alixtii: (Lockers)
So, during the 20 minutes before I left for church on Sunday, I may have committed this [community profile] fic_corner treat...

To Dream a Dream (469 words) by [archiveofourown.org profile] Alixtii
Fandom: Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Related Fandoms
Characters: Alice (Alice in Wonderland), Alice Liddell, Original Female Character

Summary: The dreams haven't stopped for Alice Liddell, but she has learned to control them.

( To Dream a Dream )

alixtii: The groupies from Dr. Horrible. (meta)
I've just stopped by the Commuter Lounge after class, and we've done Frankenstein. Now the prof wanted to focus on the slippages and fallibilities inherent in the various levels of framing devices, but I'm actually more interested in the transparencies. We found plenty of examples of said slippages, places where the narrators may be less than reliable or at least have their reliability called into question, and I can think of more we did not discuss in class, but I almost want to argue that these are localized phenomena, not actually casting sustained doubt on any of the levels of narrative--as opposed to Victors, discussed previously, which problematizes the process of narrative itself, as argued by Kristina Busse in her blog.

Fig. 1 ) Take the diagram I put forth in one of my previous posts. In Frankenstein the answer to "What is the story about?" exists on the level of what is called in the diagram the "Events of Story."

**[ The Creature's Account to Frankenstein <-- ] Frankenstein's Account to Walton** <-- Walton's Letters to Margaret <-- Shelley's Novel 

The answer to "What is Frankenstein about?" is not "An arctic explorer who writes letters to his sister" (as much as I might like to imagine the 'cesty possibilities thereof) but rather "A scientist who animates a creature." This is what I mean by "transparent."

But in, say, "The Tell-Tale Heart" the answer to "What is the story is about?" rests not on the "Events of Story" but rather the "Diegetic Act of Narration."

The Narrator's Committing of Murder and the Aftermath Thereof <-- **An Insane Man Confessing to Police** <-- Poe's Short Story

Here the answer to "What is the story about?" is not "A magical heart that continues to beat after death" but instead "A crazy man who commits murder and is driven by his hallucinations to confess." We would, under standard hermeneutic conditions, call a reading which placed the primacy on the events of the story as written rather than the diegetic act of narration suggested thereof a misreading. The story is, so to speak, "translucent."

There are narratives in which an ambiguity exists as to where the primacy lies. For example, in "Annabell Lee," the poem is either a lovely love poem (my mother's reading, although one founded on principle rather than ignorance--she refuses to read it any other way) or a poem about a crazy person who sleeps in sea-side mausoleums. My "On Her Knees" seems to be a dystopian AU futurefic, but I think it's "really" about the mindgames Lilah plays on Wes during season 4 of Angel.

And, if we accept Busse's argument, in Victors the primacy actually lies within the the act of reading itself. It is completely and utterly opaque.

What Really Happened <-- Various Forms of Documentation <-- **Speranza's Fanfiction**
alixtii: The famous painting by John Singer Sargent of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth holding the crown. Text: "How many children?" (Shakespeare)
Title: Requiem at Reichenbach
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Rating: PG
Summary: It is as if the whole universe were set in motion to bring us to this moment, Holmes.
A/N: Written for [livejournal.com profile] yuletide. The version of this story in the Yuletide Archive (and the corresponding comments) can be found here.

Requiem at Reichenbach )
alixtii: Peter and Susan, in extreme close-up. (incest)
Apparently, this year--i.e. the first year I've signed up for [livejournal.com profile] 3_ships--is the first year that [livejournal.com profile] 3_ships will be disallowing incest. Which means that Simon/Kaylee/River threesome I was so looking forward to requesting is out. Sad.

Luckily, Mac/Madison is not technically incest. And there are loads of other interesting potential threesomes, and while I did keep on going, "No, wait, that's incest," I did finally manage to pick four, three f/f/m and one f/f/f.

Speaking of incest, I watched Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (the film, obviously, I didn't sit staring at the books) trusting it to be 'cestastic, and it mostly was, but that was a pretty certain conclusion seeing as I brought my trusty 'cest goggles. Spoilers start here )

Otherwise, I wonder if they committed the cardinal sin of adapting children's stuff which is funny: they made it a comedy. Now, I get the feeling that maybe the source books don't really take themselves too seriously, as I'm assuming Jude Law's narration was suppose to capture the whimsy of the original. But I know of plenty of other movies which have committed this sin (it's a common mistake, for reasons I don't pretend to understand). The original texts of Scooby Doo, Inspector Gadget, or what have you are not comedies. They are funny, yes, just like Buffy was often funny, but they took their premises seriously--or at least I, as a young viewer, did so. Inspector Gadget is a thrilling action-adventure series about a teenaged girl with a really cool book, and the way the movie version wasted Michelle Trachtenberg was a crime. (Doing Inspector Gadget as a movie right would so hit so many of my kinks!) I saw the cartoon series Men in Black first and was sorely disappointed when I saw the movie which inspired it--a mere Will Smith comedy that didn't take its science fiction premise seriously.

Speaking of adaptation, I also a version of Jane Eyre that had Anna Paquin in it, and there I think the film was harmed by overly slavish devotion to the original, as if the filmmakers felt they had to tell the same exact story that Charlotte Bronte had hundreds of pages to tell in under two hours. It seemed clear that what they thought the book was about was (or at least that the story they wanted to tell, or thought would sell, was) a love story, making that Jane's central character arc, but if that is the case then all of Paquin's scenes--despite being the best scenes in the movie--were completely superfluous and took away time from developing the story they really wanted to be telling, so that probably gratuitous spoiler cut ) seems completely pasted on.

Seriously, dudes: figure out what story you (you, not the original source) are telling, and then tell it. Skipping step #1 is so not optional.

Except in Hollywood it seems it kinda is.
alixtii: Player from <i>Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?</i> playing the game. (Default)
Apparently, Terry Pratchett once wrote a fanfic (or at least imagined himself as having written it) "setting Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in Middle Earth; the rest of the kids loved it, because a class of thirteen-year-old boys with volcanic acne and groingal longings is not best placed to appreciate Miss Austen's fine prose. It was a really good hit when the orcs attacked the rectory. . . ."[*]





I really, really want to read that fic.

More Pratchett: "What happened in 1066? The Battle of Hastings. Full marks. And what else happened in 1066? What do you mean, what else happened? The Battle of Hastings was what 1066 was for."
alixtii: Player from <i>Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?</i> playing the game. (Default)
Book meme )

Gakked from [livejournal.com profile] witchqueen, with some alterations:
Post a link to your fan fiction. The goal is this -- when you spot the meme, click on the link to that person's fanfic and pick something you haven't read before or never commented on when you did read it. The goal is to send feedback for something that you genuinely love reading. Point out lines you loved, style choices you adored, that hot little thing that happened in the middle of the smut. Anything that you love to pieces.

You can do it as many times as you want for anybody you want but hopefully you should try to do it every time you see the meme. This way, for the next week or so, people will be getting all kinds of nice comments from people about their stuff, and I don't know about anybody else, but that always makes me happy. :) Plus, you might read something new that you missed before.
My fic index, as always, is here.

Also, in one meme or another I saw on my flist, there were the questions "Do you believe in heaven?" and "Do you believe in abortion?" For the record, I don't believe in anything. Instead, I utilize cognitive models to structure my experience. (Heaven is beyond experience, so meaningful human thought about it just isn't possible; the best for which we can hope is to resort to metaphor.) I am pro-choice, a feminist, a Christian, a Discordian, etc. but I don't believe in any of them--they are patterns of belief--or, more acurately, of interpretations.

Rec

Jul. 22nd, 2006 07:39 pm
alixtii: Player from <i>Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?</i> playing the game. (Default)
I don't usually rec things on my flist, but I'm enjoying this too much not to make sure everyone takes a look: [livejournal.com profile] bookishwench is writing Jayne Eyre, transporting the Firefly character to early nineteenth-century England and forcing him to dress up in drag. Oh, too much fun!

(I haven't read Jayne Eyre but general cultural literacy means I pretty much know/am spoiled for the entire plot, and I have read novels by both Charlotte and Emily.)

It's a WIP but it's not as if there's all that much suspense about how it ends, obviously, although I'm certainly eagerly waiting the next installment. Part One; Part Two; Part Three.
alixtii: Dawn Summers, w/ books and candles. Image from when Michelle hosted that ghost show. Text: "Dawn Summers / High Watcher. (Dawn)
I just typed "Lupin" instead of "Dupin" in the essay on "The Purloined Letter" I am writing. Fandom has eaten my brain, and it isn't even my fandom!

Anyway, speaking of detectives, I watched the Veronica Mars repeat on last night. I don't know why I'm not feeling the love for this show, but I know one problem is that I'm simply not interested in the characters. A dearth of female characters in last nights ep is part of the problem: in addition to Veronica herself, there was only Charisma Carpenter's character (to whom I'm as apathetic toward as I ever was to Cordelia) and the slumber party girls. But none of these characters, male or female, really encourage me to identify with them.

I don't know if last night's ep was darker than usual, but I also miss some humor. And I don't just mean clever dialogue; Buffy had a sense of the absurd and wasn't afraid to go there, while VM seems to be nitty-gritty realistic. And I find that a real turn-off. I want to watch shows that are larger than life, and Veronica Mars is not a supergenius teenage girl who is going to take over the world. She is not going to learn Sumerian in a summer, and it's not going to be assumed that because she is good at physics she must be a whiz at biology and chemistry too. If I can't have vampires, I want the White House, or at least a Sherlock Holmes. But Veronica? Is not nearly enough Mary Sue-ish for my taste.

But I'll try again, probably, so don't count me out yet.

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