#xanth

I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but Piers Anthony wrote a whole novel for the purpose of advancing the notion that children can consent and is pen pals when convicted sexual abusers.

When you become aware of that all the other miscellaneous creepy stuff in his children's books snap into place, such as one of them being called The Color of Her Panties and literally revolving around a preteen girl selecting underwear. Wait, sorry, did I imply the novel where he explicitly, textually argued for pedophilia made other things look bad? Because that should have probably been enough, right? Apparently not, because The Color of Her Panties was in my junior high school library.

Chex, female, from Xanth + Return To Centaur

Countercultural Lessons from Popular Fiction

1. Skepticism of Authority & Bureaucracy

All three mock centralized power—be it government (Adams’ Vogons and pointless forms), religion (Pratchett’s Omnians), or destiny/magic systems (Anthony’s Xanth authorities). Authority is often arbitrary, incompetent, or malevolent.

2. Absurdism as a Response to Existential Meaninglessness

Adams’ Total Perspective Vortex shows the universe doesn’t care. Pratchett’s Discworld runs on narrative clichés, not logic. Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality treats death, time, and fate as mundane jobs. The response: laugh, be kind, and carry a towel.

3. Anti-Exceptionalism

Humans aren’t special. Adams’ Earth is a computer program; Pratchett’s Small Gods says gods exist because people believe in them; Anthony’s Xanth humans share a world with centaurs and zombies who are often smarter or more moral.

4. Subversion of Heroic Tropes

The “chosen one” is often useless (Arthur Dent), reluctant (Rincewind), or a con artist (Anthony’s Bink). Real heroism is mundane—making tea, keeping promises, or just not being a jerk.

5. Pragmatic Humanism

Without cosmic justice, ethics derive from empathy and common sense. Pratchett’s Sam Vimes “personal is not the same as important” but acting locally matters. Adams’ Mostly Harmless suggests survival and small decencies suffice. Anthony’s early Xanth books lean on loyalty over law.

6. Mockery of Techno-Arrogance & Magic as Metaphor

Adams parodies tech as unreliable (doors that sulk). Pratchett shows magic as chaotic and elitist. Anthony treats magic as a natural resource to be exploited or regulated—both critique the idea that any single system (science, magic, economics) has all answers.

7. Inclusivity & Respect for the “Other”

Adams’ Whale & Petunia moment highlights arbitrary cosmic violence. Pratchett’s golems, trolls, and werewolves face prejudice but are often more moral than humans. Anthony (problematically in gender politics, but counterculturally in speciesism) elevates non-humans and outcasts.

The Xanth series, as anyone who has read it can attest to, is incredibly horny. This isn't always a positive - for example, the series tends to objectify women and particularly teenage girls in ways that are downright disturbing - but it also ties in frequently to one of the series' most important themes: that no monster, no matter how horrible it may seem, is innately evil, and often, conflict is simply the result of a clash of interests and/or culture.

And how are these conflicts resolved in the text? Through friendship, marriage, and/or sex. Because Anthony doesn't typically draw a hard line between all those things, except where children are concerned. To him, sex, marriage, and reproduction are ideally all part of the same joyous package.

See, in the world of Xanth, any creature can potentially have sex with any other creature - and produce viable offspring, to boot. These encounters typically occur at the series' "love springs" - otherwise unremarkable springs of water that, unbeknownst to their drinkers, inflict an insatiable lust on the next thing that they see, and make it possible to conceive a child by acting on it. And while these could be used to express some pretty messed-up ideas, Xanth as a whole tends to lean toward the positive, so it's usually two people (note that I didn't say "human") who drink from the spring, see each other, and proceed to make a baby.

And this can just be an incidental thing, but often, it's the start of a new era of diplomacy. These love springs don't just cause pornographic meet cutes - they're often the point where two members of disparate, sometimes deeply conflicting cultures finally learn to see the other as more than just an enemy, and form an actual bond about it. This doesn't necessarily resolve the whole conflict between their cultures, but it does open a door that is probably going to be explored later. (Xanth is an extremely lengthy series and it gets into these themes a lot.)

Which brings me to what the actual point is of these love springs: it's not just so Piers Anthony can imagine having hot, mutually desired, sex with complete strangers (although that's obviously a perk). But the main purpose is to break down barriers that cause us to see one another as enemies, and particularly, as monsters. Because a lot of the people's I'm talking about here are not human - there's centaurs, ogres, goblins, harpies*, skeletons, and so on and so forth. Hell, we even get an entry that humanizes zombies! They're not exactly sapient, but by gum, they're still individual beings with personalities.

And I wasn't interested in sex when I read these books, but what I did enjoy was the exploration of all these different monster peoples - many of whom had been set up earlier in the series as simple, one-dimensional baddies. For example, when ogres were first introduced, they were described as brutish, unintelligent assholes who can only be avoided or outsmarted. And then we get a book explaining that ogres only seem unintelligent because people (including the ogres themselves) believe they're unintelligent - in actuality, an ogre can be just as smart as any human, and debunking that perception unlocks a whole new dimension of ogre intellect.

Then there are the stories we get with the centaurs, who consider the personal use of magic to be obscene - a problem in the world of Xanth, where humans and sometimes other sapient creatures are each born with a unique magical "talent". When we meet our first centaur with a talent of their own, the character has been exiled from their people - a normal practice at the time. But as the series progresses, and we meet more centaurs (and their mixed-species descendants) with magical talents, the stigma is gradually reduced and the centaurs become more tolerant.

And that's basically how things play out - the longer the series goes on, the more of these prejudices are re-examined and deconstructed, and the more diverse points of view get introduced.

As you may imagine, all this shit informed the way I look at monsters in other stories. Oh, is that an alien who has kidnapped you and has unclear intentions? Clearly he's trying to woo you and make you his wife. Is there a Monster(TM) out to kill? It's probably dissatisfied with its lot in life because nobody loves it. And so on and so forth.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not a fan of the fact that the story tries to make every important relationship a romantic (and fruitful) one, and implies that two people can't be close if one of them marries a different person instead. I'm definitely not a fan of the way the series treats women's and teen girls' bodies as inherently sexual, while sexual interest is overwhelmingly the purview of men and teen boys. There's a lot to criticize about this series. But it did a lot of good for me, too.

Some sketches and lineart I've amassed of my among us ocs over time! Sorry if the sketches are too faint to see, I did what I could orz