silver

I've been reading these (Penguin 1990's edition) and I've now read Erec & Enide, Cligès and half of The Knight and the Cart (Lancelot).

(I included the book cover because it illustrates beautifully why I love medieval art. The era of photography and photo-realistic art [and understanding/importance of perspective] makes that image delightfully weird. The artist just doesn't care about any of that. The guy on horseback has literally stuck his sword into that other guy's face. And that's a lion, fighting alongside. But what a story!)

I thought that Erec is such an ass. He was fine at first but at a very innocuous remark, he basically drags Enide all over the country because work-life balance? That's not balancing marriage and knightliness, Erec. Telling Enide to not say anything, Enide then twisting herself into knots over whether Erec would get murdered by the next three knights trying to sneak-attack him and whether she should warn him and get verbally thrashed, or not warn and potentially see him killed, was so frustrating. She's so devoted to him too, even after all that; she faints after this random count tries to forcibly marry her not only because of the forcibly-married part but because she thinks Erec is dead and she can't stand to be married to anyone else period. Erec & Enide was also written rather episodically, in three parts, so I kept expecting pieces of the past bits to be picked up, but they never really were. I'm guessing that they were probably told episodically--come back tomorrow night to hear the second installment!--but it's not obvious in text.

Cligés was a lot better. A lot easier for me to follow, too. There's one part I want to talk about though: about midway through Fenice and Cligès decide to try to get married 'the right way', i.e. Fenice is already married to Cligés' uncle and so they can't just run away, no, that would destroy Fenice's reputation ¹. No, instead, Fenice decides to literally play dead, with her nurse Thessala helping by feeding her a potion which would make her seem dead. Then they would dig her up afterwards and no one would be the wiser, see. This was such a Romeo and Juliet plot that I stopped reading, thought about chronology, and then went back to reading, but couldn't help think this was going to end badly. And oh my god, IT DOES. (Other examples: Les Misérables. Lesson: don't literally play dead). Three wise doctors arrive and they infer correctly she's alive and then they start torturing her to make her speak. But the potion's effect means she can't speak or move and they literally get to the point of ( torture ) before the bereaved court ladies shatter the door barring them and rescue her. Things which I was no expecting: THAT.

I'm struck by how sometimes you can almost hear Chrétien saying some of the stuff. I mean, in the beginning of many of the tales he slips into the narrator role, and he says "written for my lady Marie [of Champagne, his patroness]". But in some of the knightly parts, where whichever knight is the hero is laying about and fighting so hard he splits weapons with the force of the blows, you can almost feel Chrétien's glee, like a little boy's, over how so-and-so is the best knight in all the land, unequalled, etc. Some of it is perhaps idealization for his audience, who would have been knights; knights becoming an actual noblish class is just beginning around this time, and they probably don't have people opening their doors and getting lavish hospitality everywhere they go. That's the dream or just an enjoyable fantasy, like our own fiction genres.



¹: For some reason it is better to pretend to die and then marry Cligès than to run away. I'm pretty sure either way you're committing bigamy.... Oh! And also it's okay to do this (perhaps not in "real life morality" reasons, but in "audience will root for you" certainly) because there's a complex plot in which Cligès' uncle essentially stole Cligès' inheritance by marrying Fenice, whom Cligès then immediately fell in love with while they were retrieving her in Saxony (or thereabouts). Trying to explain how these stories work takes so much ink because they're basically stories with most of the description taken out, although there is always description of riches (oh the furs!) and the battles, of course, with the lance splitting and being knocked off horses and all that.

Keeping in mind that I read the book while in mild pain, in a overwarm room, and sleepily:

( let the spoilers commence! )

*

Someone said something about Harry Potter the series being Calvinist, so I looked it up (usually there's an essay backing the argument somewhere) and I had an intense People are Wrong on the Internet moment while reading. Not with the theology, which I'm never gonna be qualified to argue. But on literary interpretations, well, I had objections. Here is the post for reference. While I agree that Snape isn't a nice guy, he's written as a godawful teacher, a jerk, spiteful, but also bullied, misguided, and held up as someone who did good in impossible situations--even if he personally was awful to be around. Harry names his child after him, for heavens' sake! Even if you want to argue that it's just Harry's inhuman ability to forgive (wrongly), Snape himself shows you don't have to be sorted into Gryffindor to be, as the essayist says, 'the Elect', the good guys. Lily...does not treat Snape as dirt. She's shown to stick up for Snape in that infamous scene by the lake, she tells Snape while they're in private--after years of being friends--her reasons why she feels uncomfortable with his associates. She doesn't just drop Snape for no reason; I think being uncomfortable with friends getting violent/holding ugly prejudices against you is certainly not unreasonable, and nor is it "treating Snape like dirt". I will not argue that James Potter was not "a bullying toerag", but one of the recurring themes in HP is that it's possible to be bad and still love people. I wish she had de-evilized Slytherin and carried the theme more consistently throughout, but that's an argument for another day. Nevertheless, look at the Malfoys--they really love their son (to the point where Narcissa quite clearly defies Voldemort, risking everything at the cusp of their supposed victory). James clearly loved both Lily and Harry a great deal. Dumbledore loved Ariana but not enough, as a teenager, to realize what he was doing or enough to stop being resentful. Love didn't make characters perfect, but imperfection elsewhere didn't (doesn't) mean that jerks couldn't love.

Nuance, please.

Some of the statements were perfectly wrong. "That deep down a person can't change. Deep down...Percy is officious"--but it's a major point that Percy comes back and says, giving up his pride, that he was wrong and he did wrong and he was a prat and he's sorry. This essay also ignores other characters sorted into different houses: what happened to Luna? The DA is populated with Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. Harry has a rather low opinion of some of them--he thinks Ernie McMillan is pompous, for example--but never does he, nor the text, argue that they have less of an impact fighting against Voldemort because they were sorted into the wrong house. I could go on refuting random sentences, and it's tempting, but I think I've made my main point.

I feel this argument was predicated on one assumption, namely "Harry Potter is Calvinist", and the facts got twisted to suit it. That's one way to construct an argument, but I don't see it as very valid. I'd rather you start with a reading of the text first, or at least play around with the idea.

*

In real life news, I went to dance class on Thursday! We started salsa, and it was a blast. I don't like dance as a performance very much--I did it as a child, and synchronized choreography, performance, and all that is not my cup of tea--but I do very much enjoy dance with a partner. Or with sequential partners, like square dance. I know some of my classmates thought it was hopelessly old and outdated, but I thought it was just so fun, and music was ridiculously catchy. OK, it's fun when the person you're partnered with wants to be there and wants to exert effort (not always a given in mandatory gym class!) but here, my partner, a random boy standing across from me, was good, or at least equally matched with me.

We went through the basic steps, and some turns and variations. It was really warm, even though the sun had gone down hours ago, but massively fun. My partner was good (and could hear the rhythm! Oh man, best) so we ended up practicing everything a million times while the teacher went among other dancers. I've done jive before, which I thought was kind of similar--at least some of the turns. The stop and go (leader does basic step, follower turns 180, twisting arms around, then unfolding) I'm pretty sure I did before. The music was fast--a lot of energy is involved! Definitely looking forward to learning more this week.

The Puppet Masters is a novel about Earth's contact with extra-terrestrials that want to enslave the human population. The protagonist, "Sam Cavanaugh", is an agent working with an unspecified intelligence agency, and the plot follows him as he tries to help beat them back. The extra-terrestrials are slug-like things that clamp onto the back of humans and completely take over their consciousnesses and willpower, and they begin infecting Earth. Like many megalomaniacs, their justification is that humans can't make peace themselves, and wouldn't it be better if someone solved that for them?

There, that's the bare bones of the plot. Heinlein wrote in in 1951, so I give it a pass when it comes to overused plotlines.

The novel's set in the future, so we have cars that fly and some pretty amazing appearance-altering technology (or the intelligence agencies have them anyway) but we also have a very solid Iron Curtain and some commentary about the Soviet Union. That said, the action is mostly closely focussed on Sam. When the agency investigates the disappearance of a couple of its best agents in Iowa, he tags along with the director, the Old Man.

Interestingly, because of the scale of the attack, there's an element of politics and social change involved. The slugs attached to humans make a sometimes hidden hump on the back of a person, and to avoid having one slug-infected person infest the rest (the slugs do so deliberately) the population of America strip. This doesn't exactly go over so well initially, and convincing the President and Congress that there is a serious danger isn't downplayed either.

( The more informal reaction )

Enjoyed it, can't articulate it, 8/10. Still not thinking about certain things. I wish there was a way to turn off certain parts of the brain's analytics.

I'm struggling a bit through--wait, I forgot the title of the book--The Guns of Avalon, by Roger Zelazny. I think I'm struggling because a) Corwin, the protagonist, and b) the weird language switching.

Corwin: I'm not getting a bead on him at all. He's very powerful (walks in Shadow, much more powerful than normal humans, regenerates flesh, used to be a powerful leader of some sort, etc) but he just doesn't seem to be very interesting. He's royalty but he's been distanced so long from his extensive family that all the political drama is being narrated to me (or to him, he's catching up) in little dribbles and at great distance. So far the most interesting person I've met is Dara, who I do quite like and understand, at least, even if I have a bad feeling about this seventeen-year-old girl. What happened to Lorraine doesn't reassure me. But Corwin--he's just kinda there.

Language: OK, what's up with the switching between high-fantasy and vernacular? Here's an excerpt with more formal language:

He was young and fair of hair and complexion. Beyond that, it was hard to say at a glance. It is difficult, I discovered, to obtain a clear initial impression as to a man's features and size when he is hanging upside down several feet above the ground.

(Page 70)

Nothing especially archaic, but not entirely modern, right? Especially that first statement. But then there's dialogue like this:

"Don't worry about it. It's not contagious."
"Crap," she said. "You're lying to me."
"I know. But please forget the whole thing."

(Page 44)

It keeps doing this. Corwin refers to his father as "Dad". His sword is "Grayswandir" (very pretty). And the whole thing's set with parallel universes (that's what "walking in the Shadow" means, you can walk between worlds and pick what you land in), and so there exist an Avalon. There's a Lancelot we meet. And Uther is mentioned by name. But we also have Ganelon, who I always associate (apart from the Kushiel's Legacy one) with the Song of Roland, the medieval epic. All these influences keep jerking me around, merging kind of confusingly.

1. We have a Conservative majority. OK, even though I'm liberalmaybe this means the government will be more efficient since they actually have adequate support.

The thing that blows me away:
2. Official Opposition Party: NDP.


WHAT.

(article decrying Nanowrimo). The Quote That Made Me Stop and Gape: the selfless art of reading are being taken over by the narcissistic commerce of writing.


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...*wheeze*

(also, that's a grammar mistake there: it should be "is", because "art" is singular, not plural). Perhaps you should write more?


The concept of having fun. Of taking up wild challenges. Of daring yourself to do something that's not dangerous but still exciting and all that. Do these concepts even register?


Edited to add: and I just got Mercedes Lackey's pep talk in my inbox, and I'm floored that she advised writing fanfiction. Floored. I think there are approximately two professional writers I know of who approve and encourage it. Wow.

Link to misogyny and ignorance. Click with caution.

I made it halfway down the first page of comments and then gave up.


My reaction, helpfully summarized:
DEAR EVERYONE ON THE PLANET (minus those already armed with The Clues):

1. Words have meaning.

2. Words have two types of meanings: one is a dictionary (or scientific, or otherwise defined meaning). There is a second meaning, connotation. These are associations attached to words.

3. Generally connotations are the most important.

4. Pulling dictionary definitions when people are clearly talking about the connotations is neither helpful nor clever.

5. We are not separate from our history. Even if you think there's no misogyny in your world*, by using words that historically** carry misogynistic intent to describe someone you don't like, you are using the term in a way that is misogynistic. Even if you don't mean it. I'm sorry, this is the legacy we've been handed down with.

6. Live with the awareness that yes, while you wish you could totally throw around "whore" and "bitch" and all the rest without worrying about PC POLICE***, don't.

7. For the last time, the history is why words like "dick" do not garner such reactions. No, really. You're not pointing out anything that has not been brought up before in these conversations.

8. Please for the love of all that is holy stop telling anyone they're overreacting or oversensitive.

9. If you know nothing about this issue, I would advise your library or Google or another person who knows you well and this issue.

10. This applies wonderfully to just about any -ism you can think of; just change some of the words! 

Regards,
silverflight8

*OH MY GOD HAHAHAHAHA YOU MUST BE JOKING JUST GO AWAY
**They still do, by the way.
***Someone forgot to send me the uniform, obviously; I still don't have any weapons for these things...



tl;dr: *puts head on desk and thinks of happy thing*

I feel like I've stepped in a timewarp or something.

( TMI! )

And in my mind all day was the poem (the last lines have a tendency to stick):

THE WATCH
Frances Cornford (1886-1960)

I wakened on my hot, hard bed,
Upon the pillow lay my head;
Beneath the pillow I could hear
My little watch was ticking clear.
I thought the throbbing of it went
Like my continual discontent;
I thought it said in every tick:
I am so sick, so sick, so sick;
O death, come quick, come quick, come quick,
Come quick, come quick, come quick, come quick.

I wrote a long post with this title. It promptly disappeared when I switched from HTML reader to Rich Text. I haven't the heart to type it up again (it was very long, full of random side notes and strange things) so I'm just going to assume one of the fates has indicated that she does not like my post--more likely than not--and so ate my post. (Actually, I think maybe I put in the WRONG CODE FOR THE CUT *hits self on head* OH VERY SMART.) Except writing nothing would feel very strange. Hence this mutant paragraph. Heh.

Sometimes faily sentences are just too much to respond to. Like this one: I know he put in place a brutal policy of ethnic cleansing against the riders but how does that make him evil?

WHAT?!

(What requirements come with evilness? Is ethnic cleansing not enough?!)

Context here; they're discussing Eragon and the whole cycle/trilogy.

Sometimes you get nice snark comms, that manage to self-police, and then sometimes they're just hostile and nothing else.