#modern-major general

[fipindustries]

I cannot stand the parodies of modern major general, they're overdone and simply not as good as the original. They've done them about everything, whatever topic, big or small.

And when i notice one of them my eyes will always start to roll.

The diction's always slurry when they rush the complicated words, and adding many fricatives will turn it so cacophonous. The slanted rhymes are silly and they keep just making more and more, please someone stop the parodies of modern major general.

The scanning of the lyrics in the meter is unbearable, they emphazise the syllables in ways that are untenable, in short in matters musical, prosodic and ephemeral, i cannot stand the parodies of modern major general!

[hamletthedane]

[batboy-fangs]

Oh hey I didn’t see you there

[beardedmrbean]

[davidtennantgenderenvy]

My favorite David Tennant singing moments featuring my music major commentary because I refuse to stop pushing this agenda

[anghraine]

Okay, breaking my principles hiatus again for another fanfic rant despite my profound frustration w/ Tumblr currently:

I have another post and conversation on DW about this, but while pretty much my entire dash has zero patience with the overtly contemptuous Hot Fanfic Takes, I do pretty often see takes on Fanfiction's Limitations As A Form that are phrased more gently and/or academically but which rely on the same assumptions and make the same mistakes.

IMO even the gentlest, and/or most earnest, and/or most eruditely theorized takes on fanfiction as a form still suffer from one basic problem: the formal argument does not work.

I have never once seen a take on fanfiction as a form that could provide a coherent formal definition of what fanfiction is and what it is not (formal as in "related to its form" not as in "proper" or "stuffy"). Every argument I have ever seen on the strengths/weaknesses of fanfiction as a form vs original fiction relies to some extent on this lack of clarity.

Hence the inevitable "what about Shakespeare/Ovid/Wide Sargasso Sea/modern takes on ancient religious narratives/retold fairy tales/adaptation/expanded universes/etc" responses. The assumptions and assertions about fanfiction as a form in these arguments pretty much always should apply to other things based on the defining formal qualities of fanfic in these arguments ("fanfiction is fundamentally X because it re-purposes pre-existing characters and stories rather than inventing new ones" "fanfiction is fundamentally Y because it's often serialized" etc).

Yet the framing of the argument virtually always makes it clear that the generalizations about fanfic are not being applied to Real Literature. Nor can this argument account for original fics produced within a fandom context such as AO3 that are basically indistinguishable from fanfic in every way apart from lacking a canon source.

At the end of the day, I do not think fanfic is "the way it is" because of any fundamental formal qualities—after all, it shares these qualities with vast swaths of other human literature and art over thousands of years that most people would never consider fanfic. My view is that an argument about fanfic based purely on form must also apply to "non-fanfic" works that share the formal qualities brought up in the argument (these arguments never actually apply their theories to anything other than fanfic, though).

Alternately, the formal argument could provide a definition of fanfic (a formal one, not one based on judgment of merit or morality) that excludes these other kinds of works and genres. In that case, the argument would actually apply only to fanfic (as defined). But I have never seen this happen, either.

So ultimately, I think the whole formal argument about fanfic is unsalvageably flawed in practice.

Realistically, fanfiction is not the way it is because of something fundamentally derived from writing characters/settings etc you didn't originate (or serialization as some new-fangled form, lmao). Fanfiction as a category is an intrinsically modern concept resulting largely from similarly modern concepts of intellectual property and auteurship (legally and culturally) that have been so extremely normalized in many English-language media spaces (at the least) that many people do not realize these concepts are context-dependent and not universal truths.

Fanfic does not look like it does (or exist as a discrete category at all) without specifically modern legal practices (and assumptions about law that may or may not be true, like with many authorial & corporate attempts to use the possibility of legal threats to dictate terms of engagement w/ media to fandom, the Marion Zimmer Bradley myth, etc).

Fanfic does not look like it does without the broader fandom cultures and trends around it. It does not look like it does without the massive popularity of various romance genres and some very popular SF/F. It does not look like it does without any number of other social and cultural forces that are also extremely modern in the grand scheme of things.

The formal argument is just so completely ahistorical and obliviously presentist in its assumptions about art and generally incoherent that, sure, it's nicer when people present it politely, but it's still wrong.

[parttimesarah]

One thing you need to know about me is that I will for the 5000th time rewatch the 1980 Shakespeare in the Park filmed performance of The Pirates of Penzance, starring Kevin Kline, Patricia Rutledge, Linda Ronstadt, and Rex Smith and I will gif the heck out of it…

[introverting-rn]

hey hey guys heyo

if you haven’t listened to g&s’ the Pirates of Penzance you NEED to it’s genuinely one of the funniest musicals in the world it’s just batshit insane. it reads like a crackfic and i desperately crave aus set in this world because g u y s

the pirates are so chivalrous that they never invade small ships, only ones bigger and better than them. they’re all orphans and when they manage to capture people everyone claims they’re also an orphan so the pirates let them go. the main character frederic works with the pirates because his nursemaid has bad hearing and was ordered to apprentice him to a pilot. frederic jumps out of his hiding place to tell these beautiful girls he was watching their conversation because they were about to take off their stockings how sCA nd aLoU s. frederic sings a whole dramatic betrayal ballad w his forty-year-old nursemaid because she told him she was beautiful so he’d marry her but he thinks she’s hella ugly. this kicks off her villain arc. he asks a whole, entirely unrelated group of ladies if they’re rly ugly and nobody wants to date them, they say no, so he goes ‘😬 u sure?’ twice in a row. THE very model of a modern major general sings his song upon entry, only afterwards asking what’s going on, implying that he sings it every time he sees people. the song is about how good he is at being a general but all he brags about are skills that are entirely irrelevant, eg, integral and differential calculus. frederic plans to exterminate the pirates because he’s turned 21 and left his indenture (they are very respectful about this) but realises he’s apprenticed to them until his 21st birthday and he was born on the 29th of february. there’s these policemen who are just absolute cowards and hide the moment the pirates arrive, then the pirates hear the general arriving and also hide - picture a pirate and a policeman standing obviously behind poles and completely failing to see each other. the policemen echo the ends of lyrics even if it makes no sense, eg “pied in crime” “culty smother”. the pirates sing a song about how stealthy they are, which could be interpreted as just how musicals are, but i’d like to think they’re belting the whole thing. the entire plot is resolved by the sergeant bidding the pirates to yield in Queen Victoria’s name, to which they immediately yield and become noblemen again. oh also it’s a full opera

[reddpenn]

Here is a song about my rock collection! It is a tune you probably recognize. Lyrics under the cut!

Permit me to parade my petrological anthology Collected in my quest for comprehensive mineralogy. Their shininess is second to their science and lithology. This song’s about my rock collection! Man, I love geology.

Oh, amethyst is purple ‘cause of iron, isn’t that real neat? And citrine is just amethyst plus lots of geothermal heat. And smoky quartz is brown from radiation and aluminum… Inclusions such as chlorite, rutile, goethite can bloom in ‘em!

(Inclusions such as chlorite, rutile, goethite can bloom in ‘em!) (Inclusions such as chlorite, rutile, goethite can bloom in ‘em!) (Inclusions such as chlorite, rutile, goethite can bloom in bloom in ‘em!)

Oh, sapphire and ruby, well, they’re both corundum chemically And emerald, aquamarine, and morganite are beryl. See, Historically each color had a different etymology And now they’re in my rock collection! Man, I love geology.

(Historically each color had a different etymology) (And now they’re in my rock collection! Man, I love geology.)

My fluorite is a favorite when it’s glowing under UV light. But should it be from Rogerley it changes when the sun is bright. And if you like fluorescence, put this fact inside your cranium: Chalcedony glows green because of ions of uranium!

When making porcelain vases, you need kyanite that’s powdered fine And celestine’s in fireworks and toothpaste such as Sensodyne. There’s mica in your drywall, and the litterbox has zeolites… Your bones and teeth and kidney stones are all hydroxylapatites!

(Your bones and teeth and kidney stones are all hydroxylapatite!) (Your bones and teeth and kidney stones are all hydroxylapatite!) (Your bones and teeth and kidney stones are all hydroxyl-apple-apa-tite!)

When dating strata layers ammonites can be real helpful guys. The sutures in their shell can tell how long ago they fossilized! And artifacts obsidian track trade in archeology. Those ancient folks had rock collections, man I love geology!

(And artifacts obsidian track trade in archeology.) (Those ancient folks had rock collections, man I love geology!)

Oh, did you know that peridot, as super hot peridotite Makes up the planet’s mantle and is also found in meteorites? Which make lechatelierite when it’s sandy soil that they strike. Another form of that is made by lightning, that’s called fulgurite!

Well, garnet makes the best dodecahedrons that you’ve ever seen. Prismatic crystals with three sides are quite unique to tourmaline. A certain mine in Spain produces pyrite that is cubical… Lepidolite can be botryoidal, but that’s quite unusual.

(Lepidolite can be botryoidal, but that’s quite unusual!) (Lepidolite can be botryoidal, but that’s quite unusual!) (Lepidolite can be botryoidal, but that’s quite unusu-usu-al!)

My knowledge of earth sciences is only as an amateur. But hounding and collecting rocks ain’t only for a connoisseur. And for my love of minerals I’m making no apology. Cause rocks are fun for everyone and man, I love geology!

(And for my love of minerals I’m making no apology.) (Cause rocks are fun for everyone and man, I love geology!)

[autumnillustration]

sometimes a man’s just gotta crochet a cabbage

inspired by the fact that i learnt Samuel West spent his time crocheting (edit: embroidering, but oh well) a cabbage on the set of Hornblower and i just think that’s neat.

[natjennie]

love the absurdity of what is and isnt secretive to the captain. we knew he killed a seagull in weymouth the first time he fired a bren gun before we knew his first name. what a strange little guy.

[saturnniidae]

Modern au with a strong theme of Hiccup coping with his leg better than all the people around him and it's low key pissing him off

[acediscowlng]

do you ever think about the absolute culture shock of edwin "book nerd" payne missing the most of modernism and post-modernism. cause i do. i think about that a lot.

just. think about edwin encountering The Waste Land for the first time and finding it very moving and reflects his own experiences very well, but also finding that very weird because like??? yes, the nihilism is great and all, he's never felt more Seen in his life, but he's also been to hell and what do you mean an entire generation of writers apparently just get what that feels like????

[anexperimentallife]

😆😆😆😆

[dickensianenglishbulldog]

Pros: I can now sing (badly) every word of a total of twenty two Gilbert and Sullivan songs.

Cons: no one cares.

[buggeryisthegenus]

Chapters: 1/1 Words: 194 Fandom: Interview with the Vampire (TV 2022) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Armand/Lestat de Lioncourt, Armand/Louis de Pointe du Lac, Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac Characters: Armand (Vampire Chronicles), Claudia (Vampire Chronicles), Grace de Pointe du Lac, Lestat de Lioncourt, Louis de Pointe du Lac Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Gilbert and Sullivan Parody, Filk, Humor, Musical Theater, Pansexual disaster, Parody, References to My Immortal, Romance, Self-Awareness, sort of, The Vampire Lestat (the band), Tongue Twisters, weird liminal space between canon and parody Summary:

If Lestat were given to self-deprecation, he might have summed up the events of seasons 1 and 2 thusly.