kitewithfish

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Specifically, the Richard Armitage bullshit. (I even rewatched some of the first two seasons of the goddawful 2006ish BBC Robin Hood, where time periods are a joke and the points don't matter!)

I'll cut here for spoilers that are at least a decade old now, just in case you care, and also so I don't subject you to the inevitable weirdness of my Brain on A Fictional Dude Crush.
( Read more... )

Demonology and the Tri-Phasic Model of Trauma: An Integrative Approach by Nnm
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20177950
Fandom: Good Omens (TV and Book)
Pairing: Gen Aziraphale/Crowley
Author Summary: As soon as Aubrey Thyme, psychotherapist, had opened her office door and seen her new client, Anthony J. Crowley, sitting in her waiting area, she was observing and assessing him. At first glance, she paid attention to the following:

--His clothing was expensive and stylish;

--He wore very strange but noticeable cologne;

--His relationship to the seat he occupied could only, very loosely, be described as “sitting;”

--He looked angry;

--He was wearing sunglasses.

What Aubrey Thyme, a professional, thought, upon first seeing her new client was: you’re going to be a fun one, aren’t you?
Why I love it: Aubrey Thyme is the best therapist I have ever seen. The fic takes therapy SERIOUSLY, and does the work of understanding it, and shows how it can work and how it can fail and how to do it will and how to make mistakes and fix them. Crowley so perfectly in canon, and so snarky and hilarious and fun to watch, and Aubrey's affection for him just shines thru in the same way she will not permit him get away with his bullshit. Even a little. It's a joy to read along with this work that starts as a character study of Crowley and ends with the creation of this thoughtful, joyfully spiteful, determined human being. This story is a gem, download it immediately if you can't read it now in case it falls off the face of the earth.

Warnings: Some discussion of suicide, a view of the divine in keeping with Good Omens, some abuse of alcohol, detailed discussion of therapy and trauma

Xenoethnography is a series by Therrae (Dasha_mte)
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/series/913458
Fandom: Transformers
Pairing: None, Optimus Prime/OFC if you reeaaaaaaaally wanted to squint

Why I love it: I have talked about this series before, it's continuining, it's still a great outsider POV on the Transformers that blends multiple approaches to canon and takes the alien part of alien space robots really seriously. I think this is one of the best continuing series I am watching grow, and I cannot tell you enough that it's worth a read.

I Chose You by Coleen561
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3872953
Fandom: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Pairing:Marian/ Guy of Gisbourne

Why I love it: I... I don't recommend this tv series. I don't. This fic is a fixit AU that diverges before the end of season 1. Guy avoids most of his more evil deeds and gets a backstory that makes him more reasonable and sympathetic but not a good person. Robin is as annoying as he is in the series. Marian is slightly better? I have enjoyed this fic a great deal, but I don't feel super great about the source material and I recommend this only with the understanding that you should watch the show by fastforwarding to the bits where Richard Armitage is on screen.

Forget Me Not by allyss
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3886780
Fandom: Hobbit films
Pairing: Fíli/Sigrid
Author's Notes: It’s a marriage of convenience, a way to forever strengthen the bond between the Dwarves of Erebor and the people of Dale. Or so Sigrid tells herself.
Why I love it: So, it's the usual fixit story of "Thorin and his nephews all survive the Battle of Five Armies" with some added thoughts on the politics of how the people of Laketown would actually feel about some randos showing up and stirring up trouble with the local dragon. Sigrid is Bard the Bowman's daughter, now a princess and in a arranged marriage with Fili, heir to the throne, feeling her way thru the morass of politics and distrust amongst her people and the dwarves while also figuring out if just maybe she can actually fall in love with her husband. This fic was a total surprise to me and it has completely sold me on this relationship and this pairing and I want it to be twice as long. I love it

Your New Twin Sized Bed by out_there
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89396
Fandom: Prison Break
Pairing: Alexander Mahone/Michael Scofield/Sara Tancredi
Author's Notes: Alex takes a two bedroom apartment that's close to his new office. The main bedroom is serviceably large, but it seems too big after months spent in a cabin, feels too empty after sharing a small boat with Michael and Sara, so Alex buys a large desk and makes it a study. The second room is tiny, but it fits a twin sized bed and a bedside table.
Why I love it: So, Prison Break had four seasons from 2005-2008, and ended with a death that got undone in the SURPRISE! 2017 fifth season reboot. I have not seen the fifth season, this fic has not seen the fifth season, and I legit will never see the fifth season. This fic takes three characters past the end of the fourth season of the show in a slightly different direction - as a V shaped poly triad, that has broken up. Alex Mahone is a ruthless investigator and killer and he is also more loyal to his need to protect the people loves than he is willing to risk them. So, when he thinks he's a risk to the people he loves? He leaves. And they follow. And it's just a bulletproof kink for me, to have a character think that they are less loved, less important, that they won't be missed, and then to be proven WRONG. And this fic does that. It also feels like a quick dip into a way that fanfic used to be, somehow, shorter and a little willing to indulge in character descriptions in a way that I think tumblr might drain out of modern fic? But I like all of it and I don't think it is a flaw.

My trusty stead broke a spoke this morning - my riding buddy noticed a wiggle in my rear wheel, and I noticed something squeaking. It was probably the wheel wall against the brake pad, since losing a spoke makes your wheel wobble side to side more than it should. When I checked, the spoke pulled free on the hub end, so now it's not safe to ride.

I'm debating using this as a chance to get my bike tune up in early - I usually do an annual one around the end of November, before they start salting and sanding the roads. And certainly there's some wear on the rear wheel that could stand to be handled or replaced. Brake pads, too.

But, yeah, this turned my sleepy morning a little more complicated.

So I'm not going to post pictures of my new place, but know this: I am going to be kind of insufferable about it anyways.

Which means it's time for descriptions! I'll put this under a cut.
( Read more... )
...and now I have to go do stuff, so this will get more detailed later.

We have moved into the new place! It went really well! It costs slightly less than projected due to me taking apart a whole bunch of the Ikea furnishings prior to/during the move so that the experts could just schlep things.

Jesus cHrist, there is so much space that I am literally just bouncing off the walls a bit.

I am moving. I am moving in two days. Every thing I own is in boxes, or worse, needs to be put in a box. Boxes are all. All are boxes.

And then we pay professionals to take them a mile down the road and then we get to unpack them again.

Big Life Updates!
- Homeownership: We have successfully bought our condo! I have the deed and the new set of keys to prove it! I am rather pleased with the place, and we move into it in... less than ten days. :O

- Relocation: Prepping to move is a thing we have to do! Holy crap. We have a lot of boxes and packing tape and newspaper set up, so that's what this weekend will be. We're also planning to overnight in the new place this weekend, because there is construction going on overnight near us this weekend, and it will suck.

If I were the kind of person who posted on the regular, this is where I would apologize for an upcoming gap of posts and let you know that I have not died. But, since I am about as predictable a poster as a hen's tooth, I will just allow myself to flounce about my merry and useless way.

Things That Make Me Happy
- Ergonomics: While I was gone one day this week signing the docs, my new (to me) standing desk thing appeared! It is a castoff of a fellow employee who didn't like it, but frankly, it works because it also comes with a desk tray that lowers my keyboard to a point where it's not hurting my wrists. My office chair is still just slightly too high for me at the lowest point, but with a footrest I am doing okay. This is a great improvement over my last set up.

-Sewing - I have been watching a lot of Bernadette Banner's Youtube and as a result, I have felt the urge to pick up an needle. I got myself some slightly indulgent supplies, and embarked on some of my first sewing tasks as an adult that wasn't mending something commercially made: I made myself a leather thimble. Then I made some handkerchiefs, because I had bought some and I think they are wildly useful items to have in your pocket. They are, in fact, pretty easy to make! It's been satisfying to compare my stitching from my first example to my current ones, and to try different kinds of hems, and to work with pretty patterned fabric for no reason other than doing it myself. Making things is a pretty good way to relieve your own stress, honestly, and I highly recommend it. (I am seriously annoyed how fabric and sewing materials have gotten so much more expensive than buying cheaply made items of clothing - even in my childhood, making yourself something was cheaper than buying it new, and that's just ME, I'm barely even an Old by the cruel standards of Tumblr fandom.)

- Books: I have read and finished (and not finished, shame up on my head) several excellent books in the last little bit of time.

-Torn (The Unraveled Kingdom #1) by Rowenna Miller -
This is an excellent book, with a very thoughtful first person narrator, Sophie, who is trying to balance a life as a seamstress to the upper crust in a society veering towards revolution. The politics of the story are slightly simplified, for this volume, but nevertheless grounded in real issues: common people who are not permitted to own businesses without licenses from the nobles grow fearful and angry about the lack of stability in their lives, immigrants are pushed out of society even further but their presence in politics lends the cause ill feeling from locals, and the nobles think that they can control everything forever without an concessions or changes. It is also a book is a truly excellent grasp of sewing - Sophie is a believable seamstress, and the way her magic works is tied directly into her skills as a clothing designer and garment maker. It's a really good book, and I've already started the next one in the series.

-Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell -
This books is charming. It's just charming. The main character, Cath, is an anxious introverted fangirl who loves an in-universe Harry Potter equivalent called Simon Snow*, and is a renowned fanfic author. She enters her first year of college feeling abandoned and bereft of her twin sister, who opted not to room with her and appears to be pulling away from Cath and their shared love of the Simon Snow books. (We get some great excerpts from both the 'real' novels and Cath's fanfic. )This book really scratched my itch for a viewpoint character who had anxiety and a history of damage from her family (not abuse, but some mental illness and parental abandonment [refreshingly, not from the same parent!]), BUT, she's not punished for it. Cath is honestly loved in this book for herself- her family loves her, she makes friends who don't mind her been weird and antisocial, she gets a boyfriend who really likes her for who she is... it's just a great and sweet book with a well grounded cast of characters. No one's a villain without backstory, and the one character who acts objectively wrongly is punished for his actions fairly. The author describes writing this book for National Novel Writing Month and deciding to indulge herself, and this books feels like an indulgence to read.

*The Harry Potter series still exists, and the Simon Snow series somehow parallels it without causing any copyright issues. It's clearly not the same kind of story, but it's also so clearly a fanfic inspired by Harry Potter that wandered off in its own direction, fixing the issues that Harry Potter handled badly.... Anyhoo, these are also now being published as books in their own right, so reality is a puddle.

Started watching The OA, it's weird as fuck, I'm kind of into it.

-Condo update:

We got our mortgage commitment letter! Which means we will be able to buy our condo! Yay! Not quite the last hurdle, but a big one.

-Condo update update:

No one told me that a mortgage commitment letter would come with conditions like, we need to see your W2 from 2017 and for you to have home insurance set up so we can review and also and also and also. Which, when I realized this morning, when I am at work and my dear husbeast was sleeping in to take the day off and hang with his visiting sister who we are about to go on vacation with, well, then, that does cause me concern.

Fortunately for my immediate panic, Mr. Withfish was on the job and swiftly put together nearly everything we need and is largely in charge of basically all the stuff we need to get done Basically Today. It's all actually due Monday, but since we are planning on traveling starting tomorrow, he has opted to basically get as much done as humanly possible today. Which, turns out, is most of it. He's a very good husbeast, my husbeast.

-Life update:

I got food poisoning on Saturday and had to miss the 50 mile+ bike ride I was planning on going on. The husbeast went by himself and had a lovely time, then came home and fell asleep facedown in the covers while in the middle of a conversation about where he wanted to get takeout.

-How I know I am a Slytherin (and not a Hufflepuff):

Early on Sunday morning, when I had not woken up to vomit for at least 10 hours, my husbeast was up and I was... semi-up. He looked over and me and joking said, "Well, I think you can probably do this ride!" And I looked up and him and the only thought in my head was, 'Oh. Please don't make me.' And this is how I know I am a Slytherin - had he asked and really needed me to, I would have gotten up and tried to ride 50 miles, because he is My Person and he has the authority to ask me to get up when I am sick and ride 50 miles.

Fortunately, he's not a dick; he laughed in my face before I said a word and told me to go back to sleep.

From The Friday Five

(Which I heartily endorse as a way of getting yourself posting if you haven't done in a while.)

1. What would you do if you won the lottery?

- I think I would pay off all my student loans, pay off the mortgage of the condo I am in the process of buying, put enough of it away in some kind of conservatively managed fund to generate income for me to live off comfortably for the rest of my life, and then give a big chunk of it away to Planned Parenthood and some abortion funds and some bike advocacy groups and other politically targeted nonpolitical causes.

2. What era do you wish you had lived in?

- Now. I would like to live now, just in a version with less horrible politically motivated awfulness.

3. What kind of robot would you want?

- Hard to imagine what I would do with one, but if it performed perfectly, housework.

4. What would you outsource if you could?

- Laundry and cooking and vacuuming. Oh, wait, I mostly have done that.

5. What superpower do you wish you had?

- Invulnerability and perhaps super strength. I have some really great fantasies about being hit by a car while riding my bike and simply ripping the wheels off the car instead of taking any injury. I imagine I'd be more a She-Hulk than a Supergirl if I had super powers - just an average person who happened to be surprisingly badass.

Honestly, reading this list, I wonder if they just fed a bunch of prior "best book" lists into a computer algorithm and sent the resulting list out to the public for us to be snide over. It's not great on women or people of color, really, and frankly not great on non Brits.

I think, based on a quick count, I have read about 45 of the listed books, which makes me feel smug for myself and then annoyed at the smugness. About halfway thru I stopped giving myself partial credit - I really know that I should get back to Watership Down, at some point, but the world is vast and full of books so I'm going to let it fade from my set of cares.

Well, here's the thing itself:

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Repost this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien -partially

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling - bailed

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - oh, come the actual fuck on, BBC, this is a huge work and you don't need to read the whole corpus to get a good lump of Shakespeare.

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis

34 Emma – Jane Austen

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden - For the record, this book is awfully racist and deeply gross. Read Geisha, A Life by Mineko Iwasaki for an actual first person account. Arthur Golden should not be allowed to publish books at all.

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving -This, also, was very good, and even reading it in school could not destroy its charm.

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro - This book was wonderful, and the film was also wonderful.

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Do you ever have that moment where you're like, Good god, what was I even on about when I was last posting? Who was I? What the heck was I doing?

Real Life Updates:

Condo! - We have signed an agreement to purchase the condo that I last mentioned in my update. Yay! Which, as I understand it, means that, as long as the credit union is happy with the loan process, we're highly likely to be able to buy the condo. We'll close in early October, and move sometimes in October.There are still some documents and other elements that need to get to the Bank, and moving will be a challenge of it's own kind, but I think we are largely going to be okay.
Apartment! - We are therefore now in the process of letting our landlord show our current apartment to other potential renters. So we spent Saturday cleaning the place like it hadn't been cleaning in months - which it really hadn't, we'd been very busy.
Laundry! - By virtue of traveling last week, and cleaning a lot this weekend, there was a massive backlog of laundry to handle. Husbeast, still determined to pay me back for past laundry while he was too wounded to manage stairs, did I think honestly about 8 loads over the weekend.
Friends! - I spent the rest of Saturday helping a good friend clean out her Depression!Funk situation, which was useful and good, but also dusty and I was tired and grumpy towards the end of it, and then went home to mop my own place. Still, it was nice to see her and I am happy that her space is doing better. We're going to do some more on that next Wednesday.
Students! - By nature of the fact that I live Massachusetts, and specifically around Boston, every September 1st about 300,000 students move into the area to study at the 50+ universities and colleges in the area. By virtue of the student population, the calendar of the rental market in MA runs September 1- August 31. Which means, every Labor Day weekend is a shitshow of people driving into their new neighborhoods in massive rental trucks and parking in violation all the laws of man and God to unload them. On my walk from home to church, I saw a Uhaul on every single street I walked down, without exception. September, by virtue of being the month where all the students come back, is one of the worst months to drive or bike anywhere in the Boston area. Even the people who are returning to the area or moving within Boston will be flummoxed by the particularities of their new neighborhoods, and the volume of traffic increases dramatically.
Shopping! - We went to REI. I got some new, orthopedically friendly sandals, and found a new brand of women's cycling gear that I am very excited about (Terry) - imagine, shorts that just actually fit! with pockets! I also got some new knitted waterproof gloves that I hope will be very good for the winter. ( I have Opinions about winter gloves, and what makes a good one, which differ from most people.) Even at REI, somehow, there were massive amounts of students and foreigners (by which I curmudgeonly mean, people who are not from the greater Boston area) meandering about in small herds like lost sheep.
Boats! - Labor Day Monday, we rented kayaks and toodled round the Mystic. Due to a miscalculation, we did about twice as much paddling as I was expecting, and my arm and chest muscles are mostly noodles today as a result. I also have a lovely waterlilly blossom that I snagged after it became detached, which is floating placidly in a cup of water.
Fridge! - This morning, someone was scheduled to come and see the condo while we are at work, and so we got everything perfectly ready and presentable. And then the smaller of our two small fridges decided, TODAY! Today is the day that I demand to be de-frosted. At which point I became a wreck of anxiety and concern unable to handle life problems, but I got the Husbeast set up with a hair dryer and a lot of towels to manage the task of speedrunning the defrosting of the fridge and handling the resulting mess. By the time he left the house, about an hour after our planned escape time, the fridge was not only defrosted but freshly cleaned.

Recommendations:

Because I owe you some from my last post, cut short, here are some podcasts I am enjoying recently.

[Edit: Dammit, the edit ate some of my post. I lost all my commentary on the last two podcasts I'm recommending while I was posting and then editing bc the rich text buttons had disappeared on my entry. Gr.]

[Edit the second: added the text back!]

The Worst Sitcom Ever Made - Nonfannish - "Geoff Houtman was part of the team that created the worst sitcom ever made, Melody Rules. It's haunted him for 25 years. Now he's on a quest to find out what went wrong and to see what lessons we can learn about failure in general."
- This is a semi-investigative oral-history type story about an attempt to make an American style sitcom in New Zealand, and it is hosted with great humility and thoughtfulness by one of the original writing team who worked on it. It's honestly a delight - full of interviews with people he knows who also worked on the sitcom, each reflecting with typical Kiwi humor and self-deprecation about their experience working on a show that was, really, kind of doomed from the start.
- If you liked the Fansplaining episodes with guests who work in TV and who can reflect on what the process of writing for tv is like, like Britta Lundin or Javier Grillo-Marxuach, you might very well like this.

Wine and Murder Night - Semifannish-Two friends discuss and drink to their favorite cozy murder mysteries.
- Two delightful women watch cozy murder, drink wine, and condemn capitalism in detailed and thoughtful critique!
- Sabrina and Carolyn are now on hiatus, but there are lots of back episodes to go thru.

You're Wrong About - Investigative journalism - Michael Hobbes and Sarah Marshall go back to something you have already heard about, and go over all the ways that you were given the wrong idea.
- They are compassionate and thoughtful people talking about complicated ideas with kindness and humor. Their episodes on Maligned Women are great - pretty much always behind every 'conniving bimbo out to destroy a good man' is a bunch of powerful men who got away scot free.
- Recommended episodes: Anna Nicole Smith, Enron, Gangs

I'm doing my semi-annual caffeine ditch this week, with the hopes of remaining mostly caffeine free for a good chunk of time. My love of coffee is deep and old and abiding, so this is mandated by my stomach issues. But it is Hard to be without the ones you love, even when they are beverages that make your stomach upset, so, there's that.

Life update: The condo we were trying to purchase in July fell thru for reasons that I am entirely content with, but I am kind of still mad about having to spend so much time and effort and money getting to that point. Happily, we're in the process of buying another condo! But annoyances.

So, to be kind to myself but let you know a few things I think are awesome, I'm making a short list of things I support on Patreon that I think are just great.

Fansplaining is an awesome thinking podcast by Flourish Klink and Elizabeth Minkel, who go into themed discussions about topics and events in fandom. It's not news, it's a bit more thinkpiece-y, and they bring on expert guests to talk about elements of fan culture and events that have had big impacts on fandom. Their Patreon

.... So I started this post at like 8:30 am and have been called way from it for hours, so I'm just going to post it as is. Sorry!

I am very tired of people nearly hitting me with their cars. Twice in two days. Come the fuck on. Just check your damn right side before you turn.

The Background

So, I don't normally think of myself as A Phan, aka, a devotee of Phantom of the Opera. Mostly because I fall in and out of the source material, and I don't really engage in the fandom at all. Except as a reader, it's mostly something I am dip in and out of.

I've read the original novel by Leroux, and listened to the Lloyd Weber recording, and seen the 2004 movie, and read at least two of the "sequel" novels (tho god only knows which ones the public library spat out at me for my request back in 2005!) (EDIT: It definitely seems like one was Susan Kay's 1990 novel, Phantom, and I almost certainly got that recommendation by reading Gevaisa's fics.)

But the thing was, the older I got, the less I liked the main drive of most of the fan works - pairing Erik and Christine together, assuming the events of the movie was your starting point, felt just... a bit weird? I don't judge anyone who likes it, and I've read a lot of fic trying to find an angle that would work for me. Because I see the relationship, and the attraction, and it still just somehow got to feel more and more like trying to fit Christine's experience into a box labeled "Romance" when a lot of it was a better fit for a box labeled "Horror." People are allowed to like what they like, and after a while, I found I wasn't liking Phantom well enough to find a settled place for the work in my heart. It's still compelling and interesting. But I just never feel quite comfortable with it.

The Turn

A while ago, tho, I got to see a truly wonderful amateur production by a small and casual group (staged in a living room!) that blew the top of my head off. The director for this performance was a woman, and the cast is largely women (including some playing male roles - my friend was an excellent M. Firmin. Their Phantom was a dude, and Asian.), and their Christine was a longtime member of the group - and they all agreed the tone for their production of the musical was that of a young singer being manipulated and threatened by a stalker. Their Christine was adamant about it - the star of the show is Christine, a young woman trying to handle her mysterious voice teacher murdering people, which is a big fucking deal.

Their production really helped me pull out the tensions I felt towards the Lloyd Weber musical - there's just a lot of push to see Erik's actions sympathetically in that musical, and some productions make the mistake of allowing Christine's experience of fear and confusion and mistrust to become sidelined to favor Erik's viewpoint. And I had a lot more interest in seeing the chemistry between Erik and Christine once I saw a production of the Lloyd Weber musical that actually made sure to center Christine as a person, making choices in a shitty situation that Erik put her in. That worked for me, in a way that the movie production of the musical just didn't.

This actually makes me want to see the stage version, which I wasn't sure I wanted to spend money on before I saw this incredibly great and low budget production.

This is all prologue.

The New Twist

Because I had a recent return to interest in Lloyd Weber's musical, I clicked on a certain video on Youtube on Saturday morning.

I am a big fan of Lyndsay Ellis, who has been doing film criticism vlogs since before Youtube existed. Ellis is smart and well educated and funny as shit. Also, she's a big Phan. She has a really fun series called "Loose Canon," and the Phantom episodes (two!) cover the history of the story before the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical and after. Both here: Before Broadway and After .

So, through Ellis , I discovered that there was a separate musical! From 1991, there was another musical, in a more operetta style, that adapted the story from the LeRoux's novel with a significantly more genteel Erik.

From Wikipedia - "Phantom is a musical with music and lyrics by Maury Yeston and a book by Arthur Kopit. Based on Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera, the musical was first presented in Houston, Texas in 1991. Although it has never appeared on Broadway and has been overshadowed by the success of the 1986 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Yeston and Kopit's Phantom has received over 1,000 productions." There are several productions on Youtube, filmed from various stage musicals. Obviously, it did not achieve the success of Lloyd Weber's musical, but it seems quite charming from what I'm able to find. (In tone, what I have seen feels bit like A Little Night Music - it's very European and choral and it feels like it wants to be in Paris in a particular time period.)

AND! There was a nonmusical production of the storyline of Yeston's Phantom made into a two-episode miniseries, starring Charles Dance as Erik. It's on Youtube (just google, I don't want to get any links taken down) but Charles Dance basically swans around in opera dress and a full face mask being snide about Carlotta and charming Christine and it's a delight. None of the music from the Yeston production makes it into this miniseries - the performances are all drawn from classic opera, including Faust, Norma, and a bunch of others as references that I didn't recognize. Christine is occasionally a bit thin in terms of character towards the beginning of the series, which I think is a reflection of her musical performance's work not being quite adapted properly to the all-dialogue miniseries, but she also clearly makes decisions and determinations on her own. Her involvement with Erik is unconventional, and he's definitely lying to her at the start, but at the end she's making choices on her own with the full information, and it's just.... it's nice! It's nice that I don't have to make excuses for Erik being stalkery! There so much less of that!

Yeston talked about his version of Erik being significantly less horrific - "The story could be somewhat changed.... [The Phantom] would be a Quasimodo character, an Elephant Man. Don't all of us feel, despite outward imperfections, that deep inside we're good? And that is a character you cry for.

And while I have yet to have a chance to actually read thru the libretto, and I'm still working on finding a performance of Yeston's Phantom that I can watch (other than Youtube, which does have a couple), I'm just feeling interested and excited for this adaptation of the novel in a way I haven't for a while. I have not found any fic yet, because of course I haven't. But I'm just feeling engaged and energetic about these characters in a new way, and I just wanted to get out there and share that New Fandom Energy.

So, I'm in the process of buying a condo, and I have realized in this process that I know really almost nothing about getting a home loan.

Also, this whole process of finding and applying to buy a condo, while it will eventually end in my being co-owner of a condo, is kind of hard on the ego, because I keep learning how I know basically nothing about how this works at all.

And I realize I'm in a position of immense privilege here! Financially and whole bunch of other ways, I really, immensely do! AND part of my ignorance is that this is happening faster than I realized it was happening and I am feeling like I need to do a bunch of research on a deadline with no syllabus.

Like, I'm fairly certain the application process is not binding! and that if my nice local credit union is screwing me over, I will be able to figure it out! And at some point, people will carefully walk me thru the mortgage payments and it will all be predictable and hopefully I won't fuck up and get something awful, but DANG, this is a bit nerve wracking.

I have returned from that rarest of all things, a vacation that was actually relaxing.

We visited my cousin for her wedding, which was lovely, and my college friends who now live nearby-ish.

Seeing them again was wonderful, and they were both excellent guides to their (vast, overwhelming, car-based) city.

However, I am now stuck in Wrong Standard Time (aka, three hours off) and I'm giving myself permission to have a little coffee this morning.

But, man, I would kill for a nap room.

1) Ravelry is banning support for white supremacy and Trump from their website. Yay! https://www.ravelry.com/content/no-trump
2) I put in an offer on a condo, it has been accepted, and now we have to do the work of actually buying it. I really like it! It's bright and pretty and in a good location!

I appear to be on some Speed (1994) bullshit.

This weekend I watched SPEED (1994) for the first time and holy shit, this movie demands a fandom. Where. Where is the fic?

I am back from my college reunion and flush with the feeling that I went to an amazing place for school, full of amazing people, and I am so, so glad I never have to be a student there again. God, it was a wonderful experience. My dear friend A was staying with me and we roomed together and it had all the great parts of being young and deeply friends with people while all trapped in one beautiful space together.

We ate junkfood and watched Speed and my god, Keanue Reeves was so clearly into Sandra Bullock that it doesn't even bear thinking about. We also watched Destination Wedding, which is basically older Keanu being super into Winona Ryder in a very Stoppard kind of way. Delightful.

I am also reading a great book, A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, and it's really fun and each other characters feels like a real person, no matter how alien.

In work updates, from my day back, my annoying colleague who will never stop trying to game her metrics is now wants tech support to add a field to a report I created for her. M

ind you, I had already pulled report (some 200+ people in a geographic area), and given her a highlighted version of the resulting list so that she would reach out to some of the people there - she will probably be able to meet with, max, 10. But! I didn't give her the list of the email addresses with it, and she can't figure out how to add it, so she's bugging me to start the process over from nothing, instead of using the database to reach out to the 20 or so people I highlighted as being a particularly good place to start by looking them up, with their email addresses, in the context of deciding if they are worth reaching out to.

Why am I not re-running the list and giving it to her again? Because I gave her the report and she's had the exact same lessons I have had about how to adjust it, AND I walked her thru it live at her request. So, no. She can look up the people in the database, evaluated them as one, and then decide to email them as needed. She shouldn't be keeping the Excel sheet as her notes - she doesn't need the email for all of them. She needs to email 10, maybe, and she has the information she needs to find that.

Profile

kitewithfish

January 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Page Summary

Active Entries

Syndicate

Style Credit

Style: Ivory Alcea for Mobility by branchandroot
Resources: Mitsuba Aoi

Page generated Jan. 13th, 2026 11:51 am

|

Recent Entries

Expand Cut Tags

I regret to inform you that I am back on my bullshit - and some recs

I need a bike icon

(no subject)

Hoots like a Tusken Raider

Boxes are my life, my life is boxes

Comprehensive Life Update, and some books!

(no subject)

more condo buying stuff, and some self reflection

Friday Five

BBC's made up a list of books; it is largely bland.

Post Labor Day Post

Life, and some links

(no subject)

My Phandom Renaissance

I feel kind of embarrassed by my own ignorance here.

Time is a Gift

a good day

(no subject)

I seek a fandom lost to the ages

(no subject)

Profile

January 2026

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Active Entries

Syndicate

Style Credit