I'm Proud To Be Minnesotan

On Sunday I went to Twin Cities Gay Pride.  (Or LGBTQA...whatever).  This is the first time in my life I have attended a gay event of this magnitude, and the first time in my hometown.

My brother's reaction:  "Yeah, I think I'll sit out."
My dad's reaction:  "Just don't go running off to the Gay 90's  (local gay bar)."
My mom's reaction:  "Sounds fun.  Maybe I'll come too."

Here I have to add a little tangent about books (because it's me, after all).  One of my biggest frustrations with gay-themed teen books from the nineties is that they are all coming out stories (or staying in stories, but those seem to be a fading trend), and very few of them offer any sort of picture of what it is actually like to be out and gay to your family.  In other words, I'm sailing blind.

So to my brother I can say, It's okay, I don't blame you for trying to retain your heterosexual male dignity, to my dad, Umm, I'm not of age and you know I don't like to drink anyway, and to my mom...well.

I had agreed to meet with a friend from college at Pride, and I like to keep my college life and home life separate.  It's just so weird when they intersect.  I was also in my independent teenager  mode, and did not want my mom in my life any more than was absolutely necessary.

But.

How many gay people do you know whose parents are not only willing but actually want to go to Pride with them?  At least among my immediate circle of friends, the answer is depressingly few.  The world is changing, but it has not changed so much that I can take my family's unconditional love and acceptance for granted.  I know too many people in too many situations.

So in the end, I did go with my mom (I needed her to drive me anyway).  Because it is not just the gays that we are celebrating at Pride.  It is our place in the world, a place where we can be free to be who we are, and the people who make that world possible - not just gay people, but our neighbors and friends and families who love us.

It gets better.

Not even in the course of your individual life, but the enitre course of the world is getting better.  Let's stick around and see just how good it can get.

Quoth the Rowling, Pottermore

Sorry about the title.  Couldn't resist.  Despite which, I still don't have a clue what Pottermore is.

I am the Harry Potter generation, defined here as someone who 1) waited for a letter from Hogwarts, 2) went to a midnight book release.  So I read it.  I liked it.

Then it became popular.

If HP had not become so popular, I can see two ways my life might be different.  1)  I would like it more than I do now, treasure it for its nostalgia purposes, immerse myself in the world.  Or 2)  I'd stick it in the back of the shelf and forget all about it.

As far as stories go, it is rather forgettable.  There's a kid who discovers he has special powers and has to stop some evil dude from doing evil stuff.  The characters are rather bland, rather stupid at times, and the magic stuff (wands and broomsticks etc.), which start out as delightfully whimsical, become more narmy as the series grows darker.

That last paragraph could get me burned at the stake.  Or at least accused of being a snob (why yes, I am still bitter).

Stop hating on Harry, he says.  It's just a kid's book.

Just a kid's book.

So too is Warriors.  So too is Artemis Fowl.  So too is almost...every...single...frickin'...thing...by DIANA WYNNE JONES.  And did I mention Narnia?

The problem of the matter is that Harry hits puberty.  Narnia is like a roller coaster; you must be less than this high to ride.  Rowling, with a book series that spanned seven years, had two choices: She could pretend puberty does not exist and keep her target demographic as 8-10 year olds.  Or she could anticipate her aging readers and transition her books to YA.

And that, I think, is why HP became so popular.  It aged with the readers.  Not well (see Potter Puppet Pals Wizard Angst), but it is the only series I can think of that started out with a child protagonist and ended with a teenager that was written to act like a teenager.  While most other books have to rely on new generations after the old one ages, the HP generation stuck with those books.

I can't think of many other reasons HP became so popular, though  I suppose I could hazard a few more guesses...

-The action took place in a school.  Everyone knows about schools.  But this was a magic school, so it was interesting.  Fantasy stories have a tendency to take the reader away from the familiar and recognizeable.  Lots of forests.  Castles.  Places most people don't live.

-The magic was very generic.  Nix had his light magic (or bells, but Sabriel isn't as nostalgic to me), Duane had her mystical Speech, Jones had...whatever Jones had.  But to the average layperson, the connotations that go with the word "magic" are still waving a wand and mumbling a few funny words.  So an ordinary person (for want of a better term) could pick up HP and recognize the magic.

And that's it.  I mean, does anyone really care about any of the characters' personalities?  Besides Sirius, that is?  No, because the characters simply play their roles as Designated Hero with a saving-people thing, Designated Sidekick who backs him up in everything, and Designated Smart One who dispenses plot-relevant information and gives advice for the hero to ignore.  Oh, and Designated Love Interest to...be fallen in love with.  Though in all fairness, Ginny seems to be able to do a better job getting Harry to listen to reason than Hermione does.

I did not realize I was quite this bitter.  I know that the world is not fair, and that Jones, who is the superior being, will never be as rich or famous as Rowling.  And I wouldn't want her too.  I would rather keep her private, personal, something I can form an instant connection over with a person.  And I have resigned myself to the fact that HP has altered the face of fantasy forever.  If I say I like fantasy, I usually hear a response like "Oh, like Harry Potter?  Like Lord of the Rings?  Like Terry Pratchett?"  And the answer is no; like Sarah Monette and Diana Wynne Jones and Galen Beckett and Meredith Ann Pierce.  Books by people who like magical stuff, but don't feel bound by genre constraints or the expectations of the readers. 

Dammit, I guess I am a snob.  I still remember those few years when fantasy was mine, and the choice was to feel like a freak for reading about magic, or to be proud of being different.  So when the public eye turned on my secret niche, the only choice was to seek deeper obscurity.  Or maybe I'm just irked that for most people, HP is the definition of fantasy, when it is so much more than that.

Home?

I'm sitting in my room, with the posters on the walls and too many books to count and more clothes than i remember and all the random items and junk that I have accumulated over the past two decades, unpacking my baggage from the past five months.  The suitcases are the easy part.

It is strange to be back.  Not like I never left.  Little things are different. It has been five months, after all.  But five months does not seem to have been as long here as it has there.  Five months in Germany was a lifetime.

It looks like I did build a life for myself there after all.  It just was not one I thought it would be.

So now I'm a different person than the one who left here in January, but I'm not the one who lives in Germany anymore.  It's like putting on an old pair of shoes after you've broken in a new one.

Once you return from a trip, you throw open all of your suitcases, and there is a big chaotic mess while you try to put everything back in its old place, and find place for the new items you brought back with you.

But I think, at least for a little while, I'm going to leave one of the suitcases closed.  The one whose contents are safely packed away where they can't do any harm.  It will have to opened eventually, of course - I can't be dragging it around for the rest of my life - but not now.  Wait until everything is unpacked and putback in place.  Wait until I know where I am again.  Then I can carefully find a place for the last of my baggage.