moon_custafer | Recent Entries

sovay alerted me to the existence of a tv adaptation of one of H. C. Bailey’s Reggie Fortune stories, with Denholm Elliott in the lead.

Five minutes in and he’s definitely got down Fortune’s perpetual annoyance at getting dragged into crime investigations when he’d much rather be having breakfast and doing normal things.

ETA— he looks so doleful. C’mon, Inspector Bell, let him have some breakfast!

Further ETA—the intense longing with which he looks at that piece of cake.

Enjoyed this week’s Doctor Who, "The Story and the Engine," and its dive into Afro-Fantasy—is that the right term? I usually encounter Afro-Futurism, but this was set more or less in the present (2019 according to the Wikipedia entry), and the premise was definitely more on the fantasy end of SFF.

I did think it wrapped up a bit too quickly and neatly, but that was the fault of Nu-Who episode-format constraints, not writer Inua Ellams. *reads rest of Wikipedia entry* oh that mysterious kid they lampshaded was Capt. Poppy from the Space Babies episode? Which was also about storytelling. I hope they get back to that and that it wasn’t just a thematic shoutout.

Watched The Green Man (1990) on YouTube, which had three episodes to tell its M.R.James/sex-comedy/Fawlty Towers tale, and revelled in every minute of them. I still would’ve liked a final scene with the protagonist’s new-age-y daughter-in-law—since she’d been his confidante since Episode Two, I can’t imagine her not asking how his meeting with the ghost went, especially since the injuries to his young daughter must be known to the rest of the household.

Last night I came across this Swallows and Amazons+The Charioteer crossover fic, in which a teenaged Ralph goes camping with his Scout troop in the Lake District and recognizes James Turner from his author photo. Does a charming job of showing just how weird the kids’ shenanigans look to someone slightly older who doesn’t know them: Ralph is thrilled that the author of his favourite book, Mixed Moss, is giving him the time of day—and then a little girl in a red stocking cap bursts in, shouting piratical threats, as Mr. Turner cheerfully says “oh, is it two o’clock already? Sorry, I have to be Captain Flint now.”

The Road to Rio (9758 words) by greerwatson
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Charioteer - Mary Renault, Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Ralph Lanyon, Hugh Treviss, James "Captain Flint" Turner, John Walker, Susan Walker, Titty Walker, Roger Walker, Nancy Blackett, Peggy Blackett, Dick Callum, Dorothea Callum, Timothy "Squashy Hat" Stedding, Mary Walker, Bridget Walker, Mrs Dixon (Swallows and Amazons), Mr Dixon (Swallows and Amazons), Mrs Callum (Swallows and Amazons), Prof. Callum (Swallows and Amazons), Carter (The Charioteer), Green (The Charioteer)
Additional Tags: Crossover, Holidays, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000, Canon Related, Missing Scene
Summary:

A troop of Scouts from Lanyon's school go on a camping holiday in the Lake District.

I only met him and Diane Duane for about thirty seconds in 2003, but Andrew hung out with him at several conventions over the years and always spoke fondly of him.

Last night Andrew came across The Show (2020), a fantasy neo-noir scripted by Alan Moore (who also acts in the movie). Initially I was on the other side of the room and just listening to the dialogue, but I got pulled in around the time the protagonist consults a detective agency that turns out to be literally two kids in a trenchcoat (“we don’t do messy divorce cases—we have to be in bed by 9:30”).

It’s a classic noir set-up: a hit man arrives in town (Northampton) only to find the target he was sent after is already dead; and begins to suspect, as his client’s phone calls grow increasingly frantic and profanity-laden, that the old man is less interested in avenging his daughter than he is in retrieving the “family heirloom” gold cross pendant that was not found on the target’s body. But as the coincidences and weird dreams pile up, it also looks like something supernatural’s going on as well.

Being written by Moore, it’s as funny as it is horrifying, and it’s also at least 40% easter eggs and in-jokes by volume— I didn’t pay enough attention to all the graffiti in the background to check if any of it read WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WITCH-ELM, or the in-universe equivalent, but if I spot it on a repeat viewing I won’t be at all surprised.

It’s still not quite as weird as Rudyard Kipling’s “The Brushwood Boy,” which I reread this week for the first time since high school. This one sounds fairly straightforward when described. We follow the protagonist for the first quarter-century or so of his life, from early childhood to becoming the youngest Major in the British Army; and his waking career is intercut with his dreamscape.

George’s dreamscape is one of the most realistically dream-like I’ve ever seen written. There’s a bit where George is on a boat that passes a huge stone lily, floating on the water, which is labelled “Hong Kong,” and thinks to himself “So this is Hong Kong. I always knew it’d be like this.” The first part, before he goes to school, is also a really good depiction of a young child’s view of the world, where everything is huge and the first time hearing a grown man sing is an astonishing phenomenon.

Thing is, I think in most stories the dreams would be presented as some sort of coping mechanism for either the boredom or the violence (depending on the author’s attitudes and experiences) of military life. George Cottar, otoh, thrives in public-school and military environments— he’s the kind of idealized subaltern who never meets a discipline problem he can’t solve by teaching his men to box, and who reacts with embarrassed modesty when awarded the DSO for having carried two wounded soldiers to safety while under fire. But the dreams aren’t a febrile distraction from his Empire-building, either. Kipling appears to consider George’s whole situation an example of balance—a healthy mind in a healthy body.

Anyway I’m still trying to parse it; as I think a lot of readers have been, for decades.

Happy that Poilievre lost, disappointed that Singh also lost, overall relieved that the election results weren’t as bad as they could have been. However I think all the stress of waiting for the election is catching up on me—felt tired enough last night to complain about it. General sense of my bones being too close to the surface— I’m not sure Andrew and I ever got entirely over that stomach bug last month—he hasn’t had much appetite lately and has lost weight noticeably (he has an appointment with his GP next week, we’ll ask about it), and I’ve had a few bouts of Off My Feed and occasional moments of Gah Argh Texture Is Repulsive.

I’m charmed by this show from Sudbury, ON in the early 1980s that apparently consisted of just Stewart Cameron in a gansey singing and playing sea-shanties in front of a blank background.

Gentleman of the Shade, the surreal urban fantasy set in 1990s radio station that I began writing last year as a weekly/biweekly serial, has broken 40,000 words, and I think I might be starting to manage to wrap up the plot. Which is good, because a new story idea has begun gnawing on my brain (sorry Spooked!... in Soho, I don’t know when I’ll get back to you).

Heaves sigh of relief that Poilievre didn't get in (and looks to have lost his seat); less thrilled by how close it was, and that Singh has also lost his seat.

I was hoping our local NDP candidate would win; still at least it's the Liberal who got in.

Also, looking up my riding, I think the borders may have been redrawn, which might be why our local polling station was in a different location (for this and for the Provincial election) than in past years.

Just before waking, I dreamt I was traveling through a downtown neighbourhood, buildings in ruins. A lone woman in a building (sort of deco/neoclassical bank-building style) whose entrance was now a vertical crack shouted something at me.

I was walking, thinking to myself “politics-formal politics-is granular”— and a bunch of stuff about why you have to start at the local level to influence things. I came to another building site where the whole superstructure was gone. The same woman asked me if I’d seen any squatters in it lately. Obviously no. She cackled something about how nice and quiet the neighbourhood was now, and how maybe the building would learn to be a good building and be allowed to have tenants again.

I’m afraid the best retort I could come up with was “fuck you, lady.” The past few years have made me much swearier.

I climbed across the building’s site— there was a deep crack in the ground and I approached with caution to look over the edge to see how deep it was. The crack had exposed a cliff face of what looked like cuneiform that went down into the ground.

“Do you have any silver paint?” Inside the crack, I think on a sort of scaffolding, there was a woman with short white hair and a hawklike profile, very dark eyes, who was painting a silk banner that hung down into the depths. I wondered how she managed but realized she must pull the sections of fabric up towards herself. The thin fabric was covered in a grid of little multicoloured squares and triangles and it seemed to me she’d have an easier time painting it if she used an embroidery hoop to hold the fabric taut.

I now remembered an earlier scene of the story in which the painter had attempted to kiss me, but I’d fled and she’d kissed a (male) police officer instead, leading to some kind of transference— she was using that power to make this banner, with protective but ruthless intent.

“Perhaps it’s better I kissed Officer [name],” she said to me. “The [name of ancient civilization we were dealing with] approved all sorts of couplings for pleasure; but for inward journeys, they were more conservative.” (Not the word she used, been trying to think of something not quite as slangy as “normie.”]

“And what happened to Officer Name’s mind?” I asked.

“There is something in there now. A substitute. The difference is hardly noticeable.”

“Then you’ll pardon me if I’m happy, too, that he was the one you kissed.”

I thought of offering to get her an embroidery hoop for the fabric, but i wasn’t sure if I should be helping her.

This dream was probably influenced by having watched the Dr Phibes movies back-to-back before bed.

The Master and Margarita (2024) with English subtitles

The narrative gets really restructured from the original novel— it treats all the supernatural scenes as a story-within the story, which… is not the choice I’d’ve made, but it’s still all beautifully filmed and acted, and I’m glad I watched it.

Behemoth and the rest of Wolland’s entourage get their screentime in the 2005 miniseries, which has cheesy greenscreen fx but is also the most faithful adaptation I’ve ever seen done of anything; and of course in the novel itself.

Lying awake, I started thinking about mini-goncharovs— stories by single authors that create movies that don’t exist in reality. I’m sure I listed four, but at the moment I can only recall three:

Hyperboloids of Wondrous Light

The King In Yellow (1949)

You’re Wrong About Misericorde

About two days ago a narrative in my head got vivid enough I thought I’d better start writing it down. I might be able to incorporate it into a multi-chapter fic I’ve been working on—it fits with some imagery from earlier chapters and might provide some much-needed backstory. And I don’t want to get side-tracked from the multi-chapter fic, and it’s due a new chapter, and I don’t want to let down myself and the two people reading it.

Howwwwever, the idea is also showing signs of developing into its own stand-alone short story, possibly even something I could try submitting somewhere. I think it’s been a decade since I bothered trying to submit anything anywhere, but I can dream.

The obvious solution would be to write both versions—but I saw a tumblr post a few weeks back by a professional writer whose novel got flagged by her publisher’s anti-plagiarism filter, whereupon she had to explain to her editor that the reason her novel shared a couple sentences with a very sexually -explicit LotR fic posted on Ao3 a couple of years back was because she was the author of both, and had figured those lines were too good not to reuse in her professional work.

I wonder if simply setting the multi-chapter fic to members-only would be enough to keep it from being spotted in the admittedly-unlikely event that I try to get the other version published someday. Both my readers are Ao3 members, so it wouldn’t inconvenience them.

I wonder how often this kind of thing is going to be a problem, now that there’s an option to check for plagiarism by having a computer check every word in a work against everything else findable on the internet? Not to mention the cases that probably exist where a writer didn’t intentionally steal, but did subconsciously recall some turn of phrase from a story they read as a kid…

My office periodically gets calls where I can’t hear anybody on the other end, and the screen just gives a town name rather than a caller ID (I hate our phone system). But a bunch of them are from Anzac, AB, which is an unusual enough name that I finally looked it up just now. Turns out it has a population of 506 people, as of the last census.

Who the hell is calling us from Anzac? Which of its 506 inhabitants is so desperate to talk to a hardware-supply company three provinces away? And why can they never get through?

Often fics are tonally-opposite to canon, because they’re written to compensate—if the original story is a comedy, sometimes people want to explore the more dramatic possibilities of the characters and setting; if the original is a high-stakes drama where a lot of the cast die, then fandom writes a lot of fix-its and sweet, fluffy AUs where nobody's life is in danger in the first place.

All of which is to say, there's a lot of fluffy fics for Les Miserables.

Sunday I watched One For the Pot -- this is the Shaw Festival production from, I think, the late ‘eighties-- there was a revival at the Shaw in the mid-‘90s, but I seem to remember seeing this tv broadcast as a middle-schooler. Or rather, I caught the third act, was able to tape it on the family VCR, and watched it over and over.

Seeing the entire play for the first time, I’m struck by how provisional the set-up actually is. Oh, Mr. Hardcastle wishing to find Billy Hickory Wood, the long-lost son of his late friend and business partner, and settle part of his fortune upon him, makes sense enough. And Billy having a separated-at-birth twin, Rupert Hickory Wood, raised with a posh accent and little else—well, that’s just the rules of comedy. But half the cast have no real reason to be doing what they’re doing. Jugg the butler cheerfully demands bribes for each assist; but Rupert seems to just get caught up in the inertia of mostly-innocent Billy and his scheming boss Charlie. And there’s no reason for Hardcastle’s arty daughter Amy to fall in love with Rupert at first sight, except that she does.

It helps if you regard it all as not so much a farce plot as a parody of one, with all the tropes amped up. Identical twins raised separately? Let’s throw in a third as the curtain comes down on Act II. There are walk-on characters, offstage characters, and a running gag where one or another of the party guests is always wandering by in search of the ballroom. There are so many plot threads some of them have to be thrown away as soon as they’re introduced: Clifton’s blackmail scheme is foiled almost without effort, because he's made the mistake of being a genuinely unpleasant villain in a story full of loveable comic rapscallions and they have the power of slapstick on their side. This is, after all, a play written in 1959 but set in a vaguely-Wodehousian, vaguely early-1930s country manor. Will somebody get doped up? tied up? forced to don drag in order to seduce a myopic family solicitor? Damn right they will.

By the third act (the part I saw as a kid) the whole thing has achieved escape velocity and everybody’s slamming doors too quickly for the audience to worry about whether any of it makes sense. We’re not watching it for sense, we’re watching for the pleasure of seeing the late Heath Lambert be a human shell game, swapping out accents and ducking into doorways so he can pull a Texas switch with one of his body doubles. Logic is for murder mysteries.

Been reading all morning and can particularly recommend: Hot Buttered Rum (1578 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Timothy "Squashy Hat" Stedding/James "Captain Flint" Turner
Characters: Timothy "Squashy Hat" Stedding, James "Captain Flint" Turner
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash
Summary:

As the winter cold deepens in the Lake District, Jim Turner decides to return to Beckfoot in the hope the lake will indeed freeze over completely.

For the Love of Tea (1088 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Arthur Dent & Ford Prefect, Ford's Towel & Arthur Dent, Ford's Towel & Ford Prefect
Characters: Ford's Towel, Ford Prefect, Arthur Dent
Additional Tags: Tea, or lack thereof
Summary:

Oh, what Arthur would do for a cup of tea…

not going anywhere (1813 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Harold and Maude (1971)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Dame Marjorie "Maude" Chardin/Harold Chasen
Characters: Harold Chasen, Dame Marjorie "Maude" Chardin
Additional Tags: Angst, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Dreams, Suicide Attempt, Moral Ambiguity, Unconventional Marriage Proposal
Summary:

Maude survives. Harold reckons with what it meant to almost lose her.

ritornello (1787 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hauntings - Vernon Lee, A Wicked Voice - Vernon Lee
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Zaffirino/Magnus
Characters: Magnus (A Wicked Voice), Balthasar Cesari
Additional Tags: Dream Sex, Orgasm Edging, First Person, Canon-Typical Musical Consent Issues, Castrati
Summary:

If this account of my sufferings is destined for the fire, there can be no harm in going further.

Chance Encounter (1730 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Andrew Raynes, Ralph Lanyon
Summary:

Andrew at work.

What if We Kissed at Morquinda’s BBQ and We Were Both Called Jim? (1619 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: "Australian Soap Opera" sketch, A Bit of Fry and Laurie
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Stephen Fry's character/Hugh Laurie's character
Characters: Owen | Clark | Jim, Bradley | Craig | Shane | Finley | Declan | Jim, Javelina
Additional Tags: Comedy, Getting Together, Australia, Parody, Cruising, Barbecue, Yuletide
Summary:

After the bombshell revelation that they've been having an affair, two fan favorite characters on Australian Soap Opera must face each other again at the barbecue to celebrate the opening of Morquinda's new executive fitness center and garage. Sparks will fly. Sausages will sizzle. Tune in primetime. Only on Ao3.

Marty Hong Faces the Terror Tank! (1587 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sam Clay, Rosa Saks
Additional Tags: Post-Canon
Summary:

It was the first thing Sam had told him: “You trade in your leverage, those guys’ll eat your lunch.”

And I got two gifts this year: But Never Jam Today (3267 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Night of the Jabberwock - Fredric Brown
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Elsie Minton / Doc Stoeger
Characters: Doc Stoeger, Elsie Minton
Additional Tags: Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Racism
Summary:

We’d been engaged for four years by then, but Doc Minton— he was the other kind of doctor— was dead set against us setting a date. First I wasn’t good enough for her. Now that I had a degree and a steady job, it was her health, or so he claimed.

Doc and Elsie, 25 years before.

A Skyscraper Condemnation Affiliate (3356 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Village Green Preservation Society - The Kinks (Song)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: folk horror, Kinks lyrics, Village Greens
Summary:

Alex is just doing his job, attempting to acquire 5.37 metres of village green for his property developer boss. But something about the Village is not quite right …

Last month I ordered a few sample sizes of classic perfumes (Mitsouko, Jicky, and Dolce Vita), so I could know what they smell like when mentioned in stories (well, and Dolce Vita because I *think* I know what it smells like and want to confirm. If I'm right, it's a scent I associate with a beloved person and place and I'd like to have it in a bottle).

The postal strike began a day or so after I placed my order, so the perfume samples arrived Dec 20.

Impressions so far:

Mitsouko (pre-reformulation 1998) EDT. Mitsouko (originally came on the market 1919) was one of the luxury goods Prof. Wolland’s crew conjured up at the theatre and which a few hours later turned back into trash. It’s more subtle than I expected. I’m not sure how I feel about it— it started as a very very faint boxwood scent, and eventually became something that’s… not really so much a smell as a vague sort of creamy vibe.

Jicky EDP. (originally introduced 1889) Another one that was fainter than I’d expected. It’s likely these are all more dilute than I’m used to, since they’re eaux de toilette or eaux de parfum. Jicky, to me, just smelled very slightly of licorice— at least I didn’t get any of the chicken-coop smell some people supposedly pick up. One thing about older perfume blends is that a significant number of the reviews contain references to sweat, dung, or cat pee. Presumably because they were originally created in a time when ambergris and civet were components, even if the modern product uses synthetic equivalents. Anyway, I eventually decided that Jicky, on me and to me, smells like a dilute version of a goth-y perfume I bought last year and can’t recall the name of or find where I stashed the vial.

La Dolce Vita EDT. (originally introduced 1994) The best so far, sweet, slightly metallic. Still doesn’t quite smell like 108 Albertus Ave, but I’m happy enough with it.

Seriously, that story had been on hiatus for seven years (which the new issue thematically incorporates)

...as one of those Ghost Story for Christmas tv movies, and regardless of what time period they set it in, they need to play “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” over the end credits.

This would not only fit in with the [spoiler rot13] chapu-naq-whql frevny-zheqref theme, but would let audiences hear a Paul McCartney song in December that is not “Wonderful Christmas Time.”

Also it was Ugly Holiday Sweater Day at work today.

Trying to figure out if I can describe this generically enough that I don’t dox my workplace.

OK, so I work for a large-ish hardware chain, and one of my daily tasks involves sorting through scans of packing slips for recent orders. These typically include a PO# (Purchase Order #), which depending on the customer, may be some kind of alphanumeric code from their record-keeping system, or simply the project that the parts are going to be used for. A lot of the PO#s I see are stuff like [Town Name] Public Library, or 123 Generic Street.

And then, there’s [REDACTED] Plumbing.

Whoever places the orders there doesn’t believe in PO#s. In fact one of the PO#s I’ve seen them use is “NO TO PO’S” (sic)

More often, they apparently just use whatever phrase is crossing their mind at the moment they enter the order. Usually something to do with sports or the weather:

RAINY DAY BLUES
ONE MORE WEEK OF GOLF?
FANCY YELLOW CARD
PLUMBER TO THE STARS

And the one that really piqued my curiosity: SMUGGLIN WITH GLEN

China mourns British man “Old Dry Keith” made famous by his bland sandwiches: This reminded me of Arthur Dent becoming “The Sandwich Maker,” although Keith’s fans appear to have regarded his sandwiches with horror, and him with mildly ironic affection. Thing is, I watched a couple of the videos and those are just perfectly normal sandwiches (albeit on whole-wheat bread). Everyone keeps treating this like a “ha ha British food is terrible” story, but I think it’s more a “everything is exotic to somebody” story.

Meanwhile, for an actual UK eccentric, Ivor Cutler: Whose works could also be quite beautiful. His fans included the Beatles, who cast him as the bus driver in Magical Mystery Tour.

a_t_rain, Ceremonies for Civil Wars

A particularly delightful goth xmas tree.

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moon_custafer

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Stuff and Moonshine

Recent Entries

TV Watching (more)

Television-watching (online)

On a Lighter Note

Peter Morwood 1956-2025

“Ha! Ha!” said the duck, laughing

General Update

Federal Election 2025

Dream Journal for yesterday

Meanwhile, A Movie That Did Get Made In Our Universe

Things I Should Have Written Down During the Night

Writing Quandary

At Work

Observation

Michael's coming round?! Where's me brass shillelagh?

Yuletide 2024

Perfume Reviews

Valve Finally Wrapped Up the TF2 Webcomic!

They need to adapt M. R. James’ “A Disappearance and An Appearance...”

Minor Amusements at the Office

Links Round-up