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Reading A Great and Terrible Beauty on Emily's recommendation. It was the Utena mention that pulled me in. I've just realized that, fan as I am of the series, the memory of Utena gives me- here's that word again- the fantods. (My fantods are a milder and more dark-dank-ineffable-British version of the creeps.) The whole of the late-90's does, for various psychological and (oddly) political reasons having to do with reverse culture shock and returning from half a decade away to find your happy socialist homeland taken over by a right-wing dictator who regularly has social assistance programs taken out and shot every morning before breakfast. Also hospitals and schools and little infrastructure institutions like that.
(The Harris regime left deeper scars than I'd realized. In local news, the police officer who shot the Indian protester over a decade ago died in a traffic accident before he could testify at the continuing and much delayed inquiry. Would that the guy who gave him implicit orders to do so had done the same, because I have no confidence that Mr. Harris will ever be forced to take responsibility for any of his actions, and his continued presence in my city and government offends me.)
Well, fantods are a good background to reading Great and Terrible Beauty because fantods are what it's about.
It's not typos this time, as it was with the Brust back story books. (Really, a shocking lot. And the occasional spell-checked word substituting the wrong word, when I'm reasonably certain Brust knows the right one.) It's period vocabulary.
'My mother runs a salon in Paris.' What kind? Hair-dressing? My instincts say that intellectuals and femmes savantes /had/ salons or /conducted/ salons, but only businesses are run. I suppose it's not fair to compare this book to JS&MN, whose period vocabulary and emotions were, to my ear, spot on: or at least, it read like the way people spoke and felt in novels at the time, if not in real life. But the hint of 21st century attitudes is-- more than a hint in G&TB, and rather awkward in context as well. Which probably won't affect the story per se, but I wish it had been done better.
Otherwise I want to be writing a fic about the Marshmallow King spending a weekend at home with his stolid and unquestioning cousin. But the usual problems emerge. How to present the pov of someone who doesn't talk to himself about how he feels? aka the Gokuu Perplex. Show the emotions of someone who has no terms to describe his feelings in. Do this when nothing much is happening. It's a very good writing exercise but not, you know, *fun*.
Otherwise in fandom varia, I have a speech of fire that would burn but hell, why bother. If people not in my fandom are being loud jackasses- and ohh they are, they are- it's no business of mine. And if people in my fandom are being annoying- well, it's because they're going from the translations and not the Japanese and what can you expect of people who are not only interrogating the text from the wrong perspective but interrogating the wrong text? Hmph.
(Sweeps out of the room in full-rigged Lady Bracknell mode.)
(The Harris regime left deeper scars than I'd realized. In local news, the police officer who shot the Indian protester over a decade ago died in a traffic accident before he could testify at the continuing and much delayed inquiry. Would that the guy who gave him implicit orders to do so had done the same, because I have no confidence that Mr. Harris will ever be forced to take responsibility for any of his actions, and his continued presence in my city and government offends me.)
Well, fantods are a good background to reading Great and Terrible Beauty because fantods are what it's about.
It's not typos this time, as it was with the Brust back story books. (Really, a shocking lot. And the occasional spell-checked word substituting the wrong word, when I'm reasonably certain Brust knows the right one.) It's period vocabulary.
'My mother runs a salon in Paris.' What kind? Hair-dressing? My instincts say that intellectuals and femmes savantes /had/ salons or /conducted/ salons, but only businesses are run. I suppose it's not fair to compare this book to JS&MN, whose period vocabulary and emotions were, to my ear, spot on: or at least, it read like the way people spoke and felt in novels at the time, if not in real life. But the hint of 21st century attitudes is-- more than a hint in G&TB, and rather awkward in context as well. Which probably won't affect the story per se, but I wish it had been done better.
Otherwise I want to be writing a fic about the Marshmallow King spending a weekend at home with his stolid and unquestioning cousin. But the usual problems emerge. How to present the pov of someone who doesn't talk to himself about how he feels? aka the Gokuu Perplex. Show the emotions of someone who has no terms to describe his feelings in. Do this when nothing much is happening. It's a very good writing exercise but not, you know, *fun*.
Otherwise in fandom varia, I have a speech of fire that would burn but hell, why bother. If people not in my fandom are being loud jackasses- and ohh they are, they are- it's no business of mine. And if people in my fandom are being annoying- well, it's because they're going from the translations and not the Japanese and what can you expect of people who are not only interrogating the text from the wrong perspective but interrogating the wrong text? Hmph.
(Sweeps out of the room in full-rigged Lady Bracknell mode.)
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(She's the first one I've ever seen who's has brought up the insanely bad editing/proofing of that Patricia McKillip book, which successfully scared me away from picking up any of that author's other books.)
I'd been wondering, a while back, if I shouldn't find a copy of Great and Terrible Beauty and read it, but I decided that it really did sound too excessively dripping in goth even for me. (I'd probably have wallowed in it as a teenager though.)
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I'll send you my copy of G&TB when done, if in fact it's not too gothy. The beginning had a surrealistic disjunction to it that took me by surprise, but then I'm not much of a goth reader.
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One of the local libraries has a fairly well-stocked kids section, and they may well have that book; I've got to reup my cards one of these days. (Recreational reading has always been more of a summer activity for me. For reasons unexamined.)
Oh yeah: which fandom is doing what where? So very cryptic.
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Am I the only one who couldn't get into the Amulet of Samarkand, or whatever it's called? I think I brought that one to a used bookstore before I finished it. I thought the idea (and footnotes) were neat, but overall, not grabbing. (I also wondered how they handled the footnotes in the audio version.)
I wouldn't mind hearing your speech of fire. :)
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The speech of fire is more hormones than anything. Ignore them and they go away. If they don't go away there's always gin.