I will admit to forgiving Caer Azkaban's 'well then we'll just share him' because I really really hate love triangles, so that was a refreshing change (and rather eye-opening to a sheltered wee!Tam.) And I'd missed that comment of S'Tarkan's completely! Rolling my eyes forever.
I will say, though, that I am a little more forgiving of fics as old as these are (looking at the publishing dates, they're both over a decade old, while Harry Crow is still no spring chicken with a publishing date of 2012) because I remember what the environment, especially on FF.net, was like back then. No outright homophobia/ 'eww slash gross' was, IIRC, pretty progressive.
It's easy to 'world-build' when all you're doing is grafting something on to your own culture - and by 'own culture' I include race, country (and maybe region and city too) where you grew up, and social class. BINGO. And JKR is really good at amusing little twists on the familiar. She just fails epically at stepping out of her Nice White British Lady wheelhouse, and doesn't seem to be willing to do any research to fix that. Which is especially infuriating because she of all the authors in the world has the resources.
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Date: 2018-09-27 10:50 am (UTC)I will say, though, that I am a little more forgiving of fics as old as these are (looking at the publishing dates, they're both over a decade old, while Harry Crow is still no spring chicken with a publishing date of 2012) because I remember what the environment, especially on FF.net, was like back then. No outright homophobia/ 'eww slash gross' was, IIRC, pretty progressive.
It's easy to 'world-build' when all you're doing is grafting something on to your own culture - and by 'own culture' I include race, country (and maybe region and city too) where you grew up, and social class.
BINGO. And JKR is really good at amusing little twists on the familiar. She just fails epically at stepping out of her Nice White British Lady wheelhouse, and doesn't seem to be willing to do any research to fix that. Which is especially infuriating because she of all the authors in the world has the resources.