Thinky Friday things of when world's collide...
I should be working - I will be working, any time now. When I've had my shower. This is the trouble with working until one in the morning and getting up late with tired eyes... But - one of the reasons I was working until one in the morning was that last night was book group, and we talked about The Song of Achilles. When I say talked about, we go around and each say what we thought of the book, and then it's over to the table for a pub dinner, all interspersed with much other chat. So on the one hand - waah, I'd like to talk more about the books, and eep I'm no good at that kind of small talk when I don't know people, but on the other hand everyone's nice, and it's friendly, so all good. But last night...
...there was a worlds-almost-collide moment when we were talking about the book, which involves the love affair between Achilles and Patroclus, and one of the members said that she thought it was just amazingly clever that the woman author could write so well about what it would be like for two men to be in love, imagining the feelings and textures and so on - and I bet you can guess what I was thinking about! *g* Oh, I wanted to give her piles upon piles of fic to read - how can she not know that women are not only perfectly capable of that kind of imagining, but are brilliant at it and love doing it?! But that's the thing - you forget that we're (slashers and fandomers) not the common majority, that people don't just ordinarily even know that it's out there, never mind accept, never mind love it... I had a surreptitious look around the table to see where everyone else's eyes were, and I reckon there might be a couple of people who were thinking similar thoughts - but who knows, and I'm not sure I'll be able to broach the idea, or at least not for a good long while when I've got to know them better!
The other worlds-collide-ish moment was when I was reading over coffee this morning. I'm on The Independence of Mary Bennet, which is a Pride and Prejudice sequel by Colleen McCullough that I picked up in the library because I'd been looking for Victorian stories, and remembered liking her books years and years ago. I'm nearly halfway through (don't tell me what happens! *g*) and eep! - d'you know what I realised it reminded me off? Fanfic by Jane! Not that it's at all slash or anything, but I really do feel that McCullough is using her story to teach me what life was like in Victorian England at the time, and when I got to a bit in brackets that read a guinea was worth slightly more than a pound, having twenty-one shillings to it rather than twenty I just had to *headdesk* You can't say that in a fiction book set at the time! What person alive right now, who has been using it all their 38-year-old life, is thinking of how much money they've got and pauses to explain to themselves how the system of currency works?! Such an authorial insertion! That's a very extreme example, but she's been doing things like that all through, and I'm not convinced about the characters at all - they've almost all changed briefly at some point to suddenly become insufferably wise when previously they've just been ordinary, and the heroine is growing in beauty and goodness all the time... She's writing fanfic - and she's writing bad fanfic, and being paid for it, because she's got a name! *grumps* Okay, I'm more amused than grumpy really, but there's a bit of me that *grumps* about how it's okay for some people to write fanfic because it's not being called fanfic because people who write fanfic are odd, and they're "proper authors"...
Anyway - that's my Friday so far, and the sun's shining and I also woke up to some absolutely lovely feedback from someone about my Two stories which just made me smiiiiiiile when I've been thinking for the last week or so that I can't write a thing that's readable, and I'm starting to feel a bit more awake now, so... How're you doing, this fine February morning? *g*
...there was a worlds-almost-collide moment when we were talking about the book, which involves the love affair between Achilles and Patroclus, and one of the members said that she thought it was just amazingly clever that the woman author could write so well about what it would be like for two men to be in love, imagining the feelings and textures and so on - and I bet you can guess what I was thinking about! *g* Oh, I wanted to give her piles upon piles of fic to read - how can she not know that women are not only perfectly capable of that kind of imagining, but are brilliant at it and love doing it?! But that's the thing - you forget that we're (slashers and fandomers) not the common majority, that people don't just ordinarily even know that it's out there, never mind accept, never mind love it... I had a surreptitious look around the table to see where everyone else's eyes were, and I reckon there might be a couple of people who were thinking similar thoughts - but who knows, and I'm not sure I'll be able to broach the idea, or at least not for a good long while when I've got to know them better!
The other worlds-collide-ish moment was when I was reading over coffee this morning. I'm on The Independence of Mary Bennet, which is a Pride and Prejudice sequel by Colleen McCullough that I picked up in the library because I'd been looking for Victorian stories, and remembered liking her books years and years ago. I'm nearly halfway through (don't tell me what happens! *g*) and eep! - d'you know what I realised it reminded me off? Fanfic by Jane! Not that it's at all slash or anything, but I really do feel that McCullough is using her story to teach me what life was like in Victorian England at the time, and when I got to a bit in brackets that read a guinea was worth slightly more than a pound, having twenty-one shillings to it rather than twenty I just had to *headdesk* You can't say that in a fiction book set at the time! What person alive right now, who has been using it all their 38-year-old life, is thinking of how much money they've got and pauses to explain to themselves how the system of currency works?! Such an authorial insertion! That's a very extreme example, but she's been doing things like that all through, and I'm not convinced about the characters at all - they've almost all changed briefly at some point to suddenly become insufferably wise when previously they've just been ordinary, and the heroine is growing in beauty and goodness all the time... She's writing fanfic - and she's writing bad fanfic, and being paid for it, because she's got a name! *grumps* Okay, I'm more amused than grumpy really, but there's a bit of me that *grumps* about how it's okay for some people to write fanfic because it's not being called fanfic because people who write fanfic are odd, and they're "proper authors"...
Anyway - that's my Friday so far, and the sun's shining and I also woke up to some absolutely lovely feedback from someone about my Two stories which just made me smiiiiiiile when I've been thinking for the last week or so that I can't write a thing that's readable, and I'm starting to feel a bit more awake now, so... How're you doing, this fine February morning? *g*