several entirely unrelated things make a post

[raven]

If another American academic tells me that Britain doesn't have a constitution, I am going to KILL THINGS. Hi, I woke up cranky.

Anyway.

thingswithwings did a signal-boosting post (thank you!) for dark_agenda's people-who-aren't-white in Yuletide project. Here it is - it's pretty interesting.

So of course I was thinking about my Yuletide nominations, from the other day. There aren't non-white people in many of them, actually; there are in Deep Space Nine, of course (Julian Bashir, Sisko and Jake, Kassidy Yates, Worf), and while the characters in "Recessional" could feasibly of any ethnicity or origin, Vienna Teng herself is not white, so.

Then I started thinking about the Chronicles of Chrestomanci. Millie. Is Millie (and, thus, Roger and Julia, I s'pose) a brown person? I can't remember an explicit reference in the books, but her origin story isn't suggestive of her being white. I'd love a story that actually explored this in some way - I mean, I think every single one of the other characters is white except Nirupam Singh, who never interacts with her anyway, so there would be lots to explore - but somehow I do end up writing these things myself.

In other news, Shim sent me a box of Jammie Dodgers. I love him.

(I mean, I did love him before. But.)

In other other news, the sudden grey weather and my inability to do any work today and yesterday may be related. FIE UPON YOU TOO, UNIVERSE.

Comments

[gavagai]

So it's a brilliant idea and also serious, but I confess I giggled with glee that the first comment on the dark_agenda post was about The Human Centipede.

*handbasket*

[raven]

I am TRAUMATISED by that! I am so pathetic when it comes to things like that, but the Wikipedia summary was enough to freak me out!

[gavagai]

Haha I don't actually want to see it, but I do kind of love how it's become the new goatse in terms of its mere mention upsetting people. Because I am HORRIBLE.

[brewsternorth]

Yeah, I suppose what we have is a constitution-but-not-as-we-know-it-Jim. But then some Americans seem to have a shaky grasp on what *their own* constitution is like.

I cheered at twings' post: sounded like a damn good idea.

JAMMIE DODGERS. Another cheer. (Particularly when they appeared disguised as threatening red buttons in that Dalek episode of S5.)

[marymac]

I have a hardcover of Bagehot's The English Constitution. I suggest you acquire one and hit them with it. Hard.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Telling the Americans that three hundred years ago most Westminster politicians who gave the matter some thought and understood the concept of constitution would probably have believed that Britain (if as an extension of the liberties of England to post-Union Scotland) did have a written constitution, and it was called Magna Carta, would probably not help your cause.

I remain in awe of all you successfully get through.

ETA: IKWYM, though - my line is usually that the unwritten constitution is a myth and the British constitution is a combination of statute and unwritten conventions ranging from the firm pronouncement to the hypothesis arrived at through historical and legal and parliamentary triangulation.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Hey, I agree with you! Entirely. A constitution isn't "a document"; it's "a set of secondary principles setting out the functioning of a polity". But yeah, preaching to the converted there. :)

(And, thank you. :P)

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Jammie Dodgers! *has Eddie Izzard Very Tiny Airline flashback*

"We will be flying at an altitude of ten feet, a bit higher if we see something big."

Sorry. Jammie Dodgers. *giggles*

Are they delicious and do they actually have jam in them? Or does Eddie just like them because they have the word "jam" in them? Ah, a research project for me!

I have personally destroyed an entire batch of pajama pancakes, which is Sig-n-Sal for pancakes with banana in them. They came out looking very un-pancake-like; in fact they look like the exact opposite of pancakes. I wish I had some Jammie Dodgers.

*hugs you and sekritly ogles your Jammie Dodgers* (ooh, that sounds way dirtier than intended)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

They are and they do! Each one is two biscuits stuck together with a layer of cream and a layer of jam. And the top layer has a hole in a heart shape that so a) you can see the jam, and know it is not a myth, and b) you know your beloved loves you even when you are in Faraway Longoff Land, because he is sending you BISCUITS WITH HEARTS IN THEM.

I will swap you Jammie Dodgers for Sig-n-Sal pancakes. *big grin*

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Ah, so it is at once jammy, chock full of love, and Eddie-approved. Miracle food! Ah, we have something like that, a little bit, called fruit creams, only the jam is on the top in the middle of the cookie like the centre of a flower and the cream is in between the two shortbread cookies.

And I may have to take a picture of the exactly-opposite-of-pajama-pancakes so that you know what you're in for. You may want to stick with the hearts-across-the-pond Jammie Dodgers. ;) The belated application of apple slices and the long drying-out process in the oven is not making them look any better. I'm considering covering the entire thing with whipped cream. *facepalm* And to think the whole debacle began because I was trying to find a healthier substitute for butter.

Sorry, I'm going on and on, but that's only because it's still doing something in the oven behind me and I'm scared.

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

But you don't have a constitution, because if WE have one of something, it is the ONLY EXEMPLAR WHICH MATTERS! OMG11!!!eleventyone!

Here, have a hittin' stick.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*hit hit hit*

...thank you, that's much better.

[subservient-son.livejournal.com]

Maybe you should walk around with a copy of Bagehot to hit people with.

[gummitch.livejournal.com]

But spare them the hitting if they can properly pronounce 'Bagehot'.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

A wise thought, this.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I have wondered the same thing about Millie! I am always a bit uncomfortable with her storyline, because it seems like the fact that she isn't shouldn't be white gets covered over very quickly, and it all gets very cosy and forgotten. I mean, she doesn't have a name as the Goddess, so she takes on an English name out of the Englishest-English-ever storybooks, and the fact that she is from a hot country where white-Englishness is not the norm is never mentioned again.

There's also Abdullah in Castle in the Air, which is kind of a 1001-Arabian-Nights world, with magic carpets and djinns and sultans. Like the Millie storyline, I can never quite decide whether it's yay diversity, or boo standard orientalist trope. It ends up colliding with a standard European fairy-tale world, though, and I do quite like the way that the Arabian Nights world turns out to exist on the same plane as the Seven-League-Boots-World.

I definitely recommend The Dark Lord of Derkholm for being utterly cool about colonialism and theft and identity, though. I think you do see her get more interesting from the 1970s to the 2010s, so she started off very "writing books with white English children in mind" and gets less so.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I'm not the only one to think of it! I thought in some ways it's a really cool idea - here's Charmed Life, and then The Lives of Christopher Chant works to tell you that what you might have assumed about Millie isn't true at all. But then she never does anything else with the idea in the books that follow.

Discworld also bothers me for exactly the same reason - there are so few people in it who are non-white, characters with a chunk of story and aren't meant as a joke!

Thank you for the rec! I am finding the books difficult to get hold of, but they're appearing bit by bit.