Everything we do tonight is wrong, wrong, wrong

[sovay]

From kraada, a meme. I will be out of town for the weekend and potentially AWOI (absent without internet), so my replies may take a few days, but—

Comment and I will:

1. Tell you why I added you to my friends list and/or why I keep you there.

2. Associate you with something. A song, a color, a work of art, a character in a play, a piece of fruit. SOMETHING.

3. Tell you something I like about you.

4. Tell you a memory I have of you/us.

5. Associate you with a character from a book or a film.

6. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you. (Or else I'll just ask a random question. I reserve that right.)

7. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.

8. In return, you must spread this disease in your LJ.

Comments

[sovay]

All I can find is one review from amazon.ca
Tell me more.

Faces Under Water is the first book in Tanith Lee's recent Secret Books of Venus, a quartet set in a Venice which is, like the Paradys-Paris of her earlier Secret Books of Paradys, just alternate enough to allow her to play with the feel of history without having to worry about names and dates. There is a loose elemental theme, which manifests primarily in the first two books, and a similarly loose arc that only becomes visible in the last book; the first two are my favorites, and Faces Under Water especially. It takes place in what seems to be the early eighteenth century, one year at Carnival. The protagonist, who calls himself Furian Furiano, has run away from his family's wealth to live out a peculiar penance in the slums of the city Venus, drinking when he would rather be sober, sleeping with whores when he would rather be alone, and fishing up bodies from the canals for the aforementioned Doctor Shaachen, who runs a free clinic and studies anatomy from the murdered and the drowned and is popularly rumored to be over two hundred years old, "having sold his soul to Lucefero for knowledge. Probably he was sixty." He is obsessive, distracted, dramatic, cagey in ways that exasperate Furian and so genuinely private that it is not until two-thirds of the way through the book that his first name is mentioned, or the fact that he's Jewish. Through the wings of his magpie, he is associated with the color that permeates the narrative, blue. When he practices alchemy, his patron is the goddess Diana. And while Furian and the woman with whom he becomes infatuated, the blue-eyed, mask-faced Eurydiche, are legitimately at the center of Faces Under Water, the last corner of the plot turns on the nature of Shaachen's conjurings, whether he is only the trumpery doctor of the commedia, or sometimes a magician. He is not at all decorous and he has most of the best lines in the book.

Well, it's not an icon as such, but I'm fond of that drawing.

Yes. And I would like to see it as an icon.

[setsuled.livejournal.com]

It has selkies, not mermaids, but it's one of my touchstone films about the sea.

And my interest was already piqued.

Splash is another, because I saw it at such a young age that all the romantic comedy bypassed me completely and what I retained was the myth and the metamorphosis

I wore out the tape I loved it for those reasons. And naked Daryl Hannah. Yes, I was lecherous, even as a five year-old.

Where did the names "Boschen" and "Nesuko" come from?

Nesuko's name used to be "Nes," which I got from the acronym for Nintendo Entertainment System--remember, I came up with her when I was thirteen or fourteen. At that point the happiest day of my life was the Christmas morning I was given my first Nintendo. In fact, that day still ranks pretty high.

A few years later, I began noticing "Nes" was a pretty common name in a lot of the Sci-Fi I was reading. So, since I noticed nearly every other Japanese woman's name ended in "-ko", and I was just becoming interested in Japanese culture, she became Nesuko.

Boschen used to be spelled "Boshen," and it was just what he looked like to me when I drew him. I might have been influenced by the bothans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bothan#Bothan) from Star Wars. When I was informed that "Boshen" was an actual name, I changed it slightly, adding the "c" maybe also to vaguely reference Hieronymous Bosch.

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

"You're standing in my kumquats!"

I associate them with the very strange YA novel Octopus Pie

[sovay]

1. You write interestingly. Do I need a better reason?

2. Lal Waterson, "The Flight of the Pelican."

3. You wrote an entire verse play about the redemption of Iago and it was good.

4. Our nightlong e-mail conversations.

5. BZ Gundhalinu, from Joan D. Vinge's The Snow Queen, World's End, The Summer Queen.

6. How many of your poems do you consider autobiographical?

7. "I WRITE LIKE A MOFO!"

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

6. What language would you most like to hear spoken?

Solresol.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

*heart* OK, must reply to these. ;)

1. Awww.

2. I have no idea who/what this is.

3. I do wish at least one theatre in the country agreed with you ;_;

4. We have to do those again.

5. I had to look this one up, too. I think this is a complement? It seems people like him *g*.

6. Oh my, that's tricky to explain. A lot of my work deals with, or is deeply informed by, mental illness, so in that sense, most of it. But when when we're talking about the ones that center on a father and daughter pair, that number gets raised to all. Either the poem is about my relationship to my father, or it is about how I wish that relationship had been. Of all my poems, "Elise" and "Harpagon's Coffin" are the most autobiographical in a sense; even though my father was never physically abusive, for example, he was still a miser, and a very angry man, and I often felt as conflicted and terrified as Elise. I don't really know if that answered anything.

7. Haha. I stole this one from kittydesade, who stole it from someone else, I believe. Do you know what comic it comes from? It's called Sinfest.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

I realised just now I had never answered the question in this comment. Thing. I mostly like to bake and make pastry-type things, like the lemon tart, although I will confess to using bought pastry crust and phyllo dough. No shame in bought phyllo, man. I wish I could say I could make strudel dough by hand, but I just can't. My hands are too large and too hot to roll and stretch it properly.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

2. Andy M. Stewart's "The Errant Apprentice."

Cos it's the story of my life? ;-)

Seriously--did I tell you that I sing it? Or is there something cosmicish going on here? ;-)

3. You translate beautifully.

Thanks!

4. When you wrote out your username, I thought it was Welsh.

I remember that, also.

5. Des Helani, from Doris Egan's Two-Bit Heroes.

I don't know that one. Will have to read it.

6. What is your native accent?

I'm not sure, to be honest. I just... sound the way I sound. I can try to make myself sound American--Southern being the most effective--but it sounds faked, particularly the rhythm.

I have nightmares sometimes about starting to remember, say... growing up in an America where the mid-Atlantic and parts south became as thoroughly Recusant as colonial New England became Puritan, or rather more so. Cos I'd not know if I were going insane, or quite the opposite.

7. When you get one, I’ll let you know . . .

True. ;-)

I should do somethign about that.

[sovay]

Seriously--did I tell you that I sing it? Or is there something cosmicish going on here?

Blame the cosmos: I hadn't even heard the song when I met you.

I don't know that one. Will have to read it.

It's the second of three, The Gates of Ivory, Two-Bit Heroes, and Guilt-Edged Ivory, which are unfortunately not a trilogy, but an open-ended series whose publisher stupidly let fall out of contract and into obscurity. They follow a futuristic scholar named Theo who comes to Ivory, the only known planet where magic is supposed to work, to collect stories for her PhD. She is promptly rolled in an alley, loses her passport, her return ticket, and all her money, and spends the next few years working as a market fortuneteller; until the day when a stranger shows up with a deck of cards that it seems she genuinely can read. His name is Ran Cormallon, of a well-known sorcerous (and more than slightly mob-like) family, and he wants to hire her. Chaos ensues. They are wonderful. The author is tightropegirl.

I should do somethign about that.

Yep.

[sovay]

2. I have no idea who/what this is.

It's a song. It contains the phrase "upstart old crow," which I associate more with your livejournal handle than with you, but some of the lyrics also seemed to apply.

5. I had to look this one up, too. I think this is a complement? It seems people like him

Heh. He is a terrific character. You might like the book; it is a very close far-future retelling of The Snow Queen, with lots of solstitial myth. And none of its characters are flat.

7. Haha. I stole this one from kittydesade, who stole it from someone else, I believe. Do you know what comic it comes from? It's called Sinfest.

I've never heard of it. Should I read it?

[sovay]

I shall have to listen to the Medlar.

I cannot send you the song at the moment, since my music is either temporarily inaccessible or dead, but these are the lyrics as I transcribed them:

He's a conoisseur of back roads, loves to tiptoe through hayfields
He'll put water on your fire and light your Catherine wheel
The medlar takes a chance, patchwork britches blowing free
He puts a hex on chickens, keeps geese off the lay
Nettles in your teapot, puts mice amongst the hay

The medlar takes a chance, patchwork britches blowing free
See him jump and prance, picking fruit from apple tree
The medlar fingers every pie—mischief-making minx
But if you make him go and cry, you'll find the medlar is a prince

He lies about laughing, lies about everything
If you know the medlar's name, you'll know the farmyard heap
Lives in a house beneath the hedge shared with mice and bones
Tongue is clean, teeth are green, breakfasts on ferns and sedge

The medlar takes a chance, patchwork britches blowing free
See him jump and prance, picking fruit from apple tree

The medlar . . .

He seemed suitable either to The Crow Maiden or Heretic.

I love New Model Army, particularly Thunder and Consolation, and Carnival. I also adore Nick Cave's album When the Boatman Calls, though not all his other work. I also like Waterson Carthy, the English Acoustic Collective, Bach, Bartok, Jill Tracy and Dead Can Dance.

I have heard only one song by New Model Army and nothing by the English Acoustic Collective, but everyone else you name, yay.

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

and I believe you both times.

I believe this, BTW, to be the highest compliment I have ever been paid as a reviewer. Squee!