Comments on LJ events you're already bored with

[resonant]

1. Love memes (like the one going on at queenofthorns right now) are much easier these days now that LJ introduced its little thumbtack icon! You can track the entire discussion (to see if anyone you know comments asking for love), or you can track your anonymous comment (so you can see if the person replies to it). It's very cool.

2. Some of the discussion on helenish's Take Clothes Off As Directed seems to be implying that it's a brand-new (and unfair) thing to comment on/criticize a piece of literature by writing another piece of literature in response to it.

But this sort of conversation between two literary works is at least as old as when Christopher Marlowe wrote The Passionate Shepherd to His Love ("Come live with me and be my love/And we will all the pleasures prove") and Sir Walter Raleigh replied with The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd ("If all the world and love were young/And truth on every shepherd's tongue ...").

Comments

[wicked-socks.livejournal.com]

I suppose my only real point here is that not seeing that connection immediately doesn't have to be a result of ignorance, or of Helen's doing a poor job with it, but rather of the reader simply approaching the story from a different perspective and initially missing that layer.

That's true, but initially missing something, or never ever seeing it even after it's pointed out is a little different. I didn't realize that Narnia was a Christian allegory the first time I read it, but once I heard the idea, and knew enough about Narnia and Christianity, the similaries were, well, exceedingly diffcult to miss.

[hypothalamus.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course! I for sure wasn't saying otherwise. Just that, failing to see it initially doesn't make me a dumbass-- or I hope it doesn't! *g*

[wicked-socks.livejournal.com]

See, if missing it in the first place made you a dumbass, then that means I was as well, and, ha, so not admiting to that. Nope.

*g*