responding to your two numbered questions: 2) deemphasizing is relative. When you compare your average work of fiction, HP puts forward a very different set of values. Which brings me to your other question: 1) well, if you want to explore homosexual love, or, more to the point, how others react to homosexuality, then Inverarity is definitely providing a cogent way to do it. Based on one's value judgments, one may go the same or a different route. But as I had posted, I felt - for me and from my miopic perspective of what is really absent in literature and society nowadays - that one remarkable feauture of HP was that it provided a backdrop for a different set of much more traditional values and turned that into an exciting story. To keep millions and millions of YA reading, along with their parents, without feeling the need to rate it R, is in my opinion a great achievement. Hollywood has intentionally tried to push many boundaries to the point where, instead of reflecting society, it shapes society (take as a small example the acceptance of swearing, which was clearly very much impacted by Hollywood). JKR pushed in a different direction, which many others do, but JKR had an unparallelled success, thus impacting popular imagination. I liked that, a lot.
And the fact I find some of Hogwarts to correspond to my own experiences as a teenager - boarding school, with teachers and a principal that were more gurus than teachers, with all the social aspects surrounding that, made the HP series all the more pleasurable to read, for me, my spouse and now hopefully my kids.
In the AQ series, I found many of the same aspects, along with many idiosyncracies that are cute, interesting, or often more nuanced than HP. I often liked it, but sometimes it feels like certain scenes are tacked on because they almost must. The Max Martin post facto interpretation seems like that to me. Not central to the plot, until now not really woven in at all, really as if a book cannot be complete without a gay character and a desire to have Alexandra say what the author would likely want to say in the same situation.
And since what draws me to reading fantasy novels is really the fantasy part, here magic and how it impacts decisions, and since the major plot is Alexandra discovering Abraham Thorn's motives and in her still limited life deciding where she stands and how she gets where she needs or wants to go, I really want to read about that, with all the supporting scenes.
Now it could be that in future books, the gay theme will be much more woven into the fabric of the books. Then, we might even discover many different ways of reacting sensibly to encounter with homosexual love (Alex's is not the only sensible way to deal with it - Torvald was not necessarily bigoted, and there are X shades in between). But for now, it doesn't seem to fit seamlessly in the story.
That said, when rereading AQ2, I do find interesting forward references to many different plts. Read, for example, AT's first conversation with Alex, and you will see that he is made to very consciously choose his words so as to remain truthful without lying about Hecate. It's is not always clear if he is talking about Claudia or Hecate, intentional ambiguity - a stroke of genius, Inverarity.
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Date: 2012-04-26 11:49 am (UTC)2) deemphasizing is relative. When you compare your average work of fiction, HP puts forward a very different set of values. Which brings me to your other question:
1) well, if you want to explore homosexual love, or, more to the point, how others react to homosexuality, then Inverarity is definitely providing a cogent way to do it. Based on one's value judgments, one may go the same or a different route. But as I had posted, I felt - for me and from my miopic perspective of what is really absent in literature and society nowadays - that one remarkable feauture of HP was that it provided a backdrop for a different set of much more traditional values and turned that into an exciting story. To keep millions and millions of YA reading, along with their parents, without feeling the need to rate it R, is in my opinion a great achievement. Hollywood has intentionally tried to push many boundaries to the point where, instead of reflecting society, it shapes society (take as a small example the acceptance of swearing, which was clearly very much impacted by Hollywood). JKR pushed in a different direction, which many others do, but JKR had an unparallelled success, thus impacting popular imagination. I liked that, a lot.
And the fact I find some of Hogwarts to correspond to my own experiences as a teenager - boarding school, with teachers and a principal that were more gurus than teachers, with all the social aspects surrounding that, made the HP series all the more pleasurable to read, for me, my spouse and now hopefully my kids.
In the AQ series, I found many of the same aspects, along with many idiosyncracies that are cute, interesting, or often more nuanced than HP. I often liked it, but sometimes it feels like certain scenes are tacked on because they almost must. The Max Martin post facto interpretation seems like that to me. Not central to the plot, until now not really woven in at all, really as if a book cannot be complete without a gay character and a desire to have Alexandra say what the author would likely want to say in the same situation.
And since what draws me to reading fantasy novels is really the fantasy part, here magic and how it impacts decisions, and since the major plot is Alexandra discovering Abraham Thorn's motives and in her still limited life deciding where she stands and how she gets where she needs or wants to go, I really want to read about that, with all the supporting scenes.
Now it could be that in future books, the gay theme will be much more woven into the fabric of the books. Then, we might even discover many different ways of reacting sensibly to encounter with homosexual love (Alex's is not the only sensible way to deal with it - Torvald was not necessarily bigoted, and there are X shades in between). But for now, it doesn't seem to fit seamlessly in the story.
That said, when rereading AQ2, I do find interesting forward references to many different plts. Read, for example, AT's first conversation with Alex, and you will see that he is made to very consciously choose his words so as to remain truthful without lying about Hecate. It's is not always clear if he is talking about Claudia or Hecate, intentional ambiguity - a stroke of genius, Inverarity.
--Geneva