Vid recs, and writer-fan encounters of the classic type

[selenak]

Firstly, more vid recs:

Terminator movies/ Sarah Connor Chronicles:

Land: this one is epic, using the multiple timelines premise from the show and the time loop premise from the movies to fantastic effect, matching footage from both. Sarah, John, the time loop of John's existence, and all the possibilities.

Star Trek:

Swing: this vid is

Comments

[selenak]

Werther was a drama queen, but then, so was everyone in the the era, in and out of fiction. Goethe's own attitude towards his first novel and its hero was somewhat like Arthur Conan Doyle's to Sherlock Holmes: it made him popular and was his big bestselling breakthrough as a young man, but became something of a millstone around his neck later because for a few decades more, instead of being associated with the works we now associate with him, he was "the author of Werther" and was asked about the novel. Madame de Stael bringing it up twenty years after the novel was published being a case in point. So did Napoleon, whose encounter with Goethe (a few years post-de Stael) was as much an example of period fanboy-ness as anything and will remind you of Nine and Dickens. A bit of background: a few years after the first publication, Goethe revised The Sorrows of Young Werther in that while the original solely consists of Werther's letters to his friend Wilhelm and one final remark by a narrator, the revised version has several narrative passages in between the letters by a fictional editor of the letters, explaining a few things going on outside of Werther's pov. So, here's the former General Bonaparte, now Emperor of the French, meeting Goethe:

Napoleon: Oh, you're so my favourite author! I've read Werther seven times, it's my all time favourite novel! *pause* Of course, the special edition sucked a bit. Why did you do that? Han shot first. I don't quite see why those additional scenes were necessary.

Goethe: I shall now frustrate my secretary and posterity, and reply in Italian, which I know you speak but my secretary and your sidekicks over there don't.

Goethe and Napoleon: *chat in Italian, this being the Corsican's original language*

Goethe's secretary: *is frustrated*

Goethe: *takes his leave*

Napoleon *still in total fanboy mode*: You're the man! *to sidekicks* Who the man? He the man!

(Okay, so what he said was "voilà un homme", but big diff, as Buffy would say.)

Han totally shot first.

[shezan]

*DIES*

You just know Napoleon would have been an OT purist

[selenak]

I hoped you might appreciate my summing up of that encounter. :)