Wraeththu: A Disturbing Ideal
by Anni

Note: The following essay is based on posts made to the Stormboard, Storm's online discussion list. Posts are being published with the author's permission. Visit the list archives to read the complete discussion, including Anni and several others.

Before I start my comments, I should just point out that these are the random thoughts which have occurred to me on reading the Wraeththu books for the first time.

I'm not sure what this says about me, but although the young men in the pictures are very beautiful, without a doubt, they literally don't appeal to me at all. I wouldn't take one home with me at all. Not that any of those beautiful young men would even want to go home with a woman in her fifties!

I once met a man before who was so beautiful he made my eyes water, but there was an underlying masculinity in him which I found entrancing but find is lacking in the current depictions of the Wraeththu and yet, it's that combination of beauty, sensuality, strength and underlying masculinity that is so highly regarded among the characters of Storm's Wraeththu series.

Maybe I'm strange — in fact I know I'm strange — but the overtly effeminate aura in them leaves me cold. Yet I'm not closed-minded at all — in fact I actually believe that we all have both male and female within us and it depends on the circumstances at the time as to which way you lean.

The characters in my novel are beautiful, as you might imagine earthbound "angels" to be. I've tried to give them the best characteristics of both sexes, but the sexes are distinct. There are male and there are female Grigori, but when it comes to sexuality, they make no difference between gender. To them, it's immaterial whether their lover is male or female. The men are beautiful and masculine, the women are beautiful and feminine, much like Storm's depiction in the trilogy. It's a depiction I personally prefer over the notion of our species mutating into something combining male and female in one body. Although I have to say that, without a doubt, Storm paints a fascinating and complicated world in the Wraeththu.

It does somehow seem to me though that there is an innate hatred for what we all are which runs through the Wraeththu notion of a species. That somehow we are so imperfect that only a mutated combination could be the answer. Maybe it's because of this that the portrayal of the Wraeththu in pictorial form leaves me a little cold.

Maybe it's my life experiences, seeing the deaths of people close to me before their time or the fact that I've been responsible for the deaths of fellow humans that makes me rejoice in the fact that the human species is a wonderful, flexibly intelligent and fascinating group. To desire to replace that with some combined sex super-beings, even in fiction, seems to indicate a desire to negate who we all really are. Different sexes with different thoughts and feelings. I wouldn't want to live in a world where I was thought lacking because I was either just male or just female!

I'm probably not saying this right. It's not that I think the world we have is perfect — it's not and human beings don't always do it right. That doesn't mean that we're better or worse than anyone else, however.

Wraeththu disturbs me and because of that I feel compelled to read to the end. Perhaps that's what Storm intended, that we should feel a prickle of discomfort because we, as humans, have become so bloody complacent. Maybe it's because I've been through the trials I've had to face, including fighting in a war, that I am not complacent about my place in the great scheme of things.

Storm paints an all encompassing, disturbing, fascinating, surreally beautiful and disturbing world filled with these beautiful boys. But would I like to live in that world? Hmm.... I think not. I prefer to rejoice in the differences that the human race provides, in character, personality and gender.

Of course, as a 53-year-old grandmother, I wouldn't be a candidate for the Wraeththu anyway. Does that make me less worthy? I personally don't think so. I would have great difficulties with a group of people who had such contempt for another species.

Of course at the same time, this is a work of fiction and I don't take it seriously, but what I do find bizarrely fascinating is that such an innate dislike of what we are could have been so widely adopted. This indicates an extreme dissatisfaction with our flawed humanity, yet it's who we all are, no matter who we love (male or female) or how we dress.

Yes, I believe that human beings should question and strive to understand things like gender and sexuality. We should push ourselves to the limits and beyond the constraints that the establishment places on us as methods of control — because that's all they are. I think that we as a species stagnate if we're not given anything to strive for and then we wallow in complacency. To me a lot of the restraints put on us as people are as a result of stagnation of ideas.

I certainly don't blame writers like Storm and others for pushing the boundaries. I think it's a brave thing to do in this narrowly defined society we have constructed around ourselves. I would just like to think that man wouldn't wane while a species like the Wraeththu waxed! I'd like to think that we could all push the boundaries together. <sigh> Of course given the world as it is, this is not going to happen. In reality, in our world, the Wraeththu would be ostracized and thought as deviant and to them we would be anachronisms and fossils.

About the Author:
Anni is a regular poster on the Stormboard and may be reached at anneselbyuk@yahoo.co.uk.