I think I get what you meant now . . .

There's a person on my access list with whom I've discussed Tamora Pierce's books before, and one of her past observations was that several characters who were apparently intended to be completely heterosexual seem to "read queer" to her more than the characters whom Pierce meant to make something other than heterosexual. Well, I get the concept now in a much more immediate way than I did before. I just read the latest Valdemar book from Mercedes Lackey, and the main character really surprised me by getting a female love interest because he spends the entire book noticing the little details of male characters' appearance but noticing only vaguely what the female characters-- including his own love interest-- look like. With the guys, he notices their eyes, how they smile, whether they particularly "impressive shoulders," whether they look "handsome" or merely "pleasant," and rather vivid impressions of the character's overall look. With the girls, he notices hair color and occasionally overall body size, but he doesn't go into detail about their faces or their bodies. He appears to give much more thought to female characters' clothes than to what the characters themselves actually look like. Even though he gets tingly feelings (yes, actual tingly feelings) when this one girl touches his hand, his description of her is only that she's small and dark-haired, and that's in the context of how similar she looks to his female best friend and how delighted he is that they act like sisters and even look the part. Whereas his description of his male best friend is much more specific and vivid and creates the impression that he's going to pounce and cuddle the guy any minute. XD This, despite the obviously meant to be relationship with a girl and despite his Companion directly stating that he's "not shaych." I hereby nickname this boy The Shaychest Straight Herald Ever.

Also, I really, really wish Lackey's editor had put a limit on how many times she could use the word "muddle" in one book. I think it's supposed to be thematically relevant, or maybe Lackey just decided she loves that word like Stephanie Myer loves "chagrin." It's annoying the daylights out of me. I won't be able to not have a negative reaction to seeing "muddle" printed anywhere for the rest of the week.