Pity and Terror (463 words) by RiaSaun Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Slings and Arrows, Medea - Fandom Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: Geoffrey Tennant, Darren Nichols Additional Tags: Humor, Drama Summary:
Darren sells Geoffrey on a production. This is inspired by Petra's "Grace and a Cod-piece."
*
This was inspired by one of the first fanworks I ever put on the AO3, back in my Slings & Arrows heyday. It has an excellent use of Darren Nichols' off-kilter genius.
Current Mood:flattered
Current Music:That's really no excuse to be as glum as you've become
Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.
Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!
Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!
Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.
Read It's Not A Cult by Joey Batey, a debut folk horror novel about a band whose songs based on an invented mythology (the Solkats, small gods of wine stains and stubbed toes and untold jokes and bus stop fights and texts at three in the morning, etc.) inspire a literal cult following; I picked this up mostly because I know of the author for other work (he has a band, The Amazing Devil, and played Jaskier on The Witcher) and I'm not sure if it is, exactly, good— I suspect it might work better as an audiobook, because it has a rather distracting tendency towards draaaaawing out wooooords and phonetic spelling of accents ("updéeat")— but I did read the entire thing in one day. It's definitely a [Rod Sterling voice] wouldn't that be messed up? kind of horror novel— very ambiguous ending, and a lot of ambiguity throughout; ( not a spoiler, exactly. )
According to an interview I read when this came on my radar a few months ago, either the novel itself or at least the idea for it (unclear?) pre-dates Batey's career(s) as an actor and musician, but it's a bit of context that I found impossible to shake in light of, a., the themes of artistry (specifically, as a musician) and fandom, and b., the way the narrative is entirely framed by camera lenses: if an action takes place on the page, it's because there's a camera pointing at it, from the narrator's coping mechanism of viewing the world through a camcorder lens rather than looking at things straight on, to vloggers live-streaming their every thought, filmed police interviews, etc., including some rather improbably convoluted executions of the premise.
Current Music:Farewell Wanderlust - The Amazing Devil
I do not want to read books about WASPs who are oblivious to the world beyond the city that they live in. And even in that city, they are about some white people striving and oblivious to anything beyond their own attempt to make it.
They can discuss the trappings of wealth in detail, but when it comes to discussing people, it goes like this:
The interior was a fantasy of soon-to-be-cliched Oriental fixtures: large porcelain urns, brass Buddhas, red latterns, and self-postured silent deference of an Oriental waistaff (the last servile ethnicity of American's nineteenth century immigrant classes.)
Holy hell. That is racist.
Then if that was not enough,
In front of me a broad-shouldered man with the twang of an oil-producing state was trying to communicate with the maitre d'
This is racist against Asian people AND white people all in two paragraphs. The character making this observation cannot be bothered to figure out if someone is from Texas or Oklahoma, but they decide that the rude person in the restaurant is from Texas because who cares about anything outside of New York City. Truly, a literary achievement.
Now, this author is a talented and capable author, but was any of this scene really necessary?
In the first chapters, there are references to so many other books, as if it is inviting you to write a Ph.D. thesis.
The most obvious thesis id about how this book compares to "Great Expectations." The author invites that comparison so many times. One of the characters picks up "Great Expectations" and turns to Chapter 20 as soon as she hears from her friends to London. That is the chapter in the book where Pip, the young character from "Great Expectations" goes to London, and it is just a dirty and corrupt place to be.
In this book, like in "Great Expectations," there is a wealthy benefactor warping the characters around herself, but it is best to leave the details of that for the people who are interested in the book.
Chapter Six is "The Cruelest Month," and it starts with "One night in April" slamming you over the head with T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
There are too many characters in this book that like to read, and they like to read the type of literature that is ruined by high school English teachers. These characters are absolutely obsessed with "Walden;" and I am happy for them for being able to conceive of Massachusetts, a state outside of New York, but not really.
I spent much of yesterday running pre-blizzard errands, but the local state of the parking spots is the truest gauge of the meteorology about to go down.
I have not yet managed to get hold of her memoir, but I deeply appreciate being notified of the existence of E. M. Barraud, who identified herself with chalk-cut hill figures, candidly described her relationship status as "technically single, but 'married' in a permanent homosexual relationship with another woman," published under her assigned initials and was known in Little Eversden where she worked for the Women's Land Army as John. She gave her wartime responses for Mass-Observation as both a man and a woman: "People are people, not specifics of a gender." I had never even encountered her poetry.
This week's bread was a Standen loaf, strong brown/buckwheat flour, maple syrup, malt extract - but due to electric scale going weird and giving strange readings, the proportions got very odd and it turned out larger and a lot denser than usual, if still edible.
Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft roll recipe, 4:1 strong white/buckwheat flour, a touch of maple syrup, dried cranberries, turned out rather well.
Today's lunch: Scottish salmon tail fillets baked in foil with butter and lime slices; served with La Ratte potatoes boiled with salt and dill and tossed in butter, buttered spinach and baked San Marzano tomatoes.
In exchanges news, Candy Hearts exchange had reveals- I wrote an angsty triple drabble for S.C.I.谜案集 | S.C.I. Mystery (TV): - To Banishing Memories Summary: It wasn't a bedside vigil, it was more that Bai Yutang just couldn't make himself leave.
Since the beginning of the year I got it in my head to teach myself nalbinding (an incredibly ancient technique, while now thought of mostly as a Viking era thing it actually predates the Vikings by thousands of years, with textile fragments made using the technique found at the Nahal Hemar Cave (modern Israel) dating back to 6500BCE and from 4200BCE in Tybrind Vig (modern Denmark) but there's lots of evidence from many places more "recently" like socks from 4th C CE Egypt and hats and shawls from Peru from 300BCE to 300 CE) and post-Birthday Bash really threw myself into figuring it out. There are SO many different stitches and techniques and very little standardization and there's very, very little out there about it (i.e. NO patterns basically whatsoever). After watching approximately eleventy billion videos and trying to muddle my way though some articles and books I have sort of figured out a few different styles/stitches but who knows if I'll manage to actually make anything. It's been fun (and frustrating but whatever) to attempt though!
And, as always, recthething recs (tumblr art for Bridgerton, Doctor Who, Merlin and Under the Skin): Bridgerton - Sophie at the ball (gorgeous)
Doctor Who - Sillies (cute doodle of Ten and Thirteen interacting)
Anyway, he mentioned that "Stand By Me" was "numbered among the Recording Industry Association of America’s 25 Songs of the Century." This naturally got me curious: A ranked list of things? That's like catnip to me!
So I went to look for it. Turns out that there's no such things as the RIAA "25 Songs of the Century." What there is is the "Song of the Century" list, produced by the RIAA in conjunction with the NEA and Scholastic Inc. It's a list of 365 songs. So where did Rather get this idea of "25 Songs of the Century"? Because "Stand by Me" is #25 on the list, and the Wikipedia entry for "Songs of the Century" only includes the top 25 songs on the list. Apparently Rather (or, more likely, one of his research assistants) looked at the Wikipedia entry, didn't read the text carefully, and based on the table of songs assumed that it was a list of 25 songs.
If you read the text carefully, not only do you get the correct number of songs. You also start to question the RIAA's methodology for creating the list. According to the entry, "[h]undreds of voters, who included elected officials, people from the music industry and from the media, teachers, and students" were asked to select the songs. These voters were selected by the RIAA (and one is forced to ask "how many students does the RIAA know?"), and of the 1300 voters selected, only 200 responded. Seems kind of sloppy and haphazard.
Then, if you read the list, you see that the voters were rather sloppy and haphazard in their definition of a song: #7 on the list is the entire album of West Side Story, which is not "a song." Altogether there are 18 albums on the list: 11 Broadway shows, 6 jazz albums, and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Obviously I don't have a copy of the instructions that the RIAA sent to the voters, but I think we can all agree that (with the exception of Thick as a Brick and possibly a few others) an album is not a song.
Also, just as an aside, I think 2001 (when this survey was conducted) was a bit premature to be choosing the most impactful songs of the 20th century.
All that being said, I think any other such list would be just as subject to being haphazard and subjective, and on skimming over the list I do think it would be an enjoyable and/or interesting list to listen to. Plus, unless you were born on February 29, you can figure out what day of the year you were born on and then look at the complete list and see what song your birthday corresponds to. (Mine is "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy.)
I took a day trip to NYC specifically to see the current cast of Hadestown— in particular, West End import Jack Wolfe as Orpheus and folk singer Allison Russell as Persephone— before the cast turnover in March, and it was absolutely worth the trip! I've loved Anais Mitchell's concept album for years and have actually seen the Broadway musical twice* before, although apparently it didn't stick, because I seem to have forgotten half of the songs...? Like, genuinely, I found myself thinking ...have I ever heard this song before? They can't have changed the musical since 2023, right? more than once. (The stage musical is substantially different from the concept album, both in terms of fleshing out the plot by adding new songs and in tweaking some of the original ones.)
In various assorted thoughts: - Jack Wolfe was always going to be the best Orpheus I've seen, because the previous actor I saw was... not the strongest part of the show, but even without grading on a curve, he was in fact phenomenal, just absolutely perfect for the role. His Orpheus is so sweetly awkward and completely earnest it's no wonder that even street-smart, touch-shy Eurydice falls for his castle-in-the-sky promises of gold rings and wedding feasts and his plan to write a song that will bring the seasons— out of whack since Hades and Persephone fell out of love, all freezing winters and scorching summers, no spring or fall— back in tune, and he has the voice to pull it off: like, yep, this guy can in fact sing so beautifully it would make flowers bloom and the gods fall back in love, 100%, checks out. (I even forgive the musical for the lyric changes from Mitchell's original "Epic (Part I/II)", because the less flowery lyrics did in fact sound lovely when Wolfe sang them.) It perhaps made the ending even more devastating, because surely, if any Orpheus could make it out, this one... but no :(
- At least from the nosebleed seats, the actresses playing Eurydice (Morgan Dudley) and Persephone (Russell) looked strikingly alike, which added an interesting dynamic to both Persephone's and Hades' interactions with Eurydice— the parallels between Eurydice and Persephone, and between both couples, are written into the story itself, but I did find myself thinking, like, did this Eurydice catch Hades' eye because she looks like Persephone? Is Persephone's particular kindness to/sympathy for Eurydice because she sees her younger self, too? I think the fact that I'd particularly noticed their similarly braided hair, and how Eurydice's neutral-toned first-act costume and Persephone's colorful one (green dress, ocre-red highlights in her hair) felt like visual foils, made me look at Persephone's costume change into vintage widow's black when she returns to Hadestown for the winter with new eyes, too, especially the detail of her hair being hidden away in one of those fancy hair nets (snoods?).
- I really appreciated how this Hades (Paulo Szot) wasn't trying to copy Patrick Page's original performance, because I feel like the other actor I saw in the role was trying a little too hard to match Page's "sounds like the lowest key on a piano" vocal depth and it had mostly just sounded growly. This actor's voice has/he was going for more of a rich timbre(?) (I don't know music words) than sheer depth; I found out afterwards that he's an opera singer by training, which checks out. Actually, overall, I really appreciated how differently this cast played the same roles than the one I saw before— it felt like a really fresh take! (I would say that both versions of Eurydice and Persephone are a tie for me, I liked this Orpheus and Hades much better, and my favorite Hermes remains the understudy I saw in 2023.)
Fandom: Stranger Things Pairings/Characters: Will Byers/Mike Wheeler Rating: Explicit Length: 59,047 words Content Notes: Bullying and homophobia. Creator Link:harriet_vane Theme: Inept in Love, Pretend Couple, Friends to Lovers, Canon LGBTQ+ Characters
Summary: Will needs a date to his mom's wedding. Mike volunteers.
"I have an idea," says Mike.
Ice cubes form in Will's stomach. "How dangerous is it? Like, should I call Dustin to talk you down, or should I call Nancy to be ready to drive us to the hospital?"
"No," says Mike, "you can't tell anyone or it won't work."
"Or what won't work?" Will asks. It's like picking up a rock you know a spider will be under.
Mike gets up and closes Will's door. Hopper doesn't make them keep it open but sometimes Will does anyway, because every now and then lying around alone with Mike on his bed just makes his chest ache too much. If the door is open he can tell himself You can't do anything right now, someone will see.
Mike leans back against the door. His eyes are lit up with that special maniacal gleam that the Wheelers get right before they do something insane, like when Nancy says, "Then we have to go kill Vecna ourselves," or whatever. "Take me to the wedding," says Mike.
"Yeah," says Will slowly, "you'll be at the wedding. Obviously."
"As your date."
Reccer's Notes: They've fixed Hawkins' Upside Down problem (though this predates the final season), and it's the kids' senior year, and Will is worried his mom is worried about him, so Mike hatches a plan to be Will's (fake) date to Joyce and Hopper's wedding because of course he does. That means we've got Will pretending to pretend he's into Mike and Mike playing gay chicken against himself and...losing? winning? both?? Neither of them is doing a great job (or any job) communicating, but their fake relationship thrives and does what all the best fake relationships do, becomes real. A sweet friends-to-lovers romance with just the right amount of agonizing feelings.
It's been a rather stressful week, and most of the time I've been very
down on myself, mostly for procrastination. But I got through it. I
think I'm supposed to count that as a win, even though it doesn't feel
like it.
I did figure something out, though. I often (usually?) procrastinate
things that may require a decision, because when I finally get around to
them the decision often (usually?) turns out to be wrong. (The decision
is sometimes to skip something with a time limit, and then regretting not
going for it while I had the chance. Same thing.)
Now that Discord has started age-gating NSFW channels and servers, many
people (including me) are looking for alternatives. Especially since it
was revealed that their age verification vendor Persona left frontend exposed, researchers
say. In particular, people are looking for open source
alternatives, since those are less likely to be enshittified in the
future. We have some time, because most fannish discord communities have
few, if any, NSFW channels, and because moving a community is always an
extremely lossy process (as those of us who left LJ for DW remember well)
and not to be undertaken lightly.
It's concievable that matterbridge could help hold things togather. Not counting on it. I
hate this timeline.
...Cake! This one combines two hot and happening trends: gray and ombre. Plus polka-dots, which will never go out of style.
Let's hope gray doesn't, either, because pretty much my entire house is painted gray. Some people might think that sounds depressing, but just look at this cake:
Then I learned that it was modeled after a Vera Wang gown, and I felt totally smart and stylish for a second. Then I looked down at my ensemble of mismatched sweats and slowly lowered my hands from their 'raise the roof' position.
Isn't it great how all the ribbon and fabric look like actual ribbon and fabric? Just amazing.
I sure hope you enjoyed today's gorgeous gray gateaux and that your Sunday is especially sweet!
******
P.S. I was browsing "gray whale" things to link today - because whales are awesome -but then this blue whale butter dish popped up and it's so stinkin' cute you get it instead:
Can America's well-financed, highly-experienced, heavily-armed war machine hope to prevail against a numerically insignificant, poorly-armed, American teen movement?
Last weekend, we stayed in a Landmark Trust property a mere half-hour journey to Bletchley Park. We were surprised by nice weather on the Saturday, so we made the trip. Below is an assortment of photos from the selection of buildings we managed to visit over the course of five hours. I don’t think we saw more than a third of it, so we’ll definitely take advantage of the year-long entry that the steep admission price gets you to see the rest.
The dingy basement has had a lick of paint and yet somehow doggedly retains its character.
Listening stations.
Keiki does some Morse code-breaking.
Humuhumu does some Enigma encoding.
A surprisingly dry and sunny day after all the rain we’ve been having.
Daffodils were not quite ready.
The Mansion seemed like it was a bit of all right.
Not so sure the Intelligence Factory needs this.
Humuhumu and I spent quite a while on this interactive exhibit, plotting the locations of various maritime assets and enemies.
Many of the personal testimonials in the exhibition mention how boring and repetitive some of the intelligence work was.
You can see why they resorted to putting frogs in the pneumatic tube system to liven up the day.
The Park is beautifully maintained and the interactive exhibits are well designed and engaging - I’d say from the age of about 10 on up - so well worth a visit. I restrained myself to one book in the gift shop (The Walls Have Ears by Helen Fry) but could easily have brought home a stack.
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petra
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