I guess go growingup!me for taking and remembering the good things from the book (strong happy lesbian committed relationship) and not the bad things?
Yes, good filter!
Also, go you for this being a good thing at that age. I would have rejected this book out of hand for including the word "sex" up until high school, never mind lesbians (which I didn't even know what they were) and then...I certainly would have been deeply uncomfortable with it even in high school. Between being a super-prude on my own account (for a very long time, I didn't think people should kiss on television or the word "sex" should be used in books to refer to gender, never mind actual sex), and growing up in a very heteronormative and slightly homophobic environment, and just having *no idea* about homosexuality beyond "taboo subject," I did not really become comfortable with it until late in college.
When I started grad school, I'd met a grand total of three people, all male professors I'd had in college, who were out of the closet. Before that, I'd never even *heard* of anyone in real life, i.e. not someone on television, who was gay.
And f/f lagged years behind m/m in terms of what I was comfortable reading even in fanfic, even once I'd gotten over the prudery about reading about sex. (Yay misogyny to go with homophobia.)
To my parents' credit, like a lot of people, they got more tolerant in the 2000s, as the movement for tolerance gained visibility. But when I was in high school, and my mother was pregnant and everyone in the family was tossing around baby names, I proposed Ellen, and my mother vetoed it immediately with, "I know you don't watch television, but there's a celebrity named Ellen and she's homosexual, and so you can't name your kids that anymore."
And since that kind of attitude, plus kids at school using it as a taunt/dirty joke, constituted 100% of my exposure to same-sex relationships before I started reading fanfic in senior year of high school, growingup!me would not have been okay with Lotus. (Which is exactly why we need more openness about homosexuality: growingup!me was quite happy to disagree with my parents on any and every subject on which I had a data point to the contrary. ;) )
Re: A lot of spoilers and a lot of wtf
Yes, good filter!
Also, go you for this being a good thing at that age. I would have rejected this book out of hand for including the word "sex" up until high school, never mind lesbians (which I didn't even know what they were) and then...I certainly would have been deeply uncomfortable with it even in high school. Between being a super-prude on my own account (for a very long time, I didn't think people should kiss on television or the word "sex" should be used in books to refer to gender, never mind actual sex), and growing up in a very heteronormative and slightly homophobic environment, and just having *no idea* about homosexuality beyond "taboo subject," I did not really become comfortable with it until late in college.
When I started grad school, I'd met a grand total of three people, all male professors I'd had in college, who were out of the closet. Before that, I'd never even *heard* of anyone in real life, i.e. not someone on television, who was gay.
And f/f lagged years behind m/m in terms of what I was comfortable reading even in fanfic, even once I'd gotten over the prudery about reading about sex. (Yay misogyny to go with homophobia.)
To my parents' credit, like a lot of people, they got more tolerant in the 2000s, as the movement for tolerance gained visibility. But when I was in high school, and my mother was pregnant and everyone in the family was tossing around baby names, I proposed Ellen, and my mother vetoed it immediately with, "I know you don't watch television, but there's a celebrity named Ellen and she's homosexual, and so you can't name your kids that anymore."
And since that kind of attitude, plus kids at school using it as a taunt/dirty joke, constituted 100% of my exposure to same-sex relationships before I started reading fanfic in senior year of high school, growingup!me would not have been okay with Lotus. (Which is exactly why we need more openness about homosexuality: growingup!me was quite happy to disagree with my parents on any and every subject on which I had a data point to the contrary. ;) )