Idle thoughts
Apr. 25th, 2016 02:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
heliopausaMy life is at sixes and sevens again, but to at least be posting something here are three idle thoughts, and a question.
1. Trollope is hideously unfair to the Marchioness of Hartletop. When she first is written, as seventeen-year-old Griselda Grantly, she is warm, life-loving and mildly, age-appropriately, giddy - there's a lovely scene with her sixteen-year-old sister, where they construct a private ranking of all the young curates they know in order of attractiveness, after which "the two girls went to sleep in each other's arms, contented with themselves and the world.". :)
Then the next time we see her, two years later, in Framley Parsonage, she's totally cold and clever and uncommunicative, and stays that way ever after - the last I've seen of her is in The Last Chronicle of Barset where Trollope mentions her "cold magnificence" - he very plainly doesn't like her. But somewhere in there, between Griselda at seventeen and Griselda at nineteen, her sister has died - Trollope mentions their mother standing at the grave. He mentions the death, but not how she died, or why the impact on Griselda has been so devastating. I think that is very poor indeed, and I'm sorry, because Trollope is pretty darn good, as a writer.
2. I read a short piece in the Guardian about what is and isn't proper grammar - it was very scathing about the use of 'amongst', saying:
"How longeth wilt thou persist with “amongst” and “whilst”? Yea though thine prose doth ring fanciful, long hath the “st” lain banish’d ’pon the pebbl’d shore. (These days, it’s always “among” and “while”.)"
Bah, humbug! 'amongst' is a perfectly good word, and I will jolly well continue to use it any time I feel like it. (also, "How longeth" is simply silly.)
3. I think the science here is open to doubt, because the CSIRO say so, but it's interesting in itself, and also for a glimpse of a very country Greens Party pollie in australia: the Condamine river, famed in song and story, set on fire. (videolink, one minute.)
and the question:
Four years ago, just about, I posted my first ever fanfic to fanfiction.net. Is it worth overhauling it, smoothing off some of the rough edges, and reposting it on ao3 - or is that boring? (This is partly inspired by seeing someone asking for fics starring older characters, which this does.)
1. Trollope is hideously unfair to the Marchioness of Hartletop. When she first is written, as seventeen-year-old Griselda Grantly, she is warm, life-loving and mildly, age-appropriately, giddy - there's a lovely scene with her sixteen-year-old sister, where they construct a private ranking of all the young curates they know in order of attractiveness, after which "the two girls went to sleep in each other's arms, contented with themselves and the world.". :)
Then the next time we see her, two years later, in Framley Parsonage, she's totally cold and clever and uncommunicative, and stays that way ever after - the last I've seen of her is in The Last Chronicle of Barset where Trollope mentions her "cold magnificence" - he very plainly doesn't like her. But somewhere in there, between Griselda at seventeen and Griselda at nineteen, her sister has died - Trollope mentions their mother standing at the grave. He mentions the death, but not how she died, or why the impact on Griselda has been so devastating. I think that is very poor indeed, and I'm sorry, because Trollope is pretty darn good, as a writer.
2. I read a short piece in the Guardian about what is and isn't proper grammar - it was very scathing about the use of 'amongst', saying:
"How longeth wilt thou persist with “amongst” and “whilst”? Yea though thine prose doth ring fanciful, long hath the “st” lain banish’d ’pon the pebbl’d shore. (These days, it’s always “among” and “while”.)"
Bah, humbug! 'amongst' is a perfectly good word, and I will jolly well continue to use it any time I feel like it. (also, "How longeth" is simply silly.)
3. I think the science here is open to doubt, because the CSIRO say so, but it's interesting in itself, and also for a glimpse of a very country Greens Party pollie in australia: the Condamine river, famed in song and story, set on fire. (videolink, one minute.)
and the question:
Four years ago, just about, I posted my first ever fanfic to fanfiction.net. Is it worth overhauling it, smoothing off some of the rough edges, and reposting it on ao3 - or is that boring? (This is partly inspired by seeing someone asking for fics starring older characters, which this does.)
no subject
Date: 2016-04-26 07:08 am (UTC)1) Good pointer to writers in general: characters can't be just disliked for the sake of it. (I haven't read any Trollope yet, though.)
2) Bah humbug. But the article is otherwise pretty good, for a click-baity list-based article.
3) Sorry, later. Not that I don't have a minute, but at the moment, I'm more in literary criticism / writing than natural sciences mode. :-)
no subject
Date: 2016-05-05 10:45 pm (UTC)I hate writers being unfair to their characters -setting them up for readers to dislike. That is, I hate it in good writers, whose characters are 3D enough for me to care about.
Great about your being in litcrit mode - I love reading litcrit! I look forward to your posting more of it. :)
(Thanks for the remark about boring or not-boring.)