In Defense of Wish-Fullfillment

In Defense of Wish-Fullfillment (An Essay about Writing) by Jarla Tangh





I’ve had it pointed out to me that I write wish-fulfillment stories.

My sister, Bobbi another writer, once took pleasure in a YA series called Sweet Valley High that I loathed. She loved it because it had the 1st-world problems of why won’t anyone in my peer group take me seriously, along with what dress to wear to that event, and what boy would be with the female characters on their quest to have an enviable semester or was it a summer. Who with any brain cells cares?

Yeah, I said it.

Sweet Valley High did nothing for me, as one can see, from my frothing at the mouth. First of all, the characters looked nothing like me. It’s not that I can’t relate to nonBlack characters. I’ll have you know I adore Lucy and Edmund Pevensie. The lovely thing about Narnia is I was able to just dwell there without being reminded of my otherness. C.S. Lewis put two humans in front of me and I wanted to know what would happen with the faun and the lion everyone kept talking about.

I am other. I am also Black. I accept that. So I want to read happy stories about others and Black characters that have magical things happening. I don’t want my others or my Black characters to suffer or struggle. People with 1st-world or Mainstream American problems do not get what it is to walk outside the door in public without being attacked for being other, specifically, Black. So why do I want to read or see others and Blacks getting attacked until the end?

Please don’t tell me that I’ll be inspired. I am not. I get angry. I have suffering and struggle in my ancestry.

It has me cringing when faced with people who look like me still living in tin-roofed shacks with outhouses in North Carolina. Where the hate in a general store leaves the tongue petrified to the floor of one’s mouth when a storekeeper barks at you. If I gave into the urge to verbally dismantle the bigot, I’d possibly end up at the end of a shotgun.

It’s self-preservation that ruled the day there. I understood I didn’t matter to the bigot and there would be no success in attempting to change his mind.

Everything in genre fiction follows the idea that after a character has been through sufficient Hell, they may, or may not, have a happy ending. A dwarf or several may die, and a sandworm will drown. Whole families try to exterminate each other.

It’s the tension and the suspense that will keep one turning pages.

Sometimes.

Other times, I just throw the book across the room, and if I’m truly peeved I will have to write my own interpretation of whatever the concept driving the reviled novel or story.

Mine is the mind that thinks a white ex-con who accidentally killed a Black woman’s child ends up as her male submissive instead of that best-seller about the college girl who dallies with getting spanked by a tycoon.

But enough about me.

There are times I just long to be transported as I was with Octavia Butler’s Wildseed, Craig Laurance Gidney’s Skin Deep Magic, Milton Davis’s From Here to Timbuktu, Charles Saunder’s Imaro, Valjeanne Jeffers’ Colony Ascension: An Erotic Space Opera, and Samuel Delany’s Tales of Nevèrÿon.

But those stories have struggle and suffering in them and even plots, you say.

That wasn’t why I kept reading them. I read them because of each author’s brand wish-fulfillment spoke to me. I wish there was a Black Adventurer with a sword instead of that Cimmerian barbarian guy to read. I wish there was a Black woman who could change shape and stand up to a difficult antagonist who falls in love with her. I wish that a gay slave could choose to re-purpose a slave collar into a love token with another gay slave.

I took in these author’s wishes for their characters loud and clear and felt compelled to know how they worked out. So in my own works, I will not be focused on themes, or plots, but what can I wish for these characters that I want to read?

Oh, dear, am I being a Contrarian again?



—Her Tangh-i-ness

Book Review: Night Terrors by John A. Pitts

'Lo People,

Wanna follow around a lesbian female badass with slightly more social skills than Lisbeth Salander of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo fame? Hey! I know it's a different genre and there is no hacking in this urban fantasy but, wanna read about what Arha/Tenar/Goha from the Earthsea series might have been like if she did without the skirts, spent more time smithing, and scooted around on 100+ horsepower on a regular basis? Gimme. Gimme.

Also are you the kind of reader who places value on the too-often maligned feminine traits of conferring with others, rather than always going it alone, being indirect, or being concerned with childcare? Can we agree to give a shout out to an Omega wolf who has found a place and pack of her own? Does the majority of a First Person POV mixed with occasional third person sections agree with you? Meet Sarah Beauhall. Or meet her again if you've already been reading.


*Spoiler Alert*

Her Tangh-i-ness greatly appreciates pithy plot summaries. However, for those who must have a virgin reading experience, read no further, and eyeball elsewhere.


*Spoiler Alert End*


What kept me going throughout the book was what was going to happen to Katie. Katie already seemed vulnerable and by the time she collapsed into coma and other people started dying because of the magic unleashed tossed Sarah into the spotlight. Sarah's efforts to save her beloved, to Her Tangh-i-ness, mattered more than the array of helper characters who surrounded Sarah. That's not a snipe, that's an observation. For Her Tangh-i-ness to really sink her teeth into a reading experience, she has to care. Her Tangh-i-ness worried that Sarah might lose Katie. She worried that Sarah would start wanting someone else because it was easier to manage than the grief of not being able to make a difference to Katie's condition.

Okay then. This ain't Her Tangh-i-ness's first foray into the middle of a series because she did not happen to read book 1. However, with this book, this reader read feeling kind of clueless because she did not already know who all these other people were or why Her Tang-i-ness should take notice of them. There were some characters who naturally stood out like Jai Li, Bub, Nidhogg, and Qindra. Jimmy, Katie's brother, took a little longer to get close to or figure out but that was because he had been set up as an antagonist. What would have really knocked this adventure out of the park for me was more time spent with Bowler Hat man. Her Tangh-i-ness truly does appreciate a distinctively dressed villain. By the time Sarah dispatches him, Bowler Hat man had shown promise of joining iconic baddies like Freddie Kruger or Pyramidhead and he was related to Jimmy and Katie. Now I'm getting suspicious. That couldn't have been all there was to Sarah encountering this dude.

Note: This copy of Night Terrors was an electronic edition provided by the author. Her Tangh-i-ness usually reviews on a for-the-love basis. No lucre has been involved.

Book Review: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

August 17, 2009
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
By N. K. Jemisin
©2010, Orbit Hachette Book Group



First off, once the Nahadoth Nightlord T-shirt and action figure line becomes available—I must be notified immediately! Can we say sizzling, long-haired, uber-Badboy? Shall we say this is the same kind of insane attraction that an legendary, fanged Transylvanian possesses? Yum.

Don't ask how I have come into possession of The Ten Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin. Suffice it to say, I won't betray my fellow pro-Enefadeh. The Itempan Arameri have their scriveners recording every word I say. I'll keep typing as fast as I can.

Yeine Darr Arameri, the protagonist, comes across as a solid everywoman despite her fantastical surroundings. The novel remains in her point of view. Her trouble is most of the novel's cast seeks her death for one reason or another. Yeine balances being a reader surrogate during charged exchanges with the afore-mentioned Nahadoth, being the kind of heroine who transforms from awkward barbarian to a force for justice in a vicious, amoral world, and being comfortably herself.

I fell in love with the book almost from the moment I saw the author photo on the back. People of color have an ancient tradition of fabulous story-telling. I, for one, demand more volumes to choose from and The Ten Thousand Kingdoms has earned a permanent spot on my bookshelf. The brooding cover art also promised a delicious, female-centered darkness. 398 pages later, I wasn't disappointed. Cross-pollination between genres is welcome. Romance readers and fans of Shonen-Ai may also find this book to their liking. I appreciated so much the inclusion of alternative sexualities. Think on this, an incestuous triangle between two gods and their deceased sister-goddess lies at the heart of the conflict. This is the kind of book that derives its intense eroticism, not from gratuituous prose, but from the understated image of its aftermath: a broken bed. Read into that whatever you will.

Peace,

Her Tangh-i-ness

Disclosure: I received a free advance copy of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.