fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2473 ]

[ SECRET POST #2473 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2473 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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08. http://i.imgur.com/A5CpTIt.jpg

I read The Blue Sword after reading The Hero and the Crown and became quite confused as to how the area apparently underwent a major ethnic and environmental shift. I know it's supposed to have been a while, but you'd think someone would have mentioned it!

(It's entirely possible I'm wrong and those aren't supposed to take place in the same geographic location, but that's the impression I had at the time.)

...But anyway, yeah, you're totally right. Wasn't she, crap, magic or reincarnated or descended from someone or something, so it's not like it was just any white girl. /that makes it so much better

I had a similar experience myself. It sucks.

The moral here is that perusing social justice does nothing but sour you on everything you once loved. Your miserable and the world is just as bad as ever. Wouldn't it have been better if you never cared and could still be happy?

[Your miserable]

You're better than that, sirrah.

Goddamn does fake old timey language annoy me, no offense. You just triggered the cringing intellectual in me.

I reckon.

But 'sirrah' is a real word, just archaic....

Sirrah isn't fake, though. So, kinda intellectual fail there.

Re: COR BLIMEY

chardmonster - 2013-10-11 13:50 (UTC) - Expand

I remember re-reading that as an adult and definitely losing some of the love for the reasons you mention and then others. It just didn't hold up, which is sad because it used to be one of my favorites.

:(

This is one of my favorite childhood books, but it's got to be 25 years since I've read it at least. Maybe I'll never re-read it and retain fond memories...

:( Now I need to reread this novel.

Given that they were the direct descendants of Aerin's people from The Hero and the Crown and it didn't seem to have been that many thousands of years between the two books, I'm not sure how the people of Damar were brown, cultural coding notwithstanding.

See, I didn't see it that way at all. Yes, you could read it that way if you wanted to, but I read it more as a story of someone learning about her own cultural prejudices and embracing a world that her ancestors had been part of. It's true, Harry had strong kelar, but Corlath's was just as strong. And while she did learn what she needed to in a rather short span of time, it wasn't as if she woke up one morning and BAM, magic sword-wielding powers. She was already established as physically capable and a good horsewoman, and she went through a harsh period of extremely intense training that was partially fueled by herbal drugs to keep her going longer. And she gets the hell beaten out of her in the process.

Harry also doesn't make the people of Damar go "oooh, look, her way of doing things is so much better." She acclimatizes fully to their way of life and embraces the culture she'd once thought of as foreign. The force she leads at the mountain pass is much, much smaller than Corlath's because it's composed of only friends and splinter groups; probably 90% of the Hillfolk were invested in Corlath's plan, not hers.

I hope I don't sound ranty--that's not my intention. I can see how OP would look at the book that way. But I honestly think there's more than one way to look at it, and it's still quite a good read if you go into it prepared to trust that the author didn't mean it to look like the kind of story OP mentioned. Just my two cents.

She was already established as physically capable and a good horsewoman, and she went through a harsh period of extremely intense training that was partially fueled by herbal drugs to keep her going longer. And she gets the hell beaten out of her in the process.

Was she a good horsewoman, though? In the beginning of the novel, she's riding a pony, and a placid one at that. She knows the basics of riding and is reckoned an excellent horsewoman "back Home", but the book makes it clear that those standards are not the standards of the Damar. Harry's not used to a stallion, she can't mount it by herself, she's not used to long rides (vs. short pleasure rides at an easy gait), etc.

Then yes, her training period was harsh and aided by drugs, but she becomes a warrior within a matter of weeks. And not just any warrior, but the best warrior, better than all the other contenders who've been riding and training for the better part of their lives. Nearly the equal of their leader, in fact, even though he's a grown man who, again, has been training his entire life. Does that seem realistic?

Harry also doesn't make the people of Damar go "oooh, look, her way of doing things is so much better." She acclimatizes fully to their way of life and embraces the culture she'd once thought of as foreign.

Well, yeah... but in "going native", Harry doesn't just acclimatize, she rises to the top of their ranks and is expected to play a key role in the salvation of the Damar. This is pretty much the same plot that gets heavily criticized in Dances with Wolves and Avatar, for pretty much the same reasons. I can see why the OP might've picked up on it, because it's the sort of thing that people notice a lot more nowadays, where you wouldn't blink at eye at it back when the novel was published.

If you can ride a pony, you can ride a horse. And mounting the horse by yourself is the very first thing you learn in your very first horse riding lesson. How tricky it is to ride a stallion depends on the stallion's personality and how well the horse was trained.

And, honestly, sometimes people are just naturally good at certain things, even if they've never done them before. It has something to do with the way their brains formed/developed during pregnancy. And yeah, I can think of at least four famous (historical) swordsmen who never touched a sword until they were in their teens or early twenties, had a seriously violent problem, and beat down the threat. THEN they were trained. So yeah, she very well *could* have just been good at it.

Plus, it was a very minor plot point that she didn't go native so much as go back to her maternal roots. She was a mixed-race child of a mixed race union.

And yeah, I can think of at least four famous (historical) swordsmen who never touched a sword until they were in their teens or early twenties, had a seriously violent problem, and beat down the threat. THEN they were trained.

Ooohhh, who were they? *likes interesting historical stuff*

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-12 02:32 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2013-10-12 07:25 (UTC) - Expand

It happens. My favorite movie as a kid was Pocahontas.

I can admit I still like the art and music and the character of Pocahontas just like I did before but that movie has serious problems, the whole idea they went with was a serious problem. Sometimes you just have to reconcile dual perspectives on something.

Pocahontas is still one of my favorite movies :O

I know it's problematic and it boggles me that Disney were able to even make the movie to begin with. But I also think that Disney's Pocahontas is judged unfairly because it's so popular. The Pocahontas tale has been butchered for decades, especially in children's media. So, compared to other Pocahontas films and cartoons, the Disney version is a beautiful mess. As opposed to just a mess.

I guess the positive is that it made me interested enough to learn her real story.

Disney gets more flack because butchering stories is their stock in trade. It's not a surprise that they butchered the story of Pocahontas; what would've been surprising is if they'd gotten even half right.

OP, there's no such a thing as a "non-problematic" work of fiction. There's always going to be something preventing a story from being THE PINNACLE OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS. I'm saying this as a queer-leftist-feminist-atheist-etc-WOC: I wouldn't be able to enjoy anything at all if I weren't able to overlook certain things and keep on reading/watching 'till the end, /and then/ make a judgement.

Of course we should look at works of fiction with a critical lens! But that should not prevent us from enjoying stuff, either. If anything, we can demand better written, less problematic stuff. Hell, we can even write it ourselves. And things will slowly progress towards better, more inclusive stories.

Meanwhile, we can meta all we want. And keep enjoying something despite knowing it's problematic, loving it for whatever happiness it brought us - without forgetting what made us cringe, but not throwing it to the thrash for that either.

I thought her mother was from Damar and her father was from the invaders.

Also, I definitely didn't get a 'brown savages' vibe off of the portrayal of the Damar, possibly because they were portrayed as having amazingly advanced plumbing, art, a culture, etc.

I feel your pain, OP. A lot of childhood favorites don't always stand the test of time for many reasons. That said, I hope this doesn't completely spoil your enjoyment of it.

I do sympathize, because I re-read the Blue Sword a couple of years ago and found problems with it as well. (The ones you mention and others.)

I think you also need to consider why she was writing.

From her blog: http://robinmckinley.com/faq/faq.php?q_id=11, but summarized as the fact she partly wrote The Blue Sword in reaction to the Sheikh movie, because she thought the women characters were being treated so poorly, and that she wanted to portray the native culture as being as good as or better than the Homelanders.

What I find interesting is how it is the women who bring the magic back, specifically the mothers of Aerin and Harry. Like magic is more powerful through the matriarchy or something. Also, unlike current YA fiction, there is much less focus on the romance, and there is no romance triangle, which was sort of nice to revisit.

About the white thing and Aerin: If memory serves, Aerin is considered a bit odd because she is pale, compared to her relatives.

I don't don't get why people always jump on the "savages" trope.

Stories like that are usually trying to make a point that "you know, you may think that technology makes us superior, but it's just that we don't value the same things. And guess what? Our values may not be the healthiest one. Let's try to understand what these people's values are".

To me, it's reading those stories as "white person being better than savages" that is prejudiced.

On the other hand, having an exterior look at things is usually a good way to come up with solutions that people wouldn't have thought of. That isn't unrealistic.
(though getting to become a better swordsman than everyone else in a month is).

Eh, don't hate on childhood favourites. Take it as naive wish fulfillment rather than patronizing.

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