A prepubescent flyin’ ace
I can’t believe I mentioned Anakin Skywalker without linking to Weird Al’s video of The Saga Begins. The title of this entry is taken from that epic filk of “American Pie,” and it relates to the protests of HP fans that Harry is just a normal, average wizard. I’d be more willing to believe that if he weren’t a first-year Quiddich phenomenon. (Please pardon my spelling, if I’ve gotten it wrong - I find the HP books extraordinarily forgettable, even though I just read one a couple of weeks ago.) I’m not judging HP from the perspective of a student of canon but from an overall impression of its themes. Of course, people may differ on the themes they see in a text, which brings us back to…
…subtext. When I made my off-hand comment that I don’t believe in subtext, I didn’t realize I was playing a “get out of slash free” card. I’m not complaining, by any means. Seema, in between lewd comments about my dude Weird Al, gave me this link to AJ Hall’s thoughts on subtext and backstory. Caught between an RJ and an AJ, I asked Seema whether she believed in subtext. She said she didn’t believe in J/C subtext.
I’d mentioned exactly this example before - that Janeway/Chakotay fans see J/C subtext and Chakotay/Paris fans see C/P subtext, and rarely the twain end up meeting. While certainly something happens to the story in the readers’ minds, that something has very little to do with the story itself. Thus I’ve heard J/C fans raving about all the J/C subtext, and C/7 fans raving back that J/C is the most nauseating, unbelievable, and chemistry-less pairing known to Trek - there was never any such subtext. And that’s without even involving a slash pairing!
I’m not saying there isn’t more to a story than just the words themselves, but when you get into an aspect of characterization that people violently disagree about, such as J/C vs. C/7 or C/P, then the most likely explanation is that neither one is part of the shared world of canon. I’ve been down that fanon road before, and all slash looks like to me is another fanon’s rose-colored glasses - the odd thing being the use of “subtext” in place of “fanon.”
April 8th, 2003 at 10:07 pm
I’d be more willing to believe that if he weren’t a first-year Quiddich phenomenon.
But that and his Defence Against the Dark Arts skills are his only natural talents.
April 11th, 2003 at 9:02 am
I think this is one of those arguments we aren’t going to win. She’s being rather STJ about the whole issue.
I’m thinking house elves took her real copies of the books and substituted those fake Russian knockoffs.