Quote:I do research for a living, so I've got some familiarity with the material as well - and I still find Vathara's work hard to read. By this, I mean her writing in general, even for other stories without political or social themes. Lines of dialogue are often not well-attributed to each speaker, there's a large cast of characters, there's a lot of abstract and dream-like imagery...all these things make it tough for a reader to follow along. I like it, but it is dense.
I'm torn between arguing that everything Vathara has political and/or social themes (as of rereading most of it a few months or so back), and arguing that I hardly notice political and social themes in Embers. I sometimes see several sides of a question, and then sometimes choose the side I argue at random.
I've been struggling to explain better my view of what I see as the multiple subject issue. I've scrapped a number of approaches, and what it comes down to is that different subjects can take different amounts of time to learn for the same amount of ability at research. Differing schools of thought, varying levels of aptitude for the subject on the part of the researcher, and hidden prerequisites can all be a further confounding factor. I think we can all come to some agreement on the areas which are science, especially where there are conclusive answers. For those areas that are more like witchcraft and dark arts, I can tell some areas where I think my understanding exceeds Vathara's, some where I think hers has forever surpassed mine, and a bunch where we seem to have some shared conclusions. (I'm not talking about the occult here.) I think there is a pretty good chance of swathes of subject matter that I simply am not familiar enough with to notice. I certainly didn't get the Master Li and Number Ten Ox reference until her Author's Note got me to finally break down and read the thing after a decade plus of seeing it on the library's shelves.
(I also endorse the Li and Ten Ox books, even if I disagree with the treatment of the Qin Shi Huangdi. Said treatment does have tradition behind it, but I'd first studied it in the context of a school of thought that allowed that he might've been demonized by the early Han as a form of legitimation, and noted a legal comparision between laws of the Qin and the early Han that someone had done from tomb records. I dislike Legalism, but I also dislike those of its contemporaries that I'd studied at the time.)
Then there are the authorial notes in Embers that make me ask 'What kind of pap are they teaching kids these days?'*
As far as the rest of things go, I notice it now that you mention it, but it doesn't really come to mind normally. Which is odd, because it sounds artsy when you describe it that way, and I don't think of myself as having much tolerance for artsy.
Quote:Oh I was aware of all the foreshadowing she has been doing in Embers...As well as all the different plot threads she has been weaving together. As for the Xanatos angle I was aware of it but it's extent hadn't really sunk in. Nor had the sheer scope of what she is slowly building up to in Embers. Which is literally a situation in which all those different plans and plots are going to collide head on.
Not to mention that quite a lot of what is coming out into the open now is just for events cognate to 'The Day of Black Sun'. Between the implied unrevealed secrets, the pace, that we are getting hints of events cognate to 'The Boiling Rock', and that it seems unlikely from earlier that Vathara is going to stop pulling mindscrews until at least events cognate to 'Sozin's Comet'... I think that she is still setting up greater things.
Then there is the Azula arc, which is almost entirely throwing off my conclusions about her from my draft essay mostly circa chapter 30 which could be titled 'Yeah, the Zuko focus gave me concerns also, but I've dismissed them, and I think you might find that further analysis dismisses yours'.
*I suspect it is largely the same pap in the curriculum I was taught from, maybe watered down with even more stupidity. I ended up needing to do a lot of extra curricular studies to hope to cover the basic competancies. I recall this going back to some valuable lessons on human evil in daycare.
Hopefully, one of these hasn't been Ninja'd.
http://www.fukufics.com/viewtopic.php?f ... a30e82dfd9
Pale Wolf, Art of Love; Art of Death, Nanoha AU with Russia, Space Russia, and (likely) Canada
(I really ought to get my C&C act together again.)
http://m.fanfiction.net/s/6766023/38/
Capt'n and Lathis, Ranmaflections of a Dark Titan Road, Madness with a hint of Evil Oan
(will be 39 sometime friday)
