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Sep. 6th, 2020 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsWhen I first read the setup of The House in the Cerulean Sea, in which our kind but blinkered bureaucrat hero gets sent to audit the mysterious foster home on the abandoned island with the potentially sinister proprietor and the six ominously magical children including the Antichrist, I was like "oh, I know what this is! This is a queer Gothic!"
As it turns out I was not in the least correct about this. The House in the Cerulean Sea is not at all a Gothic; what it is, in fact, is kidfic. From the moment Linus Baker first encounters Arthur Parnassus and his six magical kids, there is never any doubt about the fact that a.) Arthur is a perfectly charming and wonderful human and parent b.) the kids, including the Antichrist, have various quirks and backstory traumas but are at heart affectionate and adorable and c.) over the course of the month that he spends there, Linus is going to fall head over heels in love with all of them as he learns Important Lessons about prejudice, thinking outside the box, and the role that theoretically benevolent bureaucratic institutions such as his own DICOMY (the Department In Charge of Magical Youth) play in maintaining hegemonical systems of oppression.
So, if what you are looking for is soothing gay kidfic about a bureaucrat opening his heart to a perfect man and a new magical family, The House in the Cerulean Sea may be a good choice! I do want to emphasize the soothing and fuzzy element, like ... this is not really a book that's super interested in the emotional complexities of children? Two weeks and about one heartfelt interaction per kid is all it takes, more or less, for all of them to welcome Linus into their hearts as a second father figure. After that, the threats are all external. The kids are sometimes rude to Linus when he shows up, but they're never jerks to each other, or to Arthur, and their different needs never compete; Arthur never screws up as a guardian or feels anything but absolutely infinite love and protectiveness towards the kids, and once Linus Gets Over His Prejudices, his attitude is more or less the same.
I mean, I guess the thing is that this is not a book in which providing for the various physical and emotional needs of kids with wildly different backgrounds, or with a history of abuse or trauma, or indeed with destructive magical powers, is ever really a difficult thing to do. Like, as an example -- one of the kids is a wyvern, straight up just a different species, and Arthur and Linus are passionately willing to defend his intelligence and right to be treated as a child rather than a magical pet, and that's great, but then that's ... enough? That's as far as the book goes. The wyvern is a kid, and we treat him as a kid, and we have learned to understand his chirps, and we respect his hoard, and that's fine. He cherishes the beautiful bronze buttons we give him. Nothing about kids or dragons or adoption is harder than this.
(Also it's a book about prejudice and oppressive systems which is all centered on the fake thing [magic] and not on any of the real things; racism and homophobia do not seem to exist in this world that is otherwise similar enough to our own that Buddy Holly died in a tragic plane crash, all prejudice has been displaced onto distrust of magic. Not sure how I feel about this as a strategy although I understand the desire for worlds without homophobia etc. which is another element that may contribute to the soothing nature of this book.)
(I also had worldbuilding questions about the fact that nobody else seems to have any religious or existential questions about the existence of Little Lucy The Antichrist and his Real Dad who is the devil, but again I think that is probably looking harder at this gay magical kidfic than it's really intended to be looked at.)
As it turns out I was not in the least correct about this. The House in the Cerulean Sea is not at all a Gothic; what it is, in fact, is kidfic. From the moment Linus Baker first encounters Arthur Parnassus and his six magical kids, there is never any doubt about the fact that a.) Arthur is a perfectly charming and wonderful human and parent b.) the kids, including the Antichrist, have various quirks and backstory traumas but are at heart affectionate and adorable and c.) over the course of the month that he spends there, Linus is going to fall head over heels in love with all of them as he learns Important Lessons about prejudice, thinking outside the box, and the role that theoretically benevolent bureaucratic institutions such as his own DICOMY (the Department In Charge of Magical Youth) play in maintaining hegemonical systems of oppression.
So, if what you are looking for is soothing gay kidfic about a bureaucrat opening his heart to a perfect man and a new magical family, The House in the Cerulean Sea may be a good choice! I do want to emphasize the soothing and fuzzy element, like ... this is not really a book that's super interested in the emotional complexities of children? Two weeks and about one heartfelt interaction per kid is all it takes, more or less, for all of them to welcome Linus into their hearts as a second father figure. After that, the threats are all external. The kids are sometimes rude to Linus when he shows up, but they're never jerks to each other, or to Arthur, and their different needs never compete; Arthur never screws up as a guardian or feels anything but absolutely infinite love and protectiveness towards the kids, and once Linus Gets Over His Prejudices, his attitude is more or less the same.
I mean, I guess the thing is that this is not a book in which providing for the various physical and emotional needs of kids with wildly different backgrounds, or with a history of abuse or trauma, or indeed with destructive magical powers, is ever really a difficult thing to do. Like, as an example -- one of the kids is a wyvern, straight up just a different species, and Arthur and Linus are passionately willing to defend his intelligence and right to be treated as a child rather than a magical pet, and that's great, but then that's ... enough? That's as far as the book goes. The wyvern is a kid, and we treat him as a kid, and we have learned to understand his chirps, and we respect his hoard, and that's fine. He cherishes the beautiful bronze buttons we give him. Nothing about kids or dragons or adoption is harder than this.
(Also it's a book about prejudice and oppressive systems which is all centered on the fake thing [magic] and not on any of the real things; racism and homophobia do not seem to exist in this world that is otherwise similar enough to our own that Buddy Holly died in a tragic plane crash, all prejudice has been displaced onto distrust of magic. Not sure how I feel about this as a strategy although I understand the desire for worlds without homophobia etc. which is another element that may contribute to the soothing nature of this book.)
(I also had worldbuilding questions about the fact that nobody else seems to have any religious or existential questions about the existence of Little Lucy The Antichrist and his Real Dad who is the devil, but again I think that is probably looking harder at this gay magical kidfic than it's really intended to be looked at.)
