machiavellijr

Dear Yuletide writer,

It’s that time of year again…

Thank you for doing this. We have some fandoms in common, that’s already great to know and whatever you give me, I’ll be very happy indeed.Yuletide is one of those things that really gives me hope every year that actually the human race is fundamentally alright and we will somehow muddle through All Of This.

I tend to chuck in a few potential plot bunnies by way of potential inspiration and to give you a sense of what sort of things interest me about the fandom and characters - use or ignore entirely as you will.

General likes:

Plot. Worldbuilding. Casefic. Melodrama. Keeping your head whilst all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. Competence porn. Costume porn. Actual porn (preferably het). Humour. Farce. Epistolary. Wordplay. Swordplay.

General Do Not Want:

Non-con

Tight focus on babies/pregnancy, especially babies in danger or miscarriage

Addiction plots front and center - like I know there are addicts in most of these canons, and that's fine, but I really don't want a whole story about it.

RL contemporary politics - I know I’ve got a couple of fandoms here that are quite ‘political’ and I don’t think the characters deserve to have to deal with Trump, Farage, various Le Pens etc., much less the horrors in the Middle East.

Hilary Tamar Mysteries

One or more of:

Hilary Tamar

Julia Larwood
Selena Jardin

This is one of those canons where what I really want is more-of. I love Hilary’s narrative voice, I love the knots our heroes tie themselves with the red herrings and wrong genre savviness, and particularly any and all appearances by Julia where she gets to be her gloriously chaotic and occasionally surprisingly competent self (perish the thought that I might have a Julia in my own life, love ya T., never change).

Plot bunnies:

Hilary’s gender is never overtly specified, though I think it’s a bit difficult to read them as female given the setting, period, and the way they relate to the boys. That said, difficult is not impossible and I’ve never seen anyone write an explicitly female / nonbinary Hilary that I can recall.

Julia and Cantrip’s serial thriller being published. The reactions of the publisher’s legal reader, who of course would be someone who has daydreams about achieving the professional eminence these two clowns take totally for granted?

We very seldom see these barristers in court; some courtroom antics (especially if for sadistic reasons they’re way out of their professional comfort zone) would be fun.

Hilary being forced to do some actual academic work?

Selena has always reminded me of Douglas’ line from Cabin Pressure:

“Tell me, is there anything you’re not very good at”
“Well, there’s some things I’ve never tried, I suppose it’s possible I’m not very good at some of them”

Whilst Selena being unflappable is a delight, I’d be interested in her finding her limits, always assuming they exist - or maybe just the rest of the gang assuming she’s found them?

Laundry Files

One or more of:

Bob Howard

Cassie Brewer

Dominique “Mo” O’Brien

Mhari Murphy

Jeremy “Imp” Starkey

Honestly, this is easy. Write Laundry fic. I will love it. Case-fic, world-building, romance, horror, anything at all.

For the first time in the series I found Quantum of Nightmares genuinely off-puttingly bleak, some of the Chickentown scenes made me feel physically ill, if the body horror could not go quite that far I’d be grateful.

One of the things I enjoyed about the earlier instalments was the sense of the world being a very big place where there’s a lot of room behind the Masquerade and none of our protagonists have a good sense of all the possibilities. I think that got a bit lost in the actual collapse as the world closed in around England because Stross wanted to tell a story about the grimness of modern Britain which, well, I’m living through that already and I’m not sure Actually Existing Case Nightmare Green bears close examination anyway. So I’d be interested in any of Bob’s (or Mo’s, or even Mhari’s) adventures firefighting around the world, meeting interesting local mythology.

Or, slightly more seriously, Bob’s relationship with his own family and friends. Perhaps the conversation where he explains CNG to Mo, or his attempts to take vacations (played as serious or not as you like). Bob/Mhari backstory?

I feel like everyone has met an Imp and everyone has a story about being dragged into one of their schemes. I find myself wondering what he’d make of Cassie and vice-versa - after all she did get her human elements from a drama student, on some level she’s conditioned to get excited by Imp, whilst her Queen of Air and Darkness side will be intrigued by someone who can make you want to act against your conditioning. Plus if she’s being wrapped in cotton wool to preserve the chain of geas-command she’s going to be bored.

Crossovers here would be fine and shiny, if that's where your ideas are going. The Laundry seems to fit pretty naturally into any number of thriller-ish fandoms and quite a lot of near-future SF. I like how unreliable Late Bob is as a narrator, and how scary we occasionally realise he is when seen from anyone else's perspective; maybe a fic or crossover where the Laundry are the villains, or even the Big Bad? I can see that happening in any kind of police procedural or military thriller, for example.

Slings & Arrows

Any character

Any of Geoffrey and Ellen’s backstory pre-series would be delightful, as would adventures in Théatre Sans Argent v2. Backstage shenanigans of all kinds are very pleasing to this recovering stage manager, as is the grubby business of actually trying to make a living from theater - I’ve always felt fairly sympathetic towards Richard, for example.

I do find the writers being so much on Geoffrey’s side about theatre a little bit annoying, and I wonder if Ellen actually shares his very actor-first approach to directing, I can see there being tension between them if he suspects her of Darren- or even worse Richard-like tendencies when she’s in charge - obviously as an actor she’s not keen on regietheater being done to her but she’d not be the first to change her mind once she’s in charge, and she does seem a lot more attached than Geoffrey to the finer things in life, like food and hot water.

Again I’m quite keen on crossovers for this one, there are a lot of highly compatible backstage dramas - to take a few at random, Charles Paris turning up at New Burbage (with or without murder) or indeed changing his name to Cyril after some disastrous incident in the 1980s, Geoffrey’s stint on Extras, a very young Geoffrey or Ellen touring in Nothing On or a Franklin Sheppard production… endless possibilities and even if I don’t know the canon I’ll probably be delighted to go explore it.

Gentlemen Bastards Sequence

Any character

I dearly love a good heist, but totally understand that they are very very hard to write and not everyone's cup of tea.

For me the joy of this series and fandom is managing to absolutely commit and lean in to both the silliness and the melodrama, so if you think at any point “is this going too far” the answer is a resounding no!

I really like the glimpses of Camorri religion we get, both the Nameless 13th and Aza Guilia (who if she exists is totally enjoying Jean's shenanigans).

Some plot bunnies:

Perhaps more of the gang's training trips after the one in Republic of Thieves?

The Bastards left behind when one is off having special lessons?

An AU where whatever Chains' plans were for the Bastards get fulfilled, "a ballista bolt through the fucking heart of the Secret Peace" without Capa Raza getting there first? Or at least something with Chains explaining what on Earth he intended to do to someone - I wonder how Locke and Jean would be different if they knew? Ooh, how much would Locke hate it if it turned out Sabetha was the only one in on the plan, though that might be hard to square with it being Locke who’s made the Priest of the 13th?

I also have a nagging feeling there was a reference somewhere in LLL to the other Bastards trying to actually plan something without Locke… I bet that went hilariously.

Stalky & Co.

Any Character

I think everyone has a complicated relationship with Kipling these days except the people who uncomplicatedly hate him. You can see why so many people utterly loathed these stories when they came out, but at the same time I find Beetle and M'Turk more realistic teenagers than you get in most school stories (Stalky not so much).

It’s interesting that with the exception of a few lines everyone in Stalky is so publicly unsentimental about the fact they’re in a profit-making enterprise whose job is to feed young men to the crows via oppressing the peoples of the Empire; there’s not much white man’s burden in it, just acceptance that there is a dirty job to be done and everyone is complicit in doing it in wildly wasteful ways.

I wonder how the Head feels about this, and particularly how he feels about the rare oddities like Beetle, who are destined for something other than the Army or the Colonial administration. Come to that, what are Beetle, who is never suggested to have any kind of military future, or Turkey whose family can well afford better, doing there in the first place? And how does King reconcile his high intellectual ideals with working in a very results-focused setting (I’ve been him, I know my answers, most of them involved the rent being due)? The protagonists think he's just a hypocrite but they would, wouldn't they?

I found this clearing out an old hard drive, no idea who I nicked it from but it must have been at least three years ago.

Lust, books I want to read for their cover:

My former housemate had an absolutely stunning illustrated Dante from I think the 70s, certainly in a very 70s pulp cover art sort of style, which I coveted mightily and still kind of regret giving back.

Pride, challenging books I've finished:

War & Peace, which I read whilst teaching at a summer camp in Italy, having finished everything else I’d packed in the first week of six, with two more still to go before I could get into Genoa to the English bookshop.

Gluttony, books I've read more than once:

Probably still top of my most-reread list is Good Omens but that’s more than a little depressing these days so let’s go for the Aubrey/Maturin series, which I’ve read straight through at least four times in the past… oh bloody hell it’s 20 years isn’t it?

Sloth, books on my to-read list the longest:

I think I’ve had the same copy of Morte d’Arthur since 2009 and not yet got round to reading it. That or Middlemarch, but I don’t think I actually own a hardcopy of that at the moment so it doesn’t count.

Greed, books I own multiple editions of:

I think I have three each of various translations of Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars and Tacitus’ Annals - pretty edition, tatty copy I carried around during exams, scholarly edition with all the footnotes and apparatus. Two of the Suetonius’ are Robert Graves’ translation - outdated, yes, but still fabulously readable. I’ve also got two of George MacDonald Fraser’s The Pyrates; a spotless first edition I picked up in Devon for about three quid, and the disintegrating paperback I referred to when writing my pirate show.

Wrath, books I despised:

I don’t tend to remember or finish books I truly loathe, but I did make a completist attempt at reading through the Baen Free Library when I was… maybe 16 and I have no words bad enough for Tom Kratman or any of his works. It makes me feel ill just to think of how much he must be enjoying the present Administration.

Envy, books I want to live in:

I don’t fancy fantasy Renaissance Europe much, no dentistry for starters, but there’s something about Lois Bujold’s World of the Five Gods that makes me deeply envious - the only fantasy religion I have ever thought was really worth the effort to type up, and the only books that I think have ever made me sincerely wish I were religious, even leaving aside that the Gods do actually turn up fairly frequently.

I have an assignment and whilst it is by far the longest canon I offered, one I haven't been really engaged with for some years, and that has made some choices I really do not love in that time, I'm really enjoying getting back into it and the prompts are shiny. This is going to be fun.

Dear Yuletide writer,

It’s that time of year again…

Thank you for doing this. I still can’t quite believe Yuletide happens and works every year, it feels like it’s wandered over from a more agreeably cooperative world where *flails* all of all this isn’t happening.

General likes:

Plot. Worldbuilding. Casefic. Melodrama. Keeping your head whilst all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. Competence porn. Costume porn. Actual porn. Humour. Farce. Epistolary. Wordplay. Swordplay.

General Do Not Want:

Non-con

Tight focus on babies/pregnancy

Addiction plots front and center - like I know there are addicts in I think all of these canons, and that's fine, but I don't want a whole story about it.

Hilary Tamar Mysteries

One or more of:

Hilary Tamar

Julia Larwood
Selena Jardin

Plot bunnies:

We very seldom see these barristers in court; some courtroom antics (especially if for sadistic reasons they’re way out of their professional comfort zone) would be fun.

Hilary being forced to do some actual work?

Selena has always reminded me of Douglas’ line from Cabin Pressure:

“Tell me, is there anything you’re not very good at”
“Well, there’s some things I’ve never tried, I suppose it’s possible I’m not very good at some of them”

Whilst Selena being unflappable is a delight, I’d be interested in her finding her limits, always assuming they exist - or maybe just the rest of the gang assuming she’s found them?

House of Cards (UK)

Oh for those more innocent days when if the PM’s family were caught insider-trading he would be expected to resign, the suggestion the government had connived at starting a small war would destroy the PM’s reputation, and blackmailing closeted politicians was portrayed as wrong even if they had awful politics. Really it only seems to be FU preventing the BBC version of 1990s England being a utopia [/s]. Though he’s a pretty big obstacle.

I think there’s a bit of a contradiction in what FU wants to do in power in S2-3; he wants to preserve everything in aspic the way it was in his youth, but on another level he gets bored and makes things happen almost for the hell of it, he can’t help keeping poking away when he could just leave well enough alone and stay peacefully on top. But then there wouldn’t be a plot, would there? And it’s very Richard III. Stamper has a bit of the same bug, I think - he wants so much to be FU (even more, I think, than he wants to fuck him, though probably that too) and he’s probably not quite sure why, or what he’d do if he ever became the dog that caught the car.

Come to think of it, there’s a plotbunny - the FU version of the Richard III Society. After all his misdeeds are public knowledge, some people will still argue that he was completely and totally in the right or at worst the lesser evil, not just his politics but personally… how, and why, and what do the survivors (including the ex-King) make of it? FU’s England will have avoided some of the real-life catastrophes of his chronologically-impossible reign (he serves 12 years as PM between 1991/2 and about 1998) and had some other, probably worse ones instead.

It’s noticeable that whilst FU tells us all the thinly-veiled caricatures of the potential Thatcher successors in S1 are bad people (except Collingridge who’s just weak), they don’t really do anything onscreen to justify that interpretation - we’re supposed to just supply that from their models’ general IRL unpopularity. Woolton’s having an affair with a much younger woman but that’s about the worst of it, and it’s Roger, not him, who makes skeevy remarks about her race. I don’t think FU sees anything particularly evil about racism, or xenophobia, or exhibitionism, he just thinks it’s déclassé to show them publicly.

Or give me a day in the life of the Urquhart administration when there’s no earth-shaking constitutional shenanigans going on.

Or throw an outside-context crossover at them - they can deal with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, wizards, first contact, etc.

Laundry Files

Honestly, this is easy. Write Laundry fic. I will love it. Case-fic, world-building, romance, horror, anything at all.

Just to be clear, I won’t have read Regicide Report by reveals time, I know that on past form there will be a few ARCs floating about by then, so *no spoilers please* though I reckon we can all guess what the broad strokes are going to be.

One of the things I enjoyed about the earlier instalments was the sense of the world being a very big place where there’s a lot of room behind the Masquerade and none of our protagonists have a good sense of all the possibilities. I think that got a bit lost in the actual collapse as Stross wanted to tell a story about the grimness of modern Britain which, well, I live in that already and I’m not sure Actually Existing Case Nightmare Green bears close examination anyway. So I’d be interested in any of Bob’s (or Mo’s, or even Iris’) adventures firefighting around the world, meeting interesting local mythology.

Crossovers here would be fine and shiny, if that's where your ideas are going. The Laundry seems to fit pretty naturally into any number of thriller-ish fandoms and quite a lot of near-future SF. I like how unreliable Bob's getting as a narrator, and how scary we occasionally realise he is when seen from anyone else's perspective; maybe a fic or crossover where the Laundry are the villains, or even the Big Bad? I can see that happening in any kind of police procedural or military thriller, for example.

Lord Peter Wimsey

I’ve requested Harriet, the Dowager Duchess and Gerry and I’d like something with any two of them, but I’m making a specific exception for Honoria Lucasta back-story even though by the linear nature of time it’s unlikely to have room for the other two.

Otherwise, anything with the Wimsey family dynamics would be lovely.

As would someone other than Peter doing some detecting - I do love a good case-fic, though I know they’re hard to write, and someone else trying their hands at playing Robert Templeton would be fun - I imagine they’d be very reluctant to go scurrying to Peter for advice (well, maybe not Gerry but certainly the other Wimseys) and would find Harriet a less alarming source.

Slings & Arrows

Summary: A grim narrative of fraud, deception, false advertising, murders, robberies, puttings in fear and operating without a Board of Trade Certificate.

( Self-indulgent commentary under the cut )

So my contribution to this year's Yuletide was epistolary historical fiction... for the Stan Rogers song "Barrett's Privateers'. I had a hell of a lot of fun researching and writing it, I resisted most of the impulses towards totally inappropriate crossovers, and whilst there were things I wanted to do that I couldn't make come off, I'm pretty happy with it:

"God Damned Them All"? Documenting the Loss of the Privateer Antelope - A grim narrative of fraud, deception, false advertising, murders, robberies, puttings in fear and operating without a Board of Trade Certificate.

(also a truly demented spot-the-reference game, from the summary onwards. I may have got a little silly.)

I received three fabulous gifts:

1) Set My Life Upon a Cast by Nomad (nomadicwriter) - House of Cards (UK) - Francis Urquhart is not a man to believe in visions other than his own.

I asked for, inter alia, FU dealing with the supernatural and got it in spades; Nomad captures his voice perfectly, as well as his reaction to seeing bits of his own future, which is very Richard III. A lovely appearance for Stamper too.

2) Vanished in a Breath by voleuse - A Year And A Day In Old Theradane - All of space-time is exquisitely balanced between existing and not. A year and a day (or so) in the life of Those Unseen.

If you haven’t read the original story, do. It’s a perfect little fantasy heist and as Scott Lynch shows no sign of providing more, fandom is occasionally stepping up. This is a perfect slice of what the main characters are up to immediately post-canon, including a couple of my favourite lines in a long, long time.

3) A Minute and a Second In New Theradane by Kantayra - A Year And A Day In Old Theradane - Every dictator falls eventually, even one as powerful and vengeful as Ivovandas. The Duchess Unseen finally completes the ultimate heist and unleashes a New Theradane, but to what end?

Instant headcanon for how the plot kicked off by canon had to end, not just a fitting ending but it feels like the only possible one.

And having read through the collection on many long journeys over the holidays, I have a few recs to add to those:

1) The Muppet Show feat. Special Guest Star Patrick O'Brian by Petra - Aubrey/Maturin series & The Muppet Show

You've heard of a naval captain dressed up as a bear? Well, get ready for a bear dressed up as a naval captain. There is also a weirdo, a pig, and a chicken. Such is life on the high seas Muppet Show.

Muppet crossovers are always fun and this one is the purest and most delightful crack - a whistle-stop tour of the silliest bits of the Aubreiad with added Muppetry.

2) Family, Found by ioanite - Calvin & Hobbes

During Calvin's first winter break back from college, his parents ask him to clean out his room. He tackles the task with less reluctance than he did when he was a kid, and in the process, stumbles across a familiar figure…

I’m not even a massive C&H fan but this is very, very sweet.

3) For the Love of Tea by fried_extracrispy_trenchcoat - Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Oh, what Arthur would do for a cup of tea…

Douglas Adams is very, very hard to write fic for and nearly everyone who tries, fails. This is one of the exceptions. Though the text adventure game brings back some horrific memories.

4) A Matter of Mettle by curtaincall - Lord Peter Wimsey

When one of the Cattery's typists fears that her sister is being defrauded by a motivational speaker of dubious rectitude, Miss Murchison is sent to investigate-but finds that she may not be the only one with a hidden agenda.

The Cattery are desperately underused in canon and this casefic is perfect - clearly very well-researched and exactly the sort of thing you’d hope Miss Climpson et al. are up to whilst Lord Peter isn’t asking anything particular of them. It properly works as a case too, as well as a slice of life.

5) Tea for Two by Beatrice_Otter - Lord Peter Wimsey

"I was complaining to my brother about how few friends I had, and he suggested that you might be an interesting person to know.” After Harriet is exonerated, she and Mary Wimsey meet for tea.

The first of two Lady Mary fics to two different prompts, both of which I loved. Harriet is notably less spiky in this than I imagine her being at that stage in canon, but it works for her.

6) The Company of Women by pensnest - Lord Peter Wimsey

Peter has many calls upon his time, but Harriet is able to fill his absence with female companionship. The Dowager Duchess is decorating, and Lady Mary has opinions about many things.

I am an absolute sucker for anything with Honoria Lucasta in it, this included - and it’s a very rare fic that acknowledges our favourite scatty old dowager has actual real flaws and can make terrible mistakes (other than marrying Gerald the elder). Some great exchanges between Harriet and Mary about the travails of being married to men who get into a great deal of danger then cause people to be executed.

7) The Future in the Instant by Assimbya - MacBeth

Lady Macbeth makes a choice. Canon divergence AU, set before 3.1.

Manages the almost impossible feat of giving the MacBeths something resembling a prospect of a happy ending without making them into different people. Though not very happy for e.g. Malcolm I think, nor perhaps for Scotland.

8) Cabin Pressure by htbthomas - Only Murders in the Building

Trapped on a private jet is definitely not the best place to find out Oliver and Charles' new relationship status.

Regrettably, this is not a John Finnemore crossover. Someone should write that, I have a horrid feeling the someone in question might be me. What it is, is very, very funny. Could be a missing chunk of an episode, if the network were just slightly braver.

9) Work-Life Balance by Philomytha - Rivers of London

The breach of the peace began in the traditional English woodland at Kew Gardens at a quarter to four in the afternoon on the first of May when the morris side 'Queens of May' struck up a dance called Princess Royal and invited the crowd of bewildered tourists to join in.

One of my favourite authors, one of my favourite series, casefic and Morris dancing. My cup runneth over. Clever and sweet and hilarious. I always knew there was something suspicious about folk musicians.

10) the architecture of the minotaur's heart by giallos - Saltburn

Saltburn demanded a sacrifice.

I so wanted to love the movie (not only because having done a show with the director is my best theatrical claim to fame). I did not love it. This more Gothic-horror version would have been a much better second half.

11) Wherein We Actually Say a Great Deal About the Dog by oddegg - Three Men In A Boat

A SIDE ADVENTURE – TUMULTUOUS ROMANTIC HISTORY OF MONTMORENCY – THE MANY SISTERS OF HARRIS – MALIGNING OF LAND NAVIGATION ABILITIES OF GEORGE – AN ENCOUNTER WITH RURAL TYKES – MALIGNING OF NEIGHBOUR OF J – A WAY FOUND – VINDICATION OF NEIGHBOUR OF J

Farce, holiday misadventures, and a bit with a dog. What’s not to love?

12) A Matter of Definition by Nomad (nomadicwriter) - Yes Minister

Early on in his time at the DAA, Jim attempts to pin down some important details about the department he now runs. Such as what it is that it actually does…

This is annoying as I have had this exact idea and executed it much less well. Not a lost Season 1 script but it easily could be.

Dear Yuletide writer,

It’s that time of year again…

General likes:

General Do Not Want:

Explicit slash

Non-con

Tight focus on babies/pregnancy (OK, not such a problem for some of these)

Addiction plots front and center - like I know there are addicts in I think all of these canons, and that's fine, but I don't want a whole story about it.
RL contemporary politics - I know I’ve got a couple of fandoms here that are quite ‘political’ and I don’t think the characters deserve to have to deal with Trump, Brexit, Covid etc., much less the horrors in the Middle East.

A year and a day in Old Theradane - Scott Lynch

Any character

Available legally for free here: https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/a-year-and-a-day-in-old-theradane/. Even if we didn’t match on this, it’s short and accessible enough you might want to take a look at it anyway, I think there’s plenty for a Sarah Caudwell or John M. Ford fan in there.

This story is such a tiny glimpse of such a great fantasy setting that there’s amazing scope for anything you want to do and I’ll love all of it. I’m interested in the place of magic in the world, there’s a pretty heavy layer of magitek in there, an almost Discworld feeling of being right on the edge of an industrial revolution powered by minor wizardry. Maybe one that’s going to swallow the Parliament of Strife whole, if the gang don’t get it first. I also wonder how the rest of the world thinks of the crazy wizards poking holes in the fabric of spacetime.

I dearly love a good heist, but totally understand that they are very very hard to write and not everyone's cup of tea.

Some plot bunnies:
Backstory with one of the heists referenced in canon - or one you made up.

What happens if and when the gang actually win and suddenly the wizards aren’t ru[i/n]ning Theradane any more?

Or if the “sanctuary in reverse” thing works out and the gang have to start again, again? This has crossover potential into vaguely compatible settings if e.g. they buy their way into Lankhmar, Camorr, Lystourel … King’s Landing or Ankh-Morpork might be harder but I can see it?

Any worldbuilding around the economy/politics/history of Theradane. Shraplin’s not in the tagset but his emancipation is a lovely touch, let’s have the glory days of the Automaton Rights movement, or their revival?

Hilary Tamar Mysteries

One or more of:
Hilary Tamar
Julia Larwood

Plot bunnies:
Hilary’s gender is never overtly specified, though I think it’s a bit difficult to read them as female given the setting, period, and the way they relate to the boys. That said, difficult is not impossible and I’ve never seen anyone write an explicitly female / nonbinary Hilary that I can recall.

We very seldom see these barristers in court; some courtroom antics (especially if for sadistic reasons they’re way out of their professional comfort zone) would be fun.

Hilary being forced to do some actual work?

House of Cards (UK)

One or more of:

Francis Urquhart
The King
Tim Stamper

What is the King up to by the time of The Final Cut? I’d quite like to see how he handles life post-abdication; is FU right that he’ll be irrelevant in politics, does he take it lying down or want to find out for himself?

Or give me a day in the life of the Urquhart administration when there’s no earth-shaking constitutional shenanigans going on.

Or throw an outside-context crossover at them - they can deal with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, wizards, first contact, etc.

The Dragon Waiting (John M. Ford)

Any Character

I really do mean any character here - don’t feel limited to the ones in the tagset; if you want to write about Margaret of Anjou, or Lorenzo de Medici, or everyone’s favourite freelance gunner Gregory, or those usurping Palaeologi, feel absolutely free.

I feel like on every page there’s another story that could spin off and be just as interesting as the main one, whether that’s vampirism as early-Renaissance AIDS metaphor, the life of a mercenary captain in the Space-Filling Byzantine Empire, any kind of shenanigans at the overstuffed “French” court (what a gorgeous setting for, well, anything), young Richard III in the bizarro Wars of the Roses, Owain Glyndwr calling spirits from the vasty deep with some expectation they’ll actually turn up (OK I admit it my sense of the Wars of the Roses owes more to Shakespeare than scholarship, OK hang on, TDW!Shakespeare?), Gregory and Hywel riding off into the sunset to fight the Empire somewhere else, and somewhere else after that, and so on until the Empire finally gets lucky…

Dear mystery author, Thank you for signing up, thank you for writing, whatever you give me will be deeply welcomed and appreciated. I apologise for whatever DW has done to the formatting of this post, it has gone completely kerflooey and I can't sort it out.

General likes:

General Do Not Want:

Explicit slash

Non-con

Tight focus on babies/pregnancy (OK, not such a problem for some of these)

Addiction plots front and center

Contemporary politics - obviously RoL is set in 2010s London including its political situation, and anything about rebellion and insurgency is going to resonate with the current situation in the Middle East, but I deal with both of those every day, more of either is not what I need right now.

Rivers of London:

WB: Integration of magic into modern worldview after presumed future reveal (RoL); WB: the demi-monde (RoL); WB: human non-Newtonian magic systems (RoL); WB: Death/birth/rebirth of genii locorum (RoL) Any or No Characters (Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch); Grace Yutani (RoL); Caroline Linden-Limmer (RoL)

Fanfiction; In-Universe Meta I kind of love how well the masquerade works in RoL and anything about how the demi-monde and beyond manages to exist in the real world, or how anyone in particular handles The Reveal, will be absolute catnip to me. What stories do people tell themselves to enable them to get along in 2010s London? How, if at all, will the magic-users of the rest of the world react to a Reveal which in canon will presumably start in London and involve at least Peter in a fairly central role (though come to think of it, making our beloved heroes react to magic being unveiled somewhere else first would be cool)?

Star Wars:
WB: Organizing an alliance made of rebels (SW:OT); WB: Imperial defectors in the Rebellion (SW:OT); WB: Different Rebel factions and ideologies (SW:OT); WB: Structure and logistics of the Rebellion (SWOT); WB: Day to day life on a Rebel base (SWOT); WB: Alderaan’s role in the Rebellion (SWOT)

Leia Organa (SWOT); Mon Mothma (SW:OT); Any or No Characters (Star Wars Original Trilogy)

Fanfiction; In-Universe Meta

So in light of <flails at last 23 years' global politics>, how do you be an effective rebel against the Empire and keep your soul (or not)? What does that do to your daily life, how you relate to people with different answers? Andor suggested some of these questions and answered some of them, but a fairly narrow and TV-friendly perspective. It's a big galaxy out there!

Chalion Saga

WB: Women in the Bastard's Order (Chalion); WB: The White God's Seminary at Rosehall (Chalion); WB: Men in the Mother's Order (Chalion); WB: Women in the Son's Order (Chalion); WB: How Demons View Each Other (Chalion)

Any or No Characters (Chalion Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold); Penric kin Jurald; Desdemona (Chalion)

Fanfiction; In-Universe Meta

I adore the theology in this series and the Penric novellas have made it even better. It's a very humane theology, which as I am a horrible cynical person does mean I occasionally have flashes of wondering how it could be abused - but life is depressing enough already without getting too deep into that. On the different orders and how they work, I'd love to see someone try to make the Quadrenes make sense - like obviously their original portrayal is very hard not to see as a racist caricature of Al-Andalus but in-universe they do manage to function, apparently pretty well, despite their theology being objectively and demonstrably Wrong. Alternatively, how do you train divines of the Bastard's Order? It must be like herding cats; having spent enough time herding both regular academics and Christian seminarians, the job of head of the White God's seminary sounds like a gloriously nightmarish undertaking.

Vorkosigan Saga:

WB: Cetagandan Occupation (Vorkosigan Saga); WB: Stories about Earth during the Time of Isolation (Vorkosigan Saga); WB: Betan Viewpoints on Cordelia (Vorkosigan Saga); WB: Galactic politics and Barrayar (Vorkosigan Saga); WB: Blending traditional and modern (Vorkosigan Saga); WB: Yuri Vorbarra's Civil War (Vorkosigan Saga); WB: Who Re-Discovered Barrayar (Vorkosigan Saga); WB: Dorca's Conquest of Barrayar (Vorkosigan Saga)

Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan; Ezar Vorbarra; Piotr Pierre Vorkosigan; Olivia Vorbarra Vorkosigan; Dorca Vorbarra; Any or No Characters (Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold)

Fanfiction; In-Universe Meta

I adore the whole series, anything that springs to mind in any of those areas will be joyous. I'd be particularly interested in that brief, shining moment after the Rediscovery and before the Cetagandans turn up - what might have been without the Occupation, how Dorca was getting on managing the transition in an unprecedentedly peaceful time. The timeline has some fairly large holes in, in particular I can't work out how much of the cod-Stalinist setup we see Ezar ending at the end of Shards is how Dorca intended to deal with things and how much is post-Occupation (or a holdover from the Ceta puppet regime). Dorca, after all, is The Just, not 'The Good' or 'The Reasonable'.

Ah, Yuletide. I actually did miss this. And am currently feeling immensely smug because I thought I made up a handwavey justification to work in a really satisfying historical MacGuffin and it turns out I am not only supported by canon but now have a whole mine of related fun stuff to play with.

I have also dug out my notes towards a very long-procrastinated project which is a fun "guide to Freshers' life down the ages" - what would you have wanted to know starting as a student at 11th-century Bologna, 14th-century Paris, Restoration Oxford, the Edinburgh of David Hume or the Princeton where Aaron Burr sadly, as far as we know, did not in fact punch the bursar (though doubtless like most Bursars he would have deserved it)? What did those filthy students actually do all day and who helped them do it? And does it all have any advice for the Freshers of today? Probably going to start with Oxford and Edinburgh as I already know a fair bit about those. If I post the odd chapter would any of my learned friends here care to have a read?

Current Mood: accomplished

Dear Yuletide writer,

Gosh, I haven’t written one of these in quite some time. 2016 I think was the last. Feels good to be back.

AO3 currently won’t let me update my requests so this is more comprehensive / thought-through than my Optional Details there, and takes precedence (bearing in mind that Optional Details Are, of course, Optional). I tend to chuck in a few potential plot bunnies by way of potential inspiration and to give you a sense of what sort of things interest me about the fandom and characters - use or ignore entirely as you will.

General likes:

I note I have only requested 2 female characters. This is due to the tagset and I’m slightly disappointed by it. Please do feel free to add in any of the awesome women from any of these fandoms who have unaccountably failed to attract nominations.

General Do Not Want:

Explicit slash

Non-con

Tight focus on babies/pregnancy (OK, not such a problem for some of these)

Addiction plots front and center - like I know there are addicts in I think all of these canons, and that's fine but I don't want a whole story about it.

Gentlemen Bastards Sequence - Scott Lynch

Any of:
Locke Lamora
Galdo Sanza
Calo Sanza

I dearly love a good heist, but totally understand that they are very very hard to write and not everyone's cup of tea.

For me the joy of this series and fandom is managing to absolutely commit and lean in to both “I steal because it’s heaps of fucking fun” and “I promise you a death-offering, brothers. I promise you an offering that will make the gods take notice. An offering in blood and gold and fire.” Sometimes both at the same time.

I really like the glimpses of Camorri religion we get, both the Nameless 13th and Aza Guilia (who if she exists is totally enjoying Jean's shenanigans).

Some plot bunnies:
Perhaps more of the boys' training trips after the one in Republic of Thieves?
The Bastards left behind when one is off having special lessons?
An AU where whatever Chains' plans were for the Bastards get fulfilled, "a ballista bolt through the fucking heart of the Secret Peace" without Capa Raza getting there first?
I have to admit I find maudlin!Locke slightly hard work but I did request him and the Twins, so some reminiscing (perhaps with hints of the future?) would not be amiss.
I also have a nagging feeling there was a reference somewhere in LLL to the Sanzas and Jean trying to actually plan something without Locke… I bet that went hilariously.

Cruel Intentions (1999)

Either of:
Sebastian Valmont
Kathryn Merteuil

These two are such a compelling pair, and in a way I think they might be more interesting trying to fill the gap they leave in each other's lives (no, not like that you filthy thing, unless you want it to be like that in which case by all means, pray continue).

Plot bunnies:
The sequel that would have happened if the producers could have afforded SMG?
How does Kathryn rebuild after staying out of jail (or not - prison epistolary fic?)
Either or both of them having to cope with not being rich any more?
If you know the novel or any of the stage adaptations of Dangerous Liaisons, your favourite bit that didn't make it into the movie?
Music - I’m never quite sure which bits of the soundtrack are diegetic, but let’s assume for Sebastian at least most of it is and whilst it suits the movie splendidly and I love it, I’m not sure how well it matches up with him?.
Oh, and I love the car, a cameo for the car would be very pleasing.

Alex Stern

Darlington
Pamela Dawes

Anything about Lethe and these two and their relationship with it will delight and overjoy me. As will any wider worldbuilding-type stuff - if anyone knows what organised magic looks like outside Yale, it's probably Pamela.

Darlington's stretch as Dante is such obvious fodder for fic that suggesting it as a prompt feels a bit of a cheat.

Any slice of life with Lethe working "as it's supposed to"? I feel like we got into the main plot so quickly in Ninth House that we sort of missed how interesting and cool the status quo was. Or hell, just Darlington being a normal student, he's supposed to be able to do that isn't he? He reminds me of that quote from Gibbon's autobiography about getting to Oxford with "an ignorance that would have shamed a schoolboy and a stock of erudition that would have puzzled a doctor" - like he's a genius in some areas but basically an autodidact, and in others he's presumably pretty ignorant. Not your average Yalie.

Yes Minister

Any Character

Give me a day in the Ministerial office, or maybe a fusion with Jim and Sir Humphrey in charge of the institution of your choice, whether that's USS Enterprise or Cambridge University (though whatever it is, I think they have to continue to be very British and institutionalised).

Or throw an outside-context crossover at the Department of Administrative Affairs - they can deal with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, wizards, first contact, etc.

If you're a politics geek, I always wondered what an election would look like on the show. I suspect Sir Humphrey regards purdah (oh, sorry, the pre-election restricted period) as something provided by a just and merciful God to reward Civil Servants.

The Hacker-develops-a-conscience episodes are all great (and ‘The Whisky Priest’ a rare good bit for Anne); I wonder what it would look like if Sir Humphrey developed one?

I think I would rather not have any contemporary politics in this setting - Hacker does not deserve to have to deal with Trump, Sunak et al. Much less Covid or the horrors in Israel and Palestine. Show-era RL politics is definitely fine though.
I also find the idea of any romance between the three principals either silly (Hacker/Sir Humphrey) or downright squicky (either/Bernard).

NB - AO3 and Yuletide are occasionally inconsistent about whether Yes Prime Minister is the same fandom or not. As far as I’m concerned it obviously is and if you want to write something with Hacker as PM, please do! I am not, however, a fan of the stage shows or the 2013 revival.

Aspects - John M. Ford

Any Character

I hardly know what to request here because it's such a tiny fragment of such a glorious, rich world that never got even close to finished. If you have the vision and gumption to take it on, I place myself entirely in your hands. There are so many mysteries left to resolve in the main plot and such a huge, awesome sandbox to play in. Go wild.

My random discovery of the day is that Arthur Sullivan (as in 'Gilbert and') composed a (not the) Imperial March. If nobody has yet written a G&S Star Wars parody (I'm sure they have), the instruction book for 'How to write your own Gilbert and Sullivan opera" exists...

Watch on YouTube

Seen this going round a few places...

So the truthful answer is Huey Lewis and the News, specifically Fore! - apparently as a very small baby I wouldn't sleep without it on the stereo. My mother still shudders at this coming on the radio... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB5YkmjalDg

First favourite song I actually remember having would be from a driving holiday when I was about 6 (my parents were masochists who decided that driving round the South of France with three children under 6 was a good idea). The cassette player in the family Volvo was an ancient and unreliable device; for some reason it decided that it loved M People's 'Elegant Slumming' and never wanted to spit the tape out again, so we listened to it for two weeks straight. When I am old(er) and grey(er) I expect the opening bars of Movin' On Up will still conjure the smell of overheated car...

A splendid book meme, from

aedh, via

tree_and_leaf .

Pick a number to get an answer from me. Or give your own answer to someone else's question. Or just borrow the meme – it would be amazing to see this one get some traction!

1. A book that haunts you

2. A book that was an interesting failure

3. A book where you really wanted to be reading the "shadow" version of the book (as in, there are traces of a different book in the work and you would have much preferred to read that one)

4. A book with a worldbuilding detail that has stuck with you

5. A book where you loved the premise but the execution left you cold

6. A book where you were dubious about the premise but loved the work

7. The most imaginative book you've seen lately

8. A book that feels like it was written just for you

9. A book that reminds you of someone

10. A book that belongs to a specific time in your mind, caught in amber

11. A book that came to you at exactly the right time

12. A book that came to you at the wrong time

13. A book with a premise you'd never seen before quite like that

14. A book balanced on a knife edge

15. A snuffed candle of a book

16. The one you'd take with you while you were being ferried on dark underground rivers

17. The one that taught you something about yourself

18. A book that went after its premise like an explosion

19. A book that started a pilgrimage

20. A frigid ice bath of a book

21. A book written into your psyche

22. A warm blanket of a book

23. A book that made you bleed

24. A book that asked a question you've never had an answer to

25. A book that answered a question you never asked

26. A book you recommend but cannot love

27. A book you love but cannot recommend

28. A book you adore that people are surprised by

29. A book that led you home

30. A book you detest that people are surprised by

Stolen from legionseagle who has also given me the topics

1. Comment on this entry saying Rhubarb!, and I'll pick three things from your profile interests or tags.
2.Write about the words/phrases I picked in your journal and link back here. Spread the love.

a) Folk

It is a truth fairly universally acknowledged that I am a rotten singer. One of the lovely things about a lot of folk music is it was intended to be sung by people who weren't musically gifted, and folk people (almost as much as their mutant descendants filk people) tend to be forgiving of the tone-deaf trying to join in.

Ten years and some odd weeks ago, I had just come out of a really bruising year. I quit a job I hated in January (and then went back because they grovelled and offered me more money for fewer hours, and then they sacked me in April by way of a change), and whilst tutoring GCSE History to pay the bills as I waited to start a Masters I accidentally signed up to run an Edinburgh Fringe venue. I was 22 and in hindsight possibly not entirely stable. For a clueless 22-year-old I did a good job venue managing and we hosted some amazing shows, but it was a hideously stressful summer, we lost money and at the end of it I never really wanted to see a theatre again, certainly not from the back.

And then the excessively charismatic bastard (I love him really, hi Jonny) who talked me into the whole stupid venture decided I needed cheering up, and dragged me to a Rocky Horror-themed cabaret night, from which he was immediately evicted for not wearing shoes. And so I met a bunch of assorted weirdoes from the university Light Entertainments Society. And rather a lot of gin was consumed, and a traffic cone acquired, I think at some point my tech manager danced on the bar with an extremely attractive female civil servant cosplaying as Jack Aubrey (though that may have wandered in from a dream), and I agreed to maybe lend a hand with their next show, maybe. They turned out to be the anti-thespian society; everyone who auditions gets a part, everyone does their bit, everything's written by the members, and the whole affair is, to quote one of our best and most accurate reviews, gloriously ramshackle. Some of the shows are really very good, some are Godawful, they're almost all great fun to do.

You may well ask what this has to do with folk music. And it may be rose-tinted spectacles, but in my memory of working up that next show - it was a homebrew musical riff on Peter Pan, more or less - we were always on the edge of bursting into song. Not like Glee (thankfully) but people would rehearse a musical bit from the show, and then someone would be reminded of a different song on the same lines, or laughingly accuse the MD of plagiarising a bit from Disney, or the back room of the Mitre would turn into an impromptu post-rehearsal bardic circle. And then they introduced me to New Year... which consisted, and still does, of 50-100 people aged 17 to 40-mumble spending 3 days in a Scout camp drinking, singing, trading bits of costume, drinking some more, dressing up, cooking and eating an enormous ham, dancing a ceilidh, playing a few board games, deciding to go for a walk, not bothering... I should have hated it (I've still never got the hang of the board games) and instead decided very firmly that I had found My People, dredged up my memories of Scout songs, Tom Lehrer and the odd sea shanty, and when all else failed looked keen and joined in the chorus.

Not the least of this year's losses is that 2020 cannot truly end, because at 23.55 on New Year's Eve there will not be enough of us gathered together anywhere to strip the willow to a medley of sci-fi theme tunes by the Impromptu Kitchen Ceilidh Band.

The music grew on me, I suppose - sea songs and murder ballads, show tunes from forgotten shows, filk songs and satires and parodies and bits and pieces from who knows where. Later I discovered Oxford had a serious folk scene, which was rather too authentically beardy, and later than that, the non-serious folk scene and particularly the utterly marvellous Bastard English Session, which defines folk music, to my mind correctly, as anything the folk attending want to sing or play to each other.

So that's folk music for me - warmth and comradeship and the joy of dicking about with words and music for ourselves. I miss it. We'll be back.

b) Windsurfing

This shows how infrequently I update my interests as I haven't been on a windsurfer for 8 years...

My dad was fairly serious about it in its 80s heyday, he learned when he was working in the Caribbean and carried on in the colder waters of West Kirby Marine Lake, where the speed-sailing record for many years was set. And then in about '95 he was blasting along the sea wall, a kid in an Oppie came out of his blind spot, he bailed rather than hit them and wrecked the ligaments in his foot when it didn't come out of the strap.

Fast forward seven years, my parents are divorced and Dad can afford to indulge his less practical hobbies again - plus he's realised he's 45 and the family trick metabolism has gone from "ravenous 24/7" to "off". So he decides to teach the kids to windsurf as he's getting back into it (which is an excuse for more time with us, and buying more shiny kit). One of my sisters hated it, the other one is good at all sport but didn't especially love it. And I found a sport I could actually do, a bit, and even better it involved open water and going fast. Really fast.

We went to West Kirby probably half a dozen weekends a summer until I went to uni, and from when I was old enough not to be immediately kicked out of the hotel bar we went to Dahab in Egypt, up the Sinai coast from Sharm-el-Sheikh, for a week every year, where there's nothing to do but windsurf or dive (I've got my PADI ticket, somewhere, but I never really got to love SCUBA, even in the Red Sea which is spectacular) from breakfast time until the wind dies at 3pm on the dot. We got annual stomach bugs, learned to drink Egyptian rum and haggle with vendors for bricks of Bedouin tea, tourist tat and local gemstones. We left for the last time just as I learned to do a proper carve gybe but even then South Sinai wasn't a safe place to be, and by the next year everyone except the Russians had pretty much fled; the final straw was "Bedouin separatists" (so said the official story) machine-gunning a minibus full of Dutch tourists on the coast road outside Masbat. When we couldn't go to Dahab anymore, and I wasn't an undergrad with unlimited free time, we sort of drifted away from it; Dad got seriously ill, then into road cycling, and I started spending more and more free time on the river or in theatres.

3) Terry Pratchett.

What can I say? One of the wisest funny men, and funniest wise men, I've ever read. 'Good Omens' is my most re-read book by probably a fairly considerable margin (the TV adaptation was great too); I went through a phase of thrusting my copy into the hands of anyone I knew who was going on holiday and making a note of where it had been. I still have it, it is still much better-travelled than I am.

Neil Gaiman hit the nail on the head when he said a lot of people saw Pterry as a jolly old elf, but he was driven by a deep and abiding anger at the injustices of the world. But I never got the sense any of that anger was directed at people in general, or allowed to turn into contempt. What I saw in his writing was anger at the world for daring to be so much less than the sum of its glorious, fascinating, wonderful parts. He's the only Humanist who's ever made humanism feel to me like a positive choice, rather than what's left when you've got rid of all the bits of religion you don't like. He would presumably hate being adopted as a folk saint but if a Humanist equivalent ever evolves, he'd make a very good one.

For all that, he was just hilarious, I could quote bits of his weaker novels for ever without even starting on his better ones.

Oh, this is a bloody mess. But at least now the government have U-turned the mess is partially in the hands of people who are paid (usually not enough, but paid nonetheless) to deal with messes, rather than falling entirely on the heads of a bunch of eighteen-year-olds. We’re not out of the woods yet.

( Detailed ranting about why Ofqual and DfE's catastrophic uselessness is still screwing over students )I don’t know what the right answer to A level grades was. It probably wasn’t “just give them the centre grades to start with” but I’m bloody certain it wasn’t this. I don’t think it was malice or class war or social engineering. I just think nobody in DfE or Ofqual (or their devolved Scottish or Welsh equivalents) cared about the individuals as long as the national figures came out ‘right’.

Current Mood: depressed

Last time I traveled abroad: over New Year 2019-20; a few days with A's family in Maine, then a few more in NYC celebrating a friend's very sensible decision not to marry a complete arse.

Last time I slept in a hotel: 4th January, see above.

Last time I flew in a plane: 5th January, ditto

Last time I took a train: 11 March after seeing Leopoldstadt in London (which is very good indeed, and when the theatres reopen, go and see it)

Last time I took public transport: 16 March, bus to work.

Last time I had a house guest: Got one now for the duration as he'd rather be in my spare room with a nice garden than cooped up in a studio flat in central London with no work to go to.

Last time I got my hair cut: 3rd Jan, regretting not having one before the shutdown now.

Last time I went to the movies: New Emma, late Feb sometime.

Last time I went to the theatre: Pride and Prejudice (sort of) - sneaking under the wire at the Oxford Playhouse on 14 March, the last performance on the main stage there for the foreseeable future. Probably, in hindsight, shouldn't have gone, especially as it was packed to the rafters. But a good show to end on.

Last time I went to a concert: Death to the Mechanisms, 14 Jan.

Last time I went to an art museum: The Ashmolean doesn't count which I guess makes it Portland Museum of Art, New Year's Eve.

Last time I sat down in a restaurant: 9 March, Sunday lunch at the Punter in Osney.

Last time I went to a party: An extremely quiet dinner party on the 7 March.

Last time I played a board game: New Year's Day 2019, I think.

Current Mood: melancholy

My reading list has filled up with Shakespeare. I can't quite match my wife's record (had seen all the plays live, including Two Noble Kinsmen, before her 30th birthday) but I've seen most of them and have Thoughts about many.

All's Well That Ends Well - Seen at the Camden Roundhouse in about 2011

Antony and Cleopatra - produced and set-designed a student production with a sort of Weimar Berlin aesthetic, which would have been quite good had it been at least an hour shorter. Saw the recent National Theatre production with Sophie Okenodo and loved it. It's not the best of the tragedies but I think it might be my favourite.

As You Like It - saw an RSC production a few years ago.

The Comedy of Errors - I think I have only seen this once, an all-male production in NYC in 2013 which was trying slightly too hard to be 'street' and was rather disappointing as the company (I want to say it was Propeller) had done much better things.

Coriolanus - seen at the Donmar, and also much more memorably at the Edinburgh Fringe by a Chinese group, translated into ?Cantonese, taking up every inch of the Playhouse main stage, soundtracked by two live heavy metal bands. Gave up at the interval with severe confusion and a splitting headache; this was not a good show for A to practice her talent for somehow acquiring front-row seats!

Cymbeline - Read it to see if it could possibly make as little sense as it seemed to. Still never seen it.

Hamlet - saw David Tennant at the RSC back in 2006, and several more once A started teaching it, as well as the Branagh movie. I can admire Hamlet as an achievement, the greatest of all English tragedies, etc. but I do find it an oddly hard play to love.

Henry IV, Parts I and II - student production at the pre-ghastly-rebuilding Old Fire Station, RSC production at the Barbican (sat in the gallery, so I spent most of the show regretting that choice rather than enjoying what was a perfectly good production), and combined into one 105min show starring Harriet Walter as Henry IV at the Donmar, which was absolutely fantastic.

Henry V - I wrote the programme notes for a school production way, way back, and saw it somewhere in Massachusetts a few years ago, but most of my experience of it is through the Olivier and Branagh movies. My in-laws uniformly detest this play, I rather like it, but it goes in the box with Chesterton and Kipling where it would be ever so much better if not for a large minority of its fans.

Henry VI, Parts I, II and III - seen at the Globe when they did the three Parts in one day, though I admit to wandering off to the pub for the second half of Part 2 in search of dinner.

Henry VIII - A directed it in 2010, otherwise I would never have got anywhere near it.

Julius Caesar - seen several productions, the best one being at the Bridge in 2017 with the pit audience playing the Mob. Just after a contentious general election it felt terrifyingly real. Also featured a surprisingly brilliant Casca - not a part I had previously thought twice about. Another one done by Harriet Walter at the Donmar, saw that on its third revival by which time I think some of the energy and freshness had gone out of it.

King John - neither seen nor read

King Lear - saw at the National in 2013 with Simon Russell Beale, confirming my opinion that he is clearly very good but I don't like him in anything. Must have seen a couple of others but they don't stick in my mind.

Love's Labour's Lost - saw the brilliant RSC production set in 1914 as a double-header with Much Ado.

Macbeth - I was in a really dire musical adaptation at school age 11, and I mean diabolical, to the point where my total lack of singing ability didn't even register. Have seen several productions since but can't think of anything particularly interesting about them, other than opportunities to be mean about the more 'provocative' kind of student drama.

Measure for Measure - saw a student production which was set largely in the dark so I have absolutely no idea what was going on.

The Merchant of Venice - I was in this age 9, as a sort of chorus/narrator figure filling in the gaps made by cutting it down for primary schools. Why one would do Merchant as a primary school play is not a question I have ever been able to satisfactorily answer, and the teacher responsible is now long dead.

The Merry Wives of Windsor - neither seen nor read

A Midsummer Night's Dream - I read this before I saw it, and thought it was great. I have now seen it 13 times and never, ever liked a production. I now give up.

Much Ado about Nothing - my favourite Shakespeare comedy and probably my favourite play. Favourite production is a tossup between the Branagh movie and the David Tennant / Catherine Tate West End one. Tennant was a better Benedick than Branagh, but Emma Thompson as Beatrice was perfect. Oh sod it, Tate/Tennant win for not featuring Keanu Reeves. I saw the Joss Whedon one in cinemas, hated it at the time, but it has rather grown on me. "Love's Labours Won" at the RSC was fine but not as good as LLL.

Othello - Until the RSC one last year I had only seen a student production which suffered from the only black man in the Society being completely unwilling to play Othello, and was rather unconvincingly re-cast with the Moor as a (white) Cold War defector. Memorable mostly for a wonderful sound design by a chap who is now navigating bombers in the RAF.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre - neither seen nor read

Richard II - saw the RSC production with David Tennant, one of the best things I have ever seen, and the more recent one with Simon Russell Beale which was not.

Richard III - I have only seen this live once. I really don't know how that can be. I have seen the McKellen film, which is excellent.

Romeo and Juliet - seems to have almost as magnetic an attraction for producers of garden shows as the Dream, though at least I've managed to enjoy some of them. The one ripping off the women's prison setting from Harriet Walter was particularly good. The one on the lawns of Conwy Castle in a thunderstorm was not.

The Taming of the Shrew - Produced a student double-header with Fletcher's 'The Tamer Tam'd' in 2011, seen the BBC version, I know I've seen another on stage but it clearly didn't make an impression. But to be honest, '10 Things I Hate About You' is the best screen adaptation out there

The Tempest - I had enormously high hopes for the RSC production even though it was starring Simon Russell Beale. Unfortunately, I was right to one side of the gallery in the Barbican and the undoubtedly magnificent tech was not focused correctly, so it didn't look nearly as impressive as it could have. Harriet Walter was very good as Prospero. Two of the worst shows I have seen in my life were Tempests; one was a student adaptation into a pantomime, the other was in the ruins of the Rose Theatre, aka a flooded underground car park. Each group of characters were costumed in a wildly different period (the servants as '70s American tourists and the courtiers as vaguely Restoration gentry spring to mind) and the only cool moment was when a spectral figure appeared across the flooded bit bearing a torch - unfortunately, he turned out to be a workman checking the railings were safe.

Timon of Athens - neither seen nor read.

Titus Andronicus - in 2012-3 this briefly became an amazingly fashionable and topical play which I saw four of in a year. The RSC and OUDS each spattered blood all over the place, the latter all over me. There was Titus: The Pantomime, over which we decently draw a veil, and there was an all-female space opera production at the Fringe which... happened. All except the RSC more or less played the OTT violence for laughs, which I think is probably the only thing you can do with it.

Troilus and Cressida - Seen this twice, once in an Oxford college hall with lots of climbing up the walls which was definitely not approved by H&S, or the Bursar, once the RSC 2018 production. This really is fanfic, I love it, it's ridiculous, it's probably not particularly "good" and I really don't care. I also have a weird fondness for Pandarus.

Twelfth Night - my other favourite comedy. Seen quite a few, the one with Mark Rylance as Olivia and Stephen Fry as Malvolio was probably the best along with the '90s film version with Ian Richardson and Ben Kingsley. I don't especially like most of the principals in this, but the minor characters are so much fun.

Two Gentlemen of Verona - neither seen nor read.

The Winter's Tale - seen this twice with interesting Paulinas, viz. my wife making a relatively rare appearance on stage (normally she directs) and Judi Dench. Both productions were really rather good.

Current Mood: accomplished

Meme from various sources
"No googling allowed on this meme. Every answer must start with the first letter of your middle name."

A

Animal.............. Antelope
Girl's name......... Alexandra
Boy's name.......... Arthur
Colour.............. Amber
Food................ Aubergine
Something you wear.. Assless chaps?
Drink............... Amaretto
Place............... Abingdon
Restaurant.......... At Thai, High St, Oxford
Reason to be late... Arguing with people who are Wrong On The Internet
Job title........... Air traffic controller

I am cautiously hopeful that the TIGgers might actually manage to achieve something, but why in the name of Lloyd George's sainted left toenail should 100,000 Lib Dems "join" 11 second-rate backbenchers whose principle unifying feature is they agree with our flagship policy (and on sod all else)? Other way round, surely?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/26/independent-group-lib-dems-vince-cable-westminster-sdp

Current Mood: grumpy

(From everywhere, most recently

legionseagle

How old are you?
Early thirties

Tattoos?
Absolutely not.

Ever hit a deer?
Pheasant and something I think was a cat, but never a deer.

Ridden in an ambulance?
Nope

Sang karaoke?
Once - at the Edinburgh Fringe. The Lightning Seeds. I've also done a reasonable amount of frequently drunk and invariably terrible folk singing, but I'm not sure that quite counts.

Ice skated?
Oddly not.

Ridden a motorcycle?
It is the only thing my mother has absolutely forbidden me ever to do. Also my stepfather is an orthopaedic surgeon, so I have lots and lots of horror stories about what will inevitably happen if I get on a motorbike...

Stayed in hospital?
Once, suspected meningitis, turned out to just be a really, really bad migraine.

Skipped school?
We had Games on a Wednesday afternoon and if you did rowing or swimming you had to get a bus across town. The temptation to get off in the centre on a wet winter's day and go sit in Starbucks was strong.

Last phone call?
To my grandma

Last text from?
A friend agreeing to look in on a mutual acquaintance who has had a bad couple of weeks and is not tracking too well.

Watched someone die?
No, thank God, though there was one terrifying night when I seriously thought I might.

Pepsi or Coke?
Coke

Favorite pie?
Most pies are good. A dear friend uses the phrase "a very special pie" to describe people who are just lovely, which I think is wonderful. On that basis, Cath I guess. Favourite actual pie, probably apple.

Favorite pizza?
Quattro formaggi or the Gardeners' spinach and feta calzone. I'm hungry now dammit.

Favorite season?
Late autumn - bonfires and crisp breezes.

Broken bones?
Little toe.

Received a ticket?
One parking, one speeding in 13 years, not too bad.

Favorite color?
Oxford blue, which I suppose I'm contractually obliged to say.

Sunset or sunrise?
Sunrise over the river.

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machiavellijr

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