See here: http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/gs-vs.-sta-handicapped-heroines/ . When I read it, they had 108 comments, and I don't think they've stopped. A few books come up quite a few times, but still. This should keep me busy for quite a while. {Smile}
Anne Elizabeth Baldwin
I think it's time to stop stalling, and share what I've found so far that I feel fairly certain of. If I don't, this could turn a project all too similar to my Aunt Kitty's family tree. She promises Dad she'll share it "when it's done," but you don't finish family trees. {Smile}
Fictional Woman – Minor Character
Myste is the hero’s love interest in Exile’s Honor and Exile’s Valor by Mercedes Lackey. She’s not a major character, and their relationship isn’t a major plotline. At least it’s there.
Barbara Gordon/Oracle in the TV series Birds of Prey is courted by a male counselor at the school where she teaches by day. The ending wasn’t happy, but that was the villain’s fault, not either Barbara’s or the counselor’s. She’s also in Batman and related comics. She does have two or three romantic interests in the comics, but those romances seem to be on again, off again. The TV series’s romance was steadier.
Veronica Spencer in Vows of the Heart by Susan Fox is on crutches due to a car accident. It’s a modern, realistic romance.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the poet, eloped with Robert Browning, also a poet, in 1846, after two years of courtship. She was in frail health at the time. She got better, then worse again, but probably was never hardy. They had one son together. They lived in Italy until her death in 1861. So far, her biographical entries have tended to cover their relationship in significantly more detail than his. {smile}
Anne Elizabeth Baldwin
When the heroine is handicapped, she doesn't get a romantically satisfying ending as far as I'm concerned. I don't think it's because I'm being too fussy. Wine, roses, champagne, and the like aren't required. All I want is for her to end up with a guy who, if he were direct enough, could honestly say "I could go it on my own, or find someone else, but I'd rather stay here with you." The only gal I know of is Myste in Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar series, and she's the hero's love interest than a major character in her own right. {smile}
Handicapped guys can find gals like that. It doesn't happen often, but there's Carradoc of the Shrunken Arm in King Arthur's legends, Tannim in Mercedes Lackey's Serrated Edge series, Alberich in Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar series, Gryffin in The Dream-Maker's Magic by Sharon Shinn, Philip Guthrie in Hope's Folly by Linnea Sinclair, Miles Vorkosigan in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vor series, and a few others I don't remember quite well enough to fetch the books for. {smile}
Now don't get me wrong: this is good. Handicapped guys need the encouragement too, and I'm very glad they're getting it. However... when it's a gal who has a handicap, she's practically never that lucky. I've seen more ways for this to get messed up than I ever expected:
1) The gal ends up with no romantic involvement.
2) The gal doesn't settle down with a guy until her handicap has been fixed, so she's no longer handicapped.
3) The gal settles down on a planet where her handicap isn't a handicap. (Who cares if you're deaf when every non-deaf human has to wear deafening earplugs to keep the local inhabitants from piercing their ear drums with their loud calls?)
4) The gal finds a guy, but they're united by a magical, psychic, biological, etc. bond they have no control over. This bond tends to ensure the guy either can't "make it" with the vast majority of otherwise eligible females, or can't happily settle down with anyone else. If the gal he finds happens to be handicapped, he courts her anyway. {lop-sided smile}
What's wrong with these stories? Nothing individually. None of them quite fit the romantic attitude I'm looking for, but I don't expect every story to end the way I'd like. The problem is that I haven't found any that do work out well. All the stories that don't work out well get frustrating when I look at them together, with so little to balance them out. {pause, bite lips}
That's why I'm asking for recommendations. I haven't read everything out there. Maybe I've missed something, or forgotten something. Does anyone know any science fiction or fantasy stories where a handicapped gal settles down with a guy who stays with her because he wants her, even tho he has the normal range of choices? He doesn't have to be in perfect condition himself. I'm counting both Alberich and Myste when they find each other. {smile}
I'm hoping there's more out there that I've missed, one way or another. {wistful smile}
Anne Elizabeth Baldwin
