Subject: But the better you know the minutiae...
Author:
Posted on: 2017-10-12 12:17:00 UTC

... the better you can think about the material.

To use your own example: you can write an Ender/Alai slashfic ("salaam"), but unless you read the Shadow books and realise that Alai will end up as Caliph [/spoiler for 15-year-old book], you can't use that story as proper criticism - which it would be ideal for, since the moral assumptions in the Ender books come from OSC's Mormonism. You get to use a religious character to cast light on the implicit assumptions of a religious author - or you just read the first book and use Alai because he comes across as the most "feminine" of the Battle School boys.

I'm writing one story as a direct response to Tolkien's 'sex=marriage among the elves' idea. If I don't have a secure understanding of that idea, the whole concept is completely useless.

hS

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