Shells for Ships, Dead Horses, La Mer

[greygirlbeast]

Since I mentioned it this morning, here's the clip Spooky shot yesterday of me experimenting with the buoyancy of clam shells, filmed near Moonstone, on the stream connecting Trustom and Card ponds.

You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com

Clamshell Boat, Riding the Current from Kathryn Pollnac on Vimeo.
It's starting to look as though my shadow is destined to get a lot more screen time

Comments

[sovay]

Shells for Ships, Dead Horses, La Mer

That's a good title for something.

The idea that characters must be mundane to be believable, and a sort of elevation of the ordinary, that I find undeniably repugnant.

And that there is something laughably self-indulgent about identifying with a character out of the ordinary.

I'm currently obsessed with NIN's "La Mer," from The Fragile (1999).

I love that song.

[greygirlbeast]

And that there is something laughably self-indulgent about identifying with a character out of the ordinary.

Yep.

It's some weird sliver of social conditioning, or some neurosis. I still trying to figure it out. People who so resent those who may be more talented than them, or anyone in anyway exceptional, that they turn talent and ability and beauty into default negatives.

[scarletboi]

The whole Mary Sue thing reminds me peripherally of something I wrote on Fragments of Shadow a little while back:

Society frowns on the kind of earnest and thoughtful intensity that creates its most enduring, beautiful works. It’s interesting, because it’s almost like a kind of institutionalized discrimination. People who try are weird. Pretentious. Even when you make it, even when you earn society’s “acceptance” of your weirdness, you’re separate. Celebrity is, in a sense, another kind of segregation. It’s still a matter of us and them.

Pretension is such a dirty word. Except all writing is pretense. Everything worth doing is pretentious. You’re damn right I have aspirations “above my station.” You’re damn right I’m going to stretch and reach for things.

And I may miss. I may fall off the ladder I’ve built for myself. But that’s just an opportunity to stabilize the foundations and build it higher before I climb back up.

I’m done apologizing for that.

(from Coming to Terms)

[greygirlbeast]

I’m done apologizing for that.

And well you should be. I got that crap growing up.

But, overall, splendidly stated.

[greygirlbeast]

I herewith give voice to my hope that, Hitchcock-like, you will make a cameo appearance in your book video promo thingee.

Hmmmm. Too bad we'll have no crowd shots.

The excellence of your writing does stand alone ... but there is a mystique thing to CRK. I say exploit it. This is perfectly justified given the stalker shit you put up with.

Somehow, this is the nicest thing anyone's said to me in days.

[kiaduran]

The videos are wonderful - very soothing ocean sounds, foghorn and frogs. I'm enjoying them so much. Thank you for letting us have a peek at your explorations of the world.

May I ask what software you are using for the book trailer? I had a long discussion today with a friend over his efforts to find a software program that works.

[greygirlbeast]

May I ask what software you are using for the book trailer?

iMovie HD 6. It seems adequate to the task, and I have it.

[kiaduran]

iMovie HD 6. It seems adequate to the task, and I have it.

Thank you - don't think that's one he's tried.

[greygirlbeast]

Thank you - don't think that's one he's tried.

It came preloaded on my iMac back in 2007. Apple's moved in to iMovie 8, but it's a piece of crap. I think it's still possible to download iMovie HD 6 somewhere online, but I could be wrong.

[robyn_ma]

It could also be said that there are a lot of poorly conceived characters with an unrealistic abundance of flattering attributes who are not Mary Sues. My hunch is that the whole Mary Sue thing began as a legitimate shorthand to call out fanfic writers who inserted themselves into, say, Star Trek slashfic, with Kirk and Spock falling in love with them, or some such thing. But then it spread to professional fiction, where the use of Mary Sue as a pejorative, even if accurate in some cases, carries a sexist whiff because it's almost always aimed at female authors: See, these dizzy broads can't resist making little cute versions of themselves in their little stories. (Of course, the pejorative is just as often wielded by female critics.) Why are male writers' idealized Tek Jansen heroes not also called Mary Sues? (Actually, they're called Gary Stu. Groan

[greygirlbeast]

But to what extent does a writer go against idealization to the point where it becomes almost inverted idealization, i.e., this character is the worst, stupidest, most flawed character ever to appear in print? Like, how far can we go with this fucked-up character and still get you to care about what happens to her? Or, how far can we idealize her and still get you to identify? Is identification necessary to begin with? And so on.

Honestly, when I'm writing, these are not even questions I pause to consider. I do not believe the are valid, from the POV of the author.

I suspect that you're rejecting Mary Sue as a valid criticism on some level because you don't want to be thinking about it the next time you sit down to create a character; you don't want it, unbidden, anywhere on your radar, and you certainly don't want any possibility of some potential fanboy/fangirl snark to influence you one way or the other.

See above.

he funny thing is, none of your characters have ever struck me as being remotely Mary Sue-ish, so why dignify it

[sovay]

And it is true, they were all parts of me

And why is that a strike against the author, anyway? Does anyone call up John le Carré and tell him George Smiley and Alec Leamas are invalid characters because he wrote them out of his experiences of working for MI5 and MI6? I know this is not worth ranting about, but people have some very weird ideas about art.

[greygirlbeast]

I know this is not worth ranting about, but people have some very weird ideas about art.

Weird and horrendously wrongheaded.