observations from the trenches

[truepenny]

The Mirador, Chapter 12: 4,602 words

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Chapter 12 is now very short, partly due to a couple of stupid scenes getting axed, and partly due to my realization that there was Too Much Stuff in it and it needed to be two chapters.

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Note to self: give soirées a chapter to themselves in future (not that we're going to write any more of them, precious, because we're not) and save yourself the bother of separating them out in a later draft.

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matociquala has convinced me that Felix should be played by Jeremy Brett.

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And I don't usually post lines from works in progress, but this one deserves it. Felix Harrowgate, disposing of an adversary: "You're incompetent, darling, and really I can't think of a worse thing to say about anyone."

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I will now pet Felix.

*pets Felix*

Yanno, it couldn't happen to a nicer adversary, either.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

If you need more convincing?

http://membres.lycos.fr/jbsf/accueiljb/hamletaccueiljb.jpg

http://membres.lycos.fr/jbsf/galerie/cadeau.htm

For lo, he was exceptionally hot once upon a time.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

where, WHERE is my time machine?

That Jeremy Brett can be any character of mine he wants.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

there were a LOT of pretty boys around in the mid-sixties.

Oh yes.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Also? He had very nice hands.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Hee.

*loff*

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Oh, here, I can't resist this one.

http://membres.lycos.fr/jbsf/galerie/drac.htm

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

Yummy. Especially if one has only known him from Sherlock Holmes or as twit-Freddy in My Fair Lady.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Not that he wasn't the bestest Holmes evar.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely the bestest. Makes me very upset that my ex liberated the Sherlock Holmes tapes from the video collection.

[uneasy-spirit.livejournal.com]

Yabbut ... Jeremy Brett's been dead for over a decade. Makeup's going to be a cast-iron bitch.

[seajules]

I recently finished reading Mélusine. I must now fangirl Felix and you like a crazy thing.

[cassandraterra.livejournal.com]

Join the club the_mirador :)

[secondsilk.livejournal.com]

Felix sounds very cool.

I found you out from an lj-friend who recommended your books. I haven't tracked them down yet. And I actually friended you for the discussions on writing more generally. Particularly your essay on writing female characters, because none of my characters talk to me or take over the telling of their (that is, my) story, male or female. But when I write fanfiction, it is predominately about the male characters. I find stories I can write about female characters because I feel I should write about female characters.

My father is fond of saying that he can work for bastards, because they what they're doing, and you can confront them. And he can work for incometent people, because you work around them, and they'll let you get on with things. It's working for incompetent bastards that he can't stand.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Mmm, Felix. Jeremy Brett would be good, though it makes an odd sound in my head when I picture him with red hair.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I've just finished rereading Melusine, actually, and I can sort of see Jeremy Brett as Felix, but given what I said to you before about Mildmay's voice reading to me as gutter The Commitments Northside Dublin - there are only about four places in the whole book where his phrasing or word usage does not fit that, mostly second-person pluralisation - it was kind of irresistable to hear Felix in a Trinity College Dublin accent, of which the perfect readily available example is Paul Bettany playing Stephen Maturin, who works for me as "could play Felix".

I tried making Mildmay's voice sound like it did when you were reading it. Honest. It's just too far from the range of accents I'm used to, it kept morphing into Foghorn Leghorn, which I could neither read straight-faced nor believe was your intent.

I haven't had a weirder experience since going from the first time I read Neuromancer, which came out in quasi-Harrison Ford Blade Runner voiceover, to hearing Wiiliam Gibson read and hearing it in his voice. Which makes the book about three times longer.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Foghorn Leghorn would, in fact, be Wrong.

American regional accents are an odd thing, because they have, at the present time, become almost synonymous with markers of class, specifically lower class. Not 100%--the Deep South accent is still hanging grimly onto its gracious antebellum antecedents--but that accent can't be paired with Mildmay's mid-South dialect the way that the Dublin accents in your example can. Because they are regional. The opposite of every regional American accent I can think of is the Educated American accent (which itself has regional variations: the East Coast talks faster than the rest of us, and with a slightly different inflection).)

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

as evidenced by the way you try to make me say "quarter" and "water" in conversation, and then laugh at me when I do. *g*

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Dude. Make me say "nine." Or "down." Or "lawyer."

Sometimes (earlier this week, for example), all you have to do is make me say my first name.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

hee. You have a cute (slight) accent without prompting, though. I don't need to giggle at your for it.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I would like to point out, for the record, that you were the one who insisted on telling the story of the Constitution Oak. *g*

And it isn't that I find those dropped r's funny--it's that they're always a little bit of a shock (because (a.) they're such a sudden abrogation of Educated American and (b.) it just sounds weird to me (which is totally subjective and not a value judgment--my ear just says weird! every single time. I didn't know any New Englander kids growing up, and what you do with r's is really quite alien to what I do with r's.))

And sometimes, you know, you're being witty in yourself.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

*g* I know. And it's an ongoing thing--apparently I do Crisp Midwestern Broadcast Standard well enough that (a) Europeans often assume I am a long-term US resident, not a native and (b) when my dialect does show up, it's like a pig in a purple dress.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

You know, I have an aunt SAY-ruh. She is from Mississippi--while my niece Sarah was raised by paretns from Missouri. *ponders*. It's amazing that anyone in my family understands anyone else in my family.

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

Mmmm, Jeremy Brett. He's got the voice for it, no mistake. Though I'm having trouble picturing him with red hair...

And I love the line. Felix is so terribly Wildean. It makes me happy.