a++ would smuggle into space again

I made this, and then I decided it wasn't a secret.



Seriously. This is coming from me, okay? "Love is a psychopath" me. If you have the people in your story do fucked up things for each other, I will love you. Just make sure you admit they're fucked up! This goes for pro authors and fic authors both. Make sure it's not like, oh, say, "I sold you and my fiancé into the military but we'll never comment on that again except to be slightly sad about how much I blame myself," or "I murdered my wife but this movie is about how I need to get over feeling bad about how I murdered my wife," or "Kirk and I are soulbonded now Uhura. We can't really be friends anymore. Other friendships do not matter once you are married. \\//_" or "Rose!! I'm burning up a whole star just to see you again! ~SO ROMANTIC~" or okay okay okay I'm stopping now! I'm stopping.

Anyway, basically, fuck it, I feel a lot less bad for reading trashy original slash in which there are politics done in a way that suggest that the politics themselves matter.

I would like to stop coming up with super-brilliant comparisons that turn out to be chronologically impossible, please. Surely Victor Frankenstein is named after the Victorian Age, and Mowbray is trying to sound like Brian de Bois in Harrington? Despite the fact that Ivanhoe was published partially in response to Harrington and the Victorian Age didn't get going until after Shelley died? Clearly the solution is lots and lots of time-travel.

(Picture it -- Maria Edgeworth and Mary Shelley get hold of a time machine and then fight vampires with Mary Lennox, discovering all the great injustices of a hundred years in either direction, and therefore Edgeworth returns home to fight for the Irish cause and Shelley to be a staunch feminist, and both of them slip up and quote the future in their books a couple of times. Makes perfect sense to me.)

In related news, I've lost the sheet that indicates how long this paper is supposed to be, but I feel fairly confident in stating that what I have is currently not long enough.

Today, instead of doing any work, and this time it is literally true, I read all of Villette.

Now, if you know me, you probably know that my feelings on the Brontës are somewhat ... mixed. This has been the case ever since I read Charlotte's dissertation on Austen's work, partially excerpted below:

What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study: but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death--this Miss Austen ignores....

Now, I've read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. The first I am fond of, but think badly done. The second I hated viciously, but I am open to the idea that I somehow misconstrued Emily's irony as sincerity and it deserves another reread.

Villette, on the other hand, is a steaming pile of cow feces shat out by Charlotte Brontë. As Fran Lebowitz said, if you are writing because it's either write or kill yourself, remember that actions speak louder than words. If only Charlotte had accepted that.

( spoilers for just about everything in the novel ensue )

I am usually respectful of books, even ones I completely despise. This one, for each of the points I mentioned, got me to throw it across the room. The third time I threw it inside an elevator with all of my pent-up fury and it split down the middle.

I think this is perfectly just.

Lines I Didn't Use Today:

"Yes," said Nashal, passionately. "Blood blood blood." And then he drowned tragically in his own melodrama.

Suddenly the Lady Consort walked in and dropped a bomb made of plot upon everyone's head! Muahaha! Ahaha! Ha.

IPHIGENIA: But you're not real.
MEDEA: More real than you, pigeon.
IPHIGENIA: No, I mean, you're really fucking fictional. This is dull. Where's my agent?

Dear Mêlée, here is the list of all the people who you will have to tell I am dead, so that they do not think I can make their appointments. I shall be very sorry to miss Tuesday's with Val.

... perhaps I am not in the proper mood for High Artistic Writing today. Mmm, nosleep. How's everyone else?

Homigod I am ashamed. The early works of Emma, part one. WARNING, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE SIXTH GRADE WRITING FOLLOWS

Chapter 1

Terra woke, panting, from the dream. She remembered it so vividly -- her mother held her tightly. She imagined herself in her mother's arms, but immediately reminded herself that on the streets softness made you dead. Terra scowled. Her parents had died years ago. A dream wouldn't bring them back. But yet ... she thought ... It had seemed so real. The worst part was hearing her mother telling her to find the Prentamon Woods.

Even the thought of going in there gave her the chills. It was said to be a place of magic, dark, dank magic. But then, it was just a dream, a nice dream where Mother held her and gave her a strange stone ... Ouch! Something had stuck her in the side. She looked down at the leaf-shaped stone her mother had given her in the dream. Fear flooded over her -- it looked like she was going to go to the Prentamon Woods.

"Terra!" A chorus of voices aroused her from her gloomy thoughts.

It ends there. No indication of how I was going to end it. No wait -- oh so luckily, I remember. See this? This is a parody of bad children's shows, right? Mine had approximately the same four characters and wasn't meant to be funny. Oh my god.

This is why I never clean my room! This, right here!

Further adventures of Emma's Quest Through French Literature:

( No, you mean, they're French, so it's required. )

To all of you who commented on my last entry: thank you so much. I ... really wasn't expecting that, and it ... made a lot of things better. Great quantities of love to you all, whether I know you well or not, whether you said one sentence or a paragraph.

(To steal an act from Beth and Aria:)

Dear Emma,

Even if you can write the following sentences--

Mr. DuBois has found himself in the uncomfortable position of being the unofficial leader of an unorganized and uneducated people. Given this starting place, he has, perhaps, shown remarkable perseverance in attempting to perpetuate his misguided ideals…

--it should under no circumstances be considered a good thing. Yes. Yes, this is an accurate statement from the point of view of the people you're pretending to be. Yes, you can use words of four syllables. You can also use alliteration. We're very proud of you.

"Perseverance" and "perpetuate" should only be used in the same sentence when one is drunk out of one's mind and it can be forgiven.

Go write something that makes sense and stop faffing about.

Oh so very much love,
Your Rational Impulse



Dear Abby,

I am a total jerk. I went to bed last night, and then signed on very very late to make a marginart post, and abandoned you. Only saw your email this morning. >< Am sorry, love.

Very penitent,
Emma

Random Quote of the Day:

Sares: Yes, in my experience, if common sense tells you a plan is a really bad idea, in RP terms this means, "Do it! Do it! Do it!"

This weekend I went to Los Angeles with a youth group--a spectacularly pointless trip, may I add, in that even the Disneyland portion of it wasn't all that fun. Come on! DISNEYLAND! Unfun! That's a new one.

But it was not a TOTAL loss, as I bought myself a copy of Wyrd Sisters, which I read on the plane back, and--duhduhDUHHH--The Prince, which I started reading when I was done with Wyrd Sisters, stopped reading, and attacked with a highlighter and a pencil. For context, I do not annotate my English readings, nor my History readings, despite my teachers' pleas--and yet! Machiavelli just called to me, he and his on the one hand ridiculous and the other hand sublime claims.

The guy claims that imperialism is a GOOD IDEA--that if you move in colonies to an occupied land, you will so crush the people you are displacing, and so pacify those you are not, that no rebellion will be possible. Well, um, no. But he really couldn't have known that in the Renaissance.

He also suggests that if colonies are not possible, you should move the prince and his center of operations into the new territory--and I honestly can't see why. Any thoughts? I mean, if the prince were to leave his home to pacify the people of his new colony and to understand their issues, at the time he would be stuck there without the ability to return home except for at great time and expense. Would his original people appreciate that at ALL? Probably not.

In other news: my brother's gotten the flu again. 102 degrees, Fahrenheit obviously. The poor thing. He was sick for two weeks, then FINALLY perked up, and now--arrrrgh. He's missed more school than I did when I had pneumonia. This damn bug is attacking everyone in the Bay Area under, like, eleven. And the cold's attacking all of those older than that, including me. I've gone utterly deaf in my left ear, making it rather amusing to hear me try to sing.