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Happy Friday, everyone! This week's prompt is inspired by conversations I've been having with various people in the comments of one of my recent posts, about revisiting personally beloved or critically acclaimed stories years later, and being surprised by past perceptions. The specific story is an epic fantasy doorstopper from the 2000s which I adored when I first read it in my early twenties (I have distinct memories of sharing my copies with
catpuccino when we were housemates, and spending hours feverishly speculating about potential plot developments; I think I also still have one of the pairings from the series listed as an 'interest' on Dreamwidth, a holdover from importing my profile from Livejournal close to fifteen years ago without much alteration). Rereading the whole thing after my mum shipped my book collection over from Australia, I was horrified by the numerous unfortunate implications in the book.
So my prompt is: tell me about similar experiences, in which you returned to a story after some time (it can be any work of fiction, not just a book), and experienced it very differently to the first time around.
The other big one for me recently (again sparked by rereading my old books) is the numerous 1980s and 1990s collections of eerie short stories for children/teenagers that felt mildly creepy when I read them at the intended age, and I found downright terrifying when rereading them as a thirtysomething adult. Their authors had an absolute gift for evoking an atmosphere that was uncanny and weird and quirky to a child, overlayed across truly unsettling and horrifying implications that are much more visible to an adult. And that particular experience is really making me want to track down a secondhand copy of Victor Kelleher's Del-Del, one of the most terrifying books I have ever read, which frightened me so much when I read it at fifteen or so that I was afraid to be alone in the house or go to sleep at night — and which I haven't read since. I'm curious if I would still find it as scary!
In any case, what about you?
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So my prompt is: tell me about similar experiences, in which you returned to a story after some time (it can be any work of fiction, not just a book), and experienced it very differently to the first time around.
The other big one for me recently (again sparked by rereading my old books) is the numerous 1980s and 1990s collections of eerie short stories for children/teenagers that felt mildly creepy when I read them at the intended age, and I found downright terrifying when rereading them as a thirtysomething adult. Their authors had an absolute gift for evoking an atmosphere that was uncanny and weird and quirky to a child, overlayed across truly unsettling and horrifying implications that are much more visible to an adult. And that particular experience is really making me want to track down a secondhand copy of Victor Kelleher's Del-Del, one of the most terrifying books I have ever read, which frightened me so much when I read it at fifteen or so that I was afraid to be alone in the house or go to sleep at night — and which I haven't read since. I'm curious if I would still find it as scary!
In any case, what about you?
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Date: 2024-08-30 06:10 pm (UTC)The flip side of this is books that I didn't enjoy in my early teen years that I think I would appreciate a lot as an adult. I need to reread The Scarlet Letter and see if I still hate it--I bet I wouldn't!
(I'm super fascinated by your experience with finding books more scary as an adult. The written word doesn't scare me--it can hold me in suspense or appall me, but I just...don't get scared reading books.)
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Date: 2024-08-31 03:38 pm (UTC)I saw you saying in another post that you've never been scared by the written word, and that's very understandable. For me (and this goes for visual horror as well), what is explicitly depicted is never, ever as terrifying as my own mind filling in the blanks and imagining things, so I'm quite capable of being made terrified by the written word, or by visual horror which takes place mostly off-screen.
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Date: 2024-08-30 09:17 pm (UTC)I remember first watching the later seasons of Buffy as a teenager and not really enjoying them then appreciating them a lot more when I watched it again in my 20s.
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Date: 2024-08-31 03:32 pm (UTC)I'm still not a huge fan of season 7 of Buffy (I think it has one really good episode, some interesting ideas and moments, and then a lot of stuff that wildly misses the mark), and while I appreciate what season 6 was trying to do, I find a lot of it so actively uncomfortable to watch because it's too close to my own experiences. But I can definitely understand how you came to change your mind on those later seasons — it makes a lot of sense.
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Date: 2024-09-01 01:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-31 01:14 am (UTC)- Xander from Buffy seems like such a Nice Guy now.
- I was watching a video essay about a children's historical fiction series I grew up with, American Girl, specifically Kirsten Larson. Kirsten Larson is an immigrant from Sweden. On the one hand, I fully believe this book is one of the reasons I became so interested in immigration and genealogy. On the other hand, revisiting the book through the essay, there are... problems. They try to incorporate an indigenous character, but in a way that is not great, and the depiction of non-English speaking immigrants is inaccurate and problematic. In one of her books, it's Kirsten's life goal to learn English. She would have lived in a Swedish-speaking community and might have only learned enough English to survive if she ventured outside of it. People have this idea that immigrants came over to speak English and be as American as possible as soon as possible, when that has never been the reality.
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Date: 2024-08-31 03:28 pm (UTC)Those American Girl books sound well meaning but misguided.
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Date: 2024-09-01 11:53 am (UTC)On the flip side, it's nice to escape into the optimism of Parks and Rec.Yeah, it's a bittersweet optimism because they clearly envisioned a very different political landscape, but I like that world. So.
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Date: 2024-08-31 04:00 am (UTC)The thing is I still love a lot about the series, but now need to put even more caveats up than I used to when I was a kid when I talk about it.
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Date: 2024-08-31 04:48 am (UTC)Asprin and Abbey were regular con-minglers, and I loved listening to them and other authors talking about the anthologies that were so popular in the 90s.
But I did not enjoy my last attempt to read a TW book.
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Date: 2024-08-31 04:50 am (UTC)I loved her so much on first read as a pre-teen.
Then I read so much commentary and critique of the writer and that book in particular.
Trying to re-read it? I was looking at the holes, and it is a very Joss Whedon moment of 'women are monsters if they don't have kids'.
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Date: 2024-08-31 03:25 pm (UTC)I hated that bit in the MCU. Hated. I now can't remember which film it was, but I remember I was watching it in the cinema with my husband, and our friend
I can imagine it would have been a shock to encounter that when returning to Friday as well — like being punched in the face.
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Date: 2024-09-01 05:41 am (UTC)...what was the epic fantasy doorstopper from the 2000s?
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Date: 2024-09-01 12:02 pm (UTC)The epic fantasy doorstopper is Jennifer Fallon's four book Tide Lords series. It's basically about invulnerable, unkillable, millennia-old immortals (when I say 'unkillable,' I really mean it — one character survives having his head cut off and simply grows another head, for example), who spend their lives in endless, pointless conflicts with one another over both past petty grievances and larger scale political machinations for power. And it's about the mortal characters who have the misfortune to get swept up in their wake. The idea itself is fine, but wow are there some major flaws in the execution!
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Date: 2024-09-01 08:42 am (UTC)It's a Cinderella story; Jane is the unwanted unloved grandchild, bullied by her cruel & vicious grandmother. But she finds love, and family, and friends and happiness. I really enjoyed it first time I read it.
Reading it as an adult - I was appalled by the emotional cruelty and (truly believable) spite shown by the grandmother, and how little anyone does to help. Jane's mother is good on sympathy but little practical help. Yes, there is a happy ending, and it's a great kid's book but I found myself grinding my teeth and saying "This is no way to treat a child."
Also Anne of Green Gables - a couple write to the orphanage saying "please send us an orphan" and the orphanage despatch one orphan by return post. Like ordering a doohickey from Amazon. As a child this seemed perfectly reasonable and now it's horrifying.
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Date: 2024-09-01 12:04 pm (UTC)