themadpoker

- "You threatened my cubs. Do you think I'd hesitate to throw a thousand worlds into chaos to protect my cubs?" One of the things that's bothered me somewhat for a few volumes was the way Snow was sort of relegated off to go raise the kids after the Bigby spell sex thing. There's nothing wrong with the idea in itself, plenty of moms decide to take time off work and such but I was always kind of :l about Snow ceasing to be a wicked cool politician especially while Bigby getting a larger and larger role as a Wolverine type 'I do what NEEDS to be done' dude. Also the stuff the pig said to Rose Red is making me concerned that this is going to be a permanent thing. "A different path to politics"? Hey, I happened to really like her initial 'path to politics'. So the fact that her kids (cubs >() were the only thing she felt the need to bring up to Gepetto when he asked why she fought him just set off that particular strain of egh.

- Please Willingham, I am begging you, if you are going to be terrible about your non-Western fables just DON'T WRITE THEM. See this volume it's revealed that Sinbad and Rose Red got married. I had no idea why or how this happened but I figured I'd roll with it till Willingham gave us an explanation. Except hey, I guess it didn't matter at all since he went and got them divorced! By Rose Red saying I divorce you three times!

AGGGGHHHHH. Talak. Talak without ibadah. Willingham, Willingham, do you not even get how much controversy this practice has associated with it? Do you not know that several Islamic countries have banned it because it often puts the wife in a terrible position? Do you not know that even those scholars who do argue for it acknowledge that it has to be done with the three month ibadah period to allow the couple time for reconciliation? Do you simply NOT CARE BECAUSE SINBAD WAS JUST THE REBOUND GUY IN ORDER TO HIGHLIGHT THE ROSE RED-BLUE BOY RELATIONSHIP AND HEY WHO CARES IF YOU STEP ON THE TOES OF YOUR MUSLIM READERS, HOW MANY COULD YOU HAVE LEFT AFTER THE ARABIAN NIGHTS STORY ARC ANYWAYS?

There was also the special flavour of fail of having Rose Red do this when she's not even Muslim (as a side note, when the woman initiates divorce in Islam she uses khula so even in some hypothetical universe where it would make sense for her to use an Islamic divorce procedure she's using the WRONG ONE).

And there were the icky undertones of the Muslim non-white dude being the one used and quickly discarded but that mostly hit me later when I had my thinking brain on since reading that page gave me a visceral THROW THIS BOOK AWAY reaction. I wasn't expecting that you know? I really hate surprise!Islamfail. It hits me harder than any other kind of fail because 1) my religion is pretty important to me and 2) there are not a whole lot of Muslims in my books. The ones that are there are generally written by non-Muslim writers. Everytime I do run across a Muslim character who is not introduced as a terrorist or oppressed woman I have the split reaction of a) 'YAY someone of my religion in my fiction!', b) extreme wariness that they are going to get something terribly offensively wrong. There's also sometimes c) uncomfortable under the looking glass butterfly feeling but that one's harder to quantify since it's usually this vague sense I have that the author is treating the character as 'look at this strange little Muslim person. They are so different and fascinating' diversity experiment as opposed to an actual person. ANYWAYS. It'd actually slipped my mind that the Arabian Nights characters were Muslim because Fables doesn't reference religion much so I didn't have any of that 'proceed with caution' mindset in place. Hence the surprise!

- This one's a personal squick but I really hated it when Boy Blue gave Rose Red his 'these are your sexual dysfunctions, I'm sorry you're so screwed up speech'. I just -- I hate that. I hate it when a man explains to a woman how they can't be together because she is just so screwed up in the head. I hate it when I feel it's supposed to stand in for the authorial voice instead of one dude being condescending. I hate that Rose Red seems to have decided she is a horrible human being and she is going to try hard to "make it up to him -- become worthy of him". Eww eww eww setting off all my squickdars. I very much hope that Willingham will deal with her depression and possibly handle her storyline a little like Prince Charming's where he got a lot of flack for his inability to not cheat but still got to be a hero regardless but I don't know. I'm worried it's actually going to play out as a making herself good enough for Boy Blue storyline.

- This didn't really irritate me like the other points but I am beginning to become really confused about what I'm supposed to make of the Fabletown general amnesty. The first part of the volume seemed to say No, Gepetto Is Evil And It Sucks That This Law Means We Cannot Immediately Kill Him As Would Only Be Right And Just. And there were plenty of examples of people showing their displeasure in various ways, what with the not serving him at restaurants and so on. (Not that I have problem with this since I sort of felt from the beginning that while the general amnesty is in theory a decent idea the total lack of remorse many of the characters display was bound to create tensions). But then we had the blowup with Bigby and Beast at the end over the law not allowing him to enter the farm. If I'm supposed to judge Gepetto so hard for his crimes and lack of remorse than why am I supposed to be on Bigby's side? He killed a lot of people before Fabletown and he's never seemed the slightest bit sorry for it. I mean seriously? Gee Bigby, it really sucks that the animals put it into the Farm charter that you wouldn't be allowed on the farm after you'd killed so many of them. I am just so terribly SORRY about their utterly unreasonable dislike. Why can't they get over it and love you like Bill Willingham does?

So yeah! Something tells me I won't be picking up the next volume of Fables any time soon. Goodbye Willingham, it was nice knowing you! When you didn't suck!

EDIT: Internet, I love youuuu. Remember how I mentioned that Fables has given me some race ick since the Arabian Nights storyline?

These brilliant articulate ladies lay it all out for you. If you want to just ignore this post and read them instead I am perfectly happy with that.