greygirlbeast: (Kraken)
Since I mentioned it this morning, here's the clip Spooky shot yesterday of me experimenting with the buoyancy of clam shells, filmed near Moonstone, on the stream connecting Trustom and Card ponds.

Clamshell Boat, Riding the Current from Kathryn Pollnac on Vimeo.



It's starting to look as though my shadow is destined to get a lot more screen time than I ever will. Which is probably for the best. If you listen, you can hear the foghorn at Pt. Judith, almost five miles southeast of Moonstone Beach.

I'm still mulling over the whole silly "Mary Sue" thing. And yes, I still find it a painfully silly and generally useless concept. Though, I think there's something more insidious here. The idea that characters must be mundane to be believable, and a sort of elevation of the ordinary, that I find undeniably repugnant. Great literature is most often about extraordinary people, even when it purports to concern itself primarily with the "common man" (consider Tom Joad in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, for example). The whole idea of this sort of character police, it makes my skin crawl. We are good writers, or we are not, whether we are professional or amateur, whether we write fantasy or sf or genre mysteries or what so many mistakenly refer to as "literary" fiction (a grand redundancy). There is no place for dismissive categories like "Mary Sue." I see why it's happened. I even see why it's being applied beyond fanfic. Sure, I can understand the appeal of dismissing Stephanie Meyer or Laurell K. Hailton's distasteful and absurd heroines by simply labeling them "Mary Sues." They are undoubtedly idealized avatars in the service of the authors. But if we do that, given the inherent subjectivity of the concept, we must, wholesale, also dismiss thousands of other characters who have the same relationship to their authors. People are trying to invent a very simple solution for a problem that has no simple solution. And it's just dumb. I keep coming back to that, and I can't fathom why I'm wasting so much energy on such a completely reprobate idea. That which irks me gets my attention, more than it usually deserves. And, for the record, I do not, necessarily, have any problem with fanfic. But I've said that lots of times before.

Anyway...

I'm currently obsessed with NIN's "La Mer," from The Fragile (1999). Here are the original French Creole lyrics, which are spoken on the album by Denise Milfort:

Et il est un jour arrivé
Marteler le ciel
Et marteler la mer

Et la mer avait embrassé moi
Et la délivré moi de ma cellule

Rien ne peut m'arrêter maintenant


Which may be translated into English as:

And when the day arrives
I'll become the sky
And I'll become the sea

And the sea will come to kiss me
For I am going
Home

Nothing can stop me now


Or, somewhat more literally:

And the day has arrived
To thresh the sky
And to thresh the sea

And the sea has embraced me
And it has dispensed me from my cage

Nothing can stop me now

"Mary Sue"

Jun. 16th, 2009 10:31 pm
greygirlbeast: (stab)
So, a while back, I came across a nitwit somewhere online who described Echo, a character I wrote in The Dreaming, as a "Mary Sue." Previous to seeing this particular comment, my familiarity with the phrase was extremely limited. Indeed, I only had some vague impression that it was used by writers of fan fic who wished to complain about characters written by other writers of fan fic. Last time Sonya ([livejournal.com profile] sovay) stayed over, we talked about this, and she was surprised (and annoyed) to see the term has apparently escaped the realm of fan fic and is being applied to non-fan fic characters. Myself, I thought it was a dubious concept to begin with, so, mostly, I was just baffled.

According to Wikipedia, a "Mary Sue" is defined thusly: "A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fan fiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as 'Mary Sues' is that they are too ostentatious for the audience's taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly. The author may seem to push how exceptional and wonderful the 'Mary Sue' character is on his or her audience, sometimes leading the audience to dislike or even resent the character fairly quickly; such a character could be described as an "author's pet". (Note that Wikipedia has tagged this article for a lack of cited sources, verifiable claims, etc.)

Now, tonight I see that Poppy ([livejournal.com profile] docbrite) has come across this Mary Sue Litmus Test thingy and applied it to two of her characters. So, I thought it might be interesting to try it myself, using Sarah Crowe from The Red Tree.

Not surprisingly, the test is stupid as hell. No, really. Big-time, ginormous, Godzilla-sized stupid. But regardless, Sarah only scored an 18. The author of the Mary Sue Litmus Test writes, "11-20 points: The Non-Sue. Your character is a well-developed, balanced person, and is almost certainly not a Mary Sue. Congratulations!" So, I guess that's a relief. One thing I can stop losing sleep over. Keep in mind, by the way, I have repeatedly admitted that Sarah Crowe is my most autobiographical character to date, though I'm not precisely sure how that admission fits into this mess.

There are so very many things wrong with the basic concept of a "Mary Sue" character, I'm not about to undertake a point-by-point critique. It's just dumb. By this definition, Tom Sawyer is likely a Mary Sue. I could make a very long list of famed literary characters who would fall into the Mary Sue category. And why the hell should we accept that the person who fashioned this test is any sort of authority on anything?

Obviously, this all begs the question of whether or not Echo might be considered a Mary Sue (by the standards of the person who wrote this dumb test). Maybe some other time I'll take it again, for poor Echo, but first I'd have to read back over a bunch of issues of The Dreaming, none of which I've read since 2004.

Fuck it, Dude. Let's go bowling.
greygirlbeast: (Eli4)
Running late this morning (nope, it's afternoon already), because I didn't get to bed until after four ayem. But it's rainy, and I find myself having trouble caring about running late. Better to sit here and drink my coffee, make my journal entry, and listen to R.E.M.'s Reckoning (1984), which has always seemed like a rainy-day album to me.

Yesterday, we made it through chapters 8 and 9 of The Red Tree, and the "Editor's Epilogue" (an execrpt from one of Sarah Crowe's novels), and finished with the galleys. Except for the long letter I have to write today, explaining some of the corrections. All in all, the galleys were pretty clean, mostly formatting problems. It was good to read through the whole novel again. It has left me resolved to be better than my best next time out. I am always chasing my own tail.

Last night, I got an email from my German translator, Alexandra Hinrichsen, asking for assistance with the Jung quote that opens Low Red Moon.

Spooky and I are very impressed with The Hunt for Gollum, the "fan film" directed by Chris Bouchard. It really is quite well done, and I'm amazed that it was made for a mere £3,000 (roughly $4,534.27 USD). Well, I'm sure having 160 volunteers at his disposal helped a great deal. I've seen films with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars that didn't look half this good. My only caveat, really, is with the sound quality. We couldn't hear it at all on Spooky's laptop, so we switched over to my iMac, and it was still difficult to get decent volume. But, it's a small complaint. In my mind, the film works rather nicely as a "missing scene" from Peter Jackson's three films (and I think it was very smart of Bouchard to follow Jackson's visual cues). Marvelously atmospheric. I am impressed that Tolkien Enterprises gave their approval to the project. I hope to see more from these guys.

We've been getting back into WoW, which has suddenly become much more entertaining since Shaharrazad and Suraa moved along to Outland. We both made Level 66 last night. I've leveled more in the last two nights than in the last two months. We're both based in Shrattrath now, working with the Scryers.

A mere 21 days remaining until birthday -05, which is more than a little horrifying. For me, anyway. Horrifying and astounding. I do, as it happens, have an Amazon wish list, if you are given to such things. Thank you. Anything that distracts and helps to take away the sting. And, yeah, used books are just as welcome as new books. Oh, and for anyone not using Amazon, the address is P.O. Box 603096, Providence, RI 02906.

Here are a few photos from yesterday, nothing terribly exciting, which is reasonable, as it wasn't a very exciting day:

May 4, 2009 )
greygirlbeast: (Default)
Just a couple of reader e-mails I've meaning to get to...

Brett J. writes:

Hi, I've been a fan of yours since Silk and I've been reading your journal for a while. I have a question that I don't think I've seen you cover before, but I could be wrong. What would you think of people writing fan fiction or roleplaying as characters from your stories? I don't read or write any fanfic myself, but some of my friends do and I heard that George R. R. Martin doesn't allow it. I've never read anything by him, but it did get me wondering what some of my favorite authors had to say about it.

I also want to mention that my favorite part of
Daughter of Hounds was when Emmie opened the box under Deacon's bed and found the "Calvin and Hobbes" comics all having something to do with dinosaurs. It was such a seemingly throw-away line, but it made me picture Deacon reading the paper over the years and being reminded of Chance and her work every time he saw the dinosaurs, so he'd clip it out and save it. I don't know if that's what you intended, but I thought it was a really genuine and touching way to say he still thought about her without putting flashing lights all around it.

I do read your livejournal, so if you'd want to address the fanfic question there there instead of a personal response, I wouldn't mind.


1) Fan fiction — Well, having written a little fan fiction myself, and fairly recently, at that (see Nebari.net), I can hardly say that I am opposed to fan fiction. Still, it's odd and somewhat disconcerting to think about someone else writing my characters and taking them places that I never meant for them to go. I've seen a little bit of fic based on my work. Not a lot. Anyway, generally, my stance is this: as long as the author of any fic based upon my writing understands that I am the sole owner of the copyrights in question, that he or she is, undeniably, violating the copyright while I look the other way, and so long as hesheit never, ever attempts to profit financially from that fan fic without my express written permission, then no, I really have no problem with it. Also, if someone writes a piece of fan fic based upon my work which I find in some way offensive and I see it, I will request that it be removed from circulation, and I will expect that request to be promptly honoured. That's the stance I took when writing Farscape fic. I stated openly that if I were ever asked, for any reason, to take the Nar'eth fic down, I would do so immediately and without any argument. As for role-playing, same rules apply.

2) the Calvin and Hobbes strips — Actually, the strips that Emmie finds in the box beneath Deacon's bed were meant to be the strips referred to in Low Red Moon (Roc tpb, pp. 86 & 89). I imagined they were something Deacon had kept from her university office in Birmingham. But I do also like your take on this, so maybe the strips in the box are a mix of the two, strips Chance clipped herself and a few Deacon added later on. However, on the other hand, since the 3,160th and final Calvin and Hobbes strip ran on Sunday, December 31, 1995, and since LRM is set in the autumn of 2001, with most of Daughter of Hounds taking place in February 2010, it's not likely there would have been strips for Deacon to have clipped from newspapers. Indeed, the one Chance clipped and posted in her office must have been clipped while she was still in school, prior even to the events in Threshold. At any rate, thank you Brett, and I am always very pleased when a reader is moved by the little things.

Also, thanks to Lyn Dunagan for this link to a recipe for cute trilobite cookies. Sadly, that's cookies shaped liked trilobites, not made from trilobites. I used to have a link to this same recipe page from the old website, and it's good to see it's still out there.

One last thing for now. Of all the shitty/stupid Amazon "reviews" I have had heaped upon me over the last nine-plus years, the following, of Threshold, would win hands down in any competition to find that Amazon "review" which is both the shittiest and the stupidest*. Someone named Jerry Franklin in House, New Mexico, writes:

The basic story is interesting and I certainly dont dispute that Caitlan Kiernan is a talented writer and author....but the constant use of foul language(it seems like every other sentence)and the subtle anti-christian bigotry absolutely ruins the story.There are plenty of talented authors who dont resort to the juvenile use of foul,crude,and explicit sexual language in order to produce an exciting,("realistic")entertaining storyline.But hey, if you like to hear every character in the book curse Gods Name every ten words or so and also if you dont mind a constant barrage of foul expletives with an underlying anti-christian bigotry pervading and infecting the entire book,then by all means go for it.

For one, he can't even be bothered to spell my name correctly. For another, the "review" is replete with typos and grammatical errors. For yet another, while I never really thought of Threshold as being explicitly anti-Xtian — it's easier to make a case for LRM being explicitly anti-Xtain — I also have no problem with it being interpreted that way, as I have admittedly become fairly anti-Xtian over the years**. Also, I'm pretty goddamned sure that Dancy never once cursed "Gods Name" [sic], though I suppose I might be mistaken. Also also, I honestly don't think Mr. Franklin quite understands the meaning of "goddamn." Basically, I fear that Mr. Franklin needs to stay far away from my books in the future. The profanity only gets worse as the years go by, and I doubt his "God" approves of me or much of anything I write. In fact, Mr. Franklin would probably be better off just staying away from books, in general.

(sigh)

* Upon reflection, this probably isn't true. I'm sure there have been worse. There must have been worse Those that included personal attacks (usually sexist, heterosexist, or cisgenderist), for example. The one's Amazon was kind enough to delete. But still. This one's high on the list.

** Before someone e-mails to say I've hurt hisherits feelings by saying that I take a dim view of most of Xtianity (though I'd think by now it was clear), I should at least be a little more perspicuous. This is not so much a specific dislike for Xtians, as it is for all patrifocal, monotheistic religions, especially those which engage in evangelism or apocalypticism, promote superstition and ignorance, and foster nationalist, racist, sexist, homophobic, cisgenderist, or anthropocentric worldviews. For that matter, I'd say the same of any pagan, polytheistic religions which do the same. In fact, it's easiest to say I'm generally anti-religion and be done with it.

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Caitlín R. Kiernan

February 2012

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