Words meme
Jul. 18th, 2009 12:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabidsamfanReply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.
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janeturenne gave me these words:
Maiwand, Mary, movie, drabble, books
Well, these three are the dead giveaway that you know me via the Sherlock Holmes fandom, because they are all inextricably linked to my long-time crush on a certain Doctor. And bonus, if you turn the M over you get the W that stands for Watson!
Maiwand represents Watson's past -- it must have been the defining event of his life before he met Holmes because it's nearly the only thing he tells us about that early life. (It's certainly the most researchable.) There are other snippets of info -- we know he had an elder brother who was a bit of a wastrel, we know that he spent some time in Australia, we know that his family is not in England (although they could be in Scotland.) We know he played rugby for Blackheath, and we know that he for some reason was better acquainted with Sussex than Holmes -- at least until they went down to investigate the vampire there. But most of all we know he was at Maiwand, and we know that he saw his comrades "hacked to pieces" there.
The more I read about Maiwand, the more I realize just how horrible the retreat must have been to a doctor. The wounded would normally have been carried in special carriers on camels, or carried by men in covered stretchers called dooleys (spelled a dozen different ways). The ratio of dooley bearers to dooleys was huge. I'm not looking it up just at the moment but think 10 to one or more. These things weren't on wheels, and you had to switch off the team of carriers often. But when the rout began, the (unarmed) dooley bearers put down their burdens and ran for their lives. So did the camel "boys", some of whom took the camels that they actually owned and had only rented to the British. That left the medical personnel hastily stripping supplies off of any beast of burden they could find and throwing wounded men up onto their backs. Some men were taken up on gun carriages, but far too many were left behind for the simple reason that there was no way to bring them along, and little hope of their survival even if it were possible.
All along the path of the retreat, men died of their wounds, and more men were injured or killed by fire from the local villagers. There was no water, not for man nor beast, until they reached a river hours into the night, and some of the horses died of exhaustion even after they'd been given something to drink, or refused to move. The unarmed camp followers who did stay with the medical personnel would have needed protection. The wounded needed a miracle. And Watson, who would have been responsible for those men, must have inevitably failed to bring them all back safe to Kandahar -- must have lost far too many before he too was wounded.
The mark was indelible. Watson never forgot his respect for the military, but he lost his taste for war as a solution to any problems. The wounds he received (and its my theory that he got the leg wound sometime before Maiwand, actually, and healed "in-country") plagued him with pain for the rest of his life. And I think that he lost any sense of himself as being competent to lead others. He follows Holmes not only because Holmes is worth following, but also because a part of his mind finds it safer to leave the responsibility in someone else's hands. This changes, gradually, as the war grows farther behind him, but it does lead me to the next M.
Mary. The only woman we are certain of in Watson's life, Mary Morstan represents to me all the "wives" and theories and chronological conundrums that make the timeline such a fascinating muddle. She also represents a time in Watson's life when he has taken the lead again -- and even then, he has chosen to marry a woman who is very like Holmes in that everyone brings her their problems to solve. A lot of Holmes fans dislike her -- they see her as an interloper who disrupts the partnership -- but I can't find it in myself to join them. By the evidence she made every effort to see to her husband's happiness, and it can even be argued that she pushes him back towards Holmes at times. (I think as much because of her regard for Holmes as for Watson's sake.) She's not nearly the distraction that practicing medicine is, as she will blithely step aside, while Watson's patients must be tended to through one arrangement or another. I'm quite certain she died, by the way. Holmes would not have referred to a divorce as a cause for "sorrow" -- especially if it ended a marriage he was never quite happy about.
Movie. You've got to mean the upcoming RDJ and JL movie, because I don't think I've blathered about any other. And I do blather. Jude Law, once he grows the face fuzz and puts on decent clothing, comes closer to my personal mental image of Watson than any other actor I've seen. (Although I have several other Watsons I love dearly, I mean the Watson in my head.) That they're giving him a temper is pure gravy. That the movie seems to be set around that time in Holmes and Watson's lives when Watson is turning to Mary (and Holmes can't understand why) is pure jam. With whipped cream. Did you know that in the two trailers, the explosion scene is different? The second version desn't have one of the silhouettes that the first one does. (1:56 in the new trailer, 1:59 in the old...) Er, am I getting distracted again?
Drabble I wrote my very first drabble in March of 2004, and since then, if I've managed to tag them all, I've added over three hundred, most of them still Lord of the Rings. And that doesn't count the droubbles, sesquidrabbles and occasional trabble in the mix. I stick to the definition I first learned. 100 words precisely, and a title of no more than four words (although I very occasionally cheat on the title, it is only to identify the context for something very specific like a story or tv show episode.) Fixed-length ficlets are a joy to write. The word limit forces you to think carefully about word choices, and some of my best drabbles have required five minutes to draft and two days to revise to my own satisfaction. While it isn't a requirement, I like a drabble to have a good last line -- one which will leave the reader making an incoherent noise of glee or will turn everything they thought they knew upside down. I like to open up the book and find a passage, and then drabble about it from a different point of view than the original, and I love to drabble plotbunnies and set them out into the larger world to hop in the hopes that someone will write a longer story around them. It amuses me tremendously to see some of the things I've drabbled wander back in a different form (polka dot ears! how clever!)
Drabbles are also a form of writing which can save me when I'm too down or busy to write longer things. And they get done. I may be good at drabbles, but I'm also a genius at WIPS...
Books. What can 'I say? I'm a librarian! By vocation as well as avocation, really. I'm not nearly as erudite as I wish I were, but I do love the feel of a good codex in my hand. I like e-texts for some things, but I know that the "E" is for "ephemeral" (see my last entry) and I've got books in my collection that have worked well for decades without requiring upgrades, new software, or a paid electric bill. Chances are, if I'm on my soapbox getting splinters, the subject is books, one way or another.
janeturenne gave me these words:Maiwand, Mary, movie, drabble, books
Well, these three are the dead giveaway that you know me via the Sherlock Holmes fandom, because they are all inextricably linked to my long-time crush on a certain Doctor. And bonus, if you turn the M over you get the W that stands for Watson!
Maiwand represents Watson's past -- it must have been the defining event of his life before he met Holmes because it's nearly the only thing he tells us about that early life. (It's certainly the most researchable.) There are other snippets of info -- we know he had an elder brother who was a bit of a wastrel, we know that he spent some time in Australia, we know that his family is not in England (although they could be in Scotland.) We know he played rugby for Blackheath, and we know that he for some reason was better acquainted with Sussex than Holmes -- at least until they went down to investigate the vampire there. But most of all we know he was at Maiwand, and we know that he saw his comrades "hacked to pieces" there.
The more I read about Maiwand, the more I realize just how horrible the retreat must have been to a doctor. The wounded would normally have been carried in special carriers on camels, or carried by men in covered stretchers called dooleys (spelled a dozen different ways). The ratio of dooley bearers to dooleys was huge. I'm not looking it up just at the moment but think 10 to one or more. These things weren't on wheels, and you had to switch off the team of carriers often. But when the rout began, the (unarmed) dooley bearers put down their burdens and ran for their lives. So did the camel "boys", some of whom took the camels that they actually owned and had only rented to the British. That left the medical personnel hastily stripping supplies off of any beast of burden they could find and throwing wounded men up onto their backs. Some men were taken up on gun carriages, but far too many were left behind for the simple reason that there was no way to bring them along, and little hope of their survival even if it were possible.
All along the path of the retreat, men died of their wounds, and more men were injured or killed by fire from the local villagers. There was no water, not for man nor beast, until they reached a river hours into the night, and some of the horses died of exhaustion even after they'd been given something to drink, or refused to move. The unarmed camp followers who did stay with the medical personnel would have needed protection. The wounded needed a miracle. And Watson, who would have been responsible for those men, must have inevitably failed to bring them all back safe to Kandahar -- must have lost far too many before he too was wounded.
The mark was indelible. Watson never forgot his respect for the military, but he lost his taste for war as a solution to any problems. The wounds he received (and its my theory that he got the leg wound sometime before Maiwand, actually, and healed "in-country") plagued him with pain for the rest of his life. And I think that he lost any sense of himself as being competent to lead others. He follows Holmes not only because Holmes is worth following, but also because a part of his mind finds it safer to leave the responsibility in someone else's hands. This changes, gradually, as the war grows farther behind him, but it does lead me to the next M.
Mary. The only woman we are certain of in Watson's life, Mary Morstan represents to me all the "wives" and theories and chronological conundrums that make the timeline such a fascinating muddle. She also represents a time in Watson's life when he has taken the lead again -- and even then, he has chosen to marry a woman who is very like Holmes in that everyone brings her their problems to solve. A lot of Holmes fans dislike her -- they see her as an interloper who disrupts the partnership -- but I can't find it in myself to join them. By the evidence she made every effort to see to her husband's happiness, and it can even be argued that she pushes him back towards Holmes at times. (I think as much because of her regard for Holmes as for Watson's sake.) She's not nearly the distraction that practicing medicine is, as she will blithely step aside, while Watson's patients must be tended to through one arrangement or another. I'm quite certain she died, by the way. Holmes would not have referred to a divorce as a cause for "sorrow" -- especially if it ended a marriage he was never quite happy about.
Movie. You've got to mean the upcoming RDJ and JL movie, because I don't think I've blathered about any other. And I do blather. Jude Law, once he grows the face fuzz and puts on decent clothing, comes closer to my personal mental image of Watson than any other actor I've seen. (Although I have several other Watsons I love dearly, I mean the Watson in my head.) That they're giving him a temper is pure gravy. That the movie seems to be set around that time in Holmes and Watson's lives when Watson is turning to Mary (and Holmes can't understand why) is pure jam. With whipped cream. Did you know that in the two trailers, the explosion scene is different? The second version desn't have one of the silhouettes that the first one does. (1:56 in the new trailer, 1:59 in the old...) Er, am I getting distracted again?
Drabble I wrote my very first drabble in March of 2004, and since then, if I've managed to tag them all, I've added over three hundred, most of them still Lord of the Rings. And that doesn't count the droubbles, sesquidrabbles and occasional trabble in the mix. I stick to the definition I first learned. 100 words precisely, and a title of no more than four words (although I very occasionally cheat on the title, it is only to identify the context for something very specific like a story or tv show episode.) Fixed-length ficlets are a joy to write. The word limit forces you to think carefully about word choices, and some of my best drabbles have required five minutes to draft and two days to revise to my own satisfaction. While it isn't a requirement, I like a drabble to have a good last line -- one which will leave the reader making an incoherent noise of glee or will turn everything they thought they knew upside down. I like to open up the book and find a passage, and then drabble about it from a different point of view than the original, and I love to drabble plotbunnies and set them out into the larger world to hop in the hopes that someone will write a longer story around them. It amuses me tremendously to see some of the things I've drabbled wander back in a different form (polka dot ears! how clever!)
Drabbles are also a form of writing which can save me when I'm too down or busy to write longer things. And they get done. I may be good at drabbles, but I'm also a genius at WIPS...
Books. What can 'I say? I'm a librarian! By vocation as well as avocation, really. I'm not nearly as erudite as I wish I were, but I do love the feel of a good codex in my hand. I like e-texts for some things, but I know that the "E" is for "ephemeral" (see my last entry) and I've got books in my collection that have worked well for decades without requiring upgrades, new software, or a paid electric bill. Chances are, if I'm on my soapbox getting splinters, the subject is books, one way or another.
