Oh dear god...

This is even worse than frantic comparisons of anything and everything to Harry Potter. (Here's a clue. Even though The Young Wizards series includes magic, it's really nothing like Harry Potter. It's possible to like both series. It's also possible to like one, but not the other, and the fact that they're completely different should make that obvious.)

The article is apparently here.

I can only imagine that the writer of that article never read a book in his (her?) life. Certainly not Diane Duane, or DWJ, or even Pratchett, who has included Morris Dancing in his books.... (Oh, the shame.)

When it comes to that, JKR's books aren't even that original. They aren't subverting anything, anymore than all those fractured fairy tales are, because it's been done. Doesn't mean they aren't worth reading, but... they're hardly subverting the genre here. School of magic? I can name at least five authors who got there first, without even pausing for breath. Magic and realism combined? Three, but I got interrupted to look for tape. Multiracial, multicultural, sexual? Oh dear god, do you want me to count? Magical worlds that aren't any better than the original? Well, gee, that's only about half of them.

Sci-fi tends to have the same problem. People think that because they didn't like Star Trek, they know everything about every sci-fi book ever written. I'm not even that well-read, and I know a lot of sci-fi is nothing like Star Trek, and that's nothing new. JKR hasn't read much fantasy, so she assumes what she's done is unique, when the fact is it's not. It's still a fun read, and it's still good to analyse it to death, and it's not like there's ever anything new under the sun, but... if there were, Harry Potter wouldn't be it.

And now I'm repeating myself. Sorrysorry.

And another article.
And Gaiman's take on it.
And Pterry's reply to the storm surrounding his letter.

Oh dear. It's been fandomwanked. Must run hide.

Ahem, sorry: Fandomwank

An article from the Times on autism in literature...

For those of you who haven't seen it.

( Read more... )

Feeling bad...

I yelled at somebody in feminist for being stupid (I didn't actually say that, but I meant it really loudly) for thinking there was a chance a stupid hoax was true even though there was no supporting evidence for it.

And now I feel kinda bad.

Not very bad, because, y'know, contrary to some people's beliefs, I am Not a Nice Person, but a little bad. The last time I felt like this was a year ago, when I finally got mad enough to yell at the person who kept leaving her driveway gates open into the sidewalk, and told her how inconsiderate that is for people who might have to actually use the sidewalk - and it worked. I wouldn't've felt bad if it hadn't worked, but it did work, and if I'd known it would've worked, I would have just hung out at her house until I caught her at it, then asked her politely to knock it off and either close the gates or open them into the driveway instead of into the sidewalk.

But I digress. Now I feel a little bad. And I could say that she started it for implying that I hadn't read her post, when, indeed, I had read it, but that's a preschool playground excuse, and I really ought to try to act better than that.

But if I go now and apologise, I don't think I can do that without sounding either harassed (I said I was sorry, can you drop it?) or snotty (God, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were so sensitive!) or still irked (because I hate it when people think I haven't heard what they said when, indeed, I have. I know she said that she "didn't know if it was true", my point was that there was no logical reason to believe there was any way it could be true).

Drat. I'm going to have to say sorry anyway, because I feel bad.

Maybe if I give it another hour or so....

A post about Harry Potter, the Warner Brothers, and Slash...

I'm describing it that way because I'm about to go off on a tangent.

A while back, I made a passing comment about potential gay relationships in Harry Potter, and received the reply that it would never happen because JKR is writing a fun book, she's not trying to "make a point about homosexuality".

I didn't reply. I know this may come as a surprise, given my propensity for charging in wherever I think somebody is wrong, but... I couldn't find the words. What could I possibly say to this person?

I remember the Kel books, by Tamora Pierce. In one of them - the first one, I think - one of the characters (a good guy, as it happens), got back at the Sexist Pig Jerk character for an insult by turning it around and making it a gay innuendo. Which eventually prompted a short discussion on how homosexuality isn't accepted in Tortall, but it is elsewhere, something our main character, as far as I remember, doesn't find completely rational (the first part, not the second). Gay people are at least acknowledged to exist in Tammy's books, even if in them no person is explicitly identified as gay. This didn't detract in any way from my enjoyment of the books, nor did I feel I'd been preached at. Later, I read transcripts of several conversations with her in which different characters are identified as gay. (Pretty sure they were reliable transcripts, but I could be wrong here. I wouldn't mention them, though, if I doubted their veracity.) Does that make these books political?

Harry Potter already had one openly-disabled character, Moody. Nobody thinks that having a guy missing a leg and an eye is some sort of statement on disability, do they? They don't complain that by having him turn his missing eye into an advantage that she's somehow bowing to political correctness, not that I've seen.

Racism is a persistant theme in the Harry Potter books. Various groups of people are discriminated against because of what they are, instead of who they are. This would seem to go against the idea that JKR is just trying to write a fun book. But, interestingly, all conversation about race is limited to fictional groups of people - giants, werewolves, goblins, elves. There's at least two clearly defined black people in this English school. There's the Patil twins, obviously Indian. Does this mean that JKR is trying to make some sort of point about race and multiculturalism in England? Or is she just writing the magical world as a logical subset of the nonmagical world, with the human races represented in the same proportions as they are here? Certainly, if she is going for that level of realism, it would be fair to assume that the same percentage of wizards and witches are gay/bi as in the real world, right?

When we find out that Blaize is black, nobody in the books seems to go around shouting OMG! BLACK PEOPLE IN OUR SCHOOL! (The real world is a separate issue, and it will cease to be so as soon as I self-define "real world" to exclude those sillies.) So why should it be an issue to find out that a minor character (or, gasp, a major character, should she be so daring) isn't straight? All it has to be is one line about how so-and-so kissed so-and-so else, and they both are the same sex. They've had interracial couples, and nobody thought that was some sort of political point.

I mean, this is Harry Potter! Action, adventure, and derring-do! It's not like she's devoting chapters and chapters to... um... well, if she'd had more gay, maybe she would've avoided it so as to not upset the fundies. (Not like she should care, they hate her already for magic, but...)