Sententiae Draconis

Hey all. It's May. Which means it's getting close to decision time.

I still haven't heard from anyone official at the archaeology firm yet, but M says that things are starting up and they'll be needing new hires soon. I'll send a polite email sometime around Monday if I haven't heard anything by then.

Still trying to feel optimistic, but I'm going to have to start making plans to move into my brother's basement soon whether I hear back or not.

I've given notice at work. So May 14th is going to be my last day.

I've started organizing books, and yarn, and clothes. And I'm getting boxes together to send to long term storage in my Mother's basement (despite having just cleared everything out of there this past summer).

And I should have gotten more accomplished today, but instead I finished reading The Silvered by Tanya Huff because I just couldn't put it down. Werewolves and mages and badass womenfolk and an Empire like the Romans in a time period more similar to the Napoleonic wars. It was awesome. Highly recommend. But that's not exactly surprising since it's Tanya Huff.

Anyway. Life is hard right now. But I'm working through it. And hopefully I'll hear something good really soon. If not I'll be heading east toward family. Which is also good.

And in the meantime we're getting Iron Man 3 at my work and we're probably going to have a staff screening either tonight or tomorrow morning. So I'm finally going to get the chance to see a new movie before everyone else! Perks of the job. :)

Some friends recently told me that I should watch The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and since I'd already heard the name bouncing around the internet I got curious.

What are The Lizzie Bennet Diaries? you ask. (Or maybe you don't, because unlike me you actually manage to keep up with the cool things that are happening on the internet.) - Well. It's a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice (as you might expect) that is being told on the internet through Elizabeth Bennet's video blog (and some sidebar video blogs by other characters).

And it shows exactly why I tend to like modern retellings of classic stories, sometimes better than the original.

Classic stories are classic for a reason. They're really good. And usually they're also really old. The really old part is where problems come in. Because writing styles, and laws, and values change a lot over time. So P&P is a great story but when I read (or watch a good historical adaptation - like the BBC mini series) it's also a mental exercise - like reading tough Sci Fi - because I have to try and understand what the fuck the characters are thinking. When you read P&P you have to remember that women are not as important as men, that there aren't that many men around because there's a war on (this is the hardest to remember because Austen doesn't really mention it), and that Mrs. Bennet is not as crazy as you think - sure she's weird, but she's putting all her efforts into making sure her daughters are alright, which is quite noble even if her methods are suspect. (This is a point I have a hard time remembering.)

But modern retellings, when done well, take all the good story bits and make them easier to understand. And you can wallow in the characters and the plot without having to stop and retrospectively seethe for all the women in that time period who weren't allowed to be people.

But I digress.

The point of this post is that The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is AWESOME. And I love the way they tell the story because I feel like it shows off the characters better. I mainlined all the episodes they have so far yesterday, they're not quite done the story yet but they've gotten to the story equivalent of Lydia living unwed with Wickham (I won't tell you how they do it for modern day - spoilers!). And here are the things that I liked:

- Even though they're Lizzie's video blogs her faults and the narrowness of her views and opinions are extremely clear. Her portrayals of the other characters are so hilarious and over the top and the way that the other characters actually appear occasionally on the blog makes so much sense.
- Charlotte has real character development and is awesome! - And the way they do the Mr. Collins storyline is brilliant. BRILLIANT.
- Darcy is a Hipster!
- Everything about Lydia is amazing. Her whole storyline is so well done, with a great hint of meta. Because Lydia is awesome and she's talking about how she deserves what is happening to her ("and that's what everyone's saying, right?") which I think is how Lydia the character in the book is treated. Hell, that's kinda how I felt about her. It's so awesome to be called out about your opinions about a character!
- Lizzie is a Grad Student. Of course she is!
- Somehow this weird format went from hilarious joking into deep emotional stuff without skipping a beat. My Heart!
- Bingley is actually a Med Student named Bing Lee. Which means that he's Asian. But also that his first name is Bing. Which is phenomenal for making jokes.

I feel like this only works in part because we know the story so well. Classics are classic for a reason and being able to have a whole video of Lizzie ranting mostly incoherently about what a dick Darcy is with very little hints to the context is a luxury that the producers can afford because we already know what happened at the ball when the Bennets first meet Bingley and Darcy. Instead of being confusing it's amusing and tantalizing because we want to know more about how it turned out in this version.

So yeah. It's weird because I'm pretty sure I like this better than I do P&P, but The Lizzie Bennet Diaries couldn't exist without P&P. I think this is part of why I like fanfic and comic book movies and rebooting franchises (although I generally prefer new stories to retelling the same one over again). Because all of the story and tradition behind the new work helps shape it and make it bigger and more substantial. It's like how every retelling of the Iliad says more about the time of the retelling than it does about the fall of Troy or the Dark Ages of Greece when Homer wrote down the story.

This got thinky. Sorry. I haven't been a Grad Student in over a semester - I think my analytical brain has recovered.

BUT the point is that if you like P&P and modern stories told in new and fun ways then you should watch The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. You can find the videos here.

(That link has all the videos in chronological order. I've only watched the youtube playlist with just Lizzie's videos so far because the biggest problem with this series is that through striving for verisimilitude it took me a while to find where to watch everything and not just Lizzie's perspective. To be fair I was also distracted.)

Episode 1!

Had an absolutely ridiculous thought as I was on the bus coming home today. There's probably not enough cross-over of people around these parts who know both Swallows and Amazons and Sanctuary - but I'm writing it down anyway.

Nancy Blackett and Helen Magnus.

Look out world! I have all faith that the two of them together could do anything they set their minds to - and the rest of the world better get out of their way! (Or help.)

One of the great things about living with M is that we have pretty much the same taste in books, and certainly the same attitude toward them. In any case we've had loads of conversations about different books (and TV, and movies and things) that we remember from our childhoods (and since). It was in one of these that I remembered about Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. I've only read a few of them myself, but Mum read all of them to me and my brother as we were growing up and they are brilliant. I've started rereading them now - although completely out of order. I'm starting with Pigeon Post - which is probably number 6 or so in the series.

This is definitely one of those rare occasions where the book is actually better than I remember it being. It's a series about two (later three) families of children who sail dinghies while on holiday in the Lake Country in England in the '30s, and it was written during this time too. So it could quite easily be filled with bad stereotypes, racism, sexism, etc. But it's not! And Nancy is a considerably stronger female character than most of the characters we get on modern TV (not to nay-say the other girls in the books - it's just that Nancy is so very much in charge of everyone). Yes, it's one of those series of kids adventure books where the eldest in the family is a boy named John (a good alternative to Peter), and the second is a girl named Susan who is practical. But there is no stereotypical explanation for the Blackett sisters. And I love how even though John, as Captain of the Swallow, manages to win in the competition to be the flagship of their tiny fleet, Nancy who is Captain of the Amazon is still very clearly in charge whenever they are doing anything.

But the best thing about these books for me is the imagination.
- Nancy, who's real name is Ruth, refuses to answer to it because pirates are ruthless
- bananas being tied to trees to make banana-trees
- renaming the local village and all the different landmarks to be more exciting - Wild Cat Island, the great hill of Kanchenjunga, Rio, the North Pole etc
- being forced to interact with the Natives (locals and family members left behind on land)
- and endless battles both against and alongside Captain Flint aka Nancy and Peggy's Uncle Jim, who lives in a houseboat

I love them because all of the things that the Swallows (John, Susan, Titty and Roger), Amazons (Nancy and Peggy) and Ds (Dick and Dorothea) do in these books are perfectly normal things for kids their ages to do. They have all properly learned how to sail, or are learning from the older siblings, they are more than capable of cooking for and looking after themselves. And they're also never too far from their parents - who are responsible, loving adults. Who are in no way neglectful and are quite encouraging of their children's insanity so long as they aren't being idiots or unsafe. I think too many of these type of adventure books end up with kids doing things that kids should never have to do. And there are always moments when I wonder where their parents are and what they were thinking. But Swallows and Amazons describes the type of things that my brother and I either did or would have done if we'd been able to spend our holidays on a peaceful lake with easy access to a farm for our morning milk.

(Slight Digression - I love how camping in Mrs Tyson's orchard in Pigeon Post is much too close to civilization, but after they move camp they still send someone all the way down the hill every morning to get fresh milk for their tea. Certain definitions of "wilderness" apply.)

And the sailing is great too. I learned a lot of my first principles of sailing from these books - right off the get go with Roger tacking up and down the field with the telegram in the first chapter of Swallows and Amazons. It kinda makes me miss being out on the water - even though I really can't stand sailing in dinghies (I'm much too big for them).

Of course now I'm imagining the St. Lawrence II (the sail training vessel where I spent my high school summers - she's a brigantine, a tall ship) crewed by Swallows, Amazons and Ds. It would be awesome.

So thank you Arthur Ransome for being more awesome than your time period called for. For having awesome characters of both genders doing amazing and credible things. And for providing such good stories to fuel my imagination during my formative years. I wonder if when you wrote these books you ever thought that a 24-year-old in 2011 would read them as a means of sanity preservation while working on finishing her MA?

(And it's totally related to my Classics degree. The first homing pigeon was named Homer, so naturally the next two were also named for Greek poets. Thus: Sappho and Sophocles.)

Yesterday at work was one of those free stuff days that happen every now and again when you work in a hotel-ish-type-place. We just had a huge group in for a conference that took up the entire building, and most of them left yesterday. I was working a desk shift, and I stripped a bunch of rooms because there was literally nothing going on.

The end result: three unopened Bacardi Breezers and a paperback copy of Death Comes for the Fat Man by Reginald Hill.

*Buster voice* Wicked.

I'm not a huge fan of coolers (ack! Sweetness!) but I can't say no to free alcohol. Also last night was L's birthday party and since I didn't get off work until midnight I figured I'd end up meeting them downtown for dancing post-the party at my place, and thus didn't buy any alcohol ahead of time. Three coolers is not nearly enough to get me drunk, but there were tons of great people around and we didn't end up going downtown for dancing. I also got made fun of a bunch for them (quite rightly) until I told them I got them for free. We're students, we understand the value of free alcohol.

Anyway, I think I might not put on clothes today and just lounge about in my pyjamas. I'm also going to try and watch Baseball. I have no idea why, but I kinda want to give the sport a try. And CBC is playing a Blue Jays - Oreols (sp?) game this afternoon. E used to follow baseball when she was younger, so she might join me for some of it.

Also, any of you people who read the Daziel-Pascoe books by Reginald Hill (and for those of you who don't - why aren't you? British cop novels = wicked) can I read Death Comes for the Fat Man before Death's Jest Book and Good Morning Midnight? Or should I read those first? I know he's become a bit more sequential lately, but I don't know how sequential.

I just got my abridged copy of the Liddel and Scott Greek-English Lexicon.

The Little Liddel.

I am so happy.

I am such a nerd.

Yay!!!!!

Once again staying up reading Tam Lin.

They're discussing whether there're any plays they want to go and see, the question: what's the senior play this year?

the answer:

"Something awfully modern with a long title." Molly got up and rummaged in her desk. "Here. The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Preformed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. Yuck," said Molly, emphatically.
"Well, let's go anyway."

Ha!

The KTS put that on this year. It was quite good. Creepy beyond all reason, but quite good. I can't remember whether or not they go to see it in the book, but I hope they do because Pamela Dean is always really good at describing characters' reactions to books and plays without it becoming a tedious diversion from the main storyline. (Case in point - the reading of Julius Caesar in Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary, another of her books that I should re-read.)

Anyway... moving on...

ETA: Alas, no description of them going to see the play, but that was made up for by fun references to Greek grammar that I now understand. Mmmmm Genitive Absolutes... (but I still miss the Ablative in Greek. Ablative's my favourite in Latin because it's so weird. Moments in time, points in space, and agency in action.... Mmmmm Ablative...)

I actually knew what to write... over the past few days I kept thinking of things that I wanted to post in the good ol' LJ, but of course now I can't think of any of them really.

Sufficeth to say that I've gone and got myself a busy life. Things and people are being moved back and forth. Bits are being renovated of our house (which is crazy). Work has started and things seem to be going well (we just had training today, which always makes things seem more intense because we have to go over all of the emergency situations). And the second round of the play-offs is going strong. Vancouver and Ottawa are both in the second round and they keep playing on alternate nights so I end up watching a lot of hockey to keep up with what's going on.

Speaking of hockey I've had this craving to be reading stories about hockey lately (either fanfic or regular fic) but the only ones that I can think of are the Screech Owls. And I love them, but at the same time I kinda want something a little more grown up (to read along-side them, of course, I'll still be reading the SOs). Do any of you folks have any suggestions for good books or fic about hockey? (P.S. RPF freaks me the hell out.) There's gotta be a bunch of books about hockey teams and the like. I mean the dynamic of a sports team (and hockey teams in particular) are pretty cool. Or is it strictly a "young adult" and "kids" book phenomena? (Even if that's the case I still want to hear about other good hockey books. I don't subscribe to that agist philosophy.)

And speaking of books I got myself half a bag-full of used books from the Mall for a dollar on Sunday. I got a book of poetry by Yeats (it was still National Poetry Month on Sunday, points to kuwdora for that bit of information), a book on Pompeii and a book on the Ancient Near East that both may, or may not, be any good, and two books about Arctic expeditions. The books on the Arctic expeditions look fascinating to me. One of them is a novel with real historical figures as the background characters, which may, or may not, be interesting, but the other is a more academic book describing the Greenly Expedition up to Lady Franklin Bay (near Alert, on Ellesmere Island) and how it failed completely. It looks really cool. The guy who writes it has a good style and the whole thing makes me want to read up on the British expeditions, especially Franklin's, beacause disappearance! and Stan Rodgers!, and Frobishur's, because that's the name of my teddy bear (thanks Mum!).

Tomorrow I have the day off work and I'm going to go grocery shopping (my life is non-stop excitement!) and go and buy some yarn for some various mysterious projets I'm thinking of (Okay, yeah, maybe it is excitement!).

And now, off to watch the Canucks game!