Fandom Snowflake Challenge - Day 7 & 8
Jan. 8th, 2016 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenazStill a day late and a dollar short! (3, if you count that I still haven't done days 3 & 4!)
Whatevs, man. Onward.
Day 7
In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
Oh, but there's just so much to love!! I've been focusing really heavily on Tolkien lately, so for this particular challenge, I'm going to go in a different direction. One of my absolute favorite pieces of original canon is the infamous Chapter 6 of Mary Renault's The Charioteer-- aka "The Party Scene."
Renault's writing is generally subtle, but in this scene-- a Big Gay Birthday Bash in WWII England -- we get EVERYTHING: incredibly vivid scene-setting; the critical re-introduction of two main characters after a long separation wherein one believed the other to be dead; introductions to extremely colorful secondary characters; some absolutely amazing Queen Bitchery, vicious Camp, rent boys, gossip... and, frankly, some blatant contempt for flamboyantly Gay men. But however one reads it... OH! To have been a fly on the wall for this party!
Favorite sections below the cut:
The other faces had closed in a little; he became aware that the conversation had a poised, tentative feel. The unspoken query in the air became as unmistakable to him as a shout. Deciding that it was no business of his to resolve it, he threw the onus on Sandy by the simple means of asking to go and wash. As he crossed the landing, he heard Sandy's voice on a rising note: "...my dear, right across the ward in the middle of the teaching round, as bold as brass, no possible error, it made me feel quite shy. Goodness knows why he won't drop a hairpin now, the silly boy."
. . .
Laurie felt his anger go cold on him. Under a score of surface differences, and accompanied no doubt by many basic ones, he recognised a speaker of his own language; another solitary still making his own maps, his few certainties gripped with a rather desperate strength.
. . .
Lanyon stared at this and Laurie saw for the first time his light-blue, wary, sailor's eyes. Above the superficial smile on his mouth, they swept the room as inexpressively as if it had been a doubtful stretch of sea. Laurie got ready: but when they reached him, he forgot after all to say anything or even to smile, since Lanyon did neither: he simply stood there, with his face draining, visibly, of colour, till one could see that his mouth and chin were less deeply tanned than the rest of his face, because they suddenly stood out pallid against the darker skin above. His mouth straightened; Laurie knew the expression well, but now it seemed part of a naval uniform, emergency kit.
. . .
While they had been talking, two or three more people had arrived. He realised that a young man, one of the newcomers, was threading among the dancers in a purposeful way, and was plainly making for the place beside him. Just then Lanyon came back. He stood over the young man, quite quietly, with the kind of expression a captain uses on a tipsy passenger he has found exploring the bridge. "Excuse me," he said. The young man flinched like a startled fawn, and hurried away.
. . .
The party had warmed up by this time. A momentary detachment came upon Laurie as he looked on. After some years of muddled thinking on the subject, he suddenly saw quite clearly what it was he had been running away from; why he had refused Sandy's first invitation, and what the trouble had been with Charles. It was also the trouble, he perceived, with nine-tenths of the people here tonight. They were specialists. They had not merely accepted their limitations, as Laurie was ready to accept his, loyal to his humanity if not to his sex, and bringing an extra humility to the hard study of human experience. They had identified themselves with their limitations; they were making a career of them. They had turned from all other reality, and curled up in them snugly, as in a womb.
And... one of my absolute FAVORITE moments in all of literature...
"We'll all get drunk in a minute," said Bim, looking round with a flashing smile."But darlings, if you think I'm going any where before I've got the true story of this romantic Odyssey, you must be mad." He flicked out a heavy silk handkerchief with a monogram; a gold and platinum identity bracelet caught the light. "It is the Odyssey, isn't it? I went to such a ropy school, my dear," he confided to Laurie. "Free expression and no classics, you'd have hated it. Is it the Odyssey? The one where this silly boy goes away for about twenty years, and when he appears again he's so dreadfully gone off that no one knows him except the nurse who ... oh, excuse me, perhaps we'd better scrub that bit. And the dog took one look, didn't he, and died of shock. And all this while, the poor queen has been knitting and knitting away madly in the bedroom, dropping stitches left and right, with suitors camping and screaming all over the house." He smiled at them ingenuously, like a stage undergraduate. "Or is it Shakespeare I'm thinking of all the time?"
Laurie swung himself up on his feet. On the spur of the moment he found a new technique for doing it; it was rather painful, but it looked smooth. With intense pleasure he found himself three inches taller than Bim.
"No," he said. "It's the Odyssey all right. It's the one where the man comes back from the war and finds the flash boys on his pitch, and runs them out."
MIC. DROP.
Really, what could be better? :D
As for Day 8, I saw someone's entry on the Day 7 master post about their mixed feelings about a problematic fandom-- trying to remain in love with Diana Gabaldon & Outlander after her CRAZYPANTS [and now deleted] rant about how fanfic is rape-- and I went over to their DW journal to engage in a discussion about how I, too, suffer from this ambivalence. I still haven't forgiven DG for being such a horrific cow about it. That counts, right? I just interacted with someone new!
Whatevs, man. Onward.
Day 7
In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
Oh, but there's just so much to love!! I've been focusing really heavily on Tolkien lately, so for this particular challenge, I'm going to go in a different direction. One of my absolute favorite pieces of original canon is the infamous Chapter 6 of Mary Renault's The Charioteer-- aka "The Party Scene."
Renault's writing is generally subtle, but in this scene-- a Big Gay Birthday Bash in WWII England -- we get EVERYTHING: incredibly vivid scene-setting; the critical re-introduction of two main characters after a long separation wherein one believed the other to be dead; introductions to extremely colorful secondary characters; some absolutely amazing Queen Bitchery, vicious Camp, rent boys, gossip... and, frankly, some blatant contempt for flamboyantly Gay men. But however one reads it... OH! To have been a fly on the wall for this party!
Favorite sections below the cut:
The other faces had closed in a little; he became aware that the conversation had a poised, tentative feel. The unspoken query in the air became as unmistakable to him as a shout. Deciding that it was no business of his to resolve it, he threw the onus on Sandy by the simple means of asking to go and wash. As he crossed the landing, he heard Sandy's voice on a rising note: "...my dear, right across the ward in the middle of the teaching round, as bold as brass, no possible error, it made me feel quite shy. Goodness knows why he won't drop a hairpin now, the silly boy."
. . .
Laurie felt his anger go cold on him. Under a score of surface differences, and accompanied no doubt by many basic ones, he recognised a speaker of his own language; another solitary still making his own maps, his few certainties gripped with a rather desperate strength.
. . .
Lanyon stared at this and Laurie saw for the first time his light-blue, wary, sailor's eyes. Above the superficial smile on his mouth, they swept the room as inexpressively as if it had been a doubtful stretch of sea. Laurie got ready: but when they reached him, he forgot after all to say anything or even to smile, since Lanyon did neither: he simply stood there, with his face draining, visibly, of colour, till one could see that his mouth and chin were less deeply tanned than the rest of his face, because they suddenly stood out pallid against the darker skin above. His mouth straightened; Laurie knew the expression well, but now it seemed part of a naval uniform, emergency kit.
. . .
While they had been talking, two or three more people had arrived. He realised that a young man, one of the newcomers, was threading among the dancers in a purposeful way, and was plainly making for the place beside him. Just then Lanyon came back. He stood over the young man, quite quietly, with the kind of expression a captain uses on a tipsy passenger he has found exploring the bridge. "Excuse me," he said. The young man flinched like a startled fawn, and hurried away.
. . .
The party had warmed up by this time. A momentary detachment came upon Laurie as he looked on. After some years of muddled thinking on the subject, he suddenly saw quite clearly what it was he had been running away from; why he had refused Sandy's first invitation, and what the trouble had been with Charles. It was also the trouble, he perceived, with nine-tenths of the people here tonight. They were specialists. They had not merely accepted their limitations, as Laurie was ready to accept his, loyal to his humanity if not to his sex, and bringing an extra humility to the hard study of human experience. They had identified themselves with their limitations; they were making a career of them. They had turned from all other reality, and curled up in them snugly, as in a womb.
And... one of my absolute FAVORITE moments in all of literature...
"We'll all get drunk in a minute," said Bim, looking round with a flashing smile."But darlings, if you think I'm going any where before I've got the true story of this romantic Odyssey, you must be mad." He flicked out a heavy silk handkerchief with a monogram; a gold and platinum identity bracelet caught the light. "It is the Odyssey, isn't it? I went to such a ropy school, my dear," he confided to Laurie. "Free expression and no classics, you'd have hated it. Is it the Odyssey? The one where this silly boy goes away for about twenty years, and when he appears again he's so dreadfully gone off that no one knows him except the nurse who ... oh, excuse me, perhaps we'd better scrub that bit. And the dog took one look, didn't he, and died of shock. And all this while, the poor queen has been knitting and knitting away madly in the bedroom, dropping stitches left and right, with suitors camping and screaming all over the house." He smiled at them ingenuously, like a stage undergraduate. "Or is it Shakespeare I'm thinking of all the time?"
Laurie swung himself up on his feet. On the spur of the moment he found a new technique for doing it; it was rather painful, but it looked smooth. With intense pleasure he found himself three inches taller than Bim.
"No," he said. "It's the Odyssey all right. It's the one where the man comes back from the war and finds the flash boys on his pitch, and runs them out."
MIC. DROP.
Really, what could be better? :D
As for Day 8, I saw someone's entry on the Day 7 master post about their mixed feelings about a problematic fandom-- trying to remain in love with Diana Gabaldon & Outlander after her CRAZYPANTS [and now deleted] rant about how fanfic is rape-- and I went over to their DW journal to engage in a discussion about how I, too, suffer from this ambivalence. I still haven't forgiven DG for being such a horrific cow about it. That counts, right? I just interacted with someone new!
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no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 03:21 am (UTC)I totally agree with you that "the Party Scene" in The Charioteer is one of the best chapters in modern fiction. I love the citations you pull out as well, although that whole chapter is quotable! It is outstanding.
I have heard people complain about it for various reasons, although not from a literary perspective, most of them some form of sensitivity to what they consider non-PC elements contained therein. But seriously, it is absolutely a literary tour de force, one does not have to agree 100 percent with Mary Renault as a queer theorist or whatever one wants to call her personal analysis of concepts of gender and sexuality among these guys to appreciate the power of her observation of a unique environment at a very particular time and place in history.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 04:07 am (UTC)But YES, it is fucking brilliant, every line of it, the way it swirls and reels and the volume goes up and down... you can feel Laurie's increasing inebriation, and the growing rowdiness of the scene as people get more drunk and less polite... and let's not even begin with the immediate and amazing tension between Ralph and Laurie!! OMG, this chapter really is just so spectacular, I will never tire of reading it.
But yeah, when our Spud, who, all night long has been feeling morally superior and vaguely put-off by the "queers," gets in a verbal Voguing match with Bim (who is one of my favorite minor characters!) and just delivers the PERFECT SMACK-DOWN...OMG, YAAAAS QUEEN!!!
no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 04:13 am (UTC)I totally cracked up the first time I read that segment.
I totally agree with you. It's a wonderful chapter and beautifully constructed.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 03:36 am (UTC)OK. So, I watch the TV show--I love the leads--gorgeous actors with great chemistry. But I absolutely refuse to write Outlander fanfiction!! So there, DG, you horrific cow--I am depriving the world of my potentially awesome stylings on your fiction (which, aside from the Lord John stuff, really starts to feel tiresome after the first book)!
I seen to recall that Fanlore might have a link to a salvaged copy of DG's infamous rant. I'm too lazy to go look.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 04:13 am (UTC)I did watch the pilot since it was available for free, and it was gorgeous. I will probably watch it since it's on Amazon Prime, and I'm already paying for AP, so my money will only be going to her indirectly, but I can't think of a show that would be MORE HORRIFYING for poor Patrick than a time-travelling period romance!!! OMG, he would hate every second of it!! So I will have to watch it in bits and snatches when he's not around. The downside of living in 150sq ft.!
I would have loved to have seen your Lord John fanfic, so as far as I'm concerned, DG has definitely robbed the universe of some gems!! They would have been amazing, I know it.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 04:19 am (UTC)Rape and white slavery. I think George Lucas recently called him selling Star Wars to Disney as ... selling his children into white slavery. I honestly don't know why these content creators are so into saying things like that!
no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 04:25 am (UTC)I can't believe people still say that shit. And then they're surprised when there's a backlash!?
no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 04:30 am (UTC)He's apologized for his remarks:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/george-lucas-sorry-white-slavers-851661
no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 04:26 am (UTC)(Being a mom, I always notice how MR paints Ralph as uniquely clever and competent for being such an accomplished totally drunk driver! Jeez--people die in droves from that attitude!)
no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 04:37 am (UTC)mom! Ralph has the steadiest hands!!! Who cares if he's driving drunk?? Things were different then!I think one of my fave stories I've written in this fandom is Ralph accidentally killing Laurie when he's driving drunk. But it could have been even bleaker.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 04:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 04:43 am (UTC)http://archiveofourown.org/works/662762
no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 04:59 am (UTC)I must be having another senior-moment! I remember discussing Ralph's driving with you before, but I do not remember that story! Where is it? I can't find it on AO3.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 05:09 am (UTC)Renault, The Charioteer, the Party Scene
Date: 2016-01-09 04:11 pm (UTC)RE: Renault, The Charioteer, the Party Scene
Date: 2016-01-10 03:09 am (UTC)Snowflake Challenge Day 8
Date: 2016-01-09 04:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-09 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-10 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-10 01:05 am (UTC)