I ain't got to drive it since she brought that thing home
I have never seen Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001). I became culturally aware of the show during college, but most of my information about it has actually come from Tumblr, where gifsets of it are in constant rotation for their convincingly deserved queer lady value. So I'm not sure what to do with the fact that only on my most recent re-read of Phyllis Ann Karr's Chrétien de Troyes-inspired picaresque The Follies of Sir Harald (2001), by which I mean last night, did I realize the entire second chapter is a Xena crossover with the numbers very lightly filed off.
It was not this passage:
A mounted figure waited on the far bank, as if guarding the ford. Sir Harald started on seeing that it was a beautiful woman with long dark hair and piercing, steel-gray eyes, a haughty smirk, and a breastplate in the ancient style, who sat astride a buttercream steed with mane and tail like sun shining on milk, as proud as her rider.
Or this one:
The Lady Gavrielle of Wisten was a pretty, perky, chirky, cheerful-faced young blue-eyed blonde who wore a coronet of thin gold wires interwoven with many kinds of white and blue flowers to set off the honey-russet color of her hair. While not quite of a loveliness to rouse envy in the breasts of the famous beauties of King Arthur's courts, she could at least have held her own amongst them, if only by virtue of her insouciance.
It was the scene where Sir Harald, whose knightly honor has taken a (self-inflicted) beating in the first chapter, runs into someone comprehensively worse at knight-erranting than he is:
"Sir Jokesir the Puissant," the other made answer, drawing himself up proudly. His helmet, if helmet it could be called, was an old-fashioned leather cap with protruding earpieces, covered in overlapping iron plates of which several were absent and most of the rest dented. It would have disgraced a common foot soldier, and it covered none of Sir Jokesir's almost boyish face—a face that would have been more nearly triangular if it had been better fed: his nose narrow; his chin almost pointed; his cheeks almost hollow; and his wideset brown eyes, perched between high cheekbones and spare brows, wearing beneath the braggadocio an almost melancholy cast.
and the Ted Raimi penny dropped.
Karr does note in the novel's afterword, "While, to those readers who recognize the Warrior Woman of Part the Second, I can only apologize for failing to show her in action," so I must have known there was an in-joke from the first time I finished the book. I was just not culturally equipped to get it, as opposed to the Ivanhoe and Mozart shout-outs in other chapters. In my defense, I have spent a lot more time on Tumblr since then, in addition to acquiring reasons to pay attention to Ted Raimi's face.
I think what I'm trying to say is that,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skygiants, Phyllis Ann Karr may literally have asked for Kay fic on Yuletide that one year.
It was not this passage:
A mounted figure waited on the far bank, as if guarding the ford. Sir Harald started on seeing that it was a beautiful woman with long dark hair and piercing, steel-gray eyes, a haughty smirk, and a breastplate in the ancient style, who sat astride a buttercream steed with mane and tail like sun shining on milk, as proud as her rider.
Or this one:
The Lady Gavrielle of Wisten was a pretty, perky, chirky, cheerful-faced young blue-eyed blonde who wore a coronet of thin gold wires interwoven with many kinds of white and blue flowers to set off the honey-russet color of her hair. While not quite of a loveliness to rouse envy in the breasts of the famous beauties of King Arthur's courts, she could at least have held her own amongst them, if only by virtue of her insouciance.
It was the scene where Sir Harald, whose knightly honor has taken a (self-inflicted) beating in the first chapter, runs into someone comprehensively worse at knight-erranting than he is:
"Sir Jokesir the Puissant," the other made answer, drawing himself up proudly. His helmet, if helmet it could be called, was an old-fashioned leather cap with protruding earpieces, covered in overlapping iron plates of which several were absent and most of the rest dented. It would have disgraced a common foot soldier, and it covered none of Sir Jokesir's almost boyish face—a face that would have been more nearly triangular if it had been better fed: his nose narrow; his chin almost pointed; his cheeks almost hollow; and his wideset brown eyes, perched between high cheekbones and spare brows, wearing beneath the braggadocio an almost melancholy cast.
and the Ted Raimi penny dropped.
Karr does note in the novel's afterword, "While, to those readers who recognize the Warrior Woman of Part the Second, I can only apologize for failing to show her in action," so I must have known there was an in-joke from the first time I finished the book. I was just not culturally equipped to get it, as opposed to the Ivanhoe and Mozart shout-outs in other chapters. In my defense, I have spent a lot more time on Tumblr since then, in addition to acquiring reasons to pay attention to Ted Raimi's face.
I think what I'm trying to say is that,
skygiants, Phyllis Ann Karr may literally have asked for Kay fic on Yuletide that one year.
no subject
Crocker was a character they really dropped the ball on; he was clearly intended to be the old man sea, keeper and dispenser of the folklore. If they'd done him right, he'd have been a great counterpoint to the sfnal sensibility of the rest of the worldbuilding and characters, a nod to that in the sea which science will always glance off of. I think the other characters were better-realized, and it was definitely part of their appeal that they were not character types, and did not have relationship dynamics, that were so bog-standard. I will say, I believe an attempt was made to at least keep the young characters--or at least Shan and Hitchcock--but filming was also moved from the West Coast to Florida. So, it was a question of who was willing to make that move, and who could make that move, since some people were doing other shows too. I know Dustin Nguyen (Shan) was doing movies around the Pacific Rim, for example.
I don't know—I was watching it on Netflix, which definitely did not include interstitial oceanography. That sounds charming, though.
When it aired, it was a huge part of the appeal to my neo-hippie eco-warrior might-become-a-marine-biologist heart. When I watched my recordings again, years and years later, those bits were equally delightful and depressing, because the country as a whole had become a lot more cynical about making any effort toward conservation.
And even less likely to survive link rot! I appreciate you having done the maintenance that you did, then, because it sounds as though otherwise I wouldn't have been able to find even the surviving fic that I did.
It makes me sad how much fic has vanished, and not just in sQ. My swiss cheese memory has held onto some very odd things, including some ancient fic I read nearly thirty years ago, now. I wish I'd been more proactive about encouraging some people to cross-post their work, though; there were some stories I really enjoyed, and I neither copied them for my own personal enjoyment offline nor talked to the authors about getting engaged with the communities springing up on new platforms. Oh, but I meant to say that the seadeck community on LJ still exists, even if it's not used, and the fanfic posted to it is still on there if you're interested.
Yeah, I'm sorry, O'Neill is the character I imprinted on, but I still find that actively confusing.
Wait, I recall a friend explaining to me that there was a theory they would bond because they were both geeks? And it was assumed O'Neill's job would also make him good at computers, for some reason. Oh, and the Darwin link, though several characters had relationships with Darwin; I mean, he was a member of the crew. Anyway, you'd think fandom would understand there are different types of geeks, and that's not necessarily an indicator of mutual interests, but apparently not. Also, most of the fic I ran across was conflict-free, spark-free, and saccharine sweet, which appeared to be the point of the pairing, but is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of both characters.
I have found that I did save the two stories I mentioned, but I don't know that I have a current email address for you. I'm ranalore at gmail dot com, if you'd rather not tell me here. Just drop me a line, and I'll reply with the files. They're Temporary Duty 1 and 2.