Words Meme Plus
Aug. 19th, 2009 12:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseBy six minutes and twenty-two seconds into the first episode of Leverage I was already a little in love with Parker and Alec. I know, you're all shocked.
This morning M. took a personal day - I renewed my vow to never date long distance before catching the late bus - and tonight I made pancakes, which we ate with M.'s vanilla soy ice cream and caramel topping. Except for the part where I didn't do a bit of laundry, or get any GRE studying accomplished, or pack my lunch, and stayed up past my bedtime, a successful evening.
Five words from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
charlie_ego:
apocalypse: Wiki tells me that the word is originally derived from "lifting of the veil" or "revelation"; this would be the general theme of apocalyptic fiction. A limited number of people have knowledge others don't; the world ends; Will Smith and zombies ensue. (I Am Legend was a great movie, until Will Smith had to interact with other people.) I wish I could say I don't have the faintest clue why I am all about apocalyptic shenanigans, but I know: I like the slide toward chaos and the implicit catharsis of our heroes' survival. A truly apocalyptic novel would be much more depressing, since most of the characters would die horribly, quickly if they're lucky. If they're not lucky, dental decay, starvation and illness - anyway. Postapocalyptic fiction almost has to deal with the concept of an Elect, either survivors or leaders (good or bad) of the survivors, or as people who knew and did nothing. Revelation doesn't mean you'll survive.
The secondary meaning of apocalypse, specifically referring to the events in Revelations, has been contaminated for me by the Left Behind series: if you're not one of the Elect, why are you so invested in a Christian ideal? It makes me wonder if there will be an uptake of the elect to Heaven in the End Times, leaving the rest of humanity in a situation similar to the joke about the engineer in Hell: very soon there's A/C and other improvements. (This unfortunately parallels my final analysis of The Matrix: "having my consciousness uploaded to a VR with steak and ambition while my body is tended in a ravaged realspace is a problem how?" Obviously there are issues with freedom and bodily integrity, but the fundamental concept seems salvageable, if a little Octavia Butler-esque.)
biology: When I was in high school I took a stupefying one-year gen bio class. After that, I swore: no more bio ever.
It didn't occur to me that it was incredibly boring because I was on to Punnett squares when the class was covering plant anatomy. And here I am.
cooking: There is a difference between cooking and baking, but both require practice to get good. I worry that I'm a better baker (recipe-follower) than cook (on the fly adjustments), but some of that could also be sheer inexperience. I waver between wanting to cook more and the sensible observation that there is one of me, and most recipes fill feed my household of one for two or three days.
I also worry that I should split my cooking tag into cooking and baking, and reorder my food tag as either a master tag or an "eating other people's food" tag.
graphics: Graphics like general, visual graphics? Graphics like computer graphics? I did two years of studio art in high school, and I think that visual attention to the world left its mark on me: I like to diagram solutions and make flowcharts and put pictures into presentations. I think I'm out of the drawing / sketching / painting zone for the foreseeable future, but now I have photography and Photoshop, which combines fun with composition and fun with electronics.
Butler: I have a strong and irrational love of Octavia Butler's fiction. It takes everything I like about science fiction one step further. I was puzzled by the first Butler I picked up - Mind of my Mind - and later was thrilled by the Parable duology and Xenogenesis trilogy. I'm just going to quote what I said about Dawn the first time I read it:
Okay, quick count: biology, gender, major damage to Golden Age tropes (aliens invade; humans are always right). What's not to love? This is the sort of thing Butler does all the time.
I loved the Parable duology because of both its grim story - the United States falls apart, and power is concentrated in the hands of reactionaries - and because it offers hope. Even when the protagonist, Lauren Olamina, has nothing, she has herself and her vision. It's very inspiring.
It's impossible to talk about Butler's novels without talking about how her characters are impacted by race and gender politics, and sometime species politics. That's one of the things I like about her writing: the future as imagined in Butler's stories is not a colorblind gender-free place. It's inherited the problems of the past. Sometimes it changes or overcomes those problems, but they're not swept under the carpet to showcase a shiny genre bauble. Butler's novels are in conversation with the science fiction genre, but she takes a very different approach to story-writing compared to many people publishing and popular when she was active. The one place where I would compare her to Chip Delaney is their sometimes transgressive human-alien relationships; "Bloodchild" and Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand are both upfront to the point of bluntness about humans and sex with the Other. Is that what it feels like to deal with white people all the time, when you're a minority? (That's mostly a question for my consideration. No one need feel obliged to reply.)
I am a little frightened to read Fledgling or Kindred because if I don't like them, it's me, and not the writing, I'm going to blame. I'm not sure whether to put them aside for a bad day because there will be no more Octavia Butler novels ever, or read them sooner because I love Butler's novels and want to shout their praises (and the parts I didn't find as well written).
If anyone wants to play, the rules are out there.
This morning M. took a personal day - I renewed my vow to never date long distance before catching the late bus - and tonight I made pancakes, which we ate with M.'s vanilla soy ice cream and caramel topping. Except for the part where I didn't do a bit of laundry, or get any GRE studying accomplished, or pack my lunch, and stayed up past my bedtime, a successful evening.
Five words from
charlie_ego: apocalypse: Wiki tells me that the word is originally derived from "lifting of the veil" or "revelation"; this would be the general theme of apocalyptic fiction. A limited number of people have knowledge others don't; the world ends; Will Smith and zombies ensue. (I Am Legend was a great movie, until Will Smith had to interact with other people.) I wish I could say I don't have the faintest clue why I am all about apocalyptic shenanigans, but I know: I like the slide toward chaos and the implicit catharsis of our heroes' survival. A truly apocalyptic novel would be much more depressing, since most of the characters would die horribly, quickly if they're lucky. If they're not lucky, dental decay, starvation and illness - anyway. Postapocalyptic fiction almost has to deal with the concept of an Elect, either survivors or leaders (good or bad) of the survivors, or as people who knew and did nothing. Revelation doesn't mean you'll survive.
The secondary meaning of apocalypse, specifically referring to the events in Revelations, has been contaminated for me by the Left Behind series: if you're not one of the Elect, why are you so invested in a Christian ideal? It makes me wonder if there will be an uptake of the elect to Heaven in the End Times, leaving the rest of humanity in a situation similar to the joke about the engineer in Hell: very soon there's A/C and other improvements. (This unfortunately parallels my final analysis of The Matrix: "having my consciousness uploaded to a VR with steak and ambition while my body is tended in a ravaged realspace is a problem how?" Obviously there are issues with freedom and bodily integrity, but the fundamental concept seems salvageable, if a little Octavia Butler-esque.)
biology: When I was in high school I took a stupefying one-year gen bio class. After that, I swore: no more bio ever.
It didn't occur to me that it was incredibly boring because I was on to Punnett squares when the class was covering plant anatomy. And here I am.
cooking: There is a difference between cooking and baking, but both require practice to get good. I worry that I'm a better baker (recipe-follower) than cook (on the fly adjustments), but some of that could also be sheer inexperience. I waver between wanting to cook more and the sensible observation that there is one of me, and most recipes fill feed my household of one for two or three days.
I also worry that I should split my cooking tag into cooking and baking, and reorder my food tag as either a master tag or an "eating other people's food" tag.
graphics: Graphics like general, visual graphics? Graphics like computer graphics? I did two years of studio art in high school, and I think that visual attention to the world left its mark on me: I like to diagram solutions and make flowcharts and put pictures into presentations. I think I'm out of the drawing / sketching / painting zone for the foreseeable future, but now I have photography and Photoshop, which combines fun with composition and fun with electronics.
Butler: I have a strong and irrational love of Octavia Butler's fiction. It takes everything I like about science fiction one step further. I was puzzled by the first Butler I picked up - Mind of my Mind - and later was thrilled by the Parable duology and Xenogenesis trilogy. I'm just going to quote what I said about Dawn the first time I read it:
The Oankali have a classically cool S.F.nal idea going for them: a three sex reproductive system, involving up to five participants. They also subvert a lot of classic memes. Their behavior toward humanity is peaceful, benevolent and more invasive than any "conquer the puny Earthlings" military campaign. Their trade imperative is read by most of the characters as infecting the human genome with frightening, alien characteristics. Science fiction has reiterated the clash of cultures theme from a dominant culture’s point of view plenty of times; Dawn is about the effects on (and by) the "weaker" culture. Humans hate and fear the Oankali, but are prized by that species of assimilators for their adaptability and creativity.
Okay, quick count: biology, gender, major damage to Golden Age tropes (aliens invade; humans are always right). What's not to love? This is the sort of thing Butler does all the time.
I loved the Parable duology because of both its grim story - the United States falls apart, and power is concentrated in the hands of reactionaries - and because it offers hope. Even when the protagonist, Lauren Olamina, has nothing, she has herself and her vision. It's very inspiring.
It's impossible to talk about Butler's novels without talking about how her characters are impacted by race and gender politics, and sometime species politics. That's one of the things I like about her writing: the future as imagined in Butler's stories is not a colorblind gender-free place. It's inherited the problems of the past. Sometimes it changes or overcomes those problems, but they're not swept under the carpet to showcase a shiny genre bauble. Butler's novels are in conversation with the science fiction genre, but she takes a very different approach to story-writing compared to many people publishing and popular when she was active. The one place where I would compare her to Chip Delaney is their sometimes transgressive human-alien relationships; "Bloodchild" and Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand are both upfront to the point of bluntness about humans and sex with the Other. Is that what it feels like to deal with white people all the time, when you're a minority? (That's mostly a question for my consideration. No one need feel obliged to reply.)
I am a little frightened to read Fledgling or Kindred because if I don't like them, it's me, and not the writing, I'm going to blame. I'm not sure whether to put them aside for a bad day because there will be no more Octavia Butler novels ever, or read them sooner because I love Butler's novels and want to shout their praises (and the parts I didn't find as well written).
If anyone wants to play, the rules are out there.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-20 06:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-20 11:57 pm (UTC)Okay, now that I'm on episode five, I have one more thing to say: "It took me more'n an hour to download the new episode of Doctor Who."
Parker and Alec Hardison: great fun.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-21 04:17 am (UTC)So how did you come to be watching this at the same time? I jotted down someone's enthusiastic mention at a Worldcon Kaffeeklatsch. Before that, I'd never heard of it.