RetroActive

You were all so very right; the "Lord Peter" collection of short stories is a terrible introduction to Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey books!

Have now read "Whose Body", "Strong Poison", and "Busman's Honeymoon" - great characters, and the women in fridges problem indeed goes very much away. Women are less throwaway plot devices, and more frequently represented among the background characters, too. Although I'm already a committed Harriet Vane fan, it's not just her - there's the Dowager Duchess of Denver, and Miss Climpson and her crew. Parker seems a little under-drawn, but I think that may be because I haven't gotten to some of the stories that feature him more prominently. Bunter is MUCH more interesting in long-form, too.

Have also read "Thrones, Dominations", and I don't know what the hardcore fan attitude is towards the Jill Paton Walsh "additions" to the series, but I liked it quite a lot. I can see where some of it is a little different than how Sayers might have done it, but it was quite subtle (unlike the "sequels" I've seen to Austen works), and a good read on it's own. I do intend to read the other Paton Walsh additions.

I read about half of "Five Red Herrings", and skipped to the end, and then skipped through that as well. It's astonishingly awful! Very little characterization (overrendered dialect doesn't substitute) and nothing but monotonous grind on what feels like the same plot details over and over with very little progress. Perhaps an accurate rendering of real detective work, but not much fun to read.

Have "Murder Must Advertise" and "Nine Tailors" awaiting me; another title (don't remember which) in transit from a nearby campus, and two titles requested from my own employing institution's catalog reported back missing, so I guess I'll have to ILL those!

Thanks for the encouragement to push on! I'm glad I did!

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I have heard good things from the fannish hivemind about Dorothy Sayers' "Lord Peter Wimsey" detective stories for some time. So when I recently discovered the 1970s "Lord Peter" compilation of all the short stories on a book-exchange shelf at a campus library, I picked it up.

I've read almost all of them now. Not terrifically impressed. But that is possibly because it's only the short stories? If you have read the novels, please correct my misimpressions...

1. they feel derivative. When I read older stories that feel derivative, I usually chalk it up to my having read more recent works that are derivative of the older ones. But with these, I know some of their predecessors, both in the "gentleman+valet" genre, and in the mystery genre. The mysteries, in particular, feel a bit predictable; the characters just feel underwritten, and given everything I've heard about them from fannish hivemind, that _has_ to be an artifact of having only read the short stories.

2. they feel like "CSI" - in the ways that caused me to stop watching it. Specifically:

2a. they render murders and their aftermath in grisly detail (text is a lot easier to deal with than CSI's fx shots, but my brain fairly easily perseverates on disturbing images, whether they originated as images outside of my brain, or my brain constructed them as images itself.) The grisliness feels a bit unnecessary, but apparently it is a positive factor for some other folks.

2b. Women seem to appear primarily dead, in peril, or as negative factors in the lives of male characters. There is a contingent of background women who are relatives or otherwise hangers-on of male characters, but they don't do much.

I'd be a lot more okay if, as artifacts of their time, the stories just didn't have a lot of women in them at all. The fairly relentless victimization (often with elements of titillating sexualization or exploitation, how very ahead of her time!) is really creeping me out.

Do the novels do better with any of this stuff? Better characterization? Less exploitative?

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I liked Edmund a lot in "Prince Caspian" because he was all scornful and morally upstanding and a pretty kick-ass fighter, but he didn't do anything for me because he was clearly a kid.

So, saw "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" the other day.

Then I had to go look up how old Skandar Keynes is, because I know Edmund is only supposed to be about 16 in that story, but that actor's looking all grown and on-the-older-side-of-edge-of-manhood-ly, and the character is still scornful and upstanding and a kick-ass fighter...

Turns out it's not that shameful, because dude's about nineteen which means he's a legal adult and all. But my repeated train of thought while watching the movie was "wow, it's like they're writing a slash-engendering buddy-cop tv show about Caspian and Edmund right into their (also in many other ways extremely liberal reinterpretation of the plot)!" - and the actor who plays Caspian, Ben Barnes, is like 29, which is definitely campfire-rule territory...

So. Shameful(ish). But, um, any recommendations of good, preferably Dawn-Treader-era, Caspian/Edmund fic would not go amiss?

Whoever's casting the Narnia movies is really pretty awesome (I liked the late-80s/early-90s tv adaptations a lot, too, but these have been even better!) . Georgie Henley has been, in each movie, such a perfectly awesome Lucy. (Aside: I love Georgie Henley's hair - it is so amazingly gorgeous.) The kid they cast as Eustace for this one was a good match. I missed Eddie Izzard's flair for Reepicheep - and was surprised to find out his replacement was Simon Pegg, because I would've expected Pegg to have added his own flair to the character and instead I found him really quite a boring Reep.

In other news about Dawn Treader, I didn't much like a lot of the changes they made to the storyline. I get that the episodic nature of the book doesn't lend itself well to feature-film adaptation, so of course some rearranging and collapsing had to happen. But overall I thought the character-development arcs suffered a lot.

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As usual, sets and production design out of this world. The dragon was a little underwhelming, especially his face, especially since they've done so well with other expressive CGI creatures... Fight scenes were awesome, costumes gorgeous. Overall, I approve & will probably watch it again. Yes, partly just to indulge my "look at those pretty men" impulses. But also, production design! And also, also, Lucy being awesome. Have they cast Jill Pole for the next one, yet?

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Watched "How to Train a Dragon" with my sister's family tonight. She's been selling it hard because, "It's such a good movie!" I agree, it is a good movie - fun story, lovely dragon-design, lots of pretty animation. But I just kept thinking, how hard would it have been for Hiccup (the protagonist) to be a girl? How hard would it have been for that "Viking" village (hel, even leaving their vaguely-Scottish-vaguely-Vikingish-vaguely-nothing-like-either-one culture intact) to be multiracial?

Not hard! NOT HARD AT ALL!

Multiracial not realistic? As my brother-in-law said wrt a different point, "There're _dragons_." Not enough actors of color that were "right" for the roles? For one thing, fuck that noise. And for two, it's animation, they can look any way you want for, what's that? NO ADDITIONAL CASH? (Except maybe it might cost money to have people vet it in case you accidentally rendered offensively stereotypical characters? Except no one *coughGeorgeLucascough* does that anyway...) Hmm... (I'll concede America Ferrera was the lead female protagonist's voice, but wouldn't it have been nice if that particular character had looked as strong and gorgeous as America herself?)

I did notice there were more female characters before the movie was over. There were big, strong women fighting with the vaguely Viking-ish men. The village elder appeared to be a woman. There were two girls in the larger group of teen protagonists, and they both fought well and were equal to the boys, even. (Though really, why weren't there three?) And yet. AND YET. I DO BELIEVE IT F'IN STIIIIIIILLLLLLLL FAILED THE BECHDEL TEST!!!!!!

Had to bite my tongue, because my sister & mom are short-tempered, and tired of hearing this stuff from me. As I sit there and watch my niece absorbing all of the messages, overt _and_ inherent, in her spongelike little brain.

It's all fandom's fault. I just can't not see this shit anymore. In movies, and in real life.

Thanks.

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Haven't been around in a while; nothing wrong, just not in a terribly fannishly-productive mode. Was reminded talking with craftyreader in another forum how cool fandom people are, and decided to get more interactive again. Probably not in any high-volume way, but hey, HI!

In other news, I texted my mom the other night, and she texted back, "Oh noes!" Meanwhile, on the phone with my dad, he's telling me about a Slashdot thread.
Recognize that I am, at 35, the _youngest_ of three relatively-widely-spaced, not-that-early-in-life children, extrapolate my parents' ages, and giggle along with me at our nerdiness. :)

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FeministHulk, Old Spice Guy, and Judith Butler. In a shower. Priceless in its epic brilliance.

"...So you and Feminist Hulk are saying that my devotion to Old Spice body wash might be part of a larger regulative discourse to maintain an essential ontological gender?"

http://oldspice-kinkmeme.dreamwidt…

via toft

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I can't stop copyright-geeking in my personal life, and it _is_ my work life. At some point, it's all just gonna collapse together, I'm thinking. :)

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One of my FB friends (a good friend from law school) just sent me a message doing a (rather hilarious) joint introduction between me ('hot-shit copyright lawyer at X(place of work)') another woman ('hot-shit trademark lawyer at Y(place of work)'). The TM lawyer is doing a talk on copyright & TM issues with a group of young adults making a creative product.

She was all, "Twilight?"

And I was like "Twilight!, but also, Nintendo!"

And I was also like "And ask them questions about fairness and institutional power because boy howdy do teenagers engage more deeply with complex material if you trigger their "how does this affect me & my friends?" mode."

And she was like, "Right on!"

And it was pretty cool. Wish I could go to her talk, but half a continent is in the way.

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The Racebending Revenge Ficathon went live a little over a week ago. I hope the collection grows, but what is there has some very interesting, provocative/evocative/vocative stuff!

The five I found most powerfully affected me:

By Sun and Candlelight by Deastar
If Watson were slightly different, Holmes would still be Holmes, and their dynamic would still be as fraught, and as rewarding. Excellent character dialogue.

Even If I Tumble Fall by Ceares
The Hollywood hustle of Entourage, multiplied times structural inequalities so vast and so trivial as to be constantly swept under the rug. I don't watch Entourage, but I really liked this.

Promise of the पुरवाई by Dhobi ki Kutti (dhobikikutti)
If you speak Hindi, you will get a lot more out of this Mary Poppins fic than I did. But I have enough of a passing acquaintance with the history of English colonization in South Asia, and the "ayahs" of Frances Hodgson Burnett and other period children's literature to recognize some of the tropes this is turning on its head. That background, and my limited understanding of Hindu* religious and narrative traditions mostly let me see how much I could not see here. Although the experience of limited transparency alone is a good and challenging one for those of us who generally find fic doesn't require much translation, the lyrical text, powerful imagery (even if I am missing much of it), and fiercely transformative story are worth the read for those merits alone.
*I think this is referencing Hindu deities and theology? I apologize and would welcome correction if I am wrong about that; I know Hindi != Hindu, and I also know I am treading shallowly in very deep cultural waters, here.

Five Things People Might Have Read On The Psychic Paper (If Things Were Slightly Different) by grey_bard (also at Grey_Bard)
How things might have gone if the Doctor Who team had taken just a small step outside their brain-boxes when casting the 11th Doctor. Humorous and pointed.

Sometimes I wish I could fly, Like a bird up in the sky by fresne
In chapter one, the author asks, what if Kal-El's spaceship had landed in Kansas in 1930, and Kal-El's skin had not been such a close match to the Kents'? In chapter two, Clark and a Lois with her own secrets meet up in Metropolis. Also enjoyed the nonstandard narrative rhythms, especially in the first chapter, and Lois's unvoiced commentaries in the second.
Also also, Fresne's additional commentary/backstory is made of win.

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Took my 7 y.o. niece, whose parents are not into fan culture really at all, to CONvergence today. She got to learn about raptors, see the inside of the House of Toast (because that's who got me in), eat some rice from the ConSuite, buy a little fimo kitty in the dealer room, and make some stuff out of pipe cleaners. She liked the costumes - some were a little creepy for her taste, and she was confused by the guy she saw wearing a collar ("Is that like a real locking thing?") - but overall she enjoyed them, especially if they involved fur or other kinds of fuzziness. Fundamentally, she was just a little stymied by the idea of grownups doing silly things (like wearing costumes, or like making a hotel room look like the inside of a toaster and then giving people free toast) for no reason beyond enjoyment. :)

It was interesting. Not as if I have a great deal of experience with cons myself. The idea is growing on me, though. If only so my niece continues to see grownups being silly and creative for fun!

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