A meme which resulted in a lot of text
Jul. 20th, 2009 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elabyI got this meme from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
janeturenne, and she asked me about some quite wonderful things :)
Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.
Cut, because I tend to go on. I discuss Holmesslash, but since I just talk about my definition of the term and about the fandom, it's safe for non-slashers.
Hands:
Hands! Hands are possibly my favorite body part. I'm a total sucker for physical gestures of affection in my fictional entertainment, especially when it involves people who aren't prone to it, and hands are the part of the body (in western culture at least) that constitute a sort of "first step" in physicality. Since you can be relatively far away from someone and still touch them with your hand, it's safer in a way – less intimacy, less commitment, less possibility of awkwardness and of finding out the hard way that your feelings aren't reciprocated. I tend to like things that aren't particularly overt, and hand-touching is the least overt form of physical affection while still being significant.
In the end, I think it's all Utena's fault. Hands are a hugely important image in Utena; every character, or character pairing, has some kind of significant scene with hands. Holding hands is a symbol of Utena and Anthy's relationship (It's even the last image we see of Utena and Anthy together, in the photograph); Touga bandaged Saionji's hand when they were little, and the unraveling of the bandage symbolized the unraveling of their friendship... I could go on. I swear at least half the shots in the entire series are of hands alone. Not only that, they're also drawn beautifully. I used to practice drawing hands in the style of the anime, and that's evolved into how I draw hands now. My mother, wonderful supporter of creativity that she is, never fails to comment on the hands in my drawings and also manages to be especially appreciative when I had a difficult time with them. Drawing hands is hard. It's one of the biggest things new (and not so new) artists struggle with.
Hands are also the subtle!slasher's dream come true. Most likely, you're not going to see your favorite pairing ripping each other's clothes off, or kissing, or even hugging in most of my fandoms. But oh, do they ever put their hands to good use. With me, the slash blends with friendship and I don't really care whether there's physical attraction involved, and hand-touching is nicely ambiguous in that area. I could probably go on forever with examples, but here's a couple of them:
- In Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, the first time Hamlet sees Horatio, he shakes Horatio's hand with one hand and touches his face with the other. It's a tiny gesture but it's so perfectly indicative of their relationship.
- Similarly, Jeremy Brett as Holmes pats Watson's hand and comes close to touching his face in A Scandal in Bohemia. In fact, Arthur Wontner as Holmes touches Watson a lot too (and everyone else, but mostly Watson), poking and caressing and escorting. And Livanov and Solomin continue the trend – they hug in greeting, they hold each other, Holmes grasps Watson's hand in order to keep him from getting into trouble with Milverton...
- Speaking of Milverton, CHAS has what I consider to be the best hand-holding in the Holmes canon. Watson apparently likes hands as much as I do, or at least Holmes's hands, considering how much he talks about them. Hands therefore tend to feature significantly in my fanfic – I'm lucky that canon aligns so well with my favorite things to write about.
- Starsky and Hutch, holy crap. They are always touching each other. They actually hug relatively frequently, compared to my other favorites, but in every episode there's something. They're forever touching each other's faces, putting their hands in each other's hair, squeezing shoulders, clasping hands, grabbing arms, clinging to jacket fronts. They're very physical, in contrast to the other pairings I like, and it just delights me to no end.
- In Farewell, My Lovely there's this utterly fantastic scene with Marlowe and Red, where Marlowe ends up telling Red all of his darkest fears because Red has pretty eyes and Red takes Marlowe's hand in both of his and it's just... utterly fantastic.
I'll spare you any more, since I have other words to talk about :3
Shakespeare:
I was originally crazy about Shakespeare because it was old and academic and it made me feel smart to squee about it. Then I went to college and grad school and discovered lots of other writers of classic English literature who were, I felt, equally or more talented and sometimes more interesting than Shakespeare. Nevertheless, it's Shakespeare I come back to – I love Christopher Marlowe and I think he's more interesting as a person than Shakespeare, but I don't write fanfic for his plays and I don't find myself thinking about his characters. Shakespeare has this magic – his characters have a spark of life that few writers of the period could reproduce. Even the minor characters are complex, carefully wrought, and you could spend hours unraveling their motivations and mental states. It helps that Shakespeare has been done and done and done, and therefore you never run out of new adaptations, interpretations, and opinions to entertain yourself with. This also means that a lot more people are familiar with it, so when I make a reference to a play, somebody is bound to get it. My literary fandoms tend to be somewhat obscure otherwise, so there's an inclusiveness about Shakespeare that appeals to me.
Dreams/nightmares:
I'm not sure ifjaneturenne wanted to know about dreams and nightmares in my writing or in my life, so I'm going to talk about both :3
When I first started writing prolifically (I'll say that was when I metcaitirin in college... I've written stories as long as I can remember, but they were usually of the "page and a half and I get bored and start something new" variety, or longer stories similar to whatever I was interested in at the time in which I'd write 20 pages over the course of a few years) I used dreams and nightmares all the time. Eventually, I started thinking of them as a cliche plot device, and in an effort to be inventive and unique and all those things I mistakenly thought I had to be to be a writer, I stopped including them. Once I got over that and decided I was going to write what I love writing and attempts at supposed uniqueness be damned, I've begun to include them again. This time, though, I've tried to craft them so that they have a purpose besides "here's a way to explain something I don't know how to explain otherwise." In my personal experience, dreams don't often make a lot of sense with what's going on in my life. They're either a random mishmash of events, a sometimes-coherent story, or variations on a theme. I try to make dreams I write about be like that too, but then work the effects of them into the characters' waking hours instead of revealing plot points in the dream. I will say, though, that this goes for characters in a strictly realistic setting, not ones where magic or the supernatural or psychic talents or anything like that play a part. I think I'd be all over prophetic dreams in that case :3
Like I mentioned, my dreams in real life don't usually have much that I can connect to what's going on in my day-to-day existence. When I have nightmares, they tend to involve dead people, almost always anonymous ones. I've had many dreams where I find myself somewhere where there are lots and lots of dead people laid out (in a hospital morgue, in a field awaiting burial, etc.) and I also dream about graveyards a lot. In the graveyard dreams, most of the time there will be broken sepulchers and half-open graves and things where I'm terrified I'll see a corpse if I get too close. Related to this are nightmares that something horrifying is about to come on television and I can't turn it off or escape it. Other nightmares I have involve the end of the world, via giant storm or alien invasion or massive war. Those are usually unsure – I never know whether the attack or tsunami or whatever will come close to my house.
This is less of a nightmare and more just plain annoying, but ever since I did drama in high school I have continual – like several times monthly – dreams that I'm supposed to be performing in a play (in anywhere between 3 hours and five minutes) and I don't know my lines. And it's never because I studied them and forgot - it's always that I'm suddenly asked to reprise a part I played a year ago, or because I said I wasn't going to be in the play so I never went to rehearsal but I have to be in it anyway. These have been getting better in the past few years, in that now I just dream that I have to improvise something, or that the play gets cancelled before I have to go on, or that I know I know my lines and I'll remember them the minute I hear my cue. These improved versions are still interspersed with the regular kind. I'm always searching for a damned script, too e_e
On the "good dream" side of the scale, I have what I'd call three types: "spectacle" dreams, story dreams, and fanfic dreams. Spectacle dreams are when I dream I see something really awesome, almost always something in the sky. This normally takes the form of stars and planets and galaxies out my window at night, or giant moons filling the evening sky, or enormous spaceships that are non-threatening for whatever reason. Story dreams are ones that either involve me personally or are something I watch in which there is a plot of varying degrees of coherence. Often I wake up and go "That would make such a good story!" but then when I remember the dream when I'm actually awake, it's completely ridiculous. These often have some element of fantasy or the supernatural. I have dreams like these about haunted places quite a bit, but I never see any ghosts, I can just feel the rooms I'm in or walk by are haunted. Fanfic dreams are like story dreams only they involve characters somebody else created. All those snuggly Holmes-and-Watson dreams I've had fall into this category. I've also had quite a few bad Harry Potter fanfic dreams, in which the characters (mostly Snape) would do incredibly out-of-character things. While normally somewhat dorky and embarrassing, these were at least good for a laugh.
Research:
If my job could be to research cool stuff, compile it, and give it to somebody else to do something with, I would be the happiest little Elaby ever. That's ostensibly what I do now, except that the subject matter is boring beyond belief and I'm always asked the exact same questions, so very little "going and finding" is involved. It's more often referring to somebody who has access to said information and waiting for them to respond. I think I was at my happiest in college when I was running around the library with a list of call numbers and a stack of dusty volumes in my arms, sitting on top of a table with four books open around me going "Ooh, I can use that! And that! And... not that. That's on crack." It was the actual writing my research into papers that I was less thrilled with.
Now that I can do this for fun, though, and I'm not trying to measure up to some intangible academic standard, I love using the stuff I learn. After being blindsided by this Sherlock Holmes obsession, I consumed everything on Victorian London that I could find, and I loved planning how I would use it in stories or fic as much as I loved just learning about it. Possibly I like the learning part a little bit more :)
Holmesslash:
Thank you,janeturenne, for giving me a good reason to babble about Holmes and slash and how I interpret the two together!
I know people interpret the word "slash" in a fannish context very differently. I think the way I define and use it is one of the broadest, and it stems from my beliefs about love and sex. I think it's possible to love someone romantically and not want to have sex with them; I think it's possible to want to have sex with someone and not love them, romantically or otherwise; and I think that there are a billion different shades in between that may or may not have anything to do with romantic feelings (and that isn't to say that I think those examples are two ends of the spectrum, either. It's less a spectrum and more a, um, three-dimensional field). My usage of "slash," and my interest in so-called slashy things, encompasses any same-gender attraction, affection, love, friendship, sex, and so forth. I think it happened this way because when I first started hearing about slash and watching things people called slashy, I didn't make a differentiation between the characters (men, mostly) being really close friends and wanting to get into each other's pants. It made me happy either way, so while my friends were going "OMG, they're so totally shagging!" I was thinking "D'aww, they're adorable and they love each other!" and the shagging part didn't really matter to me either way.
This is particularly important for Holmesslash because of the way I view Holmes and Watson's relationship. Canonically, I think they're the closest thing to significant others that both of them have, and I could (and probably would) argue that they do have romantic feelings for each other. They certainly love each other, and I think they both love each other more than anyone else in their lives. I don't think they have sex, but I also don't think it's ridiculous for people to believe they do, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest to read fanfic in which their relationship is physical in that way. My personal tastes generally fall under a PG-13 or at most an R rating, but I've been known to read stories that are rated higher.
I think I gravitate towards slash fic, as opposed to gen, because I expect there to be more opportunities for the things I like in slash (those things being relationship explorations, angst and comfort over said relationship, and physical affection of a PG-13-or-below nature). Speaking of hurt and comfort, I have discovered that when it comes to Holmes and Watson, I really like comfort to go with the hurt. Explorations of their relationship, rocky as it is, are necessarily going to involve pain, and I don't mean that I need the fic I read to be fluffy and warm in equal parts to the harshness, but as I get older I just don’t get the same enjoyment out of angst-only fic as I used to. Holmes and Watson's entire story together is sad enough; I prefer my leisure reading to have some hope in it.
I also have to say that the Holmesslash community is the friendliest fandom I've ever participated in. I don't have a huge wealth of experience, but people are so goshdarned nice, so welcoming and encouraging and all-around squeeful, that I can barely believe my luck. I've run into elitism in other literary fandoms and wank in television and movie fandoms (not to say that those problems are exclusive to each) and I just haven't seen anything like that in the Holmesslash community. I've been a little (okay, more than a little) bummed by all the negativity surrounding the new movie, but I've just stopped reading comments on any post that has to do with it in a community where I suspect people will be freaking out. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I just wish people would wait to see it before they deem it a travesty. That aside, the people I've met have been ridiculously marvelous, and I never would have found out about all the great Holmes movies, series, books, and radio plays without them. I certainly wouldn't have written as much fic as I have without their encouragement – or at least I wouldn't have shared as much of it. I've never seen anyone in this fandom comment negatively about another person's creative works, and maybe I've just been lucky... but it goes a long way in my enjoyment of all things Holmesian to know that the people whose community I've joined welcome my contributions and even like them.
janeturenne, and she asked me about some quite wonderful things :)Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.
Cut, because I tend to go on. I discuss Holmesslash, but since I just talk about my definition of the term and about the fandom, it's safe for non-slashers.
Hands:
Hands! Hands are possibly my favorite body part. I'm a total sucker for physical gestures of affection in my fictional entertainment, especially when it involves people who aren't prone to it, and hands are the part of the body (in western culture at least) that constitute a sort of "first step" in physicality. Since you can be relatively far away from someone and still touch them with your hand, it's safer in a way – less intimacy, less commitment, less possibility of awkwardness and of finding out the hard way that your feelings aren't reciprocated. I tend to like things that aren't particularly overt, and hand-touching is the least overt form of physical affection while still being significant.
In the end, I think it's all Utena's fault. Hands are a hugely important image in Utena; every character, or character pairing, has some kind of significant scene with hands. Holding hands is a symbol of Utena and Anthy's relationship (It's even the last image we see of Utena and Anthy together, in the photograph); Touga bandaged Saionji's hand when they were little, and the unraveling of the bandage symbolized the unraveling of their friendship... I could go on. I swear at least half the shots in the entire series are of hands alone. Not only that, they're also drawn beautifully. I used to practice drawing hands in the style of the anime, and that's evolved into how I draw hands now. My mother, wonderful supporter of creativity that she is, never fails to comment on the hands in my drawings and also manages to be especially appreciative when I had a difficult time with them. Drawing hands is hard. It's one of the biggest things new (and not so new) artists struggle with.
Hands are also the subtle!slasher's dream come true. Most likely, you're not going to see your favorite pairing ripping each other's clothes off, or kissing, or even hugging in most of my fandoms. But oh, do they ever put their hands to good use. With me, the slash blends with friendship and I don't really care whether there's physical attraction involved, and hand-touching is nicely ambiguous in that area. I could probably go on forever with examples, but here's a couple of them:
- In Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, the first time Hamlet sees Horatio, he shakes Horatio's hand with one hand and touches his face with the other. It's a tiny gesture but it's so perfectly indicative of their relationship.
- Similarly, Jeremy Brett as Holmes pats Watson's hand and comes close to touching his face in A Scandal in Bohemia. In fact, Arthur Wontner as Holmes touches Watson a lot too (and everyone else, but mostly Watson), poking and caressing and escorting. And Livanov and Solomin continue the trend – they hug in greeting, they hold each other, Holmes grasps Watson's hand in order to keep him from getting into trouble with Milverton...
- Speaking of Milverton, CHAS has what I consider to be the best hand-holding in the Holmes canon. Watson apparently likes hands as much as I do, or at least Holmes's hands, considering how much he talks about them. Hands therefore tend to feature significantly in my fanfic – I'm lucky that canon aligns so well with my favorite things to write about.
- Starsky and Hutch, holy crap. They are always touching each other. They actually hug relatively frequently, compared to my other favorites, but in every episode there's something. They're forever touching each other's faces, putting their hands in each other's hair, squeezing shoulders, clasping hands, grabbing arms, clinging to jacket fronts. They're very physical, in contrast to the other pairings I like, and it just delights me to no end.
- In Farewell, My Lovely there's this utterly fantastic scene with Marlowe and Red, where Marlowe ends up telling Red all of his darkest fears because Red has pretty eyes and Red takes Marlowe's hand in both of his and it's just... utterly fantastic.
I'll spare you any more, since I have other words to talk about :3
Shakespeare:
I was originally crazy about Shakespeare because it was old and academic and it made me feel smart to squee about it. Then I went to college and grad school and discovered lots of other writers of classic English literature who were, I felt, equally or more talented and sometimes more interesting than Shakespeare. Nevertheless, it's Shakespeare I come back to – I love Christopher Marlowe and I think he's more interesting as a person than Shakespeare, but I don't write fanfic for his plays and I don't find myself thinking about his characters. Shakespeare has this magic – his characters have a spark of life that few writers of the period could reproduce. Even the minor characters are complex, carefully wrought, and you could spend hours unraveling their motivations and mental states. It helps that Shakespeare has been done and done and done, and therefore you never run out of new adaptations, interpretations, and opinions to entertain yourself with. This also means that a lot more people are familiar with it, so when I make a reference to a play, somebody is bound to get it. My literary fandoms tend to be somewhat obscure otherwise, so there's an inclusiveness about Shakespeare that appeals to me.
Dreams/nightmares:
I'm not sure if
janeturenne wanted to know about dreams and nightmares in my writing or in my life, so I'm going to talk about both :3When I first started writing prolifically (I'll say that was when I met
caitirin in college... I've written stories as long as I can remember, but they were usually of the "page and a half and I get bored and start something new" variety, or longer stories similar to whatever I was interested in at the time in which I'd write 20 pages over the course of a few years) I used dreams and nightmares all the time. Eventually, I started thinking of them as a cliche plot device, and in an effort to be inventive and unique and all those things I mistakenly thought I had to be to be a writer, I stopped including them. Once I got over that and decided I was going to write what I love writing and attempts at supposed uniqueness be damned, I've begun to include them again. This time, though, I've tried to craft them so that they have a purpose besides "here's a way to explain something I don't know how to explain otherwise." In my personal experience, dreams don't often make a lot of sense with what's going on in my life. They're either a random mishmash of events, a sometimes-coherent story, or variations on a theme. I try to make dreams I write about be like that too, but then work the effects of them into the characters' waking hours instead of revealing plot points in the dream. I will say, though, that this goes for characters in a strictly realistic setting, not ones where magic or the supernatural or psychic talents or anything like that play a part. I think I'd be all over prophetic dreams in that case :3Like I mentioned, my dreams in real life don't usually have much that I can connect to what's going on in my day-to-day existence. When I have nightmares, they tend to involve dead people, almost always anonymous ones. I've had many dreams where I find myself somewhere where there are lots and lots of dead people laid out (in a hospital morgue, in a field awaiting burial, etc.) and I also dream about graveyards a lot. In the graveyard dreams, most of the time there will be broken sepulchers and half-open graves and things where I'm terrified I'll see a corpse if I get too close. Related to this are nightmares that something horrifying is about to come on television and I can't turn it off or escape it. Other nightmares I have involve the end of the world, via giant storm or alien invasion or massive war. Those are usually unsure – I never know whether the attack or tsunami or whatever will come close to my house.
This is less of a nightmare and more just plain annoying, but ever since I did drama in high school I have continual – like several times monthly – dreams that I'm supposed to be performing in a play (in anywhere between 3 hours and five minutes) and I don't know my lines. And it's never because I studied them and forgot - it's always that I'm suddenly asked to reprise a part I played a year ago, or because I said I wasn't going to be in the play so I never went to rehearsal but I have to be in it anyway. These have been getting better in the past few years, in that now I just dream that I have to improvise something, or that the play gets cancelled before I have to go on, or that I know I know my lines and I'll remember them the minute I hear my cue. These improved versions are still interspersed with the regular kind. I'm always searching for a damned script, too e_e
On the "good dream" side of the scale, I have what I'd call three types: "spectacle" dreams, story dreams, and fanfic dreams. Spectacle dreams are when I dream I see something really awesome, almost always something in the sky. This normally takes the form of stars and planets and galaxies out my window at night, or giant moons filling the evening sky, or enormous spaceships that are non-threatening for whatever reason. Story dreams are ones that either involve me personally or are something I watch in which there is a plot of varying degrees of coherence. Often I wake up and go "That would make such a good story!" but then when I remember the dream when I'm actually awake, it's completely ridiculous. These often have some element of fantasy or the supernatural. I have dreams like these about haunted places quite a bit, but I never see any ghosts, I can just feel the rooms I'm in or walk by are haunted. Fanfic dreams are like story dreams only they involve characters somebody else created. All those snuggly Holmes-and-Watson dreams I've had fall into this category. I've also had quite a few bad Harry Potter fanfic dreams, in which the characters (mostly Snape) would do incredibly out-of-character things. While normally somewhat dorky and embarrassing, these were at least good for a laugh.
Research:
If my job could be to research cool stuff, compile it, and give it to somebody else to do something with, I would be the happiest little Elaby ever. That's ostensibly what I do now, except that the subject matter is boring beyond belief and I'm always asked the exact same questions, so very little "going and finding" is involved. It's more often referring to somebody who has access to said information and waiting for them to respond. I think I was at my happiest in college when I was running around the library with a list of call numbers and a stack of dusty volumes in my arms, sitting on top of a table with four books open around me going "Ooh, I can use that! And that! And... not that. That's on crack." It was the actual writing my research into papers that I was less thrilled with.
Now that I can do this for fun, though, and I'm not trying to measure up to some intangible academic standard, I love using the stuff I learn. After being blindsided by this Sherlock Holmes obsession, I consumed everything on Victorian London that I could find, and I loved planning how I would use it in stories or fic as much as I loved just learning about it. Possibly I like the learning part a little bit more :)
Holmesslash:
Thank you,
janeturenne, for giving me a good reason to babble about Holmes and slash and how I interpret the two together!I know people interpret the word "slash" in a fannish context very differently. I think the way I define and use it is one of the broadest, and it stems from my beliefs about love and sex. I think it's possible to love someone romantically and not want to have sex with them; I think it's possible to want to have sex with someone and not love them, romantically or otherwise; and I think that there are a billion different shades in between that may or may not have anything to do with romantic feelings (and that isn't to say that I think those examples are two ends of the spectrum, either. It's less a spectrum and more a, um, three-dimensional field). My usage of "slash," and my interest in so-called slashy things, encompasses any same-gender attraction, affection, love, friendship, sex, and so forth. I think it happened this way because when I first started hearing about slash and watching things people called slashy, I didn't make a differentiation between the characters (men, mostly) being really close friends and wanting to get into each other's pants. It made me happy either way, so while my friends were going "OMG, they're so totally shagging!" I was thinking "D'aww, they're adorable and they love each other!" and the shagging part didn't really matter to me either way.
This is particularly important for Holmesslash because of the way I view Holmes and Watson's relationship. Canonically, I think they're the closest thing to significant others that both of them have, and I could (and probably would) argue that they do have romantic feelings for each other. They certainly love each other, and I think they both love each other more than anyone else in their lives. I don't think they have sex, but I also don't think it's ridiculous for people to believe they do, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest to read fanfic in which their relationship is physical in that way. My personal tastes generally fall under a PG-13 or at most an R rating, but I've been known to read stories that are rated higher.
I think I gravitate towards slash fic, as opposed to gen, because I expect there to be more opportunities for the things I like in slash (those things being relationship explorations, angst and comfort over said relationship, and physical affection of a PG-13-or-below nature). Speaking of hurt and comfort, I have discovered that when it comes to Holmes and Watson, I really like comfort to go with the hurt. Explorations of their relationship, rocky as it is, are necessarily going to involve pain, and I don't mean that I need the fic I read to be fluffy and warm in equal parts to the harshness, but as I get older I just don’t get the same enjoyment out of angst-only fic as I used to. Holmes and Watson's entire story together is sad enough; I prefer my leisure reading to have some hope in it.
I also have to say that the Holmesslash community is the friendliest fandom I've ever participated in. I don't have a huge wealth of experience, but people are so goshdarned nice, so welcoming and encouraging and all-around squeeful, that I can barely believe my luck. I've run into elitism in other literary fandoms and wank in television and movie fandoms (not to say that those problems are exclusive to each) and I just haven't seen anything like that in the Holmesslash community. I've been a little (okay, more than a little) bummed by all the negativity surrounding the new movie, but I've just stopped reading comments on any post that has to do with it in a community where I suspect people will be freaking out. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I just wish people would wait to see it before they deem it a travesty. That aside, the people I've met have been ridiculously marvelous, and I never would have found out about all the great Holmes movies, series, books, and radio plays without them. I certainly wouldn't have written as much fic as I have without their encouragement – or at least I wouldn't have shared as much of it. I've never seen anyone in this fandom comment negatively about another person's creative works, and maybe I've just been lucky... but it goes a long way in my enjoyment of all things Holmesian to know that the people whose community I've joined welcome my contributions and even like them.
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Date: 2009-07-20 11:49 pm (UTC)I have to say this right off: you write the best handholding EVER. Seriously, dear, it's utterly delicious-- sweet and sensual and so expressive and just gorgeous. I will forever be in awe of that bit at the chemical table in Baker Street, 3:25 AM, which I cannot even begin to adequately praise. It's....mmmmmmmm. Mmmmmmmm, is about all that can be said. Months later. When it still haunts me, in the best possible way. *runs off to reread that bit* Yep. Mmmmmmmm!
I feel like I ought to know much more Marlowe than I do. I do recall that I very much preferred his Faust, which is the only Marlowe I've read, to Goethe's. Which of his plays is your favorite?
I want to hear about your bad HP fanfic dreams! They sound hilarious...
people are so goshdarned nice, so welcoming and encouraging and all-around squeeful, that I can barely believe my luck
Seconded! I have no idea how the Holmesslash community comes to be so amazing, how so many marvelous people could have all managed to find each other without any negativism sneaking in anywhere along the line. Seriously, we're some kind of statistical anomaly, I think, but it's wonderful. I'd spent my share of time lurking and hanging about the edges of other fandoms, but I doubt I'd have ever been really in one if everyone hereabouts weren't so fabulous! One or two folks even more so than the rest *significant glance followed by flying-tackle hug*
Oh man, I really want to ask you for words, even though I've already done one set and am working on a second... but I have no self-control :) Words, please!!
no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 10:50 pm (UTC)*beams* I spent SO long trying to figure out just the mechanics of that scene, let alone making it sound nice. It means so much to me that you remember it!
Which of his plays is your favorite?
I think either Dido, Queen of Carthage or Edward II. Marlowe is so awesome in his ability to portray complex messages in his plays, but he's not as good as Shakespeare at making well-rounded, complicated, memorable characters. Which isn't to say that some of his aren't... and it's hard to compare when we have something like 35 plays Shakespeare wrote and we only have, what, six of Marlowe's? But yeah, those two are my favorites :) I actually like Hero and Leander, one of his long poems, a whole lot too.
I want to hear about your bad HP fanfic dreams!
I think I posted about them XD Let me see if I can find the links... Aha! Here, here, and here. They all have kind of weird formatting, because I cut and paste them from my DeadJournal *laughs*
One or two folks even more so than the rest *significant glance followed by flying-tackle hug*
Eeeee! *happy squeal, bowled over* I perhaps was referring to some specific persons when I talked about how wonderful the people I've met are :3
Words! For you!
Music as writing (or writing as music), asexual Holmes, Jooster, Shakespeare (slightly cheating, but I want to hear what you think!), and Mrs Hudson :D
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Date: 2009-07-21 11:09 pm (UTC)YOUR DREAMS CRACK ME UP. Especially the second. I think he walked off with dignity had me already, and then there were BUNNY SUITS. There were giggle attacks of the highest order.
And those are wonderful words! You spoil me, dear :) *runs off to write*
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Date: 2009-07-21 11:20 pm (UTC)Dido, if I recall correctly, is awesome in that it's totally on Dido's side, which I don't think is usual during that time period. Edward II is interesting because he's a rotten ruler, but he just wants to live life as the person he is, and my professor when I took the Marlowe class said that this play was one of the first to discuss "the individual" as we understand it now. And Hero and Leander is kind of hilarious and just gorgeous in parts :D
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Date: 2009-07-21 08:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 10:55 pm (UTC)Words! Heists, abstract sculpture (pictures of, usually, but all the same), quality pens, clouds, trains.
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Date: 2009-07-22 08:38 am (UTC)No, seriously. I love the way you think about stuff, and express those thoughts. Fascinated by the hands thing as I'd never really thought about it like that, but as soon as you mentioned it I was like 'oh, of course!'
And now I want to watch Starsky & Hutch again.
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Date: 2009-07-23 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-21 08:59 am (UTC)I have a major thing for hands and have read some very...inspiring fics about hands recently. I always love the handholding bits in your fics as well!
Oh and research! How I wish I could be a student forever! The best thing about my dissertation was the crazy amounts of research I had to do (and because I wasn't writing about any classics I had to do a lot of pretty obscure research).
You make a good point about the interpretation of slash. For me it's just a broad term for relationships between two men. I would make a conclusion about the exact nature of the relationship based on the rating and the genre. If it was a fluff fic rated G (I wonder who wrote that?) then I would assume it was more romantic. An angst fic rated R (who would write such a thing?) I would assume to be less romantic (although not exclude romance) and be more graphic.
I like the different shades of relationships. It all depends for me, upon which characters are being slashed. For Holmes/Watson I prefer there to be romance. I feel there is a lot of love between them and good fics for me are ones that show that. Any shagging (you gotta love that word) is a bonus. Some of my other ships however are less romantic and more about sexual tension and a painfully onesided infatuation. *sigh* I'm really gonna have to try and learn to write something a little more fluffy.
I also have to say that the Holmesslash community is the friendliest fandom I've ever participated in.
OMG you're so right! I can't believe how wank free everything is! I mean, even the new film, there are those who are looking forward to it and those that are not but so far everyone's had their say and no one has been shot down for having an opinion. A stark contrast to Doctor Who which I tend to avoid like the plague these days. When you're sat recalling a hundred bitter arguments it's hard to get any pleasure out of the programme. So I pretty much ignore that fandom now.
I very pleased to be part of the Holmesslash community. Talent and a healthy dose of camaraderie!
Oh yes and words! (even though I've kinda already done this *shrugs*)
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Date: 2009-07-21 11:06 pm (UTC)I think this is a good definition. I know some people who think that slash just means fic with sex between characters who aren't canonically involved O_o I also forgot to mention that I don't usually use "slash" to refer to relationships between females. I think I use "girlslash" or "girl love" or something. I don't talk about it that much, I guess, weirdly enough XD
A stark contrast to Doctor Who which I tend to avoid like the plague these days.
Aww, that's sad. I tend to avoid it like the plague because I'm perpetually behind and I really don't want to get spoiled.
Words for you! Most of them are entirely for my own benefit XD
Holmes/Lestrade, Tim Stamper, Clive Merrison, icon-making, Russian!Holmes-and-Watson
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Date: 2009-07-21 02:31 pm (UTC)Gimmie words!
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Date: 2009-07-21 11:10 pm (UTC)Konata, a craft room of our own, exercise cleverly disguised as fun, amigurumi, picnics
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Date: 2009-07-22 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-29 03:26 pm (UTC)Yes! Totally, completely, yes. I find that the best way to write a paper is to find someone who really likes to do all of the writing, but isn't so keen on the research. It's the best of both worlds. You do the research, they do the writing, then you have long debates over coffee through the editing process.
I like slash/het, versus typical porn, because there is that relationship exploration, backstory, emotional changes, story and not just sex. I find just reading sex boring. But even in a PWP, there is so much else going on that it is rarely just sex.
I have complicated thoughts on love, sex and trust. This may also be further complicated by having complicated definitions for love and sex, individually.
Gen fics tend to not have the level of emotional (? I'm not sure that's the right word) involvement on the part of the reader to me. Although, that is not universally true, of course. And I think that is why, I don't tip my toe into the gen pool as often.
Speaking of hurt and comfort, I have discovered that when it comes to Holmes and Watson, I really like comfort to go with the hurt. Explorations of their relationship, rocky as it is, are necessarily going to involve pain, and I don't mean that I need the fic I read to be fluffy and warm in equal parts to the harshness, but as I get older I just don’t get the same enjoyment out of angst-only fic as I used to. Holmes and Watson's entire story together is sad enough; I prefer my leisure reading to have some hope in it.
Yes, and yes. Even more so, I find when it comes to movies. I just don't want to go on an emotional roller coaster when I'm expecting light fluff. And if I'm expecting H/C, I want there to be a reasonable level of comfort to soothe over the hurt. I also find that I can't handle a continued hurt/comfort cycle, where a new hurt surfaces, before the previous hurt has even been fully resolved and healed. This is why I don't watch Soap Operas, they never have a chance to just be happy for a little while.
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Date: 2009-07-29 11:04 pm (UTC)That's an awesome way to do it! I'm afraid I might be too anal not to write it myself, though, unless it was a topic I'm not super in love with. Like if somebody wanted me to research medieval China, which I think is probably fascinating but I'm not crazy about, I could totally do that and let them write the paper and collaborate on the editing. That sounds like such a good deal!
I find just reading sex boring. But even in a PWP, there is so much else going on that it is rarely just sex.
Yeah, seriously. I find (and my experience isn't huge) that with fanfic, there tends to be more going on than sex even if the author says it's just sex.
Gen fics tend to not have the level of emotional (? I'm not sure that's the right word) involvement on the part of the reader to me.
Yeah, I think that if gen fics are gen because they're really plot-driven and don't involve the characters' feelings, they're not as interesting to me. With Holmes stuff, some gen tends to be really straight-up pastiche where it's just a mystery for the sake of a mystery and to write Holmes being brilliant, and I don't read even the original stories for the mysteries... I read them for the characters interacting with each other.
I also find that I can't handle a continued hurt/comfort cycle, where a new hurt surfaces, before the previous hurt has even been fully resolved and healed.
Yes! It's so exhausting when there isn't any resolution, and I know that's the point sometimes, but I don't want that for my entertainment.