While I totally agree about its fanfic sensibility, I also felt like it was in conversation with those books, in the sense that it was in conversation with a genre that popular culture has defined by those books. Or rather, I felt that Elliot, as a character, was in conversation with that genre. It was almost like internal Watsonian fanfic, instead of Doylsian, if that makes sense? Elliot was encountering the portal fantasy world, with all its issues, and reacting to it in a genre-savvy way.
(It also felt, to me, like it was in conversation with Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality -- which I have no idea if Brennan's read. But there was a part of me that saw this as starting with Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality's Harry, but who grows into being a decent person who I want to root for and who sees other people as worthy of value.)
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momijizukamori and
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Date: 2018-06-20 02:56 am (UTC)(It also felt, to me, like it was in conversation with Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality -- which I have no idea if Brennan's read. But there was a part of me that saw this as starting with Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality's Harry, but who grows into being a decent person who I want to root for and who sees other people as worthy of value.)