Kate’s Comments (group member since Jul 21, 2011)

Kate’s comments from the One Does Not Simply Walk Into Your Pants group.

Austen is great at those precise descriptions. I have some of them in my notes too!

SO. Here are the first half of the notes I mentioned in my video (that's all I have typed up so far). Chapters 1-5:

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Ch. 1:

"Ah! my dear, I wish you would not make matches and foretell things, for whatever you say always comes to pass." And from that point on, the EXACT OPPOSITE of whatever she says always comes to pass.

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"I think very well of Mr. Elton[...]." Emma is such a terrible judge of character, particularly where men are concerned. Mr. Elton, Robert Martin, Frank Churchill--she's SO SURE she knows exactly what they're like, and she's so wrong each time. With women, she's not so much wrong about their characters as she is uncharitable and shallow. She doesn't like Miss Bates (because Miss Bates is chatty and annoying and thinks Jane Fairfax is the most perfect being on earth instead of thinking Emma is, the way everyone else does), and she doesn't like Jane Fairfax ("because she saw in her the really accomplished young woman, which she wanted to be thought herself" [Vol. 2, Ch. 2]), but she doesn't mistake their characters particularly. (Of course, Jane has secrets, but that's a whole different thing.) She initially likes Harriet primarily because Harriet is extremely pretty ("her beauty happened to be of a sort which Emma particularly admired" [Ch. 3]) and thinks Emma is wonderful and perfect--but Harriet really *is* very nice, if not very bright or very self-aware; Emma is again shallow but not really mistaken.

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Ch. 2:

"Captain Weston was a general favourite; and when [...] Miss Churchill, of a great Yorkshire family, [...] fell in love with him, nobody was surprised, except her brother and his wife, who had never seen him, and who were full of pride and importance, which the connection would offend. [...The marriage] took place, to the infinite mortification of Mr. and Mrs. Churchill, who threw her off with due decorum." Emma is something of a snob, but she is not a HUGE snob, and Austen is careful to point out the difference by showing us the Churchills' behavior.

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Ch. 3:

"[...]Mrs. and Miss Bates, and Mrs. Goddard[...] were fetched and carried home so often, that Mr. Woodhouse thought it no hardship for either James or the horses. Had it taken place only once a year, it would have been a grievance." Such a great, economical description of Mr. Woodhouse's patterns of thought.

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I'm always a bit surprised that Emma should be so willing to so thoroughly befriend a young woman who is illegitimate. Perhaps this is where we are meant to see that Emma is only *kind of* a snob, not a *complete* snob. (Though I suspect that Harriet's illegitimacy would have mattered more to Emma if Harriet had possessed less prettiness, less sweetness, and less conviction that Emma is perfect.)

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More excellent Mr. Woodhouse descriptions: "Upon such occasions poor Mr. Woodhouse's feeling were in sad warfare. He loved to have the cloth laid, because it had been the fashion of his youth, but his conviction of suppers being very unhealthsome made him rather sorry to see anything put on it; and while his hospitality would have welcomed his visitors to everything, his care for their health made him grieve that they would eat." Funny that Mr. Woodhouse's entire personality is made up from these sorts of contradictions, and yet it makes him an extremely, extremely consistent character--gentle, a little feeble, constantly rather worried about everything and concerned for everyone's health and wellbeing, very caring about other people while absolutely unable to consider that anyone might feel or respond differently from himself.

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Ch. 4:

Harriet is basically a big piece of Play-Dough--completely malleable and without any distinct shape of her own--for Emma to mold and stamp the way she wants. Emma finds this delightful.

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Harriet: "[...] for they are quite as well educated as me." Hee!

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Harriet is the most literal person on earth.
Emma: "Compare Mr. Martin with [Mr. Weston and Mr. Elton]. Compare their manner of carrying themselves; of walking; of speaking; of being silent. You must see the difference."
Harriet: "Oh yes!--there is a great difference. But Mr. Weston is almost an old man. Mr. Weston must be between forty and fifty."

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Just *totally* dependent on Emma's judgment.
Emma, making prognostications about Robert Martin, whom she has never met and has only seen once from a distance: "He will be a completely gross, vulgar farmer, totally inattentive to appearances, and thinking of nothing but profit and loss."
Harriet, as if Emma has The Sight: "Will he, indeed? That will be very bad."

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Ch. 5:

"This will certainly be the beginning of one of our quarrels about Emma, Mr. Knightley." It amuses me hugely to think that Mrs. Weston and Mr. Knightley have (presumably friendly) arguments about Emma, like, *all the time*.

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Interesting that Mrs. Weston accuses Mr. Knightley of snobbishness ("I can imagine your objection to Harriet Smith. She is not the superior young woman which Emma's friend ought to be"--surely a reference to Harriet's illegitimacy as well as her lack of education, accomplishments, etc.?) when he's probably the least snobbish character in the book.

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Knightley spells it out: "I think her [Harriet] the very worst sort of companion that Emma could possibly have. She knows nothing herself, and looks upon Emma as knowing everything. She is a flatterer in all her ways; and so much the worse, because undesigned. Her ignorance is hourly flattery. How can Emma imagine she has anything to learn herself, while Harriet is presenting such a delightful inferiority?"

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Sorry I am so slow and terrible! I'll try to get up my thoughts for Chapters 6-10 sometime soon (we'll see how that goes with Camp NaNo on and everything, but I'll try!).

Mistressredbird wrote: "I'm Gryffindor!! (I think I already told everyone that, but I figured I'd mention it here anyway.)"

I'm trying to remember what everybody got. (There were ten of us then--Julie and Alison were still around.)

• Shara, Alison, and I were Hufflepuffs.
• Siling was a Slytherin.
• Julie was a Ravenclaw.
• Phoebe, you and Leo were Gryffindors, and I think Oliver was too.

I can't remember for certain where Nela ended up (Ravenclaw?), or even whether she or Zoë signed up for Pottermore at all. Neither of them have Pottermore usernames in the Google doc.

I'm fine with whatever works for everybody else. I'm a fast reader (and I've read Emma several times anyway), so I'm not worried about being able to keep up.

I'm glad you thought of doing this, Nela!

Hey, hey guys, psst! The NaNo site just relaunched. If you would like, you may join me as I commence panicking nnnnnNOW.

Thank you, Zoë! I would actually take you up on that offer if I had any idea at all what I was going to be writing about. I need to dedicate time to doing nothing but brainstorming, because that's the only way I ever get anything put together. I have a month still, right? (*nervous laughter*)

I'm so glad some of you guys are going to be NaNoing too. I always wish for writing buddies during NaNo, and I never really have any. I'm looking forward to having a group of us participating together.

The Pottermore Insider updated earlier and said they've been having some technical problems, which is why the last of the e-mails haven't gone out yet, but they're hoping they'll go out in the next few days.

Either way, it doesn't matter to me. I'd much rather wait a few days and get Sorted with you guys and have that experience in my memory than Sort myself a few days earlier and have the very boring memory of sitting in my living room by myself and announcing my House to my cat.

THANK YOU, Zoë, you are so wonderful! (Now we just need Leo's e-mail to show up. Everybody direct send-y thoughts at Pottermore.)

I would like to put forward the suggestion that, as in Kristina Horner's video, those of us who are being Sorted should each have a hat of some kind ready to wear during our Sortings. (Or in lieu of a hat, Stuff On Our Heads.)

Alison's in Hufflepuff too!

Okay, so I've talked to everybody who's a reasonably active member of the collab, and here's how it breaks down:

Shara, Alison, and Siling are already in and already Sorted. (Two Hufflepuffs and a Slytherin!)

Julie and I are already in but not yet Sorted.

Leo is registered but waiting for his e-mail.

Phoebe, Alisha, and Nela missed the beta period and won't be signing up till October.

Zoë is not a beta member, and I don't know if she's interested in signing up at all.

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SO. Three Sorted, three to be Sorted now, and three, maybe four, to be Sorted in October.

Once Leo gets his acceptance letter, we can set up a schedule for the Sorting Party. And then I thought maybe we could have a second Sorting Party in October--does that sound like fun?

HEY! HEY YOU GUYS! Who else is waiting for their e-mail? I don't know how many of us got into beta. But before we can set up a schedule for the Sorting party, we have to make sure everyone who's waiting for their letter has received it and is ready to be Sorted.

That's all right, you can still come and do the Sorting party with us! Shara and Alison already got Sorted too, but they're still invited. (Congratulations, by the way--I saw you got into Slytherin! YAY!)

It's now three a.m. and I have to get up in a few hours, so I'm just going to make a list of stuff we need to cover in this thread, okay? :)

1. First and foremost, do we WANT to have a group Sorting?
2. If the answer is yes, do we want to
--- (A.) have everybody Sort themselves whenever they get their letter and film it to be uploaded in their regular video for that week?
--- (B.) have a Sorting Week and have everybody Sort themselves when they get their letter but wait to upload the video till Sorting Week?
--- (C.) have everybody wait to Sort themselves until Sorting Week, but do the Sorting individually on our own time?
--- (D.) have everybody wait till Sorting Week and then have a group Sorting in real time over video chat?
3. If the answer is (D.), does anybody have a premium account so we can do it over Skype conference calling, or should I start sending out Google+ invitations, or does anyone have another idea?


Have I missed anything? Anybody have anything else?

Julie started a topic in Your Pants. I haven't had a chance to check back yet, so I don't know how it's going. This week is Week 28, btw!

How do we want to go about this, guys?

Siling and I have talked about it some, and it seems best if we put up a discussion thread for every few chapters. (Because putting up a thread for every chapter seems like too much, and putting up one thread for the whole book, or even one thread for Book I and another for Book II, seems like too little. Breaking it up into shorter discussion segments also solves the problem of spoilers for people who are reading more slowly.) The only problem with this idea is that Siling's never read it before and I haven't read it in almost ten years, so neither of us has a sense of at what points the story naturally breaks into chunks.

So we can either try to do some research--like maybe searching for reader's guides on the internet, which I'm sure exist--or we can just set threads for x number of chapters, period. (Every two chapters? Three? Five?)

For reference: in Fellowship, there's the Prologue and Notes on the Shire Records at the beginning (and the edition I'm reading also has a Foreword), and then Book I has twelve chapters and Book II has ten.

We could also have an overall General Discussion thread in which we could talk about the book and/or series as a whole--not specific plot points, necessarily, but more general things. (By which I mean, any random things we think of that don't fit into a specific part of the book. The stuff I was talking about in my video last week, about how well LOTR works for reading aloud; Tolkien's love of linguistics; the movies; whatever.)

Ideas? Thoughts? Anything? Anybody? Bueller?

Added! Also, now I want to see the typewriter. :)

Is this going to be our Week 27 theme, then? And if so, shall we just use the list Zoë posted or does anyone have anything to add to it?

I've added you, Zoë!

This is me: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/815245

I like it too!

Vondell Swain did a video like this recently that had some other words and some "what do you call...?" questions in it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4t5m-...

His word list, according to the video description:

aunt, roof, route, theater, iron, salmon, caramel, earth, fire, wind, water, New Orleans, pecan, both, again, probably, Alabama, lawyer,
coupon, mayonnaise, pajamas, caught, naturally,
aluminum, GIF, Tumblr, drawing, crackerjack, doorknob, envelope

We could combine if we want to make it longer or have more to compare. I do kind of like the idea of "what do you call...?" questions, but there are only a couple in Vondell's video.

Leo's is in there too, and Shara said she'd upload tonight after work, so that's...six? Better than three!

Zoë, I just snickered in complete empathy. 99% of the time I don't think about the comparative ages of the people in the collab, but that other 1% of the time, I'm glad you're here. :D

Where IS everybody? I know Alisha and Siling are still at camp, and Leo may or may not be able to contribute because of his computer problems, but where are the rest of us? Do they realize that the deadline is today?

ETA: I just sent out a reminder e-mail. *crosses fingers*

I'm hoping to record mine today, Julie.

Re: the music, I think you should make the final call since you're doing the editing. I mean, everybody can send their footage with their own music, but if it doesn't seem to jell once you've edited it all together, I think you should feel free to slap a Hank song or something over the top of it. Honestly, I'm just looking forward to seeing all of us together in one video!