(no subject)

[derien]

So I stayed home again yesterday, but decided not to bore you all with more stories of sitting around being dull, eating oranges and chicken soup. I read "The Riding Hound of the House of Tain", which is a retelling of "Hound of the Baskervilles" using Garak and Bashir (from Deep Space 9) in place of Holmes and Watson.

In some ways I think it works better than the original. In "Hound" Holmes seemingly abandons Watson and hides all his plans from him, which always seemed a little out of character for Holmes, to me. And, apparently, to Watson, who (if I recall correctly) is rather hurt by it. (I'm re-reading the original, now, just to see if I have a different impression, now.) When Garak does the same thing it's completely in character and Bashir is not in the least surprised or bothered by it because it's exactly the sort of behavior he expects. He just asserts that he trusts Garak and lets it go at that.

I also typed up more old journals, yesterday, and am back at it this morning. The one I typed today was a trial and tribulation, just like the rest, but it did offer me some insights into my younger mind. There's so much I don't remember. I remembered I had some issues with being bi, because it was completely not-cool in my school, but didn't remember that I had so little concept of what being queer was all about. It's evident in the way I wrote about things that at that point I had absolutely no exposure to anything beyond the stereotypical flamers which was all one saw in the movies or on tv. But I was reaching for the fact that on some level I knew that media representation was just not the truth.

I also had blanked out the fact that my first boyfriend was really a complete asshole. I knew I'd dumped him and felt good about having done it, but I couldn't remember why. How odd. Or is it?

Comments

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

I really like 'The Riding Hound of the House of Tain', while I've always been disappointed with 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'. 'The Riding Hound' seemed to capture the tone, language and subtextual qualities of the Holmes stories very well, while also keeping Bashir and Garak in character. 'H of the B', however, gets me thinking about the difficulties inherent in painting large, savage dogs and, as you point out, suffers from the lack of Holmes. (You can read a large part of a really good article on the problems in 'Hound' here (from John Sutherland's excellent Can Jane Eyre be Happy?. All of Sutherland's books on literary puzzles are well worth reading).

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

Oh! And I meant to say: the latest TV movie of 'Hound', which had a youngish Holmes and Watson was incredibly slashy. The bloody dog was still crap, though.

[dances-withcats.livejournal.com]

God, I was so clueless about being gay or bi when I was in high school. I guess that was my safety armor. :-/

I'm glad I don't have too many high school journals to go over. I'd probably retch many times as I read the tales of my dramas and woes.

And now for something completely different: someone posted a question about animals as carry-ons in petcare...I thought maybe you could give this person some advice about how to get through security with pets. I've already commented that she NEEDS to contact the airlines to see if they even allow animals as carry-ons.

Here's the URL of the post: http://www.livejournal.com/community/petcare/75041.html?nc=1&style=mine

[derien.livejournal.com]

I almost wish I had been clueless. I knew I was bi and felt most barbs quite personally.

It took me forever to respond to that person about the cats as carry on, but I just posted my response. :)

[graeviking.livejournal.com]

Hi, I've added you to my friends list.:-) Just a heads- up...