rthstewart | A few of my favorite and not so favorite things

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A few of my favorite and not so favorite things

I have, finally, a complete draft of the NBB. Now it is time to edit, with the wonderful help of

autumnia who has patiently endured my early draft, complete with misspellings and typos. Amine_eyes was going to help too and I'm just so lucky to have such great support. (I've been through a real bout of the OMG IT SUX recently.

autumnia has kept me from chucking it all into the river). It needs work, but it is getting there. I am so fortunate and absolutely giddy with the prospect that

heverus will be doing the art!!

There have been distractions, some good (

cyndisuesue visited unexpectedly and this was divine!) and others not so good, especially some very serious illness among several in my village. Also the state of the US political dialogue has been especially grim and I find myself in a perpetual state of grimace, and I'm not sure that following the Think Progress tweet feed has been good for my blood pressure.

Also, today, I timed the distance it takes for an egg to fall with parachutes of varying sizes for my teen's science project. We did this about 20 times and happily the egg broke on the last round, thereby proving up the hypothesis that even a small parachute is better than no parachute. Words to live by, yes?

Which come to think, is a bit of a metaphor for the NBB. I keep thinking that, gosh, I've not done anything but the NBB for months. Except that NBB author sign ups were on October 23 and since then, I posted chapters 10-14 of Apostolic Way and the recent chapter of Harold & Morgan and just wrote the NBB from scratch. Never tell me the word count, but I'm sure that's over 100,000 words since October 30. So... yeah...

I read the Hunger Games and really enjoyed it. I know the basics of the whole story and we are all now eagerly awaiting the release of the film which so far seems terrific. Yeah, I know, trailers, but still, I am enjoying what I see.

Some true delights come from

adaese and

wellinghall who have provided pictures of the Cat Window at the Oxford Museum of Natural History and a link to a page of Sir Gwaine and the Green Knight on display at the Bodleian Library at Oxford. This was C.S. Lewis' own edition, with his own annotations, and edited by JRR Tolkien and EV Gordon. So, I shall share the pretty pictures and they are in my Scrapbook.

Source

I have been watching Once Upon A Time, but if they don't get make it less monochromatic fast, I may drop it in disgust. I am getting really fed up with the default to the Disney-ification at every turn. Disney cast members in the parks and the adveritising on the show are more diverse than the show itself.

With more of my RL and Old Fandom Friends migrating over to this account, once I came clean with them about this latest fandom ~~obsession~~ focus I think I might start posting the occasionally personal over here, which means F-locking. I mention this only because some people I hear from pretty regularly don't have LJ. It's not that my RL is so very interesting, but just a head's up.

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If you need another eye to edit, I'm always here. Granted, the offer may be from the selfish desire to see NBB early. I make no claims to noble action there. So, most profoundly, YOU'RE DOING IT RIGHT!

Also, I've been meaning to send you a few pictures that I think you'd appreciate from a trip to Ireland. Namely, Lynch crests all over Galway, landscapes that made me wish, and think, that Dryads were real, and stone work lions. My fellow students were rather confused when I started laughing upon seeing them. Even more so when my explanation was "not a tame Lion, indeed." Which brings me to the question of how can I send you pictures?

Much agreement on the state of politics, and I hope those who are ill recover speedily!

I would love to see the pictures! Thank you! My email addy is just rthstewart@gmail.com. Or you can post them on your LJ and I can download/copy paste. Or you can post them on google docs and I can see them that way, or any photosharing site.

I loved Galway. It's one of those places I'd stay in until the money ran out.

And thanks for the vote of confidence. I really appreciate it (and need it at the moment). Thank you!

I have something like 800 pictures to sort through so it may be a while, but I shall send them to you as soon as I can. I absolutely loved Ireland, and I'm so glad I was able to go this winter. It was really bittersweet coming home. I miss it so much, but I'm glad to be home.

On an unrelated note, I wanted to tell you that the pdf for BRD from AO3 is incomplete. It only goes up to page 12 or so, at least the one I downloaded. Also, Stone Gryphon 1 gives me an error when I try downloading it.

Unrelated to the other unrelated note: one, how do Narnian beings handle things like parasites? It's a topic of interest for me, future-professionally. Also, there's some pretty cool research on how animal parasites affect humans (see the most recent post on my lj). and Two, if hummingbirds are rude, and songbirds promiscuous, what are Canadian geese like? They're very annoying by where I live, which led me to imagine them in Narnia.

Canadian geese are vicious in ANY world. I would bet they make excellent soldiers. Flee the geese!!!

Yes, and very officious soldiers too! They always strut about as if the campus were built for them and we students get in the way! I can't see them being content as NCOs or anything of the like.

We've got an AU over on the Comm of Eustace being attacked by Canadian Geese. They're like modern day velociraptors!

Oh that is wonderful. I'll look it up right now!

Only if the officers are all swans. (Never mess with a swan. If you do, have paramedics on hand.)

OK, so I tried the downloads and they seemed fine for me, so I don't know what's up there. If you are still having problems, I can download them and then upload them to Google Docs. FF.net may have some way to download to an e reader as well. As for parasites, I somehow don't think they are sentient. They do probably use leeches in the medicine. Ick.

and Ireland is so gorgeous. I do love it there.

Go you, re: NBB! I had to drop out, but I'm greatly looking forward to what everyone else comes up with.

I, too, am looking forward to the Hunger Games film.

And I love those pictures! So interesting.

For Hunger Games, I heard that one of the promos the studio did was send an invitation to the media inviting them to the Hunger Games. The invitation included a white rose. CREEPY. I'm very excited for it.

I AM sorry you dropped out. Your Narnia stories are just terrific, but RL can be a pain!

I love how there's a partial sketch of a Knight's armor on that page of Sir Gawaine.

There are a great many cats on that window. No wonder Peter was amused.

And it has been a fun and very educational experience reading the draft! I am glad that you will not be chucking the whole thing into the ~~English Channel~~ river, and I'm sure others feel the same way. :-) The parachute experiment and comment is reminding of me of your NBB actually.

A lot of people seem to like "Once Upon a Time". I had thought of watching it but never did get around to it, though I have read up some summaries/recap about the show. Maybe I'll try to catch it in reruns over the summer when there's nothing new on tv.

Isn't that page amazing? it's funny, in looking at the cat window, I remember reading that they were supposed to be monkeys and I thought the sculpture really did look more simian than feline. As for OUAT, I dunno. I really, really want to like it. After a steady diet of BBC, the monochromatic look of it is really bothering me.

And thank you again for the review and beta. I know it was a slog and I really appreciate it.

I had to stare very hard at that photo to make out that they were actually cats and not something else. They don't look much like cats from the photo point of view.

And oh yes, my tv world has been mostly BBC and a bit of ITV and another UK channel. Going back to normal American shows have looked so dull in comparison these days (with the exception of the random special on PBS).

By the way, have you started to compile the footnotes to the NBB? I would think they'd take up an entire chapter of their own! :-)

yeah, footnotes. oh gosh....

"(I've been through a real bout of the OMG IT SUX recently. autumnia has kept me from chucking it all into the river)."

autumnia, you've been doing a great and important job!
rth is probably the only remotely sensible person who might have had such ideas about that NBB. It seems you have helped her come to her senses. Good work.

rth, I'll wait patiently ... And I'm happy about the other chapters you've been able to write alongside the project.

autumnia, you've been doing a great and important job!

I know! I am honored to represent rth's many rabid fans clamoring to read about Peter and Susan and their exploits here. :-) Chucking those tens of thousands of words into the river would be a very sad thing indeed.

Thank you! And with the Friends locking, it means you can customize who sees an LJ post, you can limit it to a group, large or small, but it means that only those people with accounts, who you designate, can see the post. It's much more controlled than other networking sites.

Pleased to be of service :-)

\\\\\\\\\o//////// (and PM/ google doc coming in the next hour or two once I finish typing!)

And yay for all the pictures! :D

Thank you SO MUCH!!!!

I never thought the day would come when I would see two Gawains together, one of them being the original manuscript, and still not be sure which of the two I preferred.

What really bothers me about the cats is that some of them are disturbingly scrawny. If only the rest of the windows had been carved, preferably with mice and voles, then they'd have had something to eat.

Happy Birthday! Yes, I had noticed that about how scrawny they were, as well. When I first saw the one carving, it was nothing like I expected. I just now wondered if maybe the reason they are so skinny is that the sculptors were 1)annoyed that they had to do cats instead of monkeys; 2) began the carvings as monkeys and had to change it. The information on the history of the building of the Museum mentioned the controversy and the problems with the builders, but did not go into this level of detail. I really find them looking more simian than feline the closer I look at them.

There is something poetic about "two Gawains together."

Thank you!

Ah, you've read the little-known chapter of Morte Darthur where all the knights fall into a parallel universe and meet their strangely altered counterparts? One of my favourite episodes, that.

"I think I might start posting the occasionally personal over here, which means F-locking."

I guess you could have a separate F-locked account, just for personal posts? Or is it possible to F-lock individual posts? I read LJ so much more than make my own posts, so I don't know much about how these things work ...

Totally excited to be doing the art! Yayyyy!

And I agree with you about Once Upon A Time - I always feel like I'm going to strain my eyes from rolling them too hard.

7 Dwarfs, all white? Every prince, white? Even Frederick in the gold armor, white? EVERYBODY?? Except Sydney who is a genie with a turban, pointy beard, and shoes? He looks like Jafar from Aladdin. It's crazy. Putting Belle in the Disney Beauty and Beast blue dress? It's so monochromatic it drives me crazy and so obviously tied to the Disney visuals, it's really become irritating to me. And I still don't like the whole idea of "Mr. Gold" with the implication of a tie to Jewish moneylenders. There was a TV commercial that ran a few weeks ago with a mixed race couple and their children and I keep thinking, if an insurance company can do this in your advertising, what is your problem?

Well, with the exception of Snow White (who traditionally must have dark hair to be recognized), the Evil Queen (who is, well, "evil"), and Ruby (who is off-kilter), everyone is pretty Aryan. Even Belle, as Disney-fied as she was, was still a klutzy, yet perfect, blonde. Cinderella's fairy godmother was black, but she was killed before she could even complete a sentence.
But then again, ABC is owned by Disney, and generally Disney doesn't have much of a reputation for being "diverse".

I cheered when I saw the Fairy Godmother, and then shrieked when she died a minute later. I was PISSED (never mind the boobs everywhere). And yep, that's my point about the Disney look when they are even dressing Belle in the same blue dress she wears in the animated Beauty and the Beast. Come on. I really want to like the show but it's making it really hard to countenance when they pull this. I keep thinking that somewhere someone should be complaining about it. io9 said recently that the show has got a tone problem and it really does. It veers from weird, creepy and interesting (squeezing hearts, people turned to puppets) to just campy bizarre.

I've always taken issue with the way the fairytale world was portrayed - both with tone and visuals.And I abhor the way they try to draw Disney influence in whenever there's a chance. For such a creative concept, the series lacks a fundamental creativity. The writing seems like poor fan fiction -- I know it's supposed to be fantasy, but some of the things that drive the characters are just plain ridiculous and poorly executed. (That whole episode where they were trying to out the mayor for using town budget to build a house -- is it rocket science to read blueprints before you make humiliating accusations? For characters that they build to be smart and savvy, they seem to be taking stupid pills. And also, WTF would they be taking advice from the tow-truck driver when a mine shaft collapses?)

Wow, that's an epic lot of words. If they were initially hard to see, then maybe I have to chime in with 'forest, trees' (which is meant in the nicest possible way, of course).

I confess to some sympathy with the whole politics thing. I'm so disgusted with the nonsense being spouted in our national variant, that I've (temporarily) stopped watching a lot of the current affairs, lest I be tempted to throw something at the tv, radio, et al.

Once Upon a Time hasn't started here yet, though it's due soon. The promos look good, but sounds like they may be the usual 'best bits'. Will be interesting to see. Oh, and homework, yes, we're immersed in that too, though our current bugbear is spelling lists (and the fact that the current lists are work that was mastered two years ago - standardized testing, phooey)

oh gosh, we had YEARS of brutal spelling lists the only good thing being that everything was a lot easier afterward! Sentences and definitions and practice in cursive! ARGH!

Yesterday afternoon, in the middle of a client call, my cell phone starts, first with calls: "Mom, my X Box Live subscription is up in a month. Can I renew now?"

"No."

And then the texts from a neighbor girl: "Im home alone rlly paranoid can u come over?"

"I dont want to get phone 2 scared."

AWHHHHHHHHH! And I'm half an hour away, so I text my child to go the neighbor house and WAIT OUTSIDE while she comes out. All this via text while I'm on the work phone trying to get the girl out of the house and to call 911 and telling my kid to not go in the house (who wisely said, "mom, I'm not going to be a hero!" and me, no! no! dont' be a hero! wait outside!) and etc. etc. You get the picture. I called the police and sounded like the worst mother ever -- Oh, I'm not home, this isn't my kid, and errr, help? Please? RIGHT NOW?

And how is that these kids will text you even when you are trying to call them on the phone???? PICK UP THE DAMN PHONE.

her: where u tryin to call me?

me: YES PICK UP YOUR PHONE AND STOP TEXTING ME IM IN THE CAR

All was well. the mail falling through the slot was very scary.

Oh dear lord. I sometimes think being a mum is the hardest thing in the world. Not saying it's not rewarding but, yeah, why did I want to do this again? And yes, the timing on this stuff is always diabolical, isn't it? What a day - you really have my sympathies : )

Can. Not. Wait. To. Read. Your. NBB. So excited.

(Also, as I side note: I was in Oxford and visited the Bodleian not two weeks ago! Huzzah!)

If I don't get to Oxford to see these things in the next year, I will be very distressed. How AWESOME was it???? Awesome, yes?? yes? did you see all the gargoyles and grotesques inspired by the University's famous alums? Like of Tweedledee and Tweedledum? And something that looks like Treebeard but I think is something else?

It was wonderful- Oxford is an amazing place, and I saw, I think, all those things. Plus a building with a statue of an ostrich on it, for reasons unknown. I tell no lies.

I am so excited for your NBB! However, I am sorry to hear that there has been a bout of illness in your family. I myself have had a viral ear thing that has been uncomfortable, but more irritating than anything else.

And oh! the Oxford pictures are beautiful. I wish I could go so much.

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A few of my favorite and not so favorite things

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