Upon Crossing the Bridge of Dreams

Snarking about Kabuki

2009-12-02T20:49:39Z

Fair warning, you probably don't want to click the cut if you take kabuki particularly seriously.

[Reactions to watching a film version of the kabuki play Kenreimon'in, based (loosely) upon the final chapter of Heike monogatari.]

Stealing a bunch of language from Go-Shirakawa's visit to Kenreimon'in [in the final Heike chapter] for Ukyoe's visit, which means Go-Shirakawa doesn't get it for his. Kind of irritating.

Why the hell is she shocked [at how many Taira men Yoritomo has killed]? She seemed to expect it in Heike.

STOP THINKING IN TERMS OF CANON! KABUKI DOESN'T BELIEVE IN CANON. Oh, god, this is going to make it really freaking hard to read plays again. Now I have Heike canon in my head and get bristly when people mess with it.

Why didn't they give us a focus on the hanamichi? Wah! [We don't get to see Go-Shirakawa's entrance.]

Since when did Kenreimon'in live in the palace with Go-Shirakawa? Pretty sure he was already retired emperor when she married Takakura.

Ohgod, CANON. CANON.

Also, Go-Shirakawa WON. He has no right to be complaining about hardships. Hah. Except in this version, he didn't win.

He didn't WALK the mountain path. [when Go-Shirakawa says he has walk the long hard path up the mountain to talk to Kenreimon'in and clear his conscience.]

Why should she let him clear his conscience onto her?

Wow, I don't like Go-Shirakawa much, do I?

Gifts. Bribes. Whatever.

THANK YOU. I'm so glad she's ticked at him.

Of course (yes, I'm unpleaseable) they're talking about their feelings WAY too much.

Uh-huh. And why doesn't she blame mommy for that, considering mommy's the one who jumped into the ocean *holding him*.

So Go-Shirakawa is a masochist [when he says he came up for her to yell at him]. Oh. my. god. Kabuki, why do you always ignore canon? IT HURTS.

The kid [Heike emperor Antoku] was practically a BABY. How the frack does a BABY die bravely?

Okay, really, we've covered that I *don't like* Go-Shirakawa, but it's NOT HIS FAULT that the Heike would rather kill their emperor-son than let the Genji have him.

Where are the poses? Not amused by this scene. It doesn't even have the kabuki pretty that usually gets me through these things.

Go-Shirakawa, you are a fracking LIAR. You put a four-year-old on the throne. How did you think you were returning to a courtly monarchy? Oh, that's right. You didn't. Damn it, Kabuki.

Yay completely stereotypical interpretation of the Kamakura period. It was NOT a poor-man's Edo! (Then again, written in the 60s. That's where scholarship was then. Dunces. Well, and that this is totally as much a story of post-WWII Japan+USA)

Oh no. Bad cherry blossom symbology. How can I keep complaining about it in Western works when they do the same thing in NATIVE JAPANESE PLAYS?

Oh, you're kidding me. She found enlightenment while Go-Shirakawa was crying on her???

Hah. And the first lines of Heike grant Kenreimon'in enlightenment. She even EXPLAINS them to us. This is kind of ridiculous.

Exist in peace with one another. Dear havens, can I tell this was written in the sixties? Can we stop talking about our FEELINGS now?

The Retired Emperor is the Buddha to her! *laughs hysterically* Can I haz original ending now?

Evening bells, oh, evening bells. Ostentatious symbology. Whee! Kabuki, you're so CHEESY! And there's not nearly enough flashy going on to distract me. Heaven save me from people who are trying to make kabuki serious.

Aw, they're never going to see each other again.

Go-Shirakawa, I promise, self-flagellating does not become you. You're much more interesting when you're being sneaky and unapologetic about it. And, y'know, not trying to make other people feel guilty, either.

Long waving scene with singing in the background, ended with evening bells. It's terribly sweet, and it actually feels a little like a good kabuki play. Like the singing at least.

WHEN THE HECK IS RECOGNIZING FAMILY THE FINAL SIGN OF ENLIGHTENMENT?

Even the commentator sounded fed up by the end of that.

Someday soon I'm going to at least start writing snippets of my Heian/Kamakura Eureka AU. And it's going to be awesome. Except for Nathan's strange resemblance to Kiyomori.

The good with the bad

2009-11-24T20:10:36Z

Things that make a crabby Maat:
Season 5 of House. And this one is so elaborate that it gets its own rant.

An otherwise spectacular story about Giles recovering from the end of Season 2 and finding love (with a male of whom I approve completely), that focuses on the physical torture and psychological repercussions thereof without a single mention of Jenny. Dammit, what broke Giles was Drusilla faking Jenny, not the physical torture. Thank you for treating one of my favorite BtVS characters like she never existed.

Someone saying (paraphrase here, but a pretty close one) that the entire time he was reading Tale of Genji, he "couldn't forget" that Murasaki Shikibu was a woman, so every time Genji did something bad (which he does a lot), he had to wonder if it was a critique of the males in Murasaki Shikibu's Heian society. Way to completely flatten an incredibly complex book.

Things that make a happy Maat:
Java! I am having so much fun with this. Even when my programming class is killing me, I love this language. I also kind of love code and writing it in general. So much fun. Whee!

Heike monogatari. Pretty, pretty complicated use of Buddhism as both a narrative structure (the fall of the Taira is being told through a heavily Buddhist perspective on the inevitable degeneration of the world) and as a practical "character" in the story (the Buddhist monks who run down the mountain and invade the capital whenever they get annoyed!). And awesome characters, of course.

Saiunkoku monogatari and Shuurei being allowed to have her career, be really kickass at her career, be occasionally wrong about how she approaches her career (no, trusting people doesn't always work), but still also be allowed to be right, too (and sometimes it does work). The fact that the show is not going anywhere near, Shuurei needs to give up serving Ryuuki as an official to become his wife or she will never be fulfilled! No. where. near. it. SaiMono, I love you.

Leverage and White Collar. Methinks I may need to stop picking my new fandoms based on whether they have an appealing threesome in them, but it's working out all right for me so far (so far being, hmm, the past seven months or so). Granted, I still need to get caught up... More fun episodes to be had!

Yuletide Joy!

2009-11-12T04:19:19Z

Hi Author!

You're writing a story in one of my fandoms. I love you. Just so you know.

I'm equally enthusiastic about all of these, and you can count the fics out there for all of them combined on your fingers, so you will be making a major contribution to literature with any of them. (Okay, with Honor Harrington in the mix, you might have to use a few toes, too, but the point remains.) You will also make me veryvery happy. Gleefully clappingly happy.

On that note, please believe me when I say my prompts are just to get you thinking. I'm the kind of person who loves to read other people's ideas, so I babble at you a lot, but if you have a plot bunny you'd love to write, I'll love to read it.

I adore all kinds of stories. Fluff puts me in a good mood for hours, plot keeps me up past my bedtime (even on rereads!), and character-examination makes me appreciate them even more. AU's of any kind are excellent, and please don’t feel trapped by what the author might intend (or even definitely did intend). My focus tends to be on relationships, both romantic and non-romantic, and I love to hear about how other people have affected "my" characters. I tend to have an optimistic outlook on characters: I'd rather see them coping than breaking down and assume good intentions until I'm forced to believe otherwise.

More specific likes: working together as a major element of the relationship, equality in relationships, family by choice, intimacy and trust, competence, sanity, the influence of history and culture, intellectual discovery, genderswap (of both the always-been and the ‘damn you science/magic’ varieties), quiet understanding, teasing familiarity, action on an epic scale, changing the world.

Squicks: non-con, bestiality, pedophilia, infidelity, utterly hopeless endings (ie, Ethan Frome hopeless; epic tragedy is fine - I love the Iliad, which isn't the cheeriest book in the world), character-bashing. Only the non-con is truly ironclad.

And now, on to fandom-specific babble.

Any kind of interaction between Murasaki and Tō no Chūjō, playing off of their importance in Genji's life. Maybe something from the time of Genji's exile, when Tō no Chūjō went to visit him and Murasaki languished in the capital. Or maybe something from later, as they all attained prominent positions in society. Also, if you for some reason feel like you can't write about Murasaki and To no Chujo, you might write about Yugiri and his interactions with Kumoi no Kari and/or the Second Princess instead. I honestly don't want them in the same story, but Yūgiri's an option if you prefer.

Murasaki and Tō no Chūjō are two of the most important people to Genji, yet they never interact and are never examined in relation to each other, the way (for example) Murasaki and Fujitsubo are, and Genji would inevitably inform their interactions. I think it's fair to say that they *both* shape their lives around him in a way that he doesn't around them. Tō no Chūjō, at least, isn't as dependent upon Genji as Murasaki (when Genji was in exile, Murasaki couldn't see him at all, while Tō no Chūjō could go to him), but Tō no Chūjō spends much more time thinking about Genji than Genji does about him (when Tō no Chūjō visited Genji in exile, which was quite a political risk, Genji still kept him at an arm's length). So it would be interesting to see Tō no Chūjō's and Murasaki's similarities and differences playing off of each other. (I don't actually think they'd sleep together, since Murasaki wouldn't cheat on Genji, and Tō no Chūjō wouldn't want to sleep with a woman constantly thinking of Genji, but if you have another view, convince me!)

Then there's Yūgiri. I adore the way that he tries to follow in Genji's footsteps and really winds up in Tō no Chūjō's, because, frankly, Genji did nothing for Yūgiri (his justification for making Yūgiri start at a low rank is a fascinating example of fictional character hypocrisy), and despite Tō no Chūjō's rocky relationship with Yūgiri, he really did help--trained him, in a lot of ways. I love that Yūgiri one-ups both Genji and Tō no Chūjō by having happy relationships with the women in his life. It's obscured by Shikibu's focus on the messy side--the childhood troubles in marrying Kumoi no Kari and the tangle with the Second Princess--but you get lovely flashes of stable life with Kumoi no Kari shortly before the Second Princess episode and afterwards in the Tamakazura's daughters chapters, stable enough that the rest of Heian society thinks they're weird. I'd love to see any of these explored.

You may have noticed that the Tale of Genji hits a lot of my squicks, which gives you a certain license to do so, too, especially when it comes to Genji. Keep in mind, I personally don't like him (much because he hits my infidelity, lying/bullshitting/hypocrisy, raping, pedophilia, etc. squicks), but he does kind of define the world, so if people are being "better" than Genji is, even if it's only slightly, I'll probably forgive them.

Useful Link: Try TaleofGenji.org for a bunch of Genji links, including the entire Seidensticker translation online. I first read the Tyler translation, and it remains dear to my heart (his language is gorgeous, and I really enjoy the allusive no-names-used style), but I love the Seidensticker, too, and it might be easier to (re)read. Plus, well, online for free! The genji tag also has a bunch of me babbling about this.

I want to see Sharleyan interacting with Nimue (as opposed to Merlin). Maybe Sharleyan needs a bodyguard more than Cayleb for some reason; maybe Merlin has gotten notorious and "his sister" might be less conspicuous; or don't even explain Nimue's substitution. If you're feeling shippy, I'd love to see a Nimue/Sharleyan/Cayleb threesome (I have an entire rationalization in my letter), but I'm really looking for interaction between the two women.

So, if you want to deal with the whole Merlin vs. Nimue thing (from either a utilitarian genderswap perspective, or an artificial intelligence one), that would be marvelous. But, basically, I'm intrigued by the idea of Sharleyan getting to interact with a woman who grew up in a culture where men and women were equals. We already had the moment where she's observing Merlin interacting with Cayleb and realizes that his lack of subject-deference was because Merlin/Nimue never grew up with a sovereign. So it would make sense for her to notice other differences, now that she knows Merlin's true background. Also, Merlin adjusted way too easily to going from an environment where women made up half the population to one with no women around ever until Sharleyan appeared. So, yes, interested in seeing them interact as women.

And I'm interested in, now that Merlin doesn't have to worry about making a first impression to the people that matter, what s/he might be able to do as Nimue, so if you have an adventure (or politics, or diplomacy) plotline that backgrounds the entire issue of Nimue vs. Merlin, I'd love that, too. Focus on either Sharleyan or Nimue, and I'm happy.

Now, for that promised rationalization! Merlin pretty much shut off any awareness of Cayleb as an attractive male back in the first book when he disabled his sexuality subroutines after that volleyball game. But it was pretty clear in that book at least that Merlin was actually attracted to Cayleb. I don't think he'd ever do anything about it, though, because they all have so much else in their lives and falling for Cayleb would be an inconvenience that Merlin really doesn't want, so I think he's blocked off that possibility. At the same time, Safeholdian society kind of blocks off any chance of Merlin falling for Sharleyan because he's a man and she's a married woman and there's this omnipresent prohition of them getting too close. But if Merlin were Nimue, s/he still thinks of hirself as largely straight so wouldn't be as guarded against Sharleyan and society would stop being such a block (because it's just two women spending time together). Once Nimue started falling in love with Sharleyan, I'm pretty sure it would extend itself back out to Cayleb, too. And then, as Sharleyan points out, Merlin is already the one person in the world who treats them as people was than Imperial Personages, so they'd be great together. And finally, as sylleptic pointed out when I said Weber was just begging for threesome fic, "And this time he hasn't locked himself into, 'And one of them has no feeling below the neck.'"

And that's that for rationalizations. I pretty massively adore the possibilities of this world (characters, technology, and politicosocial situation), so I'll look forward to seeing what you do with them!

Useful Links: The spoilery Wikipedia article, and an excerpt from Off Armageddon Reef (the first book; there are three currently out), which includes all of the Nimue-not-Merlin that we get. See if you like her! The weber tag has me snarking about the Group of Four, but not much else yet. Sorry!

I fell in love with Denis LePic in Chapter 32 of Ashes of Victory, and fumed at his apparent uselessness in the subsequent books. So, in the grand tradition of fanfic, I want to see him doing something. Anything, from running the Justice Department, to getting ticked off at Pritchart for going around him during her investigation of Giancola, to brainstorming with Theisman about ways to fix the problems with their government. Also, I loved the interactions between Theisman and LePic, and would enjoy seeing more of them. Slash or gen; I'd love either.

This is one of the few long, unending epic book series that I follow. I love the characters, though my general rule of thumb is not to listen to who David Weber tells me to like/dislike. I read in spite of the politics, but really enjoy the world-building and political maneuvering, like Emily plotting to screw with the anti-Honor government in the first ten chapters of War of Honor.

My vision of LePic is based heavily on the scene in Ashes of Victory (Ch. 32) where he and Thomas Theisman talk about going back to Nouveau Paris and talk around rebellion, as well as the rest of their scenes together in that book. To me, the LePic in that scene is intelligent, imaginative, and honorable (a bit too much so, perhaps). If you know any American history, think drafters of the Constitution or Civil War Amendments; I mean people who are incredibly intelligent, willing to work with others, committed, but not necessarily leaders.

Theisman I also love because (up until War of Honor and At All Costs*) he's a good person with some pretty major flaws, as witness his introduction in Honor of the Queen. I love the two of them interacting, which I can see as either gen or slash (no, seriously, David Weber is asking for slash when he compares Theisman's relationship with LePic to Giscard's with Pritchart!), and would be delighted with a story from either perspective. If you want to give Theisman just a cameo, though, in a AG LePic story, for example, that would be fine, too.

Useful Link: the Storm from the Shadows CD has all of the Honorverse books thus far, including the anthologies and the cowritten stuff. The honorverse tag has a bunch more babble, including a story that I wrote between LePic and Pritchart.

*He has since become The Most Perfect Leader Imaginable (tm), but I'm sure if we dig we can still find his old character!

Any interaction between Shonali and Sunehri: the AU where Jai got knocked off the roof and broke his leg, and Shonali kept chasing A (did she still try to use Sunehri as a snitch?). Or the epilogue where Shonali runs into Sunehri (A is optional). Or a wedged-in scene during the movie; I'm flexible about timelines. Femslash would be totally awesome, but I'm mostly interested in how Shonali, who has a very right-vs-wrong worldview but one that she actually does tend to live up to, might interact with Sunehri's flexible views and distrust of authority.

This was actually the first request to make my Yuletide cut this year. 1) It's a wonderfully fun movie. Action-adventure, disguises, great dance numbers, and very fun chases, amongst other things, and I love all that about it. But 2), I was also disappointed, because I watched YouTube clips of the dances before I watched the show, and the women are a lot more powerful in those clips (if I trusted the action-adventure genre more, I might even think it was ironic commentary, it's so pronounced). In Dhoom 2 (the title song), for example, A has his gang, and Sunehri has her own, so they're meeting as equals, while in the movie, Sunehri has no power independent of her effect on A, which is kind of depressing. And then in Touch Me, Jai actually acts like he respects Shonali and her choices, which he totally doesn't in the movie proper (er, I've taken about five acidic statements about how much I hate Jai out of this and my original prompt, so I might be being overly judgmental, but I don't think I am). It also fails the Bechdel test, so far as I remember, because the only (named) women who talk to each other are Shonali and Sweety (Jai's wife), and that's about Jai.

So, hi author! Fix this for me. Give me powerful women who talk to each other. And I love both their characters, so I'm really curious about how they'd play off of each other. Show me! Femslash would be awesome (cop and moral thief is totally an established slash pairing type), but gen would be equally good, because I just want them interacting, and I actually like A, and I don't mind Sunehri with him by the end (they're cute together and the power differential has basically gone away). I'm easy.

Useful Links: The Songs: Dhoom 2, Touch Me, Crazy Kia Re, and Dil Laga Na. Touch Me and Dil Laga Na are my favorites, and I skipped Call Me Ali entirely because I don't like it. :) And it's available on Netflix, so this makes a good gimme if I've scared you off any of my other prompts.

And in summary, you love these, I love these, (let's avoid the noncon), and I'm totally looking forward to what you write!

Dear Sailor Letter (part 2)

2009-11-05T01:36:07Z

Hey, it's a babble post.

Tortall (Tamora Pierce):
Keladry of Mindelan/Nealan of Queenscove/Yukimi noh Daiomoru (Love and duty)

I love the end of Lady Knight, with Kel waiting for Neal to clean up after midwife-ing a baby on his wedding day. I love the way that duty becomes a joy for both Kel and Neal (and I think it always was for Yuki), how they have found their own balances between warrior and healer/protector/nurturer. I love the Yamani politics. I love the Tortallan politics. I actually tend to agree in general (not always with individual instances, but with the overall feeling) with the morality/priorities of this world. I haven’t read the Trickster books (I will eventually), so use them or not as you wish.

Potential Prompts:
-How does a Yamani wife qualify Neal to deal with Yamani politics? Kel and Yuki may strangle him before these negotiations are over. Neal may strangle his king the next time he sees him.
-Kel is always watched. She tries not to let that stop her doing what is right, and Neal and Yuki are her family.
-Yuki is still a Yamani subject. Kel and Neal understand that; the rest of Tortall is not so accommodating.
-The fan is a weapon, and Yuki is beautiful fighting with it.
-Anything showing the three of them interacting with their extended friends and family: Shinko, Alanna, Raoul, or Thayet would be particularly awesome.

Eureka:
Allison Blake/Nathan Stark/Jack Carter (Working together)

I’m definitely a bit in denial-land about Nathan, but I’m still enjoying the show (fallen a little behind, but I’ll catch up)! I love kickass Allison (scientist, administrator, and outside-world liaison—all of them), I love the relationships all three of them have with Kevin, but particularly Nathan’s relationship with him (and I love that the show let that be partly about Nathan caring about Kevin’s mother and partly caring about Kevin himself, and how the edges of that blurred). I love the wacky science fiction science, and I love the other inhabitants of the town, particularly Henry and Kim. Anywhere in the timeline is great.

Potential Prompts:
-Disaster of the week! (Yes, I’m easy)
-Virtual reality: “Does this count?”
-Big Bang research can be a weird and freaky thing.
-Allison really, really misses research sometimes. Then someone else’s experiment contaminates hers, and she really, really doesn’t.
-Fixit fic
-Sometimes Allison and Nathan have to trust Jack to get the science right. Sometimes he has to trust them to do the investigating.
-Eureka is very, very good at loopholes, and its people protect their own.

Harry Potter:
Rowena Ravenclaw/Godric Gryffindor/Salazar Slytherin (Reality, history, and prediction)
Harry Potter/Hermione Granger/Padma Patil (Changing the world)

I did this really, really silly thing with Harry Potter, where I read at complete cross-purposes to what JKR was writing. Her happy ending was the sweetly domestic family (which creeped me out on levels that other people have said better); mine would have been the flawed world being reformed. So, anything that comes out of that will leave me delighted.

Rowena/Godric/Salazar: I think the only things here that I won’t like are idiot!Helga (I adore Helga, and the only reason she’s not on here is because I’m not particularly interested in her relationships with the men) and Rowena as a terrible mother (mothers and daughters frequently have their problems, and Helena is a very biased source).
Potential Prompts:
-Finding others who share your dreams
-Slytherin foresaw disaster, but Divination is an unreliable magic, and sometimes you create the very future you’re trying to avoid.
-Rowena as a scholar; they were building a tradition of sharing discoveries as well as teaching, or were they?
-Dealing with the shenanigans that a bunch of half-trained magical kids can get up to
-Dealing with the questions that a bunch of curious kids will ask, magical or not.
-Who tells the history? And who profits when you make differences seem insurmountable?

Padma/Hermione/Harry: I tend to pretend the epilogue didn’t happen, but use it if you want. Many of my favorite authors do.
Potential Prompts:
-They’re all outsiders to the wizarding world, but they’re outsiders in different ways.
-Hermione and Padma bonding on an intellectual level
-How do Harry and Padma connect? I honestly have no idea, and I’d love to know.
-The wizarding world doesn’t want its savior making waves.
-Frustrations and victories in trying to change wizarding law
-The first time any of them dealt with a case of an abused house-elf
-Negotiating (/being forced to negotiate) with centaurs/goblins/merfolk/etc. as equals
-Coming home from a long day to understanding and support (and possibly sympathetic grousing)

Dear Sailor Letter (part 1)

2009-11-01T21:42:58Z

ETA: The long babble post is up (about 1.5 pages, single-spaced). Also, I found the Ivory Tower Rowena story, and it's linked below.

Hi Author!

I'm already really excited about this, and I will love you for writing me any of the threesomes I'm requesting (especially since, beside the Eureka one, they don't seem to exist on the internet). So, this is mostly my bubbling over, because this time of year is always my excuse to ramble on about fic. Hopefully you'll find it useful!

This is the general part of the letter, and it covers the major points, if you want to stop reading here. I'll be putting up a second part that rambles on about my specific requests more later (this time of the year is also my excuse to ramble on about my fandoms), but, seriously, don't read that one unless you like meta and/or detailed prompts.

I adore all kinds of stories. Fluff puts me in a good mood for hours, plot keeps me up past my bedtime (even on rereads!), and character-examination makes me appreciate them even more. PWP’s are more hit-or-miss with me, but I love quite a few of them, so if they’re what you like to write, go for it. AU's of any kind are excellent, and please don’t feel trapped by what the author might intend (or even definitely did intend *stares at HP*). My focus tends to be on relationships, both romantic and non-romantic, and I love to hear about how other people have affected "my" characters. I tend to have an optimistic outlook on characters: I'd rather see them coping than breaking down and assume good intentions until I'm forced to believe otherwise.

More specific likes: working together as a major element of the relationship, equality in relationships, family by choice, intimacy and trust, competence, sanity*, the influence of history and culture, intellectual discovery, genderswap (of both the always-been and the ‘damn you science/magic’ varieties), quiet understanding, teasing familiarity, action on an epic scale, changing the world.

Squicks: non-con, bestiality, pedophilia, infidelity, utterly hopeless endings (ie, Ethan Frome hopeless; epic tragedy is fine - I love the Iliad, which isn't the cheeriest book in the world), character-bashing. Only the non-con is truly ironclad.

*Someday, I will finish making my animated icon ‘Sanity is Sexy,’ with pictures of all the sane and underappreciated characters in fandom.

Stories/Recs
(I should probably mention that none of these (except the Eurekas) are precisely the threesomes I'm requesting, hence why I'm requesting them! They're mostly stories that have shaped my vision of the characters or fit that vision near-perfectly.)

Harry Potter:
Godric/Rowena/Salazar: Luna’s Passing Through Nature to Eternity, copperbadge's Gathering, and a short old AU with Rowena as an absentminded tower-bound (but powerful!) scholar and Helga as the pragmatic warrior sent to protect her ~~that I cannot for the life of me find again :(~~ , by Andrea13 and persephone_kore.
Harry/Hermione/Padma: acadine’s Oral History, edenfalling’s Definitions of Romance, parkergray’s Heart-Shaped World, woldy’s All The Syllables of Loss (note the story good enough to get me past my infidelity issues; this is rare).

Tortall: Kel/Neal/Yuki: Lyss’s waking dreams of snow. There is not enough fic in this fandom, and with my particular trouble finding fic that recognizes the importance of Kel’s relationships with both Neal and Yuki (try finding that on FFN), I do a pretty limited amount of reading.

Eureka: Allison/Jack/Nathan: serene_quill’s A Modest Proposal, gin200168’s Legacy, havocthecat's The Eureka Field Guide to Zombie Invasions.

Also, this may not be evident from the stories recced above, but I like happy stories. A lot. Almost always, in fact. I just have trouble finding them sometimes.

seshat_maat @ 2009-10-15T16:56:00

2009-10-15T21:02:12Z

I've made my nominations for Yuletide, and I'm ridiculously excited.

David Weber - Safehold series
Dhoom 2
Tale of Genji aka Genji monogatari
Heather Alexander - Faerie Queen (song)
Saiunkoku Monogatari
Shakespeare - Cymbeline (I can't believe no one had ever nominated this...)

And I'm trusting that other people won't change their nominations of Honor Harrington and Alera, since I might want to request those. Oh, dear, requests are going to be so difficult. Oh, also, sylleptic, someone's already nominated Freedom and Necessity, and the only person other than the core four who's listed is Engels. You might actually get that fic...you know you want to do Yuletide.

In other news, I'm dithering about doing 3_ships. I have a truly absurd number of threesome ships, but so many of them are for small fandoms that I just don't know. Still, it's an awesome exchange and really cool fic comes out of it every year, so...

In other, other news, I don't get religious fundamentalism. At all. (And apparently monotheistic religions don't actually have a monopoly on it.) I mean, I know intellectually that one can think there is one true answer, end of story, but the idea of forbidding other people room to argue and interpret and find their own right answers is just so opposed to everything I think. And I hate not understanding, because I know it's a blind spot, and it makes me wonder if this is my own version of that same trait. *sigh*

seshat_maat @ 2009-09-02T22:32:00

2009-09-03T02:34:19Z

I have to wonder if this is intentional irony, but this being Japan Times, I kind of doubt it. We have an article about the first rape trial with lay judges (Japanese version of jurors; this is a very new thing for the Japanese legal system). Japan is crap on rape(1); I know this very well, and most people I talk to about it reply to me in tones that suggest I really should be over it by now. But when a rapist admits to a rape (or several rapes, as the case may be), it's time to stop calling the victims alleged victims.

Then, they end the article with this lovely quote:

"'They are despicable crimes that ignore the humanity of women. We call for attention to how deeply the victims were traumatized,' the prosecution said in a statement addressed chiefly to the lay judges, while refraining from reading out the details of the incidents and asking the judges to view written materials instead in light of the victims' privacy."

Earlier, the article notes that the trial will not use names for the women, calling them only Victim A and Victim B.

I get that with the current level about cultural fucked-up-ness about rape, these women probably want their names out of the paper. But the level of irony in quoting the prosecutor saying that the rapist ignored the humanity of these women when the article about it is doing exactly that is staggering.

I love Japan. I really do. Sometimes it's just harder to remind myself of that.

1) The text of the Japanese law on rape: word-search Article 176 to get the relevant sections. The most important parts are that

a) only women can be raped; for men you only have "forcible indecency", which is a much lower minimum penalty (6 months vs. 3 years), and Japanese rapists almost always receive minimum penalties
b) actual rape only applies to use of intimidation or physical force, while drugging or other ways of taking advantage of or "causing a loss of consciousness or inability to resist" are only "quasi-rape", though they do share the same penalty
c) rapes can only be prosecuted upon complaint. Needless to say, the Japanese police do not make it easy to complain.

Dragon Eggs

2009-05-26T17:20:39Z

Dragon eggs! I figured three times was the charm after seeing them on other people's journals, so...

seshat_maat @ 2009-05-22T22:56:00

2009-05-23T03:04:09Z

I'm posting from a hotel room that I'm leaving ridiculously early tomorrow, so I totally don't have time to do this, but femme_fic came out with its stories a couple days ago, and my story is awesome, so I really, really wanted to share it.

The Eureka Field Guide to Zombie Invasions by havocthecat

It's Allison, Jack, and Nathan trapped inside SARAH during a zombie invasion, it's got flamethrowers (if only by proxy), Allison is in control and gets what she wants, and it's threesomey. What more can a girl ask for?

Read, read, read!

John Adams miniseries fic

2009-02-01T20:05:51Z

This is really, truly all the fault of the miniseries (and maybe a little bit of David McCullough), because otherwise I am going to hell, since if there is anything that I hold sacred, it's the lead-up from 1776 to the Constitutional Convention. Well, mostly the Convention itself (hi, my Bible is Madison's notes), but still. And, okay, it's also kind of the fault of my current class on early national America, because my teacher tells us adorable stories about all of the Founders, but, really, other than the violin, this is based entirely on miniseries events and characterizations, complete with the miniseries historical inaccuracies (like John and Abigail having none of their children with them in Paris; I'm pretty sure at least John Quincy was there in reality).

But, anyway, I, uh, kind of wrote an entry for Porn Battle VII, except for the fact that I can't write porn, so it's really more like R-rated sap. The prompt was Abigail/Jefferson, admire, but I have a nearly ironclad infidelity squick, so it turned into Abigail/Jefferson(/Adams). Someday, I am actually going to write a story that gets the three of them in bed together (they went from jealousy and flirting in the garden to that lovely family-togetherness of the balloon ascension, which alone would be enough to convince me, but there's more, and the ease with which I could write a ship manifesto about this is kind of frightening), but for now I have:

Title: In Paris (link to entry)
Fandom: John Adams (HBO miniseries)
Rating: R
Pairing: Abigail Adams/Thomas Jefferson(/John Adams)
Disclaimer: Um. The people probably belonged to themselves; these particular characterizations belong to HBO and the producers of the Adams miniseries and kind of David McCullough. Any way you cut it, not mine, not making money, etc.

Abigail told herself it was Paris, these vast and private gardens in which they took daily walks; Paris, where Benjamin Franklin had once told her husband he must find a mistress to belong. In Paris, they seemed to slip free of their Massachusetts strictures. It was ... seductive.

As was Thomas's breath as it brushed warm and damp across her neck. "It is a pity that your husband is so enamored of his jealousy," he murmured. "I believe he might enjoy watching."

The words captured her imagination, and she closed her eyes against reckless and irresistible thoughts. It didn't help, as the sun-bright path before her darkened to the shaded bedroom in which John had welcomed her to France. It was still brilliant midday, but the curtains were nearly closed, and the scraps of sunlight that trickled in through their juncture turned the room into a dreamy otherworld, an impression heightened by the silken whisper of Thomas' hair over her shoulders, over her breasts.

She felt his hands along the curve of her hip, soft scholar's hands with the calluses placed perfectly for writing and violin, but not for the silly daily tasks that kept a small farm running. She wondered if that was Virginia or the same Paris that had turned her hands petal-smooth. Perhaps it was both.

She lost her thoughts as he leaned down and feathered kisses along her neck, so lightly that blended into the sensation of his breath on her shoulder. She nearly turned, and tumbled him down from the elbow upon which he had propped himself, so that she could reach and touch, but his thumb stroking around to the small of her back reminded her why they had chosen this position.

Her eyes focused upon John, sitting in a chair at the corner of the room, beside the window, shadowed by the narrow shaft of light behind him, and still fully dressed but for his discarded vest and jacket, and his collar gaping open. She could see him swallowing harshly, staring as though he could not look away, and her lips curled into a wicked smile that she felt Thomas mirroring against her neck. No, she would not interrupt his view.

Instead, she reached down and brought Thomas' hand up to her lips, traced her tongue over the inside of his wrist in circles that made him gasp at the same time that she heard John's breath stop, caught in his throat. John didn't draw in another, shaky breath until she let Thomas tug his hand back to brush her hair from her ear and whisper, "Tease," in a low voice before he licked his way along the edge of her ear in a way that made her own breath catch.

In another moment, she and Thomas would rise from the bed, and pull John into it, laughing and undressing him between them. For now, though, she arched her back into Thomas' teasing touch as he dragged his forefinger down her spine, leaving a delicious tingling in its wake, and enjoyed the heat of her husband's eyes upon them both.

Abigail snapped her eyes open, startled by the vividness of her vision, her fantasy, about the man still walking beside her, and stunned by its detail, by the little thoughts that made it something lasting. She swallowed, and angled her next steps slightly sideways, away from the maddening warmth of Thomas' breath. Though not far enough, perhaps--she didn't dare look--to escape the warmth of his eyes.

I love...

2008-11-22T02:50:49Z

My belated squee. I'm really, really sorry for being a horrible person who can't keep deadlines, but if you're by any chance also on an academic schedule and haven't figured out what you're writing yet, well... Maybe it'll be useful? Anyway, if you have, don't worry about this.

Here goes:

Amara grieving for Fidelias' betrayal because "she had loved him, in her own way, loved the danger of her work, loved the experiences he shared with her, loved the life to which she had been called." Her emotions are tied up as much with her life-as-Cursor as with her personal connection to Fidelias.

Amara flying, adoring it, and being kind of arrogant about it.

That Amara has basically unwillingly imitated Fidelias by betraying Gaius because she no longer believes in what he's doing, and my cherished hope that she'll find a different way than Fidelias' to come to terms with it

Amara's sense of duty. Gaius' sense of duty.

Gaius refusing to betray and humiliate Caria even when they obviously can't stand each other.

Gaius's conversation with Fidelias about loyalty and starting over vs. moving on, and Tavi.

Gaius being ruthless but genuinely caring at the same time, the way he totally has what I call the "great humanitarian" flaw where he sees so clearly the greater good that he screws over the people he interacts with because he can't take his eyes off the distance.

The worlds, including:
Xaihon: ooh, multisystem empire that's obsessively protective of its advanced technology and somehow based upon China

Midgarth: I asked for Norse myth-fic last year; I think why I like this is obvious :)

Alfheim: elves! that take many of Tolkien's elves' qualities and adapts them to this new world (changed by their long lives, world mastery, isolationism...) How will they change now that they are no longer immortal (or no longer the only immortals, depending on how you read the end)

Lee's Earth: Justice! "Direct exposure to a Cardinal Virtue" in the courtroom, the Lady's aid on the street

Huichtilopochtli and Tierra: oil cartels! politics of these places must be so cool

Basically everything about Lee. But I already said that.

The concept of Justice in the worlds.

That major Genji scholars have written Genji fanfiction, and it's respectable! Yay Motoori Norinaga!

Murasaki having her own religious life apart from Genji. Her beginning as Genji's keepsake of Fujitsubo but developing her own place and personality without "replacing" Fujitsubo in Genji's affections.

Tō no Chūjō imagining himself as a woman in order to imagine himself married to Genji. The way that it's never quite easy to tell whether Tō no Chūjō resents Genji or is in love with him, yet the friendship between them always seems to win out in the end.

The Second Princess gently needling Yūgiri when he gets uptight in the Ch. 42-44 section. (Kind of depressing, but that Yūgiri actually didn't rape her. Is it sad that I have to like a guy who deliberately let people think he raped a woman because that's better than the others who actually do? Sorry. This is supposed to be squee.) Kumoi no Kari and Yūgiri falling in love as social equals. That Yūgiri is so heavily shaped by his grandparents, who are definitely equals in a stable relationship.

Thomas Theisman doing a double-take at Denis LePic getting sarcastic, and also Denis' sarcasm itself (Why? It can't just be "fear-induced" because Denis had been afraid before, and gone white, not sarcastic. Growth of courage? Trust for Theisman? Different quality of danger? All of the above?)

Theisman and LePic tiredly joking with each other as they try to deal with Saint-Just after McQueen and Pierre have killed each other.

Theisman appearing at the beginning as a man determined to do his job, so determined that he turns a blind eye to the Masadans' actions, doesn't *want* to know what they're doing, and still attacks Honor's ships when they come because she's still *Manticore* and he knows nothing else. Yet he also tells her that her people are down there, and testifies against the Masadans, and tried to treat the prisoners right. How the accumulating horrors of his chain of command changed him, so that he *had* to act, but the seeds of going a different way were still in him, and those were the seeds that LePic latched onto when he wrote his citizen commissioner reports about the "bluff, apolitical wardog" in order to protect Theisman.

LePic beginning by genuinely believing in StateSec and coming to a realization of their evil out of any shadow of personal peril, the only one of the three citizen commissioners we saw working closely with their admirals who does: Pritchart was adamantly against SS from the beginning and joined out of pragmatism, and Honeker had to get hauled across space with the threat of being executed before he turns against it. Had LePic not protected Theisman, he never would have been in danger, but he *does* not only protect him but actually collaborate with him.

Theisman continuing to look for someone to follow, because as great a leader as he has become, he still needs an authority above him. And that LePic picked up on and connected to that: "neither of them were men to whom defiance of civilian authority came easily."

Reading Tanizaki's "Bridge of Dreams"

2008-11-11T04:37:35Z

Dear, sweet...argh. I swear, modern (Meiji onward) Japanese fiction seems to toss the word "subtle" out the window. Or maybe it's not subtle. What's the word for when someone is kind of screwed-up, but the story doesn't directly focus upon it? Obliqueness? But that's not it either, because it's kind of oxymoronic: you can tell when someone wants to write a story about one thing and only that one thing, even if they approach it from an angle. (This is as opposed to starting with one idea and building it into something richer) And, okay, modern Japanese lit is reasonably subtle about approaching ideas, but they seem to do it by bludgeoning you over the head with the screwed-up-ness of the individual characters. So, if Tanizaki wants to write a story about 1920s Japan's America-philia, he does it by bludgeoning you with the sexual shenanagins of his perspective character in Naomi. The ideas are reasonably subtle (in comparison, at least); the characters are blatantly screwy. But, you know, sometimes I don't give a damn about the ideology. I want the characters, and people. should. be. subtle. No one is made up of one thing!

Aaand, the point of this is that he's now writing a novella explicitly based upon Genji, about a man with a serious Oedipal complex, which, really, we all know Genji had in spades. But Murasaki Shikibu manages to make that only one element in his character, among a whole lot more, and informed by the richness of his relationships to his entire world. This story is claustrophobic, obsessive, and seriously, derangedly ill. And, fine, that's valid, but it's not the only valid thing. It's not the only valid story to tell, and the Murasaki Shikibu-style stories, with all the splendor of many fully-drawn (though not psychoanalyzed--*cough*thankgod*cough*) characters interacting feel like they're gone.

How I miss them.

Dear Yule Goat*

2008-11-07T03:28:26Z

Squee! Thank you for agreeing to write a story for me. I'm honestly equally enthusiastic about all four of these fandoms and you could count the fic for all four of them put together on the fingers on one hand, so any story will make me so veryvery happy.

On that note, please believe me when I say my prompts are just to get you thinking. A story about any of them would make me ecstatic, but if you have a plot bunny that you’d love to write, I know I’d love to read it. I think I might have scared my author off last year, so I want to emphasize this a lot. You're writing this fandom (I hope!) because you love it as much as I do, and a story coming out of that will be awesome.

I adore all kinds of stories. Fluff puts me in a good mood for hours, plot keeps me up past my bedtime (even on rereads!), and character-examination makes me appreciate them even more. AU's of any kind are fine, and please don’t feel trapped by what the author might intend. My focus tends to be on relationships (not necessarily romantic, just important), and I love to hear about how other people have affected "my" characters. I tend to have an optimistic outlook on characters: I'd rather see them coping than breaking down and assume good intentions until I'm forced to believe otherwise.

Squicks: non-con, bestiality, pedophilia, utterly hopeless endings (ie, Ethan Frome hopeless; tragedy is fine - I love the Iliad, which isn't the cheeriest book in the world), infidelity (fine to have it in the story, but it'll be hard for me to like the character afterwards)

And now, on to fandom-specific babble.

Honor Harrington
I fell in love with Denis LePic in Chapter 32 of Ashes of Victory, and fumed at his apparent uselessness in the subsequent books. So, in the grand tradition of fanfiction, I want to see him doing something. Anything, from running the Justice Department, to getting ticked off at Pritchart for going around him during her investigation of Giancola, to brainstorming with Theisman about ways to fix the problems with their government. Also, I loved the interactions between Theisman and LePic, and would enjoy seeing more of them. Slash or gen; I'd love either.

This is one of the few long, unending epic book series that I follow. I love the characters, though when the "good" people start being whoever's in line with David Weber's politics, I get a little upset, and my general rule of thumb is not to listen to who he tells me to like/dislike. I read in spite of the politics, but do enjoy the world-building and political maneuvering, like Emily plotting to screw with the anti-Honor government in the first ten chapters of War of Honor.

My vision of LePic is based heavily on the scene in Ashes of Victory (Ch. 32) where he and Thomas Theisman talk about going back to Nouveau Paris and talk around rebellion, as well as the rest of their scenes together in that book. To me, the LePic in that scene is intelligent, imaginative, and honorable (a bit too much so, perhaps). If you know any American history, think drafters of the Constitution or Civil War Amendments; I mean people who are incredibly intelligent, willing to work with others, committed, but not necessarily leaders (James Madison was a great Constitution writer and Congressman; he was a *crappy* president). Theisman I also love because (up until War of Honor and At All Costs*) he's a good person with some pretty major flaws, as witness his introduction in Honor of the Queen. I love the two of them interacting, which I can see as either gen or slash (no, seriously, David Weber is asking for slash when he compares Theisman's relationship with LePic to Giscard's with Pritchart!), and would be delighted with a story from either perspective. If you want to give Theisman just a cameo, though, in a AG LePic story, for example, that would be fine, too.

Useful Link: the At All Costs CD has all of the Honorverse books thus far, including the anthologies and the cowritten stuff.

*He has since become The Most Perfect Leader Imaginable (tm), but I'm sure if we dig we can still find his old character!

Stealing the Elf-King's Roses
Anything involving Lee, basically. Pre-book's good, post-book's great, I just want to see her running around doing pretty much anything similar to what she does in the book (and she does a lot, so that covers quite a range). The Laurin is optional, but it might be fun to see the two of them "god-parenting" the new universe together in some way, if you feel like writing him. Gen or het, both are great.

I nominated this and was so incredibly happy to see people offering and requesting it, because I adore this book to a possibly unreasonable degree. I got my copy of it a year ago and it already falls open to my favorite parts, I've read it so much. I honestly love most everything about it: the characters (especially Lee), the system of magic and its connection to the entire social justice system (not just the investigative part), the interworld politics and various cultures, and finally the way that it combines the prosaic (grunt work of number crunching to prove fraud) with the mythic (reshaping an entire universe). I love that Lee can have crises of self-confidence and get on with her job anyway, and that she can feel the celebrity-tug of the Alfen King and yet treat him like a real person anyway. I love that she loves her work, whether it be the everyday work of investigation or the grandeur of world-changing, because they're all just "seeing truth" to her.

Also, note that if my prompts on any of the other fandoms have scared you off (I hope not! but if they have), this is one fairly short, easy-to-read book (400 mass-market paperback pages), with canon that's easy to grab hold of, but absolutely brimming with opportunity for elaboration. It has everything (except for slash, I'm afraid): a complicated world, a cool system of magic, a fascinating king character who might or might not have given up what makes him a king, a gen affectionate relationship between the main character and her investigation partner, and an awesome female lead who recognizes by the end that she is indeed kick-ass, after doubting it for most of the book. Give it a try!

Useful Links: The Google Books result actually has quite a bit of the book, though with random pages missing, so it's not enough on its own, but it'll give you a taste. Also, Amazon though it's only available used, and WorldCat, to look it up in libraries.

Alera
I adore Amara, and I particularly adore her as a Cursor, as opposed to "a wife". I think that even if she's furious with Gaius now, she still needs to serve Alera--the whole, not just Calderon--in some way, which has interesting parallels with Fidelius, if you want to go there. I'd love anything from pre-series Cursor hijinks, to introspection, to plotty AU's. If you're feeling particularly cracky, I really like the older characters (especially Gaius), and would love some sort of time-twist that let Amara meet a pre-Septimus's death Gaius (like I said, cracky). If for some reason you really don't feel like writing Amara, Gaius Sextus is also definitely an option, and since pre-series Alera is *wide* open, background-fic would be great, as well as all the story-types listed above. So, basically, either Amara or Gaius, and both if you're feeling inspired.

I got uber-specific on this one, so there's probably not much more to say, but Amara seems like precisely the type of female character that a good chunk of fandom will dislike horribly (on the one hand) and she was the one female in Alera who was not defined by a role as either wife/love-interest or mother, which Jim Butcher seems busily trying to overturn (on the other), so I'm trying to be really, really clear. I love her as we see her in all four books, I don't think her actions in the most recent book will (should) change her sense of duty, and I would love to see a story in that vein.

If you don't want to write that Amara, though, I swear that I will not hold it against you, and you can write Gaius Sextus fic instead. Because he's awesome, too, but in a way that seems more consistent with fandom. Or maybe that's just me, and I'm miscalculating horribly and you love Amara but hate Gaius. In that case, feel totally free to write Amara alone. And if I've hit the jackpot and you love both of my favorite characters, and have a combined plot-bunny, yippee! Also, I know that the new book is coming out Nov. 25, which is deep into writing time, so I'm completely neutral on the question of using it or not.

Useful Links: WorldCat and Amazon for Furies of Calderon, and Jim Butcher's site for sample chapters.

The Tale of Genji aka Genji monogatari
Any kind of interaction between Murasaki and Tō no Chūjō, playing off of their importance in Genji's life. I don't actually think they'd sleep together (since Murasaki wouldn't cheat on Genji, and Tō no Chūjō wouldn't want to sleep with a woman constantly thinking of Genji), but if you have another view, convince me! Also, if you for some reason feel like you can't write about either Murasaki or Tō no Chūjō, you might write about Yūgiri and his interactions with Kumoi no Kari and/or the Second Princess instead. I don't particularly want all of them in the same story, but Yūgiri's an option if you prefer.

Um. Rereading my prompt I'm kind of nervous that I'm implying something that I'm not, so let me be clearer. I meant it when I said I'm not looking for them in the same story. The Yūgiri thing is purely so that it's formally in the prompt that you don't need to use Murasaki and Tō no Chūjō if you're using him instead. I can't think of a story that could use all three (or five) of them, so I don't expect you to!

As for what I was intending, Murasaki and Tō no Chūjō are two of the most important people to Genji, yet they never interact and are never examined in relation to each other, the way (for example) Murasaki and Fujitsubo are, and Genji would inevitably inform their interactions. I think it's fair to say that they *both* shape their lives around him in a way that he doesn't around them. Tō no Chūjō, at least, isn't as dependent upon Genji as Murasaki (when Genji was in exile, Murasaki couldn't see him at all, while Tō no Chūjō could go to him), but Tō no Chūjō spends much more time thinking about Genji than Genji does about him (when Tō no Chūjō visited Genji in exile, which was quite a political risk, Genji still kept him at an arm's length). So it would be interesting to see Tō no Chūjō's and Murasaki's similarities and differences playing off of each other.

Then there's Yūgiri. I adore the way that he tries to follow in Genji's footsteps and really winds up in Tō no Chūjō's, because, frankly, Genji did nothing for Yūgiri (his justification for making Yūgiri start at a low rank is a fascinating example of fictional character hypocrisy), and despite Tō no Chūjō's rocky relationship with Yūgiri, he really did help--trained him, in a lot of ways. I love that Yūgiri one-ups both Genji and Tō no Chūjō by having happy relationships with the women in his life. It's obscured by Shikibu's focus on the messy side--the childhood troubles in marrying Kumoi no Kari and the tangle with the Second Princess--but you get lovely flashes of stable life with Kumoi no Kari shortly before the Second Princess episode and afterwards in the Tamakazura's daughters chapters, stable enough that the rest of Heian society thinks they're weird. I'd love to see any of these explored.

The Tale of Genji hits a lot of my squicks, actually, which gives you a certain license to do so, too, especially when it comes to Genji. Keep in mind, I personally don't like him (much because he hits my infidelity, lying/bullshitting/hypocrisy, raping, pedophilia, etc. squicks), but he does kind of define the world, so if people are being "better" than Genji is, even if it's only slightly, I'll probably forgive them.

Useful Link: Try TaleofGenji.org for a bunch of Genji links, including the entire Seidensticker translation online. I first read the Tyler translation, and it remains dear to my heart (his language is gorgeous, and I actually really enjoy the allusive no-names-used style), but I love the Seidensticker, too, and it might be easier to (re)read. Plus, well, online for free!

Huh. In retrospect, all of the prompts except the Genji one have a common thread of "They love their jobs, they're kick-ass at their jobs, and hopefully they can fit in a life around their jobs, but the job comes first." Which could be a source of angst, but, really, doesn't have to be, and the characters already know that (Lee!) or really ought to (re)discover it (*cough*Amara*cough*). I'm now wondering what this says about me.

EDIT: I might have gone into analytical mode while writing this. If I did and it sounds like I dislike everything, I'm really, really sorry, and will try to fix that by creating a post by this weekend of all of the giggly squee that got cut out of this thing for length. I'm spending too much time in academia. Sorry!

EDIT2: Here be happiness!

* I thought that since I'm snagging liviapenn 's icons, I might as well use the form of address, too.

We did it!

2008-11-05T05:10:30Z

Yes! All of our killing ourselves over the Obama campaign, nagging friends and family members to vote, volunteer, donate, do more... It was all worth it!

Also, I'm so proud of Connecticut for saying "hell, no" on the constitutional convention. I'm worried about California, but at least we won't be having any right-wing loony anti-marriage propositions sitting on our next ballot. And Bridgeport went Democrat. HappyHappyHappy!

ETA: Damn. My mother's from Florida, and she didn't even tell me that an anti-gay marriage amendment was on the Florida ballot. And then it passed. And so did Prop 8. Why did two of the largest states, both of whom voted for Obama, feel the need write discrimination into their core legal texts?

Oh, David Weber

2008-05-09T01:13:49Z

So, David Weber is my comfort reading when I want to turn my brain off (and having just finished three finals and a paper, back-to-back, I have the right). Nothing in his world is complicated, unless I make it so, so the brain-off works even better when I can get myself into a mood where his blatant abuse of historical allusion is laughable, rather than infuriating. And I do mean allusion, not history. His history is fine, so far as I can tell, if completely one-sided. (Dear havens, he presents the Meiji reformation as completely positive. Yes, it strengthened the country, but it also created the ruthlessness that led to Japan-in-WWII and the Rape of Nanjing. ...And is it completely obvious that I've just been studying this?) But, anyway, his allusions. Oh, his allusions. Rob Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just? I mean, really. Or better yet, the "Group of Four". Sorry, but it really is just name-dropping when you name your evilly conservative bad guys after the Gang of Four who were the major force behind the Cultural Revolution. The Gang of Four might have been scary, but really. Conservative?

Honestly, though, when I'm in the right mood, it's actually hilarious. I can giggle hysterically over the fact that you can tell what history he's reading (i.e., whoever the next "major world power" seems to be), based on the allusions (and the names! oh, the names!) in his books. So even his historical allusion are really not the problem.

The problem is that when you have a lawyer saying completely obliviously, "I suppose a part of it is how much time I spend wrestling with legal briefs and law codes. You don't want to risk any possibility of ambiguity in those, so you nail everything down in duplicate or triplicate," you're being stupid. Anyone who's ever read a supreme court decision (and this is a world with a Supreme Court and precedent as a basis of the legal code, so yes, that's relevant), or, hell, even debates over a particularly contentious piece of legislations, knows the value of ambiguity in the law. Ambiguity is how you get a majority of the Bench or the Senate or wherever to agree when you know that they're really not all thinking the same thing. The reams and reams of writing in law briefs is not because you want to be unambiguous. It's because you want to stuff every possible argument in there, even if they don't all agree, and I've read some pretty contradictory historical briefs (oh, how much fun is progressive-era legal history!). You want to give yourself every chance to get a decision in your favor, because as a lawyer, that's your duty to your client. So you stuff in all the arguments, because even if you want to make a Fourth Amendment claim, sometimes you're actually going to win on substantive due process. And the justices take you up on that, because they might not even agree on what kind of precedent they want to establish, so they decide on the narrowest possible base, because they'll all agree on it, and they leave the rest of the decision ambiguous. It's part of what makes precedent-based law so crazy-making, and the Honorverse does have precedent-based law; he established that back in the first book.

So, basically, either Weber doesn't care about presenting his lawyers well (which is a probability, since he can be bitchy about lawyers), or every comment about LePic's crappy poker face is a blind (which is my personal canon--the guy managed to survive a crisis of conscience in front of the Secretary of Public Information).

Therefore, in my head, what happened after the cabinet meeting in War of Honor is this:

"You wanted to talk to me, Denis?" Eloise Pritchart flicked at glance at her Attorney General before examining the hard copy of the Manties' diplomatic note and tossing it in the shredder.

"Giancola is lying," Denis LePic said flatly.

Eloise sighed. "Denis, haven't we been over this? You yourself said it could just be the hang-ups of your department; he is the Secretary of State, and he's reasonably good at it."

"I lied." His voice was still flatter than she'd ever heard it, which was surprising enough that his words took a moment to sink in.

"You what?" Her voice went up before she could grab it and drag it down to her normal pitch.

"I lied," he repeated. "The only time you want to be ambiguous in law is if you're trying to get someone who you know doesn't like what you're planning to agree with you. It's what major court decisions are always so vague; if you want to get half a dozen justices to agree with each other, none of them can say what they're actually thinking."

"You lied," she echoed, focusing on that and leaving the rest of his statement behind. "You seemed convinced."

Denis's expression flickered with momentary exasperation, the first expression to cross his face since he'd walked into her office, she realized suddenly. "Eloise, I'm in charge of both the FIA and the FIS. More sensitive and shocking material passes through my office every day than probably passes through State, to be quite frank. If my poker face were as awful as you seem to think it it, the flock of reporters standing outside this building would know a lot more than they do."

She blinked. "So you lied."

He closed his eyes briefly, as if praying for patience. "You didn't sound like you needed a cabinet-wide argument, and I was the only hold-out. I thought it was better to let Giancola think he'd gotten what he came for than to make a fuss. But you do need to know that he's either lying or he's stupid, as as you said, he's a reasonably competent Secretary of State. I think he's lying."

"You've never liked him, though," Eloise pointed out, putting Denis's almost-anger aside to deal with later. "And apparently didn't bother to hide that even when you could."

Denis shrugged. "It's not comfortable hiding things--I'm sure you know that from your time with Javier. And I didn't think it would hurt anything for him to know, and it might make you look like a bit more of an ally if a relatively harmless cabinet advisor was obviously hostile. He could always tell himself that I was jealous that he got the official number-two position when I was basically Tom's number one civilian until you arrived."

"But you're not," she said, and it took a bit too much effort make that a statement.

Denis heard it, and his eyes flickered with anger. "You believe Tom didn't want the job. I sure as hell didn't either, and I've told you that. I don't want State, either. I'm a lawyer, Eloise. I was a Dolist tort lawyer, and I like to think I was pretty good at forcing the Legislaturalists to put extra effort into covering their tracks when they denied promotion to non-Legislaturalists. The only reason I joined was because Saint-Just asked me to, and I thought--stupidly enough, I guess--that we wouldn't need my law skills anymore, and I could do more good there. I love my job, Eloise." He took a deep and calming breath. "And that's why I'm here. I love my job, and I know my job, and if Giancola is looking for ambiguity, it's because he's planning something we wouldn't like."

Eloise held his gaze, but she found no softening in his eyes. She nodded. "I'll think about it," she told him. And that's not all I'll think about, she added to herself. "Thank you for telling me."

Denis nodded silently, face unreadable. "If you'll excuse me, then?" She nodded again, and he walked out the door.

See? And it even explains the way that Pritchart goes around her Attorney General's back while investigating Giancola in the next book. She doesn't like being wrong about people, and when Kevin Usher tells her about Giancola, she has to realize that she underestimated two people's sneakiness.

Oh, yes, and needless to say, Denis LePic, Eloise Pritchart, Arnold Giancola, Thomas Theisman, and the rest of their world belong to David Weber, not to me. No matter how much I disagree about some of the things he's doing with them. Just playing/writing out my thoughts.

Ah, theater

2008-03-07T04:06:04Z

You eat my life. And I'm only one of the sort-of insane people. I do the occasional 10 to 60 hour week; my friends regularly do 10 hour weeks interspersed with 30 hour weeks just for variety. This is why I am not an actor.

So. The past 60 hour week taught me that I never, ever want to light-design a show that I don't love. I did lights crew for a show where I liked the people but found it painful to watch the play (the actors were wonderful, but dear gods was it depressing; not my cup of tea), and spent about 10 hours on that. Then I turned around and the next day (never again) started load-in for the show I was designing. I didn't even think too much about the script, honestly. I liked the director and knew several of the actors, and, well, it was Pride and Prejudice, which generally turns out okay even when it's done badly (see: most movie adaptations), and I had been asked to do it, so I did. Three days later, after 15 straight hours of load-in, 6 hours of focusing, 2 hours of programming, and twelve hours of tech rehearsal with more to go, I realized that if the script hadn't been as intelligent and witty as it was, I probably would have brained myself with my wrench already. Tech rehearsals are wretched: actors hate them, directors hate them, techs hate them--basically, everyone hates them. If that script hadn't been making us laugh the entire time, I don't know what I would have done. It basically stole lines out of Jane Austen, so there were always new ways to look at them, and good actors are amazing when it comes to giving you new ideas about the text. Even when they got bored and silly, it was good. (Which puts me on a rant about idiotic reviewers who have the nerve to say after 20 minutes of watching the play that it adds nothing to the book. What are you, idiots? Or do you just have no sense of what theater is? I bet you'd say hearing Homer spoken would add nothing to reading him, too. Oh, yeah, and get the male lead's name wrong when you spell it. Grr.) But anyway, without that group of people (intelligent Austen-lovers are some of the best people ever) and that script, I would have died long before the performance.

Which means, I remind myself, that I don't want to get into anything remotely similar without loving the play whole-heartedly. I need to make a choice about working on Angels in America or The Bacchae in a few weeks, and while I won't be designing either of them, I'll be putting in significantly more than 10 hours. The facilities for Bacchae suck, and the ones for Angels are amazing, but I really do like Bacchae (one of only two so far among Euripides' plays that I do like), and I don't know Angels at all.

Right now, though, I am laughing really loudly at myself, for managing to go within four days from I am never doing this again to Hmm, which play should I do? I am a masochist. Just be intelligent about it. That's all I ask of myself now.

By the way, if anyone reads this and ever gets the chance to see the Marcus Goodwin adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, go. Immediately. The script doesn't read particularly well (duh, if you're just reading, you might as well reread P&P) but wow does a good performance make you go back and think about the original.

I love my class

2008-03-05T02:38:29Z

Oh, I love my Genji class. More to the point, I love getting to write papers that provide me with an excuse to do the obsessive rereading I want to do anyway, with a mostly-ficcing mindset and a little voice in the back of my head saying, just make sure your arguments are supported when you get around to actually writing them.

See, if I write a paper about the oddity of Genji's and Tō no Chūjō's rivalry (and it is odd! I mean, Genji gets his adoptive daughter appointed empress over Tō no Chūjō's, but Tō no Chūjō gets a promotion out of it. Granted, he's annoyed--I am, too, since Genji wins everything--but nothing bad happens to him. When Michinaga was fighting Korechika for the Regency in real life, Korechika got exiled on trumped up charges, and Korechika was Michinaga's nephew.), I get to go over their interactions, and more importantly, their thoughts about each other with a fine-toothed comb. It's so much fun. Oh, yes, I'm also doing actual research, but that's fun, too. After all, if I ever write fic about this (and dear heavens am I tempted), I'll need the cultural context.

Of course, ironically enough, the fic I'm really, really interested in writing is Murasaki and Tō no Chūjō commiserating over Genji (in a very oblique way). We're half way through the book, though, and I think they still haven't met, since Tō no Chūjō just made a really snide remark about Murasaki not possibly being as amazing as she's made out to be.* And since Murasaki dies two thirds through, we haven't much time left. I could go vaguely AU, though, and have them talking while Genji is exiled, and they're both worried about him, and Tō no Chūjō can go and talk to him while Murasaki is stuck at home, but that doesn't seem to help Tō no Chūjō much, since he's still worried when he comes back. Even when Genji tells himself he's being self-sacrificing, he's being selfish. (Upset about Genji? Who, me? Oh, no, I'm not ticked off at how many people pour their lives into him without getting much of anything back. Not at all.)

*ETA : Hey, I'm wrong here! Cool. He was actually talking about Tamakazura, so whether or not he's met Murasaki is still completely ambiguous. These are the kinds of mistakes one makes while trying to read Royall Tyler too fast.

I really, really love a canon text where a sexual relationship between the main character and his best friend is more plausible than any kind of interaction between two of the most important people in that main character's life. And then there's the really hilarious passages where the men are imagining each other/themselves as women. Genji is talking to Murasaki's father, and we get

"Elegant and romantically languorous as His Highness was, Genji speculated privately about the pleasures of his company if he were a woman... His Highness for his part noted how much more open and easy Genji was than usual, liked his looks a great deal, and, being unaware that Genji was his son-in-law, indulged his roving fancy in the pleasure of imagining him, too, as a woman."

Then a couple chapters later, Genji's senior wife (Aoi, not Murasaki--Tō no Chūjō's sister, rather than His Highness's daughter) dies, and Genji is mourning her, which leaves Tō no Chūjō rather confused, since Genji was an ass to Aoi while she was still alive. So, Genji's mourning, and looking pretty as usual, and we get this bit (remembering that Tō no Chūjō actually means Secretary Captain, as Royall Tyler translates it):

"...the Captain, gazing at him with his mind as always on pleasure, knew that if he were a woman his soul would stay with Genji instead of setting off for the hereafter... The Captain could hardly keep his eyes off him."

Most amusing, of course, is the idea that Genji imagines his wife's father as a woman who he could sleep with, while Tō no Chūjō imagines himself as a woman to stay with Genji.

So, that was long, and should have been written way before it grew into a mini-essay. Unfortunately, 12 hours a day in the theater doing lighting doesn't leave much time for random reflections. I need to write about that, too, before I forget enough to get myself into it again this term. Mental note, Maat: you need a break.

Tale of Genji slash

2008-02-20T00:46:57Z

We just had a really interesting almost-discussion (my teacher really needs to learn that lecturing in a seminar is the best way to close down discussion, not the best way to encourage it) in class today about Genji sleeping with the younger brother of a woman he wants as a substitute for sleeping with her. This started me thinking about the tropes, I guess, of slash, and how slashers frequently see our heroes' relationships with women as substitutions. I wonder how it would affect a writer trying to slash a character who canonically only sleeps with men when he can't get the women he wants. Granted, I still have more of the book to go, but I'm pretty sure that's a constant. Of course, he also sleeps with women as substitutes; in fact, this particular woman is, probably, something of a substitute for yet another woman, so the brother is a substitute for a substitute.

Now, all of this is coming from my growing interest in slashing Genji and his best friend/brother-in-law/rival/etc Tō no Chūjō, and one of the nicest things about Genji-canon is that everything in it is so very discreet that often the same descriptions attach to historically acknowledged affairs (they "talked all night") as do to two friends hanging out together. I can't say I actually believe at this point that Genji and his best friend were sleeping together regularly, but I can certainly believe they experimented together. I also, as a mostly separate character observation, think Tō no Chūjō puts more into the friendship than Genji does, because Genji inspires people to pour their souls into him, and he never (with the possible exception of Murasaki) gives quite that much back.

So, I have one character (Genji) who is constantly searching for something (which scholars have variously seen as love, intimacy, a replacement for the mother he lost, etc), who regularly uses substitutes for it, and who, moreover, uses romantic/erotic relations with males as substitutes for such relations with females. Then I have another character (Tō no Chūjō) who doesn't seem to feel the need to go searching for much, especially romantically, who doesn't sleep with men, who has fairly good reason to be ticked off at Genji's amorous escapades, considering Genji is ignoring his sister to sleep with (among others) his mistress, but who seems attached to Genji anyway. So how would Tō no Chūjō react if his friendly and filial feelings for Genji started shading in towards the romantic? He knows Genji well enough to know that Genji sees men as substitutes. He also knows Genji enough to know that Genji frequently needs substitutes, since his affairs are ridiculously complicated. Unfortunately for his sanity, when Genji throws himself wholeheartedly into pursuing anyone, even a substitute, it's rather hard to remember that one is a substitute and Genji will be moving on.

It's a fascinating situation (or story idea) that wouldn't happen in modern American culture, when so many of our fandoms are set, because we make same-sex (especially male/male) interest so very inconvenient, but I really, really want to see it. I'm also terribly tempted to write it, which is difficult, since I don't even know Tō no Chūjō's name (that appellation, the conventional one, is just a title, Secretary Captain) or Genji's given name, for that matter. But, oh, it would be fascinating to explore in fic rather than papers.

Fic

2008-02-12T05:14:28Z

So, I'm hovering at the computer unable to sleep because I was just reading really lovely fic, and I realize I've never posted my Yuletide fic on livejournal. Which is silly of me. So, here goes, with many thanks to stultiloquentia and karihan for being wonderful betas.

Disclaimer: Not mine. Property of the Tolkien Estate. On the other hand, Tolkien wanted to write a mythology. One would hope he'd be happy to see people playing with it. Still not mine, though. And the prompt came from seal_girl so I can't even say I own the idea.

Owning Light

The Silmaril gleamed white-hot in the dark of the forge. Thingol watched it as it passed from workbench to Dwarvish hand, tracking the light that burned through their fingers and ignoring the resentment in their dark eyes as they glanced at him before putting the jewel down and continuing their work. They heated gold to a red glow and twisted it into new shapes to frame his Silmaril. The price for the death of his foster-son and that for the loss of his daughter blended forever. He had already paid in blood and grief.

The dark stone walls swallowed the light. Here alone Menegroth closed in upon him and made him yearn for the woodland clearings outside his gates. Here alone, amidst the rasp of Dwarven voices that made the tongue of his people unlovely, he questioned the choice that kept him in this flawed land. Countless days had he watched and waited alone. Melian had refused to descend, had begged him to fling away the Nauglamír, tainted as it was by Túrin's death and Morgoth's schemes. When he drew forth the Silmaril from his inmost treasury, she ceased to beg. Instead, she turned away, tears in her eyes, and spoke no more. But even the Tree-light reflected in her face and glinting in her tears could not match the radiance trapped within the Silmaril. He grew weary of Beleriand, burned by the Sun, that mockery of the Two Trees. Their light shone only from the Silmaril now, and everything touched seemed returned to its true state, uncorrupted by Morgoth. If the Valar had forsaken his kingdom, he would make of his kingdom a Valinor.

The clang of hammer hitting axe shivered through his bones as a few Dwarves repaired their weapons. Most were clustered around the Nauglamír, fiddling with it as greedy children would a toy. They milled about, shadows in the greater gloom, except those closest to the Silmaril, whose alien faces were thrown into sharp relief by a light too beautiful for their darkness. Thingol saw them in that merciless light and knew that they wanted it. They had demanded payment in gold, as they did every time they came to work in his kingdom, and he had promised it, but no gold would be enough, unless it were the light-touched gold of the Nauglamír. These playthings of Aulë believed they could take from him the light of the Two Trees, they who had never seen the Trees in their flowering. They did not know the power of the light they sought to steal.

Thingol saw the chief craftsman lay his tools aside and lift the Nauglamír. The Silmaril gleamed at its center, surrounded by gems that caught its light and gave it back in darker hues: sapphire, ruby, emerald. The Dwarf approached, bearing the necklace before him, and Thingol reached for it.

The Dwarf pulled back. "By what right does the Elvenking lay claim to the Nauglamír, that was made by our fathers for Finrod Felagund who is dead? It has come to him but by the hand of Húrin the Man of Dor-lómin, who took it as a thief out of the darkness of Nargothrond." Triumph glittered in his dark eyes as he cradled the Silmaril against his coarse, sooty tunic.

Thingol rose. "How do ye of uncouth race dare to demand aught of me, Elu Thingol, Lord of Beleriand, whose life began by the waters of Cuiviénen years uncounted ere the fathers of the stunted people awoke?" He stepped forward, glaring down upon the Dwarf before him, and watched with satisfaction as he retreated. "Flawed creatures, forced upon Ilúvatar All-Father by the foolish meddling of Aulë, begone. Ye forfeit any debt owed ye for this work. Depart unrequited, save with your lives." He reached for the Nauglamír, no longer hearing the words he spoke in his wrath. They did not go. His fingers touched the Silmaril, and he saw the Dwarf's hand move. The knife flashed silver in the corner of his eye, and Thingol felt it bite into his throat. Blood splashed, and his vision darkened until he could see only the jewel in his hands. Even now, even covered in his blood, the Silmaril did not shine metal-red. It shone white.

***

The Silmaril glittered through the cracks in the door to the treasury wherein it lay, its light colored by the gems surrounding it. A ruby glint touched Naugladur's hand as he raised his hammer against the Elf in his path. "You will go," he growled. "Your king stole the greatest work of my people, and your warriors slew them. I claim this treasure as weregild; I have paid in blood and grief."

The Elf lifted an axe gleaming silver, his face grim. "Your people slew my king, and I repaid them with destruction. You, lord of stunted folk, lord of betrayers, you shall have nothing from these caves." He stepped forward and swung.

Naugladur met his axe with a ringing clash. "Murderers deserve no fair combat," he said, then bellowed "Take him!"

Around him, his people rushed forward, and the Elf's bright blade flashed red with their blood. One dropped, then another, and as the third fell, blood gurgling in his mouth, Naugladur swung. The Elf knocked his hammer aside and dodged another's blow, axe sliding out once more to bloody itself in a Dwarf's throat. Naugladur swung again, and this time, when the Elf matched him, he could not evade another's sword thrust. The Nogrod steel sliced into his gut, and the stench of death filled the air. The Elf stumbled, but that axe glittered through the air once more, taking off his killer's head, before he fell to the ground.

Vision dark with fury, Naugladur lifted his hammer for the final blow. "Fool, I name ye," the Elf choked. "Ye cannot see what hangs over your own head." Naugladur brought his hammer down and blood splashed from the Elf's skull as he crushed it.

Naugladur waved at the door and shouted, "The treasure is ours. Bring me the Necklace of our Fathers!" Stepping aside to wipe the blood from his hands, that it might not impede his grip, he watched his people rush towards the treasury. They fell upon the thick wood, hacking with war-axes and beating with war-hammers, but the door did not move. A metallic screech echoed through the hall, and he flinched. The sound came again, and again, and the furious pounding of hammer against wood could not drown it out. Then the metal-screech changed, halfway through, to the sound of iron clattering against stone, and the door swung open to reveal blinding light. "Bring me the Nauglamír," he shouted again as bodies filled the doorway and blocked the light. Finally his son struggled back to him with the necklace.

"Here, Father," he said, gazing upon the shining crystal in his arms. Naugladur snatched it up and fastened it about his neck.

"Come," he ordered, brandishing his hammer. "Come, all of you. Take what treasure you wish, but there are more Elves yet and a long march home." Slowly, his people returned, arms laden with gold and gems which they dropped into packs strapped on their backs. When at last they were assembled, he led them once more into the caves in search of foes.

The rest of the attack passed. Always he felt the Silmaril burning through his coat of mail and shining in his eyes, and he could not muster any care for the straggling Elves whom his people cut down on their way out. At last Menegroth's folk were dead, finished, and the bloodprice complete. At last they reached the Stone Ford of the river Gelion, and Naugladur could see the Dwarf-road stretching forward to bring him home.

Then, as he climbed the banks of Gelion, light-dazzled eyes focused upon the road, the arrow shafts fell and the war-horns blew. He fell to the ground and wrenched forth his hammer. Gasping, he forced himself to his feet. "In the trees!" he pointed. "They are within the trees!" He charged and felt his people running beside him, being cut down like animals. Still they ran. At last, mere strides from the treeline, the shafts stopped. He swung, strong with rage, and cut down the Elf before him, barely feeling the resistance as the Elf tried to block him with a light sword. He looked about him wildly, seeking another enemy, and a Man stepped before him.

The Man's eyes were cold, as cold as the light glittering off his sword, and he said nothing as he fought. Naugladur felt the Nauglamír growing heavier about his neck and knew that he would lose this battle. When the final blow came, the same gut-stroke that had felled the Elf before the treasury, Naugladur felt no surprise. He knew now what hung over his head. "Stained with blood of Elven and Khazad lord, death shall follow this treasure so long as it remain in Arda," he cursed, and knew he spoke true, "and a like fate shall every part and portion share with the whole." He gazed upon the Silmaril, still beautiful despite its doom. The blade descended once more.

***

The Silmaril shone, undimmed by the blood around it. Beren knelt, ignoring the dying noise of battle around him. His people would prevail, he knew. Slowly, he unclasped the Nauglamír from the collar of the dead Lord of Nogrod, and felt for a moment the shadow of his lost hand, prying this Silmaril from Morgoth's iron crown. He bore the necklace to the river, and the Gelion ran red with the blood washed from it. Beren heard his son approach. He looked up to see a crimson light on Dior's face, the light of the Silmaril filtered by the bloody waters. He lifted the necklace from the river, and watched the light change to a rainbow of hues, purest white the strongest among them. "I won this for your mother," he said, and Dior nodded. Behind his son, Beren saw his people binding their wounds amidst a field of slain Dwarves. He clasped the Nauglamír about his neck and returned to them, bathed in the light of the Silmaril.

***

The Dwarves' words ("By what right...") and Thingol's first reply ("How do ye...") at the beginning are lifted directly from the Silmarillion (Of the Ruin of Doriath), and the dying Elf's words ("Ye cannot see...") are stolen from Melian's lines in The Lost Tales (The Nauglafring)

Genji Course!

2008-01-23T21:48:23Z

Ha! Yay! I'm in to the Tale of Genji course that I never thought I'd get into. *dances around the room like a maniac* And the school is sending us to Japan for five days at the end of the term. I love my school. So, I get to read Murasaki Shikibu's diary, The Pillowbook of Sei Shonagon, and the Tale of Genji, along with assorted other historical and literary writings from/about the Heian era. And I get to discuss them with a captive group. 2.5 hours each week where people will have to discuss one of my geek-areas. This is almost as wonderful as my high school Tolkien-and-Lewis class. And, please gods, it will give me the energy to get through 1st year Japanese, which is taking as much work as all my other courses combined. (It also has a really sucky textbook that makes every linguistic concept 5 times more complicated than it needs to be and uses bloody romaji instead of hiragana. There is a reason Japanese has a syllabary. You know, it's used to write the language, even for people who need to sound it out--like Japanese 1st graders.) But! Genji course. Must remember really lovely, lovely Genji course.

Ah, Shakespeare

2008-01-11T03:10:14Z

I never realized how slashy Cymbeline is. Or maybe it was just the production (the Michael Cerveris and Martha Plimpton one, which I adored, regardless of critics writing annoying reviews), but I seriously spent the entire play from the entrance of Iachimo thinking threesome, threesome, really threesome. And judging by Shakespeare's habits of writing, that was a perfectly legitimate way to interpret it. Actually, the friend who I went with (who usually laughs at my slash goggles) saw it. And hey, (wait-is it possible to spoil a four-hundred-year-old play? Meh, I'll put it behind a cut just to be sure)

since everyone survives at the end, I can write and hope for threesome fic to my heart's content.

Incidentally, I love Shakespeare. Very, very much.

Grr. Donne.

2007-12-06T00:12:01Z

I'm supposed to be writing a paper about Donne's love poem "A Valediction of the Book," which is gorgeous and definitely on my top-five Donne poems list, but I can't think of anything useful to say about it. It's pretty; he's obviously comparing love-letters to the Bible (which is one of the best conceits ever), but why, oh why, did I decide to make a paper about it? (Oh, yeah, because nothing about Donne makes an easy paper) And I want it to be good, because I really like this professor--one of her research/teaching areas is Gawain and the Green Knight and she studies Norse mythology peripherally and has a truly endearing love for Chaucer. But none of this is making the blasted poem any more analyzable. Grr.

ETA: Finished, handed in, and graded. I took a bit of a depressing stance on the poem, which my professor apparently disagreed with. Which rather sucks, since I thought it was a good analysis. Hopefully it'll make for a good discussion when I talk to her about it.

seshat_maat @ 2007-11-10T17:44:00

2007-11-10T22:55:37Z

Squee! I just found the best site ever on English Renaissance through Restoration drama. Ebooks in all shapes and sizes!

http://www.luminarium.org/

It has all of the obscure people that my textbook mentioned, but my college library only has in really old books where the s's look like f's. (which is developing into a major pet peeve as I try to read one)

As a side note, I was terribly amused to discover that the Restoration rewritten version of King Lear has a romance between Cordelia and Edgar where they wind up happily married at the end. That, unfortunately, is not on Luminarium, but it is here, under the adapter, Nahum Tate, and I'm having so much fun reading it.

Oops. Further Yuletide Author Info

2007-10-21T15:38:16Z

If you want an online copy of the Poetic Edda, there's one here with links to important names. As for the Prose Edda, Project Gutenberg has a copy here and one combined Poetic/Prose Edda that's rather literal, but seems accurate here.

There are also online copies of the Honor Harrington series. If you're one of the few souls who likes science-fiction and hasn't discovered it yet, the Baen Free Library is here; just go to Authors, then to David Weber, and the first two books, On Basilisk Station and The Honor of the Queen, will be there. Then browse and rejoice that there are so many wonderful free books online. If you want the rest of the series, go to The Fifth Imperium and download (or browse) the At All Costs CD (#9), which has all of the Honor Harrington books. So, you really don't need the Free Library, but I can't stand not telling people about it.

For the Bourne series, I really can't help, and there are a bunch of Law and Order episode guides out there, but I've never found any one that I'm particularly attached to.

Good luck and thank you!

Dear Yuletide Author

2007-10-20T01:05:39Z

Whee! Thank you for agreeing to write a story for me. Believe me, any of my requests will leave me delighted. With that in mind, I have a few squicks, some general things, and then a bunch of fandom babble, if that’ll help you, since my existence online has been rather, ah, silent.

First, the squicks. Absolutely no erotic non-con. Please. Even bondage games make me uncomfortable. Adult/child pairings are not my thing, but I’m fine if they’re aged-up, and I never mind large age-differences (I was an Honor/Hamish shipper from at least the 4^th book, maybe even the 1^st. If you’re not an HH reader, I’ve enjoyed a lot of Harry/Snape and Hermione/Snape.) I rarely like incest, except in mythology, where everything’s incestuous anyway. :) I don’t mind angst or unhappy endings, but I really don’t like utter hopelessness (i.e., I love the Iliad and Tolkien’s Silmarillion, but Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome or Toni Morrison’s Beloved depress me). Mpreg and character bashing jar me out of the story; I never believe them.

Now that I’m done being negative (I’m not as picky as I sound, I swear!), onto the happy general stuff. First, as a note, all of my prompts are just to get you thinking. A story about any of them would make me ecstatic, but if you have a plot bunny that you’d love to write, I know I’d love to read it. I adore all kinds of stories. Fluff puts me in a good mood for hours, plot keeps me up past my bedtime (even on rereads!), character-examination makes me appreciate them even more, and PWP is just fun. AU’s of any kind are fine, and please don’t feel trapped by what the author/creator might intend. My focus tends to be on relationships (not necessarily romantic, just important), and I love to hear about how other people have affected “my” characters. I also have a fundamentally optimistic outlook on characters. If there are two or three different potential motivations for someone, I tend to assume the kindest one (i.e., Jack picked Claire as an assistant because he genuinely respected her abilities, not just because he wanted to get her into bed).

Bourne Series

Okay, this is where my politics really attack. I liked Identity and Supremacy, but I loved Ultimatum because of the choices the CIA characters (especially, guess who, Pamela Landy) made. I don’t think this deserves to be seen as just a commentary on the current political set-up, because I think the conflict between duty to protect the country and duty to remain humane is an eternal problem, and the source of some of the most fascinating character development ever. (I just spent days working on a paper about Chaucer’s Knight as an embodiment of the conflict between chivalry and violence, so the subject is particularly near and dear right now.) I love seeing the rewards and the costs of following one’s conscience (either or both), and the uncertainty of what exactly one’s conscience dictates.

Honor Harrington

This is one of the few long, unending epic book series that I follow. I love the concepts of the characters, though David Weber’s execution can leave some things to be desired (much though I love him for creating them). I fell slowly and steadily in love with Theisman from the time he showed up in Honor of the Queen, but I fell hard in Ashes of Victory. In keeping with my relationship-based perspective, the fact that Denis LePic was willing to risk everything to follow him was probably what really snared me. I read these books in spite of rather than because of the political philosophy (you might take a look above at the Bourne section for more on that), since I am fairly progressive. As an idea, the Solarian League/Mesa political strategy sections make me cringe and skip ahead. On the other hand, the scenes between Hamish Alexander and James Webster in the first book are some of my favorite scenes ever (I went through a stage where I had one of them memorized. I’m not kidding.) Snappy dialogue and good characterization within the politics can make up for a lot. I also don’t hate the recent plot developments, but I think Weber is picking the worst possible chances, so I’m definitely fine with a nice, simple solution (like get Pritchart or Theisman in range of Elizabeth’s treecat, darn it) to the entire war. On the other hand, you certainly don’t have to solve the plot. :) Er. I think that’s it.

Law and Order

This was the show that first lured me onto the internet to seek out fanfic, and it remains dear to my heart. I’m a lawyer’s daughter, so the clever legal tricks made me ridiculously happy. What really entranced me, though, was the way that hints of who the characters were outside of work kept shining through without ever becoming completely clear. The hinting of “Under the Influence” in the eighth season, with Jack dealing with Claire’s death, made it one of my favorite episodes. Of course, that lack of clarity makes for great room for fanfic outside of work, but it’s also a spectacular way of telling a story.

Claire became my favorite character because of her intelligence and her devotion to justice as a combination of truth, fairness, and mercy. I liked the way her system of values meshed with Jack’s, how sometimes she would be on the must!prosecute side, and sometimes Jack would be. When Jamie was ADA, it felt like she was always pro-defense, and Abby was always pro-prosecution. Claire and Jack brought out both in each other.

I’m very attached to Claire, so I’d rather not read a death-fic, please. Something set before her death would be lovely, and I’m always up for some explanation of how she survived (really, she did. It’s witness protection! Or something). I just want her walking and talking and being Claire (and preferably interacting with Jack), so not dead, or in a permanent coma, or amnesiac for the entire story. I also quit watching after the 9^th season, and quit fangirling after the 8^th, so anything completely AU after 8^th or 9^th season is lovely and wonderful.

Norse Myths

Finally! I am an Odin fangirl. Utterly and completely. The combination of king, sage, and trickster won me over completely. And, yes, I know that Odin can be a horrible person sometimes (he’ll turn on his favorites just to get them in Valhalla), but I generally manage to forget that. That’s not to say I’ll hate you for reminding me, but just remember that he can be pretty damn cool too. There’s always the hint that he’s doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on when he scolds Loki for pulling his pranks, and I think he remembers that. Come on, he pretends to be someone else just so he can get into an insult-war with Thor, and he totally wins (by the way, I adore Thor, too). But there’s always that other side, the side of the god who willingly died for the sake of knowledge. I’m a big fan of knowledge. Loki I love mostly because of his relationship with Odin, but also because he’s the engine behind all of Norse mythology, and he has the best lines almost everywhere. There’s an absolutely beautiful book of Norse myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland called The Norse Myths, where Loki tells Thor, “In Utgard, you’ll need sharp wits. And yours are as blunt as your hammer. Why not take me?” I completely believe he said that. Also, speaking of great lines, I crack up every time I read the line I quoted in my request details. Loki is insulting all of the gods, and he’s taking his turn to attack Odin, but rather than defending Odin, Frigg (his wife) says “Your actions out never to be spoken of in front of people, what you two Aesir did in past times; always keep ancient matters concealed.” (Carolyne Larrington translation) The gods aren’t ashamed of much; what on earth (or elsewhere) were they doing? Much though I love their humor, though, what makes Loki and Odin fascinating to me is tension of the king of the gods and the god/giant who will be crucial in the gods’ defeat at Ragnarok being blood brothers. So here I really, really would love any kind of story.

Thank you again, and I'm totally looking forward to reading what you write!