Tales of a Wicked Stepgrader

[rymenhild]

The icon, created by yuki_onna, includes a quote from Sir Thomas Malory regarding Morgan le Fay. Let us all proclaim the doctrine of the True (that is, Not Taken From Marion Zimmer Bradley) Morgan.

Very late CONGRATULATIONS!!!! to strange_selkie for completing the first draft of her MFA thesis, and relatively-on-time CONGRATULATIONS!!!! to gramarye1971 for earning highest honours on her thesis. In honor of both achievements, I have decided to pass on Selkie's meme,

If my MA thesis were a fanfic...

• the priest/nobleman subtext would no longer be subtextual
  
• Geoffrey Chaucer would be descended from the bastard son of Margaret, Countess of Winchester, and a Leicester Jew
  
• Such crossover potential...
  
• Aziraphale and Crowley would definitely be influencing Jewish-Christian relations in England - but I'm not quite sure who would be on whose side!
  
• Margaret of Winchester would have been a Hogwarts graduate...
  
• and Simon de Montfort was clearly a Squib.
  
  

If my senior thesis were a fanfic...

• Geoffrey of Monmouth/Mary Sue. Enough said.
  

Meanwhile, a new stack of papers have arrived at my door. The undergrads are currently writing about fairy tales and ballads, and far too many of them seem to believe that because the reading assignments are easy the research projects can be lazy. The undergrads are wrong in this assumption.



Yes, it's time for more student gems.

• Throughout oral and written literatures, the theme of sibling rivalry has always been a reoccurring and lasting element of storytelling.
  
• With each variation the story of Cinderella is always equated with a shoe, into which only one person can fit.
  
• Jack from the Bean Tree version seems much like a Tom Sawyer character than Jack in the other versions, very independent and priggish manner.
  
• Sleeping Beauty is a fairytale, reflective upon life's many facets and an utmost important filial relationship.
  
• While this ballad appears to be only about sibling rivalry, it is actually quite deeper when one sees that it is a tale, which explores the ideas of power and powerlessness for different people in society.
  
• If something was not meant to be yours, however hard you toil to get there you may end up like the many princes who died on the briars.
  
  
  And one last meme, adapted from cataptromancer et cetera: Post a memory of me - something that did happen, something that could very well have happened but did not, or something completely improbable. You may base it on something that happened, or make it up out of whole cloth. Be as specific and detailed as possible.
  
  Edited for small typo correction.

Comments

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

Remember when we visited Bradley's grave, and left our illuminated Malory open on the wet earth, and called down the moon to bear witness to her heresy?
Morgan was proud of us, and released from the wicked spell Marion had inflicted on her, to be only loved by adolescent proto-pagans with the reading skills of epileptic ants.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

The moon said she was slightly relieved, too. Wouldn't you be tired of being painted in blue crescents on the foreheads of angsty teenage girls?

[yuki-onna.livejournal.com]

My theory: Only losers don't tattoo the bloody thing. Are you committed to a trashy work of ficiton or aren't you?!

[bluesbell.livejournal.com]

I remember when I first met you on my pony-trekking journey through California. You were standing on the beach, waving a bag of pretzels in your hand. I stopped my pony and we shook hands. We spent a drowsy afternoon contemplating possible ships in Shakespeare's Henry V, recording whale song and eating pretzels.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I remember. Hal/Dauphin worked. And of course, I ranted for hours about the fact that Henry V wrote letters in Anglo-Norman, so that whole last scene is completely wrong, although cute. I never could see how you could stand spending so much time with that pony, though. He was less Bill the Pony and more Actual Bill Ferny.

[bluesbell.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I dozed off at some point- I guess you didn't notice. The pony wasn't so bad once I got to know him, although he did run off in the end and leave me to hitch a ride in the middle of a desert...

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I did notice but people usually fall asleep when I'm pontificating, so I rather expect it.

Is that what happened to the pony? I saw his picture on America's Most Wanted and had wondered whether you were wanted along with him.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Maybe all text has subtext, maybe all memories are part lie. Maybe all knowledge changes, subtly, when you put it out in the world for people to see. Reader, beware.

I remember a day spent aloft in a castle's tower, skewering St. Augustine and feeding bits of him to the giant squid. All sorts of books near to my hands, and proper strong tea, and dragons and portents in the night sky after; because princesses in towers can see things like that.

[prosewitch.livejournal.com]

Yes! Love the meme! It will be appearing shortly in my own journal...

As for memories... probably the most entertaining memory, which I shall cherish forever, is when we first met in Aurelio's room, and proceeded to talk for 2 hours straight about The Enchanted Forest series, fanfic, YA fantasy, RenFaires, fairy tales, and other awesome things that we randomly have in common. And the look on Aurelio's face after being ignored for so long was priceless...

[prosewitch.livejournal.com]

Oh, shit. I didn't actually read through to the end of the meme instructions. *feels silly*

Remember when we ransacked the folklore archives for magic superstitions to put a curse on my thesis professor for turning my brain to mush? ;p

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

It's all right. I said you could put in a real memory.

As for the curses, yes, that was a fun day. It's a pity neither of us has dried ostrich dung on hand, because the one that was supposed to make its recipient's head bury itself in the sand involuntarily would have been so appropriate...

[prosewitch.livejournal.com]

Your grasp of sympathetic magic might be a little firmer than mine--I thought that dusting dessicated rats' eyeballs (from the finest co-op rats, of course) on the paper I turned in to her today would cause her to go blind to grammar errors, but instead it made her become more irritable than usual. Which I guess explains why she canceled office hours and ran off muttering something about "beer-soaked cheese and cigarettes"...

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

In which we went on an adventure, and discovered the (very mobile) location of the One True Oracle.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

What did the Oracle say to you? All it told me was that there was a chance Lord Voldemort would chair my dissertation committee.

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

You don't remember? You were there, you know. You were its spokesperson. You kept telling me what the Oracle was saying, clearly pulling the information directly from a, erm, lower back area of your body. Hence our discovery of the Oracle's location.

(I might also make up a memory. That was a real one, though.)

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

::blushes:: Oops. I had no idea what you were talking about. Yes, I now remember the Oracle. And the adventure.

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

Laughing helplessly now re: thesis as fic.

I didn't do an undergrad thesis as such because I left a term early. Shall have to give thought to whether the independent study on the prose Brut could work as fic--no doubt it can, but it's kind of textual.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Certainly it could work.

There's the interesting philosophical question of whether authors of Bruts (is that the plural?) could be writing Geoffrey of Monmouth fanfic... I haven't studied the particular Brut you have nearly long enough to make a genetic chart, but I could conceive of La3amon writing Geoffrey-fic, some other historian writing La3amon-fic, and the prose Brut being another entry in a centuries-long dialogue between text and metatext.