Flutterings

The sketch file for the side fic (e.g., the non-crossing-with-Wimsey canon filler I might actually have a prayer of posting before NYR 2021 closes) is nearly at 3,000 words, which is rather annoying given how I had sternly told myself to focus whole hog on the things for which my deadlines are non-negotiable as opposed to wholly optional no-one-is-expecting-this fluffing about.

Of course, my brain has been pulling this stunt for decades, so I am not really surprised. Because, let's be frank, as much as I truly enjoy herding citations into compliance, there's the difference between black coffee and fine champagne (and I would feel bereft if my life could not include both), and so there's the pleasure of doggedly applying AMA style across a jumble of files that is most necessary (because it's related to a ton of money to be directed toward cancer research) that yet doesn't feel quite enough if I don't also carve out time to fashion fresh conversations among our England World friends (or, in the case of Daniel, the dishing out of snark and the deflecting of people shouting at him, with abundant reason for dishing and deflecting and especially the shouting). I can barely wait until I can flesh this out enough to share what's going on when I have Fen and Pat have this exchange:

( spoilers through 'How Goes the World?' under the cut )

In other sparkling distractions, my re-immersion in Monteverdi has now extended to watching every instance of "Madama, con tua pace" to be found on YouTube. It's a brilliant, hilarious aria, and the interpretations range from classical and Louis XIV settings (with 1970s production values, which adds to the entertainment) to nordic-abstract and franco-grotesque riffs.


1979 Harnoncourt/Ponnelle

It doesn't hurt that philosophical musings typically make my own head ache, so I'm delighted to come across Monteverdi making fun of them. My favorite incarnation at the moment is Silvia Frigato's, which starts at around 52:15 at https://youtu.be/A7-99pvv8f4. It is so physically precise and so beautifully rude, especially her delicious laugh as the orchestra rips through the ciaccona.

(I'm also delighted by this 2000 staging in Aix -- the page peeks in ca. 43:22 and starts sassing Seneca a minute later. Silvia's voice and technique are stronger to my ear, but this Seneca is freaking gorgeous, so there's that. . .)

Chronic grousing aside, this self-inflicted mayhem is all to the good: the KJC plotbunnies are going to push me into reading more novels and histories (and Timon of Athens) sooner than I would otherwise, and I hit the piano yesterday and today to thump my way through parts of Poppea and Ulisse. Good times.

Saints and sugarplums... I just caught sight of a scale model of Minas Tirith during the Battle of Pelennor Fields - built out of candy

The builders' progress pics

*admires*

More decluttering of the bookmark stash:
[Disclaimer: I have not read all of these links all of the way through. I don't know if/when I'll ever get around to doing so. But there's a feast for thought here several times over, and I'm more likely to look them up here than three Firefox submenus deep (I know, I know, that's sad...)]

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock" summarized in two lines. The same thread has LOLcat for the Makers.

Shooting script of The Princess Bride

Sulky_rhino's crossover fanart masterlist.
Sulky_rhino's fanart making fun of fanon masterlist.

Kassrachel's "On Judaism and fandom". I bookmarked this post and its comments in part because I may want to reread them the next time a majority vs. minority race/religion/etc. debate flares up in fandom, and also because its themes include (1) the right to stay disengaged from a debate when one doesn't feel compelled to say something and (2) fandom being "basically midrashic" (which is essentially what I was rambling about a couple nights ago...).

Sistermagpie: "Canon does not exist" (which one commenter suggested would be better titled "nothing is really canon")

[This is part of a comment that ran away with me over at ellid's. Slightly revised, both for context and because I'm compulsive...]

I think of Rowling not as our era's Tolkien but as its Conan Doyle. Seriously: amazing characters, inventive plots, lots of inconsistencies and improbabilities, some sterling passages of writing (e.g., Snape's opening speech, the end of "The Final Problem") amidst long stretches of less inspired exposition (e.g., the Mormon backstory in A Study in Scarlet), and a relatively healthy attitude towards derivative works (Gillette to Doyle: "May I marry Holmes?" D to G: "You can marry him, or kill him, or anything you want"), and both creators notably less invested in their creations than their fans. Doyle was a good man who, among other things, made a fool of himself in public over his belief in the occult; judging from her other deeds to date, I'm likewise inclined to think of JKR as a good woman who just doesn't happen to be intellectually deep or consistent.

(And this is definitely a case of a pot calling a kettle black, because while I flatter myself as being somewhat gifted at brute analysis, I'm hopeless at philosophy, critical theory, theology, etc. I can't understand any of that stuff without a sharp pencil, a ream of scratch paper, and preferably someone else's study guide translating the thickets of theory and jargon into layman's language, and no matter how much time I spend on it, it all slides out of my head as soon as I put it away.)

Given how messy (IMNSHO) the final product is, I can totally see JKR having considered and/or believed multiple versions of her characters' fates during the, what, 15 years she was working on the series, and failing to remember that she'd disclosed one set of intentions to the public, etc. Again with the glass half-full schtick, it means the part of fandom that cares about authorial intention (i.e., the meta writers and lit crit folks) now has license to go to town, because if the writer herself can't keep track of her own plans, readers can favor widely divergent themes/theories... Given what has shown up in this year's fests in response to canon's plotholes/disappointments, I figure every time JKR initiates another wave of WTF it's more straw for fandom's geniuses to transform into entertainment gold.

1. The characters in my SnuSa fic-in-progress keep surprising me. This is pretty cool, even though it means the fic is still chewing up my brain.

2. sistermagpie is one of my favorite meta writers, and she's apparently a regular participant in LJ's deathtocapslock comm, which I stumbled across this morning. I haven't gone through all their archives yet, but I'm overjoyed by the posts I've read so far, both because the Jabootu Bingo cracks me up and because misery loves company: I've spent far too much time this week trying to reconcile sections of the Potterverse that make no freaking sense when one peers at them too closely, which is what one strives to do when trying to write a fic that doesn't totally draw-and-quarter its source and grind its bones into pimento-polluted sandwich spread...

Er, uh, where was I? Oh yeah. Canon driving me batshit. I happened upon several threads yesterday in which the majority sentiment came across as "anyone who criticizes Jo on anything is an ingrate, an entitlement whore, or a delusional shipper," which made me wibble over the future of our planet. So it soothed and reassured my snarky skeptic's soul to see the good folk at deathtocapslock echoing my "Bzuh? WTF? Squid on the mantelpiece sighting! Um, no..." (albeit more coherently and in more detail).

Also, the following exchange endangered my laptop:

kaskait: Ginny is like an Ayn Rand heroine for kids. *shudder*

baeraad: A surprisingly great deal of HP is like Ayn Rand for kids. Except that Ayn Rand had this thing against laying down your life... =]

(A confession: I actually like The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged -- but I see them as soap operas for meritocrats. The Objectivist clique in my first college dorm had a collective reputation for being insufferable and out of touch with reality.)

3. I find the sloppiness more crazy-making than it should be, but JKR still gets mad props from me when it comes to the Potterverse's ability to inspire other people and make them think (even when they go down routes she neither intended nor endorses). A week ago I told another fan that DH had killed my interest in analyzing the books as literature (as opposed to treating them just as source material for fandom mayhem), but two nights ago, I started research for a proposal I'm now planning to submit to Reading Harry Potter, to Terminus, or both, and right now it's simmering at that delicious early stage where I'm feeling rather clever and inventive and full of possibility (as opposed to the "OMG what was I thinking and why did I get myself into this!?" part. Which is as inevitable and aggravating as dog fur on my sofa, but there I go digressing again).

4. sigune's Knave of Spades portrait of Snape.

5. Readers are still finding and commenting on the Lord Peter/Bunter I posted last month.

6. Trading e-mails with a friend about an author (not JKR) who'd made a provoking post-canon statement about one of her characters. My friend, addressing the author in question: "Eh. Win me over, writermonkey."

And now it's back to the SnuSa fic, with the hope of doing exactly that.