I’m on Corpsecage Island, and seem to have just found Marx’s Capital, apparently he was exiled there. It works with the dates, he died in 1883.
[quote=Marianne Anders]Who says Miss Marple can’t be black? only your imagination. although quintessential Marple would probably be in her 30s circa the 1890s, it’s true.
Arsene Lupin and Holmes are in the same universe, I think, so that’s a possibility.
…are there any clues on who the Once-Dashing Smuggler is?[/quote]
I’m thinking less that Miss Marple can’t be black than that the Miss Marple we have is very, very white - she takes the Holmesian understanding of human behaviour generalised from the specifics of the English race- and class-structure as viewed from a position of genteel privilege, and turns it up to eleven. And also that I’ve noticed in the past haven’t quite picked up on the Detective’s blackness, and unintentionally whitewash her, which is a bit of a shame, so I’m generally keen to make that point clear.
I believe you’re right about Lupin - though the name was later changed for copyright-evasion purposes. And, no clue about the Smuggler - he’s a mysterious figure in more ways than one.
I did not know about that - that is neat! I’m going to assume it’s not entirely canonical, given that the novels frequently refer to the Holmes stories in fictional terms, and to Conan Doyle himself. (For the record, I also assume The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba is non-canonical, because it’s very silly, doesn’t fit the timeline, and is never referred to again.)
edited by Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook on 1/28/2015
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[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)][quote=]I’m thinking less that Miss Marple can’t be black than that the Miss Marple we have is very, very white - she takes the Holmesian understanding of human behaviour generalised from the specifics of the English race- and class-structure as viewed from a position of genteel privilege, and turns it up to eleven. And also that I’ve noticed in the past haven’t quite picked up on the Detective’s blackness, and unintentionally whitewash her, which is a bit of a shame, so I’m generally keen to make that point clear.[/quote][/color]
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[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]nodnod I come from a tumblr-formed racecasting sensibility, and that methodology basically goes "if it’s possible to racebend it, racebend it!" I mean, granted, authentic Agatha Christie is going to be very much based on white uppermiddleclass Britain of the 1920s-30s. but the essentials of Miss Marple as a fluffy old lady who solves crimes by virtue of her great experience with human nature - that could be anyone. [/color]
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[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]and one of the benefits of this sensibility is that it tends to pick up on historical contexts that would otherwise be ignored. I mean, black people weren’t born yesterday, and they’ve been in Britain at least since the Roman invasion? link1. link2. link3. All that’s required background-wise for Marple is for her to be a gentlewoman from St. Mary Mead and to be nostalgic for the old days…and I think that it’d be super useful for a black person in that situation to be very up on the gossip and skeletons of her community. she could very easily be black, is what I’m saying, and all it would take is a little skewing. sort of the same principle as racebending Hermione Granger. reading the text in that lens gives so many different shades and variations of meaning that it can make the whole work new again. [/color]
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[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]…it really is a shame that she gets whitewashed, though. [/color]
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[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]the Sardonic Music Hall Singer is Shirley Maclaine, right? ish. (she’s born in the 1930s.)[/color]
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I’m a fan of the Yeats and Tennyson references that were previously mentioned, but one of my very favorites that I haven’t yet seen anyone point out is that when you become a Watcher via the Great Game, the text is "they also serve who only stand and watch"–which is a twist on the last line of Milton’s "On His Blindness" ("they also serve who only stand and wait"). I was quite pleased by the allusion.
More references I picked up on at 5AM this morning;
The Dilmun Club is so named after the Dilmun Civilization, thought to be one of the oldest empires of the middle east, and the original Garden Of Eden.
As a bonus, it also serves as an initialism:
Death
Isn’t
Less
Meaningful
Under
Neath
More things: Failure on the luck challenge where you talk to Doctor Schlomo about your nightmares has him tell you: "This music crept by you upon the waters, didn’t it?" (T.S Eliot, The Wasteland, again)
edited by Cotton Dee on 2/3/2015
I probably should sign all my posts "an overexcited English major". so close to getting a degree. so close.
The Great Game is pretty definitely a reference to spies. and spying. I’m not sure about the particular characters, though.
not
Honestly, what I think you’ve done there is describe a Miss Marple a lot more interesting than the Miss Marple we’ve got! In other words, I am 100% down for that approach (and by no means unfamiliar with, or surprised by, the history of black Britons, given that we’re talking about a seafaring, colony-taking, slave-trading power, responsible for mass population displacements and the creation of one-way economic chains.)
And she’s totally Shirley Maclaine, yeah. She’s Shirley Maclaine as hell.
A fresh observation: happenstance and serendipity having led me to read a bit of, and a bit about, Jorge Luis Borges, well, I never realised how many Borgesian elements make up FL, both in the broad - traitorous translations, narrative labyrinths, and what have you - and in specifics - such as the Writing of the God, which recalls both the Correspondence as a whole and the Corresponding Ocelot in particular. Also, "Jorge Borges" rivals "William (Carlos) Williams" in the "modern writers of the Americas with silly-sounding names" stakes, but that’s neither here nor there.
edited by Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook on 2/5/2015
How much, er, correspondence, do you reckon the Crimson Book has with the volumes in the Crimson Hexagon in the Library of Babel?[li][/li][li]
edited by fortluna on 2/5/2015
Miss Marples are always just sort of the best. but ahaha, for a moment there i was worried that i was just pointlessly rambling.
…Jorge Borges really should rhyme, but it doesn’t.
and oh gosh. I don’t actually know my Borges that well.
Not much of a reference, but the Bridge Without is an actual place in London (so named because it is opposite the side of the bridge that is Within the walls of the City of London (look, London has a long and complex history) and so called Bridge Within).
edited by RandomWalker on 2/15/2015
[quote=Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook]
<snippety snip>
And if Fallen London featured anyone from Wimsey or Peabody, I’d be so excited, I’d do a backflip into my hat.)[/quote]
IIRC when you first investigate the correspondence stones, one option is to consult a Philologist who sounds very like Emerson to me.
“You slide down the far slope of the dune, and water begins to well up through the sand, swirling around your feet, turning it to gritty mud. You fall to your knees. Water spurts from dunes all around you.” -Death By Water dream card.
is the above a reference to david lynch’s version of DUNE?
I love the reference in sunless sea to Indiana Jones, the one about the outlandish artefact. “This belongs in a museum! Assuming that colonial-imperial appropriation for the purpose of hegemonic taxonomisation is a suitable response to the problem of intercultural contact. Which it probably is, because museums are magnificent institutions.”
this may be incredibly far-fetched, but in Les Miserables Javert sings [quote=]Stars (…) filling the darkness with order and light
You are the sentinels
Silent and sure
Keeping watch in the night[/quote]
it’s a good description of what they do, that’s for sure. and Javert’s a good example of what happens when all you have are rules.
I kinda think the Neath would make him happy, though, because it would just prove his point that if you leave a bunch of criminals to themselves they only enact more crime.
ha. now I’m gonna imagine a Javert-dragon.
Here’s a possible one: The Allegory of Parabola is a tale of mysterious origin, detailing one person’s travel through a perplexing dream world.
It’s become a key text in the study of late Renaissance alchemy and Christian mysticism.
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More Waste Land references (unfortunately, not particularly obscure): Madame Shoshana, the Neath’s foremost clairvoyante, is Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, from the poem. The unlucky result for having your tarot cards read at the carnival is this:
“The first card Madame Shoshana turns over is the Gibbet. This does not signify an execution, of course, but it does indicate a source of extreme vexation, such as an itch you cannot quite reach. It is joined by the Garden, which looks pretty, but foretells a loss at chess to an inferior opponent, and the Lyre, which according to Madame Shoshana simply indicates water. Water. Huh. How is that supposed to help you?”
Water obviously features heavily in all of The Waste Land, but she says to fear death by water in the poem.
This is probably stretching but, “Down to Business” in Wilmots End always starts music in my mind: “Let’s get down to business / to defeat the Hun. / Did they send me daughters / when I asked for sons? / …”
I get all sorts of Angela Carter moments in Fallen London. Some names, some of the circus/carnival moments. I had a bunch in my head, but they’ve all flown at the moment; does anyone else see her too?
Of course, Carter interweaves her wild fantasies with her share of references. So maybe I’m seeing elements which point to an original that both Carter and FB refer to.
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