(no subject)

[rm]

That random cat is still out there howling. Mrowrrrr mrowrrr mrowrrr.

I'm amusing myself looking at online discussions of HDM, 99.9% of which frustrate me not just because of the abominable standards of literacy and discourse on the Internet (and this is better than most), but because I can't find where the grownups are -- and I don't mean chronologically, I just mean someone who can read something and do some decent analysis. I suppose this is what you all, and my gf, are for. But argh. The HP fandom, for all its many woes is full of good, serious literary thinking -- and while lots of that is wanky crap in its own right there's tons of casual but deeply intelligent conversation. All the HDM discussion I can find strikes me as people asking relevant questions for irrelevant reasons and then not looking at the text with anything resembling a keen eye.

Aside from that though, I'm getting hung up on the stuff I usually do, which is culture building. Like, here's this world with daemons -- now tell me what a wedding looks like, or social dancing. More precisely, as regards the social dancing, how do you not trip on the little fuckers? Because the books' women are exceptional in most cases, what is the general state of women in Lyra's world? Is Mrs. Coulter an exception? Does she get more freedom to do as she pleases because she's a widow? because she's conniving? or are women seen as perfectly equal (other than that original sin problem)? Yes, I'm pondering a fic, and yes, it requires the answering of the social dance question.

Comments

[sethg]

FWIW, I blogged a few remarks (LJ-feed version with better comments here.)

Your question about the status of women in Lyra's world reminds me of an observation my teacher made in a class on how women were portrayed in late-19th-century novels (The Awakening, Sister Carrie, The Odd Women, and probably one or two others that I've forgotten): the female characters in novels by male authors had much more power over their environments than the female characters in novels by female characters of the same era. So I am tempted to say that Pullman is overestimating how much freedom women have in Lyra's world. But that's a bizarre claim, isn't it?

From Lyra's distainful remarks about female Scholars, I got the sense that women are definitely not seen as perfectly equal in her world---it seems more that Mrs. Coulter is an exception.

The closest the series comes to a sex scene is Mrs. Coulter's aborted seduction of Lord Boreal near the end of The Subtle Knife; you could extrapolate both sex and social-dancing rituals from that, I suppose.

How much does HDM fandom overlap with general written-SF/fantasy fandom? Is this another case of a genre-in-all-but-label book that becomes a hit with scads of people who would never have read a book labeled "fantasy"?

[sethg]

I meant, of course, "...in novels by female authors of the same era". Duh.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think that that overestimation of women's power idea is right on. I'm just wary of imposing my interest in power dynamics onto a world that seems to have very specific ones that just aren't necessarily explicated to us very clearly.

As to that seduction scene (*shudder*), you have a point, but I would still argue there's a significant different between a money daemon messing about with a snake daemon in a seduction, and a monkey and a snake dancing -- more accurately, I think that while dancing, in any world, can involve the implication of sex, I don't think in a world that would probably involve somewhat formal social dancing that the daemons would touch (I mean, unless someone was up to something, which of course is what I'm pondering here -- specifically, Asrael and Marisa's first meeting).

More on the genre question in a moment.

[britgeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

It sounds like maybe *somebody* should start a comm for such high-level talks. And be really picky about who they let in the membership.

*runs away quickly*

[rm.livejournal.com]

You know there will be at least two resuls of that other than "good things", the first will be it turning into gnoticism 101, which isn't a bad thing per se, but there are people better read than me to do that. The second is "iew, you're mean Y aren't U letting me into yr comm?" You know? Heh... also are there more than three people who care?

[jothanbar.livejournal.com]

The forum on Bridge To The Stars isn't bad, although I haven't been on there for ages.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Clearly, I clicked on the wrong topics. There are definitely voices of sanity there, but they seemed to pop up mostly when a cluebat needed to be taken to a thirteen-year-old. I shall dig about more perhaps.

[jothanbar.livejournal.com]

Ha!
I had a couple of interesting debates on there, re: same-sex daemons and if they indicate homosexuality.
Given that other sites I've seen seem to be populated by people who genuinely believe they have a daemon indepdendent of their bodies, the phrase 'best of a bad bunch' springs to mind.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Ugh, although I suppose those loons (among several other types, I'm quite sure are lurking around) were inevitable.

I did read that thread and thought it was interesting, but didn't have anything useful to say to it, although I do like that the author is like "No idea, don't know everything about the world even if I wrote it."