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capriuni's post on a potential disability version of the Bechdel Test, and wondering how my own fiction would apply in that context.
It made me think of a story I roughed-out over ten years ago and recently rediscovered in its raw form. I'm not sure how this would fit the CapriUni Test: it certainly fails the Bechdel Test as there are only three named characters and only one of them is female. I think it fails because both the protagonists are 'disabled' in some way, and this is the cause of their problems...
The woman is a shapeshifter of some kind: her real form is that of a giant serpent ('the Worm') and she is under an enchantment to guard some ancient treasure (as such beasts often are in these stories), but she is capable of taking the form of a human, and in this form she and the (younger) man fall in love with each other. The young man discovers her true identity when he finds himself more or less shanghaied into a raiding expedition which seeks to rob the treasure guarded by the Worm: she of course is terrified that this will cause him to recoil from her, but in fact it doesn't. He proves capable of accepting that the woman he loves is in fact not human -- what unfortunately he can't accept is that she is, in her natural form at least, much older, stronger, wiser and not least more capable of defending herself than he is.
So he rushes off to try to fling himself in front of the spears of the attackers in her defence, and not only endangers her in forcing her to try to protect him instead of defending herself, but incurs in the process a groin wound that not only parts the lovers during his long convalescence but effectively emasculates him.
The story opens (the preceding material interpolated in flashback -- I had a lot of trouble with the time sequence of this plotline which I think is why I eventually abandoned it in its present fragmentary state) with the scene in which they are reunited (the Worm has had to 'stay South' for the winter) and in which she tells him that in her human form she is going to marry someone else -- for the simple reason that she needs a child to fulfil the conditions of the magic, and he can no longer give her one. (The tentative biology of this mythical female-only species is the idea that the enchantment or curse anchors a guardian to the treasure, who will eventually produce a single daughter who in her turn will inherit the guardianship and pass on the mission to her own daughter...)
They quarrel, violently: the young man's amour-propre being wounded in two directions at once. He feels that having stuck by her despite her 'disability' she ought to stick by him despite his; he feels that she cynically seduced him for her own inhuman ends; and of course he wildly resents the (perfectly kind and pleasant) older man she has pledged her word to in his stead. She is breaking her own heart in acting as she does, but she is ultimately in bond to her foremother's curse: the Worm's loyalty must be to ensure the continuity of the hereditary treasure guardianship. And naturally she cannot help but be angry at the way that his own folly and foolhardiness in persisting in treating her as a helpless female have been the cause of this agonising scene for both of them.
But in his anger her young lover goes too far: he threatens the Worm's treasure, promising to ensure that it is despoiled if she dares to go through with this marriage. This rouses her own lethal fury, and she transforms and kills him -- wishing, in her hurt and rage, that he had died earlier, in the treasure-cave... "while I still loved you".
It's not exactly a sexist story, in that the female partner is older, stronger and wiser than the male, and ultimately 'comes out top' when he transgresses (however little she likes it). But it undoubtedly fails the Bechtel test, in that the woman talks about very little but 'relationships' (and in fact defines herself by her reproductive role!) and certainly doesn't converse with any other female characters on any other subject.
I'm not sure how it falls on the CapriUni test. The 'monster' here is quite happy with her monstrousness, and in fact sacrifices the possibility of a 'human' relationship in order to perpetuate her monster role. On the other hand the plot definitely revolves around the problems caused by the characters' various 'disabilities', and in particular this disastrous intersection of them. Curing one or the other disability would definitely resolve the conflict!
capriuni's post on a potential disability version of the Bechdel Test, and wondering how my own fiction would apply in that context.It made me think of a story I roughed-out over ten years ago and recently rediscovered in its raw form. I'm not sure how this would fit the CapriUni Test: it certainly fails the Bechdel Test as there are only three named characters and only one of them is female. I think it fails because both the protagonists are 'disabled' in some way, and this is the cause of their problems...
The woman is a shapeshifter of some kind: her real form is that of a giant serpent ('the Worm') and she is under an enchantment to guard some ancient treasure (as such beasts often are in these stories), but she is capable of taking the form of a human, and in this form she and the (younger) man fall in love with each other. The young man discovers her true identity when he finds himself more or less shanghaied into a raiding expedition which seeks to rob the treasure guarded by the Worm: she of course is terrified that this will cause him to recoil from her, but in fact it doesn't. He proves capable of accepting that the woman he loves is in fact not human -- what unfortunately he can't accept is that she is, in her natural form at least, much older, stronger, wiser and not least more capable of defending herself than he is.
So he rushes off to try to fling himself in front of the spears of the attackers in her defence, and not only endangers her in forcing her to try to protect him instead of defending herself, but incurs in the process a groin wound that not only parts the lovers during his long convalescence but effectively emasculates him.
The story opens (the preceding material interpolated in flashback -- I had a lot of trouble with the time sequence of this plotline which I think is why I eventually abandoned it in its present fragmentary state) with the scene in which they are reunited (the Worm has had to 'stay South' for the winter) and in which she tells him that in her human form she is going to marry someone else -- for the simple reason that she needs a child to fulfil the conditions of the magic, and he can no longer give her one. (The tentative biology of this mythical female-only species is the idea that the enchantment or curse anchors a guardian to the treasure, who will eventually produce a single daughter who in her turn will inherit the guardianship and pass on the mission to her own daughter...)
They quarrel, violently: the young man's amour-propre being wounded in two directions at once. He feels that having stuck by her despite her 'disability' she ought to stick by him despite his; he feels that she cynically seduced him for her own inhuman ends; and of course he wildly resents the (perfectly kind and pleasant) older man she has pledged her word to in his stead. She is breaking her own heart in acting as she does, but she is ultimately in bond to her foremother's curse: the Worm's loyalty must be to ensure the continuity of the hereditary treasure guardianship. And naturally she cannot help but be angry at the way that his own folly and foolhardiness in persisting in treating her as a helpless female have been the cause of this agonising scene for both of them.
But in his anger her young lover goes too far: he threatens the Worm's treasure, promising to ensure that it is despoiled if she dares to go through with this marriage. This rouses her own lethal fury, and she transforms and kills him -- wishing, in her hurt and rage, that he had died earlier, in the treasure-cave... "while I still loved you".
It's not exactly a sexist story, in that the female partner is older, stronger and wiser than the male, and ultimately 'comes out top' when he transgresses (however little she likes it). But it undoubtedly fails the Bechtel test, in that the woman talks about very little but 'relationships' (and in fact defines herself by her reproductive role!) and certainly doesn't converse with any other female characters on any other subject.
I'm not sure how it falls on the CapriUni test. The 'monster' here is quite happy with her monstrousness, and in fact sacrifices the possibility of a 'human' relationship in order to perpetuate her monster role. On the other hand the plot definitely revolves around the problems caused by the characters' various 'disabilities', and in particular this disastrous intersection of them. Curing one or the other disability would definitely resolve the conflict!