Twilight II: Vampire Boogaloo

Jailbait Werewolves - Shirts = Epic Win.

That is all.

Things I read when I get in from work after midnight.

New Text! New Text! Wheee Cleolinda, thank you for making my Phd fun. I can't believe I'm going to work M15M and the Secret Life of Dolls into a thesis.

Zounding Like Ze Bad German Accent.

I was just reading this article (gods, I love Jezebel) and was taken by the ze/zir gender neutral pronoun issue. One commentor makes a reference to Margaret Piercy using 'per' (short for Person) in Woman on the Edge of Time. I'm curious about how academic writing would respond to the introduction of a neutral pronoun. I think it's clearly a political choice  that is expressed in text, however I'm curious as to how it would play with and balance out other words. Would it highlight exactly where we see gender? and what about those pronouns like 'I', 'we' and 'you'? I wrote a paper a few years ago on the masculinity of I. do we need a neutered I? (a -?) thinking. thinking.

Move over Sparklepire...

The next big thing, I'm calling it now - Urban Fantasy, Faerie Romance. And pushing it are Holly Black, Cassandra Clare and Melissa Marr. This also seems to be a genre that is particularly open to feminist readings (seriously, I squee every few pages in Marr's books) and, holy shit, it's AWESOME.

The chicks are all "Sugar, this is all about my choices, I get them, welcome to the Future". Epic. Love. The texts are edgy, explicit without being gratuitous, and most importantly are written by young women for young readers (seriously, more boys need to get in on this shit, they're missing out).  So I think I'm going to read and review these books on here for the next little while. Not today, too much to do. But some review love wouldn't be all bad at all.

And I'll do it wearing these:

(found through Love Lorn Unicorn, told about by the Delightful Catie last night via Facespace, Visiting Peter Alexander before work today.)

Rattling Windows

They creep me the fuck out. I'm just saying, like, when Ms L isn't here and it's all night and I know I need to get me sweet arse off to bed because, like, urgh, early morning, and the windows are rattling, it's creepy.

Upside is I totally have Faerie porn to read (yay!). Downside is if I read it tonight I'll be tired tomorrow (boo!). But I got my Academic CV finished (yay!). But I need to redraft my Textual Intercourse essay as an example of my academic writing (boo!). And I totally need to print off Passionate Trousers and seriously re-write it (boo!). And I went to the gym (yay!) but I ate 2 bars of chocolate (boo!) and the were Nestle (boo!). And it'll take me 7 hours a day at the gym to get the body I want for summer (boo!). Heh. Unless I just get someone else's body (Heh). That is clearly only funny in my head (boo!).

Stupid rattly, creepy windows.

Making Time with Alice

She's done it to me again.

Starting again and again and again

Getting my app through a variety of drafting stages, each one slightly different to the last. It's like a have a collection of slightly disfigured clones on my desktop. Hot.

I've also got publications under control (for now) and the book launch for Verge 09 is in November so, we can expect to see No Oblivion getting all shacked up under a tree any day now. I was amused that the editor thought there were points where it was "crass". I was all... "Sugar... it's about two people shagging under a tree in a park. This isn't exactly cupcakes and Lady Grey we're dealing with". So feeling pretty good right now, on the writing side.

The dollaz are under pressure, as per usual and I need to have a chat with my DATM to see whether he'll be kind enough to fund my time in Hong Kong. Urgh. I hate that conversation. It's so disempowering.

I'm going to rework my Beverly Farmer piece as an example of academic writing. That will be the project for tomorrow, but I totally need to settle down and do my Harry Chapter. I'm starting to get a little concerned about Passionate Trousers and I'm not sure where the draft I scrawled all over is. Damnit.

Picture time!!



There's a BRIDGE, CHAAARLIE!!! A BRIIIIIIDGE!!

Musings.

I had a delightful break in Sydvegas with Sins have have arrived back, newly baptised as Trashbat. The change of atmosphere was really delightful, very very different culturally from Melbourne. And I think I really like it there. The change, the difference, it felt really invigorating. I think it's partially because I feel that for the last three or four years I've been in a rut. And that's a very long time. It's not that I haven't been doing things, I have, absolutely. But it's all very long term commitment stuff, and I'm really wanting the pleasure of some immediate responses. So I thought I might look at maybe splitting my research. There is no way I'd sacrifice the wonderful Doc in Boots, she has to supervise. But I think that some time in a different context for a little while might be healthy. Will be healthy. I'm looking into other supervisors in NSW. I'm doing it and it feels good.

Teh sparkley, sparkley angst

Just finished the newest Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead (Blood Promise), so I need to re-look at my vampire paper and add to it. There's quite a bit of writing for me to do over the next month and I can't seem to get motivated enough to do it. I know I need to suck it up and get in there. I'm hoping to finish the short story first, as a sort of warm up, before going back to the Snow White stuff. I have to incorporate the Draco Trilogy stuff into my Harry Paper too. I know it's a case of heads down, bums up, but I'm a little scared to get back into it.

Yeah, I know. Suck it up, Princess.

The Very Secret Geekout

Having an epic Geekout watching Lord of the Rings extended editions with cast commentary. No analysis. Just wine and giggles.

Cup of tea, cup of tea, almost got a shag, cup of tea.

We’ve been watching a lot of Buffy recently. It’s been comforting to go back to it after an absence of quite a few years. There’s so much in there, but I think that Buffy is going to be one of the few texts that I can’t bring myself to tear apart. There’s so much in there, but I kind of enjoy just being able to watch it for the sake of watching it. Also, it’s kind of comforting in times of need. Like now. Pet boy is being an arse. Hopefully this arseyness is the end of all the arseyness. The grand Fuckoff has been issued. Now I just need the willpower to maintain it.
Buffy helps with that.

When the emo takes over

There’s a lot of representations of Death. I know I’m a little wrapped up in it still from the Book Thief, but between him, Gaiman’s perky gothic Death and Silas, Pratchett’s Death and Death of Rats, and George/Millie and her cohorts in Dead Like Me, I seem to be surrounded by them. It makes me think about how they’re represented in modern fictions. I’m thinking a comparison between the Death of Byron and Tennyson and Poe and so on. Not sure where to take it yet, I’ll get around to fleshing it out though.

Of Cabbages and Kings

The Fabulous Ms L and I went on a grand adventure into Lygon Street to see the premier of Coraline. We were a week early, which is better than a week late, but still not overly conducive to actually viewing the movie. So we went for coffee (or hot chocolate) and profiteroles, which – for some reason - always feels so right on Lygon St. Then started the trek to locate werewolf clubs. Booyah. Not successful. However we did discover a bottle shop that stocked Some Young Punks (with such delightful drops as Passion has Red Lips, and The Squid’s Grip), so I might have stocked up the wine rack a little. Then on the way back to the car, we passed Readings. Seriously, that place is to me as Goldfingers is to a drunken buck’s night. It started off innocently enough, a casual glance through the graphic novels for specific titles, a finger down the spine of the Dictionary of Signs and Symbols, the normal back and forth. But of course as we wander further back, toward philosophy, lit crit, psychology, things got a little steamier. The whispered sweet nothings stopped and instead the pages got sassier, they did this arching, whimpering thing and I ended up writhing against the shelves trying to decide between a Jeffreys, an Irigaray, and a Braudilliard. In the end, however, there was this sweet, purple book. Logic of Alice. She was all “hey baby, you so fine” and I was like, *blushgulp* “hi...” and she’s all “So how you doin’?” and I’m like “I’m...um... fine. So... you fancy a little sumpin’sumpin’?” and she’s like “oh honeychild, I don’t open my pages for just anyone you know. If you like it, put a receipt on it.”

So I did.

Yeah, we’ve been wrapped up in each other ever since. I’m hoping she might be useful beyond the Alice paper. The explanations of logic are applicable to all arguments, so I’m going to use her as a handbook and rework old writing, thesis included, and try to tighten them. I’m just concerned there’s a privileging of certain masculinist thought types, but I haven’t figured out how to phrase that concern properly yet. Soon my pretties, soon

Comic Books and Rock'n'Roll: Coolest PhD Evah!

Ok, well, after much musing, I've come up with a basic structure for the Phd:

The Children of the Fence: Developing an Aesthetic Criteria for Critically evaluating Trans-Media Narratives
~or~
Comic Books and Rock'n'Roll: Coolest PhD Evah!

Intro: The Last Supper
1. The Rebirth of the Author: New roles for writers and readers.
2. Convergence Culture: Developing a pre-modern relationship with text.
3. The Amory Wars: A Post-Modern Epic
4. Neverender: Musical Narrative and Performance
5. Second Stage Turbine Blade: Textual Narrative (including paratext)
6. In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: Online Narratives
7: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness: The post-modern hero of autobiography and analogy.
8. No World For Tomorrow: Developing an aesthetic criteria for critical evaluation of trans-media narratives.

Dear lord, and I am spent. I'm planning to use a similar approach with the Alice project, which might be slightly more generalised as there are more books. I'll nut that one out and post later. Meanwhile, must email supervisor.

Once Upon a Time

Well, the plan is to try and keep an online diary of my research. So this will probably make for rather dull reading, but the idea is that if I need to access something, I can get to it. All hail the blogosphere. So prepare to be enthralled by a collection of random quotes from whomever I'm reading at any given time and a poor quality application of those theories onto whatever interwebs fad I happen to be obsessed with at any given time (Secret Life of Dolls, I am looking at you). Consider it an online mindmap. Just don't use it for directions, because my thoughts often ramble off of cliffs on wings made from honey and lost chicken feathers. Yeah, it's very much more Icarus than Pegasus.

So today's theory reading list includes: Convergence Culture by one Henry Jenkins, Illegal Harmonies by Mr Andrew Ford (heh, I win Amazon, my copy was only $9.95 from the Monash Uni Bookshop Sale Table), and Je, Tu, Nous by Luce Irigaray (on loan from the lovely Ms L).

For texts in action (today), I'm looking at Frank Beddor's Looking Glass Wars series, which utilises novels (The Looking Glass Wars, Seeing Redd, Arch Enemy), graphic novels (Hatter M: The Looking Glass Wars Vol. 1 - with a video trailor), a scrapbook (Princess Alyss of Wonderland - it's nearly my birthday?), a website (including forum community), a movie and an online game. Actually, there's more than one game. There is also music and, yeah, there's a shop.

And you know... Lewis Carroll's texts kind've have to get a look in too.

So Beddor is totally rocking this whole transmedia narrative schtick. I'm going to break for luncheon and meds (can't have me going all hatter), and then we'll see what I can't drag together from this red-hot-mess.