Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: sick
  • Music: School of Rock, "School of Rock."

Too tired (and too sick) for content; have some links.

I have been home, dead of sick, for two days. We're talking "deep, rasping chest cough, I sound like a Batman villain, spent eleven hours on the couch yesterday, watched all of The Number 23 because changing the channel seemed too much like work" levels of sick. (PS: Maybe the number-obsessed OCD girl shouldn't watch movies about being driven to increasing levels of paranoia by numbers when she's already sick. Luckily for me, the movie made no damn sense, and just triggered nice little daydreams about prime factors and pi. What? I don't judge what helps you feel better.) So here is some stuff from my link file that I have been unable to find context for.

First off, no matter how bad a cover your book gets, it will never win the bad cover lottery. That prize has already been claimed by this not-safe-for-work edition of The Princess Bride. What is that I don't even. Flesh-snakes are attacking her lady bits with the intent to burrow their way into the promised land. Presumably the promised land has a cover that makes sense. Also, I do not remember Buttercup using a falcon as a cunning hat. Maybe somebody was hitting the cold meds a little too hard when they approved this one? I don't know.

The next time I go to the UK, I am totally visiting Hoxton Street Monster Supplies, which promises me "bespoke and everyday items for the living, dead, and undead," and is the only shop I've ever seen that was polite enough to request that angry mobs douse their torches before entering. Hell, forget visiting; I want to live there.

This is Alton Brown's Fanifesto. It makes me happy, even as I am sad that it needed to exist.

Disney Princesses have their issues, and I am the last person to pretend that they don't, but they have their good sides, too. This is a lovely collection of moments to illustrate that. (And while I'm pointing you at Princesses, why not swing by Amy Mebberson's Tumblr? Her weekly "Pocket Princesses" cartoons are a real treat.)

Finally, for now, cuckoos are in a biological arms race to continue their egg parasitism ways. So maybe there's hope for humanity. If the cuckoos don't figure out a better way...

I'm going back to bed.
Tags: brief notes, geekiness, medical fu, state of the blonde, utterly exhausted
  • Post a new comment

    Error

    Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal

    switch
    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

    Help
  • 79 comments
Previous
← Ctrl ← Alt
Next
Ctrl → Alt →

Deleted comment

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:52:32 UTC 5 years ago

I, too, read a different version.

biomekanic

March 20 2012, 03:43:26 UTC 5 years ago

Re The Princess Bride cover art; if I remember my logo's correctly, that's a Ballantine book from the late 60's/early 70's, and apparently they were dropping acid by the metric fuck ton when approving covers back in those days.

Before The Incident (i.e. where in my brother lost over 2000 of my paperbacks), I had quite a number of books where the WTFery of the covers could be explained by the aforementioned acid.

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:52:46 UTC 5 years ago

Woo acid woo!

autographedcat

March 20 2012, 03:44:38 UTC 5 years ago

The artist for that Princess Bride cover didn't have access to Goldman's manuscript, so he was working from S. Morgenstern's original book, in which Buttercup, berift without her beloved Westley, seeks the aid of the Swamp Witch, who agrees to help her in exchange for her voice. Buttercup agrees, but before the contract can be finalised, the Swamp Witch is arrested by Disney Time police and never seen again. Buttercup spends a brief few years in Witness protection in Savannah, Georgia, as a woman named Jenny, and tries to forget her true love by having a fitful affair with a dimwitted, whitman's sampler philosopher and shrimp baron named Forrest. But the whole thing doesn't work out, and she goes back to Florin, with no one the wiser because time passes differently when you travel by magic wardrobe, as every schoolboy knows. It is on her way home that she encounters Vizzini, Fezzek, and Inigo.

This entire chapter, some 419 pages, was cut by Goldman in favour of skipping to the kidnap scene in the first place.

[1] In the far future, Disney has managed not only to extend copyright indefinitely into the future, but also retroactively into the past, in order to prosecute infringement tht existed prior to Disney's ownership of the property in the first place. And wasn't the Grimm Brother's estate surprised?

maverick_weirdo

March 20 2012, 04:21:29 UTC 5 years ago Edited:  March 20 2012, 04:29:00 UTC

Retroactive copyright became necessary after the invention of time travel. The landmark case involved a group of fanfic writers going back to the 1970's to try and establish their own vision of "Harry Potter" as cannon.

(Ironically the Princess Bride cover mentioned earlier became instead the cover of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in that history.)

hoppytoad79

5 years ago

  • New comment

seanan_mcguire

5 years ago

  • New comment

nightfalltwen

March 20 2012, 03:46:44 UTC 5 years ago

I finally finished Discount Armageddon today! Thank you for such a fun book. :D

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:53:18 UTC 5 years ago

Yay!

misachan

March 20 2012, 03:59:50 UTC 5 years ago

I can't wrap my mind around how many people seem to see some poor celebrity heading toward the rest room and go, "Yes. This is my moment." Do they think the famous have special clubhouses in there you need a book deal or a TV show to access?

hoppytoad79

March 20 2012, 04:41:07 UTC 5 years ago

I had no idea being cornered in the loo was a big enough problem to warrant being mentioned in a fanifesto. When Seanan mentioned it happening to her, I wrote that person off as being an outlier on the bell curve of fandom insanity because--it's the loo. You have to be severely lacking in decency, sense, and manners to think it's okay to try and talk to someone in the loo beyond, "Hey, will you be at your table around two?", and there can't be very many people so extremely socially retarded, right? Pardon me while I go file another petition to be excused from the human race.

seanan_mcguire

5 years ago

  • New comment

meggins

March 20 2012, 04:02:50 UTC 5 years ago

Oh, poor you. Swift recovery!

Poor anyone who passed on The Princess Bride because of that cover.

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:53:54 UTC 5 years ago

Word.

eurii

March 20 2012, 04:20:09 UTC 5 years ago

speaking of links.. thought it may be interesting for you and your fans, that our book club on LJ just voted to read Discount Armaggedon next :)

We will be reading and discussing it together as a community, and I thought maybe some of your fans may be interested in joining.

We kind of have a little Seanan fan club going on over there xD

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:54:08 UTC 5 years ago

Yay!

That's awesome. :)

hoppytoad79

March 20 2012, 04:25:06 UTC 5 years ago

Hoxton Street Monster Supplies is on my list of places to visit now. Thanks for sharing. I definitely need to pick up some Banshee Balls, a can of Vague Unease, and a jar of Thickest Snot. *G*

Feel better soon! Being sick totally sucks.

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:54:22 UTC 5 years ago

Agreed. :(

Deleted comment

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:54:52 UTC 5 years ago

Well, we also don't know enough about her yet. I think she'll get included more once we know her better.

satyrblade

March 20 2012, 05:25:12 UTC 5 years ago

Ah, Esteban Maroto! He was a popular fantasy artist in the late '60s-mid-70s, known mostly for his work in Warren horror magazines, Marvel's B&W magazines, Metal Hurlant, and its U.S. incarnation, Heavy Metal. Given the right material, he was the perfect man for the job. The Princess Bride was not the right material for his approach. :)

bunsen_h

March 20 2012, 14:26:22 UTC 5 years ago

Thank you for IDing the artist! My immediate reaction to that cover was that it looked very familiar — possibly just the style.

seanan_mcguire

5 years ago

  • New comment

dornbeast

5 years ago

  • New comment

cathellisen

March 20 2012, 05:37:33 UTC 5 years ago

GAH THAT COVER.

*claws out eyes*

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:55:28 UTC 5 years ago

I warned you.

dornbeast

March 20 2012, 07:02:33 UTC 5 years ago

May the disease currently in your system find itself at the bottom of a thirty-lymphocyte pileup.

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:55:38 UTC 5 years ago

<3

spectralbovine

March 20 2012, 07:15:56 UTC 5 years ago

watched all of The Number 23 because changing the channel seemed too much like work
Oh God. I'm sorry.

Luckily for me, the movie made no damn sense
True!

and just triggered nice little daydreams about prime factors and pi. What? I don't judge what helps you feel better.
Oh. Okay.

That prize has already been claimed by this not-safe-for-work edition of The Princess Bride.
What. What. What is that.

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:55:57 UTC 5 years ago

I do not know what it is. I do not even.

What.

dragonsally

March 20 2012, 07:17:09 UTC 5 years ago

I'm sorry to hear that you've got a lurgy - heal quickly!

Loved all those links. More goodies for my Tumblr feed.

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:56:08 UTC 5 years ago

Thank you!

pola_bear

March 20 2012, 08:30:34 UTC 5 years ago

I am so joining you for that trip to Hoxton street monster supplies. And may figure out a jaunt there soon. How had I not heard of that?

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:56:21 UTC 5 years ago

I don't know!

lejays17

March 20 2012, 08:59:50 UTC 5 years ago

That is a truly horrible cover of Princess Bride! It doesn't suit the content at all.


Feel better soon!!

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:56:34 UTC 5 years ago

Thank you!

hvideo

March 20 2012, 09:27:29 UTC 5 years ago

My deepest sympathies on the illness. 3 days after ConSonance I came down with an Upper Respiratory Infection (URI) of my own, and though the worst has passed there is this lingering cough.... From your description, though, it sounds like a different URI. I didn't notice anyone at ConSonance who obviously had these symptoms, though, so I rather suspect the Sunday Dinner Run to Sweet Tomatoes (which was very crowded) may have been where I caught it.

I did read and enjoy DISCOUNT ARMEGEDDON while I was sick. The Aeslin mice were a lot of fun, and I've watched enough competition shows on dancing (both the professional/amateur ones like DANCING WITH THE STARS and the professional/professional competitions shown on PBS) to appreciate Verity's dance background. But while I enjoyed the book, I think I have to give the edge to the October Daye series. Of course, that has developed over 5 books (so far). It may well be that once the world of Verity Price has had more space to be developed, a re-assessment would be in order. And it could simply be that if I was feeling better when reading DA I might have enjoyed it more. But there really seemed to be too much of a rush to introduce the various races - that no sooner had one race been introduced than another was pushing it aside. For my taste (which may not be typical of your other readers), introducing half as many races and giving each one twice as much time would have been a better pace. But of course, you had specific plot reasons to introduce all those races. The plot would have had to be revised to accomodate that choice if things went the other way. As an author you have to make many such choices. The Dominic/Verity stuff likewise progressed much faster than I would have expected (given the relationship of the two families). The trust given and the shifting of his viewpoint seemed unexpectedly quick. So just letting you know that to this reader much of the book felt rushed.

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:57:34 UTC 5 years ago

I appreciate the feedback, although I note that this is a first book, which meant "introduce some of these things now or get yelled at later when they aren't properly established." In the future, however, please leave these sort of comments on the book's open thread, so as not to accidentally spoil people who may not have read it yet?

joecoustic

March 20 2012, 09:49:23 UTC 5 years ago

Hope you feel better soon!

As to The Princess Bride cover... that's so wrong it'll never manage to make it back around to the neighborhood of being right. And yeah, as someone above commented - I too think I read a very different version. :)

siege

March 20 2012, 13:50:40 UTC 5 years ago

As TV Tropes has it, things like that can be So Bad It's Horrible (and never gets better), or even So Bad It's Awesome (where it wraps all the way around and becomes good again, even if just for the cheese factor).

seanan_mcguire

5 years ago

  • New comment

leighblack

March 20 2012, 12:49:30 UTC 5 years ago

I do, in fact, own that exact version of The Princess Bride. And yes, it's just that weird.

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:57:59 UTC 5 years ago

Weeeeeeeeeeeeird.

Deleted comment

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:58:18 UTC 5 years ago

I love their cover snark. Some of those covers...I don't even.

anne_d

March 20 2012, 12:59:10 UTC 5 years ago

That cover. My eyes, my eyes! Now that's a fearsome hat!

*Puts on Mom-hat (speaking of cunning hats)*

Take care of yourself, because you are the only Seanan we have, and not a mere device. Feel better soon.

*Takes off Mom-hat*

I recently bought Human for a Day, and of course I read "Cinderella City" first. What a lovely tribute to your city. You are one of the best writers I know.

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:58:31 UTC 5 years ago

Thank you. :)

greenmansgrove

March 20 2012, 14:33:24 UTC 5 years ago

As for the cuckoos, the article says "Exactly why many hosts accept such obviously alien eggs continues to baffle biologists."

I saw a piece on (I think) Nova a while back on cuckoos, that mentioned that if their eggs are destroyed or otherwise ejected from the nest, the cuckoo would come back and destroy the remaining eggs in retaliation. And not only cuckoos, but the cowbird does so as well.. It's a very similar situation. Cowbirds will leave their eggs in a warbler nest, and destroy the other eggs if their egg is not nurtured.

Cuckoo's and Cowbirds... the avian Mafia. Or maybe more like the mafia and the tongs, or the yakuza, since they're not part of the same species. Parallel evolutionary organized crime. Hm...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11314-cuckoos-use-mafiastyle-tactics-to-raise-young.html

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 14:58:46 UTC 5 years ago

Cuckoos are awesome.

ladymurmur

March 20 2012, 14:42:39 UTC 5 years ago

"When I’m on book tour, I try to keep physical contact to a minimum. This is for your protection as well as my own. I usually tour during the start of cold/flu season and I don’t want to be responsible for accelerating the spread of what could be a potentially deadly illness. Please respect this effort by not asking me for a hug."

Awwww.... Alton doesn't want to play "Spread the Plague!" Isn't that what book tours are for? ;-)

Feel better soon.

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 15:00:01 UTC 5 years ago

I thought it was! Apparently, I was wrong.

nyxalinth

March 20 2012, 15:08:23 UTC 5 years ago

Feel better soon. *hugs* I'm just getting over what I have dubbed "Evil Zombie Death Virus" aka Spring Cold 2012. stay in bed, drink lots of fluids, and remember that kittehs make everything better!

Also, that cover...my first thought was "I've seen enough hentai to know where that is going...." My second thought was "Someone not familiar with the story will be very disappointed!"

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 16:06:07 UTC 5 years ago

My kittehs make everything better by destroying my capacity to acquire oxygen. They are BIG.

sarafawkes

March 20 2012, 15:48:33 UTC 5 years ago

Hope you get to feeling better soon!!

seanan_mcguire

March 20 2012, 16:06:15 UTC 5 years ago

Thank you.
Previous
← Ctrl ← Alt
Next
Ctrl → Alt →