Noun Used As A Verb, Film At Eleven

[handful_ofdust]

Re yuki-onna, talking about how the ending of Watchmen doesn't work for her because she's been "Neuromancered"...WTF does that even mean, exactly? I read Neuromancer, but about a million years ago, and it occurs to me that perhaps it was exactly as not-so-impressive to me, in the end, as Watchmen was to her. But seriously: There's something "innate" in a received-wisdom sense that I'm supposed to be getting from the reference about how best to end a book, right? And...I'm just not gettin' it, sorry.

I should probably be asking her, I suppose, rather than the universe at large. But I get the feeling I'd just get slapped for being dumb, and I'm not all too into that right now.

Comments

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

reading her noticing everything everyone else noticed two decades ago without being aware of the past, etc...

gotta remember that unlike us (and certain other folks involved in this discussion [kicks Sonya]) that back when Watchmen came out, Cat was in, what, second grade?

I don't know about the way the rest of the world comes to this sort of thing, but any real sense of historicity in what I read I didn't come to until a few years ago at best, and I turned 40 last year. When I was 30, the only way I could really distinguish between "old" and "really old" in something published before 1968 was the big turning point around 1930 when plot became more important than description in commercial fiction. I still struggle with it, at times (I had to pause for a few minutes to remember whether Watchmen or Neuromancer came first when I first read that).

So yeah, on that part of it, I give her a pass. Been there, done that. It's just that there are few people around, and fewer by the day, who are ancient enough to discuss books of that age with me who were actually there...

(I note that I am making an assumption about your age, which I find, upon reflection, I have always made. Apologies, if necessary.)

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm definitely that old! So old I can remember what it was like waiting for Watchmen #6 to arrive after reading Watchmen #5. And how great it felt when it did arrive, mainly because it managed to convince me that while yes, this was a world where small children were fed to dogs and already-unstable men went irretrievably insane after final crushing moral betrayals, this was also at least a world where people who've always loved each other in a haphazard way could reunite over their shared fetishization of the accoutrements of crimefighting...and baby, when you don't have much else to cling to (aside from a raft made from lashed-together corpses), that's okay with me.;)

[sovay]

unlike us (and certain other folks involved in this discussion [kicks Sonya]) that back when Watchmen came out, Cat was in, what, second grade?

I think Cat may be older than I am. I was born in 1981.

[xterminal.livejournal.com]

Yes, she just turned 30, if memory serves. (Or 29. I'm gonna get beat if it's 29, I know I am...)

My wife was born in 1981! Which actually makes you three years older than I thought you were.

...or have we really known each other that long? My god.

[sovay]

...or have we really known each other that long? My god.

I've got comments from you from 2005.

[readingthedark.livejournal.com]

Hi,

I'm 37. The only quibble
(if it really is a quibble, what I meant to be talking about is why I, personally, happened to read Cat's post a bit faster than I read most of her posts)
is because I worked in comic book stores as The Watchman came out and it's considered established knowledge that it took forever, came in erratic dribs and drabs and the rumor was always that Moore asked for an extra issue or two to tidy things up and they didn't let him have it so he threw the ending together as best he could.

Since I, personally, take that as a given, the sentiments in the post happened not to be as compelling to me so I skimmed it on the first pass (and then read it twice more to try to see if dots were actually connecting the plots of the two works.

The presumption that I'd heard these thoughts before (and again, it wasn't merely my seething jealousy that I am now old an irrelevant (teasing) as much as it is that the info is readily available) and my own petty desires for an even greater understanding of why Moore is one of the few creators who consistently blows my doors off led to my sensing that this particular post wasn't going to advance my personal scholarship much.

[Interestingly, I agree with Cat on most of her points, I just wanted more on Moore. I also feel that rape has become shorthand in a way that renders it reductivist, but would posit that it was daring back then, an attempt to demyth the underwear perverts.]