fulselden

Yuletide Rec Post the Second

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 01:24:27 GMT

Well, it's Twelfth Night for the Christmas-inclined (marking another year where my family managed to make it through the festive season without the Christmas tree burning the house down), the snow has turned into high waters, and I wish my cold would decide whether or not it really wants to turn into another bout of flu (not that I'd endorse this turn of events. I'd just like to know for sure, either way).

On the plus side, the Yuletide archive is still full of treasures: recs under the cut.

( Here lie fics for Peter Whimsey, His Dark Materials, Ratatouille, Bacchae, Diana Wynne Jones, Temeraire/Pride and Prejudice, The Philadelphia Story, Old Spice Guy/Beowulf, and Coriolanus. )

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Belated Yuletide Reveal

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 07:56:33 GMT

So, a few days back I became approximately the last person on the geeky side of the internet to see Inception, which was, well, fun. Really fun. I'm still a bit baffled as to why it became INSTANT FANDOM CATNIP, however - I guess it did a pretty elegant job at creating side characters one wants to see fleshed out, and the oneiromancers-for-hire bit of the worldbuilding is simultaneously fairly intriguing and entirely disposable (incidentally, Cob and Moll? MOST BORING ARCHITECTS EVER. Seriously, they get a lifetime to build an entire world, and they come up with a city full of indentikit skyscrapers ? I mean, I suppose I should be grateful that the film didn't indulge in too much visual noodling of the Gilliam variety, but, still. I might feel more kindly towards Cobb if his plot hadn't involved a touch too many sadface SLOW MOTION KIDS sequences). Also, I guess almost the entire cast was made up of eminently slashable guys. That probably helped.

But if the, uh, fandom lens (tm) doesn't always make things all that much clearer, it worked wonders on the fandom I was assigned for Yuletide, Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Admittedly, the last time the fandom for this one was exactly flourishing was in the early years of the seventeenth century, but as my very sweet recipient, yunitsa, says, if any early modern text deserves to have a present-day fandom, it's this one, which in its most basic form (it has a fairly complicated textual history. Here's the expanded 1590 version, if anyone's interested - warning for sixteenth-century attitudes to sex, death, peasants, lions and bears, etc etc) is the average exquisite tale of a couple of Arcadian princesses forced into a year of pastoral seclusion by their father (why? AN ORACLE DID IT), being wooed and won by a pair of dashing princes, Pyrocles and Mucidorus.

Oh, and of course Mucidorus disguises himself as a shepherd while Pyrocles decides to dress up as an Amazon - and, oh boy, the text goes to great trouble to impress upon us that he makes a very pretty Amazon indeed. So pretty, in fact, that the princess' mother and father both fall for him/her. Oh, and Sidney makes a point of keeping Pyrocles as a 'her' for as long as possible, even when the Amazon disguise is a very open secret indeed (how open? well, morning-after-with-princess-Philoclea open, for one). Shenanigans ensue.

Anyway, while my love for Sidney's 1579-ish An Apology for Poetry is deep and abiding, I've never really made friends with the Arcadia. Which is, y'know, a pity, because it is the early modern English prose romance. Really, want to know what Shakespeare was playing off in the forest of Arden or the outskirts of Athens? Take a spin through the Arcadia. Also, it doubles as a testing ground for Sidney's sideline in reforming English poetics - see, for instance, his spectacular double sestina, Ye Goatherd Gods. I mean, let me hasten to say that I think TS Eliot was talking out of his arse when he (I think) sniffed at the Arcadia as 'a monument of dullness', but, well, for me, at least, the Arcadia works spectacularly well when read curled up in my brain's fandom windowseat. Suddenly the massive slashiness and curlicuing plotlines, the general humming sexiness and the gorgeous, gorgeous clothes work so much better. (Well, I always enjoyed the gorgeous clothes).

I guess I have a tendency to read stuff much too earnestly? Anyway, my only regret about this year's Yuletide is that I ran out of time to make the whole thing into a MASSIVE SPACE AU (no, no, it's ok! My recipient actually suggested this!).

As it is, I went for highschool (um, yep): Glasses, or Feathers.

And girls-only romance (nope, not that kind, alas. The thrones and shipwrecks and distant shores kind): A Perfect Woman's Shape.

This second one is a crossover with a particularly excellent (and exceedingly epic) Arcadia fic (well, though there's a lot of Spenser and Shakespeare in there as well) from 1621, The Countess of Montgomery's Urania, by Lady Mary Wroth. I'd never read this before (and I haven't read all of it now - there's a manuscript continuation that I didn't get hold of, although it's in the modern edition), but it's pretty fascinating, not least for its full-on girlifying of romance narrative.

And it has a great frontispiece, courtesy of Simon van de Passe, the guy who did that picture of Pocahontas. Check it out:

( And now, finally, a cut. With Jacobean courtly shenanigans and ladies being awesome behind it. )

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Twin Peaks. The Awesomeness Thereof.

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 00:30:15 GMT

So, this year (or, well, last year, ahahaha HANGOVER), has seen me encounter three TV series that seem to be made expressly with me in mind by thoughtful TV gods – a phenomenon I’d only encountered previously with Buffy. Anyway, while Avatar is just about due for a rewatch and I still haven’t finished Revolutionary Girl Utena, a bout of pre-Christmas flu saw me work my way through all of Twin Peaks, which, while not exactly consistently awesome a la Utena (so far), or even Avatar, nevertheless triumphs over its dead-girl Mcguffin premise triumphantly enough to have won me over within, oh, about five minutes.

Also, Special Agent Dale Cooper, FBI.

And glazed doughnuts.

And pine woods.

I fell, internet, and I fell hard.

And, since I got the film for Christmas and watched it in a slightly blurry post-New Year’s state this afternoon, spoilers ahead.

( Seriously, spoilers. Albeit of a rather vague variety. )

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Yuletide Rec Post the First

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 03:40:45 GMT

A first spin through the Yuletide archive, and, wow, that was fun. Seriously, I am just entirely thrilled that something like this exists. Good job, internet!

( Infinite Jest, Shakespeare RPF, Earthsea, Kate Beaton, Richard II, 1 Henry IV, Finnish Mythology, Snow White, 20th Century Boys, Invisible Cities, Zelazny's Amber series, Beowulf, and META YULETIDE OLD SPICE FIC under the cut. )

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Yuletide

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 01:39:59 GMT

Well, hello again, internet! And happy Christmas, to those who are celebrating - I feel the need to note that I just had my FIRST WHITE CHRISTMAS EVER, which was fairly glee inducing, even if it is somewhat disconcerting to find that much of the world has suddenly become a picture-postcard.

The only thing more exciting than snow (what? I live in Southern England. Mostly, we have rain. Or drizzle. Sometimes sleet) is Yuletide, for which I got the chance to write my effort at THE NERDIEST STORY EVER, and for which I've received not one but two completely fantastic stories, for which I can't thank the mystery authors enough - really, wow, this was my first Yuletide, and I can't wait to play again (and, no, not just because I have some woe about the slightness of my own contribution).

My main Yuletide story was the completely enchanting Tales of the Bathhouse, an absolutely lovely post-canon enlargement of Miyazaki's Spirited Away. This is just so totally in tune with the mood of the film, so sweet and shrewd and full of the detail and texture of the world of the bathhouse, that it's a delight from start to finish. And it manages to get all its canon characters spot-on while adding some immensely engaging new faces to the spirit world. I was sent scuttling off to rewatch the film, and having this story in mind made the whole world that much more alive. Not to mention, I got three stories for the price of one: really, thank you, mystery writer!

And for Yuletide Madness, someone wrote me a fantastic little coda to Bladerunner, Last Call, which is just entirely pitch-perfect: an amazing little snow-globe-size rendition of the themes and tone of the film, with Rachel making yet another choice about what it means to be human (but, uh, not as pretentious as that sounds). And it's a well-done iteration of a station scene to boot, last calls for boarding and all. Just amazing.

Really, both my stories were so exactly the kind of thing I wanted (despite my rather, hmm, sketchy requests - sorry, writers!) that I couldn't have had a better first go at Yuletide. I haven't had a chance to delve into the main archive yet, so a rec post proper will have to wait, but I'm just thrilled that the internet can do things like this. Good times!

( And now for something completely different. )

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Yuletide Letter

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 06:21:04 GMT

Dear Yuletide Writer,

First of all, I’m thrilled you’re writing a story for me! Thank you so much! I should say upfront that if you have to make a choice between writing the story OF YOUR HEART that you really want to write and following one of the prompts I give below, I would far prefer you to write the aforementioned story OF YOUR HEART.

Seriously, I will be happy to receive anything in any of my nominated fandoms! I have no triggers and no serious squicks. Any permutation of all those F/F M/M F/M whatever/whatever ticky boxes is ok by me, although to be honest I’m not really in fandom for the shipping or indeed the porn. I will be fascinated if you write some of the latter, mind you (especially for the Švankmajer, OH BOY), but I haven’t prompted for it or anything. If you’d like to see some of the things I have managed to prompt for, see below the cut!

( Miscellaneous suggestions )

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Snegurochka

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 12:25:47 GMT

So, I wrote a really odd little take on the Russian story of Snegurochka, or the Snow Maiden (one version; wiki; not to be confused with the Snow-child) - as to which, I hope I haven't done anything crass. I have to admit this is not so much a reflection of any for reals knowledge about Russia on my part and more a result of flipping through two awesome books that I read a while back, and discovering another awesome book is ON THE INTERNET.

Book one: The Bathhouse at Midnight: Magic in Russia, W. F. Ryan (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1999). This just does what it says on the tin: it's a clear-eyed, well-written, and rather charming general survey of Russian magical practices. I can't speak at all to its accuracy, though it looks solid and has good reviews from those in the know. Ryan wisely refrains, in general, from analysis and theorising, and gives proper weight to the oral as well as the written tradition, though there's particular emphasis on divinatory texts (his area of expertise). He mostly concentrates on 'the Orthodox East Slavs of Kiev Rus' and their descendants [...] wth a heavy emphasis on Muscovite and Imperial Russia', though there's material from further afield. Do I have to say that this book is COMPLETELY FASCINATING? It doesn't have to devote time to wrestling with past anglophone witchcraft studies, because they largely ignored Russia, and it really is just an excellent overview.

The title comes from the idea that the village bathhouse, a liminal place used for pre-marriage ritual baths, for delivering babies, and of course for gettin' naked (and hence removing items of magical protection such as cross and belt), was pretty much the archetypal setting for popular magic. And also the haunt of a particularly hostile domestic sprite, the bannik or baennik, 'variously envisaged as a naked dwarf or a little old man', and thus likely to be dangerous if visited alone or after sundown. Cross-reference with Gregory the Great talking about bathhouse attendants who turn out to be penetential spirits, and with the shower scene in Psycho, I guess.

Book two: Harvest of the Cold Months: the Social History of Ice and Ices, Elizabeth David (London: Penguin, 1994). Elizabeth David was pretty much solely responsible for dragging England out of the doldrums of post war spam-n-eggs cookery with her bold new knowledge of mediterranean food and endorsement of stuff like 'pasta' and 'olive oil'. She was also an excellent writer and keen food historian who amassed a library of ye olde cookery books and produced, as her last work, this book on the human fondness for coldness out of season, which stands as an early manifestation of the kind of cultural history which keeps giving us books on spices and cod. It's less rigorous than some of these works, and bears the marks of David's age and ill-health: she never really finished it. But despite its gaps and Eurocentricity (although there are chapters on India (largely on the British in India), the Middle East, and China (people in China were using ice to transport goods like fresh fish long before Francis Bacon had his experiment with snow-stuffed chicken - a direct influence on the technique's eventual adoption in the West)), it's unfailingly, yes, COMPLETELY FASCINATING, smart and sensible and wry.

Book three: Petersburg in Bildern und Skizzen, Johann Georg Kohl (Dresden and Leipzig, 1841). This is used heavily by David in her account of ices in Russia, and the 1842 English translation, Russia and the Russians, is mostly online. Kohl was a German historian and geographer who lived for some years in Russia, and his account is lively and rather heavily picturesque, with a good eye for detail and no eye at all for social criticism (or, well, this is unfair. But he's no Henry Mayhew). He's fairly broad-minded, if often howlingly patronising, and compulsively readable.

Oh yes, fic:

( Snegurochka )

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Disasters in the Sun

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 02:18:53 GMT

So, I finally watched Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which could perhaps be summed up as Werner Herzog DOES AMERICANA if it wasn't even more the story of Nicholas Cage SQUEAKING AND GIBBERING through a sun-drenched noir wasteland for nigh-on two hours. These are both ahem specialised tastes and I'm not even sure that they go great together - the whole film is stuck in this not-quite-pulp hinterland and, well, Nicholas Cage. And I haven't seen the original, which I think was a lot more blood-and-thunder serious about things. But, well, Herzog letting Cage gurn and twitch to his heart's content while steadily pushing the film out into full-on pulp-opera territory is GOOD TIMES as far as I'm concerned. I ... even wrote fic, which is something I may regret in the morning. Ah well!

( Princess )

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Learn As If You Were Following

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 15:05:48 GMT

Happy belated Guy Fawkes and/or Diwali, to those who are celebrating!

Though, heh, one of those festivals is SO MUCH MORE PROBLEMATIC than the other. I mean:

We have therefore well done and upon good warrant, to tread in the same stepps, and by law to provide, that this Day should not die, nor the memoriall thereof perish, from our selves, or from our seed; but be consecrated to perpetuall memorie, by a yearly acknowledgement to be made of it, throughout all generations.

Thanks, Lancelot Andrewes! There is a reason why you were James I and VI's most favourite of preachers! But I'm not sure how great it is that England's big autumn festival of bright lights and blowing shit up is founded on Jacobean luxuriating in memorialisation and unseemly fondling of the skull beneath the skin. Not to mention religious intolerance, though that really goes as read in this (particular, sixteenth-century) context.

... Doubtless I will feel better once I've actually had the chance to set off some fireworks.

Talking of which, apparently I have made it my fannish business to perpetrate ANGSTY TY LEE? Whhhhy, I do not know! Here she is, however, assisting in a jailbreak (more or less).

( someone whom you could not catch up )

If, however, you prefer your Ty Lee non-angsty and sometimes upside-down (you know, the canon-approved flavour), I would recommend the fic lizbee posted this morning (as far as my timezone goes, anyway): the very excellent Escapee.

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Cabaret / House of Leaves

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 23:43:21 GMT

Ok, so this is for a fantastic prompt from haruslex at the horror comment fic thread at sharp_teeth:

Cabaret / House of Leaves: There's a reason Sally can't leave the Kit Kat Klub.

I really couldn't let this one go ... and, uh, it shows. To lengthy effect, if nothing else, below the cut.

( So put all your cares away )

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Green Girls

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 17:37:16 GMT

Two more ficlets for the excellent horror comment thread over at sharp_teeth.

One for Watchmen (why am I writing so much Watchmen fic? I certainly don't feel fannish about it, as such. But I guess there is a lot in the original that needs straightening out. Or queering up, as the case may be). Anyway, this is for a deeply creepy prompt from misachan:

Long after Karnak, Dan's phone rings in the middle of the night. "You left me here, Daniel. You left me here in the snow."

Characters: Dan, Rorschach, Laurie
Rating / warnings: PG. Erosion of free will, mention of violence and bigotry.

( Viscous Fluids Between Two Layers )

And one for King Lear (LOL, self), after an awesome prompt from newredshoes :

Fear not the storm. Fear the bright light that appears in the midst of it. (Bonus points for creepy Cordelia.)

Characters: ensemble. Well, Lear and his daughters, at least. Kinda.
Rating / warnings: PG. Massive amounts of sexism; anti-Catholic bigotry. Erosion of free will and other creeping horrors.

A/N: This is SO VERY AU, and probably has a lot more to do with sixteenth-century debates about exorcism than with Lear. It does however hopefully provide a creepy Cordelia.

( Made Ripe for Death by Eld )

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Watch for the Greenwitch

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 08:30:15 GMT

Ok, so the horror comment fic thread over at sharp_teeth continues to be ridiculously awesome. Seriously, prompts for House of Leaves/Cabaret! And Withnail & I, and Alice in Wonderland, and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase! Truly grotesque fic for classic disney cartoons!

It is ripping the books of my childhood to shreds with tiny sharp teeth (naturally) and I am cheering it on.

Also, I read my first Supernatural fic EVER over there and it was great. (also, I apparently know who the most of the characters are? How did that happen?)

In any case, I contributed to the general childhood-canon-gnawing by filling an excellent prompt from dayadhvam_triad , for Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence:

The offering to the Greenwitch always looks tangled and cold. Jane is cold, too.

Characters: Jane, Will, Merriman, ensemble
Rating: T
Warning: mild body horror. Bad things happen to Jane in this story without her consent.

( King Mark's Bride )

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Jeeves and the Creature of the Night

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 13:13:36 GMT

Ok, so. I guess I just wrote a SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT of PG Wodehouse comment fic? THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU EXPECT WHEN YOU GO TO WRITE ON A HORROR COMMENT MEME. Which is over here at sharp_teeth, by the way, and is awesome: go, write spine-chilling stuff!

Anyway, in his fantastic pastiche comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alan Moore once wrote a Wodehouse fic by the deathless name of What Ho! Gods of the Abyss, in which Bertie and co ENCOUNTER CTHULHU.

And it was pretty fabulous, as the title suggests! Since I alas no longer have any grounds on which to criticise the finer points of Moore's attempt at Wodehousian diction (that stuff is finely calibrated, y'all), I'll confine myself to one moan, which is that Aunt Dahlia was subjected to some objectionable indignities! I like Aunt Dahlia and do not believe she would ever allow herself to become a brainwashed servant of the Great Old Ones.

She is an AUNT, Alan Moore! DO YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT MEANS???

So, when I saw the following most excellent prompt from pandarus, I knew I had an opportunity to rectify this parlous situation:

Jeeves and Wooster

Bertie is bitten by a vampire, as he toddles home from the Drones Club one jolly evening, a trifle the worse for wear. Since recoiling away from the first blush of rosy-fingered Dawn is perfectly normal for any chap who's spent the best part of the night imbibing unspeakable amounts of gin, he does not immediately perceive the change which has come upon him...

AT THE EXPENSE OF JEEVES, HOWEVER, dude I am so sorry! As also for calling him dude, Jeeves would not approve.

Characters: Jeeves, Wooster, Gussie Fink-Nottle
Rating: T
Warnings: character death. Decapitation. Newts. Takes a while to get properly horrific.

ETA: now podficced FABULOUSLY by pandarus : you owe it to yourself to check this out, for the closing music alone! Not to mention an absolutely spiffing rendition of Jeeves and Bertie. In mp3 or m4b.

( What ho, Jeeves! )

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Seven Minutes to Midnight

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 14:44:26 GMT

A final round-up of stuff from the Bechdel test comment fic thread.

First up, Narnia. And oh my goodness, if Buffy was the fandom of my teens, I guess Narnia has a good claim to be the fandom of my childhood. And also my first great fictional betrayal, sob. Because, yes, Susan, naturally. But, y'know, even at age seven or whatever, I was used to handwaving that kind of stuff. I read a lot! Including ancient boys-own stuff! Handwaving was a fine art and oh my goodness I cannot believe at what an impressionable age I read Rider Haggard, yeeeech. But anyway, no, the problem was that [SPOILER] Aslan was Jesus! I have since cultivated a very friendly relationship with allegory and a respect for Christianity which is both healthy and genuine, but, oh my goodness, the indignation in my little agnostic heart when my friend's big sister pointed this out to us. IT STILL RANKLES. Phew, ok, I feel better now.

So, a Narnia ficlet, for prompt 'The Chronicles of Narnia - Jadis, Lady of the Green Kirtle - up north'' from eleusis_walks:

( Few Return to the Sunlit Lands [G] )

Aaand, an attempt, ahahaha so very much an attempt, at a rousing ballad for prompt 'Folklore - Queen Mab, Queen Titania - how now, proud Titania' from demonqueen666:

( The Changeling Quickstep [G] )

Also, another Watchmen fic. Why on earth did I find myself trying to push Watchmen past the Bechdel test? And, heh, pretty much failing! But at least I tried. For prompt 'Watchmen - Laurie & Janey - The only life you get', from anactoria.

Warning: unsettling things are implied to have happened to a child in the second half of this fic. Also, contains comic-book science.

( Slow Time [PG] )

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Promote those who are worthy

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 00:41:54 GMT

Two more prompt fills for the Bechdel test comment fic meme, both Azula/Ty Lee (this seems to be a popular request, and I am not really complaining. Although it is surprisingly difficult), both G or PG depending on your feelings on kissing.

One for myfloralbonnet, for prompt 'Found people to love, left people to drown / I'm not scared to jump, I'm not scared to fall / If there was nowhere to land I wouldn't be scared at all':

( A Reverence of the Feet )

And one for branded_irony: 'Azula/Ty Lee - I love a girl, but the girl loves royalty':

( Keep Order Among Them By Ritual )

Man, I remember when I read Ted Hughes' translation of (some of) the Metamorphoses and then went to a Chinese circus straight afterwards. Say what you will about Hughes himself, those were good times. (What? Ty Lee - circus - Ovid. Clear progression).

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At Play Amidst the Strangeness and the Charm

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 13:57:27 GMT

Another prompt fill, for 'Watchmen - Sally, Silhouette (either) - You need to watch your mouth', from findmyantidrug over at the Bechdel comment-fic thread.

Which is still excellent, by the way - go, write/prompt about ladies being awesome! The ladies here aren't being awesome as such, mind you, though I think I actually made them less objectionable than is likely for patriotic costumed adventurers in their time and place.

Both the New Yorker and the PM Magazine pieces mentioned here really were published in August 1945.

Series: Watchmen
Characters: Sally, Silhouette
Rating: PG; some swearing.
Warning: mention of the 1945 atom bomb, casual 40s-era racism.

( It just keeps on getting brighter all the time. )

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On the wrong side of the mirror

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:57:02 GMT

So, a couple of weeks ago I wrote a post which was essentially a review of an excellent comic book but which ended with a flaily plea for there to be less about Orpheus already in mainstream fiction - that is to say, less framing of the creative experience as a whole as explicitly omg ORPHIC. Not that there's anything wrong with that (though, it's worth noting, Orpheus in some versions has some problems with ladies, post Eurydice). But it is explicitly a male narrative. Very explicitly! And whileas underworld descents have become a bit of a male speciality in, y'know, Western culture post Innana, it's Persephone who gets the permanent upstairs-downstairs gig in Greek mythology, not Orpheus. She may not have a lyre or the power of ART, but it's nice to think she may have learned something along the way.

Which is a very long winded way of saying that a couple of days ago lettered wrote a fantastic Eurydice and Persephone piece: Love Like Other Things. And in the comments, stultiloquentia linked to an excellent (and food-porn-ish) Labyrinth (!) fic which is also a take on Persephone: Dare to Bake a Peach. And then there was a prompt, courtesy of laeria, at the very awesome Bechdel Test Comment Fic-a-thon (still going strong!) over on LJ for 'Eurydice, Persephone or Eurydice/Persephone - whiplash girlchild in the dark', which combined Eurydice and Persephone with my favourite pop song based on surprisingly boring Austrian porn!

So I wrote two ficlets, both rated R (Velvet Underground, dude).

( One flavoured with FIFTIES NUCLEAR DYSTOPIA )

( And the other with QUASI-COLONIAL SEVENTIES ANOMIE )

And I also realise I wrote a ficlet a while back that was an explicit take on the Orpheus myth, though at the time I marked it as orginal fic because apparently my brain files 'Greek myth' as 'public property'.

( This one is VAGUELY OCCULT VICTORIANA (PG) )

But anyway, the take-home point here is that fandom is sometimes very shiny! Also, that Bechdel ficathon is great, go check it out.

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AND TO EAT NO FISH

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 05:49:08 GMT

Ok, so in the eighteenth century a dude by the name of Nahum Tate took King Lear and ADDED SCHMOOP, transforming it into a heart-wrenching tale of victory against the odds with an added soppy love story for Edgar and Cordelia.

Instead of '[...] He hates him / That would upon the rack of this tough world / Stretch him out longer', lucky audiences were treated to:

Edgar: Our drooping Country now erects her Head,
Peace spreads her balmy Wings, and Plenty Blooms.
Divine Cordelia, all the Gods can witness
How much thy Love to Empire I prefer!
Thy bright Example shall convince the World
(Whatever Storms of Fortune are decreed)
That Truth and Vertue shall at last succeed.

... It is not even laughable : (

BUT I AM HAPPY TO REPORT THAT THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY HAS IMPROVED WHEN IT COMES TO SHAKESPEARE FIC (OR APPROXIMATIONS THEREOF).

Witness Kate Beaton's work of majesty, which plenty of you have probably already seen and which it is possible other people will not find as lolarious as I do. I probably wouldn't either if I hadn't recently watched Peter Brook's version of Lear done in a style which can be summed up as POST-SIXTIES-NUCLEAR-AGE-APOCALYPTIC. I am sorry! I will not normally spam like this! But oh my expletive deleted, rotflmao. Also, WEEPING.

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In Which I Discover Fannish Entitlement

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 01:09:03 GMT

So, I guess I have a problem with schmoop? Also with narratives that dive for the heart-strings and start twanging? NOT ALWAYS BY ANY MEANS ... but to me, fics and non-fics that do this stuff often have the sniff of kitsch about them.

So, yep, this is the piece of grousing in which I prove my heart is as dry and withered as a mummified frog by moaning about the soppy film I'm roping in here as a strawman (WHICH IS PROBABLY STILL MORE PRUDENT THAN WHEN I USED THE ENTIRE GENRE OF EPIC FOR THE SAME PURPOSE), and then leaping bravely across a chasm of genre and medium and intent to moan about soppy fic. And also, to write about p0rn, again. Well, at least ~~any~~ most squee-harshing is corralled behind the cut.

One of my most uncomfortable film-watching experiences in recent years was being taken by a friend to see The Time Traveller’s Wife, which, for those who haven’t seen it ...

( (and apologies to those who did and liked it) )

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TEA SALT SUMMER

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:26:01 GMT

I jumped on an open prompt (theme: 'dinner party') at fic_promptly. Series: Avatar, naturally. Characters: Iroh, Zuko, Azula.

The theme of the day was 'food', so how could I resist?

(currently eating: 'Supreme Preserved Plum': not as all round awesome as wah plums, but less tooth-achingly sweet than the poignantly-named 'Seedless Lover's Plum').

TEA SALT SUMMER

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FIVE FICS

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 23:38:44 GMT

Five original ficlets, all written for prompts at 31_days
All either G or PG, though see individual warnings.

1

Theme: 'In any case, try many things'
Rating/Warnings: PG: mention of violence. Random era-mashing.

GREEN GLASS BEAD

The girl followed her lover up the hillside, walking behind him up the narrow goat-path, across root-tight earth made crumbly by summer. Around them close mats of heather stretched out across the sway of the land. Ravens flew above them, one at each end of the sky.

She should have been weaving wool and he should have been weaving willow, but the older men were all out on an encounter and the village was bright and dizzy with the smell of herbs, laid out to dry in bunches on the lower roofs. The wives were busy and it was no weather to stay and make blankets or fences. So she followed him out through the trees, tall and humming with heat spirits as the morning lifted the dew off the ground in a great sheet, filming the ferns and moss of the valley floor with wet and furring her skirts with moisture, and up and out into the great roll of hills that made a pathway and a promise from the land to the sea.

We’ll show you what we’ve got.

( green glass bead )

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On fanfiction and silence

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:18:13 GMT

... Or, the opportunity to fade to black when it comes to stuff that isn’t sex.

Anecdote: something which annoys my younger brother consistently and entirely is the tendency my mother and I share for fading off midsentence. Because really, when we’re discussing for instance the way my grandmother would have absolutely slammed her way through the London social scene, if she hadn’t had a kid and gone to live in deepest Wales age twenty-five, well, what else is there to say but ‘...’

(My mother is that kid, yes.)

... And that of course, of course, is rubbish. There is a lot more to say! Responsible citizens have a duty to say it! And my brother, being a more combative person, for one, is frustrated that we’re leaving it unsaid. And he’s justifiably annoyed in that, as a conversational tactic, it’s a form of unthinking exclusion, for sure, just as much as when he and I chatter away about some geeky literary point in front of our-dad-the-scientist. But he’s also annoyed that we’re not just saying one thing. That we’re leaving our options open, fraying out. Is it laziness? Cliquishness? Complacency? What do we mean, he asks. What were we going to say?

Well. A lot of things. That’s the point.

( A tenuous link to fanfiction below the cut! )

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BUFFY

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 08:32:39 GMT

I WROTE BUFFY! Which was only the show of my heart for the latter part of my adolescence. quinara, I blame you and Spike. Also, insomnia.Though the blame for my lol!villanelle rests with me and my reliance on esoteric stanzaic forms.

Series: Buffy (yeah).
Rating/Warnings: G. Poetry!fic.

A girl who holds her stake straight in a fight

She leaves a rim of lipstick on her glass

She moves through death and pries apart the night.

( in every generation )

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WINTER, SNOW, THORN

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:11:41 GMT

Written for prompt ‘‘I have daughters and I have sons’ at 31_days
Series: Sleeping Beauty (a generic fairy-tale version)
Rating/Warnings: T. Implied non-con (it's Sleeping Beauty, ok), implied incest. Poetry!fic.
A/N: yeah, it turns out that when you add a male sibling into a fairy story, the dynamic gets pretty disturbing. And Sleeping Beauty is already disturbing! Not to mention, sestinas are already enclosed and cyclical. I should just have gone with Hansel and Gretel, they only get almost eaten.

My wife slid into deep winter white sleep

When she bore me a son and a daughter.

My daughter learned the use of her needle.

My son crept with the frost across the forest.

And the year held winter in its eye

Like a fish curls its lip round a hook.

( Winter, snow, thorn )

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Fire Nation Graffiti (and other primary sources)

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 14:34:13 GMT

Series: Avatar
Characters/pairings: canon characters, mention of Mai/Zuko
Ratings/warnings: G

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Being a notation made at the foot of a wall

In the lower passage of the eastern apartments

By the children of the second prince

In the year of the sand leopard

At the close of the evening

In the electrical air before thunder

When they should have been in bed.

( below the cut )

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