I've never read much YA so I'm not sure if it was Harry Potter that started the trend for every increasing installment sizes. I always say I was so angry with OOTP that I threw it across the room even though I could have easily have killed someone doing that. ;)
I once ended up at a folk dance in rural Brittany in which I had absolutely no idea whatsoever how to participate. This was definitely *not* a tourist trap, and we probably shouldn't even have been annoying them by being underfoot but my dad decided in his my dad/English way that we should invite ourselves. A lot of the time we had to sit around in the dark (it was summer but being outside in the dark is still a bit chilly in Brittany!) because we didn't understand what was going on and at one point some of the ladies took pity on me and pulled me up into a dance for a while until I got so nervous I started thinking about the moves instead of just copying them and fell behind so much they left me out the next time they went round. It wasn't a pagan thing at all (though I think anything rural becomes mixed up after a few hundred years, even Catholicsm) but "self-consciousness, boredom, excitement, and transcendence" about covers it.
I hadn't actually thought about empathy being seen as stereotypically female, which is silly of me, but because I was brought up in a very *non* empathetic house, any story that turns on someone unselfishly wanting happiness for someone else is My Sort of Thing. (This happens in Lost a few times.) It also reminds me a little of 'she isn't owls she's flowers' from The Owl Service (oh no, owls!) - where the old terrifying magical power is actually susceptible to compassion.
I always thought there was a hint of romance being a possibility for Jane and Will in the future actually! I guess that wouldn't really work out what with him being an Old One.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2017-01-29 03:54 pm (UTC)I once ended up at a folk dance in rural Brittany in which I had absolutely no idea whatsoever how to participate. This was definitely *not* a tourist trap, and we probably shouldn't even have been annoying them by being underfoot but my dad decided in his my dad/English way that we should invite ourselves. A lot of the time we had to sit around in the dark (it was summer but being outside in the dark is still a bit chilly in Brittany!) because we didn't understand what was going on and at one point some of the ladies took pity on me and pulled me up into a dance for a while until I got so nervous I started thinking about the moves instead of just copying them and fell behind so much they left me out the next time they went round. It wasn't a pagan thing at all (though I think anything rural becomes mixed up after a few hundred years, even Catholicsm) but "self-consciousness, boredom, excitement, and transcendence" about covers it.
I hadn't actually thought about empathy being seen as stereotypically female, which is silly of me, but because I was brought up in a very *non* empathetic house, any story that turns on someone unselfishly wanting happiness for someone else is My Sort of Thing. (This happens in Lost a few times.) It also reminds me a little of 'she isn't owls she's flowers' from The Owl Service (oh no, owls!) - where the old terrifying magical power is actually susceptible to compassion.
I always thought there was a hint of romance being a possibility for Jane and Will in the future actually! I guess that wouldn't really work out what with him being an Old One.