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Old 08-02-2012, 02:37 AM   #109
gmw
cacoethes scribendi
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Quote:
Originally Posted by anamardoll View Post
If I understand you to be saying that people will come away from both book AND reviews with their own personal and varied opinions, and that some of those opinions may not be what the author/reviewer intended and may in fact cast unfair aspersions on the author/reviewer, then I wholeheartedly agree.

But then, that happens to everyone all the time.
I guess I mean it a bit more specifically than how you phrase it above. As in that TV Trope link you provided, sometimes it seems obvious to outsiders (or at least outsiders of a particular ideology), that something has been said or presented that is unfortunate and not exactly what the artist intended (perhaps).

I could bring in examples from your blog (which I do enjoy, for the most part) but that's probably taking us too far off topic. So to stay with what you've said here, and to avoid the brief remark you said was flippant, I turn to this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by anamardoll View Post
[...]But more on-topic, I hate-hate-hate the sexual politics in Twilight. I know it's abstinence porn, but I am strongly adverse to the Hero who keeps the Heroine a virgin "for her own good". No one should have sex they're not comfortable with. But he should own that that's HIS needs speaking ("I don't want to have pre-marital sex") and not fob those needs off onto her ("You shouldn't have pre-marital sex, so I'm doing this for your own good"). Ick ick ick. [...]
The idea that a 17yo male (even a 100yo version of one) should fob off their own hang-ups onto their partner does not seem far fetched, indeed it seems perfectly reasonable and realistic reflection of reality*. What this outsider reads into your comments, especially the obviously pejorative epithet of "abstinence porn", is that you are berating the author for presenting such unacceptable, to you, standards so successfully. That is: it's hard to read this as a criticism of the text, since it is seems a reasonable representation (of what we might expect to happen*), and it was obviously successful, so what else is left but a criticism of the author for choosing to write it?

* I'm referring to your specific example here - there are obviously less realistic portrayals available in the source text.
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