A Certain Slant of Light

I've been reading Barbara Rosenwein's Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, which is fun, even though I can't keep track of the various Merovingians.

The book is built around the idea of social constructionism: the idea that emotions are shaped by the social norms of society. Rosenwein comments that "In Japan there is a feeling, amae, of contented dependence on another; but in English there is nothing comparable and presumably no feeling that corresponds to it." (15)

I disagree. Or rather, I think Rosenwein is correct that most English-speaking adults would be embarrassed to say "I feel contentedly dependent on you!" given the cultural importance of independence. But the feeling of (or at least yearning for) amae exists, subterranean and furtive, and it comes out over and over again in stories.

There's a whole subset of hurt/comfort fic which wallows in amae: Character A is injured or sick, and thus is forced into dependence on Character B - and because that loss of independence is the result of fate, not something they asked for or wanted, it's all right that they rest content in their dependence.

It crops up in professional fiction, too; there's also a whole sequence in The Virginian, the first Western, wherein the Virginian - who has hitherto been a prototype of laconic manliness - gets shot and is utterly dependent on the ministrations of his lady love.

I suspect stories bear the stigmata of all the things we aren't supposed to feel, or can't admit to feeling.

I've signed up for the GRE, finally, and started studying for it only to be informed that the test has just been revised and they've gotten rid of the antonyms section. The antonyms! I was going to pick up SO MANY POINTS off the antonyms!

But then, the antonyms test measures mainly whether you were the type of child who spent so much time inside reading as to risk vitamin D deficiency, so it's probably just as well to be shut of it.

The GRE practice books take entirely the wrong approach to vocabulary acquisition, by the way. They treat it like a drear and dreaded task. But - but it's a chance to meet new friends! Maladroit, hinterland, minatory….I can reminisce with romantic exactness about where I met them all.

What I'm really worried about is the math section. But I've got a month to study.

21,000 words.

I came up with a way to avoid the Horrible Escape Scene. I hate escape scenes; almost always they make the bad guys look like total doofuses (doofi?). It's hard to fear a villain who leaves unnecessarily large air vents in all his prison cells, and doesn't even use them to pipe in poison gas or ninjas.

Also, I've been going back and forth on the word "kvetch." I'm almost positive some people will dislike its use in a fantasy novel, although really, why? Presumably the speakers of fantasy languages steal words from foreigners. It's one thing to object to an expression that's anachronistic (put a sock in it, in a world without phonographs), or obviously refers to an Earth person (Machiavellian, though I can't let it go without pain), but objecting to words because they have a less-than-purely-Anglo-Saxon etymology seems silly.

Does anyone want a postcard? I've been on a post-card buying binge, and I have more than I could possibly need: pictures of woodcuts from Weimar Germany (German art in the early twentieth century was weird, man), pottery, sunsets, and possibly the world's cutest opossum, although that's gone AWOL for the moment.

And yes, it was actually cute, not just cute for a possum. No, I wouldn't have thought that could be possible either, but it was a baby possum, and evidently the baby versions of furry animals are always cute.

Also, possum is fun to say. Possum! Possum! Possum was apparently originally the correct pronunciation of opossum, the O being there for decoration or something; but linguistic drift has made possum sound backwoods and opossum proper.

But anyway. Postcards! I'm willing to send them overseas if need be (I just got a partial refund on my tuition. I am rich, rich, rich!) although of course they will take a while to arrive.

Our router, possibly irritated that we abandoned it over break, has stopped working again, so I’m going to be slow with the whole posting/commenting thing until we get that worked out. Other than that, however, my new term is going well (my school is on a quarter system, so we start a new term after spring break); I like all my classes.

Cleverly, I managed to schedule Russian History and History of the Book back to back, thus making a four hour bloc of solid class time. *headdesk* I remember back in high school, when that used to be normal. I can’t figure out how I survived all those years of it.

On a completely unrelated topic: I have a question. Has anyone ever heard the word ginger used as a pejorative for redheads? We had a long discussion about this at dinner, and were evenly divided between yes, no, and “Ginger is a word for redhead?”

I’ve never quite understood why “ginger” is used to describe redheads, anyway. Ginger isn’t red at all – the outside is a sort of dusty colorless brown and the inside whitish or yellowish or, if pickled, pink. Not anything close to red except the taste, and while that would be an interestingly synesthetic explanation I doubt it’s accurate.

I’ve been reading Limyaael’s fantasy rants. They’re interesting, but I think they shade occasionally into over-stringency.

It’s always struck me as terribly unfair the way some fantasy readers complain about the word “okay.” In all fairness, anyone who objects to okay ought to object to fuchsia and chauvinism and blizzard (not coined till the 1880s), too. Fuchsia and chauvinism have the additional black strikes of being eponyms, but evidently neither Mr. Fuchs nor Mr. Chauvin were memorable enough to strike their namesakes from the fantasy vocabulary like Machiavelli.

It’s a problem, because Machiavellian is an awfully useful word, and it’s a bit silly to come up with a direct fantasy replacement (Eogolfian!) because everyone knows that Eogolfian is Machiavellian which still throws them out of the story.

In fact, inexplicable vocabulary generally throws readers out of the story as they try frantically to parse it out. There seem to be two ways to get around that reaction: make most of the weird words superfluous, a la Tolkien, so the reader can rush right on without understanding the Numenoreans, or create a relatively small body of new terms and make most of the vocab self-explanatory, a la Isobelle Carmody.

I think Isobelle Carmody did a better job in Obernewtyn than in Darkfall, though. I though Obernewtyn’s language, like much else about Obernewtyn, felt organic and real, whereas Darkfall felt artificial. Darkfall’s worldbuilding is complicated but it’s all surface, no depth.

Whichever method—don’t create unpronounceable letter strings. There are languages where ktoshtza is a phonetically valid (I’m studying one right now) but it makes English speakers cry. Let your readers save the tears for the scene when Our Hero cradles his sidekick’s dying frame and vows revenge on the Dark Lord Evil.

I’m torn on fantasies where the words are based very obviously on some earth language—Italian or Norwegian or what have you. On the other hand, it’s easy to be phonetically consistent that way, but on the other it drags in associations about Italy that may not be germane to the fantasy world.

(Speaking of germane: is that word allowed in a fantasy world? It’s derived from the word German, after all. If germane is disallowed, what about slave—it’s related to Slav through the Latin, after all.)

…I feel that I should not be let loose near dictionaries.

I'm going to Florida! I'm going to be gone Friday to Monday to visit my brother and sample the delights of Disney World. The laptop is staying at home. I may check LJ and keep up with comments but I won't post till I get back.

I'm very proud of myself, because I did finish the first draft of the last part of Tea and Sympathy before leaving--just as I planned--so go me!

Tea and Sympathy as a whole is 13777 words long, which just fills me with awe--it's the longest thing I've written that hasn't made me consider becoming a botanist instead of a writer.

For any British people who read this: do you actually use the word "counterpane"? I spent years thinking that a counterpane had something to do with windows, so I feel very odd using it to refer to bedding, although the dictionary assures me that's correct. I also spent years thinking sideboards were somehow attached to the table, like a table leaf. Clearly I need a tutorial in furniture terms.

Back to the topic at hand! Is a counterpane a fluffy sort of blanket, or is it more flat? And if it's not fluffy, what word would you use for a fluffy blanket? And how do you feel about the phrase "safe as houses"?

***

And now for something completely different: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, just in case anyone hasn't run into mention of Joss Whedon's project thing. It's about Dr. Horrible, who wants to join the League of Evil, and his troubles with his One True Love and his nemesis, Captain Hammer (played by Nathan Fillion. I am told the other actors are famous people but I don't recognize them).

The songs are good, the One True Love is a bit flat, Captain Hammer is hilarious, and Dr. Horrible is strangely poignant for someone whose goal in life is to gain the acceptance of the League of Evil's leader, Bad Horse. The first one starts off slow but the whole thing picks up speed; it's fun.

Sameer Mishra is in last week’s Newsweek. NEWSWEEK. ZOMG.

***

My teddy bear is very, very happy to be home. He enjoyed college (except for the occasional threats to life and limb from the Bangladeshi contingent) but there’s nothing like breathing the sweet air of Indiana and being re-ensconced in his own personal chair.

Someone should do a study in the gender identity of teddy bears. Teddy (I have multiple teddies, but my favorite is Teddy, who is small and white and scruffy and has red plaid ears and foot paws) has mostly been male, although occasionally female when it was convenient.

Teddy bears are one of the few toys I can think of that aren’t generally limited to one gender (unless they’re pink). Both boys and girls are allowed to haul around stuffed animals and chew on their paws and send them on commando raids under the dining room table.

Also, teddy bears combine stereotypically male and female attributes: they’re protective and strong, but also cuddly and comforting.

But despite this androgynous nature, teddy bears themselves seem always to be male. Stuffed animals in books are almost always male: All the characters in Winnie the Pooh except Kanga. Almost all the characters in the Jolly Tall books. Corduroy. Paddington Bear. Clearly it’s a conspiracy of the patriarchy.

And it doesn’t help that society would consider it a bit off if a little boy had a female telepathic companion teddy. But a girl having a boy teddy? That’s just par for the course.

***

On a sort-of related note. According to the Teddy Bear Encyclopedia, the collective noun for teddy bears is “a hug of teddy bears,” which sounds just right.

Are there teddy bear gender nouns? Bears have bruins and sows, which are way too macho for teddies.

I’ve been very productive this morning. I have a thesis statement and a batch of cookies.

The kitchen in my dorm is in the basement, a creepy basement with tangled branching corridors, a stairway to nowhere, an elevator so ghetto that it once trapped a group for nearly an hour, and pipes that rattle and gurgle and appear generally on the verge of collapse.

Today there was this horrible high-pitched sound on the edge of hearing, like one of the hot water pipes squealing steam. So I’m standing there stirring chocolate chips into cookie dough and contemplating death by boiler explosion.

But the sound got lower and then I realized it was music, although eerie and monotone. Clearly live but totally disembodied, as if the Phantom was lurking in the basement.

So I went to check it out. In one of the back rooms tucked into the twisty corridors, there was a woman tuning a piano.

This is where shoonthree comes in. It’s pronounced “shoon-tree” and it means, in Gaelic I think, a song for sleeping. Not a lullaby but a song about sleeping, a song that is sleep. The word has captured my imagination, won’t let go, demands that it be given a foothold in my world, and now I have a sound to go with it.

If my dreams had a sound track—they don’t; do people dream in sound?—but if they did, this would be it. My own personal shoonthree: the eerie and inexplicable sound of strings being twisted back into harmony.