#we're all fulfilling our personal needs w literature at the end thats what fandom is

[ghostinthetumbchine]

Guys. Ok.

You have a series written by an author who strives to be a fair, gentle, good person that does not do harm. That is raised in a deeply catholic, western european, dominant culture, in an imperialistic country. Part of his strong relationship with faith, through which he sees the nature of good and evil, are monarchist beliefs, are some strong anti science sentiments. Not all of those sentiments are right but not all are of course wrong, especially when you even think of the times he had lived in.

He is a genius, a once in a century creative, worldbuilder. He writes a series of books that become genre defining. Any interaction with said genre after that is automatically measured to his mettle, that is how great is it's impact.

And those books being written by him end up naturally reflecting his beliefs, which happened to be dominant belief of western society - and dominant too in those liminal, outskirts of the west that have been under its boot and influence and strived to join, appease it for its own safety, for centuries. Like mine, for example.

And for me, as i am just a single example of someone who might come at these works from this position - of an author i greatly respect, whose choices and reasoning and context i understand - i was raised in this exact same dominant philosophies. They pervade so much of my environment, these same perceptions that are not entirely wrong but have so many holes and sharp edges that hurt people, hurt me.

And so, is it really that hard to believe that in interaction with such work and all associated ones, i would question its presentation of Good tm, disect it's ability to actually be what it claims, would empathise w Evil tm i have been associated with in real life for the most flimsy reasons? And then, there is also another layer, another group of people i belong to. People who have know in their life, been around bad people and saw a bit too much of how they become those bad people and how they stop being bad and what you gain as a community when they manage to do so who want to genuinely question societies perception on what we should do about them and how much collective responsibility for them we have?

Of course it shows up in interaction and transformative work of literature because literature is art and art at it's core is another means of communication.

At a risk of making it too serious, sometimes i feel like people see you playing too deep in the mud they prefer to be fascinated and entertained by from distance and use as character building for other characters and get irritated that you actually want to get into the dirt of it because they just want to keep seeing the mud and only mud and not anything thats hidden in it.