Just in case you haven’t seen these ...

[snorkackcatcher]

A few interesting things seen recently:


France and UK considered 1950s 'merger' -- a report on Monday suggested that Britain and France talked about a "union" in the 1950s, even discussing the possibility of the Queen becoming the French head of state, according to a document someone found in the British archives. I must admit, when I saw this in the paper my eyes instinctively flicked to the top of the page to see if it said "April 1^st". Now I knew that Churchill had proposed such a thing in summer 1940 as a desperate solidarity-showing exercise, but reviving the idea a decade and a half later seems very strange. This is pretty much what you would describe as a historical bombshell if true, although apparently the French archives have no record of it whatsoever, which makes me wonder if some practical joker has sneaked a forged document into the archives (that sort of thing has been done before, I believe).



TV series of 'A Song of Ice and Fire' -- HBO in the States have acquired the rights to ASOIAF and are proposing to film it on a one-book-per-series basis. This is probably a good approach, as they're long books and the LOTR (and to an extent HP) films show what happens when you try to cut down long books into 2-3 hours of screentime, and it's not always pretty. On the other hand, they might well cancel the show part-way through leaving the rights in limbo ... I did notice an aside in the article which stated Martin "won't complete the seven-book cycle until 2011", to which my reaction was, I'm afraid, "yeah right, and then some"!



All About Romance's Yearly Cover Contests -- a link seen on ladybracknell's LJ. What you probably want are the links to the "worst cover" contests -- classic bad cover art from romance novels ranging from the ludicrous to the creepy to the anatomically impossible. Also notable for some of the cattier comments which suggest that certain shipper mindsets transfer well to this fandom -- because heaven forfend that average-looking people should ever get laid in a romance novel. (All right, I know, as a reader and writer of HP fanfiction I'm not in a good position to snark at anyone else's literary tastes.)


A terminology question: suppose for the sake of argument that in DH Bill and Fleur get married, and so later on do Harry and Ginny -- what's the term for Gabrielle Delacour in relation to Harry? Can the term "sister-in-law" be made to stretch that far? Does "sister-in-law by marriage" make any sense? Or am I stuck with the clumsy "wife's brother's wife's sister"?

Lyrics: The last one was of course from The Eton Rifles by The Jam in 1979, a classic from one of my favourite bands! lazy_neutrino and ladybracknell spotted it. A bit more recent is this one:

But you see, it's not me, it's not my family.
In your head, in your head they are fighting,
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are crying (1990s)

Comments

[snorkackcatcher]

I know -- it feels like there should be a term for it (and according to sugarannie, there is in German, which unfortunately doesn't help unless perhaps there's a corresponding term in French). Fortunately, however, I was doodling with Gabrielle's introductory paragraph last night and this morning and realised I could just phrase it as something like "Ginny had never been fond of her relative by marriage ..."