![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Darkover Novels
Aug. 11th, 2013 12:10 amI was thinking about the Darkover "world" just recently - a friend used a quote from it as a reply to a FaceBook comment I made and it threw me back into myself for a moment.
See, I really used to love the Darkover books. Loved. Them.
Now, you can sneer, or call me overly naïve, or anything you'd like, but I found a lot of solace in those stories. And they sparked a lot of thought (or reaffirmed my own views) about personal ethics, or honour... especially as I was reading them about the same time as I was being introduced to Heinlein and Asimov's novels while also studying comparative theology.
... and then word got out about the author's husband and the charges against him - and her lying on the stand in support of him - and suddenly the shiny was gone from that world for me. Instead of some of the books being something of a good introduction for a young (and naïve) woman to try to understand gay relationships, I now thought of them as exercises in rationalizations of abhorrent perversion. And that tainted my view of the whole series because I could not reach for any of them without the thought of that trial, and her knowledge, flashing before my eyes even as my hand was reaching for a book spine no matter if the storyline had anything to do with that theme or not. I pretty much stopped reading them save maybe one or two in a year and set the terminology and the world-view aside from my thoughts.
And then a friend said, ""Z'par servu"... And it threw me again, because that friend is gay, and kind and loving - and certainly NOT interested in molesting children - and I wondered how reactive and knee-jerk my evolved view of the novels may be.
I'll have to think about it some more.
I absolutely do not condone sexual predation toward a child or youth. The novels with that as their central core are very difficult for me to read, now, knowing that the author probably was aware that her own husband was doing exactly that while she stood idly by. But what if those same books became a comfort for a young man realising that he is gay in _today's_ world? What if the love and acceptance he read in them soothed his fears and helped him be strong? Perhaps they served a purpose there. Certainly, they touched my Brother very deeply when he was younger and he loves them still.
I don't know. I suppose I'll have to think about it a lot more.
See, I really used to love the Darkover books. Loved. Them.
Now, you can sneer, or call me overly naïve, or anything you'd like, but I found a lot of solace in those stories. And they sparked a lot of thought (or reaffirmed my own views) about personal ethics, or honour... especially as I was reading them about the same time as I was being introduced to Heinlein and Asimov's novels while also studying comparative theology.
... and then word got out about the author's husband and the charges against him - and her lying on the stand in support of him - and suddenly the shiny was gone from that world for me. Instead of some of the books being something of a good introduction for a young (and naïve) woman to try to understand gay relationships, I now thought of them as exercises in rationalizations of abhorrent perversion. And that tainted my view of the whole series because I could not reach for any of them without the thought of that trial, and her knowledge, flashing before my eyes even as my hand was reaching for a book spine no matter if the storyline had anything to do with that theme or not. I pretty much stopped reading them save maybe one or two in a year and set the terminology and the world-view aside from my thoughts.
And then a friend said, ""Z'par servu"... And it threw me again, because that friend is gay, and kind and loving - and certainly NOT interested in molesting children - and I wondered how reactive and knee-jerk my evolved view of the novels may be.
I'll have to think about it some more.
I absolutely do not condone sexual predation toward a child or youth. The novels with that as their central core are very difficult for me to read, now, knowing that the author probably was aware that her own husband was doing exactly that while she stood idly by. But what if those same books became a comfort for a young man realising that he is gay in _today's_ world? What if the love and acceptance he read in them soothed his fears and helped him be strong? Perhaps they served a purpose there. Certainly, they touched my Brother very deeply when he was younger and he loves them still.
I don't know. I suppose I'll have to think about it a lot more.
