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lunasarielMy last week of classes was another very "uuuugggghhh" week. I got my Ben Franklin paper back on Monday with a B, which is way, way below my usual standard. The GSI's comments are basically, "I know you can do better than this," and I like it when professors/GSIs actually expect their students to do well and be smart, so, silver lining. But still, I'm going to need some damn good grades to get into the UCLA School of Information Studies, so as many As as possible would be a good thing right about now. The rest of Monday was okay, with the exception of my Celtic Romanticism professor telling us to read half of a book she never told us to buy by Wednesday. So I rushed home to order it (plus another one that we're apparently supposed to have), and hopefully it will be here in time for class tomorrow.
Tuesday, though, was just...*headdesk*. I thought we were watching a movie in Celtic Literature; we had an exam that I thought was on Thursday instead. Luckily, though, the questions weren't too hard, and there's only one thing I think I got drastically wrong. After the exam, the professor had us act out a play, but because of the aforementioned movie/exam confusion, I didn't bring my book, so I had to share with the guy sitting next to me. I loaded my bag with all the books we've read for ENGL 125A instead, since we also had a midterm in that class today, and ENGL 125A immediately follows Celt Lit. But Celt Lit ran a little long, so the professor was already handing out the tests when I got there. When I sat down, I realized that I'd forgotten my exam booklet, so I had to write on sheets torn from my notebook, which earned an eyeroll from my GSI. For the essay portion, the professor had given us a list of six possible prompts in advance, out of which two or three would be on the test, and we could pick one to answer from those. None of the ones I was really hoping for made it on, but I made do with one of them...or I would have, if I hadn't forgotten that class ends 10 minutes early instead of starting 10 minutes late, the way pretty much every other college does it. So I had a decent amount of time to answer the first part of the prompt, but the realization that I had 10 minutes instead of 20 to answer the second part meant that my essay looked something like: "Moll Flanders blah blah blah formal realism blah blah blah modernistic worldview blah blah blah legitimizing the novel for a middle-class audience blah blah blah commercialization of literature blah blah blah JonathanWildsatiresarcasmpoliticalcommentarygottagobye."
The rest of the week was fairly decent, although I was really looking forward to going home on Thursday (skipping out on my Friday discussion section, but w/e), mostly because I'd been accumulating all this stuff that needed to be done, and could only be done in Sebastopol. So I was focused on making sure that I had everything necessary for the week, but, as per tradition, I forgot one extremely important thing, and had to decide between going back for it or doing without. Usually it's something like my robe (absolutely necessary; Sebastopol is freakin' cold!) or my course reading or my toothbrush, so I was very, very careful that I had all the usual suspects. But once I'd unpacked all my stuff in Sebastopol, an hour and a half drive from Berkeley, I realized that I'd forgotten my glasses. Wearing contacts 24/7 badly irritates my eyes, so glasses are rather necessary for me. I ended up driving back to Berkeley on Friday to pick them up and, in a rather lol-worthy moment, arrived almost exactly as my discussion section would be getting out.
So I spent Thursday and Friday doing a lot of driving, packing/unpacking, and running errands. I thought that things would calm down enough for me to enjoy the R&R I'd been so looking forward to on the weekend, but Saturday was the day of my late St. Paddy's Day party, and my dad threw one of his, er, events on Sunday. C and H came over for an early dinner on Saturday, after I'd spent almost the entire day running back and forth to the store and cooking. We had corned beef, mashed potatoes (I dithered between mashed and roasted before settling on the crowd-pleasing mashed), and Bailey's brownies, all of which came out rather well. The potatoes were the most labour-intensive (I actually had to call in P, who was on the last weekend of his own spring break, and thus staying at the ol' homestead, to do a lot of the actual mashing), but the corned beef took the longest, although I could pretty much just throw it in the pot and then ignore it for a couple of hours. The brownies were definitely the most fun to make, as the recipe called for making them from scratch, not from mix. I was a little worried about how they would turn out, but the end result was universally pleasing, and everything was pretty quickly devoured. C and H are doing a lot better than the last time I saw them, especially H, who healed up just fine from her surgery. They're head over heels in love/hate with Mass Effect 3, and I got to talk to them about the ending that seems to have so much of the fandom up in arms. We also watched some Eddie Izzard, which gave me some bittersweetly nostalgic London flashbacks, and KC was an unrepentant Eddie Izzard addict, although the Internet connection in our apartment building was too slow for us to actually watch any.
Sunday was mostly taken up with one of my dad's events for his distributors, clients, workers, etc., which didn't go all that well. I don't know whose idea it was to have it outside in 55-degree weather. I helped ferry the pre-made food from dad's house to the winery, where it was held, and even though I specifically asked A to make sure that the plate of marinated tofu, which was basically swimming in a thick teriyaki sauce, didn't spill...it did. All over the car, and all over me when I tried to get it out. XP A also wandered off with one of Dad's client's daughters, who is about three and speaks no English. The client didn't seem too freaked out about it, but they were just gone for, like, 15 minutes, and I was supposed to be keeping an eye on A, so I was embarrassed. Speaking of embarrassed, Dad told P to grab a few bottles of wine at our house, and P accidentally ended up with, like, the four most expensive wines in the cellar, including Stepmom's special birthday wine, which was incredibly rare and expensive. Finally Dad was at the party for a grand total of about 20 minutes out of a couple of hours, which really cheesed me off. I mean, I don't get to see him that often, so when he says, "Wanna come have dinner with me?", I generally assume that I'll be able to, y'know, talk to him, instead of him running back to the cellar while I set up the food and greet the guests (and I hate hostessing, especially because I didn't know anybody there except for P, A, and P's friend P2). So, yeah, I could have had a better time there.
The rest of the week has been *much* more restful. I'm not getting as much course reading done as I planned, but to be fair, a lot of it is unusually boring and/or incomprehensible. I have, however, accomplished the two goals I set myself while back home: haircut and new shoes. I like to keep my hair short, so that the thinness/totally-not-going-bald-ness on top isn't as noticeable. A couple of people have told me that I should get my ears pierced if I'm going to keep my hair short, which I originally didn't want to mess with, but lately, I've been seeing a lot of nice earrings, so it's a definite possibility. My new sneakers are New Balance, like the old ones (actually, like every pair I've worn since I was nine years old), and *extremely* comfortable. Seriously, I hate wearing any other brand of sneakers than New Balance. Nike and Addidas have all sorts of bad juju around them, and while I like the look of Converse (especially hi-tops), The Roomie has a pair, and she says they're awful to wear in rain, which, considering where I live, is a big consideration.
Also, the Housing Situation of Doom finally got taken care of, and I officially won't be living in a box in People's Park next year! Woohoo! I got the offer email just after I got my hair cut the day before yesterday, and I may or may not have made excited little squeaky noises. I'm actually going to be kind of sad to leave The Roomie, fellow baker/Harry Potter nerd/introvert, and Roommate Roulette is beginning again, but after a couple of weeks of being terrified of apartment-hunting and possibly ending up in some spider-infested rathole with a roommate I detest. This is more than enough good luck for me, but I'm just sayin', if my transfer to Wada (the upper division/graduate student building) were to be approved, I wouldn't complain. The Housing Situation of Doom was my main worry this week, so now that that's out of the way, I've been able to make baked mac'n'cheese (from scratch, once again! I don't need no stinkin' cheesy mix!) and eat it while watching Downton Abbey (more on this in a little while) to my heart's content.
In Nerd News, I've been scrounging around Teh Interwebz for other people's reactions to Crucible of Gold, and I found a very interesting post/article (with citations and everything!) that addresses an interesting point. The tone of the entry itself is a bit vitriolic for my tastes, but brings up an interesting point: in That One Scene, "invert" is an anachronistic term for Granby to use, and probably didn't exist in the early 19th century. Ar's research has it first appearing in medical journals no earlier than 1838, and probably not coming into widespread use until the 1880s. From dipping my toe into the roiling waters of Avengers fandom, I know that "invert" was one of the less offensive words used to describe (male) homosexuality in the 1940s, but I admit that my knowledge of gay slang of the Napoleonic Era is hardly comprehensive. Nevertheless, she makes a compelling case that Granby, born lower-middle-class and raised largely by the decidedly informal aviators, probably wouldn't have identified himself as an "invert," but as a "sodomite" or similar. I don't quite think that this misstep, which Ar documents quite well, deserves quite the level of bile that it's treated with, where she basically calls Naomi Novik an insensitive jerk who doesn't know research from a hole in the ground, but that doesn't invalidate her basic premise. So, yeah, not quite the end of the world, but an interesting point, and one worthy of discussion.
The thing is, this isn't the first time Naomi has been called on less-than-comprehensive research. Mostly it's stuff that I wouldn't have caught in the first place, since I don't know pinyin from Wade-Giles in the first place and my knowledge of European history is mostly confined to what a variety of contemporary writers thought about it, which they generally expressed through novels about upper-middle-class successful merchants/minor aristocracy and poems about Nature. And then, of course, there was the whole "yay Wikipedia!" thing. But this is the author who travelled halfway around the world in the name of research, and actually lived in southern Africa to gather firsthand experience about local geography and culture. I dunno, I'd just love to get an actual historian's/anthropologist's opinion on Temeraire, not just enthusiastic fans, to see how on or off the mark she really is. Stuff like this seems to generate a lot of wank, and sometimes it seems that I can't find a discussion of research, historical accuracy, etc. without a research error somehow becoming a deliberate act of disrespect towards/disvaluing of LGBT readers, POC readers, or what have you, and I'd really like to just actually look at what people have found out. Because even though Ar gets (I think) a bit unnecessarily angry, her actual points are still many and valid, and her research seems to be pretty solid.
Although I haven't had time to post for the past, um, *checks* week and a half (yikes!) I've been meme-ing away when I have five minutes here and there. That's the thing I really love about memes: you can answer a question or two during a ten-minute study break without getting so involved in it that you spend hours on it and forget to finish whatever you were doing in the first place. (Usually. XD) I've actually got two memes ready to go this time around, so I guess we'll see if this breaks the posting limit or not. [EDIT: It does. Next one up soon.]
First, have a kind of general fandom meme:
1) The first character I first fell in love with
Robin Hood. I tend to have a weird relationship with characters that I “love” where it’s a platonic, hero-worship kind of thing. With Robin, for example, my fic (yes, I wrote fanfic as a grade-schooler) never ran along the lines of “Robin Hood falls in love with me and we get married. The end” or “Robin Hood falls in love with Maid Marian and they get married. The end,” but more like “The Merry Men have awesome adventures and steal stuff from the Sherriff of Nottingham and beat up Guy of Gisbourne. The end,” or “I use my magic powers to go into the Robin Hood world and they teach me to shoot arrows and we go on adventures. The end.”
But, yeah, I loved me some green-clad archers in my day, yes I did. I liked a lot of the themes and recurring tropes, such as the ragtag bunch of misfits exacting justice from the big, bad Powers That Be, but mostly I loved the camaraderie. I’ve always loved ensembles, and it gave me more warm fuzzies than I can accurately describe when they raise hell to recover an injured or captured member of the band. I also remember liking that Maid Marian was an Action Girl who could and did outdo Robin on occasion, not some weepy damsel in distress.
2) The character I never expected to love as much as I do now
Probably Sam Gamgee, from The Lord of the Rings. I actually saw the LotR movies before I’d read more than a couple of chapters of the books, and I became an instant Legolas fan. I liked that he was sexy and snarky and badass; I liked the flash and glitter, as Granny Weatherwax might say. Sam, being the opposite of flashy and glittery, took a couple of years to catch on for me. I never really noticed him, except to be vaguely annoyed with him for being kind of boring, until I was about 13 or 14. I strongly remember reading the passage where Sam is tempted by the Ring: like everyone before him, it offers him unlimited power to win glory and adoration for himself by keeping his homeland safe. But Sam doesn’t want glory or adoration, and he’s very much aware that he’s a lover, not a fighter. So in order to get at what he truly wants, it offers to turn Mordor into one giant garden. He turns it down because he couldn't take care of it all himself. The Ring offers him an army of servants under him to take care of the garden, but he turns that down because what’s the point of a garden if you don’t care for it yourself? This is really the epitome of what I think Tolkien was trying to get at when he goes on about Hobbit-ness and their particular stalwart, undefeatable spirit: an assistant gardener who turns down unimaginable power because all he wants to do is raise flowers and vegetables for his friends.
And yet Sam isn’t annoyingly perfect: he’s stubborn, insular, prejudiced, and sometimes not all that bright. He didn’t turn down the Ring out of hand; there was quite a back-and-forth between them before he was able to reject it completely.
It’s the melding of these two aspects of his personality, the provincial-ness and the sweetness, that really made me come to love him, though. Another scene I strongly remember reading was when he and Frodo get caught by the Rangers of Ithilien, and then this happened: “He planted himself squarely in front of Faramir, his hands on his hops, and a look on his face as if he was addressing a young hobbit who had offered him what he called ‘sauce’ when questioned about visits to the orchard” (322). I just love the image of this little guy, surrounded by a dozen heavily-armed Men, each three times his size, who he’s just seen engage in a bloody battle, and he’s telling them off.
3) The character everyone else loves that I don’t
Sebrahn, from Nightrunners. He’s not cute, he’s not compelling, he’s not interesting. He’s a deus ex machina and a cheap grab at sentiment by triggering the “ONOEZ A CHILD IS IN DANGER!!!!1!!!” response in Lynn Flewelling’s primarily female fanbase without doing any of the work of establishing him as a character that we care about.
4) The character I love that everyone else hates
Phoria, also from Nightrunners. She’s always painted as the mean, nasty, eeeevil sister, and yes, she has done some definitely questionable things, but they were by no means indefensible, and I admire her for doing a hard job even when she gets no thanks for it. She broke up Seregil and Korathan because a stranger who was recently exiled from his home country for murder was now putting the moves on her
Basically, Phoria doesn’t have one tenth Klia’s charm or charisma, or as much of her mother’s tactical ability as she’d like, but we’re meant to hate her because she’s not as pretty or personable as Klia. Imagine how you would feel if you’d worked hard your entire life, kept your head down and tried to keep things on an even keel, but all of a sudden everybody just wants you to STFU because your super-duper-awesome little sister came in and suddenly everybody loves her and hates you.
We’re told that Phoria is wrong and Klia is right…but that’s just the problem. We’re told. We’re meant to assume that, because Klia is friends with the main protagonists and we’ve spent a lot of time with her, that she’s automatically “the good guy” and Phoria, who is stern, somewhat cold, and relatively unfamiliar to the audience, is automatically “the bad guy,” but from what I can tell, the evidence is hardly that clear-cut.
This is kind of funny, because there’s a certain other pair of siblings whose ultimately destructive feud I’m interested in, one charming and personable, the other dour and serious, but in Westeros I take the opposite view. I honestly think that Stannis would have made a bad king and Renly a good one, but with Phoria and Klia, it’s rather the other way around (or rather, I think they’d both make good queens, but I’m not unhappy that Phoria as the job). Of course, I can *sympathize* with both Phoria and Klia, and while I can appreciate Stannis’ conundrum, he’s very clearly wrong, and rather unsympathetic (both in-universe and to readers) to boot.
5) The character I used to love but don’t any longer
Probably Yuki, from Gravitation. I’ve rather fallen out of love with anime/manga in general, but Yuki is an especially good example as to why. He’s a sexy, snarky, angsty writer who just needs luuurve in order to open up and become the fluffy kitten all us fangirls know is hiding under that emotionally and/or physical abusive borderline-rapist (where even the “borderline” part is debatable) exterior…wait… I dunno, there’s just something so contrived about how his character (both personality and appearance) seem calculated to appeal to the average teenage girl, and, since I was 16 when I first read Gravitation, I was completely sucked in. When I was transferring all my data from Lila (who still has a place of honor in my room, btw) to Sleekerton last summer, I found that I still had some old Gravi scans saved, so I went back and re-read them. The result was…not pretty.
Also, I think Gravi was the first work of fiction I’d read/seen with an openly gay protagonist who wasn’t out-and-out insane, so I think I imagined myself as some sort of crusader for social justice by reading this OMGSUBVERSIVE!!11!! manga, but now that I know better, I find that Gravi actually falls into a lot of genre traps, including All Gays are Pedophiles, Rape is Love, and Depraved Homosexual/Bisexual, fairly hard.
As a subset of this, actually a good deal of FAKE, which used to be one of my major fandoms. I think I might have burned out here, because I still like it on a theoretical level, but the characters and plot no longer interest me. This has taken me a while to realize, and is rather depressing to think about, but there it is. I can’t put my finger on what went wrong, but now, suddenly, the sloppy translation from the original Japanese, melodramatic plots, and continuity/factual errors are no longer outweighed by my love for the characters and their relationships.
6) The character I would totally smooch
Actually, the first answer that came to mind was Hank from X-Men: First Class. A sweet-but-awkward genius with floppy hair, amazing bone structure, and superpowers? Yes please.
7) The character I’d want to be like
Either Hermione or Professor McGonagall, both from Harry Potter. They’re both bookish witches who take no crap from anyone and conceal a deviously twisty mind and sneaky sense of humor behind their persona as the voice of reason to their more hotheaded friends/colleagues/students. They’re both widely respected, even revered, for their intelligence, and command enormous respect and loyalty from those around them. Basically, when they talk, people listen, because they’re (almost) always right. The reason I can’t choose between them, though, is that Professor McGonagall is all steely and gimlet-eyed, but seems to lack much of a personal life (aside from what little is revealed by Pottermore, which indicates several failed romances and a heaping helping of angst, which sounds even less attractive than no personal life at all), whereas Hermione has a bit too much personal life, if you know what I mean; I think I’d find it fairly exhausting to be her, or be entirely like her, on a permanent basis.
8) The character I’d slap
Nico Minoru, from Runaways. I can excuse her being not that great a leader, since she’s young and thus bound to make mistakes, just like everyone. But I really cannot forgive her screwing up other people’s romances on purpose. I don’t care if she has a “pathological need to insert herself into other people’s relationships,” it boils down to her being a bitch to her friends for no good reason. Maybe this is just because what she did to Gert and Chase hit a little too close to home. When J and I broke up, it was because we’d genuinely grown apart an no longer worked as a couple, so, thankfully, there was no “other woman” to fulfill the Nico role, but I really empathize with Gert being all too willing to believe that Chase was with Nico on the side, because he’s snarky and gorgeous and (outwardly) confident, so why on earth would he want an overweight, pasty nerd when he can have a lithe Goth goddess? and so was all set to believe that he knew he could get someone better and then went out and did just that. I dunno; I just find it really tragic that Gert and Chase gave each other the confidence they both so desperately needed, and then Nico went and wrecked it just because.
Actually, I’ve been working on an AU where Nico is fully aware of the effect she has on people. In fact, the effect isn’t just a series of unfortunate coincidences, but a low-level mind-control spell that she emanates. She first tried it out on Karolina, the first person to form an inexplicable romantic attachment to her, without really meaning to, but ‘Lina’s alien biology, combined with Nico’s inexperience, meant that the spell was less than totally effective, but the results were definitely noticeable. Gert and Chase were her first success: she was unhappy about being rebuffed by and/or outliving Alex and Karolina, and Gert and Chase were inexplicably, inexpressibly happy with one another, and Nico couldn’t stand to see them making goo-goo eyes at each other all day, so…it just sort of happened. She was frankly amazed, an maybe a little intoxicated at how easy it was, and just how much power it gave her over everyone involved, either as an object of sexual desire or as a supportive/repentant friend.
At this point, she starts honing her powers. Her time-travel-instigated run-in with Forget-Me-Not and her ancestor gives her some ideas, and before you know it, she’s ready to go to work. She’s around the other Runaways pretty much 24/7, so getting them slavishly devoted to her is a piece of cake. She knows them well enough to tweak their perceptions of her to be an object of desire, a mother figure, a BFF, a damsel in distress, whatever the person wants/needs most. Xavin and Karolina, who present the dual difficulties of non-human biology and being genuinely in love with one another, pose the biggest challenge, but as long as she manages to keep them apart most of the time, things work out okay.
This done, she shifts her attention over to the East Coast, and their NYC counterparts, the Young Avengers. This has to be done more subtly: aside from another alien, they’ve got a magic-user savvy enough to recognize love spells and/or mind control, so she takes it slow. The important thing, she realizes, is naturalness. A subject can spook and dig their heels in if they realize that they, or someone around them, are being manipulated, so it’s of paramount importance to make sure that it’s all done in-character, for lack of a better word. Like with Xavin and ‘Lina, she leaves Teddy and Billy, the toughest nuts to crack, for last. Teddy, who just recently proposed to Billy, is the biggest challenge she’s had in a while, but the look on Billy’s face when Teddy quietly, gently tells him that it isn’t working out, he just doesn’t feel the way he used to, and it wouldn’t be fair to either of them if they got married under false pretenses, so can he please have the ring back, god, B, don’t make this any harder than it has to be, is totally worth it.
Billy, as another magic-user, would sense any influence on his mind, so she has to control him through more conventional means (i.e. his friends, especially Teddy), but Jonas also proves intractable. She thought she had the whole “magic influencing technology” thing down when she got Victor, but Victor was designed to eventually become completely human, while Jonas has never been anything but synthetic, and so Nico’s magic isn’t nearly as effective on him. She manages to corral both Billy and Jonas, though, by holding their friends and significant others over their heads, although, like with Xavin and Karolina, keeping all previous couple apart is often necessary.
After that, Billy and Jonas have their work cut out for them in convincing their friends, who have all moved to L.A., that they’re being brainwashed and that their feelings for Nico aren’t real, all while Nico from finding out. This isn’t easy, of course: with just a little tweaking, Cassie sees the confident leader in Nico as an acceptable (and sexy!) substitute for Nate (after her affections have been recalibrated to tilt more towards Nate than Jonas, of course), Tommy likes the Dark Action Girl in her, Kate admires her panache and confidence, Eli already has a thing for kickass action girls that allows his affections to be transferred with a minimum of fuss, and Teddy has always liked vulnerable-yet-snarky magic-users, so, one way or another, they’re all devoted to her. In addition, Nico insinuates the doubt into Teddy’s head that Billy wanted their relationship into being in the first place (an idea that’s been brought up several times in fandom), which seriously discomforts him, because Billy’s magic obeying his subconscious desires outside of his control isn’t exactly a new problem.
Eventually, though, after some telepathic training with Professor X, an expert at memory/emotion manipulation, Billy and Jonas can successfully enter their teammates’ minds long enough to set things to rights, setting off a palace revolt. Nico’s powers only work as long as those they’re working on aren’t aware of them; once everybody realizes what’s going on, the whole house of cards collapses.
9) A pairing that I love
Oh, goodness, so many! There are some, like Dean/Castiel or Holmes/Watson, where the line between heterosexual life partners and actual couplehood is blurry, but doesn’t necessarily need to be strictly defined; they work either way. Then there’s the true OTP, such as Sam/Sibyl or Renly/Loras, where they’re not only clearly the single most important person in each other’s lives, but are clearly The One(s).
For the moment, though, for obvious reasons, I’m thinking a lot about Laurence/Granby. These two are interesting, because they don’t fall neatly into either of the aforementioned categories. They’re very close friends, yes, especially given A) the bond formed by serving in battle together and B) their era, which promotes the same-sex friendship as the strongest and, for lack of a better word, worthiest bond between people. And yet, their dragons are still the most important people in their lives. I do ship them, and ship them hard, and I think they would go to the ends of the earth for one another (technically, they have), but I think they both acknowledge that, whatever they have between them, it has to coexist with their relationships with their dragons.
10) A pairing that I despise
The only times I can think of a character that I like, in a series that I like, hooking up with someone catastrophically bad for them are Wynn/Chane of the Noble Dead Saga and Harry/Murphy of the Dresden Files. There have been pairings I’m kind of meh about and/or just don’t get, but can’t get my panties in a twist over (as in most of the Harry Potter pairings; seriously, some people get a little scary about their hatred for, say, Harry/Ginny, and I just don’t get that), but these two, I’m really unhappy with.
Wynn had an adorkably klutzy ninja Elf boyfriend, who had proven himself willing to fight a millennia-old Mother of All Vampires for her, and she reciprocated by using her magic and skill with languages to keep him out of trouble with the authorities. They made a great couple! But then, for some reason, she dumps him and hooks up with a minor antagonist from several books ago. At this point, they both undergo severe Twilightification, where Wynn, who has fought in wars and travelled across continents, now can’t cross the street without help from her supernatural stalker. Oh, wait, he’s not staking her! He’s just following her. All the time. Without her permission. And breaking into her house. And kidnapping her “for her own good.” And for some reason, she finds this indescribably sexy, not creepy. *headdesk*
Harry/Murphy I’m just annoyed with because I know it will end horribly. If they actually go through with that relationship upgrade, they’re both going to be so unhappy, it’s going to end in death and/or a messy breakup, and heap more angst on them both while simultaneously destroying one of the few positive, supportive relationships they both had. I really like them as friends, but adding sex to the mix, especially when sex will only exacerbate Harry’s protectiveness and Murphy’s abandonment issues, is just a recipe for disaster.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-29 08:27 pm (UTC)Sorry to hear about the rough last week of school, having to do the Berkeley-Sebastopol drive twice, and the frustrating event of your father's.
Very interesting blog post on "invert". Not knowing anything about it one way or another, I rather suspect a stylistic authorial choice rather than lack of research. I don't think it's justified by world-building; I suspect that Novik decided (for whatever reason) that she didn't want to use "sodomite" or the other terms (of which I do think "sodomite" is the only reasonable choice). I tend to be pretty tolerant of inaccuracies in fantastic fiction, so even knowing it's an anachronism doesn't bother me -- though I can certainly accept that it would bother other people.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-30 05:50 am (UTC)It really, really is! I didn't realize it at the time, but I'd apparently been grinding my teeth for a good deal of the early part of this week, and I'm pretty sure that was the cause, because the pain in my neck/jaw went away after it all got sorted out. XD
I suspect that Novik decided (for whatever reason) that she didn't want to use "sodomite" or the other terms (of which I do think "sodomite" is the only reasonable choice)
Hmm... (editorial?) PC-ness, maybe? And I absolutely agree that "sodomite" was the only viable choice; "paederast" has pedophilic overtones in pretty much any era, and I just can't imagine Granby calling himself a "buggerer" (which, in addition, doesn't exactly roll off the tongue).