Good breakdown of what you did and didn't like about the book. Meta seems to be getting more popular in this media-saturated environment; I was reminded of the show Ever After High, though I didn't actually watch it.
And AHAHAHA prepubescent lesbians who aren't that subtle about it! I love the whole over-the-top camp thing, but am I puritanical to be slightly squicked that a grown man is writing about middle-school lesbians? I think I'd be more comfortable if he out and out made them a couple, but this coy dancing around the subject strikes me as just a wee bit creepy.
*remembers that she once wrote about a thirteen-year-old Zuko almost having sex with a sixteen-year-old woman*
*shuts up*
Maybe the in-plain-sight-but-not-out-and-proud queerness is a marketing consideration much like the all-white cast appears to be. Unhappily we still live in a world where some parent could raise a stink about their child's school library carrying a book for young audiences that clearly has a lesbian couple. "Indoctrination" and all that. With this presentation Chainani gets plausible deniability, and in fact can make any bigoted adults look like the perverted ones. And homophobes aren't the quickest to catch on to queer-coding in children's media, as decades of Disney movies can attest.
This kind of thing, by the way, is exactly why I would never quit my day job to be a full-time novelist, except in the exceedingly unlikely case that I become independently wealthy. It would suck to compromise for financial reasons in the writing aspect of my life, just about the only part of it where I can be entirely myself.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2014-06-02 04:26 pm (UTC)And AHAHAHA prepubescent lesbians who aren't that subtle about it! I love the whole over-the-top camp thing, but am I puritanical to be slightly squicked that a grown man is writing about middle-school lesbians? I think I'd be more comfortable if he out and out made them a couple, but this coy dancing around the subject strikes me as just a wee bit creepy.
*remembers that she once wrote about a thirteen-year-old Zuko almost having sex with a sixteen-year-old woman*
*shuts up*
Maybe the in-plain-sight-but-not-out-and-proud queerness is a marketing consideration much like the all-white cast appears to be. Unhappily we still live in a world where some parent could raise a stink about their child's school library carrying a book for young audiences that clearly has a lesbian couple. "Indoctrination" and all that. With this presentation Chainani gets plausible deniability, and in fact can make any bigoted adults look like the perverted ones. And homophobes aren't the quickest to catch on to queer-coding in children's media, as decades of Disney movies can attest.
This kind of thing, by the way, is exactly why I would never quit my day job to be a full-time novelist, except in the exceedingly unlikely case that I become independently wealthy. It would suck to compromise for financial reasons in the writing aspect of my life, just about the only part of it where I can be entirely myself.