Reading Excuses - 4-18-16 - Spieles - Heir Ch 3,4 (L) - 4,186 words

[krystalynn03]

Hey spieles,

 

At first I wasn't sure what LBL was and wikipedia suggested "light bladder leakage" and I'm sure that wasn't what you meant.

 

Line by line.

 

Right.

 

Also, your response to my concerns about Calgary have really jarred me more than anything in the text. Nothing about him (at least the way I interpret him on page) reads at all like the way you meta-described him in blue here. If you mean for Calgary to be a cold, punk of a pseudo-father...none of that came through for me. At all. What came through was that Oz is young and doesn't understand adults well at all. I can find no textual evidence of Calgary being 'cold,' 'immature', 'annoying' yet 'lovable'.

 

I can find evidence of an edgy man taking care of a kid who wasn't really meant to be his responsibility when he's still (probably?) young enough to be doing his own thing without a stubborn teenager around the house. If he were cold, he wouldn't care about whether Oz got hurt out there or how late he comes home or whether he comes home. Also, immature people don't waste their time worrying about others; they worry about themselves. I can see how Oz would be annoyed at Calgary (typical teen broadening circle of control conflict), but I don't see evidence of Calgary doing immature things. Seriously, did I miss something? Otherwise, what you describe here and what I read in text seem like two different people.

 

That doesn't have to be a criticism in a bad way. People read texts all the time and come away with very different impressions, and that very phenomenon is what can make book discussions so much fun, but I thought you should know. If it's important that he have these flaws later in the book, then I will be really jarred by a sudden, unexpected change in what I perceived here.

[spieles]

Also, your response to my concerns about Calgary have really jarred me more than anything in the text. Nothing about him (at least the way I interpret him on page) reads at all like the way you meta-described him in blue here. If you mean for Calgary to be a cold, punk of a pseudo-father...none of that came through for me. At all. What came through was that Oz is young and doesn't understand adults well at all. I can find no textual evidence of Calgary being 'cold,' 'immature', 'annoying' yet 'lovable'.

 

Eh, cold is the wrong word. And "punk" is my favorite descriptor for the people I love when they annoy me - so it probably came off harsher than I meant it to. Better to say that Calgary is emotionally limited in a certain way. He would be awkward with physical affection and probably wasn't a shoulder to cry on when Oz was a kid. Also, he's definitely inconsistent - is probably a better descriptor. For example, a better parental figure would have prepared Oz for this massive transition that Oz is about to go through (instead of avoiding it). Pretty much, Calgary is like me if I'd become a parent at 25, LOL. But yeah, there's also the fact that Oz is 18 - technically an adult - and he's grown up in a world that really doesn't allow for children to stay children. 

 

Heh. We're also going with the YA bias that teenagers would be much better off if adults left them the heck alone. 

 

I'm going to revisit the scene in a few days for a fresh look.