Personal Archaeology

[osprey_archer]

I am in the process of moving the last of my stuff out of my parents' house, which is a little bit like an archaeological dig: yesterday we unearthed a pendulum, still in its shipping box from 2001, which no one could recall buying. Why was that in my closet? Who can say?

Mostly, however, I have been unearthing things that I more or less knew were there, although this does not lessen the joy of (re)discovery. Finds include:

1) A picture book about a dragonship that I wrote and illustrated circa fourth grade (pictures over on Twitter because their photo interface is so much simpler than DW's).

2) Many, many fantasy world maps. Maps were apparently my primary creative outlet throughout high school; exactly one of them got a complete story to go with it, and that story was TERRIBLE. The failure record is so high that I have remained gun-shy about writing secondary world fantasy ever since.

3) Among my little notebooks (distinct from my big spiral-bound notebooks, which I sorted last time...) I discovered one from 2010 with a good wodge of unused pages at the back. WELL. I've demarcated the new section, as my future self will of course wish to know when the book shifts from 2010 to 2021, and I will at long last fill that long-neglected notebook!

4) My old grad school essay "Emotion Is a Useful Category of Historical Analysis: Understanding the Emotional Turn." I've been drawing on this material heavily for Sleeping Beauty and I was moping because I thought I'd lost the essay, but a paper copy survives! Hooray!

The relevant bit is that "from the early nineteenth century until the 1920s, the prevailing emotional culture in America welcomed and supported emotional intensity in love and grief. In certain well-defined circumstances, it even upheld the importance of justified anger. In the 1920s, however, American emotional standards changed, giving way to a culture that increasingly rejected emotional intensity and viewed both grief and anger as inherently bad emotions... both emotional intensity and "bad" emotions seemed to demand a reaction from others, which came increasingly to be seen as an imposition."

As you can imagine! this is a cultural difference that is going to repeatedly blow up in Russell & Andrew's faces. Russell says things like "I love you so much! I would die if you died :D" and Andrew is very uncomfortable! with this level of emotional intensity!!! HAS Russell considered expressing his feeling with a shoulder-punch and an affectionate insult? And Russell is like "D: I thought we were friends but I guess.... casual chums?... is what we are???"

Comments

[paigeflux]

I've just had a look at the picture book, it's utterly adorable. I commented on Twitter too but now kind of feel like I'm stalking you a little which completely isn't my intention. Also, hi, I found your journal through the 'latest things' feature.

[ellenmillion]

Dragonship is AMAZING. I utterly love it.

[osprey_archer]

Hello! I'm glad you enjoyed the picture book. My younger self knew exactly what I liked, and what I liked was dragonships and colorful weather!

[osprey_archer]

You will be UNSURPRISED perhaps to hear that dragonships made an appearance in the fantasy worldbuilding that generated many maps but very little actual written-down story. Once you've got dragonships you've got to use them!

[littlerhymes]

The dragonship is amazing. I'm so glad it's being preserved for posterity.

HAS Russell considered expressing his feeling with a shoulder-punch and an affectionate insult

NEVER!!!!

[luzula]

Awww, the dragonship is adorable! <3

I too posted art from my childhood and teens a while ago--behold my sparkly unicorn with wings!

[philomytha]

That emotional intensity thing is really interesting! You definitely see it when reading Victorian novels when everything is very Dramatic.

Your dragonships are great! A+ use of rainbows :-D

[osprey_archer]

I love the winged unicorn WITH WINGS ON ITS HEELS, omg. The dinosaurs are great too, and I love the cat painted with the wide brush strokes.

[osprey_archer]

It's funny because the stereotype these days is definitely "Those Victorians, so repressed!" and then you read an actual Victorian novel and the main character is like "Then I cast myself onto my beloved's grave and wept till I could weep no more."

Or (Little Women style) "My sister and I are having a fight and she BURNED MY CAREFULLY HANDWRITTEN STORIES and then I NEARLY LET HER DROWN." The sheer savagery of temper that the characters are allowed to have is really quite something.

[osprey_archer]

I'm just imagining some future literary researcher stumbling on this piece of juvenilia and... IDK, I'm not sure this actually goes anywhere, but obviously they are totally charmed by it.

Russell really feels that he and Andrew have gotten beyond the shoulder-punch and affectionate insult stage, not realizing that in Modern Times this IS the highest stage. Surely they have reached the "standing behind your chair and squeezing your shoulder in a gentle yet manly clasp" stage? Not to mention the "we always contrive to share a bed when we can and snuggle and whisper secrets in the darkness" stage.

[asakiyume]

HAS Russell considered expressing his feeling with a shoulder-punch and an affectionate insult? --I'm dying. THE AFFECTIONATE INSULT

The dragonship story is so beautiful. I love it not in a "isn't it amazing what a fourth grader can do" way but in a "this is beautiful; if this were a publicly available picture book I would get a copy for myself and give it as a gift" way. (I don't mean that you should produce it as a publicly available picture book--that would be a lot of work and expense. I just mean that I like it with no riders, no "for a fourth grader" attached.) I love the rainbow page! I love the quilting stars! I love the different angles on the ship! And I love that it's a ship of dew--I love the poetry of that.

Do you recall at all what prompted you to make it and where the ideas came from?

[asakiyume]

I love your hoopoe! And I love that your unicorn has backup ankle-wings if his shoulder-back wings get tired!

[asakiyume]

It makes me wonder where/when/how we came to think of them as repressed.

[osprey_archer]

I have a VERY VAGUE memory that the book, or possibly just the marbleized paper cover of the book?, was made at a sort of craft evening at my school. (There were a number of these: also one where we made handmade paper, and another where we crafted little clay animals.) I wanted to fill it with something Worthy of its beauty as a physical object, and I'd already written the poem (it's included in another poetry anthology that I made), so I may have picked it partly because it was the right size to fill the pages.

I'm not sure how I got from "ship of the dew" to "dragonship," but I suppose it was rather hard to draw a ship of dew. Possibly it is depositing dew as it goes and THAT'S what makes it a ship of dew? Maybe that is the real meaning of those blue lines following the ship.

[luzula]

It was so much fun to discover that art! Yeah, the wings on the heels are pretty great.

[luzula]

Thanks! I wonder why a hoopoe, I have never actually seen one--I suppose I was browsing a bird book. And yeah, the wings on the heels are very extra.

[skygiants]

DRAGONBOOK IS PERFECT

[osprey_archer]

Dragonbook is a shining light in this dark world!

[lokifan]

"from the early nineteenth century until the 1920s, the prevailing emotional culture in America welcomed and supported emotional intensity in love and grief. In certain well-defined circumstances, it even upheld the importance of justified anger. In the 1920s, however, American emotional standards changed, giving way to a culture that increasingly rejected emotional intensity and viewed both grief and anger as inherently bad emotions... both emotional intensity and "bad" emotions seemed to demand a reaction from others, which came increasingly to be seen as an imposition."

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh man. Do you have any theories about why? The war, the pandemic, standards of masculinity?

Also lol poor Russell and Andrew.

[osprey_archer]

I strongly suspect that the author I was summarizing offered some explanation in his book, but sadly I did not include that in my essay. I might track the book down to check, because I'm sure Russell will ask ("So when did you people start to have ICE FOR BLOOD?")... but Andrew probably has no clear answer ("World War I? I guess?" "But the Civil War killed far more Americans than World War I, and WE came out of it still capable of human emotion!").