Interests & icons meme
I asked alto2 to tag me for the "explain three interests/icons of the tagger's chosing" meme, and she kindly obliged. Here are the results:
Steampunk - Cyberpunk ethos (well, less dystopian), extrapolated Victorian technology. Steam-powered rocket ships, for instance. New Who's clockwork robots in "Girl in the Fireplace," or the, well, steam-powered rocketships planned by the werewolves in "Tooth and Claw" are representative of the genre. I love it because I luuuuurve me some Victorians, and often steampunk stories are set during that era. (There seems to be a division between "Victorian person invents a steam-powered rocket ship" stories [the original Victorian sci-fi of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and that crowd, as well as modern takes], "if the Victorians actually built steam-powered computers and dragged in the Information Age a century ahead of schedule, what would the world look like now?" stories [I think this is where Neal Stephenson mostly falls], and a fantasy society has steam tech" [China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, Howl's Moving Castle].) I was first introduced to this genre via a little show called The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, which posited that Jules Verne actually experienced all the sci-fi adventures he wrote about, along with his friend Phileas Fogg, Fogg's valet Passepartout, and Fogg's cousin, Rebecca, the first female British spy. (More about her in a moment.)
Vorkosigan - Only the best family ever! Most of you have probably read the books thanks to my relentless pimpage, but if you haven't: check out Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series. Start with Cordelia's Honor (aka Shards of Honor and Barrayar), move on to Warrior's Apprentice, and then snatch up all ten or eleven others. I want to be LMB when I grow up, because these books are awesome. They're nominally space opera, but they also focus on politics (Miles and Aral Vorkosigan's home planet, Barrayar, is trying to modernize, and it's not easy) and family/parenting issues, and there's quite a bit of romance as well. It's kind of like what might happen if you put Catherine Asaro, George R.R. Martin, and David Weber in a room together and told them to write something. Cordelia is one of the awesomest characters ever. She's a "strong female character," but she doesn't have to turn herself into a man to be so. Her strength lies in stereotypically female areas, such as helping to raise the future emperor of the planet and looking out for her own disabled son and being the "great woman behind every great man" in her role as Aral's wife. And they are funny. So funny. I dare you to pick up A Civil Campaign, read chapter nine (the infamous dinner party, with cockroaches), and not bust a gut laughing.
Eavan Boland - Is a contemporary Irish poet whom we studied extensively in Irish Lit. She writes mostly about Irish themes and women's/feminist issues, often in combination. She writes a lot about women's hidden role in Irish history and letters. Her poems are beautiful; she's one of my favorites. In fact, my favorite poem of hers is online: That the Science of Cartography Is Limited.
And the icons:
Rebecca Fogg in full Victorian spy mode, turning the frame of her specially-made hoop skirt from skirt into ladder. Girl has more gadgets than Bond, I swear. Anyway, I love her; I also love that she shares my name. (Interesting factoid: Francesca Hunt, who played Rebecca, is the older sister of India Fisher. She's the voice of Georgina Marlowe in Other Lives, actually. Learning this was what tipped me over the edge into listening to the things.*)
Ah, ice dancing. These are the Israeli team of Chait and Sakhnovsky doing...I don't even know what that program is. I don't want to know what that program is. And what really makes me sad is that these costumes are not necessarily the most egregiously awful that the ice dancing world has produced. Near the top, yes, but the top spot is certainly not uncontested.
This is actually a reference to an event in Barrayar, one of the Vorkosigan novels. When Cordelia's little renegade troop behdeads Count Vordarian, she brings back the head in a shopping bag. When asked where she's been she says, "I went shopping. Want to see what I bought?" and rolls the head out on the table. (Do you see why I love this woman?)
* One last ineresting factoid: the Cordelia Vorkosigan-in-my-mind is played by none other than Francesca Hunt. Full circle in the meme!
Steampunk - Cyberpunk ethos (well, less dystopian), extrapolated Victorian technology. Steam-powered rocket ships, for instance. New Who's clockwork robots in "Girl in the Fireplace," or the, well, steam-powered rocketships planned by the werewolves in "Tooth and Claw" are representative of the genre. I love it because I luuuuurve me some Victorians, and often steampunk stories are set during that era. (There seems to be a division between "Victorian person invents a steam-powered rocket ship" stories [the original Victorian sci-fi of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and that crowd, as well as modern takes], "if the Victorians actually built steam-powered computers and dragged in the Information Age a century ahead of schedule, what would the world look like now?" stories [I think this is where Neal Stephenson mostly falls], and a fantasy society has steam tech" [China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, Howl's Moving Castle].) I was first introduced to this genre via a little show called The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, which posited that Jules Verne actually experienced all the sci-fi adventures he wrote about, along with his friend Phileas Fogg, Fogg's valet Passepartout, and Fogg's cousin, Rebecca, the first female British spy. (More about her in a moment.)
Vorkosigan - Only the best family ever! Most of you have probably read the books thanks to my relentless pimpage, but if you haven't: check out Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series. Start with Cordelia's Honor (aka Shards of Honor and Barrayar), move on to Warrior's Apprentice, and then snatch up all ten or eleven others. I want to be LMB when I grow up, because these books are awesome. They're nominally space opera, but they also focus on politics (Miles and Aral Vorkosigan's home planet, Barrayar, is trying to modernize, and it's not easy) and family/parenting issues, and there's quite a bit of romance as well. It's kind of like what might happen if you put Catherine Asaro, George R.R. Martin, and David Weber in a room together and told them to write something. Cordelia is one of the awesomest characters ever. She's a "strong female character," but she doesn't have to turn herself into a man to be so. Her strength lies in stereotypically female areas, such as helping to raise the future emperor of the planet and looking out for her own disabled son and being the "great woman behind every great man" in her role as Aral's wife. And they are funny. So funny. I dare you to pick up A Civil Campaign, read chapter nine (the infamous dinner party, with cockroaches), and not bust a gut laughing.
Eavan Boland - Is a contemporary Irish poet whom we studied extensively in Irish Lit. She writes mostly about Irish themes and women's/feminist issues, often in combination. She writes a lot about women's hidden role in Irish history and letters. Her poems are beautiful; she's one of my favorites. In fact, my favorite poem of hers is online: That the Science of Cartography Is Limited.
And the icons:
Rebecca Fogg in full Victorian spy mode, turning the frame of her specially-made hoop skirt from skirt into ladder. Girl has more gadgets than Bond, I swear. Anyway, I love her; I also love that she shares my name. (Interesting factoid: Francesca Hunt, who played Rebecca, is the older sister of India Fisher. She's the voice of Georgina Marlowe in Other Lives, actually. Learning this was what tipped me over the edge into listening to the things.*)
Ah, ice dancing. These are the Israeli team of Chait and Sakhnovsky doing...I don't even know what that program is. I don't want to know what that program is. And what really makes me sad is that these costumes are not necessarily the most egregiously awful that the ice dancing world has produced. Near the top, yes, but the top spot is certainly not uncontested.
This is actually a reference to an event in Barrayar, one of the Vorkosigan novels. When Cordelia's little renegade troop behdeads Count Vordarian, she brings back the head in a shopping bag. When asked where she's been she says, "I went shopping. Want to see what I bought?" and rolls the head out on the table. (Do you see why I love this woman?)
* One last ineresting factoid: the Cordelia Vorkosigan-in-my-mind is played by none other than Francesca Hunt. Full circle in the meme!