I see the mountain and that is all I see

[sovay]

1. My poem "Spirit Photography" is now online at Through the Gate. It is their inaugural issue; the table of contents is full of poets whose work I love and a few I look forward to learning more about. The inspiration is exactly what it says down at the bottom of the page.

2. My poems "Graffiti" and "Taking the Auspices" have been nominated for the 2012 Dwarf Stars Award. It's rose_lemberg and mitchell_hart's fault for publishing them in the first place.

3. I spent most of last night with a weird half-migraine, but earlier in the afternoon derspatchel met me after my dentist's appointment and we went to the Ether Dome and the Russell Museum of Medical History and Innovation, although we did not go up to the roof garden; we stopped with the portraits of people we'd never heard of, as the guard at the door glossed them to us. We walked to Pho Pasteur afterward for dinner. There was, later, a glass of rum for the pirate cat.

4. J.K. Rowling has said something terrible on the internet: "The thing about fantasy—there are certain things you just don't do in fantasy. You don't have sex near unicorns. It's an ironclad rule. It's tacky."

I have no doubt the internet is already filling with unicorn-proximate porn, but if anyone on this friendlist wishes to add to the literature, I can only approve.

(She says also, "The person who is leading the quest—it seems that they have to have this weird purity about them," with which I passionately disagree. I've spent most of my reading life being bored with Galahads. More questing fuck-ups, please.)

5. I still have too much of this weird half-migraine, but I slept until two o'clock and I am seeing rushthatspeaks and Apocalypse Now (1979) before candlelighting.

Come back out of the dark and be written well.

Comments

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on numbers 1 and 2!

"Spirit Photography" deserves such a lovely home--I'm looking forward to reading the company.

I'm sorry for the half-migrane, but glad it wasn't all a bad day.

That Rowling thing is bizarre. I find it hard to credit that she truly knows so very little of contemporary fantasy that she hasn't at least heard of the explicit urban fantasy and fantasy erotic romance that the shelves are groaning with for the past few years, even if she's not read any herself. I'm starting to wonder if she doesn't deliberately say untrue things to interviewers that she knows they'll eat up. There was another interview, years ago, where she was quoted as saying something to the effect that she knew nothing of fantasy, even Tolkien or Lewis, which contradicted other interviews of hers.

I can't help but think of that one short story from a few years back, the faux-mediaeval-setting story about the unicorn hunter and his virginal companion who went from a passive bit of pre-teenaged bait the hunter bought from her father for a few shillings to an equal partner in the hunt, the one that ended with the two of them rutting next to the carcass of their final kill. Maybe Rowling's read it, and was deliberately making a reference that would fly over the interviewer's head? Sort of a red herring for the media, and a shout-out to all of us geeks and weirds? I'd like to think so, but maybe it's only wishful thinking. Or the collective unconsciousness having a laugh.

I have no doubt the internet is already filling with unicorn-proximate porn, but if anyone on this friendlist wishes to add to the literature, I can only approve.

Hmm... I'll try what I can do. It might have to be fanfic--I think unicorns are only mythological in that one 'verse with the people with the Irish names and the hemi-semi-quasi-Frankish national history, and I certainly don't think there are any unicorns in the modern day one with the academics who've been dancing round each other for years who get snowed in with the cuddly bi werewolf girl.

5.

I hope the half-migrane will soon change to a zero-migrane. I hope ye enjoy the film.

Come back out of the dark and be written well.

May it be so.

[coraline]

a hunter's ode to his bait.

sadly, i don't think she's that clever. but the rest of us will read the unicorn-adjascent-sex and the fucked-up-quester books and leave her in peace.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

a hunter's ode to his bait.

Thanks!

sadly, i don't think she's that clever. but the rest of us will read the unicorn-adjascent-sex and the fucked-up-quester books and leave her in peace.

Alas, I think you're right about her cleverness, much as I'd wish otherwise. Ah, well, that's a good plan, so.

[sovay]

but the rest of us will read the unicorn-adjascent-sex and the fucked-up-quester books and leave her in peace.

Amen.

[sovay]

"Spirit Photography" deserves such a lovely home--I'm looking forward to reading the company.

Thank you! It's really a terrific lineup.

I'm starting to wonder if she doesn't deliberately say untrue things to interviewers that she knows they'll eat up.

Well, I would, but I'm not sure she's that kind of imaginative!

and I certainly don't think there are any unicorns in the modern day one with the academics who've been dancing round each other for years who get snowed in with the cuddly bi werewolf girl.

Dude: if you've got werewolves, I don't see why not unicorns.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Well, I would, but I'm not sure she's that kind of imaginative!

You're probably right about Rowling, as much as I like the idea of her being sneaky that way.

Dude: if you've got werewolves, I don't see why not unicorns.

True, but it would be hard to hide unicorns in something roughly equivalent to New York state. Unless, I suppose, they were human-to-unicorn shapeshifters,* but that's getting into some really disturbing territory. Introduce those and, before you know it, you'll have Otherkin and people who sell Amway products and naturist Smurfs who are members of obscure sects derived from Scientology.

Werewolves are able to be physicists and farmers and archaeologists for most of the month, so it's easier for them to avoid detection--in that particular 'verse, they eat a big meal before moonrise so they'll not be tempted to take livestock, and spend most of their time in wolf form running about and singing in parts.

*Wereunicorns sounds so very wrong that I can't even use it as a joke.

[sovay]

Wereunicorns sounds so very wrong that I can't even use it as a joke.

Thank you.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

You're welcome. I do have a few limits.

PS

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I'm 3k words into a piece of smutty fic that will, by the end of it, demonstrate the fact that unicorns like to watch.

I suppose that's a start.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

In all his years as a unicorn, he had never experienced such emotions before.

[sovay]

In all his years as a unicorn, he had never experienced such emotions before.

I still love you.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Goodness, that's... impressive. Or something like that.

Thanks for sharing.

I think.

Well, it is good to be reminded that if rubbish like that can be published, things that I write might have a chance, after all.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

"I find it hard to credit that she truly knows so very little of contemporary fantasy that she hasn't at least heard of the explicit urban fantasy and fantasy erotic romance that the shelves are groaning with for the past few years [....]"

But do these urban/erotic fantasies have unicorns?

[sovay]

But do these urban/erotic fantasies have unicorns?

There must be one. The only story I ever had published in Realms of Fantasy before its weird untimely demise involved a sexually persuasive unicorn. That was in 2004. We've got were-leopards now and vampires that sparkle. Somebody must have thought of the pornier version since then.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

But do these urban/erotic fantasies have unicorns?

I suppose it's true that the ones I've read (not so many, I have to confess) haven't had unicorns, but I was taking the unicorns in Rowling's remark as more a sort of synecdoche, the unicorn standing in for the entire apparatus of the genre. (Or should I say metonymy?)

Any road, I sincerely hope for a flood of unicorn-proximate pron in response to this.