The Uncanny Soyo

In Chapters 2 and 3 of Over Sea Under Stone, the Drew children go exploring and find their MacGuffin! Simon says some racist stuff along the way. Meanwhile, their parents lead normal lives and Great-Uncle Merry is mysterious. Intrigued? Then it's time to read The Dark is Rising sequence!

Apologies for the lack of specific discussion questions this time. I spent Thanksgiving at home allergic to stuff, so my body still feels a bit out of wack. If you have some of your own, though, please fire away. Or just ask me my opinions about stuff so far, I don't care.

Onward!

( Simon Drew you are so on my shitlist right nowCollapse )

This is just your reminder that the Dark is Rising Sequence readalong continues today with chapters two and three of Over Sea, Under Stone. For those of you who haven't started yet, the chapters are short and there's still time to catch up. We're just moving up to two chapters per week, because the chapters are short.

The discussion post for chapter one is right here. Come join us!

I'm going to try posting my entries earlier, too, to give people more time to discuss. So stay tuned for more sometime this weekend, in which I call Simon Drew out on being a nascent colonialist asshole.

Welcome to The Dark is Rising Sequence Readalong!

Okay, so I'm not as cool as Mark of Mark Reads, but I thought I'd do a discussion entry with my reactions and such in a manner similar to his. Sadly, this doesn't have as much keysmash and capslock as I'd like, but JUST YOU WAIT. It's The Dark is Rising Sequence. I'll get there.

So, I've recapped the chapter of the week, adding my thoughts along the way. At the end of each chapter, I'll add some general thoughts, followed by discussion questions both deep and shallow. No one is obligated to answer any of them, but of course I welcome discussion! And you can add your own discussion questions and reactions too. I WELCOME ANY AND ALL THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS.

And now the adventures of two boys, a girl, their mysterious archaeologist great-uncle, a dog, and an evil yacht.

( To Cornwall!Collapse )

Staring tomorrow, we'll be reading chapter 2, and maybe chapter 3. Can everyone weigh in on whether or not they'd be willing to read two chapters a week? I'm up for it!

Sorry I messed this up, guys. Anyway! I am here to OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCE that The Dark is Rising Sequence readalong will begin next Monday, November 14 week with Over Sea, Under Stone. My discussion entry for chapter one will be posted Sunday, November 20. Right now we'll be doing a chapter per week, but if we feel the need to pick up the pace a bit we can do more than one chapter at a time.

Over Sea, Under Stone is the prequel to the sequence, so while it introduces some of the elements and characters of the series, it's skewed towards a slightly younger audience and it's not as awesome as the other books. It's still fun, though. And it's important for setting up the rest of the series. If you find yourself quitting OSUS halfway through, that's okay--but do join us back for The Dark is Rising, as it's very different in tone.

You may also want to read E. Nesbit's Five Children and It alongside Cooper. Cooper was allegedly pretty influenced by Nesbit, so I want to see what kind of interplay we've got going on.

Here are some questions I'll be considering while reading the sequence as a whole. Feel free to think about these or submit your own:

-What different threads of folklore go into Cooper's stories, and how does she weave them together?

-Which other children's fantasy authors are influencing Cooper?

-In what way does the time period in which Cooper was writing get reflected in the books? I've seen very few folks consider the whole... sixties-seventiesness of the books and it might be something to explore.

-I fully acknowledge that Cooper could do more with female characters at times. Where are some opportunities to work with that?

-How would one adapt the books to a visual medium (movies, TV) in a way that works for audiences today? The recent movie adaptation of TDiR was... we do not speak of it. But, I do acknowledge that there's an inherent challenge in adapting these books for the screen, so let's brainstorm some ways to get around that. Maybe someone will give us a movie contract! lol sadly no

So! See you all next week, hopefully. For those have you who have been keeping folks updated, could you link this around? Thanks.

HOW DOES THIS SOUND EVERYONE

DARK IS RISING RE-READ, STARTING NOVEMBER 7 WITH CHAPTER 1 OF OVER SEA, UNDER STONE

ENTRIES TO BE POSTED ON SUNDAYS, AND ONE CHAPTER SHALL BE READ AT A TIME

Perhaps more details to come. Hope to see you all soon!

For those of you who missed it, I'm going to be rereading the Dark is Rising sequence and blogging about it. Thus, I've invited a bunch of people to do it along with me. There's still time to think about joining me, if you're interested!

So, I'm thinking we can start the readalong in about two weeks from now, towards the end of October. For those of you who are already onboard, there's the tricky question of which book in the series we should start with. Now, you'd think The Dark is Rising would be the obvious first place to start but it's kind of like when you read Narnia as a group, and some folks put The Magician's Nephew first while others put The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe first.

Here's what you need to know about each book:

Over Sea, Under Stone was published in 1965. If I remember correctly, this was before Cooper had the idea for the sequence as a whole. The book follows the Drew children--Simon, Jane, and Barney--on a holiday to Cornwall where they end up searching for ancient treasure. Like you do, in children's Brit lit. In addition, it also introduces the character of Merriman Lyon, the Drews' godfather. He and the Drews themselves will become pivotal in the later books in the sequence, as things grow more fantastical and epic. OSUS, however, is the least fantastical of all the sequence, focusing more on following clues and exploring. It skews a bit younger than the other books, and the influence of E. Nesbit is very clear.

The Dark is Rising was published in 1973, when Cooper had a much clearer idea of the series and its scope. Elements are introduced in this book that run through the remaining three books. TDiR features a fairly ordinary English boy named Will Stanton awakening to his true destiny as an Old One, and a guardian of the Light. He is so not the lovechild of Harry Potter and Tsukino Usagi that he sounds like. Will spends the book on a quest to seek the six signs, and to keep the Dark and Light in balance with one another. The book is much more explicitly fantasy, with spells and time travel and flat-out weird, epic shit going down.

Each book has its pros and cons for going first. OSUS has the advantage of BEING first, chronologically, both in and outside of canon. And getting to know the Drews is fun. I've thought about looking at it in concert with some E. Nesbit (which no one else would be obliged to read) and looking at the dialogue between the two. On the other hand, it is more juvenile and less fantastical than the other books, and some fans of the series don't consider it their cup of tea. I admit, as much as I love OSUS, I'm afraid its rather old-fashioned style might lose me reading comrades. But it's got it's good points, I promise!

(Pet peeve: whoever wrote the Bran/Will 'ship manifesto put down not only OSUS, but the Drew children in general. I love Bran Davies possibly more than I love any other character in this series, but this statement seriously irks me. I LOVE THE DREWS TOO AND THEY ARE IMPORTANT DAMMIT. For those of you wondering who Bran is, he first appears in The Grey King but we won't be starting that first, at all.)

TDiR is a much more epic fantasy read, and introduces more series concepts, so I do love that about it. And if we read it starting in late October/early November, we'd be timing it right around when in the year the series takes place. (At least for the Northern hemisphere. But Midwinter is super important in this book.) On the other hand, we'd have to go back and read OSUS after TDiR at some point, and it'd be a weird tone shift to go ahead and do that in the middle of the series. TDiR still works as a second book; OSUS does not.



Let me know what you think! Feel free to expand in the comments if you have strong feelings one way or another. As you can see, my own are conflicted. But I reserve the right to be a dictator if I have to.

QUESTION: Is anyone interested in a Dark is Rising Sequence read/re-read and commentfest?

So in a move which she will probably regret forever, terrorcandy once loaned me her copies of The Dark is Rising Sequence when we were both about eleven. These were YA High Fantasy classics, packed with coming of age and world-saving. The author, Susan Cooper, had studied under JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. Starved for more adventures after reading Narnia and Redwall, and with things like Harry Potter not quite on the radar yet, I devoured Cooper’s novels whole. And I did it again and again. It got to the point where young preteen me was cursing my mother and father for not giving birth to me earlier and across parallel dimensions, so I could have been a kid in 1970s Cornwall or Wales in a fictional universe. (This was probably a silly instinct, given that some of the stuff which happens in these books tugs at one’s emotions in the most gut-wrenching way possible, but it’s a general fact that eleven-year-olds growing up in boring suburban subdivisions don’t always know how good they have it.)

Of course, now that I’ve talked these books up, I should make the disclaimer that they aren’t perfect. Susan Cooper could stand to write more about ladies more often, for instance. And the magic isn’t quite as flashy as it is in other fantasy books. Some of the things Cooper did were picked up by other writers later on, so there may be moments where you feel like you’ve read the story before.

Overall, though, the books hold up pretty well every time I read them, and there’s a lot about them that’s unique and quite likeable. For one thing, they are unashamedly pagan. They are also British, but multicultural instead of monocultural—they recognize the layers of Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse cultures that went into the building of the British Isles. Furthermore, they highlight the cultural and linguistic divides that exist even today, such as that between the English and the Welsh. And there’s Arthurian legend, but in this extremely subtle way that isn’t really the Theme Park Version. And while there’s a Dark vs. Light conflict, it’s not so simple as Good vs. Evil, especially as the book series goes on. (The Light will work for humanity, but they have a tendency to be unfeeling assholes.) Plus, really pretty landscape descriptions. I admit I am a sucker for those.

For the record, THERE WAS NO MOVIE WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.

So! I’ve been thinking. I want to re-read these books, maybe a chapter a week, and blog about them. Not right away, since I’m finishing South Riding by Winifred Holtby (and that’s good too btw) and it’s long. But maybe in a week or two or three? And, while I may do this on my own just for kicks, it’d be even more fun to do this with a bunch of friends/fellow readers. We could all comment and discuss. I’ll do the main entries and all, so it’s not like other folks would have to invest too much unless they wanted to.

So if you’ve read TDiR and would love to read it again, or if you’ve always wanted to read it but have never got a chance, or if you’ve never heard of it but this post may have sparked your interest, you should read along with me and we can have an internet party.

Might I add that this is a series where people sometimes put “historians” and “academia” as tags for the slash fanfic? I’M JUST SAYIN’

Let me know!

First of my unlocked entries in a long time, because it's an openish letter with some discussion added to it, and I figured that open letters may as well be... open.

Dear Team StarKid,

Thank you for producing and putting together A Very Potter Musical. It's given me many a laugh as I remember my more active days reading the Harry Potter books, and the songs are super catchy. Even my mother has grown fond of the bromance you created between Quirrel and Voldemort.

Now, in light of the recent youtube premiere of A Very Potter Sequel, I'd like to say thanks for that, too. While not every moment in the new musical was funny, some of them were funnier than moments in the first musical. The music's also come a long way. However, one of the ways in which you tied up loose ends has me a bit concerned. Admittedly, if I saw this plot twist in another creative work, I'd be instantly flying into a rage, and I can feel that gut reflex kicking me right now. However, I'm also puzzled--and, like I said, concerned--because usually you guys are so great, and manage to walk the Refuge in Audacity line of humor without too much difficulty. Either you subvert problematic tropes, or you play them up so intensely they come across as satire. In this, case--well. Onto the spoiler cut.

( spoilers for the ending of A Very Potter Musical. trigger warning about consent issues and rape.Collapse )

Sincerely,
littledarkvoice

For the rest of you, a discussion question: can you think of examples in your own favorite media where there's something problematic, where the problematic stuff could be avoided with a simple rearranging of a scene or two? Or, can you think of a story where it would have gone down a bad path, but the author/creators did something to turn that bad path on its head and make it a good story? I've found that Avatar: The Last Airbender's been pretty good at this, and I'm sure there are others.

I think in most cases, just changing a few things here or there that can make a whole world of difference in a story, and often, in most cases, make it even better. So, it'd be great to have a list like this, of concrete examples, just to prove to people that they don't need Ph.Ds in sociology and gender studies just to make their works--yes, even edgy comedy, especially edgy comedy--more... socially considerate, I suppose. Thoughts?

As of tomorrow (Wednesday, June 16) I will be out of the country and unable to take calls on my cell for two weeks. Drop me an e-mail, and LJ comment or message, a direct message on twitter, a facebook message, whatever... I'll still have my computer, and occasional internet. And if you're desperate to hear my voice, I should be on Skype. HOWEVER. I will be out doing things, so I may not get back to you right away.

See you all July 1st! (Except shandoras who sees me Sunday.)

A bit ago, greeneyedlady and I were talking about making a mix of like... various songs we'd put on a soundtrack about ourselves. I'd been working on my own soundtrack for a bit now, and since a lot of the songs on it are also some of my favorite songs ever, I figured I'd upload them to mediafire and let folks snag them as they wish.

I will warn you that my taste tends to lean towards folk and occasionally pop. However, I like a mix of things, so you may yet find something to your taste.

ALSO, feel free to meme this/do this yourself. I'm not trying to start a mass meme here, but it is always fun to see what songs others chose for themselves and to uh. Share music in a totally legal way.

Totally legal, you guys.

( songs and explanations behind cutCollapse )

Hope you enjoyed! What are some of your own favorite songs?

Maybe I should make a soundtrack about specific people I know, next.