Happy Friday, everyone. It’s time to Blog for a Beer! (click here for the rules.)
We haven’t had an Open Thread in a long time, so that’s what this week will be. Post anything interesting in the comments (as long as it has something to do with genre) — a snippet of your WiP or some opinion on the impending cancellation of Sarah Connor Chronicles or how old you felt once you found out it had been ten years since Harry Potter first came or anything else.
The person who best entertains or moves us wins the prize!
I’m curious what people think of cross-canon fiction? I’m not sure if that’s an actual term for it, but things like Anno Dracula and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which put together famous characters from Victorian literature. Some of my other favorites are:
Sandman (Graphic novel series): World mythology
Fables (Graphic novel series): Fairy tales
Nursery Crimes (book series): nursery rhymes and fairy tales
Thursday Next (book series): all fiction
So what’s the verdict? Is it a clever use of old characters or really all just glorified fan fiction?
Holy crap. It’s been 10 years since Harry Potter first came out? Wow. I do feel old.
Michael @ 2. It could go either way, I guess. A lot of the tales we read today as folklore or fairy tales or mythology aren’t even the originals. They have been tricked out and modified by antiquity, long before there was such as thing as the Postmodernists. But the stories we love from fairietales and fables are more like public domain. They have a vested interest with the people of a region. It’s different than Harry Potter/Malfoy slash fic. Folklore has had a chance to age, to be interpretted by different eras of people, which might bring about different reactions to the tales.
Take Hansel and Gretel. A story about what happens to children when the family is starving to death is different when taken for an original meaning, such as “we had to abandon them, but they are in a better place” to “rotten parents send children off to die so they can do the nasty and eat ice cream without kids in the house.” In one time it was acceptable to kill your children if you were starving. It just turned out that the kids were better off and offered hope to a derelict family when they came back after defeating the witch. The other way, you hope they come back with a pocket full of whup-ass instead of bread crumbs.
Different interpretations of the same scenario.
Today though, we don’t want to wait. We are headed down the rails on this crazy train and need to choke down, regurgitate, reprocess and repeat our stories before they become stale, lest we forget.
Instant gratification gives us a “re-imagining” of something with nearly every generation. But maybe it’s appropriate. Our mores and values are different now than they were in the 1960′s. Just watch “Mad Men” to see that put into action.
For several generations, studying things like world mythology, folklore, and fairy tales was almost a taboo, since some of it was in direct violation of religious teachings. Tell a story about a dragon and some folks might think you are talking about the DEVIL. Or with others, a tale about a puppet that becomes a real little boy because he wants it would be a tale of conjuring and black magic. Seriously, I had friends whose parents forbid them from such things. They also disavowed dinosaurs and things like the Moon Landing. For some, Jungian archetypes were a bad thing, since it acknowledged the validity of the traditions of cultures outside their particular religion. If folklore was studied, it was seen as a quaint piece of barbarism, tantamount to a tourist show.
In a more secular world, we’re able to see traditions with objectivity. People now acknowledge that people may believe things other than what are perceived as “acceptable.” Thus, we get to learn something from these crusty old tales that are outside of popular religious writings. The archetypes still stick with us too, and though the situations might be skewed or a little anachronistic, they still resonate with our base emotions and perceptions.
But Harry Potter as an archetype? He’s already a copy of somebody else. Heck, he’s really kind of a knockoff of Mildred Hubble, the Worst Witch. But he’s a current Brand Name too. Which by law alone is a no-no for what, 75 years? But in 75 years, I wonder if anyone will even care who Harry Potter is?
Disney doesn’t have the copyright on our imaginations just yet. I say if you are going to tell a good story with heroes of folklore and legend, which belong to us all, do it. And do it now, like there’s a bomb in the building and you’ve got to get the chopper.
May I just say that I think it is incredibly irresponsible to implicitly endorse underage kitty drinking in the above picture.
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m no prude. I let all my cats go out and get drunk as a skunk.
And before you go and call me a skunkist for “playing to the stereotype” that all skunks are alcoholics, just tell me the last time you spoke to a skunk, I mean really spoke to an actual live skunk, that wasn’t drunk, huh?
I remember the first time my cats stumbled in during the wee hours of the morn, I demanded to know how they’d got all shit-faced.
“Excushe me!” Elsbeth said. “Shitfate … shitfaked … (hiccup) shitfaced ish when you get drunk and go to clean yourshelf and pass out mid cleaning, and wake in the morning with a face that shmells like a litterbox. Not that I’d know, of course. No, we, shir, are totally ‘pussed’.”
Of course, they were two years old. That’s, like, 24 human years, so I decided it was okay.
I suspect that the kitten in the above photo, however, is underage.
CAAK (which stands for Cats Against Alcoholic Kittens – and ironically is also the sound my cat makes when coughing up a furball after a wild night of drinking, Cateoke, and licking strange kittens in bars) will not be at all pleased when they learn of this, I can tell you.
Since Sarah Connor is going off the air anyway, I hope they take advantage of the opportunity to have her figure a way to send the terminators after Harry Potter. Maybe make them believe he’s John Connor. I’m pretty sure a shiny patronus won’t work on a T-850. Nor would crucio, expelliarmus, or any of the other standards. And a T-850′s thermal imaging would totally detect him huddled under his invisible cloak.
Run, Harry, run. They are coming for you. Bwah-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAA!
PS – there is a rather naughty joke inherent in your phrasing of the Harry Potter event in the intro. I shall refrain from making it, but you may want to reword that a bit.
The new season of Pushing Daisies just started. I really enjoyed the first season but I wondered what drew me particularly to this show. I love strange stories and it is pretty strange but I think it must be that each episode reminds me of a flash fiction bit. Each one revolving around the same main set of characters. I guess every episode of a show is kind of like that. But thinking of it this way makes it a little easier to write one. I wish there were more strange TV shows like this one in the mainstream. It’s just strange…not about vampires, ghosts, or murders. Those characters are fun but they aren’t it. There has to be more to fantasy than the strange characters someone has already thought of. Someone will probably argue with me that there are plenty. And yes there are, but I’m talking about in the mainstream. Like on TV or on the best seller list. Maybe that’s why I like Doctor Who so much. But you’ll notice the show is not on ABC or CBS. Didn’t BSG start out on CBS or NBC? I know with cable channels are able to specialize a lot more but it’s nice see a show like Pushing Daisies on one of the big three and back for another season.