(no subject)
Dec. 28th, 2005 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmThat 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-29 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 05:52 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-30 06:10 pm (UTC)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."