Among Others, by Jo Walton
Feb. 9th, 2012 09:51 pmOH RIGHT I was going to do posts about other books I've read lately! Here, have my thoughts about ( Among Others, by Jo Walton! )
What, more recs, so soon?
Jun. 18th, 2011 03:19 pmI have a thing about William Carlos Williams. That is to say, I have an issue with him and his poems. So much so that I, um, have one of them memorized. In my defense it's really short and I didn't mean to? *headdesk*
So yeah.
"So much depends upon the red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens." Whatever, William Squared.
As a result I have been working on a collection of fannish poetry that has been written as a pastiche of or reaction to him, usually of the one about the plums. They are AWESOME. And here they are, as recs. If you know of any others, PLEASE do share! They make me strangely joyful, despite my antipathy towards William Carlos Williams himself.
This Is Just To Say, by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
toft. A Mythbusters version!
(ETA: And in the comments of the LJ version of Toft's, as a sort of sequel, a Mythbusters version of the wheelbarrow poem too, by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shimere277!)
FORGIVE ME, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, byasimaiyat. A series of White Collar versions, that together form a fic!
An experiment in translation, byskalja. A lolcat translation!
With All Apologies To William Carlos Williams, by![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
lannamichaels. A fandom version! Of both the plum poem and the wheelbarrow poem!
So yeah.
"So much depends upon the red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens." Whatever, William Squared.
As a result I have been working on a collection of fannish poetry that has been written as a pastiche of or reaction to him, usually of the one about the plums. They are AWESOME. And here they are, as recs. If you know of any others, PLEASE do share! They make me strangely joyful, despite my antipathy towards William Carlos Williams himself.
This Is Just To Say, by
toft. A Mythbusters version!(ETA: And in the comments of the LJ version of Toft's, as a sort of sequel, a Mythbusters version of the wheelbarrow poem too, by
shimere277!)FORGIVE ME, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, by
asimaiyat. A series of White Collar versions, that together form a fic!An experiment in translation, by
skalja. A lolcat translation!With All Apologies To William Carlos Williams, by
Third post in my "but THIS should be my first post upon returning from vacation!" series: YULETIDE!
So I was lucky enough to two full-length stories AND a treat this Yuletide, for three different fandoms -- so basically I got fic for ALL of the reasonably-accessible fandoms I requested this Yuletide!
My assigned fic was The Redemption of Sam McGee, byIsis, and it totally thrilled me. I'd managed to figure out before the 25th that my fic was going to be for Cremation of Sam McGee, given that when a "mystery work" appeared under my gifts there was exactly one fic each for two of the fandoms I'd requested, and I knew that the day before, there'd been exactly one fic for one of the fandoms I'd requested. But it was still a mystery to me just what would be done with it -- and I can say unequivocally that this was not what I expected, though I really should have expected to be surprised, given how open-ended my request for this fandom was! This fic is a lovely look at Robert Service the author, and the real-life dude from whom Service borrowed the name "Sam McGee", and the ways in which the poem haunted McGee.
It's clear from the fic that the author wrote with a strong knowledge of Service, and that made me happy. Because as much as I love Cremation of Sam McGee (AND I LOVE IT!), I also just plain love Service. Yay!
AND, as a bonus, the fic ended with an extra two stanzas to act as a coda to the original poem, and those stanzas are just PERFECT.
My surprise extra yuletide fic was Wedding Day, bychiana606, for Little Women. And -- Little Women fic! About all sorts of favourite characters of mine from the sequels! Featuring an asexual Nan, who is a competent and awesome doctor! (NAN ILU) And female friendships! And Tommy/Dora! And hints at Bess/Dan (or at least Bess/Dan angst...!) Getting to wallow with joy in spending time with these characters is awesome. *happy sigh*
And then my treat was Long Distance, byAriadnesThread, for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, just a short little look at Arabella and Jonathan's relationship after the novel: HE DOESN'T FORGET HER, despite wandering off to be all magicy and academicy with Norrell! YAY! (the only tragic thing is that it is so short, because now I want to know MORE. But it is a nicely self-contained ficlet, and that is just me being selfish.)
I also wrote a fic this yuletide (obviously), and now I can reveal it! My fic was As The Sea Will Allow, written forechoinautumn, for Fairy Tales, and it's a modern day Canadian femslash adaption of the story of the selkie. (I know -- I said after my last fic that I would never again title a fic after a song. I lied.)
It was SO WONDERFUL to get to spend all this time in a fandom in which I last wrote anything probably at LEAST five years ago, a fandom that was my FIRST EVER FANNISH LOVE (Oh fairy tales how I love you!). It's nice to write for it with a bit of actual, you know, writing skill. I was pleased with how it came out! Though mildly distressed the whole time at how long the thing insisted on being. I started writing it and knew almost immediately that it would end up longer than my then-longest fic (my 5000ish word long Inception fic), and I was a bit worried it would end up being more in the range of 10,000 words. Thankfully the latter didn't happen, but I was right about it becoming my longest fic.
I found this fic really hard and really easy to write in multiple ways. ( cut for minor spoilers for the fic )
It helped that my recipient was really easygoing, and basically wanted ANYTHING about one of the four fairytales they'd requested. That might have been intimidatingly open-ended to me in another fandom, but the idea for this fic just dropped into my mind (because: FAIRY TALES! YAY!) and OFF I WENT.
In conclusion: Yuletide is awesome, both in the giving and the receiving. AS ADVERTISED!
So I was lucky enough to two full-length stories AND a treat this Yuletide, for three different fandoms -- so basically I got fic for ALL of the reasonably-accessible fandoms I requested this Yuletide!
My assigned fic was The Redemption of Sam McGee, by
It's clear from the fic that the author wrote with a strong knowledge of Service, and that made me happy. Because as much as I love Cremation of Sam McGee (AND I LOVE IT!), I also just plain love Service. Yay!
AND, as a bonus, the fic ended with an extra two stanzas to act as a coda to the original poem, and those stanzas are just PERFECT.
My surprise extra yuletide fic was Wedding Day, by
And then my treat was Long Distance, by
I also wrote a fic this yuletide (obviously), and now I can reveal it! My fic was As The Sea Will Allow, written for
It was SO WONDERFUL to get to spend all this time in a fandom in which I last wrote anything probably at LEAST five years ago, a fandom that was my FIRST EVER FANNISH LOVE (Oh fairy tales how I love you!). It's nice to write for it with a bit of actual, you know, writing skill. I was pleased with how it came out! Though mildly distressed the whole time at how long the thing insisted on being. I started writing it and knew almost immediately that it would end up longer than my then-longest fic (my 5000ish word long Inception fic), and I was a bit worried it would end up being more in the range of 10,000 words. Thankfully the latter didn't happen, but I was right about it becoming my longest fic.
I found this fic really hard and really easy to write in multiple ways. ( cut for minor spoilers for the fic )
It helped that my recipient was really easygoing, and basically wanted ANYTHING about one of the four fairytales they'd requested. That might have been intimidatingly open-ended to me in another fandom, but the idea for this fic just dropped into my mind (because: FAIRY TALES! YAY!) and OFF I WENT.
In conclusion: Yuletide is awesome, both in the giving and the receiving. AS ADVERTISED!
Poetry appreciation time
Dec. 16th, 2010 12:03 amThere’s a couple of people on my flist posting a daily poem for advent, which I’ve been really enjoying reading. I don’t get exposed to poetry often enough in my life, and it’s good to expand my horizons beyond the small number of poets I DO know enough to appreciate.
And so because of this unprecedented exposure, all of a sudden I have managed to change my mind about freeform poetry. I’ve never liked it and now I have managed to change the way I look at it just enough that I like it now. I still don’t know that I’d call it poetry – it feels more like it ought to go into a different category of thing – but at least I’m now capable of liking it.
What it is, is a way for people to write extremely short works, in a way that’s socially acceptable. Super-short fiction is mostly looked down on; stories, and essays, and personal reflections, and so forth are all supposed to have some weight to them. Freeform poetry allows you to condense your form into something much smaller, where you try to talk about something with limited space, and getting maximum possible use out of your words.
And because the form is so short, the sometimes arbitrary-feeling line breaks are about the poet giving the poem the right pacing, the same way longer works use paragraph breaks to control pacing.
Okay.
I feel much better about this.
This might be an oversimplification, I might be misrepresenting the point of freeform poetry, I don’t know. But looking at it like this makes me able to like it, so I’m happy.
Anyways, O flist/rlist, what is your opinion of freeform poetry? Of poetry in general? Inquiring minds want to know!
And so because of this unprecedented exposure, all of a sudden I have managed to change my mind about freeform poetry. I’ve never liked it and now I have managed to change the way I look at it just enough that I like it now. I still don’t know that I’d call it poetry – it feels more like it ought to go into a different category of thing – but at least I’m now capable of liking it.
What it is, is a way for people to write extremely short works, in a way that’s socially acceptable. Super-short fiction is mostly looked down on; stories, and essays, and personal reflections, and so forth are all supposed to have some weight to them. Freeform poetry allows you to condense your form into something much smaller, where you try to talk about something with limited space, and getting maximum possible use out of your words.
And because the form is so short, the sometimes arbitrary-feeling line breaks are about the poet giving the poem the right pacing, the same way longer works use paragraph breaks to control pacing.
Okay.
I feel much better about this.
This might be an oversimplification, I might be misrepresenting the point of freeform poetry, I don’t know. But looking at it like this makes me able to like it, so I’m happy.
Anyways, O flist/rlist, what is your opinion of freeform poetry? Of poetry in general? Inquiring mind
Yuletide Letter!
Nov. 12th, 2010 05:49 pmDear Yuletide Writer:
I am so thrilled and happy and excited to know that you are going to be writing me a shiny fic in one of my fandoms. I already know you have excellent taste, since you love one of my beloved fandoms as well, so have no fear that I will adore whatever it is you write for me. If you are the sort of person whose inspiration gets stifled when given an overload of information, then stop reading right now and run faaaaaaar away, because I tend to get very long-winded when I am excited about something. I am sorry!
But if you want further details about what I am especially jonesing for, well, I am happy to share! Also feel free to stalk the rest of my LJ for further details about me if you feel so inclined; none of it is flocked!
The rest of my letter is split into two sections: the first section is Things Which Apply To All Fandoms, and the second section is Things About Each Specific Fandom.
( SECTION ONE! )
( SECTION TWO! )
And that is all, O Wondrous Author! I look forward with great anticipation to see what you will come up with for me! I hope you have fun with this.
With much love,
Sophia
PS: There is a good chance that I will not have the ability to read my gift until a number of days after Christmas, so do not feel bad if I do not comment on your story for several days after it's posted -- it simply means I haven't had the chance to read it it yet!
I am so thrilled and happy and excited to know that you are going to be writing me a shiny fic in one of my fandoms. I already know you have excellent taste, since you love one of my beloved fandoms as well, so have no fear that I will adore whatever it is you write for me. If you are the sort of person whose inspiration gets stifled when given an overload of information, then stop reading right now and run faaaaaaar away, because I tend to get very long-winded when I am excited about something. I am sorry!
But if you want further details about what I am especially jonesing for, well, I am happy to share! Also feel free to stalk the rest of my LJ for further details about me if you feel so inclined; none of it is flocked!
The rest of my letter is split into two sections: the first section is Things Which Apply To All Fandoms, and the second section is Things About Each Specific Fandom.
( SECTION ONE! )
( SECTION TWO! )
And that is all, O Wondrous Author! I look forward with great anticipation to see what you will come up with for me! I hope you have fun with this.
With much love,
Sophia
PS: There is a good chance that I will not have the ability to read my gift until a number of days after Christmas, so do not feel bad if I do not comment on your story for several days after it's posted -- it simply means I haven't had the chance to read it it yet!
