I, like many introverted high school students probably wrote dozens of stories dealing with a fictional high school and mystical come-uppance. You know, those awkward tales where the insipid bully gets turned into his inner troll.
I think the story I wrote in my junior year, featuring myself as a sekrit leader of some sort of mercenary outfit hired to blow up my highschool would be frowned upon in this day and age. Of course, I had all the students herded into the gym so they were safe, because I didn't care about their fate. What I was looking for was a gripping confrontation between me and a certain teacher.
"Lewis is upset, among other reasons, because the character in the play modeled on her has had an affair with her collaborator -- Lavery has, in some sense, written a slash of a living person."
Otherwise known as RPS, or Real People/Person Slash. Most frequently seen with the assorted actors from the Lord of the Rings movies, who all are particularly huggy and kissy in public.
This is one of the particular strains of slash that I really don't get.
Wow, a topic that I know something about! I work for a small decorative arts museum in Washington, D.C. and we have a bunch of really nice examples of these mourning pieces, along with other silk embroideries (like "Liberty at the Trenton Arches", or "Sense of Scent", which is actually not silk, but is really pretty and very early). A lot of these silk embroideries aren't mourning pieces, but funny little allegorical representations of Liberty with a Phrygian cap saluting a giant eagle, or things like that. Many of them are based on popular prints or set motifs that could be slightly rearranged but which usually followed a pretty rigid structure.
What gets me is the samplers - gorgeous little pieces of stitchery created by eleven year olds who obviously had more manual dexterity then than I do at age 28.
I always forget that Something Awful is there, until somebody posts a link to it and reminds me. I had to bite down on my fist to keep the howls of laughter from alerting my boss. Promptly sent it off to all my fellow art history geeks.
Or the book might be an excellent thriller about giant fruitflies taking over the White House and impersonating the President, but last week the editor bought a thriller about giant cockroaches taking over the White House and impersonating the First Lady.
Can I just say that I now really, really want to read this book?
In a slight tangent, I was rereading _Dogland_ today and was slightly startled to see the Tor imprint on it, because for the first time, I made the I read books published by Tor / I read and comment on things at Making Light, written by a Big Shot at Tor connection. Why yes, I'm rather slow - but it made me tingle slightly.
The Davinci Code has bad art history, as well. Former grad school friends of mine assembled at an Olive Garden over the holidays, and there was some grumbling about it, much to the startlement of the waiter.
I too was saddened to hear of Joan Aiken's death - her books were always on my "hmm, must pick up more" list, as I had only read a few but never got around to picking up more of them.
I actually stole from Bocaccio to mimic Chaucer - an English prof. of mine had us write additional Cantebury tales, and I adapted the Decameron story about the young lass who goes off to seek holiness in the desert and returns with a sex addiction. It turned out to be the top vote-getter in the class for "most believable Chaucer story," so I suppose I was doing something right.
I think the great deisgn (thank you, thank you, thank you, Alan Lee) of things like costumes, and weapons, and other anthropological stuff, set against the fantastic backdrop of New Zealand, would have made the movie for me, even if all the actors had been horrible and the script botched beyond belief. I do think the movies were fabulous, but I also mentally take the bad parts of the movies and correct them. I also feel that there are pieces where the movies added to the books: Boromir's depiction, Pippin's singing, etc.
On the other hand, just about the only value I find in the Harry Potter movies is from whoever did the set dressing and location scouting, plus true happiness with Snape and Lockhard. The rest of the actors were fine, but both films felt lifeless. I spent more time looking at details in the background and going, "ooh!" Maybe the new director will remedy this.
Now on the lookout for the Beowulf translation reccomended by Graydon...
Chaucer is very funny, as is Bocaccio. I mentioned this to somebody and got a blank look back, but hell - the Decameron is full of naughty episodes that are great to read. Juvenal is nicely catty, as well - at least in the very strange translation I have.
Even after I realized it applied to all my idle daydreams about what I would do in this world or that world ... and started blushing as I discovered that my inner self is a Mary Sue!
Hey, join the club! Well, I don't admit to wanting eyes that change color with my every mood, or silver hair down to my ass, but I do mentally self-insert myself into a lot of universes. I've caught myself pondering how one could treat arrow-wounds in the middle of the wilderness, because Sean Bean's Boromir just brought out all these...um...tingly feelings.
I've perpetuated only two fanfics (well, two and a half, and I'm not including all the MacGyver stuff a friend and I wrote in tenth grade). The first one was in the Anita Blake universe, and I think the story came out fairly well. The second one was in the much more populated Harry Potter universe, and I got called on Mary-Sue-itis big time. One of the big red flags for a Mary Sue in the HPverse is having your main character as an American (although it wasn't exactly a major plot point - I just wanted to avoid having to look up Britishisms). That trope is apparently so frequent in the HPverse that many readers, upon seeing it, will simply hit the back button. Serves me right for writing something when I'm not part of the fandom, I suppose. There does seem to be a big difference between being a fan of something and being part of the fandom, and I've managed the first but not the second.
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|---|---|
| 2005 | 2 |
| 2004 | 8 |
| 2003 | 4 |
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