Forsooth, Gadzooks and a Murrain Upon It
Oct. 29th, 2012 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
handful_ofdustMan, I've really lost control of this whole Hallowe'en Entries thing, for which I apologize. You will be getting those updates eventually, but it's quite likely they may extend far beyond Hallowe'en itself. Life just got away from me.
Speaking of which, re World Fantasy Con: The good part is that because I'm already in Toronto, I don't have to worry over whether or not I'm going to be able to get myself up to the hotel(s) in Richmond Hill in time to do my part. My schedule includes One panel (Gothic Fantasy Noir at 1:00 PM on Friday, with Elizabeth Hand, Nicholas Kaufman, Dana Cameron and Rhiannon Held, moderated by Elwyn Cotman), one reading (12:00 noon on Saturday) and a host of parties, including being at the CZP table during the Awards ceremony. I'm very much looking forward to all of it, but though the weather here isn't even vaguely as brutal as it is in the direct path of Hurricane Sandy, it's still dark and wet enough to disrupt my sinuses, make me ache all over and keep me fairly consistently exhausted. I also have the usual roster of crazy crap immediately before and after, including Hallowe'en, which I don't know what the hell we're going to do for. Dress Cal up and watch The Nightmare Before Christmas, maybe.
Over the weekend, I found myself thinking about how a lot of my bulletproof kinks could probably be traced back to Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, which my Dad gave me an illustrated and annotated version of around the same time I'd been reading Edward Eager's Knight's Castle, in which four children build a city out of books, populate it with figurines they've named after the various characters and then magically interact with them, letting slip various spoilers about the action of the book as they do, which causes things to spiral in very different directions. (One part of Knight's Castle that's very amusing, in retrospect, is that the two girls both manage to impose their prepared 'ship on the narrative—Wilfred of Ivanhoe/Rebecca of York, which grantedly only “can't work” in the original because Scott is maybe anti-Semitic, and treats Rebecca like the Jewish equivalent of a tragic mulatto—and also to reform Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, Ivanhoe's jerkass woobie of a complicated Templar villain.)
I remember that it took me a long time to read the whole of Ivanhoe, probably because of the jargon, though it's hardly impenetrable to me now. As with books I initially find difficult, I got stuck in one section for quite a while, in this case the Siege of Torquilstone. This is where our three bad Norman knights, De Bois-Guilbert, De Bracy and Front-de-Boeuf, have managed to kidnap two parties of travellers and taken them to said castle, there to work their evil will on them. One party includes rich Jewish moneylender Isaac of York, who they intend to torture and ransom, plus his hottie doctor-in-all-but-title daughter Rebecca and disgraced Saxon crusader Ivanhoe, who has recently managed to defeat all three knight in tournament combat (while undercover as “the Unknown Knight”) but also been wounded, and thus spends most of his time being Mister Hurt-Comfort himself. Ivanhoe was disinherited for swearing loyalty to Richard the Lionheart, so the knights know he may know where Richard—recently ransomed himself, after being imprisoned through his brother Prince John's treachery—may be hiding out, also in disguise (tip-off: It's in Sherwood Forest, with outlaw friends), and intend to curry favour with Prince John by getting this information for him.
The other party includes Ivanhoe's estranged father Cedric the Saxon, who's also rich and would fetch a good ransom, plus Cedric's ward Rowena, who's descended from Saxon kings. Cedric and Ivanhoe fell out not only over the whole loyalty-to-the-Norman-king thing but also because Ivanhoe is in love with Rowena, who Cedric wants to marry to another pureblood Saxon named Aethelstane to give him a prospective shot at the crown. De Bracy saw Rowena at the tournament, thought she was a stone fox, and decided to abduct and marry her: Money and lady problems solved, in one fell swoop! So he's “making love” to Rowena, constantly threatening to hurt Ivanhoe (who she knows was with Isaac's party) if she doesn't give in.
Meanwhile, De Bois-Guilbert has fallen hard for Rebecca, who's like: “Later for you, sheygetz!” Sir Brian is described as handsome, proud and scary, a warrior of infinite potential but prone to almost manic-depressive episodes; somebody describes him as being like Greek fire, just as like to burn friend as to burn foe. As a Templar, he isn't supposed to fall for anybody, and as a crusader, he sure isn't supposed to fall for an Infidel. But his affections for Rebecca, lust-based as they start out, lead him into increasingly selfish/selfless places—he's willing to break his oaths for her, to rescue her, Isaac and even Ivanhoe, but always with the sting of extortion in the tail: “You are the price, Rebecca,” as the George Sanders version so magnificiently puts it, in the 1952 film. There's this amazing moment on the battlements where she's willing to step off the castle wall right in fromt of him and he's just like: “And a second after you do that, I'm going to go downstairs and cut out Ivanhoe's heart.” Stalemate. And it's not like Rebecca isn't impressed; you definitely get the idea that she, too, is tweaked by his awful devotion, the intensity of his passion, which serves to remind her of the impossibility of her love for Ivanhoe. But this is the classic scenario in which two people, however attracted, with find themselves at permanent loggerheads due to a clash of moral standards and mutual codes of honour. It's angst central.
Long story short, when Torquilstone falls, Sir Brian takes the opportunity to grab Rebecca on the way out and rides to the nearest Temple keep, where he expects to find an old friend in charge who'll be down with him resigning and running off to get married. Unfortunately, the head of the Order in Britain is also there, and decides that Rebecca must be a Jewish witch who's laid a spell on his most promising initiate. There's a rigged inquiry, Rebecca demands trial by combat, and Sir Brian is forced to fight against whoever shows up to prevent her being burnt. Naturally, that's Ivanhoe, still wounded and stuff. In the movies, Sir Brian usually basically throws the fight in order to prove his devotion was real to Rebecca, and also so he won't have to live without her; in the book he's defeated but Ivanhoe grants him mercy, after which he dies anyway of a stress-related paroxysm, “the victim of his own conflicting passions”. (Other people who've played Sir Brian include Sam Neill in the 1980s miniseries, and Ciaran Hinds in the 1990s; Rebecca, OTOH, has been played by Olivia Hussey, Susan Lynch and—I kid you not—Elizabeth Taylor, which basically reads like: “Way to stack the deck, there, Hollywood.”)
So yeah. Given that my most enduring 'ships have usually been antagonistic in one way or another, often with mutual attraction but extreme power disparity, I think you can see where this is going/comes from. Though usually not het, of course, which is a whole other kettle of fish entirely...and the most recent iteration of this, in my own work, is certainly visibly lurking in the very back of “Trap-Weed”, thus sparking off my current Peter Cushing obsession, amongst other things. Because the other fallout is that I do like difficult people, something that translates into my mad scientist/magician obsession, as well as my pirate ship fetish. Control vs. out-of-control is a great dynamic, especially if it shifts back and forth not just within the relationship but also within the characters themselves, which is why I love watching the Night Creatures interplay of Extreme Undercover Pirate Action vs. Prissy Parson Wonder-Troll Powers Activate! It's like they took all the best and worst qualities of a “typical” Cushing character and stuck them together.
(Two difficult people together is the real bomb, though. Obviously.;))
Speaking of which, re World Fantasy Con: The good part is that because I'm already in Toronto, I don't have to worry over whether or not I'm going to be able to get myself up to the hotel(s) in Richmond Hill in time to do my part. My schedule includes One panel (Gothic Fantasy Noir at 1:00 PM on Friday, with Elizabeth Hand, Nicholas Kaufman, Dana Cameron and Rhiannon Held, moderated by Elwyn Cotman), one reading (12:00 noon on Saturday) and a host of parties, including being at the CZP table during the Awards ceremony. I'm very much looking forward to all of it, but though the weather here isn't even vaguely as brutal as it is in the direct path of Hurricane Sandy, it's still dark and wet enough to disrupt my sinuses, make me ache all over and keep me fairly consistently exhausted. I also have the usual roster of crazy crap immediately before and after, including Hallowe'en, which I don't know what the hell we're going to do for. Dress Cal up and watch The Nightmare Before Christmas, maybe.
Over the weekend, I found myself thinking about how a lot of my bulletproof kinks could probably be traced back to Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, which my Dad gave me an illustrated and annotated version of around the same time I'd been reading Edward Eager's Knight's Castle, in which four children build a city out of books, populate it with figurines they've named after the various characters and then magically interact with them, letting slip various spoilers about the action of the book as they do, which causes things to spiral in very different directions. (One part of Knight's Castle that's very amusing, in retrospect, is that the two girls both manage to impose their prepared 'ship on the narrative—Wilfred of Ivanhoe/Rebecca of York, which grantedly only “can't work” in the original because Scott is maybe anti-Semitic, and treats Rebecca like the Jewish equivalent of a tragic mulatto—and also to reform Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, Ivanhoe's jerkass woobie of a complicated Templar villain.)
I remember that it took me a long time to read the whole of Ivanhoe, probably because of the jargon, though it's hardly impenetrable to me now. As with books I initially find difficult, I got stuck in one section for quite a while, in this case the Siege of Torquilstone. This is where our three bad Norman knights, De Bois-Guilbert, De Bracy and Front-de-Boeuf, have managed to kidnap two parties of travellers and taken them to said castle, there to work their evil will on them. One party includes rich Jewish moneylender Isaac of York, who they intend to torture and ransom, plus his hottie doctor-in-all-but-title daughter Rebecca and disgraced Saxon crusader Ivanhoe, who has recently managed to defeat all three knight in tournament combat (while undercover as “the Unknown Knight”) but also been wounded, and thus spends most of his time being Mister Hurt-Comfort himself. Ivanhoe was disinherited for swearing loyalty to Richard the Lionheart, so the knights know he may know where Richard—recently ransomed himself, after being imprisoned through his brother Prince John's treachery—may be hiding out, also in disguise (tip-off: It's in Sherwood Forest, with outlaw friends), and intend to curry favour with Prince John by getting this information for him.
The other party includes Ivanhoe's estranged father Cedric the Saxon, who's also rich and would fetch a good ransom, plus Cedric's ward Rowena, who's descended from Saxon kings. Cedric and Ivanhoe fell out not only over the whole loyalty-to-the-Norman-king thing but also because Ivanhoe is in love with Rowena, who Cedric wants to marry to another pureblood Saxon named Aethelstane to give him a prospective shot at the crown. De Bracy saw Rowena at the tournament, thought she was a stone fox, and decided to abduct and marry her: Money and lady problems solved, in one fell swoop! So he's “making love” to Rowena, constantly threatening to hurt Ivanhoe (who she knows was with Isaac's party) if she doesn't give in.
Meanwhile, De Bois-Guilbert has fallen hard for Rebecca, who's like: “Later for you, sheygetz!” Sir Brian is described as handsome, proud and scary, a warrior of infinite potential but prone to almost manic-depressive episodes; somebody describes him as being like Greek fire, just as like to burn friend as to burn foe. As a Templar, he isn't supposed to fall for anybody, and as a crusader, he sure isn't supposed to fall for an Infidel. But his affections for Rebecca, lust-based as they start out, lead him into increasingly selfish/selfless places—he's willing to break his oaths for her, to rescue her, Isaac and even Ivanhoe, but always with the sting of extortion in the tail: “You are the price, Rebecca,” as the George Sanders version so magnificiently puts it, in the 1952 film. There's this amazing moment on the battlements where she's willing to step off the castle wall right in fromt of him and he's just like: “And a second after you do that, I'm going to go downstairs and cut out Ivanhoe's heart.” Stalemate. And it's not like Rebecca isn't impressed; you definitely get the idea that she, too, is tweaked by his awful devotion, the intensity of his passion, which serves to remind her of the impossibility of her love for Ivanhoe. But this is the classic scenario in which two people, however attracted, with find themselves at permanent loggerheads due to a clash of moral standards and mutual codes of honour. It's angst central.
Long story short, when Torquilstone falls, Sir Brian takes the opportunity to grab Rebecca on the way out and rides to the nearest Temple keep, where he expects to find an old friend in charge who'll be down with him resigning and running off to get married. Unfortunately, the head of the Order in Britain is also there, and decides that Rebecca must be a Jewish witch who's laid a spell on his most promising initiate. There's a rigged inquiry, Rebecca demands trial by combat, and Sir Brian is forced to fight against whoever shows up to prevent her being burnt. Naturally, that's Ivanhoe, still wounded and stuff. In the movies, Sir Brian usually basically throws the fight in order to prove his devotion was real to Rebecca, and also so he won't have to live without her; in the book he's defeated but Ivanhoe grants him mercy, after which he dies anyway of a stress-related paroxysm, “the victim of his own conflicting passions”. (Other people who've played Sir Brian include Sam Neill in the 1980s miniseries, and Ciaran Hinds in the 1990s; Rebecca, OTOH, has been played by Olivia Hussey, Susan Lynch and—I kid you not—Elizabeth Taylor, which basically reads like: “Way to stack the deck, there, Hollywood.”)
So yeah. Given that my most enduring 'ships have usually been antagonistic in one way or another, often with mutual attraction but extreme power disparity, I think you can see where this is going/comes from. Though usually not het, of course, which is a whole other kettle of fish entirely...and the most recent iteration of this, in my own work, is certainly visibly lurking in the very back of “Trap-Weed”, thus sparking off my current Peter Cushing obsession, amongst other things. Because the other fallout is that I do like difficult people, something that translates into my mad scientist/magician obsession, as well as my pirate ship fetish. Control vs. out-of-control is a great dynamic, especially if it shifts back and forth not just within the relationship but also within the characters themselves, which is why I love watching the Night Creatures interplay of Extreme Undercover Pirate Action vs. Prissy Parson Wonder-Troll Powers Activate! It's like they took all the best and worst qualities of a “typical” Cushing character and stuck them together.
(Two difficult people together is the real bomb, though. Obviously.;))
