- to be clear, if they’d met as adults, I’d not especially care about: it’s skeevy because of all the goddamn detail put into showing us how Damia loved Afra as a baby and vice versa, and using adult words like “coy” and “beguiling” to describe how she looked AS A CHILD.
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- and even on a skimthrough now, those strengths still hold true. The Rowan's desire for a big family after a lonely childhood doesn't prepare her for the difficulties of multiple pregnancies & all the challenges of rearing those kids while working; it's real and complicated.
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That she suffers pregnancy complications and makes the difficult but positive decision to have her children largely raised and fostered with loving family on-planet? That the narrative doesn't shame her for this, but reinforces that it was a good decision? Those aspects are SOLID
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But every. single. time. that gender, sex and sexuality come up, McCaffrey just. she's just fuckin' WEIRD about it, you guys, and it's SO FUCKING UNSETTLING. The little asides about Larak finding his sister fuckable! Calling partners "mates" and the talk about breeding! W H Y
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Prior to this, given that the book is called Damia, I'd completely forgotten that it starts with Afra and is mostly told in his 3rd person POV - I'd just assumed those elements were all from the first book in the series. And to a degree, the book IS about Damia -
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- but not as her own person. It's about how she comes to exist FOR AFRA: about how HE gets his happy ending, when we ended the first book watching him lovelorn while the Rowan goes off with Jeff. Damia isn't about Damia; it's about how Afra GETS Damia, and in that context -
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- the decision to show their "special bond" through her childhood is just... I'm not *quite* gonna call it grooming, on account of how he ignores her advances until she's a legal adult and she has a healthy sex life beyond him prior to that, but it's... it feels really creepy.
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Like. Narratively, when you know where they're headed, it comes across like "somehow as a child she Knew this adult man would one day be her husband and she was Into Him as soon as she hit puberty, but he nobly waited while she went through her rebellious phase to make it Cool."
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Even so - and this is a LOW FUCKIN BAR to leap - the Afra/Damia relationship is still WAY less skeevy than the setup for Tirla/Sascha in Pegasus in Flight, wherein Tirla is TWELVE YEARS OLD BUT LOOKS SEVEN, and the justification is "oh but she'll be ripe enough for him at 16."
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A glance at my bookshelves reveals that I still have copies of the next two books in the series, Damia's Children and Lyon's Pride. You guys... I am. I am tempted, because I am a masochist. But I do not think that I should.
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I remember very little of the rest of the series beyond 1) Damia and Afra go on to have, like, eight children, 2) there are lil blue furry aliens and 3) one of Damia's daughters bones a gay man and turns him straight with the power of Compulsory Hetetosexual Romance.
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I will... consider skimcritting the Gay Man Turns Straight book, if I can remember which one it is, and assuming it's one of the ones I already own. But goddamn. I am TIRED. I am gonna go read something now for pleasure, that doesn't make me want to bleach my eyes. good NIGHT
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End of conversation
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