In the midst of this sea and on the edge of this desert.

As resurrected by the lovely kass , she asked me five great questions about fandom, fanmixes, party guests and favourite Vorkosigans!

1) What was your first fandom, and what did you love about it?
Alles was Zählt - Eskimo Kiss Project. Wherein it turned out to be possible to fangirl the fandom as much as the canon Show. Words fail me when it comes to the wonders of this tiny fandom but I loved the snarky community so much. It came at a time when I was definitely looking for escapism into a different world and EKP just opened up before me. The fandom was critical and exuberant and so loving. I loved the story of Deniz and Roman (and Marc and all the pretty ice skating) and how messed up they were and yet how glorious, they broke my heart multiple times, as did many of the fanworks, but there was always someone to cling to and hold me through it. The friendships have long survived the disintegration of the show itself.

2) If you could invite any five characters (from any source at all) over for dinner or tea or wine, who would you include?
The Scarlet Pimpernel. I'd take him in any guise, and definitely with wine.
The Sandman/Dream/Morpheus… and perhaps his sister, Death? Again, wine.
Katherine de Swynford – the historical or the Anya Seton book version. For commiseration over loving John of Gaunt. ♥
Anne of Green Gables or Jo March: I CANNOT DECIDE.
CJ Cregg, The West Wing. It's true love between us, and that would be dinner, wine and English breakfast tea.

3) What's your favorite fanmix you've made, and how did you get started making them?
My first fanmix was a yagkyas good cookie about Brad/Ray and seedy hotel rooms but it spiralled through waywardmixes community. I love fanmixes as a way to find new music and as an exploration of characters and source material in a fun or meta way without the pressure of committing in the same way as writing fic..Fanmixing has really helped me when I just can't write but still want to be fannish about something. My guilty pleasure favourite is The Veil Falls a mix that imagined Gen Kill characters in the world of Elisabeth: Das Musical. It still tickles me now and I loved thinking of Nate and Death and their fucked up relationship.

4) Who is your favorite Vorkosigan character, and why are they your favorite?
OH GOD. UMM. Outside of Cordelia? Alys Vorpatril or Simon Illyan I think. I love their story arc and their constancy behind the scenes. I love the conflicts inherent in Simon's work and character. How smart he is, the wealth of difficult decisions he's had to make and horror he's had to witness. Little things, like his relationships with Ivan, Miles and Gregor as well as Aral and Negri and Cordelia. Yeah, Simon Illyan gets my vote I think!

5) What do you hope your life will look like in 25 years?
That would make me 52. I hope it will look full of purpose and people to love. Perhaps with a really nice mahogany desk?

Thanks kass for the questions and if anyone else would like me to ask them 5 questions just comment below! 

I read Marge Piercy's The Moon is Always Female today and I love reading poems aloud so I thought I'd record it. So just in case you were in the mood to listen to a slightly echo-y rendering, here you go! It's a pretty powerful poem!

The Moon is Always Female
Marge Piercy

download mp3
Listen on Soundcloud

Bullet points? Bullet points! 

·     I was watching The Far Pavilions last night (again) and Wally quotes Aurora Leigh to Ash and I really liked it. This bit:

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes

·         Two days in and I'm really enjoying Write Something, you Miserable Fuck. It's both wildly distracting and oddly motivational.

·         I saw Blue is the Warmest Color on Friday and I... didn't really like it. Sorry Palme D'Or et al. It skipped ahead in time at odd moments but the characters didn't really change at all, as if they were stuck in a timewarp of their lust, which I guess they were, you know, until they weren't. It introduced ideas that it didn't follow through on and it was also a bit long and boring. What had made Adele seem youthful and interesting at the beginning just made her seem unable to get over herself by the end. Was that the point? IDK. I don't think I like films about obsession that much! I just wanted her to get over it and go have fun with all the other hot women out there. Their love was hot and explicit but it didn't come across as irreplaceable. Adele just needed to try again! And shut her mouth when she was eating and wipe her nose occasionally. The lingering shots of snot, omfg! Not hot!

·         Still working on my fics for femslashex and smutfest. I really should stop writing this and get them finished. I keep getting distracted by ideas for yagkyas though. Too many fests-syndrome. I found a book in a charity shop today that details all the Naval, Marine and Air Force uniforms of world war 2. Suddenly it seemed essential to own that! Any ww2 fics I write now will be highly accurate on the uniform front, jsyk.

·         In the same charity shop they also had s1 of Stargate Atlantis so I bought that. No idea when I'll get time to watch it but it seems like time I did.

 

Lovely weekend activities:

!! I joined the library finally near my new place and it had exactly the issue of Sandman that I've got up to, Go Tiny Library Go! (By which I mean, stay forever, back off Tories on the local council, back well off).

!! I watched Rush, and I loved it. ( Sure, there were a couple of overdone pumping sex to pumping car iron transitions )

!! Had a lovely roast dinner with my sisters, and contributed excellent yorkshire puddings! 

!! Decided it was high time to move on the kink bingo card and tried to start small with the "tickling" prompt. So I wrote Les Mis, Jehan/Bahorel and there is a brief mention of tickling. So, yay?! A prompt is a prompt wherever it takes you right? I'm kind of liking it as an excuse to get to know Les Mis characters though. I also posted it to my tumblr because it felt like a transient kind of fic and also I'm ridiculously pretending to myself that I exist over there. 

 The Malta update is to say, I'm in Malta! I am sat in a rocking chair with a glass of red Maltese wine, very full from the beautiful food lilithilien cooked me earlier. All round we are having a Very Nice Time. We spent the day exploring the ancient walled city of Mdina (Mdina apparently meaning Walled City) which dates back 4000 years from when it was first settled. Then we explored the city outside the walls, Rabat (no guesses what Rabat means), and then the Catacombs underneath Rabat. 

Lil said she felt all Night Vale-y when we descended the steps into the Catacombs while the audio-guide voice intoned, "Do not fear the Catacombs." 

Mdina is notably very pretty and is used for filming all the things. I mostly couldn't tell though. I was just thoroughly charmed. 

We are also watching Wentworth starring Danielle Cormack of Legend of the Seeker fame as a woman who goes to prison for attempting to murder her violent husband. So far we're up to episode 5. It's awesome. Episode 5 is the episode in which everyone talks about how they like to masturbate. Basically all the women are in pretty dire situations and they're trying to cope in a violent, scary environment but enforcing a brutal loyalty amongst themselves. The "found-family" is just as dysfunctional as the home lives most of the women have escaped but it's potentially all that's keeping them going. So far my favourite character is Boomer "I used to knock a few heads together" Jenkins, long may she continue.

Has anyone else seen it? Anyone wanna place bets on how f-ed up the Franky/Erica thing could get? Any other ships people want to float by me? 

Tomorrow we're going to see the waters of the famous Blue Grotto and visit some prehistoric temples.

Hopefully I can pass on some holiday cheer to you guys! 

GOOD THING 1) It was always going to happen but it still turns out that watching the West End version of Les Miserables with 8 other visiting fangirls is guaranteed to make you need all the fic. The singing was fantastic obvs, everyone's voices slapped me in the face with their power and feeling. We were all leaning on each other and sobbing, it was glorious. Marius was ridic! Grantaire was all handsy over his militant boyfriend and heartbreaking over Gavroche. I love the older, beer-bellied Grantaire! Also the same actor played the Bishop at the beginning which was kinda hilarious. I mostly cried for Javert and his life choices. All in all it was devastatingly better than the film. Also yay, fangirl reunion weekend, it was wicked fun. 

Does anyone have any recs or know of any good rec lists I can/should devour? I'm happy to read book-based things too. *g*

because GOOD THING 2) I'm going on holiday on Saturday and need to download all the fics to read while lazing about in exotic Mediterranean locations. I'm going with the irreplaceable lilithilien who is visiting from Canada and who I've missed so much since she left the UK. I'm so happy to have her back, even just for a few weeks. 

GOOD THING 3) FILM FESTIVALS! London Film Fest and UK Jewish Film Fest are both coming up and have a ton of excellent stuff going on. Am waiting till I get paid tomorrow but I have big circles around far more than I can afford anyway! All the big films are basically sold out at this point but I don't really care because that's the stuff that will get an ordinary release too down the line. I'm gutted about The National docu, Mistaken for Strangers, already being full though. :( 

Also I just re-watched The L.A. Complex through again and it was still utterly fantastic in the best, most fucked-up kind of ways. *sigh* WHY YOU ALWAYS GET CANCELLED CANADIAN SHOWS?

Wishing you guys all good things as well!!!! *smooch*

 YOU GORGEOUS THING YOU. Thank you for writing something all for me! 
( Bletchley Circle, Bomb Girls, Spartacus, The Hour ALL YAY )

 
For some reason I'm a little fixated on this line from ep. 30 of Welcome to Night Vale:

 lovely Carlos, with his perfect teeth and hair and penchant for sometimes chewing a little more loudly than is preferred

 I just love that little hint that Cecil is starting to notice the less than perfect things about Carlos. Its also made me wonder about all the other people that Cecil might previously have thought were perfect and has since amended his opinions about. My favourite choice is Steve Carlsberg, on the sheer amount of unreasoned vitriol Cecil employs when talking about him.
Excuse me while I just go make my way through the Cecil/Steve Carlsberg tag. Already 73 entries! Go fandom go! I would love to find a fic where Cecil is going on about how perfect Steve is.
I would also love a fic where Night Vale residents were so desperate to cheer Cecil up from a previous break up that they came together to lure Carlos to Night Vale to do science enticingly in front of their radio host.

 For some reason I feel like I can't start consuming Night Vale fandom until I've caught up on the show and it's killing me to wait but I'm not quite there, I've just passed episode 21 but ahhhhh.

I like to be multitasking when I listen, like walking or washing up or tidying, anything brainless. The tube is a tiny bit too loud for me to enjoy it properly when commuting because I know I miss bits and also the frequent snortgiggles that Night Vale results in is quite disturbing for other commuters, not that I really give a hoot. 

Anyway if you are posting fic or recs of fic or art or anything at all Night Vale related I am bookmarking it so hard right now and I am gagging to get back and consume it all. I just for some reason HAVE to listen to it all first.  

 I just went to the theatre! 

I saw The Pride with Hayley Atwell and Al Weaver. It was bloody glorious. It was set simultaneously in 1958 and The Now and the characters in both parts had the same names but were living slightly different lives. I think the suggestion being that the times they were living in were affecting who they were or could be. Obvs it was about two gay blokes. In the 1958 side Hayley's character, Sylvia is married to one - Philip - but introduces her husband to her author friend in an attempt to pinpoint the loneliness in all their lives. The two men start an affair but Philip's self-disgust leads it to end in tragedy and betrayal. In the modern times Sylvia is a friend to the semi-suicidal Oliver who's boyfriend, Philip, can't put up with Oliver's need to have anonymous sex sometimes - casually referred to as "the slut thing".

The staging was utterly fantastic, the way they slipped back and forth through time was inventive and served to highlight both sides so well. I really loved the impression that even though things had improved for Philip and Oliver in their second lives, the trauma of their past continued to haunt them and inform their behaviours and psychology. 

Hayley was incandescent as the modern girl, gay's best friend who had to extricate herself from her friend's life in order to live her own. Al Weaver was phenomenal as Oliver in both settings, the 1950s author who thinks he's finally found a kindred spirit only to have the hope beaten out of him, and as the modern queer journalist trying to come to terms with who he is and keep his boyfriend around at the same time! 

It was super funny, I always love a good joke referencing the Victoria line. I only had one qualm, ( And here I'm cutting for potentially triggery talk on depictions of sexual assault )

The set was so good, it was like a massive rusty mirror and was a perfect reflection of the storyline and enhanced the telling in all sorts of ways. Did I mention Hayley was gorgeous and funny and sad and an excellent crier! She had all the tears, even when she had her hand in front of her eyes I could still see tears falling from her face! She was perfection. 

Have some pictures! 


Descrip: Matthew Horne as the Role-Playing Nazi-for-Hire and Al Weaver as Oliver, who thought that was a good idea.


Descrip: Hayley Atwell with the To Russia With Love placard the cast carried at curtain call.