Abuse of parentheses

[mrissa]

Amber and Em have been and gone, and timprov was well enough to see Amber, albeit not well enough to get up and go see Em downstairs as well. (He knows Amber much, much better, since we lived in exile California at the same time, without anybody else from college around the Bay Area. We all miss the Amber and are working with the Emily to try to get her to move here.)

I have been on the phone trying to get things figured out for timprov and am still waiting for a call back. I am exhausted, though not particularly by the phone or Amber and Em. (I'm still trying to refer to them in that order, because in college it was always "EmmanAmber," because they are that kind of best friends, and then Em went and married Aaron, so now it's "EmmanAmb--err, Aaron." And I think putting Em second is the solution to this.) (gaaldine and I were a good deal more like Janet and Molly: close, but with distinct nomenclature throughout. And also we sometimes left out a third person without meaning to, freshman year, which is why I thought of Janet and Molly in the first place.) (I think this might make me Molly. This thought pleases me. I would cheerfully whack things with a stick if given the chance -- maybe with just a wee nap first.) (But then, so would gaaldine, so that really gets us nowhere, as distinguishing features go.)

Do you know what has been upsetting me lately? (Among the things I haven't mentioned, I mean. Except I think in a couple of e-mails.) The trope that pure hearts win the day. Bah. Bah, I tell you! It's a pernicious lie, and it's particularly common in books aimed at children, and it's even worse to tell children, because they have less experience to see that it's a lie. I was glad to see Terry Pratchett take it on with Tiffany in one of her books. The things I'm doing against it seem to all be more indirect and mostly for grown-ups. (And why am I writing for grown-ups anyway? Elephino. Because something broke my brain in that direction, don't know what.) The focus on the power of purity of heart and purity of love in the latest (sixth) Harry Potter book made me roll my eyes halfway out of their sockets. Love is a very powerful thing, but so is knowing what the hell you are doing.

Three things, then: any similar messages driving you disproportionately nuts? Any thoughts on pure hearts? And anyone who was powerfully affected by the deaths in the HP books: can you explain to me why they mattered to you in the context of the series? Why they were important and either surprising or powerful beyond need for a surprise? Because they did not hit me right at all, and I know they did hit some people in the solar plexus, and I'm trying to get a handle on why.

Comments

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

My favorite part of The Princess Bride is when Goldman takes on "Life is fair, things will balance out in the long run."

I haven't read HP, so can't help you there.

[zunger.livejournal.com]

I recently read a short little graphic novel, "Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things," aimed at what seems to be a YA audience. It had an introduction which took on this issue very nicely, pointing out that children's view of the world is a lot more sophisticated than the view that many adults seem to want their view to be. The book itself is a marvel of impure hearts winning the day, in a very honest way. (The protagonist causes a school bully to be eaten alive by goblins, and is quite content with that resolution. But when she uses a glamour to make herself more attractive, she learns a lesson about what not to do. I have to say that I like the morality of this book.)

As far as pure hearts winning the day - they can. I suggest a tincture of them and wolfsbane, dipped onto crossbow bolts.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

The Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things GNs are quite nice. My expectations for them were very low, given Naifeh's previous work on Gloom Cookie, but apparently he does better work on his own.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

Driving me disproportionately nuts: the canard that EVERYONE wants to be surrounded by people, and that it's not natural not to want to socialize with/like everyone else, and that it follows that one doesn't like or care about them (as opposed to merely needing more time alone than they do).

And also: that if so-and-so does such-and-such, they MUST be gay, and in denial if they won't cop to it.

Not so much books as casual remarks setting me off. Sigh.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

If They refuse to follow the Gay Rulebook, how are We to know that We aren't Them? How are We to know We aren't hiring Them, or socializing with Them, or smiling at Them on the street?

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

There's a story by L.M. Montgomery (first one in Akin to Anne) in which a little girl goes in search of a mother, leaving her aunt's house in which everyone expects her to be happy because it's such a jolly rollicking polace, and which she hates for just that reason. You can just feel her shoulders relaxing as soon as she meets her grandmother, just because it's quiet at that house, and *no-one expects her* to chatter.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Do I have to be spoiler-proof here? I don't think I can, entirely, but I'll try. I wouldn't say the deaths in HPVI hit me in the solar plexus, but they didn't leave me unaffected either. It certainly wasn't a surprise. And it wasn't the effect on those who died, either - they were expecting it, I think. It was the effect on a couple of those around them. In one case, it was just one more thing taken from a character who had already had several other layers taken from him, like peeling an onion (only sort of in reverse, with the most core one first). And the other case it was someone who is pure enough of love and heart - whatever you can say (truly) about it not being a protection, I guess it still upsets me a little more when it isn't.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't expect spoiler-proof at this point; everyone knows Darth Vader was his sled by now, or they can avoid reading the comments entirely.

The death of a mentor seems like one of those things that is immensely affecting in real life and basically the normal way of things in fiction, at least from my perspective.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I hate other moral virtues that aren't allowed their complexity, like: telling the truth, loyalty in the face of abuse, or inner beauty. It's not that these things aren't good, or can't triumph, but if being smart/good/pure were enough many of us would be much better adjusted and appreciated by now. The problem of evil is too knotty for redux. Yes, I want good to triumph, and morality to pay off, but why does it always have to seem so damn easy in these books.

A friend of mine mentioned she'd seen the HP movie and how much better she liked the book. (I liked the movie better.) She said she likes how JKR "builds anticipation" in the books and that in the movie things just happened. (Well, she'd read the book, so there might be fewer surprises.)

I think HP is vastly overrated. That "building anticipation" part bores me, especially as because there are very few surprises, and limited craft.

With regard to deaths: Cedric's death was senseless and made me feel both manipulated and angry. To start the toll in book four meant that there would be another three books with senseless slaughter. Sirius disappeared, I'm not convinced he's really dead (a la Ben Kenobi). As for Dumbledore, it seemed equally senseless, more iconoclasm than sacrifice.

The most recent movie cut out a lot of extraneous bits and really made me feel a lot more empathy for the characters. I felt included by it in a way I did not by the book. Plus, there were no house elves.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, one person's foreshadowing is another's plot telegraphy.

I don't think it was unreasonable to have a character die in book four. What I found unreasonable was that it was a character we didn't have any particular reson to care about. I wouldn't characterize the books since as senseless slaughter at all, because if anything, the deaths haven't touched the major characters enough.

And yes, I find the house elf subplots deeply problematic at best.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I failed to be particularly affected by either death in and of itself.

I felt that the Sirius thing was perhaps a case of too much bad stuff heaped up. It wouldn't have hurt the series any for Harry to actually have some family who cared about him for a bit.

I have felt that Dumbeldore's death was inevitable since book 1. He's too powerful and removes some of the tension from the conflict with Voldemort. I haven't been entirely impressed with the handling of the character in a lot of instances anyway, so I wasn't as attached to him as I otherwise might have been. Frankly, I never thought his supposed status as so wise and benevolent jibed well with the continued employment of Snape in a teaching capacity. Paying Snape to interact with children is only a few steps above mentally abusing them yourself.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

As much as people quote Lois McMaster Bujold about figuring out the worst thing that could happen to your character next and then doing it, she doesn't actually do that: Miles does not have to watch Cordelia and Aral die of torture, for example. That would be worse. Or Cordelia, Aral, Ivan, Gregor, the Koudelkas...well, point made: there are all kinds of bad things she doesn't do to her characters because it would just be piling on, not doing anything more interesting.

And I think you're right on both counts with Dumbledore: he is the powerful mentor character and can't be around to save Harry's bacon -- as with all powerful mentors, he has to somehow be removed and probably die. This is a standard path of plot. And letting Snape continue -- you know what? Even if all the people who are speculating that Snape's actions are all at Dumbledore's behest are correct, Snape is still not good to his students. Acting for the best of the whole world? perhaps, but by being a total shit along the way. We are in yet another Ender's Game scenario, where the fate of the world conveniently rests on the torment of children, and I just don't buy it.

In Lord of the Rings and the original Star Wars trilogy, we are not asked to believe that Gollum and Vader have been good all along. We are asked to believe that they have capacity to do good in the end, which is a different proposition entirely, and a much more reasonable one.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Love is a very powerful thing, but so is knowing what the hell you are doing.

In case you have ever wondered, *this* is the kind of statement that caused me to go find your journal in the first place. I have just yelled, "Go, Mrissa!" quite loudly, startling the quinea-pigs, but not Julian, who is used to me by now.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hee. Thanks. Poor piggies.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

A theme that hasn't been bothering me lately, but does bother me when I encounter it, is "the scrawny nerd who doesn't see the light of day will suddenly become the savior of humanity through the use of technology he hasn't specialized in and has no practical experience creating."

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

For me, the movie Independence Day was the extreme example of that - the part where Jeff Goldblum was able to hack into an alien system in about ten minutes. And I'm pretty sure the characters on the alien computer's screen were just some of the graphics code they happened to have around from the movie's special effects (looked like OpenGL from the glimpse I got).

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

"the scrawny nerd who doesn't see the light of day will suddenly become the savior of humanity through the use of technology he hasn't specialized in and has no practical experience creating."

It depends on what matters, the experience of the specific tech, or the modes of thought that let you pick it up.

One of the things I'm in the middle of writing has as a core element what happens when you take someone in their early twenties who is a rather good systems porgrammer with a sneaky turn of mind and who has also read quite a lot of secondary world fantasy, and drop them into the sort of secondary world that has a magic system. Which he promptly sets about trying to hack. Because there's not enough fiction out there where the magic Has Rules and people treat them with ways of thinking appropriate to "sets of rules" in general rather than to Magic. I hope this doesn't count as the sort of thing you find offputting, even if he has the sort of degree of connection to averting the threats facing all of humanity one expects from a principal chracter.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I woke up with a phrase in my head once: "The pure of heart often die in vain."

I've always wondered what that was about.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I don't like the "love and purity of heart conquer all" trope in general. In the Harry Potter books it doesn't bother me so much. a) because it's been tied into actual magic mechanics (just like you have to *mean* the Unforgiveable Curses to use them, you have to *mean* the kind of magic that, say, Lily Potter used to save Harry) so it's not only a question of virtue in and of itself. b) because the Good Guys and Bad Guys are pretty clearly evenly matched when it comes to cleverness, so something other than cleverness has to end up being the deciding factor.

Whether it's written well or convincingly or consistently, well, that is often another matter.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Eh. Having to really, really mean your purity of heart doesn't do much for me in terms of mitigating the point. Yes, she's built it into the fabric of her world, but that doesn't help: she's the author. That was a choice.

I don't think that cleverness has to be -- or is necessarily -- the deciding factor in most books. Most books are better if the sides are reasonably evenly matched in cleverness: "And then another orc walked into Jane's trap, and another, and another" is not very interesting. Still doesn't mean that "And then another clever opponent walked into Jane's trap because she was pure of heart" is an improvement.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I forgot--your entry made me think of The King in the Window by Adam Gopnik:

"You find yourself in a confrontation with absolute evil and you are planning not to think?" says Mrs. Pearson indignantly to poor Oliver in Adam Gopnik's thoroughly entrancing The King in the Window. An American boy in Paris, Oliver has encountered the wraiths that live in windows and water. Through sheer accident they have made him their king as they battle the soul-stealing Master of Mirrors. It's a crucial passage showing, refreshingly, that in a world where instinct is frequently celebrated over reason, Gopnik wants his young hero to realize that "the only way he is going to do the things he has to do is to think his way out."


(From Library Journal's editors' picks (http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6251456.html) last fall)

[rosefox]

I'm immediately reminded of the end of a movie--which one doesn't matter except to me, because lots of movies end this way, but it particularly struck me for a number of reasons--where the hero is collapsed, wounded, dying, and the heroine falls to her knees and clasps her hands and The Power Of Love *stars! hearts! flowers!* flows into the hero and he wheezes a bit and is suddenly all okay. Everyone cries. Fade to white.

I held on for the five minutes until the credits started rolling, and then I bolted down the aisle and out the door and collapsed sobbing against the far wall of the hallway (where I wouldn't be in anyone's way, as if I'm going to have hysterics I try to have them in the most considerate way that can be managed) and when my partners found me all I could say was "It doesn't work that way! It doesn't work that way!"

banesidhe, a man whom I loved very dearly, died in a building collapse. He made it all the way out before the building fell on his head; we know this because it took three and a half months to dig down to where his body was buried in the rubble. (Some of the kindest words in the English language, as it turns out, are "blunt trauma".) He would have gotten safely away, except that he made sure that his floor of the building was empty before he started down the stairs and then he and a colleague stopped to help a woman who was frightened. Their bodies were found near his. He was pure of heart, all right. He was a fucking Boy Scout. He died exactly the way he would have wanted to: doing his best to aid someone in trouble, with complete disregard for his own safety. He also left a wife and young daughter with a nice fat insurance payout, some photographs, and a great many tearstained memories. Their love didn't save him. His kindness didn't save the woman he was helping. It doesn't work that way.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes. And I'm so sorry for your loss, and also sorry that the people who made that movie rubbed salt into it.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

You know my feelings on "Pure hearts win the day". I'm convinced that myths and lies of that type are far from harmless when spoonfed to an audience that doesn't know any better. God knows I believed that crap for far longer than I had any reason to.

This isn't to say that there's no value in altruism or good deeds, but we can't *expect* them to be rewarded. This isn't physics, where actions result in equal and opposite reactions. As rosefox noted above, it doesn't work that way.

There's no justice in this life, except insofar as we create it ourselves.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes. When adults say to children, "Life isn't fair," my response is always, "But sometimes we can be."

It looks to me like our culture has been shying away from the idea that good deeds can have negative consequences for the doer, over the last fifty years or so. The people who were civilly disobedient in the Civil Rights Movement expected to be jailed. They expected ungentle police and/or security guards. Many of them knew they were risking their very lives. They did not trust in their purity of heart to save them because they didn't expect to be saved from the likely consequences of their actions -- bad and unjust as well as good and just. Sometimes enduring the bad and the unjust is the only way to get to the good and the just, and if we count on pure hearts to save us from harm, we won't get there from here.

In the movie version of "The Black Cauldron," Gurgi jumps into the cauldron to break it instead, and comes out alive because his heart is pure. Even as a kid, I was outraged at the horrible mess that made of the story. Bleh.