Consent in Victories Greater Than Death
People keep mentioning the way my YA novel VICTORIES GREATER THAN DEATH deals with consent, and I’m glad folks are noticing.
In the book, nobody touches anybody else (except for fight scenes) without asking for permission. I wish this had been in the books I read as a teenager.
This goes together with all the other themes of the book, which keep coming back to respecting people’s identities. Everyone in the book is searching for their identity and trying to become their best selves. But also, the translator makes sure you know everyone’s pronoun.
Don’t worry, the book is not a sermon! It’s full of pew-pew-pew fight scenes and creatures and weird food and monsters.
But as I was writing it, I did think a lot about that idea of respecting other people’s identities. Personal space and bodily autonomy are a huge part of that.
Respecting everyone else’s identity, and personhood, means respecting their space and their boundaries. I found it really powerful to make sure people asked before touching, and it helped my characters get closer and form a chosen family.
There’s a lot of darkness in this book, and we start getting hints that the “good guys” have a lot of issues. But I love the utopian strand in #StarTrek and other big space adventures, and respecting other people is central to that.
