skygiants: Princess Tutu, facing darkness with a green light in the distance (find the light)
skygiants ([personal profile] skygiants) wrote2009-10-12 10:46 am

(no subject)

A while back, [livejournal.com profile] avariel_wings mailed me a copy of Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy all the way from England (which is dedication) and after a shamefully long time I have finally gotten around to reading it!

I should be honest: I tried to read The Crystal Cave a few times a kid and I never could get through the beginning few chapters of Merlin-as-a-kid. Once I got to the parts about Ambrosius, though, the story really picked up for me, and I think the second half of The Crystal Cave and the Baby Arthur parts of The Hollow Hills have been my favorite parts of the series so far. (Kate also sent me The Wicked Day, which I think is the finale of the series, so I will be reading that at some point too.) I really like some of the ways that Mary Stewart pieces together the myths, and re-interprets them, and I like how she is careful to show how stories spread. All that is very cool! I like less the focus on Arthur in the last book to the exclusion of much of the other characters of the legend (I am sorry, I just could not love this Arthur as much as T.H. White's Arthur - he was formative for me!) and how unambiguously evil Morgause and to a certain extent Morgan are, because Ladies' Power Means Using Sexuality For Evil, Duh.

I am not quite sure how I feel about this Merlin; Merlin has never been the most interesting part of the story for me. Sometimes I think I quite like him, especially when he is young and kind of arrogant and being sarcastic and clever! Other times I am frustrated by him and how content he is to give up agency to Divine Power and how little he morally questions that. (Other times I just want him to stop going on about how pretty the hillside is because sometimes my attention span is short.)

Anyway, pretty much everyone knows the Arthur stories and everyone sees them in a different way, and I am very curious about everybody's favorite Arthurs. I asked this question before when I reread The Once and Future King, but it is different now because there are new people on my flist! Also, because it is in the form of a POLL, and that makes it officially shinier.

[Poll #1469901]

[identity profile] jezrana.livejournal.com 2009-10-12 03:16 pm (UTC)(link)
The first one was tough for me to answer because as a kid I imprinted really hard on Disney's Sword and the Stone, but then when I was 13 I imprinted even harder on Mists of Avalon. So I went with Disney because it's got about ten years on Avalon, but Avalon had a lot more impact on how I view Arthurian legend today.
ext_27060: Sumer is icomen in; llude sing cucu! (Tutu: the raven boy)

[identity profile] rymenhild.livejournal.com 2009-10-12 03:26 pm (UTC)(link)
BECCA WHY DO YOU USE RADIO BUTTONS INSTEAD OF BOXES? I CANNOT CHOOSE.
ext_901: (Default)

[identity profile] foreverdirt.livejournal.com 2009-10-12 03:35 pm (UTC)(link)
This was pretty much word for word my decision-making process, too. :D
sdelmonte: (Default)

[personal profile] sdelmonte 2009-10-12 03:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Firelord by Parke Godwin beats them all. It's a reasonably down to earth, generally magic-free, and historically based retelling of the Arthur legend.

Of the things you list, I would take Tennyson.
jothra: (Default)

[personal profile] jothra 2009-10-12 03:40 pm (UTC)(link)
You forgot the Camelot musical! Also, you are very mean for choosing radio buttons. It's hard for me to pick between The Dark Is Rising, Disney, and Monty Python.
agonistes: a house in the shadow of two silos shaped like gramophone bells (incognito)

[personal profile] agonistes 2009-10-12 03:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I am so totally unsurprised that my answers mirror [livejournal.com profile] gramary1971's exactly. *cracking up*
jothra: (Default)

[personal profile] jothra 2009-10-12 03:45 pm (UTC)(link)
OR apparently my cold medicine is affecting my brain.

Let us not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.

[identity profile] scifantasy.livejournal.com 2009-10-12 03:47 pm (UTC)(link)
My justifications:

Python: The Pythons were and are very impressive historians; they have a fair amount of in-jokes to all of the others, and are one of the few sources to correctly show Lancelot as a raving homicidal lunatic.

Merlin: Well, for values of "star" equal to "narrator." Or perhaps "puppetmaster."

Robin: More likely to fight dirty.
ext_901: (Girlgeek)

[identity profile] foreverdirt.livejournal.com 2009-10-12 03:49 pm (UTC)(link)
I swear, my copy of the book probably falls open at the threesome, I reread it so many times.
gramarye1971: a lone figure in silhouette against a blaze of white light (Over Sea Under Stone)

[personal profile] gramarye1971 2009-10-12 04:14 pm (UTC)(link)
*dry* I think I would have been far more surprised if ours didn't match up.
sdelmonte: (Default)

[personal profile] sdelmonte 2009-10-12 04:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Camelot 3000, actually.
varadia: (Default)

[personal profile] varadia 2009-10-12 05:20 pm (UTC)(link)
I am kind of ridiculously fond of The Child Queen and The High Queen by Nancy McKenzie. I am fairly sure I have not yet plumbed the depths of the historical inaccuracy, and they are written in first person like a memoir from Guinevere, but FATE IS A BITCH and this story runs along with that like it's on fire. So.

Sadly Morgause and Morgan are fairly clearly Bad Guys (with awesome powers!), but Guinevere is very complicated and tomboyish. That part kind of makes me very happy.
varadia: (Default)

[personal profile] varadia 2009-10-12 05:33 pm (UTC)(link)
They have been collected in an omnibus edition whose name I can never remember. But FYI, if you ever do look for them? Do not read ANY OF THE OTHERS. She wrote one for Galahad and her own version of Tristan and Isolde, and -- no. Just. No. (Though it is kind of interesting to see how the Gwen POV in the first book/books and Galahad's view of himself is hugely different. So that's cool. It's just -- oddly romance-driven. The Galahad one.)

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