Instalments of Series
Mar. 24th, 2022 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_losThe 12:
Very good, as expected of Les Cites Obscures. The flood v. intriguing, and good to see more of this world outside of the cities themselves. It's odd that by now, I think more stories than not occur in this dieselpunk era. My overall impression of the world is still firmly of that earlier Belle Epoque period.
There is, however, a one-page sexual assault sequence that some readers might find disturbing (the graphic suggestion or even the bare fact of which I really don't feel adds much to the story).
Anne of Avonlea:
So Anne, 16 and a school teacher now, broke her No Corporal Punishment rule and whipped a student with her pointer. The kid (Anthony Pye) respects her now, because her whopping was just as good as a man’s. I hope this child can just eventually come to terms with his BDSM instincts in an environment better suited to that.
It’s weird/annoying though, because from the SECOND the corporal punishment thing was introduced I was like, 'oh Anne’s idealism is going to be Humbled here', and SURE ENOUGH. The text's very anxiety on this point is almost a testament to the writer's knowing, on some level, that this is actually dumb, and that educators can well get on without this. I find the apologism occasioned by that defensiveness uncomfortable. To even get Anne to do this, LMM writes her into some bizarre toothache fugue state. This feels especially weak given that Anne’s been calmer when people were literally and actually dying around her, on multiple occasions. Up until this point, Anthony Pye has been 'letter of the law' good, but surly. So why would he suddenly put a mouse in her desk on the day she’s very visibly in her worst mood ever? Unless he does just crave that attention?
Other thoughts:
- Sunlight is streaming through trees onto some moss, Wang Wei u up??
- Fff this child getting into god because he enjoys jam and he’s heard god ‘makes preserves and redeems us’
- Anne, stuck in a roof like a hentai trope: I’ve had an idea for a poem, DIANA!! Bring me a pencil.
Diana: oo, you should sub this to The Canadian Woman—
- I kinda dig Miss Lavender, though Aisha and I had a long discussion about her 'quirky' practice of calling her maid Carlotta IV (not her name) and then broader contexts of re-naming as enchantment and practice of power in the series (Anne's own renaming of Barry's Pond, the whole island having already been Renamed by settlers, the fact that during the time covered by these books there are two native settlements on Prince Edward Island that are never mentioned herein).
- ‘She found him in the kitchen, stroking Ginger’s gay, dead body with a trembling hand’ I know it’s a parrot but what an epitaph
- Wow I didn’t expect Marilla/Rachel to be endgame
- Anthony Pye, the BDSM child, responds to Anne's leaving the school by getting into two huge unprovoked fights with other boys. Once again I am asking him to grow up and learn BDSM etiquette.
- Mrs Allen still sings lullabies to her lost baby????? Devastating.
Very good, as expected of Les Cites Obscures. The flood v. intriguing, and good to see more of this world outside of the cities themselves. It's odd that by now, I think more stories than not occur in this dieselpunk era. My overall impression of the world is still firmly of that earlier Belle Epoque period.
There is, however, a one-page sexual assault sequence that some readers might find disturbing (the graphic suggestion or even the bare fact of which I really don't feel adds much to the story).
Anne of Avonlea:
So Anne, 16 and a school teacher now, broke her No Corporal Punishment rule and whipped a student with her pointer. The kid (Anthony Pye) respects her now, because her whopping was just as good as a man’s. I hope this child can just eventually come to terms with his BDSM instincts in an environment better suited to that.
It’s weird/annoying though, because from the SECOND the corporal punishment thing was introduced I was like, 'oh Anne’s idealism is going to be Humbled here', and SURE ENOUGH. The text's very anxiety on this point is almost a testament to the writer's knowing, on some level, that this is actually dumb, and that educators can well get on without this. I find the apologism occasioned by that defensiveness uncomfortable. To even get Anne to do this, LMM writes her into some bizarre toothache fugue state. This feels especially weak given that Anne’s been calmer when people were literally and actually dying around her, on multiple occasions. Up until this point, Anthony Pye has been 'letter of the law' good, but surly. So why would he suddenly put a mouse in her desk on the day she’s very visibly in her worst mood ever? Unless he does just crave that attention?
Other thoughts:
- Sunlight is streaming through trees onto some moss, Wang Wei u up??
- Fff this child getting into god because he enjoys jam and he’s heard god ‘makes preserves and redeems us’
- Anne, stuck in a roof like a hentai trope: I’ve had an idea for a poem, DIANA!! Bring me a pencil.
Diana: oo, you should sub this to The Canadian Woman—
- I kinda dig Miss Lavender, though Aisha and I had a long discussion about her 'quirky' practice of calling her maid Carlotta IV (not her name) and then broader contexts of re-naming as enchantment and practice of power in the series (Anne's own renaming of Barry's Pond, the whole island having already been Renamed by settlers, the fact that during the time covered by these books there are two native settlements on Prince Edward Island that are never mentioned herein).
- ‘She found him in the kitchen, stroking Ginger’s gay, dead body with a trembling hand’ I know it’s a parrot but what an epitaph
- Wow I didn’t expect Marilla/Rachel to be endgame
- Anthony Pye, the BDSM child, responds to Anne's leaving the school by getting into two huge unprovoked fights with other boys. Once again I am asking him to grow up and learn BDSM etiquette.
- Mrs Allen still sings lullabies to her lost baby????? Devastating.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-26 09:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-26 09:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-26 10:54 am (UTC)It's really a tough thing to do when we think about it, taking a child heroine in a book that has become wildly popular as a children's book and following them as they grow up. A fair number of my favourite school story authors took the same route with shall we say varying success.