All the Mirrors of the World

On Tidying-up Shakespeare

2010-01-07T03:04:54Z

I'm on the prod staff for a college club's production of Julius Caesar this coming term (as master electrician---the non-design side of lights---though I intend to act as well), so today I received a copy of the script as the directors have cut it. Skimming through it, I paid particular attention to the Brutus-Cassius dialogues since a friend and I have been doing these for the past few months.

Now, although I don't usually endorse Brutus/Cassius myself (they were, after all, Roman, not Greek), I'm perfectly aware that there are numerous lines that can be read as extremely slashy. The directors were, apparently, painfully aware of this themselves, and cut or altered many of them. Notably, the exchange following their argument in IV.iii, which includes Cassius' line `I cannot drink too much of Brutus' love' is absent.

My personal favorite revision, however, is from V.i. To be sure, I have myself not had as much success as I would like in rendering Cassius' line

Now, most noble Brutus,
The gods today stand friendly that we may,
Lovers in peace, lead on our days to age

as non-slashy as possible. Granted, `lovers in peace' may be worth a few snickers, but at least by comparison the change to `true friends in peace' is outright hilarious.

Of course, all of this probably is well-done. It will, at least, keep the audience from getting side-tracked in asking themselves, `Wait, did he just say . . . ?' Nor am I one of those people who cringes in horror at the thought at the editing of the Shakespeare's work. Even aside from accommodating time constraints, sometimes the plays just need a bit of trimming; So-And-So doesn't really need all forty lines of that speech, especially when ten of them are redundant. The thing with Caesar, however, is that I have gotten so used to the language and world of that play as a place where `love' and its various cognates do not necessarily have romantic connotations, but applies more as an expression of friendship. Being, then, accustomed to this interpretation of the play, the alterations . . . seem to feel somewhat embarrassed about the original text. Really, though, it's mostly that they're just strange . . . something different I will have to get used to, whether or not I will be playing either of the characters principally affected.

Yuletide 2009 Dear Santa Letter

2009-11-20T18:08:51Z

Now with original prompts and character listings! (See below.)

I would like to preface this by a general apology for any vagueness, over-explicitness and otherwise general bungling of Yuletide procedure despite my earnest (though doubtless at least partially unsuccessful) attempts to be merely a newbie and not a n00b, as it were. I have, however, no more graceful way to say this than I just did, so let's just take it as read, shall we? That said, I will make a forthright apology about taking so long to get this out. Sorry about that.

Original Requests
Aeschylus - The Oresteia
Orestes/Pylades
Slash would be excellent, although gen would be great too. Possibly something somewhat outside the bounds of the trilogy - say, their childhood in Phocis or what Pylades is up to during Eumenides. Alternatively, perhaps something could be made of Pylades being an all-but-mute character.

Cesare (manga)
Miguel/Any
I love Miguel as the devoutly loyal and rather sinister servant/friend/henchman of Cesare. Something exploring either or both of those qualities would be great. Het, gen, slash all good.

Dorothy L. Sayers - Lord Peter Wimsey
Lord Peter Wimsey/Any
Wimsey (and Bunter) during the War would be great, possibly also running into someone else associated with that time and place - say, Louis Renault of Casablanca. Alternatively, a cross-over set in Ancelstierre of Garth Nix' Old Kingdom trilogy (I once read that Nix had been in part inspired by Sayers; seeing a merging of the two would be amazing). Or in general (as an alternative to or included in either of the above) Wimsey acting, as he sometimes does, like an over- bred/educated aristocrat while actually being dreadfully clever. No slash, please.

Shakespeare - Henry VI plays
John Talbot
I just watched the BBC's version of these this summer and was particularly impressed by Talbot as a charismatic leader and a clever soldier (especially after the scene with the Countess of Auvergne). If you are acquainted with the BBC version, perhaps you could include some more about Talbot's captain who gets a tremendous amount of camera attention for only having a handful of lines. Het, gen, slash all good.

Why I Love these Fandoms
Oresteia - Orestes/Pylades is my current Greek mythology OTP . . . or OTF; I'm perfectly happy with them either as lovers or as friends. I used to be really into Achilles/Patroclus, although I'm afraid I can't really say why I changed. Doubtless it was partly that everybody else was for Achilles/Patroclus and I just wanted something different; possibly also, though, I wanted characters who were less ridiculously larger than life (although if my memory is correct about the Spartans re-interring the 10-foot tall skeleton of Orestes, I may have failed in that ;) ).

Cesare - Like the Oresteia, Cesare is something of a vehicle for my interest in characters who have life beyond the bounds of just the one story: Cesare Borgia himself who was a son of a cardinal (later a pope), lived extravagantly like the rest of his family, was a tyrant (as it seems to me) in both the ancient and modern senses of the word (a popular leader who achieved power by conquest, as well as a violent ruler), inspired Machiavelli's The Prince; one who lived fast and died young. And in the shadows, constant through it all, is Miguel (or Michelotto), the henchman and assassin. For the manga itself, I suppose I particularly enjoy the characters in their youth in the setting of a Renaissance school, with all the intricate relationships between the various students of different nations. I appreciate that it remains mostly in historical fiction in contrast to what I have heard of the other manga about Cesare Borgia (Cantarella), which I gather leans more to fantasy. I even like Angelo, perhaps in spite of himself: he is, at least, consistently naive in the extreme - adorable, in a way, even while I shake my head at him in exasperation. One thing that does concern me about the series is that it seems inclined to try to present Cesare and his social ideas as centuries ahead of their time (and thus appealing to a modern audience) rather than as the product of ambition . . . what TV Tropes calls the Historical Hero Upgrade.

Lord Peter Wimsey - Wimsey's interactions with really everyone are so very amusing, whether he's acting like something of a harmless ass or dragging up quotations from various bits of literature, the two pseudo-competitions in Busman's Honeymoon being an extreme example of the latter (although, to be sure, these occur simultaneously quite frequently as well).

Henry VI - Talbot (who's only in Part 1 of the three plays) strikes me, beyond being a clever soldier and a good leader of men, as (at least among the military characters) the last one hearkening back to Henry V and the (possible) glory of war or conquest, while the other characters are beginning to anticipate civil war. It's like he's becoming an anachronism or an antique from a sort of `golden age'. The BBC's video of Henry VI, Part 1 (which got me started on all of this in the first place) has an interesting habit of giving a lot of attention to Talbot's captain. I have come up with a couple theories for this: one involves slash (after all, why not?), the other makes the captain an illegitimate son of Talbot, or some other relative of less social significance than Young Talbot (who shows up near the end).

What I Love in Fanfiction
In general, I really like relationships between characters - not necessarily always romantic pairings, though sometimes so. Howbeit, characters that I find awesome and who have relationships full of fascinating dynamics with each other do tend to end up getting slashed (`slashed' I say because the vast majority of the time the characters in question are male).

I also really like crossovers; my brain is a happy place when it is wandering between a couple of different worlds. This is especially true if I know the worlds in question, but that does not have to be the case, at least so long as the major points of the other world are explained. As an example, knowing no more of Buffy the Vampire Slayer than I gleaned from occasionally seeing the previews for the next episode, I have greatly enjoyed one crossover between that and Labyrinth and another with Pride and Prejudice.

Application of the Above, or More Elaborate Prompts
For Orestes and Pylades I am particularly interested in their relationship: why is Pylades tagging along? What is his importance to Orestes (or Orestes' to him)? Granted, Pylades only appears in the second play of Aeschylus' trilogy, and then speaks only once, and briefly at that, albeit in a crucial moment. Still, I would like to think that he is quite as important (at least to Orestes) as he is in any of the other tellings of the myth in which he has a larger role. Since the category here is specifically the Oresteia, I'm focusing my suggestions (such as they are) on that version of the myth in particular, but you're perfectly welcome to use material from other sources if it inspires you.

For Cesare, again I'm primarily interested in the relationship between Miguel and Cesare, comprising both Miguel's supreme loyalty to Cesare as a quasi-servant, and also a friendship of near-equals each able, for example, to make fun of the other (as in the later part of chapter 12). I find that it is expressed not only between those two themselves (as in the latter parts of chapters 12 and 14) but also that it comes up (more or less explicitly) in Miguel's interactions with Angelo (second half of chapter 4, most of chapter 11 which also includes Columbus) and Henri of the French Association (end of chapter 16); it is even (less directly) discussed between Angelo and Niccolo (end of chapter 15).

Lord Peter has so many fascinating interactions with so many people that I don't really want to limit it to being with any one person, although I am (as I noted) very fascinated by Wimsey and Bunter in the War. This could be anything, though: the first time they meet each other, some little puzzle (so to speak) which they solve, perhaps some specific incident that is passingly mentioned in canon (say, Wimsey's work with intelligence, or something out of his PTSD), or just life (and death) in the trenches ( . . . I say, that just struck me as rather intriguing: heretical though I may sound, if an AU deathfic happens to strike your muse, I'd be happy to see that, too). For crossover possibilities, I already mentioned Louis Renault of Casablanca (he alludes to his service in WWI with the comment - apparently historically inaccurate - to Strasser, `I was with [the Americans] when they blundered into Berlin in 1918'), but a couple of other suggestions are Sherlock Holmes (either the Doyle stories or something pertaining to his cameos in Laurie R King's Mary Russell series) or Harry Turtledove's Timeline 191 series. Or whatever else might strike your imagination. And about that suggestion for a Garth Nix crossover: I think it is in his forward to `Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case' (in Across the Wall and Other Stories) that Nix mentions that Ancelstierre upper class society was, at least in part, inspired by Sayers' stories.

Directions you could take for Henry VI are something about the difference (if you agree with my perspective) between Talbot and the other major characters in the play or examining the significance of his captain, whether according to either of my theories or something else that strikes you. For a crossover possibility, I will throw out the idea of working in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (by Susanna Clarke), given that Uskglass leaves England at around the time Talbot is running around. Also, I'm not really acquainted with the actual history of that time (i.e. beyond Shakespeare), but you are quite welcome to bring some in if you like.

Concerning Spoilers
This is not an issue for any of my requested fandoms, except perhaps Cesare. Even there, although I've only read up through chapter 16, I'm familiar enough with the history that spoilers shouldn't be a problem, unless Souryo Fuyumi departs substantially from history or has some significant plot arc that leans much more heavily to the `fiction' side of `historical fiction'.

Where to Find Out More about these Fandoms
If you want to try looking at one of the fandoms you know little to nothing about, I offer the following suggestions.

Oresteia - Translations of the trilogy may be found various places around the internet, including here.

Cesare - At present, there are only 16 chapters of the manga translated into English (so far as I know); they may be found here.

Lord Peter Wimsey - The novels can certainly be found in a library, probably in used book stores and possibly (though I'm not certain) in new book stores. The crack_van has a good introduction to the fandom here.

Henry VI - Shakespeare can be found many places across the internet, not least at Gutenberg. The BBC film is more likely to be at a library than a video store.

Crack!Fics I Will Never Write: Persuasion/Murder steer legend

2008-07-28T04:37:41Z

There are some fanfiction ideas I come up with which I will never write. Typically, this is either because the idea is too ridiculous to deserve such a distinction, or too few people would appreciate the obscure crossover involved for it to be worth anyone's effort. Oh, and did I mention that I don't actually write crack!fics? I don't. I, arrogantly, take my writing much too seriously to do such a thing. This does not mean, however, that I am immune to receiving absurd inspiration. Take the following, for example.

Who
Persuasion, of course, is one of Jane Austen's novels - the last one she wrote, and published posthumously. The legend of the murder steer is actually mostly historical fact. The story goes that in west Texas, on 28 January, 1891, there was a round-up of cattle belonging to several ranches. The ownership of one yearling calf, however, could not be identified. A rancher named Henry Powe claimed it was his, while a man named Fine Gilliland asserted that it was the property of one of the two outfits he represented. Things grew heated, and Gilliland ultimately shot and killed Powe and left rather hurriedly on horseback (the law caught up with him and killed him two days later). Meanwhile, the other men at the round-up decided to write 'MURDER' on one of this steer's haunches with a branding iron, and the date of the incident on the other. The legendary part of the story is that the steer is still roaming the plains of west Texas.

What
The story would basically be Persuasion set in late nineteenth century (ca. 1890) west Texas. Certain changes would have to be made, of course. The Elliots would probably own Kellynch Plantation, and would have owned slaves a few decades earlier. The Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the U.S. may have had something of an impact on the family's present dire financial straits. Some research would have to be done concerning the fashionability of various Texas cities at the time, but the debate for the place of relocation may have wavered between San Antonio or Austen or Dallas and El Paso, and been decided in favor of El Paso.

Frederick Wentworth was originally a cowboy of no note whatsoever. Somehow, though (this remains a very mysterious matter to me), he eventually manages to own and run his own ranching operation.

How
Anne Elliot meets Frederick Wentworth several years after she had been compelled to refuse his proposal of marriage, and the usual difficulties ensue. Will the trip to Lyme Regis become a visit to Corpus Chirsti or Galveston, or might it be an expedition to one of the local caves - perhaps even Carlsbad just over in New Mexico? Could the last battles with the Indians, before they were all forced on to reservations, play a part in the tale? Is there any hope for a cameo by a (probably historically nonexistent) descendant of one of the camels who were briefly a part of an experiment just before the Civil War on using camels in the deserts of the U.S.? Since we're out in west Texas at this time, could the charismatic Judge Roy Bean get a cameo, too? And where, exactly, does the murder steer fit in, and what are Fine Gilliland's and Henry Powe's connections to the characters?

Why
Because one of the ranching outfits that Fine Gilliland represented was named Wentworth. I did mention that these crack!fic ideas are based on rather flimsy grounds, didn't I?

Fan Creations

2007-05-29T18:29:10Z

Without implying that there would be anyone to notice such a thing, yes, I do in fact still exist. Now to continue with our unscheduled programming.

We've all heard about fan fiction. It's been around for decades, and even if we don't dabble in writing it, we've likely humored ourselves by reading at least one or two unofficial accounts of some of our favorite characters (or, in my case, read more than I can possibly remember). Then, of course, there's fan art for those of us gifted in the visual fields. Draw the characters, the scenes just as you see them, or perhaps a quintessential moment never described, but which ought to exist. But what about fan music?

Forums for fan fiction exist right, left, center . . . anywhere you care to look. Fan art is almost equally prevalent. But what do we do with music created for those worlds of fiction we cannot bear to be parted from? I suppose to some extent, music is a more vague form of expression: Dmitri Shostakovich got away with underhand jibes at Stalin and Soviet Russia in his fifth symphony because his medium was instrumental music, the interpretation of which can vary so much more widely than interpretation of the printed word or colors on a canvas (until more recent styles of this latter, perhaps). A piece of music that to you so closely illustrates the passion of two lovers may to me describe the frenzy of a pitched battle; when I hear someone walking through a peaceful countryside, you might be reminded of someone scratching off another indistinguishable day in prison.

But that's purely instrumental music. Put something with the music, and it becomes so much more definite: how many old folk-tales or plays by Shakespeare have been put into opera or ballet? Wagner's Ring Cycle, Verdi's Falstaff and Otello, Stravinsky's Firebird, Vaughn Williams' Sir John in Love, Tchaikovsky's or Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. How many poems of past centuries are given music and sung by modern artists? Take, for example, William Yeats' 'Stolen Child' which has been performed to tunes by at least five different people, including Loreena McKennitt and Heather Alexander.

Ok, I confess, I am of course expounding upon some cause that has particular interest to me. I've taken a few of songs from novels and written my own music for them. And so, I wonder, what forum is there for we who take poetry or songs in a story and set music to them? Or write songs with both our own words and music (a feat beyond my own capacity, but certainly not others')? Consider: I could post a .pdf file of sheet music that I write . . . I could find someone to record my compositions for me (let's face it: my singing is best confined to the shower and my practical ability to play the piano is not worth mentioning). The former is within my abilities, the latter requires no prerequisite skills on my audience's part (such as knowledge of reading music).

Ah well, here I am, having accomplished nothing of note, bar whining about what I can and cannot do. Perhaps some day I shall learn to sing. :)

Hic sum

2006-12-21T14:31:41Z

What to say? Well, 'here I am' seems like a good start. And why am I here? Heavens help me, it's not for telling people what I actually do. No, can't be that. Probably just poking about, being a part of some community - some conglomeration of my fellow mostly-human-beings.

Ok, I'll confess. Fully and completely. Once in a blue moon, I write a piece of fanfiction, horror of horrors. Being my egotistical self, I become immensely elated when people read my work, and even more so should I find out that they like it. There was a day, not that long in the past, when I wrote a clever little piece (that's my opinion, of course), and posted it at fanfiction.net. About a week or so later, somebody was so generous as to not only read my aspiration of creativity, but to comment upon it, and also to suggest that it might find an audience here. Sooo, here I am, for the purpose of gratifying my own vanity. Such selfless motives. ;)