rants positive, negative and in between
Feb. 3rd, 2011 02:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elen_nareDear Mr. Ransome: I love your work, but you're not the always the best with details - for instance, the year 1930 somehow didn't exist in your canon! Though you did notice that and intend to change it, so points for that. That's not the bone I have to pick with you, however.
In Swallows and Amazons (1929), you describe Peggy Blackett as being the same size as John Walker. However, by Winter Holiday (1931), you imply that Dot Callum thinks Peggy's younger than John's younger sister Susan. This is fixable, by assuming the Blacketts had earlier growth spurts than the Walkers, and making Peggy and Susan the same age - a solution to which you'd come, judging from some notes of yours (I found them online, but it's a fansite, they were quoted from a book, and no-one challenged them, so I guess it's legitimate). "Assume they're the same age" also applies to Nancy and John.
But! These same notes give me John being 12 and Susan 11 in the first book. But according t Swallows and Amazons, Susan was born on January first, and John "just before" the summer holidays - presumably no further back than the start of July. So there being a one-year difference between them in August? Umm... If you do the maths, it works out as really really unlikely. She has to be at least two years younger than him during the holidays. In numbers, that is; the actual difference works out at about one and a half years.
That means Peggy gets made younger, too. Which de-ages Dot, which in turn impacts on her brother Dick, and therefore on Titty Walker, since they're all much of an age. It... kind of winds up making more sense, in some ways - these three plus Roger Walker are treated as if they're all about the same age, although Roger is the youngest. And we got Roger's age in canon, he's 7 in S&A! Yes! A hard number! And if you don't make the others younger, he winds up being too small.
So, yeah... Thanks for the notes, Mr. Ransome, but I'll tweak them as I see fit.
(Also, would it have killed you to give a couple more ages within canon? Birthdays? People's hair colour and type (curly, straight, wavy...)?... Anything?) Yes, I know it leaves more scope for fanfic. But these are the sort of things I like canon on. It's the way I am.
And why, you ask yourselves, is Elen going on and on about this? I mean, it's not like she has an excel file with the months for each year from 1916 to 1939, and is trying to make all the birthdays fit with brothers and sisters, and with no-one having a birthday party during any of the books except Bridget Walker, who's so much younger her age doesn't cause problems anyway (except, you know, for it being self-contradictory within canon. Thanks again, Mr. Ransome!) . While also trying to get everyones' ages to fit into her half-plotted version of what happened after the series ended, when the kids grew up. Because that would be insane. And Elen is never insane. Nor does she talk about herself in the third person.
.......
Moving on...
Dear Subconscious: We're not fond of calculus. I know this. You know this. So why, pray tell, must we take the longest, most rambling, least conductive to an answer, path with every single exercise we attempt? I swear, it's not just that my thought processes don't go in straight lines; they go in spirals.
......
A posi!rant, to make this post not be quite so negative [Although the first one isn't meant to be negative, just a chronicle of over dramatized annoyance, to which other authors would also be subjected had I not got Swallows and Amazons on the brain :) ]
Dear pair of recent reviewers on ff.net: How dare you be so nice! You told me what you liked,but you also pointed out where I'd got a person's title wrong in one case, and a pretty big age gap I hadn't thought about in another. And you had the nerve do to it really nicely, too! You made me smile, you pointed out what I'd missed and you made me think. Thank you very much :)
.......
Today my mum took me shopping with her, looking for a present for my cousin. Normally I'd be moaning, but since it was a short trip it wasn't too bad. One of the shops we went into was a kitchenware/ornaments/school stuff place. In it, they had an ornament that looked a bit like these things (Which are used in astronomy). I have a picture on my phone, I´ll post it tomorrow. I loved it! There were also carved wooden dragons, and glass vases filled with what looked like nothing so much as un-numbered, approximately 10 sided, translucent plastic dice. I am now convinced that the shop owner is a bit of a geek. (Or I'm the geek and seeing too much into things, of course. Both work :P)
......
Soo.... summing up, we have learnt today that Elen can obsess in great detail over fictional characters, whines about Calculus, likes nice reviewers, and is a bit of a nerd. And talks about herself in the third person too much, albeit inconsistently, in LJ posts. I'm sure you're all shocked. :P
PS: Random question: difference between geek and nerd? I use both fairly interchangeably, but I know other people don't , and I'm interested to see what you do. I seem to remember there being discussion on this somewhere in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
daydverse , but I have no idea exactly where.
In Swallows and Amazons (1929), you describe Peggy Blackett as being the same size as John Walker. However, by Winter Holiday (1931), you imply that Dot Callum thinks Peggy's younger than John's younger sister Susan. This is fixable, by assuming the Blacketts had earlier growth spurts than the Walkers, and making Peggy and Susan the same age - a solution to which you'd come, judging from some notes of yours (I found them online, but it's a fansite, they were quoted from a book, and no-one challenged them, so I guess it's legitimate). "Assume they're the same age" also applies to Nancy and John.
But! These same notes give me John being 12 and Susan 11 in the first book. But according t Swallows and Amazons, Susan was born on January first, and John "just before" the summer holidays - presumably no further back than the start of July. So there being a one-year difference between them in August? Umm... If you do the maths, it works out as really really unlikely. She has to be at least two years younger than him during the holidays. In numbers, that is; the actual difference works out at about one and a half years.
That means Peggy gets made younger, too. Which de-ages Dot, which in turn impacts on her brother Dick, and therefore on Titty Walker, since they're all much of an age. It... kind of winds up making more sense, in some ways - these three plus Roger Walker are treated as if they're all about the same age, although Roger is the youngest. And we got Roger's age in canon, he's 7 in S&A! Yes! A hard number! And if you don't make the others younger, he winds up being too small.
So, yeah... Thanks for the notes, Mr. Ransome, but I'll tweak them as I see fit.
(Also, would it have killed you to give a couple more ages within canon? Birthdays? People's hair colour and type (curly, straight, wavy...)?... Anything?) Yes, I know it leaves more scope for fanfic. But these are the sort of things I like canon on. It's the way I am.
And why, you ask yourselves, is Elen going on and on about this? I mean, it's not like she has an excel file with the months for each year from 1916 to 1939, and is trying to make all the birthdays fit with brothers and sisters, and with no-one having a birthday party during any of the books except Bridget Walker, who's so much younger her age doesn't cause problems anyway (except, you know, for it being self-contradictory within canon. Thanks again, Mr. Ransome!) . While also trying to get everyones' ages to fit into her half-plotted version of what happened after the series ended, when the kids grew up. Because that would be insane. And Elen is never insane. Nor does she talk about herself in the third person.
.......
Moving on...
Dear Subconscious: We're not fond of calculus. I know this. You know this. So why, pray tell, must we take the longest, most rambling, least conductive to an answer, path with every single exercise we attempt? I swear, it's not just that my thought processes don't go in straight lines; they go in spirals.
......
A posi!rant, to make this post not be quite so negative [Although the first one isn't meant to be negative, just a chronicle of over dramatized annoyance, to which other authors would also be subjected had I not got Swallows and Amazons on the brain :) ]
Dear pair of recent reviewers on ff.net: How dare you be so nice! You told me what you liked,but you also pointed out where I'd got a person's title wrong in one case, and a pretty big age gap I hadn't thought about in another. And you had the nerve do to it really nicely, too! You made me smile, you pointed out what I'd missed and you made me think. Thank you very much :)
.......
Today my mum took me shopping with her, looking for a present for my cousin. Normally I'd be moaning, but since it was a short trip it wasn't too bad. One of the shops we went into was a kitchenware/ornaments/school stuff place. In it, they had an ornament that looked a bit like these things (Which are used in astronomy). I have a picture on my phone, I´ll post it tomorrow. I loved it! There were also carved wooden dragons, and glass vases filled with what looked like nothing so much as un-numbered, approximately 10 sided, translucent plastic dice. I am now convinced that the shop owner is a bit of a geek. (Or I'm the geek and seeing too much into things, of course. Both work :P)
......
Soo.... summing up, we have learnt today that Elen can obsess in great detail over fictional characters, whines about Calculus, likes nice reviewers, and is a bit of a nerd. And talks about herself in the third person too much, albeit inconsistently, in LJ posts. I'm sure you're all shocked. :P
PS: Random question: difference between geek and nerd? I use both fairly interchangeably, but I know other people don't , and I'm interested to see what you do. I seem to remember there being discussion on this somewhere in
daydverse , but I have no idea exactly where. 
no subject
Date: 2011-02-03 02:18 pm (UTC)Remember, I'm the one who compiled a ridiculously detailed chart of every DAYD member, cross-referenced by house, year, survivor status, and children, and wrote a million emails to the author to check details (and caught a couple continuity errors along the way :)) So yeah, I totally understand.
Calculus. Ugh. I'm still hiding from it. And I tend to take the convoluted route to get to the answer too, except I usually don't even get to the answer.
YAY for good reviews!! A good review can totally make your day. :)
Oooh, those astronomy things, I've seen them before, and they look so cool. But for the life of me I can't remember what they're called! And carved wooden dragons? I want!
Geek vs. Nerd: There was this discussion a while back. I also tend to use them interchangeably, though to me geek implies an obsession with a specific topic; a language geek, a biology geek, etc. But I don't have any hard or fast rules. :)
*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2011-02-04 04:45 pm (UTC)How much detail they give is more their own business, of course. However, it still staggers me that, for imstance, in all his working and reworking of his mythology, JRR Tolkien didn't give some of the Elven kings' wifes names.
Haha, true. Detailed-obsessed Ravenclaws rock :) Trust me, if I could email Ransome, I'd do it right now!
I never said I got to the answer, just that I took the longest path in trying to find it :P I'm still stuck on some.
Good reviews are fantastic :) Yours are always wonderful, by the way; but you never know what you're going to get on ff.net.
They're called armillary spheres (I was too lazy to google a dictionary lastnight, sorry). I want those dragons too...
Thanks for the link! I knew Colin was mentioned in it, but I thought it had been on a thread to do with him. I don't really distingush between the terms, though if I was talking about an obsession with a topic, I might be more likely to say geek.
*hugs back*
(I definitely did the right thing in asking for this icon and its ravenclaw pair. I use them so much!)
rants positive, negative and in between
Date: 2012-10-29 10:11 pm (UTC)Re: rants positive, negative and in between
Date: 2012-10-30 12:37 am (UTC)The ages being given at the beginning of the year is a brilliant idea, though! I never considered that... Annoyingly, I don't seem to have saved the Roger Wardale reference (I have all sorts of links saved, but of course the one I need I can't find!), but it would work for John, Nancy, Susan and Peggy at least, assuming Peggy is actually older than Susan. I chose to make her a little younger (February birthday) following Dot's comment, but she could be older, too. And the detailed specifics don't really matter much, I suppose, so long as the ages are reasonably right - but they are fun to speculate over!
Also, slightly off-topic, but I've been getting quite a lot of Anonymous spam comments, so seeing one that wasn't (and was S&A commentary!) really made me happy, and convinced me that I was right to just sigh, delete the spam, and not turn off anonymous comments. Thank you for that! :)
Re: rants positive, negative and in between
Date: 2012-10-30 11:06 pm (UTC)Re: rants positive, negative and in between
Date: 2012-11-02 04:09 pm (UTC)I'll have to see if I can find a copy of that book sometime! It sounds really interesting. I suppose I can understand Ransome's reasoning for taking out details, but I'd love to have them. Nancy and Peggy had curly hair? Ooh, interesting... I have to say, as someone who has curly hair, I'd have been thrilled to see that included!