They are more to be pitied than censured, I'm afraid. If for no other reason than that they can no longer conceive of any source of ectasy other than the sexual.

And they are evidenly making the mistake of interprting a book written nearly a century ago as if it had been written by a contemporary.

Literary criticism fail.

No, they're more to be beaten the hell up than censured or pitied...

And you're quite right: they apply modern standards to the past, where they have no business doing so. Eejits.

I do find the increasing sexualisation of any relationship in literature annoying, I agree. I re-read the relevant passage online and it seems to be an account of religious awe - an emotion we've largely lost sight of. I've only experienced it in dreams and it is quite distinct from other emotions.

I've just finished reading Arthur Machen's letters and he wrote about Pan in one, at least, of his novels - a very strange and eerie passage, IIRC. Graham was writing around the same time. As far as I know, Graham was not associated with the Golden Dawn, but may have been aware of it - whatever, his evocation of Pan is a remarkable passage.

Someone at Milford this year did a follow-up story based on one of Machen's books, which was highly sexualised and very effective. But this was for adults and in no way connected with TWITW.

And I also think the sexualisation mentioned here devalues friendship, particularly male friendship, which can be quite intense without any homoerotic component. Pendulum has swung too far the other way, IMO.

Good point about the GD. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that KG had been at least a fellow traveler, the way so many writers of that age were. Even P.L. Travers, who hung out with Yeats and A.E.

And that Pan evocation is awesome in the original sense. What an amazing piece of writing: I don't think, having been fortunate enough to have experienced religious awe on several occasions (and it has NOTHING to do with sex), that he could have written it so powerfully if he'd never felt it.

It's like... slashing everything has become The Thing. Whether there's any justification for it or not.

I know you have a large problem with fanfic in general, but I can understand exploring possibilities (think of them as quantum) which the original author decided against - but dear Brigit, can there possibly be some reasonable justification in said exploration?

The Frodo/Sam stuff really gigs me. Talk about defiant subversion of authorial intent. It's like nobody's allowed honest hero worship or anything anymore without somebody insisting it's a crush.

I think there's a rush to slash extremely unlikely relationships just to show it can be done. (My real bugbear, as I've mentioned before on my own LJ, is real life slash, which I think is a totally unwarranted invasion of privacy and should be libellous).

It's all tied in to what I consider the supreme evil of fanfic. I've ridden this particular hobbyhorse in any number of places, so you'll forgive me if I saddle up again...

Fanfic is stealing. It is taking something not your own and perverting/subverting it to uses that its creator never intended.

It's just one more example of how people have utterly obliterated boundaries of any sort. I'd not heard there was real-life slash around; the very idea makes me want to vomit.

That's what we get for having Puritans as forefathers.

Or the Catholics. Why have Christians never been able to accept sex as a pure and holy and wondrous gift from the Creator, instead of something sordid and dirty? Says more about their nasty little minds than about anything else...

*jumping up and down * thank you thank you thank you !!!

I actually chased someone out of my office the other day for insisting that there was "something" between Sam and Frodo.

My husband has an intense and beautiful friendship with a male friend of his. There is love there but nothing even remotely sexual and it pisses me off that lesser beings try to put anything there. And if there were, what business is it of theirs? It's like nothing intense exists without sex; if that's their life, I pity them.

These sound like the same geniuses who concluded that Harry Potter was homosexual because he lived in a cupboard under the stairs and "came out" to go to Hogwarts.

Stupidity and ignorance are alive and well!!

*applause* I'm so glad I'm not the only one who is bothered by that crap!

Frankly, I don't think any of the critics of the classics would know a good book if they were smacked upside the head with it !

And, in my humble opinion, there is nothing wrong with two women or two men being close friends.

Some people like these critics have way too much time on their hands and are worrying about far too trivial things.

Banal is the perfect word for it. I find this phenomenon unthinking, selfish, self-indulgent, rabid mental mouthbreathing on part of the perpetrators. I like well-written fanfiction for it's such a rare beastie, but this type of rampant... uncaring seemes to be a rising trend among readers, viewers and listeners. And it makes me sick to my marrow.

I would rather read a well-written friendship than a cheap-written romance any day of the week, or of the year. This tendency to 'slash' any and all characters based on however minuscule a relationship to one another is appalling to me; it's not just undermining the author's hard and rather tender and tricky work of establishing those ties but blatantly disregarding them for a cheap thrill. No, I really can't do better than 'uncaring' and 'disrespectful' - but I would like to 'slash' some of these 'writers' until they screamed like Bambi's mother (and that's canon, you limp-wristed wimps)...

Have any of these people actually sustained a long-term relationship with a person not related to them? (Shagging your Uncle don't count, Sheri-Lee!) I wonder if they've realised just how bloody precious a friendship is, and how it must be cultivated and how it might give one something far better than a romance? I suppose not since such frivolous things are to be thrown into the winds for a romp in the sack the fledgling writer doesn't know how to tackle tactfully and realistically. Harrumph!

... Oh dear. Ma'am, I think you may have just brought out my inner conservative. Yikes.