Beyond Selidor

When I was a child and teenager, I consumed stories with an urgent, hungry intensity. I reread favourite books again and again until I could quote them verbatim,* I wandered around the garden pretending to be Snow White or Ariel from The Little Mermaid or Jessica Rabbit.** I had a pretty constant narrative running through my head the whole time I was awake, for the most part consisting of me being the character of a favourite story doing whatever activity I, Ronni, happened to be doing at the time. (No wonder I was a such a vague child: every activity required an extra layer of concentration in order for me to figure out why, say, the dinosaurs from The Land Before Time would be learning multiplication at a Canberra primary school.) The more I learnt about literary scholarship, the more insufferable I became, because I would talk at people about how 'URSULA LE GUIN WROTE A STORY WHERE EVERYTHING HAS A TRUE, SECRET NAME AND THEN ANOTHER USE-NAME AND ISN'T THAT AMAZING IN WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT IDENTITY?!?!' For the most part, I don't inhabit stories to the same extent, and they don't inhabit me to the same degree, although there are rare exceptions to this.

The rare exceptions tend to be things that sort of satisfy my soul in some deep and slightly subconscious way.*** And the funny thing is that although I can write lengthy essays explaining why something both appeals to me on this hungry, emotional level and is a good work of literature (indeed, I have been known to dedicate a whole blog to this), I can also remember a specific moment when reading/watching these texts and they suddenly became THE BEST THING EVER. I can remember exactly what it was for all of them.

The following is somewhat spoilerish for Romanitas, Sunshine by Robin McKinley, Galax-Arena by Gillian Rubinstein, The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, The Demon's Lexicon, The King's Peace by Jo Walton, Parkland by Victor Kelleher, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Robin Hood: Men in Tights,
Ten Things I Hate About You, Cirque du Soleil, Pagan's Crusade by Catherine Jinks and His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman.


( Probably a closer look at my subconscious than is comfortable )

Do you have moments like that?
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*Which led to a very awkward moment in Year 5 when our teacher was reading Hating Alison Ashley out loud to the class, but would skip bits from time to time - whereupon I would correct her.
**(whose appeal was less that she wasn't 'bad, just drawn that way' and more due to the fact that she wore an awesome dress)
***I've seen people describe fanfic like this as 'idfic', but for me this tends to be a phenomenon of professionally published fiction.

Instead of writing a book review, I'm link-hopping.

I read this interview in today's Guardian. It's an interview with A-Ha (you know, the guys who got a new lease of life with the literal video version of 'Take On Me') and is hilarious. The interview wanders into Spinal Tap territory on several occasions (highlights include the band members arguing about the merits of various translations of Kierkegaard). I wish all newspaper interviews could be that good!

Yesterday Felicia Day posted this link on Twitter. (Come on, you know you want to!) It's photoshopped images of 23 film plots that could've been solved in seconds. Great stuff.

Finally, ellevee posted some great Star Trek (new!trek) macros. They use 10 Things I Hate About You quotes, so they're clearly reaching stratospheric levels of awesome.

( Macros behind the cut )

I think she originally found them on ontd_startrek.

Now I'm off to read Annabel Crabb tweet Question Time. That is as geeky as it sounds, but nowhere near as boring. Annabel is a family friend, and one of the best, and funniest political journalists in Australia. Her tweets are like Australian politics in a bottle, and a joy to read. If you're not following her yet, you should.