Take Miles Vorkosigan, who is a favorite of mine (from Lois McMaster Bujold's Barrayar books).
I love the Miles books. Yeah, he's a good example. It's the pressure of Barrayar's environment and the need for the power to survive it that drives him so far. On another planet like Beta he'd never have developed like that.
I don't think I quite understand the mindset of the second group of people you mention. Is it that they fear to identify with someone who isn't a true-blue hero? Or is it about the safety of the familiar, where they don't want to read anything that might upset them or fall outside certain rigid boundaries?
I'm not sure. I think it's partly that some people don't ever question their assumptions. We had a conversation on a mailing list a while back when someone was talking about people who take as fact the idea that Hercules takes Iolaus for granted and treats him terribly and where on earth they get this idea, since it isn't in the show. Several others jumped in to defend this idea as canon, but when challenged, they couldn't name a single instance from an episode that really illustrated this. The closest anyone could get was "Gladiator" where Hercules goes ahead with the slave plan even though Iolaus thinks it's a bad idea. (I'll grant that that shows Hercules can makes mistakes (and what a boring show it would be if he was perfect) but I don't grant it shows Hercules doesn't value Iolaus.) But despite the discussion, I was left with the impression that nobody's mind had been changed. They preferred to see Iolaus as inadvertently victimized by Hercules and didn't care what had actually occurred on the show.
I also think it's partly the fault of the US educational system that for the most part doesn't teach textual analysis.
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Date: 2003-09-23 08:23 am (UTC)I love the Miles books. Yeah, he's a good example. It's the pressure of Barrayar's environment and the need for the power to survive it that drives him so far. On another planet like Beta he'd never have developed like that.
I don't think I quite understand the mindset of the second group of people you mention. Is it that they fear to identify with someone who isn't a true-blue hero? Or is it about the safety of the familiar, where they don't want to read anything that might upset them or fall outside certain rigid boundaries?
I'm not sure. I think it's partly that some people don't ever question their assumptions. We had a conversation on a mailing list a while back when someone was talking about people who take as fact the idea that Hercules takes Iolaus for granted and treats him terribly and where on earth they get this idea, since it isn't in the show. Several others jumped in to defend this idea as canon, but when challenged, they couldn't name a single instance from an episode that really illustrated this. The closest anyone could get was "Gladiator" where Hercules goes ahead with the slave plan even though Iolaus thinks it's a bad idea. (I'll grant that that shows Hercules can makes mistakes (and what a boring show it would be if he was perfect) but I don't grant it shows Hercules doesn't value Iolaus.) But despite the discussion, I was left with the impression that nobody's mind had been changed. They preferred to see Iolaus as inadvertently victimized by Hercules and didn't care what had actually occurred on the show.
I also think it's partly the fault of the US educational system that for the most part doesn't teach textual analysis.