Archie-as-author = BEST THING that ever happened to fanfic writers! Whenever something seems contradictory you get to shrug and chalk it up to Archie being an unreliable narrator.
I have never thought it a coincidence that books with ongoing fandoms often have either a setting too complex to be entirely explored in canon (LOTR, HP, Age of Sail) or occasionally self-contradictory POV protagonists interacting with other strong and vivid characters (Sherlock Holmes, Nero Wolfe, Vorkosigan books). Both kinds of books provide the open spaces fans need for their imaginations to breathe deeply.
I think it's better to include historical racism with it's unavoidable ugliness than to ignore it as though it didn't happen.
I very much agree. Also, Stout himself sometimes made a deliberate choice to show the racism and show it as being what he considered ugly, so, in this case, it's a way of paying tribute to canon. (He was actively liberal enough about the issue by the standards of his own day, if certainly not ours, that it was commented on by a contemporary or two.)
It's interesting, trying to track where he was considering the matter and trying to make a point as opposed to unconsciously typing out something really unpleasant, which he also did. Makes me want to re-read what I write to see if I can spot what I'm screwing up when my attention slips...
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Date: 2010-04-06 05:43 pm (UTC)I have never thought it a coincidence that books with ongoing fandoms often have either a setting too complex to be entirely explored in canon (LOTR, HP, Age of Sail) or occasionally self-contradictory POV protagonists interacting with other strong and vivid characters (Sherlock Holmes, Nero Wolfe, Vorkosigan books). Both kinds of books provide the open spaces fans need for their imaginations to breathe deeply.
I think it's better to include historical racism with it's unavoidable ugliness than to ignore it as though it didn't happen.
I very much agree. Also, Stout himself sometimes made a deliberate choice to show the racism and show it as being what he considered ugly, so, in this case, it's a way of paying tribute to canon. (He was actively liberal enough about the issue by the standards of his own day, if certainly not ours, that it was commented on by a contemporary or two.)
It's interesting, trying to track where he was considering the matter and trying to make a point as opposed to unconsciously typing out something really unpleasant, which he also did. Makes me want to re-read what I write to see if I can spot what I'm screwing up when my attention slips...