Cool and Dorky
Jan. 3rd, 2008 12:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
handful_ofdustOfficious bullshit quotient for today: Some person at novel_in_90 posted just to tell me I posted yesterday’s word-count in the wrong place, adding: "I’ve seen your name before, so not a newbie, huh?" Possible responses which spring to mind—
*"And I’ve never seen yours, so…whatever."
*"Was that supposed to be mockery? Because it really comes off like you being an asshole for no reason whatsoever. I’d look into that."
*"Ooh, somebody wants to feel important!"
A pity overall, since it might have been enough to warn me away from the whole community if I wasn’t A) almost forty, B) already published and C) generally a bit more of an adult than that. And from the further extended Department of People Reacting to People Trying to Make Them Feel Small, please do go admire some of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
moon_custafer’s most recent works, which she’s posted under a cut over at her LJ. I think they’re keen, especially the double panel of a Transformer fighting Gamera—ostensibly for control of the sushi which lies stacked in the foreground, one assumes—that she did as a Christmas present for theengineer and his brother. They are nifty and fun, and she needs to get as many strokes as possible in order to drive the carping voices of fools from her cranium.
Meanwhile, I continue to reorganize the apartment in short bursts. Stuff found inside a dusty file-box shoved under the armoir included copied excerpts from two reference books on Mary Shelley (ie, research material for a stage-play I gave up on ten years ago), an incredible amount of "you are just so great!!!" feedback on my OZ fanfiction, and a National Georgraphic clipping of a Melanesian guy with a fake shark on his head. Also, a wad of really, really bad juvenile poetry…pure "darkest of dark darknesses"-style dreck. Random lines are excerpted for your horrified contemplation below:
The stars implode, the stars implode and die
into the hungry mouth of night
and darkswollen things creep out to taste her tears…
He left
a ragged cavern in my breast
I tried to fill with you.
But now my head aches empyrean slow—
moonphases like sweet razors come and go…
Fall. The autumn trees are bleeding
into winter’s numbing sorrow.
Pain stains the leaves for our delight
and signals pale and brittle diamonds
of frost tomorrow.
OH MY GOOD GOD.
In other words—wowiee wow wow, am I glad those years are over. (Though I do retroactively award extra dork-points to my teenaged self for both calling the middle selection "d’arcqueangel" (with a lower-case apostrophe-D, C and Q-U-E) AND penning an entire ode to the character of Servalan from Blake’s 7, which I will not inflict on you here. Feel free to thank me in the comments.)
Aaaanyway…I also spent some time seeing my Mom off (she’ll be on her way to Mexico as of six o’clock tomorrow morning) and finishing Phillip Pullman’s the Golden Compass, perhaps the best-written book I’ve ever read by someone who obviously hates everybody, including his own main character ("she was a coarse and vulgar little savage", etc). Yeah, he already admits up front that he wrote the entire trilogy just to piss on C.S. Lewis’s grave, but the sheer amount of hairpin emotional contortions he ends up going through simply in order to reflexively up-end everyone’s expectations started to rub me the wrong way roughly by the bottom of Chapter Two. Not only is Pullman’s textual "for children!" world actually deliberately, nastily, unnecessarily adult on every level, but his subtext is hateful and weird in a way no mere tool of the Church could ever aspire to—the only things he seems to find truly admirable are ignorance and force, with a side-order of self-destructive anti-authoritarianism. I particularly "like" how he essentially states at one point that it’s a good thing Lyra has no imagination, because imaginative people are ineffectual liars who most often talk themselves out of ever doing anything useful. And props to Cleolinda at Movies in 15 Minutes, because damn, that episode where Lyra offers to be the bear-king’s "personal daimon" really did give me the ever-lovin’ wig.
Okay—Cal’s asleep, finally, so it’s printing and marking pour moi; my time grows ever shorter, y’all. Tomorrow, The Subtle Knife!
P.S.: I forgot to mention that Thrillers 2 is, at last, in my possession. A beautiful-looking artifact. I'm already reading the other entries, but keep flipping back to gaze lovingly at the illustration for "Pen Umbra", the first time I've ever really seen one of my own characters explicitly realized. It's so cool.;)
*"And I’ve never seen yours, so…whatever."
*"Was that supposed to be mockery? Because it really comes off like you being an asshole for no reason whatsoever. I’d look into that."
*"Ooh, somebody wants to feel important!"
A pity overall, since it might have been enough to warn me away from the whole community if I wasn’t A) almost forty, B) already published and C) generally a bit more of an adult than that. And from the further extended Department of People Reacting to People Trying to Make Them Feel Small, please do go admire some of
moon_custafer’s most recent works, which she’s posted under a cut over at her LJ. I think they’re keen, especially the double panel of a Transformer fighting Gamera—ostensibly for control of the sushi which lies stacked in the foreground, one assumes—that she did as a Christmas present for theengineer and his brother. They are nifty and fun, and she needs to get as many strokes as possible in order to drive the carping voices of fools from her cranium.Meanwhile, I continue to reorganize the apartment in short bursts. Stuff found inside a dusty file-box shoved under the armoir included copied excerpts from two reference books on Mary Shelley (ie, research material for a stage-play I gave up on ten years ago), an incredible amount of "you are just so great!!!" feedback on my OZ fanfiction, and a National Georgraphic clipping of a Melanesian guy with a fake shark on his head. Also, a wad of really, really bad juvenile poetry…pure "darkest of dark darknesses"-style dreck. Random lines are excerpted for your horrified contemplation below:
The stars implode, the stars implode and die
into the hungry mouth of night
and darkswollen things creep out to taste her tears…
He left
a ragged cavern in my breast
I tried to fill with you.
But now my head aches empyrean slow—
moonphases like sweet razors come and go…
Fall. The autumn trees are bleeding
into winter’s numbing sorrow.
Pain stains the leaves for our delight
and signals pale and brittle diamonds
of frost tomorrow.
OH MY GOOD GOD.
In other words—wowiee wow wow, am I glad those years are over. (Though I do retroactively award extra dork-points to my teenaged self for both calling the middle selection "d’arcqueangel" (with a lower-case apostrophe-D, C and Q-U-E) AND penning an entire ode to the character of Servalan from Blake’s 7, which I will not inflict on you here. Feel free to thank me in the comments.)
Aaaanyway…I also spent some time seeing my Mom off (she’ll be on her way to Mexico as of six o’clock tomorrow morning) and finishing Phillip Pullman’s the Golden Compass, perhaps the best-written book I’ve ever read by someone who obviously hates everybody, including his own main character ("she was a coarse and vulgar little savage", etc). Yeah, he already admits up front that he wrote the entire trilogy just to piss on C.S. Lewis’s grave, but the sheer amount of hairpin emotional contortions he ends up going through simply in order to reflexively up-end everyone’s expectations started to rub me the wrong way roughly by the bottom of Chapter Two. Not only is Pullman’s textual "for children!" world actually deliberately, nastily, unnecessarily adult on every level, but his subtext is hateful and weird in a way no mere tool of the Church could ever aspire to—the only things he seems to find truly admirable are ignorance and force, with a side-order of self-destructive anti-authoritarianism. I particularly "like" how he essentially states at one point that it’s a good thing Lyra has no imagination, because imaginative people are ineffectual liars who most often talk themselves out of ever doing anything useful. And props to Cleolinda at Movies in 15 Minutes, because damn, that episode where Lyra offers to be the bear-king’s "personal daimon" really did give me the ever-lovin’ wig.
Okay—Cal’s asleep, finally, so it’s printing and marking pour moi; my time grows ever shorter, y’all. Tomorrow, The Subtle Knife!
P.S.: I forgot to mention that Thrillers 2 is, at last, in my possession. A beautiful-looking artifact. I'm already reading the other entries, but keep flipping back to gaze lovingly at the illustration for "Pen Umbra", the first time I've ever really seen one of my own characters explicitly realized. It's so cool.;)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 06:01 am (UTC)Psssht. I expect an Oxford prig to have a much smoother prose style.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 06:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 07:09 am (UTC)And, of course, it's an unimaginative child who is most suited to mastering an extremely complex system of abstract symbolism...
no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 06:14 pm (UTC)It really is that "antithesis of all children's literature" thing that keeps him getting in his own way, though. If he wasn't so bent on kicking Lewis' ghost in the nuts, he might've done some thing worth salvaging; I mean, he seems perfectly capable of telling a coherent--even moving--story. Too bad that's just not enough, for some people.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 06:12 am (UTC)Saw that on my way in to post my wordage. I suspect nothing much was meant by it.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 06:36 am (UTC)a ragged cavern in my breast
I tried to fill with you.
—actually isn't bad. But for the rest, I'll take "Mrs. Margery Lovett Her Book" any day.
(Did I mention lately you need to write more poetry? You do. You're good.)
Not only is Pullman’s textual "for children!" world actually deliberately, nastily, unnecessarily adult on every level
So it's okay I was haunted for nights by the image of the half-killed soldiers whose daemons have to work ceaselessly to keep them breathing or they all die?
he already admits up front that he wrote the entire trilogy just to piss on C.S. Lewis’s grave
My problem is more that I think he wound up more polemical with The Amber Spyglass than Lewis at his preachiest, which is impressive considering that I tolerate the existence of The Last Battle solely for the vision of Narnian apocalypse. And at least Lewis was action, not reaction; and had six good books to his credit already.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-03 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 05:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-05 08:49 pm (UTC)I have not read Till We Have Faces since I discovered it in high school, but I remember liking it very much. I should re-read it and Out of the Silent Planet.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-04 08:11 pm (UTC)