Getting to know you weirdos meme

[attackfish]

Ganked without attribution from people on other people's f-lists

I know very little about some of the people on my friends list. Some people I know relatively well. But here's a thought: why not take this opportunity to tell me a little something about yourself. Any old thing at all. Just so the next time I see your name I can say: "Ah, there's Parker ...she likes money and cereal." I'd love it if everyone who's friended me did this. (Yes, even you people who I know really well.) Then post this in your own journal [only if you feel inclined]. In return, ask me anything you'd like to know about me and I'll give you an answer*.

*Providing it's answerable/suitable for public posting.

Comments

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

I understood what you meant; it was your speculation about what you would do in a Lord of the Flies situation that I was responding to with that comment.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

It was worded as "What would you do if you crash landed with your class on an island?" and I said first of all, we would be rescued very quickly, given modern plane tracking, and our pictures would be all over the media. Then I was told that we wouldn't be rescued, so stop injecting reality into the speculation. Then I said once it became clear rescue wasn't coming, I would kill myself. The only question was how long I would hold out hope. So I wasn't really using my canon knowledge. It didn't help that I hated the book and the premise, and disagreed with the idea that my teacher was pushing that taken away from society, humans fall into chaos, seeing as we're the ones who build society, thank you very much, and planet earth is effectively one big island we're stranded on. So I was like, you can all hang out on your island without me, 'kay?

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

I like your answer, and I hated that book, too. To be fair, Lord of the Flies did lightly imply that rescue took so long because their country of origin was involved in a nuclear war and didn't expect to see them again for a very long time.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but my teacher didn't specify that the situation was identical to LotF, and I was a born malingerer.

I never understood why LotF was seen as so meaningful, or why teachers kept pushing it as a rousing adventure. No.

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

Lord of the Flies is not a rousing adventure. It suffers from a lot of What Do You Mean It's Not Symbolic (or, to be more respectful, it's a book with WDYMINT, if you're in the US, or a What Do You Mean It's Not Symbolic book, if you're in the UK), and a lot of it makes very little literal sense, which would work better if the symbolic meaning were itself cogent and well-argued.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Speaking as an American, what does the T stand for in WDYMINT? We use What Do You Mean It's Not Symbolic too.

which would work better if the symbolic meaning were itself cogent and well-argued

Oh, this, so much. And if Golding hadn't used religious symbols that to me as a non-Christian didn't mean much. *shrug*

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

It stands for "oops, chordatesrock made a typo."

The symbols didn't mean much to me as a Christian, either. The book is bad that way.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Oy.

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The scene with the pig-hunt in the meadow is particularly bad about that. I think I managed to weasel out of writing about LotF for high school English, which was a good thing for my mental health.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I didn't, but I excoriated it in essay form instead. The failing grade was totally worth it. It was even more worth it when I appealed the grade and got an A.

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

You are officially awesome. I would love to read that essay.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

*blushes shamefaced* It was an in class essay, and as soon as I was done with the class, it when straight in the recyclables. I try to pretend that I didn't write anything before my eighteenth birthday, because while I was cogent, and argued a good case, I was pretentious as fuck.

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

That's a shame. I have a tenth-- or maybe eleventh-- grade essay arguing that Tristan and Iseult is about how good intentions can lead to terrible outcomes. That probably sounds reasonable to you, but, actually, as an example, I cited the "fact" that the entire story was accidentally masterminded by sentient birds as evidence of my point.

(On that topic, you cannot convince me that the lepers weren't secretly planning to release Iseult. Otherwise, the story is just too problematic.)

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

When I was fifteen, I wrote an essay all about how the holy grail stories across Celtic and Germanic Europe had their roots in pre-Christian myths of a cauldron of plenty, and had nothing to do with Jesus's bloodline or Mary Magdalene, thank you very much. The Da Vinci Code really annoyed me, if you couldn't tell, so I wrote it for kicks, though I later submitted it for extra credit. I also attempted a feminist analysis of Guinevere and Morgan le Fay, which in retrospect is kind of adorable.

[chordatesrock.livejournal.com]

It makes me very sad that you didn't save these.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I'm just glad the world has been spared their continued existence.

[danceswithwaves.livejournal.com]

I came back to this because I wasn't feeling very inspired the other day. Basic stuff about me would be...I lived on a boat last year and will do so again this coming spring, and I hope to go to grad school for Marine Policy.

But what I really want to do is write novels, and while I'm currently between jobs and school (after I finish applications), I'm trying to finish my second ever novel. (The first one I started in middle school and never finished -- it's currently in my file cabinet and not coming out anytime soon.) I'm afraid I won't actually finish it ever.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

My grandmother lived on a boat with her second husband for a while.

You and me both. I'm a political science student, but if I could do anything, it would be to write YA fantasy novels. I finished my middle school novel in 9th grade, and I reread bits of it on occasion, when I need a reminder that I've gotten better. I hope...

[lalunatique.livejournal.com]

I discovered the Abhorsen series in my early 30s and quite liked the books. I probably would have enjoyed them better in the target age, but as it were I was critical of some of the plot developments and the evident deus ex machina elements. I really enjoyed the fantastic setting and the unique look at death and necromancy, though.

I read Harry Potter throughout my university and post-university years (which shows my age) and was part of the fandom for a while. I read the first book in the Prydain series when I was in my young teens, then read them piecemeal as I found more books (pre-internet days--God I'm old). The conclusion to the series was a little bit of a letdown; it's another case of a book I probably would have enjoyed better as a young person.

Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown was a book I actually read in the target age, and it really did shake me to the foundations. Together with The Lord of the Rings, which would shortly become my teenage obsession, and Ivanhoe, another book that affected me deeply (though I think I'd have laughed at it if I were older), H&C started a lifelong obsession with strong heroines, fantasy, chivalry, and big sweeping stories.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I really liked them for four big reasons. The first is that I am a musical kind of woman, and especially the magical panpipes really appealed to me as a flute player (yes, Ocarina of Time was my favorite video game as a kid, why do you ask?). Also, depressed Lirael was a lot like young depressed Fish. And she sought refuge in the library, just like me. Then there was the fact that there were all those morbid elements in an otherwise high fantasy. That was the first time I had seen that. And I loved, loved, that Sabriel and Touchstone didn't stop being awesome and heroic just because they got married and had kids, which I was getting really sick of in YA fantasy. The main character in my current novel has a kid. Her mother is a central heroic figure. I want girls to have stories that tell them they can grow up, get married, and have kids, and still be the center of their own story.

Harry potter fandom is where I first discovered porn, at the tender age of fourteen. I think that explains a lot.

Prydain were not my favorite of Alexander's books, and I think they really show some of his real weaknesses as an author. It took him a really long time to get women and girls. I like his later works, especially the Westmark Trilogy much better.

My favorite Robin McKinley book, closely followed by The Hero and the Crown, was The Outlaws of Sherwood. However, I didn't much like The Blue Sword when I read it, for two reasons. The first was that middle school me saw Corlath as a sotr of father figure for Harry, and when they ended up together, I was squicked hard. The second, and more important in retrospect was that there were things that kept hitting me as wrong or off, and as I got older, all of them would strike me as playing more than a bit into the "mighty whitey" and "noble savage" narratives. I'm proud of my twelve year old self for realizing something wasn't right, even if I didn't know what.

There's this novel I wrote in eighth and ninth grade, 500 handwritten pages (and my handwriting was small) that I occasionally pull down and read to reflect on how far I've come (and how much worse my handwriting got. Wow) and now that I look back on it, I can see just how much of an Inu Yasha/Abhorsen trilogy crossover it is. Hmm.

[lalunatique.livejournal.com]

The account of Lirael's displacement and alienation was some of the best writing in the whole series, and I thought it was a wonderful expression of the loneliness many teenagers feel. I also liked Sameth's dread of being the Abhorsen, and it was such a nice twist that he wasn't meant to be one at all. It helped me think about some of the things that were going on in my own life, that maybe I was trying too hard at the wrong things thinking I have to be "strong" and power through my blockages.

I wonder what it is about marriage and childbirth that, in the popular conception, take characters out of the realm of the heroic and firmly into the prosaic. Even works with heroic parental figures often play their return or entry into heroism for laughs, e.g. Mr. Incredible trying to fit into his costume in The Incredibles. It's like there's a firm divide between boring everyday life and heroism. as though people who are married with children can only be amazing despite their status as "squares" and not because of it. I'd like to see more acknowledgement that the heroic and the prosaic are not so divided at all, and being a pillar of a family and community make you more amazing, not less.

Sabriel and Touchstone probably aren't the best examples of what I'm talking about, though. It's clearly acknowledged that the demands of their position take a toll on family life, so there's a tension between family and heroics, and frankly as the royal couple they're not beset with the demands of childcare and housework to the same degree as the rest of us. Maybe that divide between the heroic and the prosaic exists for a reason, and constitutes Truth in Television. This discussion may come down to what it means to be heroic in the first place.

I'll keep the Westmark Trilogy in mind, though my usual go-tos (Audible, Kobo, school library) are drawing blanks on the title which makes me has a sad.

McKinley does seem to like her older men for heroines, if The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown are any indication. :) It was one of the regrets of my pre-internet young life that I couldn't get The Blue Sword, but it looks like it wasn't too much of a loss. I might still look it up when I'm bored.

One of my favorite quotes is that all fiction, in fact, is fan fiction. And Inu Yasha/Abhorsen crossover sounds so awesome. XD

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Don't read The Blue Sword. It will raise your blood pressure. It's dances with horses. The plot goes something like this: Free willed and penniless young blueblood, Harry Crew goes to live at a frontier colonial outpost with her soldier brother upon the death of their father. Although everybody is nice, Harry doesn't fit in until the king of the extremely reduced people her people are trying to colonize kidnaps her because his magic orders him to, oh, and while he's doing that, he's trying to convince the colonials that the Northern demons are coming to kill them all. So Harry is trained by the king and his men to be an awesome warrior, she beats all of the natives except the king, and it turns out that one of her great grandmothers or something was a native princess, and then gets to use the Blue Sword of Aerin, a major native relic to beat the Northerners back, and then settles down and marries the (middle aged) king and starts competing with her brother's wife, who is a mysterious native warrior, over how many kids they can pop out. Yeah.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Myinsufficiently disguised Inu Yasha/Abhorsen crossover was not awesome, but that had more to do with the fact that I couldn't write worth crap at fourteen than anything else. I like to think about fiction as a conversation. Fanfic is saying "dear so and so" instead of "to whom it may concern".

I talk more about Westmark here, if you want more information before you go hunting: http://attackfish.livejournal.com/45155.html

As for married heroines and heroines with children, I don't think it's just about the prosaic verses the heroic. We have whole genres based around that, superheroes who have to keep up their grades or are constantly at risk for being fired, etc. Also, there are plenty of older heroes who left wife and children behind to go adventuring, so leaving and reentering the domestic world is permissible. But for women, there is still the assumption that marriage is the end of our story. When we marry, we have achieved our real goal, if it were, and with marriage and motherhood, we are assumed to subsume our identity to our spouse and family. There is no more heroine to have an adventure.

[lalunatique.livejournal.com]

Ugh no. Just no. Thanks for warning me off the idea, and now I'm glad my fourteen-year-old self never laid eyes on the book. My imagined version was way better anyway. *grumbles*

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Just think, it won a Newbery Honor.