ParanoidObsessive posted... Granted, Jordan certainly could have used the opportunity to explore trans themes (having the magic itself "validate" someone who claims to have been born the wrong gender and seem to be tapping into the "other" side the One Power once they transition in some way), but that's a very "modern" outlook and he was writing a bit too early for that sort of thing. Though there are certainly stories now that do something similar.
left hand of darkness came out in 1969. and subverting gender/sex roles has been a theme of literature for hundreds of years. it's a failing of genre fiction IMO that the vast majority of it had nothing to say about this core part of human identity until ~10 years ago. like the best you got usually was a Badass Woman in Armor who uses a sword and isnt a huge bitch like your mom
also i didnt say anything about trans people ... there are a lot of weird edge cases on the idea "magic thats tied to your sex/gender", i wanted him to dig in on at least one of them
it soudns like he does and the answer is giga-boring tho, if it's like "you have a gender soul that determines what magic you have; every gender soul you see in the books is binary".
ParanoidObsessive posted... What you seem to want out of a magic system is extreme crunchiness,
Sort of? I want it to explore how magic interacts with society in a way that has nuance. that's usually easier if there are rules about how it works.
But I don't think most Fantasy Books With a Big Map and Magic Rules actually use the magic system to say anything interesting to me. and some speculative fiction (terra ignota for example, or magical realism like disco elysium) do interesting stuff with "magic" whose limits and rules are almost undefined
ParanoidObsessive posted... women having to sort of give in and submit to the flow, men having to seize control and force it to do what they want),
this sounds even worse than i remember it being, lol