selenak

Yesterday was frightfully busy and today brought some reminders of sad RL events happening in my wider family, but there was some beautiful consolation in the form of various fannish delights.

(Andraste, you're a goddess.)

artaxastra had the splendid idea of applying the remix principle - a fannish writing exercise in which one fanfic author volunteers to use the story of another as a template to tell it from another angle - to professional authors, and gave three examples of pro remixes she'd like to see. I decided to follow suit, but being in a quixotic mood right now after reading.... something not yet unveiled to the public at large... I'll go with the impossible and speculate about remixes of the classics. By the way, while picking these examples, it occured to me that Jean Rhys' Wide Saragasso Sea, which tells the story of Rochester's first wife, is of course, among other things, a Jane Eyre remix.

So:
Emily Bronte takes on Charles Dickens, David Copperfield. She'd have zilch interest in Mr. Micawber or Dora or Agnes or David, for that matter. Methinks she'd go for Rosa the companion and her scar and her love/hate relationship with Steerforth. Intriguing backstory, that, in Dickens, and Emily with her zest for passionate characters whose selfishness she never prettifies would bring it to the fore.

Wilkie Collins remixes Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray. Collins goes for his favourite approach and tells the entire thing in a series of letters and diary entries, primarily written by Becky Sharp, corresponding with her estimed mentor, Collins' own character, Conte Fosco.

Thackeray stares at Bram Stoker's Dracula and first thinks we can't be serious. Then he decides to tell the whole thing as the adventures of an American naive abroad, namely, from Quincy's (aka the one of Lucy's suitors who dies in the final showdown with Dracula) perspective.

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I felt honoured by being recced over at

crack_van.

sabine101, whose divinity aisn't in question, either, also amused me by starting the review with this sentence: Selena is known far and wide as the champion of characters most people think are jerks.

For some reason, this awakened in me the thirst for the following icons:

1) A slideshow of pictures showing Londo, Quark and Rygel, framed by the HP quote We solemnly swear we're up to no good
2) A slideshow of pictures showing Anakin Skywalker, Connor (of AtS, not HL) and Mr. Potter himself, with just one word inserted at the start: Issues
3) A slideshow of pictures showing Buffy Summers, John Crichton and Frodo Baggins, framed by John's diary entry in Terra Firma "What I've done... what's been done to me"

So, should any of you gifted icon-creating folk feel the slightest inclination of making one of these, I'd be eternally grateful.

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Lastly: Star Trek: TNG was one of my first fannish loves. Without a doubt, DS9 is the overall better and more ambitious show, and I do love it more as well, but I still retain a fond appreciation for the Next Generation crowd as well, and Jean-Luc Picard shall always be my favourite Captain. So I was thrilled to discover that

yahtzee63 has written a Picard/Crusher story which "feels" like a TNG episode as well in its premise.