Stuff and Moonshine

Finished my fic for Yuletide a few hours before the deadline. I’ll still go back and tweak it a bit.

Looked up fanfiction for The Bacchae early this morning (mainly because I’d bought myself faux-leopard onesie pajamas last week) and these two, from Yuletides past, were especially good:

Bakcheios, orphan_account, Yuletide 2010 (several commenters compared this to Mary Reneault)

Honey and Roses, the_alchemist, Yuletide 2016 (Euripedes-Shakespeare crossover, English history AU!)

ETA—Just realized the_alchemist is the author of my 2024 Yuletide gift: 
A Skyscraper Condemnation Affiliate (3356 words) by the_alchemist
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 …

Found a YouTube post of Bob Godfrey’s The Do-It-Yourself Cartoon Kit (1961), which I hadn’t seen in decades. Surprised at how much of its proto-Monty-Python lines and proto-Terry-Gilliam animation I’d recalled correctly.

Found a whole YouTube channel about spiders, very informative, but I also like that the theme song is just:

(The video maker, his voice doubled with recording technology, singing lackadaisically) THESE are the SPIDERS in your HOUSE

Sometimes he changes it up: THESE are the SPIders in your YAAAARD.

This one also has some nice footage of St. John’s, Newfoundland: THREE DAYS with SPIDER SCIENTISTS

For the video on spider cognition: The MINDS of the SPIDERS in your HOUSE

First snowfall of the season. I’m waiting for the bus in boots, a woolen coat, tweed cap, and also fishnets because I turn fifty-one next month and can make dubious fashion choices if I want to.

A few weeks ago I changed my pronouns in my Ao3 and Tumblr profiles to she/they, although it’s a bit more complicated.

See, I usually feel feminine enough that, frex, I quit square-dancing in elementary school the first time they made me dance as one of the boys (because there weren’t enough boys interested in square dancing). On the other hand, by my twenties I was quite happy to play masc characters onstage. I supposed it was a matter of choosing to do it vs. being told to by a teacher.

Now, there’s a third hand to this, which is that there’ve been a couple of periods in my life when I do start wishing I were a man, or inventing a male alter ego. I never do anything about it, because it wears off after four or five years. And I do realize that’s a significant chunk of a person’s life; but it’s hard to know what I can practically do about it, when the pendulum swing has that long an arc.

Anyway it stuck me tonight that my best self-description is “genderfluid, except the fluid in question is the University of Queensland Pitch Drop Experiment.”

Dear Yule Writer— Thanks for volunteering to write a fic for me. I am moon_custafer on AO3 as I am here. Repeating the first part of this letter from past years:

General likes— Hurt-comfort. Conversation. Period-specific details. Ghosts or supernatural. Found family. Casefic or plotfic. I don’t mind explicit sex scenes, but I’m usually indifferent to them. OTOH kissing or touching hands, foreheads, stroking hair, etc, are great, as are descriptions of the characters’ appearance.

General DNWs—AUs that deviate from canon to the point of being a completely different premise/setting, i.e. high-school/coffee-shop/ABO dynamics.

My requests for this year:

Мастер и Маргарита - Михаил Булгаков | The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Hella, Behemoth, Margarita Nikolayevna
I’d love to know more about Hella, beyond “she’s a sexy vampire”; I’d like to see how she interacts with Margarita; and Behemoth is always a delight to read about.

The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins:
Ezra Jennings, Mr. Candy
My favourite character in the book has always been Ezra Jennings, the mysterious mixed-race doctor with a clouded past and a terminal illness. His only friend is his colleague, the flamboyant Mr. Candy who unwittingly contributes to the mystery. I’ve shipped these two for years. Pre-canon would be nice, but feel free to write whatever you want.


Decoy (1946)
Margot Shelby, Sergeant Joseph "Jojo" Portugal, Frankie Ollins, Dr. Lloyd Craig.
This movie packs a lot (including SF/horror) into its runtime. Margot is the most gleefully evil femme fatale I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t mind a little of Frankie’s PoV after he’s returned to life by the dose of methylene blue.

The Green Man (TV)
Maurice Allington, Rev. Sonnenschein, Joyce Allington, Amy Allington
Maurice is a somehow-endearing absolute trash-fire of a man. Also I love that he and Rev. Sonnenschein successfully exorcise the ghost even though the Reverend doesn’t personally believe in the ritual he’s doing. Possible prompts: Maurice reconciling himself to the fact that his wife and his mistress have dumped him for each other. Maurice and Rev. Sonnenschein teaming up to investigate another supernatural event. How much does Amy remember about what happened, and how does it change her relationship with her father?

Get Crazy (1983)
Toad, Reggie Wanker, King Blues, Auden 
The ending of this movie leaves plenty of room for further adventures for any or all of the characters. Reggie and the band’s new direction? King Blues and his band and their adventures in the Motor City? Auden’s new album? Or anything you wish.

Got our latest covid shots on Saturday—the ‘flu shot apparently isn’t out yet, at least not in our neck of the woods.

In the evening I went to the final night of Bus Stop alone (Andrew didn’t want to risk the flight of steps that leads down to the theatre). The audience filled maybe three-quarters of the seats. The cast told me afterwards they were disappointed by the turnout, as the last night of a run they usually get a full house, but that they’d been in competition with the baseball playoffs. I thought the actual performances were pretty good, especially Brit, the actress who’d had to step into the role of Elma for the final weekend after Spencer (our original Elma) was injured in an accident. I still don’t know exactly what happened—apparently she’ll be ok, but was recovering at home and loopy on painkillers for a few days.

Afterwards I helped move the props back to the storage room, and we had some pizza. Got home around midnight, went to bed, and shortly thereafter my reaction to the shot kicked in. I’m fine today, but Sunday was spent feeling achey and tired.

Did a job interview this morning, don’t know if I’ll get it or even especially want it (1-year contract, no benefits, and a weird-sounding schedule).

Oh, I’ve been asked to be co-costumer for the November show, On the Air. I’d been hoping to get that one—the setting is contemporary, but a couple of the characters sound like they might be fun to dress, especially the crazy ex-rockstar radio disc-jockey (sound familiar?)

TIL the cemetery in Vienna has tons of merch, much of it featuring their little grim reaper mascot.

Interviews with the costumers for Bus Stop, myself included. My voice sounds like the bottom of a very small boat scraping against a rock.

Apparently nobody knows what musical genre Jhariah is. I’ve heard three of his songs, and each one sounds completely different. He isn’t Goth music, but his work is somewhat gothic.

Short chapters of WWMBD and Gentleman of the Shade to tide you over while I focus on writing for Yuletide.

Speaking of Gentleman of the Shade, last month I showed sovay this 1973 radio show DJ’d by Keith Moon, but didn’t think to post it here. Moon’s comic patter, and eclectic playlist, make it the nearest thing our world has to ‘Mad Bob’s Late-Nite Platter Party,’ the radio show hosted by one of my story’s leads.

I should start a list of fandoms to nominate and hype up.

*Checks past years* Well, I’ll repeat the recommendations for Lud-In-the-Mist, The Westing Game, The Woman In White, Daniel Pinkwater’s oeuvre, Night of the Jabberwock, People Will Talk, Kolchak, The Time of Your Life, The Who bandfic or songfic, and Get Crazy (1983).

The Moonstone, The Hidden (1987), Decoy (1946), The Green Hills of Earth, the Silver John/John the Balladeer stories. What else? Oh, The Green Man (the novel or the tv miniseries)…

Hilda the Plus-Size Pinup and Sapphire and Steel are annual favourites who need no introduction.