bunch of very miscelleanous stuff

[salinea]

I had a long week end. 1st of May is Labour Day and a Holiday in France, and my work had given us the Monday free to make a "bridge" (not a free, free day, it's a free day among a specific number of free day we're supposed to have anyway); and I'm depressed because I didn't manage to do anything much during this time.

I went to the movie theater, though. We went to see "Life of Others" which was really, really good. Though I found it was slightly self-indulgent in parts, and I was a little bit uneasy about the thing about women, but overall a great movie.

By the way, the Earthsea movie was just as bad as expected. I didn't hate watching it as much as I should have because I read the books so long ago I was half remembering throughout without being able to compare, and because I love watching animation even when it's subpar, but it was really not that great.

And Sunday, I missed out Bog's game because I was trapped at a friend's house by a thunderstorm, but we finished watching all of Slayers : Next, which was great. (I'm in Xelloss withdrawal as I speak ^^)

While looking for Slayers fic to remedy to my withdrawal, funnily enough, I found a Snupin fic by amanuensis1 (of all people), and an mpreg fic at that, and I loved it, and I'm not a big mpreg lover.
Here it is : Random drabble
Read it and then don't kill me.

And I tried writing, but I don't think I managed to write more than two lines in one specific fic. No very much inspired.
I've been looking at all files of half-finished fics too. It's amazing the number of started-never-finished fics I have out there. (well not amazing, I s'ppose, but given how ot prolific I am...). I even found a Kotori fic that looked finished, and a Salazar/Godric preslash fic. And lots of other stuff I never finished... it's a bit depressing.

I didn't even manage to clean a bit. My sink is getting so dirty molds have civilizations building skyscrappers in it. I shall not mention my bathroom.

Otherwise I've been reading The Princess Bride. Wached the movies many times, but had never read the book before. It's pretty good. I like... how he talks about the way we look back at stories from our childhood. How they become mythical, you know. Filled with some sort of glamour and meaningfulness, but then if you look back at them later on, they're often not that much (or they are, sometimes, but you have to squint a little bit ^^) I've got books like that, of course. Well I had the Last Unicorn, except not the book, the movie, except not even that. I had a postcard of the movie, with the castle and the redbull and the unicorn and the big wave with little tiny unicorns on it. It belonged to m sister. I don't know - don't remember - if I actually watched the movie when I was little, but probably not. Even though I was obsessed with that postcard, with the story I wove from it. I was drawing unicorns everywhere (i know, not that's outstanding from a little girl), and to this day I feel this is part of the reason why I got into fantasy, science fiction, and mythology, and everything (it was much later when I was a teenager that I actually watched the Last Unicorn and realized I hadn't dreamed the whole thing! before nobody else had even heard of it, and TLU? doesn't even need squinting). There's also all these cartoons I used to watch younger (we ha some real good cartoons in the 80's in France, mostly Japanese and a couple of Franco-Japanese ones), stuff like the Mysterious Golden Cities, and Ulysse 31 (space opera + greek mythology, two great tastes that go well together), and Les Mondes Engloutis, and Cobra (not the one from GI Joe), and many others. Loved these stuff, growing up.
What was your own mythic story when you were growing up? The one that still fills you with nostalgia?

It also got me thinking (okay, this is going very very far from The Princess Bride), about one trope I've always loved, the one about the relationship between a young kid and an ambiguous adult figure, one who's half a mentor or a protector, and half an ennemy. You get that in the Mysterious Golden Cities, with Mendoza (who's one of the most kick ass ambiguous character from a children's cartoon ♥) and Esteban, and you got that in that Japanese cartoon version of Treasure Island (I don't remember if it was as strong in the book) with Long John Silver and Jim. And I was wondering how it related with the Snape/Harry ship. Because it's not relationships I particulary wish to sexualize, generally speaking, but I do find them pariculary fascinating, and I remember really loving them as a kid. I wonder, is it at least a little bit of a trope, generally speaking? Does it play a role about why I like Snarry (when I do like it)? Anyone has any imput about these kinds of relationships (wether sexualized or not)? (ASOIAF gets that in a way, with Arya and her various unsavory protectors : Jaqen H'Gar and Sandor Clegane, and Yoren a little bit. Arya really got a "boy's story", I think, I love that about her).

Anyway, to go back to the Princess Bride, I loved how the book played - even more than the movie - with the way we interprete things that we read. There's something very fanficcy about it. Take the good parts, and write around the missing ones, y'know. Except of course the aesthetics are very different.

There were some stuff I didn't like in the book, but they were mostly the stuff I didn't like in the movie, except in a way even more disturbing in reading them. You know, Buttercup's general uselessness. Part of the parody, but still get me meh. Did love the additionnal background about most characters though.

Oh, and, last Changelings : the Lost soon to be released cover. I'm so excited!

Comments

[c-mantix.livejournal.com]

I think this great sentence:

My sink is getting so dirty molds have civilizations building skyscrappers in it.

counts toward your fiction tally:)

And ITA that The Princess Bride has an aura of fanfic about it. There's a self-consciousness about the story within a story that is very well handled.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

lol three fictionnal sentences then (I've just Godzilla-ed the molds' civilization - may they rest in peace)

ITA? I don't know that as an acronyme, what dos it mean?

There's a self-consciousness about the story within a story that is very well handled.
Yes, totally! I felt that it commented how we read stories (and remember them, and pass them back to others ^^) in a fascinating way.

[c-mantix.livejournal.com]

Godzilla vs the Mold Monsters?! :)

ITA = I totally agree. It's one of the 'good' acronyms. Hee!

[quietliban.livejournal.com]

What was your own mythic story when you were growing up? The one that still fills you with nostalgia?

I guess for me the things that have really influenced me that way, that seemed like half formed dreams in my head even though I know I've read them, or seen them are things like The Chronicles of Narnia and Enid Blyton's The Faraway Tree.

I watched the BBC adaption of Narnia before I even knew there was a book (but wasn't suprised when I found out that it was an adaption like some kids have been with the recent movie adaption. ::shakes head::) and I only read the books when I was about ten. But seeing the BBC adaption is just I don't know...it's a story that's kind of always there in the back of my head. The Faraway Tree Series less so, but they were my favorite books when I was a kid and I know that I really, really, wanted to have a tree I could climb up and go into a different world (not that some of them weren't scary).

Other stories are ones like The Hobbit and the Edgar Allan Poe story about the cat that my dad read to me as a kid (I still don't know why he read me Poe and I sort of wish he hadn't) are also always sort of in the back of my head.

[generalblossom.livejournal.com]

My mythic story, well, this is going to be sound very predictable, was The lord of the Rings. For me it was unbelievable to get to university and meet people who had ever heard of it, or even read it. I was 11 when i found it, local library, a copy of the first local edition ( early 80s I think), very boring cover, from a literary imprint with some philosophical blurbs. I make it past the prologues on a rainy sunday just because I had read everything else I had brought from the library ( and everything else in the house) and kaboom,a whole universe, and for years it was like it was all mine and Mr Tolkien´s because nobody i knew had heard of it. It sort of sucked before the internets, but to have it all for my own for a few years was not bad exactly...