Rattenforum

I've been teaching fanfiction/fan culture this year and am in the very last stage of a dissertation that is partly on fandom, so I've been poking around here from time to time again. Hiya :)

Hello internet. I'm not even going to apologize for being away, because - away!

But I wonder if you might know the answer to a question:

"Mrs Baldry is lovely. She has three circles round her neck. I've only two." This is from a 1918 novella by Rebecca West called The Return of the Soldier. Does anyone know what it means? The speaker is a dumpy (but angelic!) middle aged woman, and Mrs Baldry (the lovely one) is a younger, very beautiful and very rich woman. I assume it means the young woman has a long neck, but I've never heard this and can't find it on Google, though I didn't look terribly hard.

Also, how's it going?

Dear Internet,

Halp!

I would like to buy a new TV. I am reading a lot of "how to buy a TV" columns, and yet I feel like I keep getting more and more bewildered.

Let's assume that I can figure out what size to buy, how much to spend, and whether to get plasma or LCD - I think I can handle those questions, more or less.

The problem is how to watch the content I actually watch, which does not come from a cable box.

DVDs are easy. But that leaves Netflix streaming, Hulu, and - if possible, and the one that worries me most - avis. I watch all these on my laptop, but I would really love to watch them on a TV. I've read articles about hooking up your computer to a TV, but the last time I tried I spent $$ and struggled and researched and ultimately failed completely. I am willing to consider either a device like a Roku box or an internet-capable TV - neither of which solve the avi problem, I don't think, but would at least let me watch streaming video on the TV.

Do any of you know anything about any of this and feel like hooking me up with some free advice? I will be grateful indeed. I will even drabble for you, if you have a fandom I know.

Rat Love,
Rat
Rat New York

( 1. Missing person )

2. So I coped with this trauma by having an extraordinarily indolent weekend in which I attempted to ward off loneliness with talking people in the electronic box. I happened on this article about films and TV shows (unjustly) killed by competition, and one of the first examples was Studio 60, killed by 30 Rock. I thought it was a very smart read on what was wrong with Studio 60, which I had actually liked quite a bit, namely that Aaron Sorkin couldn't write SNL sketches, like, at all. Just not funny (in that way), and they took up a lot of time. Anyway this prompted me to sit in bed and stream all 22 episodes consecutively.

( Studio 60. Spoilers for the last few episodes, with Jordan's pregnancy and the hospital and Brad Whitford, on the remote chance that anyone cares. )

3. Speaking of ER, I saw Anthony Edwards at BAM last week, when we went to MacBeth at the Harvey (which was good, though I didn't like Lady MacBeth). Not acting - he was in the audience, and I passed very close to him and there were smiles. He hadn't really aged at all; he looked great, very relaxed and like he was enjoying himself with his pals. I saw John Leguizamo last week, too, in Central Park. And then a week later I was on the same walk in Central Park, and I sat on a bench in this pretty area up near W 96th, not far from where I'd seen him, and overheard this woman saying, "I've got to go - John Leguizamo tonight!!" (He's in a play on Broadway now).

( 4. Chrome Snaps )

( 5. Obligatory LJ - Russia comment with obligatory DW code offer )

Happy New Year, folk of the journalling lands!

As mentioned previously, I participated in Yuletide for the first time this year. ( My fic )

I also want to mention two other fics. ( One by Bow )

Finally, the best Yuletide fic I read - my favorite, anyway - was this Monty Python RPF, already recced elsewhere but deserving of much, much more love:

READ THIS ONE FIRST (3872 words) by trifles
Fandom: Monty Python RPF
Rating: Not Rated
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Alison Telfer
Summary: Anne Durham: What it is to be married to Clive.

I'm going to give slightly different advice on reading this one than ellen_fremedon did when she recced it. There are two AO3 files that are part of it (the other is We would skip this one, if we were you...). The story is in hypertext: it's full of links, some of which go to the second "story" file, and some of which go to other pages and files - some of which, in turn, contain further links (labeled "back" but not always going straight back). It's a fantastic ride, completely appropriate to Monty Python, but the core story is fantastic also. I recommend first reading it ("READ THIS ONE FIRST") straight through, and taking it at face value in that mode. And then experience it as quite a different story by reading it through again and following all the links, watching the vids, etc. It changes what the story is about, and it works both ways, so I advise that you do yourself a favor and experience it both ways. And one of the Easter eggs made me cry.

I do think this is for lovers of Monty Python with an affection for those boys, but it's so ingenious, moving, funny, and original, and the characterizations and the sense of time and place are so acute, that if you have any fondness for Monty Python then I recommend this story to you in the highest terms.

For all your bowdlerized news needs...

She has drabbled. Twice. (First is Echo Bazaar; second is Little House on the Prairie.)

And stay tuned, because I happen to know there's a big story breaking there very soon. Elfin governess caught in freak storm! Read all about it! The saga begins tomorrow, early edition!!

Very exciting here, folks.

Dear Yuletide Author!

This is the first time I've ever signed up for Yuletide! What has possessed me? I don't know. But I am most grateful to you for writing for me. I hope you find my request fun to write- what I want most is for you to write the story you want to write and think you can write well. But here are a few thoughts and preferences. Please poke around my old posts (some even have tags), interests, and whatever else you can find if you want to know more about me.

( Bewitched, Mad Men, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy )

Well, that was vague - I truly can't wait to see what you do.

xox
Rat

Just popping by after, what, a six-month absence to do a little squeeing and a spot of speculating/question-asking re that outburst of fannish awesomeness that is the New New Who.

Gratuitous exposure of my cluelessness and yay: I had the great and totally random luck to watch all 12 episodes in the last week, due to a bout of extreme fatigue that demanded TV. I didn't realize I was one week from the finale, or that I'd care. I also didn't realize that the guy who wrote "The Girl in the Fireplace" and "Blink" and the library ones -- in other words, the one who wrote for me -- was even a guy (that is, that the same guy had written all the eps I'd liked best), much less that he had taken over the helm from Russell T Overblown (who, yes, some good stuff, but not quite my thing). Team Moffat yay! And I like Matt Smith, too.

So here's my observation/question going into the finale - references "The Eleventh Hour" & last week's ep:

( Contains spoilers for The Pandorica Opens )

Would love to hear your thoughts or follow where you point - but I don't want to be spoiled, just speculate.

Oh, and, you know, if you care... me, and the state of the world - the latter is just so unbelievably awful, and I'm more or less OK, though things aren't easy. And you?

What have I been up to lately, you ask? Well, I hated Avatar a lot! I have some thoughts to add to the various posts I've seen - many of them saying some of the things I'd want to say, but there's more. I want to talk about this movie as the alleged "next step" in big-budget fantasy filmmaking, and its relationship with other films in that tradition (specifically Jackson's The Lord of the Rings).

( Read more... )

A couple of weeks ago, on Twitter, I called Sarah Palin "the Plebefic queen of US politics," citing this line (copied character for character) from the transcript of her farewell address to the Alaska governor's office:

*((Gotta put First Things First))*
But thinking about it again yesterday, I realized that Sarah Palin isn't the plebefic writer, she's the Mary Sue.

How can a real person be a Mary Sue, since she is by definition impossible? On the other hand, how can a Mary Sue not be a real person, given that the whiff of self-insertion is one of the tell-tale properties of the Mary Sue?

A number of years ago I read an old book by a psychoanalyst named Heinz Kohut, who did some very smart and influential writing on narcissism back in the '50s. One of his preoccupations, which isn't terribly surprising coming from a mid-century European, was narcissism in public and political life. He wrote about demagogues and cults of personality of his era, when hugely powerful autocrats turned the world upside down trying to remake it in their own images (e.g. Stalin and Hitler, but there were tremendously larger-than-life figures on "our" side also, including the US's only 4-term president).

Kohut wrote about the personal narcissism of public figures based on his readings of their memoirs (Churchill, e.g.). But he also wrote about how citizens (members of the cult, so to speak) participated in the narcissism of leaders and invested their own narcissism - their own sense of self worth - in identification with them. The metaphor he used for this involved the idea, common in discussions of narcissism, that the narcissist experiences other people as extensions of his or her own body, like limbs, and thus expects to be able to command them, control them, and expects them to be dependent and available. If others participate in this fantasy, that's how the narcissist gets his/her power. He argued that members of the public experience the grandiose leader as part of themselves, as enhancing their identity, especially if they feel weak or vulnerable.

Certainly, I think Sarah Palin is a narcissist, in fact more or less crippled by her narcissism. But that doesn't make her a Mary Sue - a Mary Sue is the fantasy, often noticeably different (e.g. in eye color, name, & telepathic ability) from the fantasist. That's where the narcissism, or the narcissistic lack, of the public comes in. Most of the credit for "Sarah Palin" goes to the talented fantasist "S," from Wasilla, AK. But she/it only came into being as we know her when other people started participating, when sparks flew into Bill Kristol's pants or whatever it was, when thousands chanted "Drill baby drill" and a million AP photo pool photos started appearing in gossip magazines.

This sounds like an etiology of either Sarah Palin or Mary Sue, but I don't mean it that way. I don't think "Sarah Palin" begins in Sarah P's mind or in the minds of her admirers. Her origins have a longer, more complicated history, in which the textual and the material are interwoven. I guess I'm asserting a negative and/or tautological ontology. Sarah Palin is a Mary Sue. And neither is wholly textual, or wholly fantasy, or wholly real.

--
Realized when writing that this relates to driscoll's eloquent, and differently formulated, recent post on identification and on mourning celebrities - Remembering Farrah Hair". Highly recommended.

PPS: I went through a spate of picking up icons when I joined DW because I had space for them, and I'd lost all my own. I didn't expect to use this one more than once or twice a year, in comments. But I seem to use it all the time - it is amazingly appropriate for the kinds of things I post about.

Rundown of astonishing number and variety of racist stereotypes in Transformers 2. My favorite Little Wonk Boy Blogger Ezra Klein, who has also seen it, writes:

wow, is it racist. Much of the movie's comic relief comes from a pair of Autobot twins named Mudflap and Skids. They look like monkeys. One has a gold tooth and satellite ears. The dialect is a parody of ebonics with words lifted from gangster rap, complete with frequent threats to "bust a cap" in this or that character. At one point, they're asked to read a symbol. "We don't much like reading," they say. They're not Autobots. They're Minstrelbots. As Ty Burr smartly said, "it's the first known example of robot blackface."

Note - both of these posts are by white dudes. Haven't looked at ABW yet, e.g., but sure they are on it. This is, as I said, a drive by.

My question, as I recently said to mulberryfields, is: when and how did this become "OK" again? This OTT "retro" racism, of the kind found all over the later Star Wars movies, or the very essence of Peter Jackson's King Kong, is a sentimental throwback to film making in the age of Jim Crow. Star Trek: Reboot, while not a cartoonish colonial romp, still did way, way worse than the original show on race, and it's 40 years later. Did some memo go around saying they have permission to do this, saying that now we're "past" racism, (homophobia, sexism), we can all have good, tongue in cheek, "of course WE'RE not" fun with it?

New Memo: NOT OK. NOT. O. K. !!!!!!!!!