Misaimed Fandom?

[branchandroot]

*reads reviews of The Blue Sword with mounting puzzlement*

...why does everyone think tBS is a bildungsroman? It isn't. I'm finding a lot of criticism because people say it's a bad example of its genre, that Harry doesn't actually learn and grow. But... she's not supposed to. Isn't that obvious?

This book is a deconstruction, in the original rather than popular meaning of the word, of the fairy tale. Harry gets given everything, yes: sword skill, language, a place to belong. She doesn't have to struggle for any of it, no. Because that's not the point. The point is that being magically gifted with all these things is a royal pain in the ass and involves becoming the tool of magic, like it or not--and a bewildered, ignorant tool at that. The wonderful fairy tale where everything comes easy is turned over to show the consequences of not having to struggle for language and place and skill: it means she doesn't actually know what she's doing and hasn't had a chance to grow into these things or, significantly, to control them.

So will people stop blithering on about that and talk about things I can use for supplementary materials, like the absent colonized, the links between whiteness, demonicness, and divinity, the gender politics, or the construction of Damarian culture.

Comments

[staranise]

...Oh, tBS. I remember reading that book when I was 14, and what blew my mind was near the end, when Harry and Corlath are kissing and she pulls him down beside her and I got, for the very first time in that moment, that women could want sex and could sometimes be in charge of it, instead of it being this (occasionally nice) thing men did to them.

I am so glad I read it.

[branchandroot]

*agrees* And she did it in just one line. Well, okay, and the momentum of their relationship before that, but still. Mckinley's writing style isn't for everyone, but I've always been very fond of it.