A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square

The UC Octet: making me want to have a eight-way sex marathon since 2008

Once a year, during my High School days, I would be overcome by the most soul-destroying jealousy.  I thought that as the years passed, the intensity of my nasty feeling would decrease.  And yet, each year, the green monster reared it’s ugly, neighbor’s-wife-coveting head from the cesspool of my most unappealing emotions.

And the reason was this: each year one of my school friends would play host to the Harvard Krokadiloes.

To the uninitiated, the Krokadiloes are but one (albeit among the most Ivy League, elite examples) of the many gimpy singing groups that confound and delight Universities and lucky outsiders around the world.  And it is within this particular context that any standard-bearing feminist drops her ideological problem with anything exclusively male, and just embraces the vision of a group of men dressed in tuxedoes or baggy beige pants – walking Tommy Hilfiger ads, all of them – while hearing the most delightful a cappella singing that the ear can stand. Whatever variation we’re talking about, whether we’re in the spires of Oxford, or the halls of Harvard, or the quadrangles of Yale – or even in light-hearted and sunny California – let’s be honest: a cappella performances are aural sex.

But it’s not canon!

I have a confession to make. I read fanfiction, and, occassionally, I write it too. This isn’t something I’m particularly proud of, and I like to tell myself it’s because I like to broaden my writing horizons, practice it, and also read some good yarns. (Which is complete bollocks because I can categorically say that 99.999999% of fanfiction is rubbish.) But, really, it’s to indulge my romantic-sensibilities as a TV fanatic. And, by that, I mean that I heavily invest in TV romances. We all do it, and TV will usually anoint a ‘Chosen Couple’ in order to exploit our unhealthy fixation on these characters and their relationship, in order to get us to keep watching, by building up sexual tension, getting them together, breaking them up, getting them together, and breaking them up again like the emotional tug-o-war it is for a viewer who’s a closet romantic, because TV is a sick, sick, sadistic bastard.

So, in the absence of closure, or in an attempt to fill in the gaps and ‘fix’ anything we may find wrong with the current state of the relationship of the Chosen Couple, we turn to fanfiction to create our own – and we’d like to think, a better – revisioning of the saga between these characters [1]. Unfortunately, a lot of 13-year-old girls with access to the Internet think the same thing, and you’re left to find the proverbial diamond in the rough as you attempt to dig through bad grammar, unrealistic plots, and poorly written sex scenes, those of which are written by people who’ve probably never actually touched a member of the opposite sex [2].

Unfortunately, Weasley fans did not get the memo.

There is a reason why the word fan takes its roots from the word ‘fanatics.’ And when you delve in to the scary world of the Harry Potter fandom, it becomes apparent that there are some seriously fucked up kids out there. Most of it is harmless, others are just. Wrong. *cough*Snape/Harry slash*cough*. It goes without saying that in this particular fandom there is a blatant disregard for canon, the beacon of guidance for aspiring writers. Usually, all fiction must operate within the parameters of the canon. Those who attempt to deviate from it may suffer the backlash of readers and fans alike. One such example being Smallville fans, who want everything in the series to follow the canon of the original Superman mythos, and don’t take in to consideration that Erica Durance and Tom Welling have the chemistry of a plank of wood. Truth is, some of the most interesting relationships aren’t canon at all.

Emma Thompson Please Date Me!

Emma Thompson is a goddess. And if I ever saw her in person I would probably do a half-bow, realize that I couldn’t be more uncool if I tried, trip over one of my feet, realize that somehow I’ve fumbled my meeting with Emma Thompson even more, throw caution to the winds and just make out with her. Probably.

As if my embarrassing girl crush hadn’t already reached a fevered pitch, in today’s Australian there was an interview with the woman herself – obviously a puff piece spruiking the impending release of Brideshead Revisited (23 October, I believe… not that I have a giant calendar in the corner of my room marking each hour that passes before the release). The article glossed over her authorial ambitions, the discovery of her acting talents during her sojourn with the Footlights theatrical club at Cambridge.

Nonetheless, there was still a lot of juicy info for a swooning fan-girl such as myself. Apparently, when Thompson found out that the actress playing Julia in the film was asked to lose weight before filming, she through a hissy-fit tantrum and threatened to walk away from the entire film unless they revoked their request.

Swoon.

Why am I here when I could be over there?

Tired. May embellish thought process later.

New York, I love you and miss you. And yes, I still dream of you.

The Genius of Gossip Girl

Blast from the past.

In my early high school years I wanted to be Joey Potter, who’s now known as Mrs Tom Cruise, a.k.a. mother of the cutest celebrity baby ever, other than that, you know, Scientology problem. Anyway.

Dawson’s Creek paved the way for mid-20 year old actors and actresses passing themselves off as ten years younger, who seduced teachers with no legal repercussions and did things like climb into their best friend’s bedroom window at night. Then came The O.C. and Marissa Cooper, with all her Californian tan bottle goodness in a cute Marc Jacobs dress and monotonous voice. She probably single-handedly revived Chanel bag sales in the under 25 demographic and made every girl want a geek Jewish boyfriend (Seth) to deck out in Lacoste polos, or at least a cute-but-not-as-cute sidekick (Summer) who will look like, you know, super-cute with her Valley Girl accent and all.

And now we have Gossip Girl.

What the Korean romantic-drama-dy has taught me about love. (Or, why crunchyroll ate up all my bandwidth.)

In 'My Sassy Girl' the doormats get the girls.

For some odd reason there was a time last year when I was addicted to Korean romantic comedies slash dramas (because their films can’t belong to just the one genre), I don’t even know why or how I got hooked on to them. And, no, it wasn’t because of the re-make of ‘The Lake House’ which had just been released, nor was it because of the buzz surrounding ‘My Sassy Girl’, which I picked up from reading blogs about J-Pop (don’t ask). Actually, I think I stumbled upon a link on YouTube of a trailer in English for ‘Ditto.’ You know how it is, you just keep clicking links on the Internet and suddenly it’s 2 in the morning and you find yourself watching reaction videos to 2 Girls 1 Cup, and then curiosity gets the best of you and so you actually watch 2 Girls 1 Cup, and it’s from that moment on that you realise you have a stomach of steel because you managed to sit through the whole thing without being affected.

Paris is Burning.

The birth of Vogue-ing.

Dir. Jennie Livingston

Released in 1991, Jennie Livingston’s ‘Paris is Burning’ is a documentary that focuses its lens on the lower class GBT community in the late 80’s and the elaborate ‘Balls’ that were held in the back alley dance halls of New York. The members of this community are thrice marginalized: they are gay, poor, and ethnic minorities (either black or Hispanic). As society has no space for the marginalized, Balls create this space for them to exist and to perform.

The film documents the Balls, the slang and jargon associated with them, the ‘Houses’ which are often metaphors for the homes in which many of them were no longer welcome at, and key characters who make up the narrative of the film and provide different perspectives and insight in to a world and experience that is foreign to the mainstream.

It offers an empathetic and non-judgmental lens to a community and sub-culture that, today, is often caricaturized.