Days 13 & 14
Mar. 28th, 2011 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineI think I may have escaped meditation class. I begged the psychology of women prof to let me into her course, and she's like "you're a senior and your class got cancelled after the freshmen had signed up? ALL RIGHT THEN." Yay for awesome profs! Then I discovered the heckyeahlukeskywalker tumblr and I seem to have somehow lost about five hours.
Oops!
Also, someone wants to podfic First Impressions! This (1) made me ridiculously happy, and (2) inspired me to finally edit the AO3 version, which I've been meaning to do sincehl read it and conveniently pointed out all the typos. Hurrah for gmail's chat log! I did Chapter One tonight; mostly it's just technical stuff, but I'm pretty sure there are a few wonky pronouns. Also, I added a sentence about Catherine (= girl!Darcy) wanting Georgiana to marry Bingley, which I always imagined as a fairly significant motivation in her tolerance of Caroline and Louisa. I don't think I ever clarified that in First Impressions proper - Fitzwilliam implies that Catherine has Other Plans for Bingley, but that's as far as it goes and I didn't get the impression that anyone paid much attention to that. I didn't have the heart to go for full-blown Viewers Are Morons, but I think it's a bit clearer now.
Also-also, I'd forgotten how much I loved the fanart I got for it, even if Gemma Artreton is (1) forever associated with Elizabeth because of Lost In Austen (damn!), (2) nothing like even the sparse description of Catherine (very tall, with 1790s!curls and blue eyes). It's so pretty. I'm totally looking forward to this year's au_bb just because so many more people are doing Austenfic (namely, people other than me), and I'm so invested in the supergenderswap that it'll be like getting three pieces of fanart, really. I hope whatever I get for Lucy is as shiny as the FI fanmix.
Day Thirteen: Who is your favourite female character in a book?
My absolute favourite, with the aforementioned Mary Lennox, is Aravis from The Chronicles of Narnia. As I've mentioned before, there are a lot of very uncomfortable things in The Horse and His Boy (the book in which she appears), but Aravis herself is above all that. She's my favourite kind of heroine -- or hero, for that matter: intensely, irredeemably virtuous, with all the trappings of a glorious villain.
This character is fierce, abrasive, and chilly, often scheming, generally haughty, and always clever, with a distinct tendency towards dramatic monologues. He/she is also faithful, high-minded, and endlessly valiant. In fact, my favourite summary of the entire archetype is probably the one that we find in HHB: She was proud and could be hard enough, but she was true as steel and would never have deserted a companion, whether she liked him or not.
So take the general type, wind every aspect of it up to the highest possible pitch, and you get Aravis: daughter of a Tarkhaan, cousin of the archvillain, descendant ofSatan Tash, and thoroughgoing badass. Also, she's like ten. Maybe twelve. But definitely just a kid ... whose evil stepmother plots to marry her off to the elderly and repulsive grand vizier. Aravis, as one might expect of this kind of story, isn't having any of it. She announces that she needs to make her final dedications to her goddess, drugs the slave set to spy on her, goes off to commit suicide not because she can't deal with arranged marriage, but because she would rather die than marry a man who is (1) a grovelling toad, (2) low-born, and (3) kind of evil. Then her horse convinces her to run away to Narnia instead, so she steals her brother's armour and heads off, masquerading as a saracen.
That is just her backstory. She has realistic flaws from her upbringing, but isn't demonized for them any more than Shasta/Cor is for his. She's unfriendly, superior, and deeply snobbish. When they sneak into the capital city, she sulks about not being carried in on a litter and generally missing out on all her usual luxury -- but at no point is she willing to sacrifice her freedom (or anybody else's) to get it back. She has stellar virtues which are celebrated. She's willing to admit when she's been wrong, she develops as a character, and as snotty and impatient as she can be, she leaves her ditzy ultra-privileged friend with a brusque but gracious expression of tolerance and general good will. Also, she's a fabulous storyteller.
Oh yeah -- and despite the cringeworthy descriptions of the almost invariably villainous Calormenes in just about every Narnia book ever, this one ends with the adult Aravis (a Tarkheena of Calormen) marrying the pale blond hero, who's turned out to be heir to Narnia's sister-kingdom of Archenland. And, the narrator kindly informs us, their son is the best king of Archenland ever.
Seriously, nothing could make me love her less.
Day Fourteen: Who is your favourite older female character?
For the first time (except Leia), I didn't hesitate for this one: Polgara the Sorceress.
She's thousands of years old, she's raised five gazillion children, she kowtows to no one (including her more powerful father), everybody she loves dies (often horribly), and she's lived much of that time in the shadow of an unspeakable terror. In this case, "unspeakable terror" means "prophesied to be the bride of an evil god, and brainwashed into liking it." Nevertheless, she doesn't mope around about how much this all sucks. She's pretty much of her father's and uncles' opinions on immortality: there may be drawbacks, but living forever is awesome.
<3
She's probably the most nurturing person around, aside from Garion himself, and her personality is abrasive enough to strip paint. She becomes a duchess, reorganizes the government to make it actually a pretty cool place to live, leaving her own position obsolete, and turns it over to the people to run for themselves. They end up electing a rutabaga farmer to be their king and she goes on to the next thing. (But she retains her manor, which she conceals behind masses and masses of killer rosebushes, and occasionally hides out there when things are going badly.)
She's strong, sharp, compassionate, demanding, loving, tolerant, brilliant, immensely powerful, proud, resolved to accomplish her task no matter what, with some fairly extreme values of "what," tries a bit of everything, likes luxury but can put up with just about anything (though she tries to keep everyone properly washed, because hygiene is important, y'all), occasionally fails or just misses things or loses patience, regularly turns into an owl, and stands up to a god.
Also, she can sing in multi-part harmony with herself.
Oops!
Also, someone wants to podfic First Impressions! This (1) made me ridiculously happy, and (2) inspired me to finally edit the AO3 version, which I've been meaning to do since
hl read it and conveniently pointed out all the typos. Hurrah for gmail's chat log! I did Chapter One tonight; mostly it's just technical stuff, but I'm pretty sure there are a few wonky pronouns. Also, I added a sentence about Catherine (= girl!Darcy) wanting Georgiana to marry Bingley, which I always imagined as a fairly significant motivation in her tolerance of Caroline and Louisa. I don't think I ever clarified that in First Impressions proper - Fitzwilliam implies that Catherine has Other Plans for Bingley, but that's as far as it goes and I didn't get the impression that anyone paid much attention to that. I didn't have the heart to go for full-blown Viewers Are Morons, but I think it's a bit clearer now. Also-also, I'd forgotten how much I loved the fanart I got for it, even if Gemma Artreton is (1) forever associated with Elizabeth because of Lost In Austen (damn!), (2) nothing like even the sparse description of Catherine (very tall, with 1790s!curls and blue eyes). It's so pretty. I'm totally looking forward to this year's au_bb just because so many more people are doing Austenfic (namely, people other than me), and I'm so invested in the supergenderswap that it'll be like getting three pieces of fanart, really. I hope whatever I get for Lucy is as shiny as the FI fanmix.
Day Thirteen: Who is your favourite female character in a book?
My absolute favourite, with the aforementioned Mary Lennox, is Aravis from The Chronicles of Narnia. As I've mentioned before, there are a lot of very uncomfortable things in The Horse and His Boy (the book in which she appears), but Aravis herself is above all that. She's my favourite kind of heroine -- or hero, for that matter: intensely, irredeemably virtuous, with all the trappings of a glorious villain.
This character is fierce, abrasive, and chilly, often scheming, generally haughty, and always clever, with a distinct tendency towards dramatic monologues. He/she is also faithful, high-minded, and endlessly valiant. In fact, my favourite summary of the entire archetype is probably the one that we find in HHB: She was proud and could be hard enough, but she was true as steel and would never have deserted a companion, whether she liked him or not.
So take the general type, wind every aspect of it up to the highest possible pitch, and you get Aravis: daughter of a Tarkhaan, cousin of the archvillain, descendant of
That is just her backstory. She has realistic flaws from her upbringing, but isn't demonized for them any more than Shasta/Cor is for his. She's unfriendly, superior, and deeply snobbish. When they sneak into the capital city, she sulks about not being carried in on a litter and generally missing out on all her usual luxury -- but at no point is she willing to sacrifice her freedom (or anybody else's) to get it back. She has stellar virtues which are celebrated. She's willing to admit when she's been wrong, she develops as a character, and as snotty and impatient as she can be, she leaves her ditzy ultra-privileged friend with a brusque but gracious expression of tolerance and general good will. Also, she's a fabulous storyteller.
Oh yeah -- and despite the cringeworthy descriptions of the almost invariably villainous Calormenes in just about every Narnia book ever, this one ends with the adult Aravis (a Tarkheena of Calormen) marrying the pale blond hero, who's turned out to be heir to Narnia's sister-kingdom of Archenland. And, the narrator kindly informs us, their son is the best king of Archenland ever.
Seriously, nothing could make me love her less.
Day Fourteen: Who is your favourite older female character?
For the first time (except Leia), I didn't hesitate for this one: Polgara the Sorceress.
She's thousands of years old, she's raised five gazillion children, she kowtows to no one (including her more powerful father), everybody she loves dies (often horribly), and she's lived much of that time in the shadow of an unspeakable terror. In this case, "unspeakable terror" means "prophesied to be the bride of an evil god, and brainwashed into liking it." Nevertheless, she doesn't mope around about how much this all sucks. She's pretty much of her father's and uncles' opinions on immortality: there may be drawbacks, but living forever is awesome.
<3
She's probably the most nurturing person around, aside from Garion himself, and her personality is abrasive enough to strip paint. She becomes a duchess, reorganizes the government to make it actually a pretty cool place to live, leaving her own position obsolete, and turns it over to the people to run for themselves. They end up electing a rutabaga farmer to be their king and she goes on to the next thing. (But she retains her manor, which she conceals behind masses and masses of killer rosebushes, and occasionally hides out there when things are going badly.)
She's strong, sharp, compassionate, demanding, loving, tolerant, brilliant, immensely powerful, proud, resolved to accomplish her task no matter what, with some fairly extreme values of "what," tries a bit of everything, likes luxury but can put up with just about anything (though she tries to keep everyone properly washed, because hygiene is important, y'all), occasionally fails or just misses things or loses patience, regularly turns into an owl, and stands up to a god.
Also, she can sing in multi-part harmony with herself.