nineveh_uk

OK, I admit that this is probably me showing my age, but there really ought to be a Nirvana in Fire Prince Jing/ Mei Changsu vid to Bryan Adams '(Everything I Do) I Do It For You'. Just look at those lyrics:

Look into my eyes
You will see
What you mean to me
Search your heart
Search your soul
And when you find me there
You'll search no more

( I'm a reasonable person, I will cut the rest of the excerpt.) )

This train of thought is brought to you by the black swans Aragorn spots flying across Anduin, and the black-feathered orc arrows mentioned early in The Two Towers.

Thought one: what are black swans doing in the service of Sauron*? Are they a sign that the Numenoreans discovered the Middle Earth equivalent of Australia and brought back ornamental birds? Is Aragorn's ornithology or eyesight lacking here, or is he indeed being metaphorical and they are not black swans at all, he is remarking on an impossibility? Or just as the Company are mistaken about the eagle-that-wasn't-evil, are the swans not evil at all, but fleeing the bondage of Sauron?

Thought two: if Mordor-Orcs have black-feathered arrows, where are they getting the feathers from? Are they dyed? It's possible. Unlike the black horses, stolen from Rohan, it is probably easier to dye a vat of feathers than a horse, and it hardly seems beyond Sauron's technological powers. We know that the Nazgul's cloaks remain a sinister black despite a journey to Eriador that has left Boromir's rich clothing travel-stained.** But you still need to acquire the feathers.

According to the internet (and the people who wrote the books that get referenced on the internet), goose feathers were used for arrows in Medieval Europe, and in staggering numbers:

Arrows were fletched with goose feathers, which were collected from the peasantry as a form of tax. In 1418-9 Henry V ordered his sheriffs (the royal officials in each county) to collect a total of 1.19 million goose feathers over the course of 10 months, to be delivered to the Tower of London by Michaelmas (on Sept. 29). A similar though smaller order, two years earlier, specified that six feathers should be taken from each goose. (Source.)

That's a lot of goose feathers.

So where is Sauron getting his feathers from? There is no mention of terrible depredations of poultry sheds throughout Wilderland or Ithilien. Is he taking them as tribute from the lands further east? And what of the orcs of the Misty Mountains? Is there a thriving trade (through intermediaries, perhaps) between Moria and the little-known poultry sheds of the Sea of Rhún? And are they goose feathers at all, since other birds can be used, and Sauron is cutting out the dye manufacturers by using black swans?

Which brings me to the Sea of Núrnen and its surrounding slave-tilled fields that feed the armies of Mordor. We're told that it's a "bitter inland sea", so possibly its tributaries rather than it are used for irrigation. In which case, why not use the lake for other things? In short I vote for giant goose (or possibly swan) farms. The resultant guano-based fertiliser can explain the famous stench of the Mordor air.

*And has anyone ever written the Dr Doolittle crossover? What with bird spies who must be given instructions and have their reports understood, and their impressive achievements in training wolves as riding animals, I feel that some at least of the servants of Sauron might have a new Fourth Age career in the entertainment and industrial espionage industries.

**Speaking of which, if Boromir got off on the wrong foot with the Council of Elrond at times, maybe it would have helped if, having turned up at dawn with news of a prophecy, they had put it off for 24 hours to allow him time for a good night's rest and a change of clothes. Especially since they spend the next two months hanging around there.

I really didn't mean to spend time today writing metafic on the Law of Conservation of Cock Size in some nebulous historical period of badly-spelled English,* but I did. I blame lilliburlero for the inspiration, and antisoppist for hosting the original commentfic. And of course the anonymous member of fandom who formulated the concept in the first place. I am calling it a writing exercise.

You may find is on AO3 here.

*Or badlie-spelt Englishe. It takes a surprising amount of time to insert it.

I really did. I have just discovered the official video to I Would Do Anything for Love, which looks like it is the most expensive Phantom of the Opera fanvid ever made*. It features a falling chandelier, oodles of candles, and a miserable, deformed, and hooded bloke who skulks around in the shadows waiting for a woman who appears inexplicably interested in him.**

I would have unironically adored it in 1993, had I known that it existed.



*With make-up rather like Buffy's vampires.

**Christine Daaé at least had the excuse of free singing lessons offering a rather better career, not to mention the mind games.

Youngest Sister is here for the weekend, and we thought we'd look up what this week's Studio Ghibli offering was at the cinema. Alas, I think not, after reading this blurb for the film Ponyo:

After running away from the sea she calls home, an effervescent young fish-girl is rescued and befriended by a five-year-old human boy called Sosuke.

Naming her Ponyo, Sosuke soon comes to realise the heartbreaking impracticality of their budding romance.

I think that even without the expertise in reading things into text brought about by an English Lit degree and years of fandom I'd probably be saying 'no' to that one. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's a charming tale of friendship, but I think I'll wait a fortnight for The Wind Rises.

A sort of resolution is that henceforth when I have ideas for stories I should note them down rather than try to keep them in my head for years before eventually deciding I have time to write them. I don't have to write them straight away, just make a note. Naturally therefore noting something down turned into writing it more or less straight away*. I'm not entirely sure that this ought to be 2016 as I mean it to go on, but productivity counts for something, right? Even if the contents are completely mad.

So yes, fic. At A03: Uneclipsed

As for the content, it is, er, Dorothy Parker RPF/Tanz der Vampire crossover. I can't help it, it's the way my mind works. One minute you're listening to Total Eclipse of the Heart with vampires, next you're putting an English degree to dangerous use to reflect that the scenario fits beautifully against a Dorothy Parker poem, and then a month later you remember that you thought that and decide that clearly a crossover is the way to go.

It is a jeu d'esprit that I can't honestly think that it is of any interest to those who don't know the canon, so as a reward for reading thus far here is Parker reading One Perfect Rose instead.




*I blame walking to work on Tuesday

Did you know that Total Eclipse of the Heart was originally written as a love-song for a never-happened musical version of Nosferatu? Me neither. Nor did I know that it had subsequently been used in a different musical, the Austrian Tanz der Vampire (link in English), a musical version of Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers, of which I was a teenage fan* in my ‘read/watch everything about vampires’ stage.

I learned this fact at the end of last week, and inevitably therefore have been enlivening working through the massive ironing backlog** while watching said musical on YouTube. Fortunately I don’t know Meat Loaf’s oeuvre, so I haven’t spotted the songs recycled from that. It’s all magnificently bonkers and surprisingly entertaining, and I really want to see it live, except that would mean going to Germany because there was a disastrously re-written Broadway production in the early 2000s that has torpedoed any further English language attempts for the foreseeable future. Anyway, Total Eclipse of the Heart makes far more sense once it’s about vampires, the German version would be an amazing karaoke duet, here it is. This version doesn’t have subtitles, but you don’t really need them to get the sense of the massive OTT-ness, complete with swirly cape action.



Sadly I fear the literal video version of this song, fun as it is, would be less engaging:

(Long intro)
Sometimes in the night I wander round on the stage and there’s nothing much to do.
(Long intro)
Sometimes in the night the audience wishes that something else would happen on stage.
(Long intro)
Sometimes in the night I cling onto a pillar that looks randomly like a totem pole.

Etc.

*I have also just realised that the plot of TFVK is a sort of mirror version of Keats’ Eve of St Agnes.

**All summer clothes now washed, ironed, and put away, hurrah!

Would you like to sin
With Elinor Glyn
On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer
To err with her
On some other fur?

You can’t say I didn’t promise something appalling. There’s no point trying to build up to this one, it is what it is. And what it is, is Peter/Harriet furry sex-tape fic.

Let me explain. The condemned are allowed a last word.

So, there was this story in the Daily Mail (so as we know, it’s absolutely true), and subsequently in the Independent. In summary, a man was charged with the possession of extreme pornography and was on bail for six months – with the prosecution only realizing that the tiger having sex with the woman in the rather fuzzy video was not a tiger (hence the extreme pornography bit), but was in fact a man in a tiger costume, complete with Kellogg’s Frosties cereal strapline. The prosecution was dropped.

And then someone on FFA posted this comment: 'Fellow Dorothy Sayers fans, please tell me that you, too, are thinking of Busman's Honeymoon and laughing uncontrollably.'

There are two things in life I cannot resist: the common cold, and a cracky Wimseyfic premise. So here it is. You will be relieved to hear that I do at least maintain my inability to write anything explicit, so PG rating, albeit the parents in question are insane.

( No shabby tigers )

It’s that time of year again! The cards creep into the shops. Mince pies and whatever “Ecclefachan”* pies are start to appear on the shelves. Far, far away the attentive ear catches the sound of reindeer bells, and on a screen near you the first signs of Yuletide start to be seen. Which means that it is time for the return of How Will You Ruin Yuletide?

I first ruined Yuletide in 2009.

I did it in 2010 with a poll.

And again in 2011, on both LJ and DW.

In 2012 and 2013 I ruined Yuletide by not Ruining Yuletide. That is worst of all.

And now it is 2014, the nominations are in, the fandoms are being sorted, people are are having arguments about what should go in Yuletide letters, and whether saying you don’t want cannibalism in Flower Fairies fandom is kinkshaming.

So I have two choices. I could Ruin Yuletide by write a very long post about how to do everything right that is actually accurate and quite reasonable (except that it is 20,000 words long and starts a flamewar on yuletide_coal that spills over into civil war in Quebec), and then break the spirit of every rule in my own fic.

Or I could do a Yuletide Hell game post. I choose the latter.

The rules are simple: write in comments the Yuletide prompt that you would hate to get. Others are then invited to try and write a sentence of it.

Like every other facet of Yuletide, it is of course more complicated. To be true to the spirit of Yuletide Hell, there is no possible degree by which your prompt could be too entitled, self-contradictory, and generally batshit. While optional details are entirely optional I nonetheless expect that all prompters on this page will have many optional details that they will fully expect their writers to cover, and will also be dreadfully, mortally offended if writers do not merely cover the prompt, but fail to intuit what the requester wanted but forgot to write down.

Here are mine to start off with...

(1) Measure for Measure. Angelo/Isabella. Thanks so much for writing this for me, Yuletider! I know that you’ll do something true to the spirit of Shakespeare’s play! Though don’t do iambic pentameter unless you can really measure up to the standard set by Will as I find bad poetry triggering. Angelo and Isabella are my OTP, so it’s such a pity that Isabella’s internalised misogyny and Vienna’s slut-shaming culture make her unable to respond in a sex-positive way to Angelo’s proposal. I’d love some fix-it fic that has Angelo teaching Isabella to respect her identity as a sexual being. Also, it’s so stupid that Juliet and Claudio don’t practice responsible contraception. I know it’s 1603, but NFP was available then and they should have educated themselves more responsibly, so no babyfic. Bloodplay and BDSM are canonical, so don’t leave them out.

(2) 17 Moments of Spring. Stirlitz/Schellenberg. Omegaverse. I just think that the confluence of the last days of the Third Reich and A/B/O could lend a really fascinating dimension to the story. Obviously in order to respect the very serious setting of the canon complete historical accuracy is a must. It is particularly important that you get the uniforms right.**

(3) Lord Peter Wimsey. Bunter. Bunter isn’t actually in the list of characters, because I didn't nominate the fandoms I planned to request because the Spirit of Yuletide means other people should nominate them for me while I nominate for things I want to write experimentally but actually hate, so I selected Any, but that doesn’t matter, he is still the main one you should write about. I have a very, very specific story in mind, and if you don’t write about this then obviously you are going to ruin Yuletide forever and also possibly cause me to go on the rampage and destroy all Christmas trees within a hundred miles. I’d like a post-war story that has Bunter start by wanting to help Peter to overcome his shell-shock, but he gets to like Peter being dependent on him and when he realizes that Peter doesn’t remember what happens during his nightmares, starts to coerce him into acting as his sex slave. But Bunter’s got an enormous sex drive (and that’s not the only enormous thing, lol!) and wants more sex, so he tricks Peter into thinking that hypnotherapy will help him, so that he can force him to have sex whenever he wants. Please respect Bunter’s demisexual identity.

BTW, I know that the Wimsey canon can be intimidating for a first-time writer, but don’t worry. As long as you avoid the most egregrious Americanisms and make sure you say things like “settee” instead of sofa, couch, or Chesterfield, and stick closely to Strunk and White, I’m sure you’ll be fine.

*Some sort of cross between Lancashire and Wales?

**Note in 2015. The recipient was lucky enough to receive an absolutely masterful fic for this prompt, in which Stirlitz’s cover is blown when he screamed in Russian during childbirth.

I posted, you were polled, this resulted.

Life is too short for the full version, but the edited version can be achieved while cooking dinner.

The 1950s Peter Wimsey Adventure That You Chose

‘Oh no,’ said Harriet, as the body came into view. It wore a familiar tweed suit. ‘It’s Hope.’

*

‘That doesn’t look right,’ said Peter, as the boat drew nearer. He shouted something at the diver, his words blown away on the wind, but the man seemed to hear. He bent over the corpse and seized the hair.

‘Peter, what is he – ’ It came away in his hand, a dark wig revealing a man’s closely-cropped head beneath it.

‘Who on earth,’ said Harriet, ‘has managed to get himself drowned while dressed up as Bunter’s wife?’

*

( Read more... )