The Faculty of Humanities: Turning entertainment into srs business since 1838.
I mean, what better way to digest really dull theory than to apply it to texts you actually care for? I'm so, so sorry.
Since fandom is all about slash these days, both Are You There, God and Skeletons share the motif of emerging homosexual identities. Funny as it is (and different from a lot of conventional gay fiction, I bet), both Alexander and Matthew are pulled into the closet, so to speak, by positive role models in their family. In Skeletons, Alexander's brother (who, like Matthew's, is far more popular and well-liked in school, if not entirely by their parents) is gay and has never done much to hide it from anyone except his father; their younger sister Rosalie is bisexual, and at least initially more sexually active (stopping short of intercourse) than both her brothers. Rosalie is the one to encourage the emerging relationship between her brothers, and ultimately the one who forces Alexander to admit to himself that he is attracted to his brother. As she doesn't know the story of their grandfather(s), Rosalie's motivation becomes a modern, secondary confirmation of how the world has changed, and while incest is still taboo, it can be accepted by the individual, if not society. Since the other morally questionable side of the relationship, the homosexuality, has since grown to become accepted by society at large, Rosalie's blindness to the moral objections to a consensual incestual relationship stands as a herald to the day when that, too, might become an acceptable form of love [the author's stance, not necessarily critic's]. This hope of acceptance is strengthened further by the parallel between Edward Sr./Alphonse/Annya and their "reincarnations" in Edward Jr/Alexander/Rosalie: Annya, originally a "little sister" to Edward and Alphonse who propels all three of them into misery because of her selfishness and inability to accept the relationship between the brothers, is succeeded by Rosalie who not only accepts it, but also encourages.
In Are You There, God, Matthew's initial resistance to being "the gay kid" is not because of presumed homophobia, but because of the "cliche" he does not want to be because his parents, as it happens, are both men. If one that Matthew finds endlessly embarrassing for their general dysfunction, not because of their sexuality, which (as in much slash fic) is never portrayed as being objectionable to the society which they live in. But for all his complaints, Matthew does recognize his parents as representatives of the kind of lasting relationship and normalcy (relatively speaking) that can be looked up to. Matthew's eccentric parents are also constructed as the very antithesis of Feliks' family, where he was born as an only child to strictly religious parents who never loved each other but married because they "had to", and who have no love to spare for neither each other nor their son.
You should see the section on the narration of Skeletons and its depriving Alphonse of all and any subjectivity. Or it would have if I actually thought that the author meant something with it, and I just went back and skimmed through the fic and realized that no, Al actually gets a real, physical appearance in the epilogue which is... whatever the hell you call it when the narrative isn't omniscient but isn't focalized either? As in, it presents him as a presence instead of just the a fictionalized replica (that is, the narratee) of Ed's letters. Except that Al gets a piece of free indirect discourse which of course is even better, because that means his voice overpowers that of the narrator for a moment. Which makes the ending even happier because Al, the one person whose absence caused so much misery in both the past and the future and whose existence was silenced and denied for decades, is finally acknowledged by the story proper.
Yeah, this is how learned people talk about the books they like. *le sigh*
Since fandom is all about slash these days, both Are You There, God and Skeletons share the motif of emerging homosexual identities. Funny as it is (and different from a lot of conventional gay fiction, I bet), both Alexander and Matthew are pulled into the closet, so to speak, by positive role models in their family. In Skeletons, Alexander's brother (who, like Matthew's, is far more popular and well-liked in school, if not entirely by their parents) is gay and has never done much to hide it from anyone except his father; their younger sister Rosalie is bisexual, and at least initially more sexually active (stopping short of intercourse) than both her brothers. Rosalie is the one to encourage the emerging relationship between her brothers, and ultimately the one who forces Alexander to admit to himself that he is attracted to his brother. As she doesn't know the story of their grandfather(s), Rosalie's motivation becomes a modern, secondary confirmation of how the world has changed, and while incest is still taboo, it can be accepted by the individual, if not society. Since the other morally questionable side of the relationship, the homosexuality, has since grown to become accepted by society at large, Rosalie's blindness to the moral objections to a consensual incestual relationship stands as a herald to the day when that, too, might become an acceptable form of love [the author's stance, not necessarily critic's]. This hope of acceptance is strengthened further by the parallel between Edward Sr./Alphonse/Annya and their "reincarnations" in Edward Jr/Alexander/Rosalie: Annya, originally a "little sister" to Edward and Alphonse who propels all three of them into misery because of her selfishness and inability to accept the relationship between the brothers, is succeeded by Rosalie who not only accepts it, but also encourages.
In Are You There, God, Matthew's initial resistance to being "the gay kid" is not because of presumed homophobia, but because of the "cliche" he does not want to be because his parents, as it happens, are both men. If one that Matthew finds endlessly embarrassing for their general dysfunction, not because of their sexuality, which (as in much slash fic) is never portrayed as being objectionable to the society which they live in. But for all his complaints, Matthew does recognize his parents as representatives of the kind of lasting relationship and normalcy (relatively speaking) that can be looked up to. Matthew's eccentric parents are also constructed as the very antithesis of Feliks' family, where he was born as an only child to strictly religious parents who never loved each other but married because they "had to", and who have no love to spare for neither each other nor their son.
You should see the section on the narration of Skeletons and its depriving Alphonse of all and any subjectivity. Or it would have if I actually thought that the author meant something with it, and I just went back and skimmed through the fic and realized that no, Al actually gets a real, physical appearance in the epilogue which is... whatever the hell you call it when the narrative isn't omniscient but isn't focalized either? As in, it presents him as a presence instead of just the a fictionalized replica (that is, the narratee) of Ed's letters. Except that Al gets a piece of free indirect discourse which of course is even better, because that means his voice overpowers that of the narrator for a moment. Which makes the ending even happier because Al, the one person whose absence caused so much misery in both the past and the future and whose existence was silenced and denied for decades, is finally acknowledged by the story proper.
Yeah, this is how learned people talk about the books they like. *le sigh*