Terminus Day Five
Aug. 10th, 2008 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenna_c_tanTerminus Day Five
Last day of Terminus! I'm soooooo tired. Slept like a stone last night, but only seven hours or so. Didn't go to as many presentations, since a two hour slot was taken up in the morning for the keynote that I didn't pay to see. And then![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clauclauclaudia and I had a leisurely breakfast so I missed the presentation on wizard dueling I had been interested in.
Latin for Wizards
by Katie Krohn
This was an interesting session, taught by a Ravenclaw in professorial robes. It was part lesson in Latin conjugation, part criticism of the wacky way that JKR's spell construction works. I personally don't believe that spells "need to be" or "should" conform to Latin or English grammar, since spells themselves are made up from so many different languages and language roots, and presumably various incantations were invented at different eras in history and, like many oft-used words, can shift and change over time. But that's my take. Professor Krohn's presentation was no less delightful for that.
Among the points she made:
Lack of target specificity – spells work like bullets, often hitting the wrong target, and they can ricochet, and backfire (Ron's wand).
Some spells, by application of grammar can be targeted. Subject--object.
False cognate: reparo. Not repair, but refresh.
"Spell" from the old English spelion, which was both transitive and intransitive. "Spelle," meaning charm, enchant, or bewitch. Related to words in Gothic, and is the root of "gospel."
Swearing, cursing, and oaths, are not exactly the same.
Traditional curses require the deity to do it.
An oath is a solemn appeal of a deity to witness one's desire to speak truth.
Him Whom We Must Not Name – the object form of He Who Must Not Be Named.
Profane once referred to pagan/following the old ways (pro-fanus = before the temple), which morphed into meaning actually desecrating.
Incantation derives from incantare to chant. "Use of a formula of words to produce a magically effect."
Hex, comes from hexa, witch. Has negative connotation, whereas "spell" has a neutral connotation.
Jinx comes from greek, and then latin, jynx, the wryneck bird, a hissing snake-like sound it makes and twists its head around. Its feathers were used in spellcasting. Its mating rituals are supposedly interesting and the feathers were used in love spells. But the word overall went from neutral to being negative and minor ill-luck.
Curse, the most strongly negative term, comes from old English "curs" (possibly from cursion). OED says "utterance consigning a person to evil." "The evil used in retribution." In the Talmud, the undeserved curse is ineffective.
Anathema – the curses used by the church.
Excommunication with bell, book, and candle, required a bishop with 12 priests. A bell to evoke the death toll, close the holy book to represent the closing off of the access to holiness, and then knock over the candle to snuff it, to represent the soul being snuffed out.
The spells in the books are a mix of the English, which uses word order, and ancient languages which use infected endings and not word order.
Most spells are given as first person singular (conflagrio, incendio, imperio, diffindo, etc...)
Some verbs require objects (throw, catch, idolize) others do not (sympathize, burp).
But in the HP universe, there are many that are lacking their objects.
Obliviate, Ennervate, Finite – are the imperative form of the Latin verbs
Verb and object together with: colloportus, mobilicorpus, tantallegra, etc...
Colloportus – should be collegoportem
Legilimens – lego=I read, mentem is the proper object, therefore "legomentem"
Expelloarmum! (kind of a mouthful)
One Inferius, Inferii it should be!
Horcrux, the plural is Horcruces (just like index, indices).
I then landed in the Room of Requirement with a lot of the friends I made, drabbling and drawbling in each other's friendship books. I wrote a LOT Of haikus for people this weekend. Most of them smutty or suggestive, of course. No, I don't have copies of them so if you want to read them, you'll have to beg people likebethbethbeth, chibitoaster, gatewaygirl, amanuensis1, ze_dragon, alisanne, jin_fenghuang, nimori, and sassy_cissa to post them. (I've lost track of all the ones I've done...) We also coined a new term for "Snarco," which is "Drapery." Yay!
LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD: Authorship, Ownership, and Fan Appropriation
Suzanne Scott and Amy Tenbrink
I came in late to this, so I missed Amy's opening comments. This was a panel on legal issues and sociological issues within fandom and the intersection of the needs of fans, commercial entities, and creators.
I cannot do any justice to the breadth and depth of all that was said, so I just have some notes:
Fans have an ambivalence to authorial intent, there is the power of effective ownership
Harmonians wanted to see their ship sail on in the text, very invested in canon but invested in their own interpretation of the text, too. Hamonians were much much more invested than some ships because for example slashers ambivalence toward the text is strong, whereas it really seemed like Harry/Hermione could have really been real in the books. So that fandom was able to be very invested in a way that other ships couldn't be. (Suzanne is writing her dissertation on the subject of fan appropriation.)
Compare to The Campaign for a Female Boba Fett – to try to convince Lucas that BF should be made female to fix the paucity of female characters in the Star Wars universe. Started a long time ago. The site is still trafficked even though Episode 2 canonized BF as male.
A constant internal negotiation between the desire to read the text and the desire to find the desired reading in the text.
The response to JKR's announcement that Dumbledore is gay: more media debated about her right to make announcements after the publication versus the fact that D. was gay itself. Is the canon closed if she will still keep saying things? Does only the author have the right to re-open the canon?
"Interfering with reader's minds" was what one book reviewer called it in the Wall Street Journal (?? I thnk, might have said Washington Post) "Do you really want to limit your fictional world? ... You let them (the characters) go. And now they are ours."
"Subversive respect": Rebecca Toushin sees a drop in legal disclaimers being put on fics. If fan texts are conceived of as more legitimate, less plain appropriation, that subversive respect may flow in two directions.
Any great piece of literature will have MORE interpretations, not fewer. Whether interpretations of authorial intent or other readings.
Amy also gave a summary of the RDR Books case. The JKR camp tried and tried and tried to see the RDR Books manuscript in advance, but they refused to give it over, leaving them only with the choice to SUE. So they sued. Once they actual knew what was in the book, then the question of what was "fair use" came up, because so much of what was in it seemed to be using JKR quotes. Also the question of having given permission for a free-to-use website is not extended to giving implicit permission for a pay-to-use book. Suzanne's problem with the RDR book is that tons and tons of fans have contributed to the Lexicon over the years and now suddenly VanderArk seemed to be appropriating other fans' labor. It eventually came out that no, the essays and bylined pieces were not being included in the book, but there were questions in fandom about whether there was appropriation or not.
At 4pm I was too tired to go to One More Panel, so I landed back in the Room of Requirement to do some more haiku, and then got ready to go to dinner.
Later, just got back from a fabulous spanish dinner with much sangria, paella, and tapas withsilver_ariel (who had been to the restaurant before), and lesyeuxverts00, vals_wickedgrin, claudclauclaudia, jin_fenghuang, chibitoaster, and gatewaygirl. Now we're getting dressed for the Bon Voyage Ball. Tomorrow there's a goodbye breakfast, and then the con is done! We'll probably spend the afternoon in Caribou Coffee where there's free wireless before we go to the airport. If there are no delays, I'll be back on the ground in Boston just after 9pm!
Last day of Terminus! I'm soooooo tired. Slept like a stone last night, but only seven hours or so. Didn't go to as many presentations, since a two hour slot was taken up in the morning for the keynote that I didn't pay to see. And then
clauclauclaudia and I had a leisurely breakfast so I missed the presentation on wizard dueling I had been interested in. Latin for Wizards
by Katie Krohn
This was an interesting session, taught by a Ravenclaw in professorial robes. It was part lesson in Latin conjugation, part criticism of the wacky way that JKR's spell construction works. I personally don't believe that spells "need to be" or "should" conform to Latin or English grammar, since spells themselves are made up from so many different languages and language roots, and presumably various incantations were invented at different eras in history and, like many oft-used words, can shift and change over time. But that's my take. Professor Krohn's presentation was no less delightful for that.
Among the points she made:
Lack of target specificity – spells work like bullets, often hitting the wrong target, and they can ricochet, and backfire (Ron's wand).
Some spells, by application of grammar can be targeted. Subject--object.
False cognate: reparo. Not repair, but refresh.
"Spell" from the old English spelion, which was both transitive and intransitive. "Spelle," meaning charm, enchant, or bewitch. Related to words in Gothic, and is the root of "gospel."
Swearing, cursing, and oaths, are not exactly the same.
Traditional curses require the deity to do it.
An oath is a solemn appeal of a deity to witness one's desire to speak truth.
Him Whom We Must Not Name – the object form of He Who Must Not Be Named.
Profane once referred to pagan/following the old ways (pro-fanus = before the temple), which morphed into meaning actually desecrating.
Incantation derives from incantare to chant. "Use of a formula of words to produce a magically effect."
Hex, comes from hexa, witch. Has negative connotation, whereas "spell" has a neutral connotation.
Jinx comes from greek, and then latin, jynx, the wryneck bird, a hissing snake-like sound it makes and twists its head around. Its feathers were used in spellcasting. Its mating rituals are supposedly interesting and the feathers were used in love spells. But the word overall went from neutral to being negative and minor ill-luck.
Curse, the most strongly negative term, comes from old English "curs" (possibly from cursion). OED says "utterance consigning a person to evil." "The evil used in retribution." In the Talmud, the undeserved curse is ineffective.
Anathema – the curses used by the church.
Excommunication with bell, book, and candle, required a bishop with 12 priests. A bell to evoke the death toll, close the holy book to represent the closing off of the access to holiness, and then knock over the candle to snuff it, to represent the soul being snuffed out.
The spells in the books are a mix of the English, which uses word order, and ancient languages which use infected endings and not word order.
Most spells are given as first person singular (conflagrio, incendio, imperio, diffindo, etc...)
Some verbs require objects (throw, catch, idolize) others do not (sympathize, burp).
But in the HP universe, there are many that are lacking their objects.
Obliviate, Ennervate, Finite – are the imperative form of the Latin verbs
Verb and object together with: colloportus, mobilicorpus, tantallegra, etc...
Colloportus – should be collegoportem
Legilimens – lego=I read, mentem is the proper object, therefore "legomentem"
Expelloarmum! (kind of a mouthful)
One Inferius, Inferii it should be!
Horcrux, the plural is Horcruces (just like index, indices).
I then landed in the Room of Requirement with a lot of the friends I made, drabbling and drawbling in each other's friendship books. I wrote a LOT Of haikus for people this weekend. Most of them smutty or suggestive, of course. No, I don't have copies of them so if you want to read them, you'll have to beg people like
bethbethbeth, chibitoaster, gatewaygirl, amanuensis1, ze_dragon, alisanne, jin_fenghuang, nimori, and sassy_cissa to post them. (I've lost track of all the ones I've done...) We also coined a new term for "Snarco," which is "Drapery." Yay!LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD: Authorship, Ownership, and Fan Appropriation
Suzanne Scott and Amy Tenbrink
I came in late to this, so I missed Amy's opening comments. This was a panel on legal issues and sociological issues within fandom and the intersection of the needs of fans, commercial entities, and creators.
I cannot do any justice to the breadth and depth of all that was said, so I just have some notes:
Fans have an ambivalence to authorial intent, there is the power of effective ownership
Harmonians wanted to see their ship sail on in the text, very invested in canon but invested in their own interpretation of the text, too. Hamonians were much much more invested than some ships because for example slashers ambivalence toward the text is strong, whereas it really seemed like Harry/Hermione could have really been real in the books. So that fandom was able to be very invested in a way that other ships couldn't be. (Suzanne is writing her dissertation on the subject of fan appropriation.)
Compare to The Campaign for a Female Boba Fett – to try to convince Lucas that BF should be made female to fix the paucity of female characters in the Star Wars universe. Started a long time ago. The site is still trafficked even though Episode 2 canonized BF as male.
A constant internal negotiation between the desire to read the text and the desire to find the desired reading in the text.
The response to JKR's announcement that Dumbledore is gay: more media debated about her right to make announcements after the publication versus the fact that D. was gay itself. Is the canon closed if she will still keep saying things? Does only the author have the right to re-open the canon?
"Interfering with reader's minds" was what one book reviewer called it in the Wall Street Journal (?? I thnk, might have said Washington Post) "Do you really want to limit your fictional world? ... You let them (the characters) go. And now they are ours."
"Subversive respect": Rebecca Toushin sees a drop in legal disclaimers being put on fics. If fan texts are conceived of as more legitimate, less plain appropriation, that subversive respect may flow in two directions.
Any great piece of literature will have MORE interpretations, not fewer. Whether interpretations of authorial intent or other readings.
Amy also gave a summary of the RDR Books case. The JKR camp tried and tried and tried to see the RDR Books manuscript in advance, but they refused to give it over, leaving them only with the choice to SUE. So they sued. Once they actual knew what was in the book, then the question of what was "fair use" came up, because so much of what was in it seemed to be using JKR quotes. Also the question of having given permission for a free-to-use website is not extended to giving implicit permission for a pay-to-use book. Suzanne's problem with the RDR book is that tons and tons of fans have contributed to the Lexicon over the years and now suddenly VanderArk seemed to be appropriating other fans' labor. It eventually came out that no, the essays and bylined pieces were not being included in the book, but there were questions in fandom about whether there was appropriation or not.
At 4pm I was too tired to go to One More Panel, so I landed back in the Room of Requirement to do some more haiku, and then got ready to go to dinner.
Later, just got back from a fabulous spanish dinner with much sangria, paella, and tapas with
silver_ariel (who had been to the restaurant before), and lesyeuxverts00, vals_wickedgrin, claudclauclaudia, jin_fenghuang, chibitoaster, and gatewaygirl. Now we're getting dressed for the Bon Voyage Ball. Tomorrow there's a goodbye breakfast, and then the con is done! We'll probably spend the afternoon in Caribou Coffee where there's free wireless before we go to the airport. If there are no delays, I'll be back on the ground in Boston just after 9pm!
