isle of gramarye (the crystal goblet and the wine)

It's been like fandom party central these last couple of days, between the AO3 opening and Yuletide and the shiny new Merlin ep and just wow. I heart this thing of ours so hard. It makes me so happy that between the AO3 and Dreamwidth and Fanlore we're really coming to be in possession of our own arts, and my inner cultural historian is also really thrilled that we've begun constructing our edifice, making our mark a little more indelible.

Erroneously gendered contemporaneous reviews of George Eliot just make it all the better. Sporfle.

This entry was originally posted at http://lotesse.dreamwidth.org/172523.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I heard A.S. Byatt speak at the University this afternoon, which was just unspeakbly lovely - she's absolutely charming, and from the excerpt that she read, I think her new novel The Children's Book sounds fantastic.

The following is something she said at the Q&A preceding the reading, which I liked so much that I recorded it on my little camera and then transcribed:

When I was a child it was the fairy stories I liked reading, it was the stories about things that were not real but were more real than real. And so it gives you in a sense the possibility of telling - I don't like the word spiritual but cosmic - truths, or truths about the nature of things which is harder to do when you're writing about men and women cooking lunch for each other - or even making love to each other. It's a different world; I like that. I like the rules that there are to fairy story worlds.

The English Writer Angela Carter said in the 1970s that she'd been trying to write realist novels about social behaviors for years and suddenly realized that actually she wrote because she had lived in this other world of fairy stories. And what I've found is that I'm happy putting the one world into the other world and juxtaposing them, because that's how you actually live - the things that you read are both more real and more unreal than your daily life. And there was a point particularly when I got to writing possession when I couldn't go on writing and then he sat down at the table and took up his knife and fork without also writing there were two little girls who went through the forest like Hansel and Gretel. But if I combine them, for me, I can make the knife and fork look more interesting because it's next to the forest, if you see what I mean.

le sigh. Now I am off to make spinach and feta pie for dinner. Maybe with a little bit of pesto?

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now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white
a BtvS/Vanity Fair crossover
Angelus/Becky Sharp, Angelus/Darla
1,718 words, explicit
Her savagery, hidden under the thinnest veneer of maidenly propriety, fascinated him utterly.

( now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost )

This entry was originally posted at http://lotesse.dreamwidth.org/166475.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Am I the only one who really wants Darcy to somehow get wind of all Mr. Collins' nasty insinuations about Lizzy - that she's saying "no" because she really means "yes," that she may never have another marriage proposal, all the nose-rubbing later at Rosings - and give him a good whomping? With, like, sardonic eyebrows and frosty sarcasm and maybe even a bit of macho beatdown when the more subtle methods by which he expresses his disdain rebound of off Collins' thick skull?

This entry was originally posted at http://lotesse.dreamwidth.org/162610.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

So I'd heard about the egregiously Twilight-tastic new cover for Wuthering Heights, but apparently that's only the beginning of it.

( cut for images and ranting )

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Hoo. Spent today doing business - trying to sort out my stupid loans, because my college is full of dips who don't think they need to continue sending out enrollment information, and panicking around about graduate financial aid. Apparently, the state of Indiana does things late - they've only just set this next year's tuition, and aid packets won't go out for another two weeks. I'd been freaking, because omg July! and I didn't know about my loan yet! but I think I should be okay.

Lauren, sent out your dwth invite code, sorry to have dragged my feet about it.

I've been watching Merlin on the telly with The Baby, and man, they weren't even trying. The whole "born like this" deal? So. Stinking. Queer. I continue to not like Gaius. King Uther yay!

I just finished reading Gene Stratton Porter's "A Daughter of the Land," and was shocked by how dark it was. And grown up - I'm used to her doing bildungsromans, but this was a novel about adults. Perhaps the cynicism came from that. It lacks her usual transcendentalism, but it's strongly shot through with a very Midwestern kind of work ethic, one that values honest craft and tasks well done over riches or beauty. Her heroines are always very restful for me, because they're so often not beautiful, and yet remain loved and lovely. Though "Freckles" does rather break that pattern, at least wrt the Angel. I suppose that Freckles himself isn't exactly pretty, when you come to it.

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five questions meme, from idlerat. Comment for five topics of your own - rat gave me: Lotesse (your name!), Tolkien, Jane Eyre, Spike!Elizabeth Bennett (your icon!), Oregano (your motto!)

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Hi, fandom! Hi! Hi!

Oh, I think it's time for me to stop being reclusive! After we moved, I found that I just wanted to tuck up into the woods and hide a bit. Which was fine, but I think it has stopped being healthy. Erm.

Indiana! Gorgeous, woodsy, feels very good after the post-industrial wasteland we left behind. Am currently playing with a small child for money, which is v. fab. Reading as many Victorian novels as I can - lurrrved Adam Bede, which I finished in about four days. Was bored absolutely by Portrait of a Lady, which I expected - I don't think Henry James will ever be one of my own. Am now investigating Vanity Fair, which is a nice bit of fluff, though not entirely to my loving.

But mainly hobbits! Which is what I've been doing while not journaling. Thanks to my withdrawal from social life, I now have nearly twenty thousand words of angsty cracky postquest au-age. Which I shall begin posting shortly, I hope, if I can keep on a-rolling.

Maybe tonight I'll finally open up my Dreamwidth invite code, and start making the move. I don't know - I rather expect I'll stay on eljay for the summer. My internet connection out here in rural land is not as good as it could be, and I'm not sure I want the hassle of trying to port files over such a shaky connection. So I'm thinking that autumn will be moving time.

Also, hobbits! Oh hobbits. I have read so much hobbitfic over the last few weeks, you have no idea. Too much to do individual recs for, but they're all stacked up in my delicious, over yonder.

I've been trying to puzzle out just why on earth I lurve them with such passing fervor, and I think last night I finally hit on it - they're Victorians who get to go on Quests. Seems obvious, but when I unpack it, I think there's a lot there for me.

( I can manage it. I must. )

Oh, hobbits!

If there's one point that I continue to waffle about with wrt fairytales, it's their fitness as feminist or woman-positive artifacts. I took them as such in my thesis last year in a tradition of thirdwave/minority feminist concepts of wholeness, subversion, and reappropriation - but I still haven't completely shaken my anxieties.

Okay, but. I was reading fairytale stuff this afternoon, for no particular reason, and I'm just going to go ahead and quote at length.

( From Maria Tatar, Off With Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood )

And here's my thought: if patriarchy feels like it has to contort itself into such utterly bizarre readings of fairy tales, there's got to be something scary, something major, hidden there. Obviously the tales as they stand are for some reason deeply offensive to the literary sensibility of the patriarch. And I figure, anything those guys are so scared of is probably something I want a closer acquaintance with.

If fairy tales were simply and fundamentally patriarchal, male critical responses to them would be equally simple. As Tatar points out, though, they're not. Dudely philosophes apparently couldn't just let fairy tales stand. And in order to sanitize them, they had to resort to Orwellian doublespeak: oh, these stories obviously mean the exact opposite of anything you'd expect! Abandoned children? No, those are clearly horrid brats who drive their parents to distraction! It's victim blaming, and it's crazy, and its presence indicates a latent power in fairy tales.

Sometimes you can best see your allies by noticing who's furthest away from your enemies.

Tangentially jumping off of a topic on narrative friendship at fangs, fur, & fey -

It's a mistake, I think, to see all fannish involvement with a text as somehow indicative of what fen want that text to be. Ficcing a pairing doesn't mean you want them together in canon - although it can mean that, of course - so much as it means that you see an interesting possible story in their hooking up. Fanwriting is spidery. Unlike prowriting, it doesn't per se drive toward a goal narrative.

This is negative capability with a vengeance - no irritable grasping, just flinging webs of possible, divergent stories. Ideally unprivileged? Like some sort of pornographic quantum event, where everything is everywhere at once until we look straight at it, and becomes so once again after we look away.

OMG YULETIDE ASSIGNMENT EXCITEMENT!!!

( to my dearest Yuletide santa )

Been thinking about "specialness"/supernaturality in romantic geekstuff. This was actually sparked off by my attempts to explain Twilight to my boyfriend - I ended up talking about the fantasy of the supernatural lover/fantasy objects who sweeps off the ordinary girl with whom we all identify. He asked it the gendering ever went the other way around. I've been making lists! Pairings which involve in some way falling in love with the "other," sorted by gender:

( lists! )

I'm sticking to het, specifically because I'm interested in the gendered implications of "otherness" within heterosexual genre romance narratives. From what I can tell - and I guess I'm pretty much reading from a female-oriented mindset here in terms of fantasy and identification - "special" guy pairings seem like they play into a much more predatory, dom/sub kind of thing, and the attraction is located in the idea of being wanted by someone so different and wonderful and strange. “Special” girl pairings are more about a conflation between women as other in patriarchy and women as literally different “other.”

Anything you want to add to the lists? Anything I missed? Implications?

The letter meme, from tiamatschild, who gave me "L":

( Laurie Lawrence, Lucy Pevensie, Luthien Tinuviel, Leela, Leia Organa, & Remus J. Lupin )

With the accidental release of the Twilight spin-off Midnight Sun, I've found myself pondering vampires.

I haven't actually read Twilight, save in mockworthy excerpts around internetland. My sister bought all four books, though, and then my mother read them. This kind of weirds me out.

But the thing about Midnight Sun that's been freaking me out is how like some sort of dark mirror of Buffy/Angel it is. I'm embarrassingly otp about B/A, and looking at Edward Cullen is a very interesting exercise in self-examination. Because I think that at the end of the day, Angel and Edward - heck, throw in Rochester for a historical precedent - are cut from pretty much the same mode. Handsome, powerful, has knowledge that the heroine does not, secret darknesses, stalkerishness, possessiveness, that whole fantasy of total all-consuming love that verges on creepy and badwrong.

( Except that they choose very different sorts of girls to be in love with. )

Also, in tangent land, rewatching the end of Buffy 3 made me frustrated with it all over again. Because to me, the breakup never actually reads as final. It reads like the Romanceland trope of the obstacle to love, which is SUPPOSED TO BE OVERCOME BY TRUE LOVE. The breakup feels like the first part of something. I don't ever feel like the writers actually say that it's over. If they would, maybe I could get over it. Right now I'm just having Season Six AU fantasies wherein Angel is the one who catches B at the end of Once More With Feeling, instead of stupid Spike.

I just finished reading Salman Rushdie's newest novel "The Enchantress of Florence," which was lovely. Very sensual, rich, velvety. So pretty. Plus, has the best book design in, like, ever. It's a sexy read, really worth it. Fully recommended.

The prettiest device in it is that the chapter titles are the first few words of the chapters themselves, isolated on a separate page. They form these lovely little koans, small discrete mediations on language and narrative. In the day's last light the glowing lake. At dawn the haunting sandstone palaces. On the road to Genoa the empty inn.

I've only got one more month to go before we head home to Illinois. I think I might have a decent lead on a possible graduate opportunity that I'm - tentatively - really excited about. I'm worried about money, because business has been slow. The recession mean that people are cutting back their expenses, and waitresses are the first ones to feel it. People can give up restaurant meals pretty easily, so they do. I'm still making better money than I would in any other industry, but it's a lot less than it could be. Oh, material goods, I need to learn that I do not need you.

Also, ( brief spoilers for Dr. Horrible, with bonus philosophizing. )

Real Life Update: living in a good house (with air conditioning!), raking in the dough waitressing (I walked with $150 tonight, not half bad for five hours' work on a Wednesday). I'm within very easy biking distance from the beach, and I've already been in several times. I missed my big water like crazy. Tomorrow I'm going to the bookshop for a complete works of Carl Sandburg. Right now I'm reading Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles, which are very fun and Scottish.

The boy and I have also been mainlining House MD - two seasons in as many weeks. So I've been muchly with the reading of the House/Wilson. I have kind of a Robert Sean Leonard thing - after he's played the theater geek in Dead Poets' Society and starred in my favorite filmed Shakespeare to date, ie Much Ado About Nothing, how can I not have a thing for the guy? It's the pretty hair, in combination with the lovely mouth. Hugh Laurie is obviously god, so I don't feel bad for neglecting his pretty blue eyes for Wilson's mouth. He'll get over it.

If anyone has any House/Wilson that I absolutely must read, be pleased to let me know. This is the best part of picking up new fandoms - the honeymoon stage, where you get to dive down through years worth of brilliant fannish work.

From the first book of To the Lighthouse:

With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild violets—what nonsense was he thinking? She was fifty at least; she had eight children. Stepping through fields of flowers and taking to her breast buds that had broken and lambs that had fallen; with the stars in her eyes and the wind in her hair—He had hold of her bag.

“Good-bye, Elsie,” she said, and they walked up the street, she holding her parasol erect and walking as if she expected to meet some one round the corner, while for the first time in his life Charles Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; a man digging in a drain stopped digging and looked at her, let his arm fall down and looked at her; for the first time in his life Charles Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; felt the wind and the cyclamen and the violets for he was walking with a beautiful woman. He had hold of her bag.


and then also this one, from the same:


that it was real; the house was full; the garden blowing. If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurt him; however deep he buried himself or climbed high, not for a second should he find himself without her. So boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent; and James, as he stood stiff between her knees, felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid with leaves and dancing boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of his father, the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demanding sympathy.

Girls, if any of you would be willing to read over my proposal for my final paper on Jane Eyre, I'd love you forever. I have to present it to all faculty and majors on Thursday, and the prop is due tomorrow morning. It's just a short bit - let me know if you see any glaring flaws or logic holes?



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I'll possibly make icons on request for anyone who gives me good crit /wheedle