Dog is a good old cat

[sovay]

My afternoon blew up on me. At least I spent the remainder of it with a_reasonable_man, drinking iced herbal chai and learning about Sam Houston and the gonzo run-up of Texas to the Civil War; I got to meet his [not Houston's] daughter's French bulldog and eat homemade biscotti and I had to borrow an umbrella to wait for the bus because the weather in Cambridge had by then returned to its regularly scheduled monsoon, but I am reliably informed there was a rainbow afterward. In the evening I watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) with my mother. spatch brought me coconut-lime ice cream when he got out of work. Autolycus has been attempting to distract me from the composition of this post with earnest headbutts and a purr that would put bandsaws to shame.

1. I am charmed by this comic about the Julio-Claudians.

2. I am really charmed by this epic hockey cross-stitch, whose perpetrator I am proud to know.

3. Courtesy of umadoshi: the woman who invented slash.

4. This is some excellent sociopolitical jewelry analysis.

5. E. M. Forster famously thought that Dickens hardly ever wrote three-dimensional characters, the kind he called round; instead he thought Dickens had a genius for flat characters presented so cleverly that the reader could be fooled into recognizing them as human beings as might be found in the reader's own life when they were nothing but vivid types in two dimensions.

I am sympathetic to this argument, to a point.

"The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School," said Stryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the past, "the old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and down the next; now in spirits and now in despondency!"

"Ah!" returned the other, sighing: "yes! The same Sydney, with the same luck. Even then, I did exercises for other boys, and seldom did my own."

"And why not?"

"God knows. It was my way, I suppose."

—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

had a genius for flat characters presented so cleverly that the reader could be fooled into recognizing them as human beings as might be found in the reader's own life when they were nothing but vivid types in two dimensions.

LOL! I think I might be with him on that...

(Although settings and events were totally from life: I've just been going through 19th C London newspapers a lot. Dickens is just fact.)

[sovay]

(Although settings and events were totally from life: I've just been going through 19th C London newspapers a lot. Dickens is just fact.)

I believe it, but may I ask for examples?

[thisbluespirit]

Bankrupts, Body snatching, urchins playing to the magistrates, people starving to death in lodging houses, streets of bird sellers, houses falling down, conmen and women, drunkenness and cook shops, workhouses, ragged schools, and everything, including stolen cats in comedy court sessions.

I mean, the thing is my ancestors that I'm looking into lived in Seven Dials aka the place that Dickens went into to write slum tourism stuff for the papers. This was following a bankruptcy and decline into poverty, unlikely marriages and early deaths, before recovering to become East End cliches instead by the end of the century, but basically my early/mid 19th C London ancestors were all walking Dickens cliches (probably still visible if they turned sideways). The other London branch have turned out to be middle class sorts who lost their fortune in Chancery via a drunken excise officer and wound up in the workhouse, so short of an incident of human combustion, I'm not sure what I'm lacking on the Dickens checklist now, but whatever it is, I'll probably have it before I'm done. Oh, wait, one of the houses they lived in was formerly owned by a famous old miser, whose sister later suffered the delusion she was the Queen of England.

[sovay]

The other London branch have turned out to be middle class sorts who lost their fortune in Chancery via a drunken excise officer and wound up in the workhouse, so short of an incident of human combustion, I'm not sure what I'm lacking on the Dickens checklist now

I'm impressed.

Oh, wait, one of the houses they lived in was formerly owned by a famous old miser, whose sister later suffered the delusion she was the Queen of England.

All you need is someone to quit their long-suffering terrible job in a dramatically satisfying fashion and you've collected them all!

[thisbluespirit]

I'm impressed.

Me, too. Until last year I didn't have a single ancestor above the rank of yeoman anywhere, and then it turned out I did. In chancery! 0_o

All you need is someone to quit their long-suffering terrible job in a dramatically satisfying fashion and you've collected them all!

Well, they might have done! That kind of thing is pretty much impossible to find out, unless it was so dramatic it got in the papers.

[moon_custafer]

The Brian Blessed episode of Who Do You Think You Are involves Blessed learning he was pretty much descended from Dickens cliches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9J5oI4Pkzc

[ethelmay]

I once got in a long strange argument with a friend (involving much digging about in Old Bailey records and so on) about whether Dickens was a reliable reporter on what might be sold in rag-and-bone/marine stores shops. I thought he was and she thought not (specifically, she thought the description of such a shop in A Christmas Carol conflated several sorts of shops for dramatic purposes -- which of course he could perfectly well have done, I just don't think he did).

[thisbluespirit]

Yeah, you definitely get some bizarre mixtures of things people sold mentioned in papers - not as odd thing, just mentioned in passing or in what's been stolen.

[strange_complex]

That Julio-Claudian comic is awesome - thanks for sharing. So many little details, all absolutely on point. I think my favourite of all is the use of the Snapchat styling for Caligula, though. :-)

[sovay]

thanks for sharing. So many little details, all absolutely on point.

You're welcome!

I think my favourite of all is the use of the Snapchat styling for Caligula, though.

"#carpediem"

[moon_custafer]

E. M. Forster: ...at any moment we may look at Mr. Pickwick edgeways and find him no thicker than a gramophone record. But we never get the sideway view. Mr. Pickwick is far too adroit and well-trained.

Mr. Pickwick, 2D, scuttling sideways like a crab: no one must learn my shameful secret

[sovay]

Mr. Pickwick, 2D, scuttling sideways like a crab: no one must learn my shameful secret

I love everything about this image.

[asakiyume]

This comment made me laugh.

[cmcmck]

Shrewsbury school?

Know it well- we pass it often.

[sovay]

Know it well- we pass it often.

Cool!

[sartorias]

I suspect I'd know the name of the zine ed who published K/S. The first story was actually "August Moon," (Kirk and Spock alone on some planet when Spock goes into pan farr) which electrified the (mostly female) fandom.

Equicon, which was at that time the biggest con ever, was a Trek con, and mostly female, a huge change from the mostly male Worldcon. I think that was '73.

[sovay]

Equicon, which was at that time the biggest con ever, was a Trek con, and mostly female, a huge change from the mostly male Worldcon. I think that was '73.

That sounds like a lot of fun. I hope it was.

[sartorias]

It. Was. AWESOME. (well, not sleeping in the bathtub because that was the only free spot with fifteen people, mostly women, sharing a hotel room, but . . we were young.)

[sovay]

It. Was. AWESOME.

I'm glad!

[sartorias]

In retrospect, it was never the quality of Trek that was so magical, it was what it inspired in fan writers, mainly women: it was the early days of IDIC, so heady and so wonderful. And so shortly before, seemingly impossible.

[ethelmay]

I remember the Seattle Weekly publishing an article about K/S fic in the mid 1980s. Joanna Russ got mentioned a lot, IIRC.

[teenybuffalo]

I read somewhere (it was the Joanna Russ RIP thread on Making Light, I seem to recall -- it's a wild internet rumor, so it must be true) that in her later years, Joanna Russ was interviewed and the interviewer tried to get her to talk about her original work or literary theory or feminism or genre, and Russ only wanted to talk about Angel/Spike, which by then had become her OTP.

[sovay]

in her later years, Joanna Russ was interviewed and the interviewer tried to get her to talk about her original work or literary theory or feminism or genre, and Russ only wanted to talk about Angel/Spike, which by then had become her OTP.

I very much hope that's true.

[ethelmay]

Patrick Nielsen Hayden: "I never saw her after we moved away from Seattle in 1983. But a few years ago, at a Wiscon, Chip Delany conducted a public interview with her over a phone hookup. Avedon Carol and I watched from the back of the large function room, and nearly killed ourselves laughing at Chip's distinct bemusement over the fact that the single thing Joanna seemed most avidly interested in talking about was BtVS [Buffy the Vampire Slayer].

"(Chip is of course capable of containing multitudes etc., and was entirely gracious. It was funny because one so rarely sees Chip knocked even a millimeter off his poise.)"

Teresa Nielsen Hayden: "I have a small knack: if you show me the patterns or shapes of something, I can sometimes tell you what other things share them. That night, I listened to her analyzing and pattern-fitting this slash fanfic; and when she finished describing how arbitrary (and therefore required) the deaths of one or both characters were in stories where they didn't act on their mutual attraction, I said "Which is not to say that The Left Hand of Darkness is a Kirk-and-Spock novel."

"Joanna's jaw dropped, and we stared at each other in wild surmise. Then we dived straight into it, talking as fast as we could..."

[cyphomandra]

That is fabulous!!

[teenybuffalo]

I found it! Here on this thread from 2011, in memoriam. It's actually in Patrick Nielsen Hayden's next comment, but I linked to Teresa Nielsen Hayden's comment because it gives context (and is generally heartwarming).

https://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/012974.html#547586

[cyphomandra]

I am sympathetic to this argument, to a point.

I have just finished reading Sarah Rees Brennan's Tell the Wind and Fire, which is her YA fantasy take on Tale of Two Cities, and ends with an acknowledgment "to any out there who loved Sydney Carton at age eleven, because you're me, and I am you."

[sovay]

I have just finished reading Sarah Rees Brennan's Tell the Wind and Fire, which is her YA fantasy take on Tale of Two Cities, and ends with an acknowledgment "to any out there who loved Sydney Carton at age eleven, because you're me, and I am you."

That's really nice. (I was not eleven. I was in tenth grade and assigned it for English class. My mother took it as an opportunity to show me the 1935 film.) Did you like it as a retelling?

[cyphomandra]

Did you like it as a retelling?

No, sadly; I like that it centres Lucie and makes it her story, and there's some interesting stuff there about the double nature of using your femininity as a public figure, but the worldbuilding never entirely worked for me (Manhattan is divided into Light and Dark cities; the Dark are oppressed, the Light oppressors, and there's a rather vague magic system involving rings and blood). Because of that the violence ends up feeling arbitrary rather than inevitable. And I agree that Brennan loves Carton, but her version falls a little too far towards snarky bad-boy.

Paula Volsky's Illusion has a great fantasy version of the Terror, where by great I mean that I still get unnerved thinking about her sentient guillotine equivalent.

(and I suppose the retelling did work on one level; I'm now 115 pages through a re-read of the original)

[sovay]

And I agree that Brennan loves Carton, but her version falls a little too far towards snarky bad-boy.

Ah, well. I definitely think of him less as a snark monster and more of a human disaster zone.

[edit] Paula Volsky's Illusion has a great fantasy version of the Terror, where by great I mean that I still get unnerved thinking about her sentient guillotine equivalent.

Yikes.

(and I suppose the retelling did work on one level; I'm now 115 pages through a re-read of the original)

It's certainly a testament. Enjoy! I re-read scattered chapters after having a line stuck in my head all day.

[asakiyume]

That's interesting: presenting flat characters in such a way that the reader rounds them out. I feel like that happens a **lot**--I feel like with fanfic, that's what we see: people rounding out characters. (In some cases maybe the characters are already round, but I think in many cases they aren't really, but they're constructed in such a way--or put in situations--that let people fill in what's missing.

Is the E. Em Forster critique online, or did you come across it elsewhere?

[sovay]

In some cases maybe the characters are already round, but I think in many cases they aren't really, but they're constructed in such a way--or put in situations--that let people fill in what's missing.

Especially, in fanfic, in cases where it feels like the author has forgotten to do the filling-in.

Is the E. Em Forster critique online, or did you come across it elsewhere?

I went looking for the precise wording because I was thinking about A Tale of Two Cities, but fortunately the relevant passage was online.

[asakiyume]

That's brilliant--thank you very much. I loved this:

Those who dislike Dickens have an excellent case. He ought to be bad. He is actually one of our big writers, and his immense success with types suggests that there may be more in flatness than the severer critics admit.

That's just brilliant in so many ways--not least characterizing Dickens as a "big writer." I like that so much more than "major" or "important" or "influential" or anything else. I think I'll use it as my commendatory phrase of choice from now on. Zora Neal Hurston is a Big Writer.

But also, I think E. M. (... not "Em," GOSH) Forster is right in having an intuition that there's more to flatness than meets the eye. But then, aficionados of fairy tales know this.