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rhysintherain · 4 years ago

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There's a funny thing that happens when stories are written down:

They stop changing.

Sure, we still have retellings of fairytales, but we know what the originals are and we compare them back to that for reference.

Most of the classic stories we know don't change.

Pride and prejudice has been the same since 1813. Every person since then has heard the same version, read the exact same words Jane Austen originally wrote, in the language common in her time.

Dante's divine comedy has used nearly the same words for more than 500 years. If you read old-timey Italian, you can read the exact same words he wrote before Europeans arrived in the Americas, from a time when the shape of the world was still in question and the greatest minds on every continent couldn't picture what lay across the ocean.

Through the written word we communicate Directly with people who died hundreds of years ago, which is incredible.

But it also means we don't always connect to the people who read those works before us. There's no need for our elders to pass down stories like treasured possessions when we can so easily find them in books. The values Jane put in her stories, in a different society over a century ago, are still there, but the values our parents and grandparents might have added to make the story useful to us today are not.

Because tellers shape stories, work them and rework them to what they need them to be, and to what is worth passing on. Each generation adds and shifts meanings within much older narratives, keeping them alive through a subtle evolution through the ages.

When we write them down they stop doing that.

Fortunately, we still tell some stories according to these ancient traditions.

They're passed down through generations of 5th graders on the playground, until one day you realise you and your niece know the same vaguely dirty rhyme for playing jump-rope. They're told around campfires, when the hitchhiker's jacket hangs on an old headstone the next day, or the teenage protagonists discover a hook lodged in their car door. They disguise themselves as something that happened to a friend of a friend, but if you ask your grandmother I bet a similar thing happened to a friend of a friend of hers at your age too.

In a society based on writing, we glorify the monoliths that are published works, and that often causes us to forget that other kinds of stories also have value.

We've been anatomically modern humans for around 500,000 years, all of those with the potential for storytelling.

We've had written language for only the last 5,000 of those.

So do the math: which kind of stories have the most staying power?

i will defend improvised storytelling till the day i fucking die i think stories told by people under pressure to do it fast, stories told in collaboration…. that shits gorgeous and ALIVE. have you ever gone to a writing workshop and someone writes the rawest shit in the entire world during a ten minute free write? playing dnd and some dialogue is so moving it makes you wonder how it came from your dumbass friends? got really into one of those ‘one sentence at a time’ campfire story games and ended up making something— totally unrecorded, lost except to the people who were there— that should have been in the fucking moma?

people are full to the BRIM with stories and honing that storytelling into a specific practice (ex. writing) is for sure a learned skill that takes tons of practice to do effectively but…… it’s there. it’s there and anyone can tap into it if they’re given opportunity and an audience to say it to.

look, the point of telling stories is to connect with other people. and all we’ve ever done throughout human history is connect connect connect so is it any wonder when you put a human being in front of an outlet and you say ‘tell me a story’, no one stays silent?

#anthropology #humans #stories are what we're good at #and stories are part of how we survived as a species #oral traditions have gone underground in western cultures #but they're still around #if you know where to look

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thewritersworkout · 2 years ago

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RETELLINGS!!

Take a look at our latest blog post by Lindsey Odorizzi. It’s all about this month’s topic, retellings!

Find it here!

Excerpt:

What if the Pied Piper lured all the adults away instead of the children? What if Pride and Prejudice took place on a spaceship? The possibilities are endless with story retellings! Read on to find out what retellings are and how you can incorporate them into your own writing.

Some Background

Writers generally look to well known, classic stories to retell, as well as fairy tales or creation stories. There is a huge well of content available to draw from: hundreds and even thousands of years’ worth!

A lot of your favorite stories are actually retellings and you might not know it. Most people know that many of the Disney princesses are actually based on the more gruesome Grimm fairy tales. James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, considered one of the greatest books of the 20th century, is based on Homer’s The Odyssey. Even Shakespeare pulled from other stories for his plays. But many other modern stories also draw from the classics. There are dozens of modern Shakespeare retellings; the most well-known ones are surprisingly typically teen movies like Ten Things I Hate About You (based on The Taming of the Shrew) or She’s the Man (based on Twelfth Night). And Clueless is based on Jane Austen’s Emma! These examples just show that you can take a story with one genre, context, or scholarly level and bring it into an entirely different genre, setting, or context to make it your own.

It can be daunting to engage with old stories, especially if retellings of them already exist. But it can be creatively engaging and fulfilling to enter conversation with writers of both the past and present through retellings.

#retellings #blog post #writing help #writing advice #the writer's workout

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kosegruppaa · 5 years ago

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2, 26, 27 for book thingy

hi anon :) thank you!!

2. Are you an Austen person or a Bronte person?

i don’t know. both?? i’ve not that much by either austen or the brontë sisters, so maybe i’ll form an opinion after reading more of their work. from what i’ve read, i loved wuthering heights and i loved pride and prejudice, so so far it’s quite even. i did recently start jane eyre though, so that might tip the scales.

26. A book you studied in school and ended up loving?

i read el beso de la mujer araña by manuel puig when i studied spanish and i LOVE that novel. it’s about two men who share a prision cell in argentina. almost the entire novel is just dialogue between them and most of it is one of them retelling movies to the other guy. it’s also a little romantic, and political, and just a super interesting and kinda hearbreaking story. right up my alley. i also read wuthering heights for a course about victorian literature and i loved that! one of the first times i finished the reading assignment waaay before i had to.

27. Classics or modern literature?

i wanna say both! i love reading classic literature because i like the idea of so many people having read the books before me, and through hundred of years we’ve all been able to relate to it somehow. like it’s facinating how shakespeare can still feel relevant today. or that i can read words jane austen wrote in the 18th century and i can relate to things she says and respond to her humor. idk it’s just facinating to me. but i also love modern literature and reading about issues that are relevant now, that have references to things that i also have known in my life etc. so i think if i had i choose i would choose modern literature. although thankfully we don’t have to choose and i’ll continue to read both.

#anon #thanks for asking!#tag

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abrajadex-blog · 5 years ago

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Remixing, re creating or copying?

Remixing is the art of taking someone’s original idea and transforming it into something original by changing or embellishing enough elements to call it original.

A perfect example of remixing would be any of the older “Disney princess” stories.

Disney was founded October 16, 1923 in LA California. Walt Disney came to California armed with a sketch series titled “Alice’s Wonderland”. Walt and his brother Roy were contracted to distribute the Alice comedies on Oct. 16th, 1923 by a New York distributer, M.J. Winkler. Walt and his brother formed what is now known as the Walt Disney studio.

www.d23.com

Walt Disney made many original animated characters (Mickey Mouse anyone) however, he found the greatest success with his animated feature film “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. Snow White debuted on December 21, 1937 and became the highest-grossing film of all time. It held this record until the release of Gone with the Wind.

Now, anyone familiar with Disney history know that many of Disney’s princess films are based on other stories. The original “Snow White” is a 19th-century German fairy tale.

The Brothers Grimm published Snow White in 1812. Snow White was featured in the first edition of their collection Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

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Now, the original story of Snow White is a little more gruesome than Walt Disney’s version, however he retained the basic story in his animated retelling. The original story sees Snow White’s mother prick herself with a needle and wish for a child that is “As white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood in (the window) frame”. Snow White’s mother then gives birth – dying in the process. Disney decided against placing this in their version of the film. Disney leaves out a lot of the darker more depressing elements of the story. Both stories have the same basic elements – an evil stepmother hellbent on being the “fairest in the land”, a magic mirror, Snow White needing to flee her home after a failed murder attempt, 7 dwarfs, Snow Whites iconic death by apple, and a Prince to come and rescue her.

Disney did a great job remixing this story. They kept the basic premise of the story but changed enough details to make it original. Disney made original names for the dwarfs and gave them a personality to add to the film, making the dwarfs almost as iconic as Snow White herself. The ending is also different from the original. The Grimm’s story saw Snow White placed in the iconic glass coffin, however unlike the Disney version there was no “true loves kiss” to awaken her. In an almost anti-climatic ending Snow White was awoken by her coffin being dropped on the ground and the poisoned apple being dislodged from her throat. This scene would have been a lot less dramatic than Disney’s version, as who doesn’t want to believe in true love?

Pretty much all of Disney’s princesses are based on other Fairy tales (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_Of_Disney_animated_films_based_on_fairy_tales). Cinderella is another great example of remixing existing material to make something original. Cinderella was a successful Disney movie, based off of an illustrated book of the same name. It again has the premise of an evil stepmother and ending with the “happily ever after” ending that most Disney princesses enjoy. It is also a fairy tale that has been re-created in so many different formats it is hard to keep track.

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One of my favorite adaptions is “A Cinderella Story”. The movie – released in 2004 stars Hilary Duff as a modern day “Cinderella” named Sam. Like in the Disney film Sam is made to behave like a servant for her evil stepmother and stepsisters after her father dies in a tragic accident. As a Cinderella story is based in modern times, we get modern technology. Sam’s dream is to be accepted into Princeton. She becomes pen pals with a boy - Austen (Chad Michael Murray) who also shares that dream but is struggling with the pressure of what his father wants from him instead. We see a lot of social dynamics at play mainly Sam and Austin’s complete opposite social standing, Austin’s popularity VS Sam’s unpopularity. There is even a scene at the ball where Sam dresses up like a masked Cinderella and loses her cell phone (instead of a glass slipped) at the dance. This leads Austin on a frantic search for his “Cinderella”.

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Also like the Disney version we see these two end up with their “happily ever after – well for now”, with both being accepted to Princeton and ending up together. This is a great example of how you can take something and remix it enough to be original. Almost everyone who watches this movie knows that it is a remix of something else, yet with the original take on the concepts it’s completely loveable all the same. What also makes this original is that while Sam’s family is wealthy, she’s not a princess in the way Disney portrays it. She won’t inherit a kingdom - instead she inherits a diner, and she won’t be “ruling” over anybody. She goes to Princeton and lives her best life.

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Disney isn’t a stranger to controversy, however. While their Disney Princess stories were always known to be adaptions of other stories, there is one dark stain on their history. “The Lion King” (1994) was credited as being Disney’s first original story. Almost immediately, people started realizing a great deal in common with a Japanese manga series “Kimba the white lion”. Disney adamantly denied any copyright infringement, instead trying to plead ignorance and stating that “The Lion King” was created by using concepts from “Hamlet” – a Shakespeare play, and Bambi. Most don’t exactly buy that defense… it’s hard not to see the similarities between the two – with some scenes almost mirroring each other. You can watch this side by side comparison and draw your own conclusions, however to me, this looks like a clear copyright infringement.

www.avclub.com/disneys-claim-that-the-lion-king-was-their-first-origi-1822629988

When remixing and remaking movies how far can you go before, you’re just copying instead of remaking? In 1994 such as when the Lion King was released, I think it was easier to copy and not credit the original sources. This was before the internet was such a popular place. People in the Western world didn’t always know what was happening in the Eastern world. Disney probably thought no one would notice that they copied direct scenes from another source. If this happened now, the entire internet would be alit with hundreds of YouTube video’s showing the similarities between the two and making Disney accountable. Instead, it happened in 1994 and instead, they probably got a couple of digs in the newspaper – and one notable nod in “the Simpsons”. Pretty much, if you don’t want to be accused of copying something else… change more than one letter in a character’s name, and definitely do not copy entire scenes from the original.

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#disney #princess #original #copycat

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igsy-blog · 8 years ago

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BBC 100 books (with commentary)

thanks for the tag @thegreatorangedragon As an English major I was compelled to read a lot of these, and I may only have skimmed/read chunks of some of them if I could get away with it....

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen: not my favorite Austen, actually (Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility are 1 & 2) The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - OMG, SO many times. My siblings and I had rituals around the reading of LOTR.

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte. Yes - it’s OK Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - Yes! My kids grew up to them and the experience was almost as good as the books. But I also really enjoyed watching Rowling mature as a writer over the course of the series. I don’t ask for perfection from my writers, but warmth and growth. :-) Also, they got my stubborn non-reader sons to READ. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - like probably every other person who went to MS/HS in the US. The Bible - yes, and twice all the way through. once at about 10, and then more recently along with Slate’s Blogging the Bible (ok it was just the Old Testament). That was a stage on my journey to my current fallen-catholicness  Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - yes, but prefer the Pat Benatar song :D Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - yes and really need a re-read  His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - No, keep meaning to. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens . Yes, and can I say I love Dickens - LOVE Dickens - but I hate this book. I think it’s always assigned because it’s shortish. I regularly reread the glorious messes that are Pickwick Papers, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, and my fav, the insane Our Mutual Friend (but ONLY the Lizzie Hexam/Eugene Wrayburn segments). Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - and the sequels. I think Jo’s Boys might actually be my favorite. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy . yes - I am pretty sure??? Catch 22 - Joseph Heller. read enough of it to count Complete Works of Shakespeare - William Shakespeare; yes! my mom was a Zefferelli Romeo & Juliet junkie - we had the album of the film - and I must have heard it 3 dozen times before I was 7. She bought a complete works and I read all of it over the years. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier. No  The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - Yes. My husband’s favorite book. And I really liked the Rankin-Bass film, when I was young. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk No Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - yeah The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger Realllly? This is a good book but I’m not sure it belongs on this list. First novel and feels fresh out of an MFA program. My other complaints I won’t say here because I tend to get very snarky about this book. (Another book I read around the same time [mid-oughts] was Then We Came to the End, the debut novel of Joshua Ferris - much better, like DeLillo without the air of self-importance.) Middlemarch - George Eliot; love me some Eliot (but prefer Silas Marner, mainly because of a very good tv adaption). Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - Again: really? I read this book because I spent the summer between HS and college in a really small town with a teeny library and I basically read my way through the fiction stacks. Won’t say more than that, because I would get political. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald Yes, but not a favorite. Bleak House - Charles Dickens. A great, great book for which two amazing miniseries have been done in my lifetime. But rightly criticized, IMO, for the annoying tone of its first-person narrator, Esther. Dickens was dazzlingly, spectacularly wrong in writing about women. Not to mention other groups. But my god did he skewer institutions on behalf of the (British) poor - none better. This book wins for the Jo’s death scene and its sweeping, bitter, critique of church and state and society and everything - and so human. “Dead! And dying thus around us, everyday.” I was 12 when I first read that, recovering from chicken pox, and I sat straight up in bed. This is the book that made me a socialist. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy This is so horrible, but I haven’t! The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams. Yes, fun, but not a favorite. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - No. I started to and have a copy at work, for some reason I don’t even remember. But not enough to county Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky No :( Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck. Yes, oh and my grandma’s family were Okies. Everyone in my family has a copy of the Sacramento Bee front page story sneering about the dust bowl immigrants arriving in town and my great-grandmother is mentioned by name (though they mistakenly think she is her widowed father’s wife). I love Cali, and Sactown, but we have a long history of being not-so-welcoming to everyone at certain times (was it in the 80s where the “Welcome to California, Now Go Home” bumper stickers were everywhere?).

Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - yes The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - yes but so long ago I don’t remember it at all Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy yes. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens. Yes, not his best by far. Another “easy” read like Great Expectations Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - and many other of his works, when I was trying NOT to be an atheist - Mere Christianity, his sci-fi trilogy and Til We Have Faces, a retelling of my favorite myth, Psyche and Cupid. I like the more obscure books in this series best - The Silver Chair and The Horse and his Boy. Emma - Jane Austen Persuasion - Jane Austen - oh, here it is!

 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis .... uh, yes The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - was a group read at work a couple of years ago. recommend. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres  Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - yes Animal Farm - George Orwell - another book I want to re-read. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - nope  One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez; YES A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving  The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ... did I? I’m pretty sure. Or was it The Moonstone? Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery. YES. Anxiously awaiting the new adaption. Why is it so hard to get Anne of Windy Poplars on kindle? That is the funniest one. And Rilla of Ingleside so heartbreaking  Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy  The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood, yes and ever so long ago. Another book to re-read soon (haven’t started watching the series yet) Lord of the Flies - William Golding Atonement - Ian McEwan; LOVE this book and his writing in general. He also wrote the screenplay, and the movie and the book are a perfect match in tone.  Life of Pi - Yann Martel No, but on my list Dune - Frank Herbert - no Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - yes, Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - yay!  A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon  A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - my intro to Dickens, though not his best Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - starting to get depressed at all this dystopian fiction that needs to be re-read as a primer for the present times  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - lives at my desk at work. Not even a favorite book of mine, but I love diving into his words every once in a while Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov The Secret History - Donna Tartt The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - when I saw the movie it reminded me why I wasn’t into reading the book Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - plot better than the story  On The Road - Jack Kerouac Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - yeah, I had to read so much Hardy Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - no, want to though  Moby Dick - Herman Melville; I can’t even think about this book without remembering our class discussion of the “circle jerk” chapter. I remember literally nothing else.  Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - meh Dracula - Bram Stoker  The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - an ALL-TIME favorite Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson Ulysses - James Joyce; all hail the master, and the bastard responsible for my sick dependence on the em-dash The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome Germinal - Emile Zola Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - unfortunately, yes Possession - AS Byatt A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens; of course Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell The Color Purple - Alice Walker - excellent The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry Charlotte’s Web - EB White: yes The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Yes. I prefer Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter series hands-down, but despite her association with Tolkien, Lewis, et al, she got squashed between Conan Doyle and Christie. Her Gaudy Night is one of my top five books.

The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - yeah The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery heck, yeah The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks Watership Down - Richard Adams yes A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - my kids read this book in HS, so I have a copy lying around, but have never read it A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas Hamlet - William Shakespeare - yes, probably too many times. What are my favorite Shakespeare dramas? Maybe King Lear, Richard III? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl. yes  Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

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thejgatsbykid · 7 years ago

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No but see that’s what I mean- the changing of Collins’ offer from one of marriage to employment isn’t a novel innovation, it’s necessary in the adjustment to a modern audience. They had to change it, because a functional stranger asking Lizzie to marry him in a modern context would be weird as hell and untenable in our context, and if they just kept it as “oh he asks her out” then the Lizzie of LBD probably would have given him a pity date or two and cut him loose, because the stakes of one or two dates aren’t nearly as high as marriage. In order to maintain the stakes of marriage without alienating a modern audience, Collins’ proposal couldn’t have been one of marriage, and a job offer was the most obvious solution.

I’m talking about LBD when I make my original “mrs bennet not caring about marriage” argument specifically for your last point- that even with the elimination of the Collins plot, LBD still maintains a love-crazy characterization for Mrs Bennet. (Side note- I know I’m picking on LBD here but I do adore it, it’s one of my favorite Austen adaptations, along w/ Emma Approved which does an astounding job of adapting Emma, a novel that because of its plotline centering on matchmaking is necessarily difficult to adapt into a modern retelling, because the culture surrounding setting people up/matchmaking really isn’t the same two hundred years later, but I digress) (side note side note, Emma adaptation where Emma Woodhouse is trying to develop, like, the perfect dating app, that would be a good one, someone call Hollywood).

My issue is mainly that something we as modern audiences don’t appreciate is that Mrs Bennet has super valid reasons to be the way she is. Is she melodramatic and kind of obnoxious about it? Absolutely. But we as modern audiences tend to attribute her obsession with marrying off her daughters as a side effect of her melodrama and obnoxiousness, rather than something that’s just enhanced and affected by it. So as a result we don’t think about her character in the same way. We stop understanding her at “wants her daughters to be married” rather than digging under that to the real core of her which is “wants her daughters to be taken care of,” which is shown in context as “wants her daughters to be married.” Whereas other characters get updates that carry through their original traits into a new context- Elizabeth becomes a grad student whose Very Loud opinions get voiced through a public blog, Lydia becomes an aimless thoughtless party girl (other side note, the sex tape thing was a great innovation on the part of LBD, in my opinion, because it really carried through the same sort of stakes as running away with Wickham had in the original context, in that The Internet Is Forever and it would be a black mark on Lydia’s reputation forever, whereas her just running away with a boy in the modern context would be a source of alarm and upset for her family but imo doesn’t carry the same “could potentially ruin your life” weight as the sex tape did) (that’s not to say that adaptations that don’t change Wickham’s actions are worse, just that I’m really taken with the sex tape plot point).

Anyway, my point is that we don’t update Mrs Bennet in the same way, and we should. Because her obsession with marriage ends up being... kind of anachronistic, you know? Which is a thing Lizzie comments on in the very beginning of LBD! She points out how ridiculous it is. Which, like, Mrs Bennet wanting her daughters married wasn’t ridiculous in 1813. She was ridiculous about it, to be sure! But it wasn’t itself ridiculous.

But bringing it back to the Collins point- while yes Mrs B in LBD is upset about Lizzie turning down the offer, it doesn’t carry the same sort of... weight and connotations as it does in the original context. That’s my qualm- they updated the Collins plot, but because they didn’t update Mrs Bennet in turn, the whole thing seemed mismatched. We didn’t have an entire web series of Mrs Bennet being obsessed w/ Lizzie’s job prospects leading up to her turning down this offer to justify and give weight to Mrs Bennet’s ire, whereas in the original the Collins plot represented Lizzie throwing everything her mother dedicated herself to back in her face- for good reasons, and Lizzie was right, etc etc etc, but you just don’t get the same narrative consistency if the Collins situation and Mrs Bennet’s motivations are asymmetrical.

But like I said- it doesn’t help the plot in the same way for Mrs. B to be obsessed with getting her daughters into a good college, for all that it’s more faithful to the actual motivations of the character. Not everything can be perfect all the time, and LBD is really good, but This Essay is in fact picking on LBD for this specific aspect of Mrs Bennet’s character

ok here’s a hot take: modern adaptations of pride and prejudice should replace Mrs Bennet’s obsession w/ marrying her daughters off with a determination to see them all be lawyers/doctors/engineers in their own right, and her frustration with Lizzie for refusing Mr Collins should be because she turned down the opportunity to have a lucrative and successful career in order to do what she wants, which is, like, journalism or something

#said Jamie #i should have put 'disclaimer i know about lizzie bennet diaries' in the op lmao #sorry for the essay i'm not trying to be a dick i'm just doubling down on my point

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kateeorg · 8 years ago

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Art of Adaptation: The Literary Webseries

Classic novels ingrained in Western culture have been adapted in many ways over years – plays, musicals, miniseries, films, modern teen novels, even text posts (no, really). In recent years, with the success of Game of Thrones, we’re seeing more and more books and series adapted to television format.

But one of my favorite methods of adaptation is one rarely discussed outside of internet culture: the literary web series.

These modern retellings of public domain works turn classic protagonists into Youtube vloggers, who let their story unfold before an audience. Literary web series have to be particularly inventive in bringing classic stories to modern day, organically integrating racial & gender diversity and modern sensibilities to works made over a hundred years ago.

Breaking down the structure of these series, there are five components to an effective adaptation:

Components

Initial conceit (or, why does this character have a blog?)

Audience acknowledgement & interaction

How are other perspectives integrated?

Inventiveness (with camera stuff, settings, etc.)

Quality of Adaptation (modernization of problematic elements, captured the spirit of the original)

Let’s look at some examples to see how this breaks down. (spoilers ahead)

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, 2012-2013

(Adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, 1813)

Conceit

Pretty straightforward – Lizzie Bennet is a grad student in Communications doing this as her project, presenting her views in contrast to her mother’s. What starts out as documenting Lizzie’s opinions ends up getting involved in a whole lot of drama.

Audience acknowledgement & interaction High acknowledgement and interaction. Lizzie’s videos are very public and very popular in-universe. The story even takes from the audience quite a bit, responding to the multiple requests for Darcy, and even affecting the self-esteem of Lydia. Acknowledges the problems of putting your life and the lives of those around you on the internet, but how communicating with strangers can help to communicate with people closer to you.

Are other perspectives integrated? Other characters take over Lizzie’s vlog or have their own side vlogs, and show the holes in Lizzie’s sometimes biased logic.

Inventiveness This was pretty much the first well-known literary web series, so launching the whole art form definitely counts! Also, two words: costume theater.

Quality of Adaptation Lizzie Bennet Diaries, rather than being a straight point-by-point adaptation, streamlined the events to make sense for modern day – house parties become weddings and pub visits, estates become companies, problems with inheritance laws become problems with student debt and bad economy. Characters barely sketched out in the original text are fleshed out, and Lizzie herself is not only the modern Elizabeth, but the voice of self-exploring 20-somethings everywhere.

But my favorite method of adaptation was the new life injected into main themes of pride and prejudice. When the original book came out, the audience would have been surprised to discover, along with Elizabeth, the hidden depths of Darcy.

200 years later, when “Where is my Darcy?” is the common phrase among Austenites, no one is surprised Darcy is better than he seems. So, Pemberley Digital brought back the element of surprise by making Lydia Bennet, an irresponsible flake in the original book, the one truly misunderstood by Lizzie (though dear Darcy still plays an important role).

The only thing maybe lost in adaptation is the fact that, in the original book, Lizzie was more right than wrong, whereas in the web series, she seems more wrong than right. Additionally, Lizzie’s confrontation with Caroline Lee near the end of the series, meant to mirror the one with Lady Catherine De Bourgh, loses its power since Caroline doesn’t have nearly as much power over Lizzie. Lizzie standing up to her is not as big a deal.

Note: I highly recommend the companion novel The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, as it fills in some elements of the story that couldn’t be put on screen.

Emma Approved, 2013-2014

(Adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, 1815)

Conceit Emma Woodhouse is documenting her greatness in lifestyle excellence as head of the consulting firm Emma Approved. Eh…it does fall in line with the character, but some see it as over-the-top.

Audience acknowledgement & interaction Emma’s videos, except for the Q&As, are private. But she has cameras on the desks of everyone who works there (to the consternation of some of them). I think this is where a lot of fans got lost, because the audience didn’t affect the story the way it did before.

Harriet’s music videos are a little more interactive, but not part of the main storyline.

Are other perspectives integrated? Swiveling to other people’s desk cameras helps. Also, Harriet has a music blog which often reflects her mood and her growing confidence in herself.

Inventiveness Month-long arcs of consulting clients in an office setting. More space, multiple rooms, in-universe charities made real.

Quality of Adaptation I love the way the characters were adapted, on one hand.The themes of appearance vs. true character are even more apparent in a web series format, where often charisma rules the day. Emma starts out ingratiating, but we really root for her by the end. Knightly is as lovely as ever, but now with more of a sense of humor (also helps that he’s not above Emma in station this time around). Harriet no longer stands in Emma’s shadow and grows beyond a project to a true friend.

The supporting characters are all well-sketched and memorable, with the addition of LBD’s Caroline Lee as the infamous Mrs. Elton an incredible twist. The resolutions of the main pairings (Emma/Knightley and Harriet/B-Mart) were extremely satisfying, almost more so than the ones in LBD!

But the adaptation of the story felt choppy. The month-long arcs of Emma counseling a client weren’t quite organic, and didn’t quite fall in line with the format of the original book. And by keeping the action confined to the offices, it’s argued that an important element of the story – mainly Emma’s interactions with her neighbors and her father – is lost. So, as an adaptation, it may not be the strongest. Still, it’s an enjoyable, inventive twist on a classic.

(Oh, and PS - the actors playing Emma and Knightley ended up dating in real life. If you just watch for their chemistry, that would be enough)

Autobiography of Jane Eyre, 2013-2014

(Adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, 1847)

Conceit Jane Eyre is a nursing graduate embarking on a new chapter in her life, and wants to be brave like Lizzie. Though Jane narrates her own story in the original book as well, she’s a shy character who might seem unlikely to put herself on display on the internet. But once she gets going it becomes a great form of self-expression for her (the original Jane was an artist, updated to a photographer).

Audience acknowledgement & interaction Jane’s videos are public, and she does do Q&As, but the audience doesn’t affect the story more than that. However, Jane does acknowledge that her audience might serve as witness to the weirdness going on, proving she isn’t crazy (and possibly account for her whereabouts if she turns up dead! Ah, gothic novels.)

Are other perspectives integrated? Sometimes other people find the camera, or don’t realize that Jane left her camera on somewhere. Mostly, however, this is Jane’s story, and she tells it well.

Inventiveness Outdoor shots, not afraid to get downright creepy, meta-commentary episode of Mary Rivers watching all of Jane’s videos.

Quality of Adaptation Jane Eyre is a pretty weird novel, by modern standards, and a problematic one, what with its shortsighted treatment of race, mental illness (the half-Creole Mason family hinted as being somewhat crude and prone to mental illness), and culture (Adele and her mother are put down for being French), and its arguably unhealthy relationships (since Rochester is kind of a jerk who has slept with a lot of women, and St. John is… well… Jane’s cousin). So I’m glad a lot of this is either removed or approached with more sensitivity, while preserving much of the darkness of the original novel.

However, the adaptation does lose the supernatural element that makes the original a gothic novel. Also, since Jane isn’t facing nearly as steep of odds in terms of her class and gender, she’s as a result a softer character. But she is nonetheless strong and principled in the face of going it alone, and her story of finding a place and people to belong to is just as fulfilling as the original.Though the ending may feel rushed due to circumstances beyond the show’s control, overall it’s a strong modern adaptation.

The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy, 2014-2016

(Adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play, Peter Pan, and 1911 novel, Peter and Wendy)

Note: This only covers Seasons 1-2, as I haven’t gotten around to Season 3 yet.

Conceit In the town of Neverland, Ohio, 27-year-old Wendy Darling runs an advice blog through her family’s paper, the Kensington Chronicle, which also captures the lives of her brothers, John and Michael, her vitriolic female friend Lily Bagha, and her best friend (who wants the be more-than-a-friend), Peter Pan.

The blog fits with Wendy’s motherly personality from the original story, but realistically doesn’t show all the action happening in front of Wendy’s camera.Not-as-realistically, the rest of the action occurs from Tinkerbell’s perspective, but it is so brilliantly done that it seems like fairies should have been included in a web series ages ago!

Audience acknowledgement & interaction On Wendy’s vlogs, Wendy does talk to the audience and answers questions, though I think most are fabricated to move the plot along.During the fairy-cam moments, no acknowledgement of audience directly, but the businesses and characters created by audience members on the Neverland Twitter registrar are sometimes referenced (and on that note, the P + W social media platforms interact a LOT with their audience).

Are other perspectives integrated? The fairy-cam gives the audience more movement and perspectives than Wendy’s vlog alone would allow, and each character gets their day in the sun, so kudos to P + W for that! Season 2 also adds cameras in Wendy’s office at JhMedia (similar to Emma Approved) and Peter’s playacting videos, splitting the narrative between the small town and the big city in interesting parallel ways.

Inventiveness The fairy-cam, and inclusion of magic in a web series in general (though it doesn’t really effect the plot). Also, surprisingly might be the most lewd of the shows reviewed so far, due to veiled references to smoking pot and “magic” brownies.

Quality of Adaptation New Peter + Wendy is by no means a faithful adaptation of the beloved novel in terms of plot. And really, how could it be? By choosing a fantasy over a comedy of manners/period piece, the creators faced a particularly huge challenge in adaptation.

The basic tenants are there – Wendy being too old to stay where she is, escapes with Peter, but realizes she has to grow up and leave Neverland, leaving Peter behind by his own choice. But other than that, the adaptation basically takes the original characters, fleshes them out as modern 20-year-olds, and uses them and Neverland as a launch point for a rumination of what it means to grow up – or not – in the 2010s. This is highlighted even more by depicting the Neverland gang and the pirates/executives of JHMedia as contemporaries. Adulthood, here, is not about age but about attitude.

The characterizations are spot on, the plot both whimsical and deeply thought provoking, and the magic of the original is still retained in surprising ways. They even made sure Hook went by “Jas” rather than “James,” a facet of the original story lost in time.

Changing Tiger Lily, a stereotyped Native American character, into a complex woman of actual Indian descent, sacrifices the problematic element of the character without whitewashing, which the reviled prequel Pan got flack for. In a major departure, the web series also explores sexuality more in depth. (If you’d told me John Darling and Smee could be an adorable pairing before this series, I’d have called you crazy. But there you go.)

Wendy’s character, however, strays from the original in that she is allowed to be more flawed. The original Wendy was meant to be an argument in favor of women’s suffrage by depicting a female character as more sensible and responsible than the male characters. While modern Wendy is still the most responsible of her friends, she is also zany, ambitious, and sometimes even cruel, making some questionable decisions the original Wendy might not have made. Her character arc reminds me a bit of Peter Banning’s in Hook as she tries to find balance between childhood and adulthood.

I can’t say whether it was effective or not without seeing Season 3, but I love that the writers are tackling those themes.

It’s difficult to pinpoint a single element that makes an adaptation a good one. But if I had to take a stab, I think it is heart, humor, and sincerity in the characters, plus a relatable plot dealing with changes and new beginnings, that most draws people to a series, and all the ones above definitely managed to capture that!

For more literary web series, check out this comprehensive list. My recommendations: Misselthwaite Archives, From Mansfield with Love, Northbound, The Cate Morland Chronicles, Edgar Allen Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party/Gala for Friends Potluck (aka Poe Party).

So, what do you think? Do you think these web series capture the best of the books they’re based on? Got any other examples you want to talk about?

#literary web series #lizzie bennet diaries #emma approved #autobiography of jane eyre #aoje #lbd #the lbd #new peter and wendy #new adventures of peter and wendy

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jixiani · 5 years ago

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In defense of fanfiction

I’ve been thinking about fanfiction lately, (really I’ve been thinking that I should really be taking some of this time to write more, but that’s another post) AO3 just had their yearly fundraiser so of course the old discourse over the site and its history was dragged up again and then Sarah had brought it up this morning and well, I have a lot of strong feelings on the subject. Let’s start with a little personal background: I have been reading and writing fanfic since the late 90’s. It started out as something silly my best friend introduced me to and we would sit in her mother’s computer room and giggle over ‘speculative fan fictions’ and participate on months-long roleplay scenarios on chat boards and take turns passing notebooks full of handwritten stories back and forth which were every bit as terrible as you’d think two 14-year-old girls could come up with. Unfortunately, we were in the Vampire Chronicles fandom so we had a front-row seat for the Anne Rice and her lawyer's debacle that will from here on out be referred to as “The Dark Times”. We watched our friends’ work get pulled, our RP sites close down, we feared that we’d get a cease and desist letter, we hid our notebooks and dreamed up our stories exclusively verbally. I was deeply ashamed of my secret love of fanfic for years. I kept writing, but I kept it secret, I kept reading it but would never admit to it. Fanfiction was something shameful, taboo, some terrible sin akin to watching porn, and not the good socially acceptable kind of porn. But time moved on and fandom moved on and fanfiction started to be more acceptable. I joined Fanfiction.net, I wrote some stuff on Livejournal (although I still kept it set to private). I read A LOT of fanfiction, jumping fandoms, and leaving reviews. People I admired came out as liking and writing fanfiction. Of course, then the purges hit. Strikethrough and the like. I’m not going to get into that here, because that’s a rant all its own. Anyway, those were also some dark days as fandom searched for somewhere to land. I stumbled over Archive of our own a few years ago and I aggressively support them whenever I can because they fight for the fandom. Now I speak out in defense of fanfiction whenever possible. I’ve attended panels at conventions about fanfiction, I support and share posts about it from my favorite authors, I let everyone know that I’m proud of my fanfic (although I still don’t post it, that’s because I tend not to finish things and I don't’ want to get someone excited for something I know I’m going to abandon in a month, not because I’m ashamed.). So let’s talk over some points because Sarah brought up a good point today. Why is fanfiction such a shameful thing in the fandom community, and in the writing community? One of the people on my friends list who I admire and is a professional, published author once rolled their eyes and scoffed when I said that I wanted to go to the fanfiction panel at a convention. Yet, no other facet of fandom is treated this way. I brought this up on Sarah’s post and I’m going to reiterate it here. Fan artists are not scoffed at, people flock to their tables in artist’s alley. Fan-made comics and doujinshi have led to careers writing and drawing comics and scripts for the same series their fanwork was based on. No professional costumer or prop maker sneers at cosplayers, in fact, there are now professional cosplayers. Fans wait in line for hours to watch masquerade skits at conventions. Fan-dubs like Dragonball Z Abridged and Nescaflowne are hugely popular and have led to professional voice acting gigs and production studios. But if an author dares to mention that they got their start in fanfiction? The horror, the outrage, the hate mail. Yet so much of our media could arguably be called fanfiction. Dante’s Inferno? John Milton’s Paradise Lost? The Aeneid? Classics? Yes. Fanfiction? Also yes. Joyce’s Ulysses is just an AU of the Odyssey. Anything written about or based on myths? Anything involving King Arthur? Sherlock Holmes? Shakespear...Oh you can cry adaptation all you want. Let’s face it if it’s written by some old white guy it’s literature and a classic and an innovative reimagining but really it’s just fanfic and it’s everywhere. West Side Story is a fanfic of a fanfic since Shakespeare based Romeo and Juliet off a poem by a similar name. My Fair Lady? Pygmalion AU. Hamilton? Real Person Song Fic! 50 Shades series, Mortal Instruments, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, hell there are literally hundreds of published Jane Austen fanfictions. John Gardner’s Grendel is a retelling of Beowolf. The Wiz, Wicked and the rest of Gregory Maguire’s books? The Wizard of Oz doesn’t enter public domain until 2035. The Magnificent Seven? Kurosawa called and he wants his seven samurai back, he’d also like to reclaim Yojimbo from A Fist Full of Dollars. Speaking of tv, how about Black Sails? It’s a fanfiction prequel to Treasure Island. Any comic book not written by the original creator. Any book series based on Star Wars, Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft, etc. I could go on all day. So why is it, when so much of our popular culture consists of what basically boils down to fanfiction, that fanfiction is seen as a shameful indulgence, as “cheating”, as trash?Part of it boils down to sex. Read any article that brings up fanfiction and there will invariably be a line where the author distances themself by saying something along the lines of they don’t personally read it, or how slash fic isn’t their thing but to each their own. (Both quotes from some of the sites I pulled the above list from) A lot of people seem to think that fanfiction is just porn, and while yes there is some fanfiction that is porn and some of it is very good, the same can be said for regular fiction as well. People don’t blush and giggle over Lord of the Rings, yet when I say that I’ve read fanfic that’s longer than Tolkien’s trilogy I may as well be talking about how I read Aragorn/Boromir slash fic regardless of what the actual subject matter was. Yes, there’s sex in fanfiction. A lot of it is gay sex. You can read Lolita in school but Harry Potter fanfic? Gasp, think of the children! Even if that fanfic happens to be about what if Petunia loved Harry like a son instead of pushing him away and neglecting him. There is some really fantastic fan fiction out there. Some of it has sex, some of it doesn't. Some of it deals with queer characters and experiences, some of it doesn’t. There’s nothing inherently wrong with erotica and it’s an entirely separate issue. Not every fanfiction is a 50 Shades-eque erotic rewrite of Twilight, and even if they were, so what? A lot of fanfiction has to do with wish fulfillment. You want to know what happens next, or what would happen if this had happened instead, or if there was this character. You want to see someone like you in your favorite fandom. I had wanted to adventure with Bilbo when I was a kid. I wanted to go on adventures and fight and ride dinosaurs. These desires don’t go away just because we grow up. I got into roleplay and larp and gaming because I still enjoy make-believe. I write for a lot of the same reasons. Everyone wants to be the main character. Fanfiction gives you that chance. You can write yourself into a story, you can write someone that’s like you, you can write someone that’s nothing like you but what you want to be. So, let’s discuss our old friend Mary Sue. She gets trotted out as an example every time someone brings up fanfiction (or any uppity female character ever). Mary Sue was born in the 60’s. She is an actual character from a Star Trek Original Series fanfiction. Yes, fanfiction existed in the 60’s. Mary Sue was the brightest and prettiest girl to come out of Starfleet, she managed to be in all the right places at the right times to save the ship and capture the heart of Spock. Self insert fics and Mary Sues are at the heart of why we should be terribly ashamed of our fanfiction habit. Except, what was Luke Skywalker if not George Lucas’ self insert Marty Stu? There are countless male characters that are as bad or worse than your typical Mary sue and they are never called out for it. Seanan brought this up in a post once about her character October Daye, her editor had said that the character was too competent, too cool, and that it was unrealistic and she should tone it down. She had him replace the character’s name with “Harry Dresden” and reread the story and suddenly it was fine. There are a great many articles and essays about our friend Mary Sue and I implore you to read some of them. She is not the enemy we make her out to be. Fanfiction, on the rare occasion that it is accepted, is seen as some sort of training wheels, or baby’s first writing. It’s amateurish, it’s juvenile, it’s just not very good. If we are not ashamed of it, then it’s expected that we are only using it as a starting point to hone our writing and move on to professional published works. It’s either that or something terribly self-indulgent that should be kept to ourselves. Some fanfic writers do go on to become “real” writers. Seanan McGuire has always been very open about how her agent first approached her after reading some of her Buffy/Faith fanfiction. Some “real” writers also write fanfiction. Neil Gaiman won a Hugo for his Chronicles of Narnia Fanfic. Ursula Vernon and Mercedes Lackey write fanfiction in their spare time. Some fanfiction writers never become published authors, not everyone wants to. Some are happy to have a dozen 150k fics about their favorite fandom, or maybe just one 500k epic, some, myself included, may only have one short fic posted somewhere. There is nothing that says that you have to use your hobby to turn a profit. (By the way, for reference, War and Peace is 561,304 words, Dune is 187,240 words, you cannot make the argument that fanfic writers don’t put time into their craft when they have more words than Tolstoy under their belt.)Some of the ‘training wheels’ analogy is true. Fanfic is a terrific gateway to writing. It teaches pacing, plot, character development, how to take criticism. If I ever do write something professionally I will not be nearly as afraid of the red pen as I am of bad reviews. Anonymous readers are the most ruthless critics. May the literary gods preserve you from ever having your fanfic read aloud as an example of how terrible and ‘cringy’ fanfiction can be. There is a lot of fanfiction out there that is written by teenage girls, and it reads like it was written by a teenage girl, but the only way to get better at something is to practice. Fanfiction allows budding writers to do that. There are no rules, no one standing at the gates to bar entry, and entire communities of people willing to give advice and commentary. Sometimes it’s less helpful than harmful, but there is something about posting a new fic and waiting for that first ‘like’ or ‘kudos’ or a review. There’s something to be said for instant gratification. I have read a lot of really terrible fanfic. I have slogged through stuff that would make Mary Sue herself cringe. I have read about the ½ vampire, ½ werewolf, ½ fairy long lost princess. I have read grammar that would make your eyes bleed. Not all of it has been confined to fan works. I have read fanwork that has had me convulsing with silent laughter to the point that I wondered if I would die. Dialog that was ten times better than anything I had read in a professional novel. Fanfiction should not be judged by its worst offenders. We don’t hold Dune to the same standard as Twilight. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is not terrible and cringy because 50 Shades of Grey overuses the phrase “Oh my.” There is some absolutely terrible fanfic out there and there is some pretty terrible published fic as well, but we don’t hold that against most novelists, so why do we hold it against fanfiction writers?I guess that brings us to the elephant in the fandom. Sexism. Fanfiction has historically been something written by and for young women and there is nothing more shameful than something liked by a young woman. Boybands? The color pink? Horse Girl books and Sparkly Vampires? Society hates them. We mock them. It is not acceptable to enjoy them. Sound familiar? How many times is something considered cool until a woman decides that she likes it? We as a society hate women and hate the things they enjoy and we hate teenage girls the most. Think of how much people hated selfies and duckface and instagram. How much hate was directed at Britney Spears, One Direction, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber? Whether it has a basis in something or not, we hate them, we make jokes, we share the memes. We write them off as having no substance, as being stupid, not worth our time. Belittling of teenage girls for their interests and fandoms isn't a new phenomenon. Remember Mary Sue? Not only that, but a lot of fanfiction is gay. Women and gays are still the punchline to a lot of jokes and we can’t ignore that that plays a big part in people’s hatred of fanfiction, even if it’s not on purpose. Fanfiction has always been a bastion for people that couldn’t find stories about them in popular fiction. A lot of mainstream main characters are straight guys. A lot of fanfiction main characters are young women or gay men. Now, I admit that I’m oversimplifying this, and especially in recent years as it is becoming safer for people to come out as other genders and queer and as having mental illness or not being neurotypical, you are seeing more of that reflected in the fanfiction community. I don’t want anyone to think that I am purposefully leaving anyone out of this. The fanfiction community has not always been so great at being inclusive of people of color or transgender, it’s getting better, but I’m not going to stand here and pretend we’ve always been perfect. In the last several years I’ve seen a lot more inclusion. As I said, fanfiction has always been a home to the “Other”, as that expands to include more individuals so too does the community. Fanfics provide us with a place to work through issues and present perspectives that we don’t get to see anywhere else, without having to create an entire world from scratch. It’s accessible to everyone. I’ve spent the better part of an afternoon researching and writing this. I hope that I was at least partially coherent and I got you to at least take a look at why you feel the way you feel about fanfiction. I’m not sure if I exactly got across the points I was trying for, there’s a lot more eloquent, well thought out arguments out there from more knowledgeable people. Check out Seanan McGuire, she’s got a lot to say on the subject.

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jackson38toh · 8 years ago

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Jane Austen’s “Fanny”

Q: Where do you stand on the debate in academia over whether Jane Austen winkingly used the name “Fanny Price” for her Mansfield Park heroine?

A: There’s no chance that Jane Austen was slyly winking at her readers when she used that name in Mansfield Park (1814).

The British use of “fanny” to mean the female genitalia (here in the US it means the buttocks) didn’t appear until Austen had been dead for 20 years.

And if she had been familiar with this use of “fanny,” she wouldn’t have used it for such a shy, upright, and conscientious character as Fanny Price.

The feminine name “Fanny,” a diminutive of “Frances,” was very common in England at the time Austen was writing. Before the slang usages came along, “Fanny” was no more suggestive than “Annie.”

“Frances” was the feminine version of the men’s name “Francis,” and it used to be very popular in both Britain and the United States.

Many famous and admired women were officially named “Frances” and known by the pet name “Fanny” from the 16th through the early 20th centuries.

Popular authors included Fanny Burney (1752-1840), and Fanny Trollope (1779-1863), Anthony’s mother. Well-known actresses included Fanny Kemble (1809-93) and Fanny Brice (1891-1951).

All of them had been given the formal name “Frances” except for Brice, who was originally named Fania Borach.

However, “Fannie” was the original name of the American cooking expert and food writer Fannie Farmer (1857-1915). Her name was borrowed with a different spelling in 1919 by the candy company Fanny Farmer.

In his book Names and Naming Patterns in England, 1538-1700, Scott Smith-Bannister writes that “Frances” held a mean ranking of 17.8 in a selected list of women’s names that were popular during that 162-year period.

At its peak during that period, “Frances” was ranked 13, Smith-Bannister says. (In case you’re interested, the names generally ranked ahead of Frances in Smith-Banister’s statistics were Elizabeth, Mary, Anne, Margaret, Jane, Alice, Joan, Agnes, Catherine, Dorothy, Isabel, Elinor, and Ellen.)

In “New Influences on Naming Patterns in Victorian Britain,” a 2016 paper, Amy M. Hasfjord classifies “Frances” and “Fanny” among England’s “classic” names.

Her statistical ranking places “Frances” 13th among names given to girl babies born between 1825 and 1840.

However, Hasfjord says both “Frances” and “Fanny” dropped in popularity during the period from 1885 to 1900.

In the United States, meanwhile, surveys of the popularity of “Fanny” show that the use of the name dwindled from a peak in 1880 to relatively uncommon in 1940.

In both cases—British and American usage—it seems that the name “Fanny” dropped in popularity just as the slang word “fanny” increased in common usage.

In British English, “fanny” came to mean “the vulva or vagina” in the late 1830s, according to The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang.

Jonathan Lighter, author of the slang dictionary, cites a collection entitled Bawdy Songs of the Music Hall (1835-40): “I’ve got a little fanny / That with hairs is overspread.”

The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest example is from an 1879 issue of a pornographic magazine published in London, The Pearl: “You shan’t look at my fanny for nothing.”

And a British slang dictionary published in 1889 defined “fanny” as “the fem. pud.” (the female pudenda).

This genital usage is “always rare” in the US, Random House says. As an exception, both the OED and Random House cite the American writer Erica Jong, who used it in her novel Fanny (1980):

“ ‘Madam Fanny,’ says he, obliging me, but with the same ironick Tone. ‘D’ye know what that means in the Vulgar Tongue? … It means the Fanny-Fair … the Divine Monosyllable, the Precious Pudendum.”

However, Jong’s novel is an inventive retelling of John Cleland’s bawdy English classic Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748-49), popularly known as Fanny Hill after its main character.

We suspect that Jong’s imaginative take on Fanny Hill as well as speculation, since debunked, by the slang etymologist Eric Partridge may be responsible for the myth in academia that “fanny” meant the vagina in Cleland’s time.

In the original, 1937 edition of his slang dictionary, Partridge wrote that the use of “fanny” for the “female pudenda” was from “ca. 1860,” but was “perhaps ex Fanny, the ‘heroine’ of John Cleland’s Memoirs of Fanny Hill [sic], 1749.”

However, the 2015 edition of Partridge’s dictionary notes that Fanny Hill’s “publication in 1749 is about a hundred years before ‘fanny’ came to be used in this sense.” (From The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, edited by Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor.)

Two other slang dictionaries—those by Lighter and Jonathon Green—call the reader’s attention to Fanny Hill but date the slang usage from the mid-1830s or later.

So why mention Fanny Hill in connection with the usage? The only apparent reason is that the novel’s leading character is promiscuous and is named “Fanny.” Cleland might just as well have called his protagonist “Eliza Hill.”

Nevertheless a handful of academic writers have strained to establish an 18th-century history for the usage, based on guesswork or intuition from hindsight. Their claims have been often repeated, despite the lack of any direct evidence.

A pair of literary scholars demolished their case piece by piece in 2011.

“In fact the evidence is to the contrary,” Patrick Spedding and James Lambert write in their paper “Fanny Hill, Lord Fanny, and the Myth of Metonymy,” published in the journal Studies in Philology.

They write, for example, that the terms “Fanny Fair” and “Fanny the fair” were used in 18th-century songs, “but never in an obscene context or as a synonym for vagina.”

We won’t detail their arguments, but they painstakingly document actual historical uses of the term and conclude that “fanny” was not used as a sexual term until 1837, citing the same book of music-hall songs mentioned above.

“Consequently,” they write, “it is highly unlikely that any of the fictional Fannys were named with the intention of suggesting the female sexual organs, however specified or identified (vagina, genitalia, pudenda, vulva, mons veneris, or mons pubis), or the male or female buttocks.”

“Current usage rather than eighteenth-century usage is the basis of the interpretation of fanny as a sexual term,” they write.

The milder, American sense of “fanny,” meaning the derrière, apparently dates from World War I, according to Random House. Here is the slang dictionary’s earliest example:

“They made us all get in a circle and stoop over while a guy ran around and hit us on the—never mind where—with a strap—I believe they call the game ‘Bat the Fanny’ and they sure did bat me.” (From a diary entry in a regimental history, 12th U.S. Infantry, 1798-1918, published in 1919.)

The OED’s earliest example is from the hit Broadway play The Front Page (1928), by Ben Hecht and Charles Macarthur. Here’s the OED citation, which we’ve expanded for context:

“KRUGER. (To MOLLIE, who is in the swivel chair in front of the desk) What’s the idea, Mollie? Can’t you flop somewhere else?

“MURPHY. Yah, parking her fanny in here like it was her house.”

This milder usage soon caught on in Britain. The term was used in the same way by the British playwright Noël Coward in Private Lives (1930): “You’d fallen on your fanny a few moments before.”

Subsequently, the OED has examples of the “buttocks” sense of the word by both British and American writers.

Here’s the American poet Ezra Pound in The Pisan Cantos (1948): “And three small boys on three bicycles / smacked her young fanny in passing.”

And here’s the British novelist Nevil Shute in Trustee From the Toolroom (1960): “I’d never be able to think of John and Jo again if we just sat tight on our fannies and did nothing.”

In short, although there are exceptions, the OED still characterizes the “fanny” that means genitals as “chiefly British English” and the one that means the butt as “chiefly US.”

In case you’re wondering, the OED also labels the noun “fanny pack” (first recorded in 1971) as a North American usage, the equivalent of the British “bumbag” (1951).

Oxford’s definition, found under “bumbag,” is “a small bag or pouch incorporated in a belt worn round the waist or across the shoulder (orig. designed for skiers and worn at the back).”

A similar term, “fanny belt” was in American use almost a decade before “fanny pack” and today means the same.

Oxford’s earliest citation is from the journal American Speech in 1963, when the term had a more limited definition: “Fanny belt … slang for the belt on which ski patrol men carry their first aid kit. A term used by ski patrols.”

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from Blog – Grammarphobia http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2017/02/fanny.html

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carnegiestout · 8 years ago

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Check out a good book: “When We Wake” by Karen Healey

What will the world be like in 100 years? Odds are we won't be around to see it, but Australian teen Tegan Oglietti cares about the future she can't see. Okay, she might be slightly more interested in her new boyfriend, but she's hoping to make a difference in the world by attending a protest of government policies on the day she dies, shot by an inept sniper. A hundred years later, Tegan is revived in an experimental military procedure, the first human ever to return from cryogenic suspension. When We Wake by Karen Healey is the story of Tegan's attempt to adjust to the Australia of the 22nd century, where everyone she knows is dead. Some things about the future are better, but very little is familiar, and Tegan isn't sure who she can trust. Fast-paced and thought-provoking, When We Wake and its sequel, While We Run, will appeal to fans of dystopian fiction. For a quieter, more romance centered dystopian novel, try For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund, a retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion set in a future reeling from the effects of genetic modifications gone awry. ~Sarah, Adult Services

#good books #book review #book advice #karen healey #ya lit #dystopian fiction #australia #booklr

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voyage-in-the-dark · 8 years ago

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2016 in books

(Going through my Goodreads to pick the books that made a big impact on me this year; these books are the formative influences that really shaped me each month. If I had to redo the year, I must reread these books.)

January -- Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles in Love & The Curse of Chalion, Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy. January rereads -- Andrea K Host’s Hunting, Sharon Shinn’s Jovah’s Angel.

So, January seems to be the month I first discovered Lois McMaster Bujold. It’s so weird because it feels like I’ve known her works for forever. I have a huge soft spot for The Curse of Chalion and Miles in Love; Chalion is the first time I was introduced to the trope of the powerful and assured woman with a scandalous and uneasy reputation, causing others to fear her or feel uneasy around her because they don’t know what to do with her. I love this trope. Miles in Love was the first time I was introduced to Miles (the character, not the series), and he was so different from what I’ve usually known. Surprisingly endearing. I finally read the Mistborn trilogy and I devoured it -- it was so creative and good and that ending still guts me.

I reread Hunting and Jovah’s Angel and loved them waaay more than when I first read them.

February -- Lois McMaster Bujold’s Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, Andrea K Host’s The Sleeping Life, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Richard II, and Twelfth Night. February rereads -- Andrea K Host’s Stained Glass Monsters.

February was the month when I read a lot more Shakespeare than I’d ever had, for one of my modules. To this day, Twelfth Night remains one of my favorite plays -- there’s a liveliness, quickness, and sweetness that none of the other plays have. I am so heart-eyes over Viola. Macbeth is my favorite tragedy. The Sleeping Life also came out and it was great -- I’d read and reread Stained Glass Monsters obsessively while waiting for the sequel; SGM is one of my favorite novels by Host, mostly because Rennyn Claire is the trope of the powerful, enigmatic, and supremely self-assured and capable woman. I only wished TSL was longer.

February was also my first venture into classical plays -- Oedipus the King is one of my favorite Greek tragedies. Admittedly, I’ve literally only read 2. I’m amazed at the power and force of it. Gentleman Jole was so good. I love Cordelia. I love love love Cordelia so much and I was so happy to have a novel with her; Jole was a wonderful protagonist. Very sweet, very sincere, very moral.

March -- none.

I read very little this month; spent most of my time watching films. Got into Marvel, watched a lot of superhero films this month.

April -- Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Jane Austen’s Emma, Nicole Kornher-Stace’s Archivist Wasp. April rereads -- Ilona Andrews’ Silver Shark.

Lol obviously I have to reread a romance each month. Stop me. Anyway, Archivist Wasp is one of the best books of the year for me. It was beautifully written, and I love Wasp so much. I love her wayward kindness, I love the compassion that she struggles to hide, I love her relationship with the soldier.

May -- Homer’s The Odyssey, CS Pacat’s Captive Prince trilogy, Ada Limon’s Bright Dead Things, NK Jemisin’s The Shadowed Sun & The Awakened Kingdom. May rereads -- Erin Bow’s Sorrow’s Knot, Lynn Flewelling’s Tamir Triad, Robin McKinley’s Deerskin, Juliet Marillier’s Daughter of the Forest.

So, this was an eventful month. I reread a lot of fantasy/fairytale retellings. I loved all the things that I reread way more than the first time I read them: Sorrow’s Knot was beautiful and hopeful and aching; Tamir Triad was a very solid fantasy while also giving me food for thought when it comes to gender; Deerskin is just one of my favorite books despite the brutality and the awfulness, because of the bond between the princess and her dog, and the gradual healing and catharsis that happens -- it’s gentle and good and is just really healing to read; Daughter of the Forest was the first of multiple Marillier books that I made my way through. I enjoyed Daughter the most, made my way through Heart’s Blood and Heir to Sevenwaters as well, whereupon I noticed the pseudofeminism and subtle misogyny, which was very, um. Not fun.

I also first read the Captive Prince trilogy -- I have some reservations about the trilogy, but it was good; and I had a lot of fun talking to my sister about it (which was the main reason why I read this). The Odyssey remains one of my favorite plays of Greek tragedy because of Penelope and Circe. Who cares about Odysseus lol. I love subtle and cunning women who slide under the narrative. Bright Dead Things was one of the first few poetry collections I read all the way through and I am very fond of it. I also made my way through NK Jemisin’s works (Shadowed Sun, Shades of Inheritance, Awakened Kingdom, etc). They prove my growing suspicion that NK Jemisin is talented as hell and writes fantastic stories.

It’s not on the list up there, but this is the month I spent some time rereading Linda Howard’s romance/romantic suspense novels and came to the realization that I honestly detest the adult het romance genre. It’s a lot of ‘alpha’ males who are honestly just threatening and gross, but are seen as hot, and the novels just perpetuate the whole rape culture thing and sexism and misogyny and it just goes on. Ugh.

June -- none. June reread -- LJ Smith’s Nightworld,

Didn’t read much again apparently. Oh yeah, I went overseas twice and watched a lot of movies. This is the month I watched Hellboy II, Snowpiercer, Under the Skin, Now You See Me 2, and got into Hamilton.

I reread most of my LJ Smith books (they were such favorites of mine when they were younger) and I found that I still love the story with Keller, and the one with Jez and Morgead. Still some of my favorite romances.

July -- Nora Sakavic’s The Foxhole Court, Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch. July rereads -- CLAMP’s Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles.

TFC is up here mainly because it made me realize I really love team-stuff where everyone works together (this is honestly what I remember from the book -- the moments where everyone played together). Oh, and also it’s another bonding thing between me and my sis. Akata Witch was just so different from the usual stories, it was so good.

But the highlight of this month is definitely Tsubasa. It was a formative influence, and rereading it now, I am still so heart-eyes over it. Okay, I LOVE IT!!!!!

August -- George Orwell’s 1984, Joan Wolf’s The Road to Avalon & The Edge of Light, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Kate Elliott’s Jaran. August rereads -- JK Rowling’s Order of the Phoenix to Deathly Hallows.

1984 is a huge formative influence. It changed the way I think about dystopia and oppression and propaganda. Jaran is one of my favorite love stories of all time; I was heartbroken by and also loved Avalon and Edge of Light -- and they made me pick up The Once and Future King. I love this kind of male protagonists. And of course, the bulk of the month was taken up by Harry Potter. I love this series with all my heart. It shaped so much of my life when I first read it; rereading it again, it made me refine my mental perception of Harry (he’s a lot angrier than I remember lol, also a lot more wonderful), and understand/judge/perceive the characters, events, and their stories in a new light. Ginny is still super hot.

September -- Intisar Khanani’s Memories of Ash, Rabindranath Tagore’s The Home and the World, Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey. September rereads -- none.

Memories of Ash made me realize I love Intisar Khanani’s works, and it also made me realize I love these stories with strong bonds of friendship, loyalty, kindnesses, and camaraderie, and are romance-free. The Home and the World is beautiful and also heartwrenching, and it... I can’t explain why it has such a special place in my heart, but it does.

October -- Kate Elliot’s Spiritwalker trilogy, Rachel Aaron’s No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished, Emily Martin’s Woodwalker, Bliss Carman’s Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics. October rereads -- Rachel Aaron’s Nice Dragons Finish Last & One Good Dragon Deserves Another.

Cold Fire is one of my favorite romances ever; I love the Heartstrikers series -- they’re so good. I realize I really love those stories where there are lots of likeable characters who are all kind and supportive and friends with each other; I honestly could’t care less about romance in these stories, but they’re so hard to find. And so I end up looking endlessly for good love stories, because good love stories have the same effect as those. Woodwalker because I realized I really like stories where there is a HUGE plot-twist at the end that changes everything, that frames/reframes the way you look at things. I love these stories. Carman’s book of poetry is here because it introduced me to Sappho and also I love her writing, it’s beautiful.

November -- Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit. November rereads -- Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice.

These two books are the highlights of my year, without a doubt. I love both to bits. I already wrote a huge and long post about Ninefox Gambit that is probably suffused with my love for it. And I have so little experience with dystopia and apocalyptical stories that it gives a new framework with which to think of things. P&P made me realize no other love story will ever match up to it, ever, probably. My favorite love story of all time. It made me realize that there can be so much UST or URT between two characters even though the book is SO clean there isn’t even a hug. Or a touch.

December -- Suzanne Collins’ Gregor series, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Martha Wells’ The Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy. December rereads -- Tamora Pierce’s Mastiff, Eliza Crewe’s Soul Eaters trilogy.

Some of my favorite books of the whole year are all here -- the Gregor series is <33333 Hunger Games pale in comparison because the Gregor series feels so much more... heartfelt. I felt so much for all of them; I still remember the events as clearly as if I’d read them a couple of days ago; I still grieve for some of the characters, and I still miss some of them. My main takeaway was, again, a framework for dystopia and apocalyptical stories. The third book -- that thought experiment with the baby Bane is still so... raw.

Martha Wells is the best thing to happen to me in the end of 2016/start of 2017. I’ve already worked my way through her entire backlog and I. love. all. her. worlds.

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So, the best books of the year for me are definitely:

Archivist Wasp

Jane Eyre

The Fall of Ile-Rien

Gregor

Ninefox Gambit

Pride & Prejudice

1984

Memories of Ash.

#book thoughts #2016

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