Stuff and Moonshine

Film Noir fanfic vignettes, everybody! (mostly for I Wake Up Screaming)

I seem to be drifting into an obsession with Lionel Bart. Here’s a clip of him in the 1970s visiting the Stratford East Theatre Royal. Having seen a few other photos and clips, the man had a sincere commitment to Hats.

Enjoyed Albert Finney enough in The Green Man that I went looking for Dennis Potter’s Karaoke in which Finney is the protagonist and probable author stand-in (he’s also in the sequel, Cold Lazarus, but it sounds like he’s mostly a frozen head in that one). Accidentally watched the third episode first (ETA-- no wait, it was Episode Four), which was confusing—I’d a general idea of the plot from the Wikipedia entry, but I was starting to think “oh, so it starts near the end and then tells the story in flashback” and then I kept waiting for the flashback to start. Went back, found the first episode and watched that, which made more sense; although I’m now withdrawing at least half of the sympathy I felt for Richard E. Grant’s character after his beating in Episode Three Four Have also decided not to watch this one with Andrew as there’s at least three plot points that would likely be triggery for him.

Have a terrible feeling I’m going to have to read John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra for research purposes-– I mentioned in the latest chapter of Gentleman of the Shade that Eddy acted in a movie adaptation – it was just sort of a throwaway bit, but Mel speculated that Lambkin is going to track the movie down and watch it, and y’know, she’s right.

Have risked starting a new novel, well, multi-chapter original fic, anyway; two chapters posted so far: WWMBD

Just two totally normal men from the 1930s who are definitely not any of the Marx Brothers.

A propos of nothing in particular: 'When That Man Is Dead and Gone.'

Got my assignment on the weekend-- it seemed to me they came out faster this year. I was expecting it to take a week after sign-ups closed, but it was only about a day. 

Obviously I can't say what fandom it's for. I will say it's one I added as an afterthought to my list of offers and had no particular plans to write for, but I had some ideas yesterday (and re-read the recipient's requests) and I think I can do something good with it.



Other fics will have to be tabled for the time being, naturally.

I formatted it and made him an Ao3 account.

A short one, but some progress is better than none.

It's been a couple of weeks, but I've posted another chapter.

A flashback

https://archiveofourown.org/works/49863202/chapters/127010242

Earlier this week, I had a dream that somebody was remaking a cult-classic supernatural comedy about a haunted antique shop that starred Dudley Moore (as the ghost); and upon awakening was disappointed to remember that the mid-1980s original film didn’t actually exist. Disappointed enough that I began trying to write the novelization that would have been released along with it if it had existed. Which involves building a whole plot and characters out of the very few details the dream gave me.

I really ought to be working on my most recent fanfic, which stalled out last month—but then trying to send one story away doesn’t bring the other one back, it just leaves me with an empty head.

The antique shop’s owner insists on appearing in my waking mind as Christopher Plummer doing a vaguely Mittel-European accent; the rest of the cast now includes a couple of artists sharing the third floor of the antique shop’s haunted premises; I think at some point we’ll meet a waitress from the bar down the street; and the block is probably under threat from a real-estate developer because no 1980s NYC-set movie would be complete without a villain based on Donald Trump.

I've named the ghost Dennis, but I'm still not sure what his backstory is.  I don't know why he's an Englishman in New York. I don't think he's been a ghost all that long-- his clothes aren't noticeably from a different era from everyone else's.

This may all be because the week before I made a jokey post on Tumblr about having a tv that showed movies from alternate universes but forty percent of them are different versions of The Canterville Ghost.

Aargh. I want to do this and I don't want to do this. OK, right now it's threatening rain, I have a headache, and I'm at work, so I don't want to do anything.





(p.30):

“Can I change the channel?” Ellen asked.
“Naturally, darling,” said Luce, frowning at the green squiggle he’d just added to his current work-in-progress. “Wait, what are you talking about?”
“You put the radio on, didn’t you? I can hear music.”
Luce listened intently for a while:
“I can’t.”
Ellen prowled the studio space, cocking her head and trying to home in on the music that still played on the edge of her hearing. Luce followed her, still holding his paintbrush.
“It’s stronger here,” Ellen said in a corner where some of the building’s old hot-water pipes were exposed. On a hunch, she placed her ear against one of the larger ones:
“Yeah, the pipes are conducting the sound from another floor.”
Luce tried to imitate her, but only shook his head again, spiky hair bouncing.
“All I can hear are some gurgles, and the furnace humming, and even I wouldn’t call that music— mind you, if you added a backbeat…” He tried drumming on one of the pipes with his brush.
“Luce, shut up. I swear someone’s playing piano downstairs.”
“Nobody lives downstairs.”
“Well, in Mr. Finster’s shop on the ground floor, then. There might be a piano in there somewhere, with the antiques.”
“Might be? You work there, shouldn’t you know these things?”
“It’s a really cluttered space.”
“Anyway, doesn’t Finster close up and go home when you do?” Luce sighed and leant against the wall with his arms folded. “What kind of piano music is it? Beethoven? Boogie-woogie?”
Ellen pressed her ear to the pipe, and the faint tinkling sound resolved itself into an old-fashioned tune. She tried to hum it for Luce:
“And there’s someone singing, I think— but I can’t make out the words.” She decided not to tell Luce that from the few words she could make out, it seemed to be a cheeky ditty about a barn door.


(p.50):

Heaving a ghostly sigh, Dennis parked himself in a despondent attitude on a Hepplewhite dining chair. Ellen took the opportunity to ask a question that had been bothering her since she’d met the antique shop’s spectral assistant:
“How come you walk through walls but you can sit on furniture?”
Reply came in the form of a startled yelp, a thud, and the annoyed face of Dennis glaring up at her through the chair frame:
“Oh, now you’ve gone and done it!” he groused, looking like a head laying on the chair’s needlepoint-tapestry seat. “You made me think about it, and I lost my concentration.” He scrambled to his feet and dusted himself off— quite unnecessarily, in Ellen’s opinion, but she bit her tongue. It was clear to her now that asking Dennis to apply the normal laws of reality to his condition would just lead to disaster. Probably the only thing that kept him from fading or drifting away was force of habit.

OK back to printing invoices or whatever-it-is I'm actually supposed to be doing around here.

I’ve been updating a multi-chapter fic weekly for the past couple of months, but these past few days I’ve been obsessing over a potential Doctor Who fic, so I guess that’s on too, now:

Revelation In San Diego ( words) by moon_custafer
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sarah Jane Smith, Fourth Doctor, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Case Fic, 1930s, California, 20th Century
Summary: Following the events of Pyramids of Mars, the Doctor hopes to cheer up Sarah Jane with a visit to golden-age Hollywood, and the TARDIS is only off by a hundred miles or so this time. But they soon have something else to worry about.

For those who’ve never read any of my Who fics: usually they’re what happens when I think up a scenario and some original characters, so I put a Doctor Who framework around them in order to entice readers to take a look. Which may well be what a lot of the classic series writers were doing anyway (I maintain that shows with a wandering protagonist are basically anthologies in disguise).