Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Progress on This Blessed Plot

Today I made the first update to my original story (We'll call it a co-authored original story, since it's not really my idea) in several months and made Simon (the co-author) very happy. You can make me happy by reading and reviewing it here, at fictionpress:

This Blessed Plot -- A MechKnight Story

To try and refocus my mind after so many months of non-work on this project, a few nights ago I started writing a little woodle to regain a sense of my characters. I wrote this into the future of The Lady's Guardian and This Blessed Plot, so it'll probably only make sense to me and Simon, but I'm curious what the rest of you will think of it. It's called Tea and Solace.

Jane loved Japan. There was always something serene about the place she had spent so much of her adolescence, the place that had been home when home had not wanted her. Years of riotous tumult and lost wars had taught the Japanese two things – how to cultivate patience and peace. Every imperial islander seemed to have both in spades.

It was an island outside the world. Across the sea, the People’s Socialist Republics of Asia created sprawling factories out of entire villages, employing faceless masses of people making everything from children’s toys to parts for cheap, readymade ‘mechs. The pieces were like their producers, stamped out of the same unchanging molds by the billions. In Japan they still valued the hands of the artificer and the artisan, taking years to craft the perfect blade. Jane had two such blades over her mantle at home, unused, gifts at her first leavetaking from Japan many years ago. They had never come out of their sheaths, reminders of a simpler time she wished she could have seen. She was not a knight as those knights were – she had different weapons and a different, equally deadly precision. But they valued the old ways in Japan, and she had learned to use blades like that. She had honed her body into a weapon, her teachers making her learn the limits of her fleshy shell before they would let her near a mech.

And all that training was nearly wasted when Father made me come home to fight in the Balkans, Jane mused. Because Harry and Vincent had the bad sense to die and leave me to pick up their part in the Balkans. And I didn’t understand it all, young as I was.

There were many wars she didn’t understand, even some of the ones she fought in now. This business with Vlad and Monica, the bad blood between the Pallavincini and the Hunyadi: that she understood, even if she didn’t want to. That was why she was leaving Japan so soon, even though she had only been there a matter of weeks. She had come back to her old teachers and her old school after Vlad and Byrghir had rescued her from Count Rudolf. She had needed time to rest, trying to run away from the world and her injuries. But now it was time to settle debts. She owed Vlad this.

In her luggage, stowed somewhere beneath the decks of the hulking transport ship, there was a plain wooden box, tucked lovingly inside one of her chests. Nesting inside that box like precious eggs were two identical celadon cups, glazed the traditional, translucent ephemeral blue. Jane had called them skyware when she had first seen them as a child, though she knew they had a different name. There were also seven canisters of finely powdered tea leaves, a whisk, ladle, kettle and siphon, as well as several bundles of charcoal.

It was more than just a tea set – it was tradition, it was grace beyond time. It was peace.

She was bringing it with her to share with Monica, during the long, cold days of Romanian winter when Vlad was away. The tea ceremony needed no words – and Jane knew (because she was in that place as well) that where Monica was, there were no words. Jane had been caught before falling down the well; Vlad’s message had indicated to her that Monica had drowned and would never swim again.

Jane’s body twinged at the thought of that kind of violation, so far removed from what she herself had suffered. It went beyond the physical into the emotional, the psychological – yes, even the religious. And it was partially her fault.

Who but God alone knows what our ends may be? Something inside her asked. He placed mountains in front of us to test our faith, and enemies behind us to test our courage. To turn aside is to turn away from him.

She could offer no words of consolation to her friend’s wife, but she could bring her own peace, and company. It was all God had given her, and it was all she could give. And they would share tea, and solace, and hopefully, the hurts would heal.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Edith Wharton

Today, my Quote of the Day email informs me, is Edith Wharton's birthday. For those of you not familiar with the Pulitzer Prize winning authoress, Edith Newbold Wharton, nee Jones, was born on January 24th, 1862 and came into her life and her writing at the turn of the century. She saw the Old New York give way to the New, and the nineteenth century bow out to the twentieth as World War One came, and went, leaving a bloody swath and a irraprable impact on world politics. Wharton wrote several novels and short stories, including a manual on interior decoration that continued to guide American fashion for many years as well as Ethan Frome, The Age of Innocence, and the House of Mirth.

The Age of Innocence holds a special place in my revered literary canon as one of the only books I've started reading after I saw the movie, and one of the only books I thoroughly enjoyed after watching the movie. Martin Scorsese is to be commended -- his film brilliantly realized what I think is some of the greatest prose writing ever, in some places even going so far as to narrate passages straight from the novel, as if he were afraid it would loose something in visual translation. I would give anything to be able to fully realize a place in prose the way Wharton does.





Mrs. Beaufort, then, had as usual appeared in her box just before the Jewel Song; and when, again as usual, she rose at the end of the third act, drew her opera cloak about her lovely shoulders, and disappeared, New York knew that meant that half an hour later the ball would begin.

The Beaufort house was one that New Yorkers were proud to show to foreigners, especially on the night of the annual ball. The Beauforts had been among the first people in New York to own their own red velvet carpet and have it rolled down the steps by their own footmen, under their own awning, instead of hiring it with the supper and the ball-room chairs. They had also inaugurated the custom of letting the ladies take their cloaks off in the hall, instead of shuffling up to the hostess's bedroom and recurling their hair with the aid of the gas-burner; Beaufort was understood to have said that he supposed all his wife's friends had maids who saw to it that they were properly coiffees when they left home.

Then the house had been boldly planned with a ball-room, so that, instead of squeezing through a narrow passage to get to it (as at the Chiverses') one marched solemnly down a vista of enfiladed drawing- rooms (the sea-green, the crimson and the bouton d'or), seeing from afar the many-candled lustres reflected in the polished parquetry, and beyond that the depths of a conservatory where camellias and tree-ferns arched their costly foliage over seats of black and gold bamboo.

Newland Archer, as became a young man of his position, strolled in somewhat late. He had left his overcoat with the silk-stockinged footmen (the stockings were one of Beaufort's few fatuities), had dawdled a while in the library hung with Spanish leather and furnished with Buhl and malachite, where a few men were chatting and putting on their dancing-gloves, and had finally joined the line of guests whom Mrs. Beaufort was receiving on the threshold of the crimson drawing-room...

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Everything Old is New Again

In case you were wondering, the title of this post is the theme of this semester's reading material. Last semester I realized I was very into the 'women's studies' area of historical exploration, and I decided I needed a focused vein of inquiry in my free reading books. I wanted to re-read all of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey Maturin Series (armed with my two news books from paperbackswap, Men of War: Life in Nelson's Navy by P O'B himself, and Harbors and High Seas: An Atlas and Geographical Guide to the Complete Aubrey-Maturin Novels of Patrick O'Brian. (I'm waiting for a copy of this book to show up on my Wish List Request Filled queue any day now -- When I have that, my P O'B experience will be complete. Plus I'll be able to make a dish called The Last of the True French Short Bastards. I love historical cookbooks.)

So that's this semester's theme: Everything Old is New Again. I'm reading many books I've already read before, many books I haven't, but are on historical things -- I'm in the middle of Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park's Codebreaking Computers and Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, which as we speak is being made into a movie.

Photobucket Photobucket



Yeah, I'm excited, too. Crime, Tommy guns, the 1930s, and Christian Bale. But I digress.

So I took this "What Kind of Reader are You?" Quiz (as seen and promoted on Jane Austen Today, which I subscribe to.) and this is what I got:


What Kind of Reader Are You?
Your Result: Book Snob

You like to think you're one of the literati, but actually you're just a snob who can read. You read mostly for the social credit you can get out of it.

Literate Good Citizen
Dedicated Reader
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm
Fad Reader
Non-Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

I have to say, I'm a little...leery of this result. I don't think I read for social credit (although, granted, being the person at parties who always has random things to say is a social function, albeit not a very loved one.) But I want to know now -- Who gets social credit for reading?

Saturday, January 17, 2009

A very Shakespeare Themed day

Yesterday was a very Shakespeare themed day. Which isn't surprising, considering I started my Shakespeare class this semester and so far it rocks. We're reading Shakespeare's later plays, beginning with Twelfth Night (which is my favorite Shakespearean Comedy ever) and yesterday I decided I wanted to watch the movie. Not knowing if there was one, I looked on YouTube first...and found the whole version of the 1996 version with Toby Smith as Duke Orsino, Helen Bonham Carter as Countess Olivia, Imogen Stubbs as Viola/Cesario, ben Kingsley as Feste and Imelda Staunton as Maria. Let me tell you, Shakespeare is awesome on his own, but put together a bunch of actors who really know how to do what they do, set the play in this Victorian-esque background, and then let what you will happen, it becomes a beautiful, beautiful thing.

After I finished my movie, I went to dinner, then read a book on the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and how it could be considered a colonial extension of Europe (this was an interesting direction for me to read in because I have Post-Colonial Lit this semester too) and after that went to go find the posse and watch a movie. We ended up watching Shakespeare in Love (another excellent film) which, as many learned men know, has in it a lot of references to Twelfth Night and, again, a lot of actors who know very well what they are about.

After that we watched Twilight, which, after following so much Shakespeare, fell farther and flatter on its face than it probably would have done if we had watched something a little less awesome beforehand. We talked through the whole movie and related why it was terrible and what was wrong with the characters (We have a theory now that Edward should be called nothing but Eddy C for the sake of his mind-altering coolness, and all were agreed that Bella is a Mary Sue.) and it was fun.

But I was still thinking alot about Shakespeare when I went to bed, including one of the discussion questions our professor is having us ruminate on, the idea of whether Cesario is a real person or not. If you haven't read Twelfth Night, here's a little summary for you: A pair of twins, brother and sister, are separated during a storm. One of them, Viola, washes up on a beach in a foriegn country. She dresses like a man to keep her options open and her safety in check, goes to serve the local duke, and ends up trying to woo the woman he's in love with for him. She falls in love with Viola/Cesario instead. Meanwhile, her brother, Sebastian, has also come ashore, and is looking for the Duke to also go into service with him. Sebastian is confused for Viola, vice-versa, and then it all seems to work out at the end. (If you want a more detailed plot summary, try CliffNotes.)

So Olivia falls in love with Cesario. Orsino finds a bosom buddy in Cesario. Sir Andrew and Sir Toby have a bone to pick with Cesario. But Cesario isn't really a person -- he's a constructed identity. I realized after class on Thursday that Cesario sounds a lot like Caesarion (as in Caesarion birth or C-section) and his role in the play bears a lot on that. His birth or creation is forced, just like a c-section is, and it is done out of necessity, when all the other options are given up on.

And it occured to me (because I am self centered, and the chain of events lent itself to it) that Cesario and Audemande have something in common. Neither one of them becomes who they are, essentially, until they are removed to this far, foriegn place. Cesario offers himself to the duke as a performer because he doesn't have any other talents. Audemande culitvates her skill at telling stories so she becomes useful to Baldwin and Sybilla. If Viola had stayed in Messaline, she never would have married Orsino. If Aude had stayed in Poitou, she never would have met and befriended all the people that she does. Both women occupy traditionally male places, as public members of a ruling party's retinue, and both are very close to their soveriegns. Is Audemande a constructed identity, too, then? I say no, because she remains who she is throughout the story. She adapts her manners and her skills to her situation, but she doesn't usurp who she is for the sake of the people who control her life.

That's about where the comparisions end (Spoiler for the end of Song of a Peacebringer -- Aude and Baldwin do NOT get hitched.) but it was still really interesting to me. Here's a play I really enjoy watching and a story I really enjoy writing, and they're remarkably similiar.

So that was my very shakespeare themed day. I hope everyone else's Friday was just as fun and exciting.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Great Minds...

...Often think alike, as the saying goes. And I don't claim to be a great mind most of the time, but when the creator of a hit TV show and I have the same idea, I'll consider myself a great mind for the time being.

From TvGuide.com

Exclusive: Grey's Digs Dirt Star as McArmy's Old Flame

As teased weeks ago in a Mitovich Mega Minute, Grey's Anatomy is going to be shedding light on the shadowy Owen Hunt — by introducing viewers to someone from the Army vet's past.

Playing Owen's ex-lover, TVGuide.com has learned exclusively, will be Laura Allen, whom you either know from A) Dirt, B) The 4400 or C) All My Children. Allen will guest-star in this season's 15th episode, which is shooting this week (and also marks Melissa George's final appearance as Sadie).

Kevin McKidd himself gave me the heads up on this storyline development when I ran into him at Sunday's Golden Globes after-parties. McKidd also hinted that to further explore his character, Hunt's mother or father might be cast later this season.



Okay, I haven't shared much of my new addiction to Grey's with you all on this blog yet, but if you've been following my fanfiction posting, you'll notice that I have written two fics so far, one called The Small Matter of Teaching about Cristina's apparent lack of any teaching chops whatsoever with her interns, and another called All the Befores and Afters about -- guess what? -- Owen's old girlfriend showing up at Seattle Grace. With James Wilson, of all people. Because someone needed to write a Grey's/House crossover and I'm kind of like a crossover guru right now.

So I'm kind of interested to see how this turns out. And to see if my version of Cristina's perception of Owen's previous relationships is true -- "She didn’t look like the sort of woman Cristina imagined Owen dating, but maybe the hospital gown hid that. (In her mind’s eye, Cristina always saw before-Owen dating intense, strong women who climbed mountains and ran marathons for a living, not oncologists who were basically like her except that their line of work involved less stress.)" My Before!Owen girlfriend OC is an oncologist at the University of Chicago who's a pretty chill, awesome type of girl because I think that works with Owen's former adventuresome, adreniline junkie personality. I'm not liking this Laura Allen person in this former girlfriend role because she looks like she's a bit...spiky.

And, for the record, I came up with my idea all on my own. Before this press release, in fact. You can check the dating on my fanfiction if you don't believe me. Now I'm working on expanding the All the Befores and Afters compass to include Owen and Wilson's perspectives on the situation. But it really was my idea. I just hope Shonda Rhimes and the rest of the Grey's writing crew do a good job with their version.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

So I was tagged...?

...by one of my followers, catroux, and now I'm filling this out. *shrug*

4 Things I Did Today:

* Watched "My Boy Jack" based on a poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name
* Made wallpaper based on said movie, avaliable on my deviantart
* Went to the dentist and the library
* Sent out three PaperbackSwap books

4 Things On My To Do List:
* Taxes.
* Study Abroad Application to Galway, Ireland.
* Buy Wellington Boots in traditional, unobtrusive color.
* Go to COD advising office tomorrow for advice on summer courses.


4 Guilty Pleasures:

* Maple Fudge
* Writing smut. *snicker*
* Watching an entire BBC miniseries in one day
* Pro-war poetry from World War One.



4 Random Facts About Me:

* I want to learn Welsh or Gaelic.
* I could probably be categorized as having an Electra complex, as many of the actors I admire are old enough to be my father.
* I enjoy grocery shopping more than I do shopping for clothes.
* If you gave me an old piece of art, I could explain the symbolism in it to you. It's a hobby of mine.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Happy Birthday!

...To Sherlock Holmes, that is. Apparently Sir Arthur Conan Doyle decreed that on this day in 1854, one of the world's most brilliant deductive minds was born. That would make him...154 years old today. And he's still going strong, with two new movies in the works and a world of fans following his every crime-solving move. Not bad for a sesquicentenarian.

So, we have today's quotes, all from the elusive detective himself with a little help from the Quote of the Day emails. I finished reading the first part of the Holmes canon over my stay at my Aunt's house (which was wonderful, thank you for asking) and am happy that it was not so overwhelming to read Doyle that I do not remember some of these quotes.


A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to need, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
- Arthur Conan Doyle, 1858 - 1930

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
- Arthur Conan Doyle, 1858 - 1930

You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.
- Arthur Conan Doyle, 1858 - 1930

The most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859 - 1930, Character of Sherlock Holmes

Yes, I have a turn both for observation and for deduction. The theories which I have expressed there, and which appear to you to be so chimerical are really extremely practical - so practical that I depend upon them for my bread and cheese.
Today's quotes are from the character Sherlock Holmes,
created by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859 - 1930


Sherlock Holmes is a fascinating and endearing character, but equally fascinating and endearing is his sidekick, Dr. John Watson, a man who at the beginning of the series has just come home from Afghanistan and has need of a roommate. He finds one in Sherlock Holmes, and after that, the two become nearly inseparable. Reading "Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories (Vol. One)" over break gave me a new appreciation for these characters and for the spin offs they've spawned.

As I was reading the introduction to the particular compendium I'd chosen, one thing dawned on me -- "Watson is exactly like Wilson!" (James Wilson, Best Friend of Greg House on House MD) Then I remember that Watson is Wilson, and House is Holmes, the first bumbling, inexact, unlucky in love, several times married, and inept beside his brilliant partner while the second is brilliant, capable, removed from the world, elitist, and disdainful of the rest of the human population. But somehow we come to like Holmes and House, and as Loren D. Estleman posits in his introduction to my volume, it's because Watson's ineptitude humanizes Holmes. As his only constant friend (even Holmes' brother Mycroft doesn't get the same treatment or share the same bond) and the narrator to a great majority of his adventures, Holmes isn't quite as bad as all his characterizing adjectives would normally make him seem. (Also, having Watson narrate the chase of crime as it's happening is MUCH easier to read than Holmes recounting it afterwards, as Doyle writes in several stories. Watson's a much better story teller, anyway.)

And Watson has another function besides that of narrator and friend-- to make Holmes look better. By being there to observe a crime scene and make his own observations first, Watson makes Holmes' ridiculously detailed theories seem all the more amazing. If Watson notices that the carpet's been tred on, Holmes will note by how many men, what kind of tobacco they smoked and what size shoes they all wear. Oh, and that one of them recently suffered a wound overseas, probably in India.

I made several wallpapers over break, and one of them was of Doctor Wilson. When I had it as my background, my mother asked me, in an exasperated tone, why I liked Doctor Wilson so much. I replied, before she could give the rest of her customary argument on this one (it is an argument we have had several times -- the perils of letting your mother get hooked on the same TV show) that I liked Wilson because he is the more human of the pair, and easier to like, and becuase he is all of the things I have described him to be, bumbling, inept, specialized in only one thing while House can recite laundry lists of obscure diseases, and because, by his special influence, he makes House look better and helps House solve his cases by letting him talk the whole thing over and making some pithy remark that makes House realize something he didn't think of before. "And yes, Mom, I know that he's a terrible oncologist, but that doesn't take away from his being a fun and interesting character," I finished. My mother works with cancer statistics and patient records in Oncology, so she would know all about great oncologists, and she sort of gave me this fed-up little frown and dropped the subject.

It's a debate we've had several times, and a debate we'll probably have again, but it doesn't change my views on the subject -- Without Watson, there is no one to record Holmes' brilliant exploits and chat with him at the end of a long day chasing criminals. Without Wilson, House is just another crabby doctor pushing around his little gang of Baker Street Irregulars and bullying his patients into telling him what he needs to know. Sidekicks they may be, but important peices of the narrative quilt and necessary additions to the story.

(If you'd like to view one of my House wallpapers, you can do so at my DeviantArt Page, at the link to the side.)