kali

It's no secret to anyone who's talked to me for more than ten minutes about books, but just in case there's anyone of you to whom that doesn't apply, in my opinion Pride and Prejudice may be the most perfectly structured novel ever written. I think it is shocking in its sheer, staggering brilliance. And snark.

The P&P industry's taken a new turn though... and I gotta say, I can't wait!

Because you know what? Zombies make everything better!!

No joke: this is Mr. Darcy & Elizabeth... battle the undead!

And get a load of this: just green-lit, Pride and Predator: i.e. P&P meets TORCHWOOD.

Who's coming with me when this shit hits the screen???

Also found on the intertubes today: thoughts on polygamy from MsNBC. What do y'all make of that?

...a sad commentary on the current state of my brain, forsooth. But thank goodness for kayliemalinza who kept me in the loop!

I will say that getting an email which begins:

Fellow Doctor Who scholars,

We have a book deal.

Cambridge Scholars Publishing has accepted my proposal and is in the process of generating and mailing a book contract. So — if you’ve been putting off reworking that conference manuscript, now is the time.

is pretty squeeful. Like. YAY. =D

I've heard mixed things about Cambridge Scholars Press; founded by some scholars at Cambridge, some seem to think it has semi-vanity press associations because of its name; but others seem to think it's simply a young press, trying hard to establish itself in the humanities. But... I checked out their website, and they seem respectable.

Anyway. This means I have to expand that paper, yo. *laughs* I'll just add it to the list! At this rate, I'll sleep when I'm dead.

YAY!

ETA: The abstract for the paper is here, f-locked, if you're interested. The paper's called When Worlds Continue: The Doctor's Adventures in Fandom and Metatextuality.

Wow. Step away from the internets to go see a play... and BOOM. It's all runes and nazis and what??? Yeah. I'll try not to be away so long next time. =D

In other news, the play: Architecting by The TEAM. faris_nallaneen and I deeply enjoyed it, with one caveat. First of all, it was crazy in a worlds-collide-y sort of way. I read & post about race and fiction, and then go to see a play... about (among other things) race and fiction. And America and fiction, which in some ways, is the same thing. But mainly it was about so many of the questions I (and rm, which is one of the reasons we write together) have; the obsessions that are always somehow at the heart of my fictional explorations. How one can be enchanted and revolted by something at the same time. The task of an author is to believe in contradictory facts, all of which are true. Being in love with a society that is both beautiful and wrong, and lost the war, and grieving for that loss anyway. Loving something at its end rather than at the beginning -- the sunset, instead of the sunrise, autumn rather than spring. (I'm never up early enough to see the sunrise anyway, and I love the fall. All metaphors intentional.) Burning things down in a glorious conflagration rather than having them stolen from you in increments of lost dignity and fake-ness.

"Do you miss your [dead] father?" the play asks.

"Yes."

"Was he a good man?"

"Yes."

"Would you miss him, even if he wasn't?"

And there is silence.

And so you have the American South - Atlanta, and New Orleans and Arkansas, and all its farce and tragedy and ridiculous splendour, and its chequered past - the Confederacy, and I thought of reading Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, and being enchanted and revolted and then watching Joss Whedon's Firefly, which is like the Confederacy, without that pesky slave issue¹ -- and thinking, oh how nice, but you can't just TAKE THAT PART OUT, can you?

Which brings me to my caveat. It was a play about race and fiction and the American South. And I was engaged and interested and admiring except THERE WERE NO BLACK ACTORS. Not one. There was a black character though, and he was played by a white guy.

Um, what??? It was like a visual aid to deepad's post, about voices being appropriated and removed entirely from the discourse. I was so distracted by it, and really fucking disturbed.

We had several theories for why this might be the case:

1) (in my opinion the most disturbing) They think that white is race-neutral, and so thought casting poc's as any of the parts would distract from the language-specific discussion of race.
2) (in E's opinion the most disturbing) They had no intentionality, and just didn't think about it as an issue.
3) None of the TEAM (who collaboratively write and perform their shows) are black, so they didn't think it would be troubling. (But it really, really was.)

The sad thing is that aside from this, and the length (it dragged a bit with an inexplicable dance number towards the end), it was stunning. And (especially) for something written collaboratively by performers, its language was complex and erudite and interesting. It ended with this line, which was the subjectline of this post: when spirits give up their ghosts and put on flesh.

And I thought of stories and entrances and imaginary worlds. How we call them to us. How they become real. Even if they're not true.

Then I came home, and discovered that Ricardo Montalban has died. Khaaaaaaan!! That's another shout of my childhood there... and a Mexican playing an Indian who is one of the greatest villains of all time. Those ear bug things! *shivers*

All those worlds. All those stories. Flesh.


¹But with a billion more Invisible Asians. Oh Joss, I love you anyway.

Thank you all for your words of encouragement! I am feeling a bit better, and slightly less like an extremely angsty seventeen. Which is good. I don't know how teenagers make it through adolescence without killing themselves or being killed by others. I appreciate it muchly, and will endeavor to be a little less classic lj-whiny in future - but I make no promises. *grin*

I watched the Children in Need charity thing. First of all, it was pretty budget, wasn't it? I mean just the first two mins of the Christmas special? CHEAP. And also, *sniff* it was sad. Two minutes less of absolutely new Ten material. I really want my Seven Doctors story. Now that would've encouraged me to donate!

At some point soon, I've got to post pictures of the Chicago thing, and magnetgirl's and my incredibly underappreciated halloween costumes. And the regency ball photo essay! I see I have a lot of fiddling with pictures in my near future.

Today I taught "The Last Battle" and Neil Gaiman's "The Problem of Susan." Susan was always my favorite; she had long black hair, as opposed to Lucy's golden curls, she was a wicked shot with a bow, and could swim, and I loved her. "The Last Battle" broke my heart. What do y'all think about the problem of Susan? I don't know why being an outcast from an undesirable redemption filled me with so much woe, but it did. Also, the Stable at the end of the Last Battle? Lewis says it's "bigger on the inside than it is on the outside." faris_nallaneen accuses me of seeing everything with TARDIS colored glasses. Probably true.

If it's wrong, I don't want to be right.

A few days ago I read something - can't quite remember what, as it was a day filled and fueled by procrastination, so this was one in a long line of clicks- which said something like the following: Did there ever exist at any time, any girl for whom Jo was not their favorite character? The reference, which I apologize for mangling and vaguing and ungrammaticalling - went on to suggest that surely any red blooded girl, certainly one who wanted to be a writer, of course wanted to be Jo, and had no time for any of the other girls - housewifely, prim Meg, saintly Beth, and spoilt, vain, petulant Amy.  Naturally Jo, who wanted to be a boy, and was boisterous and adventurous and daring was the one to emulate.

I liked Jo fine, but I didn't want to be her. I liked Amy best. I cheered when Amy and Laurie got together; I thought they made a great couple. And in many ways I thought Amy's story far more tragic than any of the other girls. How terrible to desire greatness, and then graciously resign yourself to your own mediocrity. I thought she was great. Not pretty, perhaps - but none of the girls were really supposed to be, except Meg. Her juno-esque figure, her blonde hair, her blue eyes never made me crave them. But I liked her. I thought she was clever and funny and I adored her method of catching flies with honey, and her sharp tongue, and her aplomb.

It's odd because normally, I never like best the character that the author wants you to. I almost always root for the bad guy. Because if the author is God - and God loves you the most, you'll always be a little more blessed. The book will always give you the benefit of the doubt. That's why they need me, those bad guys. They don't have God on their side, so instead - they get me. I'm a firm believer in toppling the Kingdom of Heaven and forming a republic.

But - for books like Little Women, and Little House on the Prairie (both incidentally based on the authors' real families), this didn't happen. I liked Amy best, and I loved older sister, prissy Mary who always wanted to be reading and sewing, and WHO WENT BLIND and then could do neither (until college, but even then it wasn't the same...). And in both these books, I'm convinced both independent Louisa and adventuresome Laura wanted me to. These writers were writing about sisters whom they adored. Surely they wanted us to love and know them as they did. If they hadn't; if they gave their own fictional counterparts the god-dispensed "benefit of the doubt" that other, completely fictional characters often get, the books would have read like the worst kind of Mary Sue fic! But they don't.

So why are readers who happily go along with the author's judgement in other cases, so unwilling to do so [and even unwilling to believe that anyone else might do so] here? The Kingdom may have fallen, but Cromwell's already formed his parliamentary dictatorship. You're supposed to like the author-projection best, say generations of readers! Because? Well...They are tomboyish and devil-may-care! They have agency! They are rapscallions!

It reminds me of nothing more than the whole school of feminism which states that women have to be as man-like as possible in order to be treated equally, and any woman who does not follow this law should be ejected from the sisterhood. Or the kind of queer community that thinks there's not room in one lesbian relationship for two femmes - 'cause we all know the only way to do it, is to reproduce heteronormative norms as closely as possible. Or the kind of s/m folks who look down on submissives because they think they are weak (and not in a fun way).

There's nothing wrong with being a tomboy. I was never one, but I knew them, and thought they they were fun, and admired them (and probably thought they were hot.) I wasn't particularly successful at being a girly-girl either (too lazy and uninformed and self loathing).

But I reject utterly the idea that you have to be one to be worthwhile.

Amy/Laurie OTP!!!

So, it's been a while...

But I just had to post tonight. hofnarr, magnetgirl, farisnallaneen and I went to the Neil Gaiman event at FIT - he was being interviewed by John Hodgman from the Daily Show...and it was seriously awesome. Even John Hodgman, who is (and was this evening) incredibly hilarious, dropped his persona for quite a while, and instead just seemed touched and moved and fannishly awestruck like the rest of us. Despite the preponderence of some of the scary!fans [which included the remnants of one of the bands at my high school - called Lack Thereof, and rightfully so!], it was really lovely. Like really lovely. I'm not usually fangirly about real people - more about fictional ones. But with a writer, especially one that I've been following for so long - it feels different. Personal. Somehow those dimly lit 3 o'clocks of the morning filled with the Endless, the tears at The Kindly Ones and the Wake; enspelled by Neverwhere, being enchanted by Stardust and finding for the first time, the magic of America in American Gods, the way his novels always seemed to magically mirror shifts in my own personal aesthetics; his language, and the stories, above all the stories - without a doubt, I think, he is the writer I would most like to be like, beautiful and witty and fey all at the same time.

I know him, not in the way of a friend or a lover or a real person, but in the way that stories meet and collide in some Elsewhere, I know him. And I think he knows me too. And maybe you as well, if you've read the stories, and they mean something to you. I always thought he must understand, and then I read Anansi Boys and I knew for sure - because the dedication reads: "You know how it is, you pick up a book, flip to the dedication, and find that, once again, the author has dedicated a book to someone else and not to you. Not this time. Because we haven't yet met/have only a glancing accquaintance/are just crazy about each other/haven't seen each other in much too long/ are in some way related/ will never meet, but will, I trust, despite that, always think fondly of each other...This one's for you. With you know what, and you probably know why."

Cheap, they might say. But they wouldn't have been there, that day, where he was, and I was, and Edie was [and about 1000 other fans - he didn't leave that day till he talked to every one.] That day, the very last time I was in the World Trade Center - the first time I met him, if you can call it that. I remember going up to meet him, and seriously thinking my heart might explode, it was pounding so hard. Edie was with me, and held my hand, and I did not burst. But I got up there and handed him the little post-it with my name on it, and he looked at it, and said, "Kali? I put you into American Gods," and smiled. And I gibbered, and choked out something maudlin, about his stories and how they got me through nights that I thought would never end, and he smiled again and said they did the same for him.

I got a copy of Neverwhere signed for Daniel too, I remember - and then much later, last summer in fact, Daniel gave me the best present ever - from his second road odyssey - a ticket from the House on the Rock, signed to me by Neil. Those who call that dedication a stunt, wouldn't have been there on that day either, when Daniel got that ticket signed, and told him it was for me, and re-told him the story about that day in the WTC Borders, and he stopped, and added three kisses to the bottom of his signature for me. I'm looking at it now, and it still makes me shiver.

And they wouldn't have been there today either, when he changed my opinion about his poetry, which I used to think was quite terrible, but today was actually charmed by, and when he signed the copy of Fragile Things that Daniel and I bought together to both of us, and smiled when I told him we'd been sending signed things of his across the country for years, and now finally we could get one signed together in the same place. And he stopped signing, and took my hand and did not let go for several incredibly long moments when I said that I had nothing clever on offer, so all I could say was thank you. And we looked in the book, and it had a little message - "Fragile wishes" [everyone else just got butterflies].

And hey, when asked the inevitable question about fanfiction, he said, go thou, and write with my blessing - but he had to say that his mind was not meant to encompass such things as the RPS fic about him and Terry Pratchett. He suggested instead that we "go back to making the nice boys in Harry Potter mate," to which I say, thank you, Neil. And I will.

In a nutshell:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007459.html#121781

link gacked from rm