Master Thesis on Representations of Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Ex2

[Bladewind]

I'm not sure I have anything to add to what's already been said, I appreciate that the paper exists and congratulations on your Masters.

This is great, even if I'm a little bit terrified of the kind of emails Academia dot edu is going to send me in the near future. "Since you liked 'Sexy 16 Year Old Baby Eater," we recommend..."

A concern of mine also. For now I'm just appreciating an academic paper that could share its name with a metal band.

One thing that surprised me was your interpretation on the Wyld as representative of anxieties about racial miscegenation; to me the all-suffusing corrupting energies of the Wyld always sounded like a pretty straightforward magical analogue to nuclear radiation and the fears associated with it, right down to how it lingers on the land, causes "mutations" and is the consequence of a large-scale disaster (the Balorian Crusade and the Great Contagion).

The connection of mutants (especially ape men) to miscegenation has a history in pulp fantasy that predates public concerns about nuclear radiation.

The Shadow over Innsmouth is probably the best example of this because HP Lovecraft didn't exactly hide his racism.

[Lioness]

I was hesitant to cite Innsmouth as an example, because Lovecraft was so open with his racism there is a tendency to miss when its more discreet, for example the City of Opar in the original Tarzan novels is a former colony of Atlantis who have bred with apes in a way that over generations has left their men bestial and their women gorgeous.