Plaster of paris trout and Ur Doing It Wrong (redux)

I had to google fu More Joy Day. Admittedly, I’m not feeling terribly joyous the last two days due to some badness and woe – one of those situations with a close family friend about your own age going into the hospital for a backache and coming out a day later with a dire prognosis. WTF? So, I’ll just get that out there and move on.

After 2 plus years of hiding rthstewart from the Old Fandom Friends, I’ve now come clean, more or less, and so some of them are now over here. So, Old Fandom Friends meet New Fandom Friends. Fanfiction has been my social network for a very, very long time.

We’ve all had some fun watching this Ur Doing It Wrong unfold (also here and here) and if you want to read more, PM lady_songsmith about it who has done a wonderful job dissecting the Ur Doing It Wrong advocates.  (I very much want to buy Sasper and NotAFan a drink.  Step up to the bar, ladies, whoever you are).  We went through some of this earlier over here with the “fic slayer” Anaprate which turned into a lovely discussion here about textual analysis, communities, and canonicity.

It does make me a little sad and wistful as I have noticed that some folks who have been long time readers, have apparently finally abandoned the stories and jumped on board with the above. I suspect that, to their mind, I finally went where they just could not follow, first with the NFE, and then when I tried to recognize what the data show about the social impact of the war on women with Helen and her guilty relationship with the widow Beatrice next door. I get where the objections come from and I regret that we seem to have parted company as I do really value the associations that have developed over the course of the last few years.

Something interesting from the last chapter is the reader split on whether the “children” would perceive the relationship.  They are all adult and sophisticated.  Susan sees something and dismisses it -- essentially concluding, "I know what that looks like but of course it's just my imagination.  My mother would never do anything like that."   I’d written several versions of the scene in the kitchen with Susan and her mother and in some Susan did recognize it.  Readers definitely went both ways on the issue.

Last, there’s been (again) a lot stuff about poor Mary Sue. Geek trendsetter Felicia Day recently Tweeted that more than “meh” she was coming to hate the term Mary Sue, which led to the often posted link to the discussion of why Mary Sue was sexist. My favorite exploration of Sue comes from Pat Pflieger here. It was that article that formed the basis for my own exploration of Sue in the character of Dalia. The article is dated in its fandom references but in the end, Ms. Pfliger comes down solidly in the camp that Mary Sue is an expression of feminine empowerment, and maybe the very first one for a young girl.

Granted I don’t read all those stories on the ff.net page. But that’s not the point. I think of it this way. When I was 10, I used to make sure I always wore sensible shoes to school because, should a portal open and take me to Narnia, I’d be ready. I knew it wasn't real, but if it was real, one does not simply walk into Narnia in sandals (I grew up in So Cal). And you can bet there was a purpose/prophecy in me going there; I didn't think romance at the time but adventure and awesome ninja fighting skills definitely.  By 13, I was certain I had a tragic past and I was totally the 10th member of the Fellowship.   My spousal unit mentions that there’s not a boy (or man) in the world who, alone, shooting hoops or kicking a ball, doesn’t pretend he’s the hero scoring the game-winning point. Every girl out twirling on the ice pretends she’s an Olympic medalist. These are self inserts, the products of our glorious imaginations, and damn it, most of us will never make a living as a basketball player or Olympic skater. The fact that we aren’t great at these endeavors, and might even be really terrible at them, doesn’t matter because it’s the glory of creative pretend play.  So there.  (I've been thinking about this a lot as someone posted the first 1700 words of a girl falls into Narnia using some of rthstewart-verse, so I'm anxiously waiting to see what (if anything) happens next.  Oh vanity but I am curious really to see a modern FOC/Peter set in rth-influenced Golden Age crack Narnia).

Oh and I’m looking for a 1940s Brit speak for insert into the following [assume drunk paratrooper grunts at a pub]

“That trout was plaster-of-paris,” Peter added, laughing at Brotheridge's quote.

The others all stared at him.

“The book? Three Men in a Boat? To say nothing of the dog?”

More blank, glassy looks.

“I’ll just shut it and drink my pint,” Peter said.

Bailey laughed and slapped him across the shoulder blades so hard he nearly upended his beer.  “It’s cuz it’s about boats.  That's how you know it."

“Pevensie don’t know ___ from ___, but he does know boats!” Parr hollered.