throbbing light machine

This made me laugh and grin all over my face and believe in humanity and and art and all that, so I thought I'd share: 35 Clueless Quotes That Make Everyday Life Worth Living.

One of the best-written films of our generation, and also a wonderful case of people Getting Austen, which I gather the new Austenland movie fails to do.

five icons, to be blathered about below!

keyword: Sheeta/Pazu

Laputa! My favorite Miyazaki film, largely due to this scene. I love this moment, when Pazu touches her but isn't quite holding her yet - it's this little soapbubble of not-quite-yet, because as soon as her crystal releases her into his arms, he's lost to her completely. The text is from Pablo Neruda, and is possibly the most romantic sentiment I've ever heard: "let me remember you as you were before you existed." I use this one for Miyazaki stuff, innocence, romance, and potentiality.

keyword: p&p

This was a silly - watching the Pride & Prejudice with my partner, as one does, and making snide Buffy references at it. Big swelling music, panoramic landscapes, period frocks = Spike, apparently. Somehow it turned into an icon, idek, these things happen. Possibly the most random thing I've ever made?



This is from a set I made a while back, when I really started to become dissatisfied with the films as visual reference points to Lord of the Rings, and for the hobbit characters in particular (no one's the proper age! they're all too skinny! seriously, this ickle teenager is supposed to be Frodo Baggins?). Frodo/Merry is my secondary hobbitfic otp - I have this thing for the eleven years of Frodo's life we know so little about, when he was Merry's fostersibling and playmate. And Frodo's Brandybuck lineage doesn't get enough play! I'm really pleased with how the layout on this turned out, restrained and balanced and playful without losing a certain sense of formality.

keyword: virginia

Virginia Woolf is one of my three Patron Saints. The other two are Tolkien and Charlotte Brontë - Tolkien teaches me compassion and patience and plainness and love, Charlotte helps me connect to my reserves of anger and determination to change my life and my times - but I call on Virginia for aesthetics and politics, and being in pursuit of a higher degree I tend to call on her a lot nowadays. Talismans of all three pop up in my living spaces, and this is one of them. I think that Virginia Woolf was one of the most heartbreakingly lovely women I've ever seen - that curl at the nape of her neck, oh god! The photomanipulation with the embroidered flowers in the background was a sort of visual loveletter to her. I thought, when I uploaded this icon, that I would use it for feminist stuff, but I never seem to. It's queerly romantic rather than stridently political - for the latter, I go to Mary Wollstonecraft!

keyword: sherlock

Unf. Sherlock and his violin. This is, like, half the appeal of the fandom for me, and I haz a sad over how many media adaptations dodge or avoid or halfass the violin. The late nineteenth century produced some of the most marvelous violin music I know - Mendelssohn, Grieg, Dvorak. It's all so hopelessly overfull, oversexed, mad with feeling and beauty - and the idea of Sherlock Holmes of all men hooking into that makes me just about faint with happy. This tends to be my grumpy Victorianist Holmes icon, deployed resentfully against bloody modernized adaptations that blow right by all my pretty history in ways that I Do Not Appreciate. (point of interest: in my keywords, "holmes" means Holmes09, "sherlock" the Granada series. which is actually rather strange - don't know what I could have been thinking.)

Give me a yo if you want to do the meme, and I'll give you five icons to talk about!

on poking about the 'net for discussion of the terrible and egregious 2005 Pride and Prejudice film, found this absolute gem of a review (positive): "A good, old-fashioned movie with a pretty star. The story is good-hearted, romantic, and lacking in any sort of cynicism"(!)

Because clearly, it's a plus in an Austen adaptation that the work be devoid of cynicism.

Ugh. Do they know who they're talking about? Do they not get the absolute, utter, incandescent ironies of Austen? This is why I sometimes get worried about satire - it's so easy for rubes to declaw satirical works. Poor Austen, they've made her all hearts and flowers and sugar and sunshine!

I mean! "It’s a winning, old-fashioned movie, a time machine that removes you from 2005 for two hours and tells you a satisfying story of love"? As if!

So. I read P&P years and years ago, mainly because my mum had this really natty copy with leather and gold leaf and other shiny things. And I didn't like it. I remember thinking that all the characters were silly and obsessed with marriage and that I didn't really like any of them because they were all so bloody brainless.

But. I know that Lizzie Bennett is rather beloved of the smart-girl-romantics set, of which I am most definitely a member. Witness the absolute obsession with Jane Eyre. And y'all have good taste, and I'm doing all this travelling and need reading material.

Well. I watched the BBC film last night, having come into ownership of it for very little money indeed, and enjoyed it. Especially Colin Firth. I enjoyed him very much indeed. And I have the book packed along with me for train reading on Tuesday.

I think that part of what bothered me so much about it as a girl was that I was feminist enough to object to Mrs. Bennett and the whole socio-political mess, but not enough to understand that it wasn't Lizzie's fault that her world was like that. And now I see her subversivness, see that while she must marry and live in the real world she is very much aware of its shortcomings. The problem isn't with Austen, it's with the world.

Running off to Ann Arbor now--my baby cousin broke her arm, and needs a consolatory visit before I am back to school.