also, two-headed dog

[freckles_and_doubt]

Department of Academic Gloating: the approved cover design for my book arrived today. It's stunning - as per my suggestion they've used Ursula Vernon's art deco nouveau "Beauty and the Beast", and done the whole thing with a corresponding art deco nouveau feel and exceptionally beautiful fontage. I am a very, very happy proto-author. I'm also a chapter away from finishing the edit review, which is a good feeling. Current peeve: the copy-editor has taken out all my uses of inverted commas as distance quotes and added "so-called" instead. This annoys me, and there has been much throwing about of stettage. I am also somewhat miffed by her refusal to accept "formulae" as a plural. "Formulas" just looks all wrong to me. Still, she has managed to remove a positively ridiculous, if not indecent, incidence of the completely spurious word "itself", so it possibly all comes out in the wash.

Fired with near-completion, not to mention hopeless fangirliness, I took myself off to see X-Files: I Want To Believe last night. I have heard, from various sources, differing things about this film:

1. It's just like an X-Files episode, and therefore dull and disappointing. (Half of Teh Internets).
   
2. It's just like an X-Files episode, and therefore wow, squeee! (The other half of Teh Internets).
   
3. OMG Mulder and Scully are old and ugly! (Different half of Teh Internets).
   
4. OMG Mulder and Scully are still hot! (Other different half of Teh Internets).
   
5. It's really dark and depressing. (jo&stv).

The upshot of all of this was that I didn't have very high expectations, as a possibly direct result of which I thoroughly enjoyed the film. I think Chris Carter actually went seriously out of his way to provide an antidote to the (equally enjoyable) giant!underground!arctic!alien!spaceship!-vibe of the first movie - this was low budget, gritty and real, with the focus away from special effects and towards the psychological and philosophical interactions which were always the strength of the series, anyway. The games the writers play with self-conscious use of the series clichés are particularly entertaining; I loved the classic X-Filesy driving-a-country-road-at-night opening.

Overall I found it a surprisingly adult and thoughtful film, although really I shouldn't be surprised, the series always had the capacity to deliver that, however interspersed with goofy humour, weird science and grandiose paranoid conspiracy. I'm also revolving some kind of theory as to the symbolic function of snow for Chris Carter; apart from its obvious provision of freeze/thaw motifs for both meaning and emotion, it's visually very effective, and the film was beautifully shot. (The end credits were particularly lovely).

Overall, I think I fall into category 2, with a side helping of category 4, except that, while it's well presented, goofily endearing and eccentrically realistic, Mulder/Scully is just weird.

Comments

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

OMG, you got UV art!

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Yup! and they paid her a professional fee, and everything! I am feeling V. Proud at having done my bit to Support My Favourite Alternative Web Artists.

[wolverine-nun.livejournal.com]

I have seen the cover and It Is Beautiful

[kadekraan.livejournal.com]

Very exciting; will the book be available on Amazon?

We saw the X-Files movie last night too. Moody. I'm still thinking about it. The more I think about it, the more I like it. But I was also saddened because the movie seems... hmmm... displaced from its own time. I liked the Skinner/Mulder moment - thought it would make the slash fanfic writers happy. And there was something seriously disturbing about the look on Scully's face in the last scene... (I think they drew the parallel a little too well).

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Book should be on Amazon, others in the series are.

Yes, the film did have a melancholic sense of displacement - X-Files in the classic sense is now a lost golden age which is pretty much inaccessible owing not just to the age of the stars, but to the stupid choices made in the last couple of seasons. The only possible mode for a new film is elegaic.

The thematic parallels were beautifully drawn - not just the implications of surgery and medicine in general, but explorations of love, loss and the possibility of hope. I didn't get Scully's last look as freaky, I saw it as the affirmation of hope towards which the whole film had been struggling. But it was a surprisingly mature and open-ended conclusion. No cheesy absolute answers here.

[nimnod.livejournal.com]

On a totally different tack, you occasionally rec kiddies books and songs for smaller children, but I can't find any of the entries now. Do you have a list or can you recall any of them?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, interesting question. The "aunts" tag should get most of them, I think, or possibly "y.a." if you want kids' fantasy/sf, although a lot of that is teen stuff.

I completely missed, in my intermittent swings past your blog, the fact that you'd safely produced your offspring. Congrats!

[bronchitikat.livejournal.com]

Congrats with the book so far. Hope most of your prose manages to survive the editor.

BTW - it's an Art Nouveau Beauty & the Beast. UV says so! But if your cover is anything like that, it'll be amazing.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Bother, you are quite correct. I meant Art Nouveau. Although apparently they're related. Thank heavens for Wikipedia.

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

I'm also revolving some kind of theory

I assume that was a typo, but it's a very nice turn of phrase. I think you should keep it.

However, on to more important matters. Dear proto-author:

It's a fantastic (yes, yes) illustration.

"Formulas" is all wrong. She is a philistine, though apparently an occasionally useful one. And "so-called" is uncalled for. (Starting a sentence with a conjunction, however, can be perfectly acceptable, particularly in online writing.)

I cannot adequately convey my delight at the idea of ordering your book from Amazon, which I shall do as soon as it is available.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

No, I completely meant "revolving" - as in revolving it gently in my head, like a sort of cognitive rotisserie. It's a relatively characteristic phrase, its absence of general currency/actual logic hadn't occured to me until you pointed it out. I know what I mean.

The amount of support your witterers evince for this gosh-darned book is heart-warming. You do all know that it's academic to the (relatively jargon-free) nines and perfectly capable of using the word "postmodernism" and meaning it? On the other hand, I'm kinda hoping enough of you do actually read it that you can apply your usual out-of-left-field random debating skills to it in this forum. Then I can add a stamp to the second edition which reads "STRESS-TESTED IN THE FIELD."

[egadfly.livejournal.com]

revolving it gently in my head, like a sort of cognitive rotisserie

Yes, that's exactly what it sounded like, and I loved the expression - however I wrongly assumed that you'd stumbled on it while aiming for "evolved". In future I shall be more respectful in my assumptions about your wordsmithing.