stunt_muppet

Even though I should really go to bed.

1. So I finally watched the opening cinematic to the I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream PC game, and...I've got to say I'm not crazy about Harlan Ellison's voice as AM. It's not bad, it's just so different than the way I imagined AM sounding. Maybe it's because I've become accustomed to text-to-speech programs, and HAL 9000 and all his cinematic successors and knock-offs, but I always imagined AM as having...not quite a monotone. It's hard to describe, but when I read the "hate" speech I always heard it in a very even tone, with very little inflection - but still intense, fervid, shaking with rage. Like he had only basic vocal processors, not accustomed to conveying emotion, but the sheer intensity of his hatred was straining their capacity, quavering that basic voice.

If I thought I could do it any kind of justice I'd make a voice post about it. Maybe I'll do it anyway, under flock and key so I'm not a complete embarrassment. to the people around me.

A note: Really, if you liked the short story (for a given value of "liked", of course), I do highly recommend at least looking up a Let's Play of the game (as a copy of the game itself is somewhat difficult to procure). Ellison, who is about as curmudgeonly and video-games-cannot-be-art as it gets, wrote the game himself in order to answer the repeated questions he got about why AM chose to torture those five specific humans. Grim, atmospheric, and really good.

2. I've asked this question before, but it's been a while so I might as well go another round: in books, fic, or other printed media, what scares you? 

I think I've figured out why it's so difficult for me to write something scary (which, if you haven't guessed, I really really really want to do) - fear, for me, is intimately tied to auditory cues. Sounds with unknown sources, the usual "something behind you/beside you that you can't see", noises in the dark, distorted speech, things like that are what strike me as scary. Not that visual and text cues can't scare me, but when I try to think of scary things I always go back to sounds. Or sensations (like the "bugs in the skin" associated with withdrawal), but those are hard to convey in textual form without looking over-the-top and silly.

So...what about you? What do you find scary? What sticks with you after you read it?

3. So there was this fic idea I had, and it technically goes against canon but I want to talk it out anyway.

( Cut for TFA natter but no spoilers. )

I really must go to bed now, mustn't I. Good night, good night.

1. The Taming of the Shrew makes for some really, really uncomfortable reading, and while I appreciate the efforts of feminist critics everywhere who tie themselves into interpretive pretzels trying to make the whole affair less repulsively sexist, I'm not sure I'm buying it. You can read allegories of gender performance and re-examination of social roles into it, and I don't think for a second that Shakespeare meant for Petruchio and Katherina's relationship to be a model one, nor even Katherina as a model of feminine behavior (he writes so many other good female characters in the comedies, after all), but the ending is still tough going. But we're moving on to As You Like It after this, and I like that one.

2. The first Matrix movie is incredibly loud. The bass, it is still throbbing across my eardrums the morning after watching it. With respect to my Film professor, I suspect that The Matrix is one of those movies you're not actually supposed to watch on a big screen with big speakers because you'll wind up stone deaf.

Also, maybe it's just that when it was released Matrix was hailed as the best thing since sliced bread and thus I was expecting to hate it on second viewing, but the movie holds up pretty well. There are some clunky lines and acting and way too many wide-eyed repetitions of "He's the One!!!", but Laurence Fishburne actually pulls off a great deal of lines that really shouldn't work, and Agent Smith wasn't nearly as overplayed as I seem to remember him being. Plus, there's a lot of playing with the media/audience division and the nature of a medium itself, which is really cool to watch now that I'm a little more savvy to it. (Notice, for example, how the "authority figures", Morpheus and the Oracle, are almost always shot in close-up with their face to the viewer, effectively talking to us; there are very few two-shots.)

Also, I want there to be prequel movies all about Switch and Apock and Mouse and Tank and Dozer having adventures. Even if Switch and Apock don't really do anything I inexplicably love them, and despite being sketchy I think Mouse is just adorable.

3. The Mind Robber is one of the best things to happen to Doctor Who, ever, in the entire history of the program. On occasion I'll leave a DW serial going in the background to have some familiar noise while I'm working; I can't do that with Mind Robber. It demands full attention because it's just that good. 

Again, maybe it's just because I hadn't seen it in a while, but I hadn't remembered just how intense and scary the first episode was, with the sense of intrusion and control and sheer unpredictability - the kind of surreal horror of the familiar rules of the universe breaking down, replaced by new rules that you don't understand and can't learn. And the Doctor's desperation to maintain control of his own mind and his own ship conflicting with his worry for his companions and the thought that he may not be able to do anything at all for them...it...I just...brrrr. :(

Other things:

4. Reading The Trial for class and am halfway finished with it, which isn't so great as I'm supposed to have it finished by tomorrow, but I suppose that's better than not having started it. Progress! Work ethics! 

Anyway, despite some iffy things about the translation (a lot of the dialogue is really stilted, but then that might just be how Kafka writes) I'm enjoying this much more than I did Metamorphosis, mostly because Josef K. actually does things and goes to new places and makes plot happen, whereas Metamorphosis is pretty much entirely about Gregor Samsa being a cockroach and how much that sucks. 

I'm still not sure why every female character in the book wants to sleep with Josef, but I'm sure that'll have some relevance by the end.

5. VH1 Classic is apparently having a Beatles-a-thon to promote Rock Band: The Beatles (which I would have bought right this second if I had money and a game console to play it on), which means I've watched Help! twice in the past couple of days. Supposedly, this movie was made before the Beatles were on all manner of illicit substances. I don't see how that's possible.

Also, all the cuddling and puppy-piling and silliness in the "Ticket To Ride" music video section makes me start to realize what all those Beatles RPS shippers are on about, much to my shame and horror. 

5.a. In flim class I started talking with my classmates about children's TV we used to watch, and was delighted to discover that the boy sitting in front of me was not only a fellow Thomas the Tank Engine viewer but a Ringo purist (i.e. no narrator was ever better than Ringo, though I contended that George Carlin certainly wasn't bad). I love my school so much.

6. I appear to have gone from "incapable of writing anything" to "writing 1500 words or so, stalling once I hit a plot point, and abandoning the ensuing fic fragment, never to be seen again". Equally unproductive and annoying, yes, but better than nothing.

7. I have internets back! Sort of. It keeps cutting out and insisting I use the LAN cable even though I'm using wireless, but at least it's here. Hopefully this will not prevent me from getting things accomplished, except how it already sort of has. Like lookit that, I just missed Commons lunch AGAIN. Ergh.


And now I have officially spent too much time on the Internets again and must be off.

Can't do the music-related ones quite yet as I have no blank CDs on which to burn things, but here's a quick one, courtesy of violetisblue :

Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.

1. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
2. Matilda, by Roald Dahl
3. The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, by James D. Watson
4. Catherine, Called Birdy, by Karen Cushman
5. Minimalism, ed. James Meyer
6. But Is It Art? An Introduction to Art Theory, by Cynthia Freeland
7. The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
8. Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett
9. The Museum at Purgatory, by Nick Bantock
10. Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine
11. So You Want To Be A Wizard, by Diane Duane
12. Dealing With Dragons, by Patricia C. Wrede
13. Animorphs: Megamorphs #3: Elfangor’s Secret, by K.A. Applegate (shut up, shut up)
14. Consider the Following, by Bill Nye (I said shut up, it’s what made me want to be a scientist so I can count it if I want to. I got it signed by him and everything.)
15. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
16. (Because I said so) The Art Book, by Phaidon Press

Why yes, I'm appropriately ashamed that most of these books are either my childhood YA fantasy novels or nonfiction books. I told you I need to read more for pleasure; grown-up books don't stick with me nearly the same way. :(

I really should go to bed. This is becoming a bad habit.

One of the things I really love about my Romanticism class is that we really get to examine the works of poets who typically get a quick name-check and a single poem in our review courses. Not only do I get to poke at some of the typically-ignored Romantic writers (the female poets, especially), but spending some serious time with the Romantics is the only way you find out that many of them were sharp political writers and the rest were absolutely sparkling insane. Blake was both, the Renaissance man.

Coleridge has yet to reach the heights of grandiose madness that Blake has (or, for that matter, Burke during his "My Size Marie Antoinette Barbie" phase), so far as I've seen, but...well, my knowledge of Coleridge up to this point was "Kubla Khan" and the vague knowledge that "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" was about a guy shooting a bird.

And then I actually read "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". And I love how nobody ever talks about how disturbing this poem is. Yes, the Mariner shoots an albatross. But the creepy thing is he is never given any motive for doing so. He never explains why he did it. And then, after a few weeks of scorching heat and no water, he and his crew are left to the mercy of a game of chance between Death and Life-in-Death. The latter wins. The rest of his crew drops dead on the spot.

It gets more surreal from there, involving zombies (seriously), angels, the Mariner going completely loopy from solitude and being unable to sleep, being unable to pray, and then, eventually, *completely arbitrarily*, regaining his ability to pray for mercy and being redirected back to shore. But not before spending more time parched of thirst with his zombie crew and driving the kid in his lifeboat insane.

It's hallucinogenic, it's illogical, and the creepiest part is there's no reason given for any of it - not for the shooting of the albatross, not for the disproportionate retribution, not for the Mariner's sudden ability to pray, not for anything. Nobody has a motive. The Mariner only reacts - he never acts.

It's all one long play from Coleridge on the expectation for romantic/Gothic poetry (which was considered low art at the time) to have some kind of moral message so the silly little womenfolk who read it wouldn't fill their pretty heads with fantastical nonsense (Coleridge makes everything arbitrary and his protagonist at the mercy of a world that hates him), but it all adds up to an unsettling poem.

Anyway, the point of that diversion is that we started reading "Christabel" today. Being a bit more familiar with Coleridge's oerve now, I was expecting something weird.

Not expecting: surreal whispy dream-like forest sequences, the title character basically having a wank in the first few stanzas, and a shapeshifting (or possibly not) witch who first seduces Christabel and then her father (but tempts her father mostly with the prospect of being reunited with his long-lost boyfriend bestest friend ever with whom he had a falling-out and whom he never got over, never ever ever, it is a SCAR across his heart woes), then completely replaces Christabel in her father's eyes while still being creepily seductive and clingy. Oh, and after Christabel first takes the witch into her home, said witch insists that they sleep in the same bed, that Christabel undress in front of her, that she snuggle up to her scantily clad body, etc, and then wipes her memory after Christabel sees her Evil Markings (you can tell she's evil because she's not pretty under her clothes, naturally). It's the most up-front molestation/rape subtext I've yet seen in a Romantic-era poem.

Oh, and "Christabel" is unfinished. If it had been finished, one of Coleridge's plans was for the witch to assume the form of Christabel's fiancee. Who, yes, is who she was thinking of whilst "dreaming" in the opening stanzas.

...have I just been in fandom too long, or is there some seriously creepy subtext all over this thing?

The funniest thing is that this was almost in the Lyrical Ballads, right next to Wordsworth's poems about Tintern Abbey and the transcendant power of nature. Of course, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" was in the lyrical ballads, and even shorn of all the sexual subtext it's arguably the more disturbing.

Of course, Wordworth's rather passive-agressive preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads is rather entertaining in and of itself. "Yeah, I know we put my friend's crazy mariner poem up front last time, but...oh, look, I just told him to write me some filler. Here, we'll put it in the back this time! That way you can get right to the serious poetry. About trees and things."

This post has been brought to you by gratuitous English geekery and "my goodness, I think I read this when it was an Anne Rice novel. The Coleridge version is much more fun."

...well,I'd like to be warned for it in other people's posts*, seeing as how even seeing a link causes hours to disappear from my day.

*I am not being serious.

---

It snowed last night. Real, legitimate, fat-flaked, clumpy, sticky snow - one to two inches, probably, the most I've ever seen here in Collegeland. On those few occasions when we get snow, it's generally no more than a dusting, if that, but no - clean, picturesque snow this time. It's started to melt by now, but it was pretty while it lasted.

I do feel quite sorry for the Wednesday lab people, though.

Also, it turns out that the presentation I had to make wasn't until Thursday, which gives me a little more time to prepare. Plus, it seemed that even the teacher can't take Udolfo entirely seriously all of the time. However, the book does become much more interesting if, as she proposed in the last class, you read it as part-genre exercise, part-savvy commercialism, and part-sendup of Gothic tropes and sensibility in general. Perhaps Emily and Valancourt are meant to be that annoying, as a way of both ridiculing and warning against the excessive sensitivity popularized in literature at the time, and perhaps the long descriptive passages are Radcliffe's way of saying "That's what you want? Really? Here, then, have 600 pages of it."

The professor also put forth an interesting theory about the popularity of the loco-descriptive poem at the time, and the scenery porn in Udolfo is Radcliffe's way of engaging with that trend and possibly gaining a little poetic/literary cred for the novel, since most novels weren't considered art in their time.

I'm feeling much better about this book, anyway.

---

( The rest of this post is writing wittering, plotbunnies, and building a story around the flimsiest of plot devices. )

Should get back to work now, so I actually am ready for that presentation tomorrow. Ta.

1. I have acquired The Cough That Wouldn't Die, apparently. The cold I acquired earlier in the semester (the one that morphed into vertigo) has mostly passed, but the dry cough hasn't gone away yet. It occasionally disappears for a few days to lull me into a false sense of security, but once I've convinced myself it's gone it strikes again in the night. It's not particularly bad - certainly not as bad as the cough I had while I actually had said cold - but I can't figure out what's up with that and it's beginning to bother me.

2. Halfway through Mysteries of Udolfo; still have 300 pages to go, but I've learned to skim the lavishly descriptive bits and any passage where Emily ruminates on how horrid her life is and how much she misses Valancourt, so it shouldn't take as long. I'll still be up late, but at least there's a goalpost in sight.

It helps that the plot's finally started to move, and while Madame Cheron and Montoni are assholes of the wicked-step-parent variety, they're at least interesting wicked step-parents, and Madame Cheron in particular is at times quite funny. Plus, the whole thing is much more interesting going once I realized that Montoni and Cavigni were kind of working the subtext. Oh, and that Emily and her step-mother's servant, Annette, could be quite girlslashy when viewed in the right light.

Oh, fandom goggles. What did I do without you.

3. I never did see Grindhouse when it came out, mostly because it had Planet Terror in it and zombiefear > ironic love for pulp horror (and because someone told me what happens in Quentin Tarantino's "guest star" scene and there are some things I never, ever, ever need to see). The Planet Terror soundtrack is beginning to make me reconsider that decision.

Actually, no, that's a lie. I'm still not in a big hurry to see Planet Terror, but the soundtrack makes me wish I had an excuse to dance naked to it. Purr.

(Has anybody on the flist seen Grindhouse, by the way? Any good? Worth a rental provided I fast-forward through the Tarantino scene?)

4. Didn't pay too much attention to the Super Bowl, what with having Gothic mysteries to read, but am I the only one who thought the commercials were especially unimpressive this year? Nothing particularly offensive, but I honestly can't remember a single commercial except for that Coke Zero one and the Monsters vs. Aliens promo, which I'd already seen. Nothing stood out.

5. A meme what I've seen tossed around (no, not the 15 OTPs in 15 words meme; I'm still trying to think up good clues for that one, since I spend way too much time on memes like this): Fanfic tropes: bold the clichés you have written, and italicise those you've considered writing. Explicate/annotate as necessary.

( Memes are fun. So are guilty pleasures. )

Back to Udolfo; comment replies to come when I get bored again.

"Productive" is somewhat loosely defined at this point, of course, but there are still things I could be doing and am not. For example, I still haven't unpacked all the way.

First day of classes today. Nothing too strenuous, as it was the first day, but I've got both my sciences on Monday withing five minutes of one another, so switching gears is going to be interesting. Ecology is first, followed by Genetics; while Ecology isn't a field I normally enjoy all that much, the professor at least seems enthused about his subject, so that might help. I'm hoping that Genetics will be something of a break, after my past two Bio seminars. I hesitate to call it easy, because it's Collegeland, but I'll have probably covered at least some of the material we learn there in my seminars, so the memorization and exams might be a little less taxing this time around.

I'm also not getting off to a great start with this whole "getting organized" business, as evidenced by my post title, but I am for now optimistically attributing that to first-day back-from-break blahs (I'm not one of those people that can hit the ground running) and hoping that I'll get better about that in the coming days.

Fortunately, for only the second time in my college career I have a semester with no 8:30 classes - my earliest is a 10:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I woke in a panic this morning at 7:59, frantically calling my mother and telling her that it was okay, I was awake now, she didn't have to call me again...only to be reminded, in a bemused voice, that I'd asked her to call to wake me up at 8:20. It's going to be one of those weeks, I can tell. Oh, sleeping in until 8:30. It is such a luxury and I am so not used to it.

I also woke up in the middle of a dream for the first time in ages, so I actually remembered it for a while before getting distracted by things like breakfast. I never usually remember my dreams.

Since I got back, I've been mostly catching up with friends, watching movies (usually also with friends - we watched WALL-E last night and will probably watch The Dark Knight tomorrow), staring into space, occasionally writing, and reading the Target novelization of The Three Doctors, since I need to get back in the habit of reading things and what better way to do that than with the literary equivalent of cheap chocolate. I'm typing up more complete thoughts on it and on the Target novelizations, but it was an interesting way to spend 45 minutes to an hour, anyway, and I still get a little geek joy out of owning the things to begin with.

Also, speaking obliquely of writing, a quick question: is it too cheesy/gimmicky for the narration in a story to cut out mid-sentence or mid-word to indicate something...unexpected happening to the POV character? The narration in question is limited-third-person rather than first-person, and since the unexpected thing would literally cut off said characters powers of observation/narration without them ever seeing it coming (so I wouldn't be able to say "he winced in anticipation" or "she heard, in the distance, the whistle of a small brick succumbing to gravity" or anything like that). It seems to me like it'd be a nice fourth-wall moment that could be freaky if I pulled it off properly (and I'm not sure I could), but I've also always had a tin ear for gimmicks, so I'd like some additional thoughts before I actually try it.


Also, I have an Inksome account, since it's said to be a good fandom-friendly alternative to LJ in case LJ Mysteriously Vanishes Into The Night (which I don't think it will, but it never hurts to be careful). There's literally nothing on the page yet, but I'll be setting up my profile and backing up my journal and things like that soon enough. If you'd like an invite code, I'd be happy to give one; just leave me a comment and I'll PM you the code. Also feel free to link me to your journals here so I can friend you at some point; I could go back to the links you've already posted, I know, but I'm a terribly lazy person and like it when other people do the work for me.

At some point, I will update sometime other than just before going to bed.

Couple more thoughts before I go back to work:

1. So I'm still only a little more than halfway through Watchmen, but I have to ask: Where are all the Doctor Who crossover fics, yo? Doctor Manhattan strikes me as the ideal central character and plot device for this, given how he's stopped perceiving time linearly and can fly unaided to Mars and all. Even though Watchmen would have to take place in an alt!verse from the Doctor Who canon perspective, surely he could eventually find a way through the dimensional barriers, too. You'd just have to futz around with string theory/quantum mechanics a bit.

This strikes me as an Incredibly Obvious Thing, but like most of the Things I find Incredibly Obvious (where are all the Cyberman fanvids to "Iron Man", yo?), it doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone else.

I do advocate putting Manhattan in the Whoniverse, though, rather than the Doctor in the Watchmenverse. The sheer mood whiplash of the latter would be neckbreaking. Plus, frankly, Alan Moore's work intimidates me a bit, and I'd rather pilfer his characters than try to inhabit the world he created.

Still. Um. The first person to write me fic where Doctor Manhattan meets the Doctor (preferably One or Seven but I'm not picky) gets internet cookies. Come on, y'all, we cross over our show with everything from Shakespeare to The Magic School Bus, and we do it well. Surely you all can manage this.

2. You know what? There need to be more rock'n'roll fanvids in general. Alt-rock may have more meaningful lyrics and all, but don't deny that a Ten vid to "Supernaut" or that "Draconian Crackdown" vid for the Master I keep going on about would be awesome.

3. Wait, what? Quantum of Solace is already out? WHAT? WHY DIDN'T I KNOW THAT. I AM SO BEHIND ON MOVIES OMG. *flails*

Anyone else seen it so far? Is it good? spoil me not, obviously, but do tell me if it's worth seeing. Which...will probably have no bearing on whether I go see it anyway, but I'd like to know, at any rate.

Also I have heard nothing at all about that Australia movie and now I hear it's almost in theaters or something. Have I been paying that little attention? More to the point, isn't Hugh Jackman in it? I'll be very happy if he is.

4. Have just checked my class schedule for next semester, and while it's a literal madhouse that I'm sure will leave me scrambling by summertime, I also got all the classes I wanted and needed. No drop/add necessary, hooray!

And now back to work. Good night to you all.

- Still have not seen Hellboy II. Must rectify this before I return to school.

- I completely forgot that the Olympics started this week. Shows you how much attention I'm paying.

- I think I've been around my parents too long. I say this because I am (dark secret confession time) really, honestly starting to like Brad Paisley music, despite my distaste for the country genre in general. What? He's funny. And he's not a scary right-wing whackjob country musician. And he plays a mean guitar! And gathers up his friends to do an old-timey-sounding radio show about the Kung Pao Buckaroos! Please don't judge me. :(

I am taking my revenge by getting Brother into Rammstein. So there.

Anyway. How have you all been? What exciting things have you been doing? Talk to me; I missed you.