Merry Christmas, flist!
Dec. 24th, 2005 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaParty went off smashingly. ^_^ SSBB no.3... seems not to be broke? Slept a good deal yesterday, then sallied out (still a bit fragile and woozy) for food shopping and movie with Erin. We saw King Kong - what an absolutely awesome movie. The effects were jawdropping but the actors carried the day, along with the script, which was a good example of how postmodern awareness does not necessarily imply lack of emotional sincerity. I cried buckets. ^_^; IMO it could've stood to be 15 minutes shorter (less giant bugs and swamp monsters thx), but no more.
I haven't felt like blogging at all. XD Just kicked back and read random crackfic and watched Bleach. Nothing feels so luxuriously self-indulgent as watching anime for a manga series one's already read, unless it be watching film adaptations with Keira Knightley in of books one's read 547,130 times. (I didn't write a review blurb. Hmm... I thought it was a bit blatantly fanservicey at moments, and Wickham was rather shortchanged - he ought to have felt like a proper rival for Elisabeth's and/or the viewer's sympathy - but compressed into the space of two hours something had to give. As long as it's not the chemistry. XD When Elisabeth appeared in Netherfield's drawing room with her hair down and all aglow from brisk walking I thought I could hear Martin Amis squee. XD
Also I can't remember the other recent instances I thought this, but I got the impression the director really rated Russian Ark.)
My mother expressed surprise that I like P&P at all, given that I often tell her I dislike romantic comedies. I waved my hands in the air for a few seconds and came out with, "It's because Austen's heroines aren't allowed to be stupid." That really is it, I think: there are Julia Roberts or Meg Ryan movies where their characters behave no better than Lydia and the viewer is supposed to cheer them on, when (social mores and age factor aside) it's not a whit less dumb in the 21st century than it was in the 18th. =_=
Someone I just came across googling said it better: I think here Amis touches on, but does not discuss, another reason why I love Austen: she is romantic without being sentimental. Her most compelling heroines are typically rational actors facing constraints, choosing based on their reason, but still not willing to sacrifice principle for pragmatism. I think here in particular of Elizabeth Bennet and Elinor Dashwood, neither of whom would marry solely to raise the financial prospects of her family, but would marry only for a love grounded in reason, respect and integrity.
...We're back to desire vs. self-realisation. XD
My SSBB story. It's weird, innit? I tend to think of myself as an intensely conventional writer, but of other genres than romance - ask me to write romance and it warps into something else (noir, fantasy, SF, metaphysics) unless I keep a tight rein. My first draft didn't have sex at all, and I think I like it better. ^_^; "Revels" was based on a universe I've been elaborating for years but this one I made up completely as I went along - it's the sort of cod-SF I used to write constantly in high school despite not really reading very much SF. By the time I was two-thirds through I was more interested in elaborating concepts than in the romance per se. I did run it past my sister just to see if it was comprehensible, but a bunch of plot threads are left dangling in case I ever get around to making it twice as long and more about socio-economics and planetary ecology.
Back to the ficlets. No seriously!
I haven't felt like blogging at all. XD Just kicked back and read random crackfic and watched Bleach. Nothing feels so luxuriously self-indulgent as watching anime for a manga series one's already read, unless it be watching film adaptations with Keira Knightley in of books one's read 547,130 times. (I didn't write a review blurb. Hmm... I thought it was a bit blatantly fanservicey at moments, and Wickham was rather shortchanged - he ought to have felt like a proper rival for Elisabeth's and/or the viewer's sympathy - but compressed into the space of two hours something had to give. As long as it's not the chemistry. XD When Elisabeth appeared in Netherfield's drawing room with her hair down and all aglow from brisk walking I thought I could hear Martin Amis squee. XD
Also I can't remember the other recent instances I thought this, but I got the impression the director really rated Russian Ark.)
My mother expressed surprise that I like P&P at all, given that I often tell her I dislike romantic comedies. I waved my hands in the air for a few seconds and came out with, "It's because Austen's heroines aren't allowed to be stupid." That really is it, I think: there are Julia Roberts or Meg Ryan movies where their characters behave no better than Lydia and the viewer is supposed to cheer them on, when (social mores and age factor aside) it's not a whit less dumb in the 21st century than it was in the 18th. =_=
Someone I just came across googling said it better: I think here Amis touches on, but does not discuss, another reason why I love Austen: she is romantic without being sentimental. Her most compelling heroines are typically rational actors facing constraints, choosing based on their reason, but still not willing to sacrifice principle for pragmatism. I think here in particular of Elizabeth Bennet and Elinor Dashwood, neither of whom would marry solely to raise the financial prospects of her family, but would marry only for a love grounded in reason, respect and integrity.
...We're back to desire vs. self-realisation. XD
My SSBB story. It's weird, innit? I tend to think of myself as an intensely conventional writer, but of other genres than romance - ask me to write romance and it warps into something else (noir, fantasy, SF, metaphysics) unless I keep a tight rein. My first draft didn't have sex at all, and I think I like it better. ^_^; "Revels" was based on a universe I've been elaborating for years but this one I made up completely as I went along - it's the sort of cod-SF I used to write constantly in high school despite not really reading very much SF. By the time I was two-thirds through I was more interested in elaborating concepts than in the romance per se. I did run it past my sister just to see if it was comprehensible, but a bunch of plot threads are left dangling in case I ever get around to making it twice as long and more about socio-economics and planetary ecology.
Back to the ficlets. No seriously!
