skygiants | (no subject)

So while I was reading Monster Blood Tattoo I was thinking that I was a little bit sick of teenaged protagonists and their fantasy coming-of-age tales . . . and then I read the first of Fuyumi Ono's Twelve Kingdoms books, Sea of Shadows, and I was like "I TAKE IT ALL BACK, COMING OF AGE IS AWESOME!" OR MAYBE it is just that this book is awesome.

Okay, so if I summarize Twelve Kingdoms it is going to sound a lot like a collection of tropes we all know very well: Yoko is an Ordinary High Schooler, quiet and shy, who doesn't quite feel like she fits in and is set apart by her super special red hair! AND THEN some crazy dude shows up, swears fealty to her as a destined chosen one, takes her to a magical land, hands her a magic sword, and tells her to fight monsters with it! Awesome wish-fulfillment, yes?

Well, no, actually, not at all. After Yoko is given the sword (and reacts with "No, no, WTF, you're insane, I want to go home, and more no!") she is almost immediately separated by a monster attack from the person who brought her, leaving her completely alone.

In a poverty-stricken country that has severe laws and prejudices against kaikyaku, people from the other world.

With monsters attacking her wherever she goes.

Basically, Fuyumi Ono apparently takes great glee in rounding up her super-magic-wish-fulfillment-fantasy tropes and then kicking them in the face. Let's make it clear from the start, Yoko is not noble or instantly likable or an independent thinker, or in any obvious way a heroine in the making. On the contrary, Yoko is passive and frightened of conflict and has spent her whole life trying very hard to please everybody and do nothing controversial, with the result that she's never successfully made a connection with anybody - the rest of her classmates rightly judge her as two-faced, because she'll say whatever she thinks the person she's talking to wants to hear. And while the situation she finds herself in does change her, this is not your standard Growth Through Adversity - on the contrary, although she gets pretty good at killing monsters in a badass fashion, the constant grind of hardship and betrayal nearly breaks her, turning her into a bitter and feral outcast who's in danger of losing her humanity altogether.

It's not easy to become a fantasy heroine. In fact, it's really hard. And that's a lot of the reason why I loved it so much - because the fact that it is so hard makes it all the more satisfying as Yoko does start to rebuild herself. I love her for a lot of the same reasons that I love Dave in the Fionavar books - she starts out with a full back catalog of issues, and they don't go away, but by the end, she's determined not just to survive, but to make her own choices and become the kind of person she wants to be. She even manages to grow a sense of humor! And - guys, you might want to take my review with a grain of salt here, because I am not capable of objectivity, I love Yoko like crazy. I did even from the beginning of the book - I've seen reviews saying it was hard for people get through the beginning before Yoko starts to go through some of her more significant character development because they were so frustrated with her, but I was identifying with her like a maniac. (Confessions time: I am always terrified that I am far more like Early Yoko than I want to be. That girl, that girl who doesn't want to actively pick on the social pariah so she can feel good about herself, but is too scared to be seen being nice to her either, so ends up hovering in a miserable middle ground? Oh, have I ever been that girl. I'm not proud of it, but I so have.)

Um, besides how much I love Yoko, there's other good stuff about the book too! The world is really unusual and interesting - based largely on Chinese mythology, I believe - and there's setup for cool political stuff and some really cool secondary characters who enter about two-thirds of the way into the book and I like the whole thing a lot, but basically for me it is all about Yoko. (Except not really, because I understand the next two Twelve Kingdom books that are published in English are not at all about Yoko, and I am still going to hunt them down and devour them ASAP. But I am most excited for the one that has Yoko again, which is coming out next year.)

I also desperately want to see the anime based on it, but I kind of want to wait until I've read the rest of the books. But they are only being published once a year and there are four to go, so that is like four years to wait! D: D: DILEMMA!

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(Hee - comforting LJ presence? That is good to hear, I think! <3)

My thoughts are all confused too, which is wy I haven't commented on it! I mean, I personally was never a big fan of the 'problem novel' growing up, in the way where I kind of fled into the fantasy section and did not come out for many years . . . but on the other hand I feel like it is doing a disservice to kids to say they can't handle Srs Bsns Issues, you know? I mean, if you want to talk about rape and incest and abandonment issues, I read Mists of Avalon in fifth grade. Hah.

I don't know. I guess when it comes down to it I think balance is the key. I mean, obviously no one can say, "Writers, don't write Problem Novels!" because they really are meaningful to a lot of the people who read them, a lot of them are legitimately very good books that I would be very sorry to have vanish into the ether. (And the ones that aren't people eat up like candy anyways! Everyone I knew read Face on the Milk Carton.) I think where the frustration comes from is the fact that schools only seem to assign Deep Dark and Depressing books, and I do get that frustration; the dead dog jokes kind of make themselves. I definitely think it would be a good thing to mix up the reading lists a little - keep a couple of the Problem Novels, but also throw in some Daniel Pinkwater and Judy Blume and Tamora Pierce and Diana Wynne Jones (who totally has her fair share of Dark Problem Issues in her books as well, even if they're covered over with a candy coating of wizardry and wackiness, and I don't think reading them scarred me . . . anyway, tangent) so that kids can really get a sense of the richness of Literary Options that are out there. But, I mean, as far as Finding Literary Merit In Things goes, I am way out on the radical lefty scale that firmly believes there is literary merit in any and everything. I'd happily give the kids Babysitter's Club books and discuss that - why not? There's interesting cultural stuff going on there. So, uh, the world at large may not abide by my opinion.

. . . and now I just word-vomited all over you and you are probably sorry you asked. :D But your thoughts, I want to know yours!

I am not sorry I asked at all! I feel that balance is key as well. And really, in a field as subjective as literature, balance is about all you can ask!

... Except.

I do believe that there are genuinely bad, evil, and harmful books. I have, for instance, no desire to read Mein Kampf, and I respect the philosophy behind the books/words-have-power idea. I do really think that some books are just bad, and bad for you.

The author seems to be drawing those kinds of lines, the kinds I would. But she draws them in places I definitely wouldn't! Despite her (apparently) best intentions, she comes across to me as having a very roseate view of the past and an overly cautious approach to how to decide what's good for children. But I can't come up with any particularly compelling or concrete reasons to explain why my lines should be accepted over hers.

Yeah, I am very, very wary of sentiments that tend towards the "this happier, fluffier world is what is BEST FOR KIDS! They must be protected from all dark things!"

Half of me wants to agree with you, and say, there are books that provide bad and ugly ideas, that no one should read and that have no redeeming value whatsoever. On the other hand . . . I have a very hard time with wanting to erase any book out of existence. Maybe I've had 'censorship is bad!' hammered into my head too often, but I kind of believe that even from Mein Kampf there might be something to be learned or understood as long as you're not reading it blind. Even if you're reading it for the purposes of more thoroughly tearing it and everything it stands for to shreds - that's still something useful in it, you know?

Which is not to say I'd give Mein Kampf to kids, ever, because oh HELL no. I guess the thing is, while I believe there's value in all books, there are some I would never offer to anyone who hadn't reached a certain level of . . . general literary skepticism, maybe? The skill of thinking critically about what you read (and what you see and hear, too) instead of intaking blindly - I sort of think that's one of the most important things that English classes teach, or should be teaching. It's the blind-intake thing that's worrying, I guess, and the younger a kid is, the less likely they are to have developed the skills that will allow them not to internalize harmful books.

And personally, I think harmful attitudes - like racism, like sexism, and so on - are a lot more dangerous long-term when internalized than almost anything else I can think of. So . . . I think I can see the origins of your lines. If any of this makes sense.

Huh. You know, I actually agree with you about that. I sure wouldn't read Mein Kampf alone, or casually, but in a group that was going to discuss it-- I do think that'd be valuable.

All of which is basically shorthand for agreeing with everything you just said.