Cimorene

Hello, new people and fellow rediscoverers of DW!

In light of Tumblr Exodus I thought I would point to the bio in my profile and the blanket permission statement there (though in short: comments from new people are welcome; feel free to follow me; feel free to introduce yourself if we don't know one another; almost nothing is access-locked). For anyone newly subscribing to this blog, you may be interested in the introduction post 10 Things I Assume You Know About Me If You Read My Journal (this was a meme that went around LJ in 2006. I've just had it pinned to my profile & periodically updated)(though in short: I'm 36 and have been in fandom since 2001; waxjism is my wife).

I have been using Tumblr more than DW over the past few years, and am now making an active effort to increase my engagement here. (I need to look for more communities, I suppose.) I used to do 'what am I reading and what am I watching' sort of roundups here, and I haven't done one in ages; therefore, here's a hopefully comprehensive ( Survey of My Fannish and Non-Fandom Interests and Hobbies )

So I saw a remark on Pinboard that perfectly encapsulated my sense of 'WHY' when reading a lot of old fandom fic, and also about my own teeniefic: "hilariously unsexy".

"Hilariously unsexy" certainly doesn't cover everything unique about old fandoms or teeniefic; it just captured the thought that had been on the tip of my tongue as well after reading a lot of old Legolas/Gimli fic (and also the problem with the ones I wrote) (not ALL Legolas/Gimli by any means, just a lot of it).

Obviously, writing sex isn't the only thing that gets better about one's writing with practice, but I started thinking about how that is true of all my teeniefic. Trying to write better sex is, I think, something many of us have struggled with, and I often got hung up at that bit in a story and went back to look at my older ones over the years, trying to analyze which bits I'd done right and wrong. So while it wasn't a straight upward trend in my own eyes - there are some I liked better and some I hate completely - in general, it got better.

I was musing that I actually remember the first time I read many of the stories that now appear to have glaring weaknesses in the sex sections, and I clearly remember liking them or loving them at the time. I remember finding them hot at the time.

"So in my defense, I also genuinely liked reading hilariously unsexy sex at the time," I mused.

But it wasn't that. It wasn't like I thought, "I'm going to read some sexy sex and I love that. Now I'm going to read unsexy sex and I like that too." (Not ruling that out. I do it sometimes. Getting the giggles isn't necessarily a detriment.)

Ultimately I realized that at the time, I couldn't tell the difference between sexy and hilariously unsexy sex scenes (has the word 'sex' lost all meaning for anyone else or should I type it a few more times?). I'm not sure it actually occurred to me that the world contained both of those things. I literally could discern no difference among sex scenes; they were essentially all the same to me, although of course, sometimes I'd like one better or worse, and sometimes I wouldn't like one, but that was usually a matter of squicks or wandering bodyparts or unreadable punctuation - certainly not a matter of unsexiness.

And then I realized something else. The reason the sex scenes in slash mostly all seemed quite sexy to me was that in comparison to the sex scenes I'd been exposed to until that point, they were. ( Read more... )

Even sex that is hilariously unsexy by fandom standards is usually sexier than the average published sex scene.

Only after reading tons of slash, for a long time, did the shapes of 'good' and 'bad' emerge from the mist. It was sort of the way I learned to distinguish between Swedish and Finnish vowel sounds that don't exist (or are grouped together as only one sound) in English. It took a lot of listening for that, just as it took a lot of reading during which 'unsexy' and 'sexy' sex writing became clearer and clearer.

And now, of course, the difference between "yö" and "öy", and between the various sounds covered in Swedish by Å, O, and U, seem blindingly obvious, just as bad sex writing does, but I can still clearly remember when it just sounded like Wax and my teacher were repeating the same exact sound over and over again and expecting me to hear the difference, like Lina's diction coach in Singin' in the Rain.

Remember when I said that the local theater's doing Singin' in the Rain in Finnish with hilariously incongruous casting? Yeah. Here's the promo picture side-by-side with the artwork it's imitating (I presume the fat guy is probably Cosmo, in which case they've staged it backwards; but if it's Don, that's so fascinating and enchanting - a fat romantic lead, that NEVER happens - that it's clearly a purposeful political statement, and I take back everything I've said).





Click for bigger versions.

I wanted to note, though, that in response to my initial rant, my beloved shiroi_chi said that you can't really see what the actors on the stage actually look like anyway, and they don't have to be classically pretty to be awesome and that's kind of what she loves about theater. And she has a point there, I mean, surely in casting SITR to be viewed in spotlights on a stage from a distance in the dark, the dancing skills are what counts. If they've cast for dancing skills, well, they probably still don't have Gene Kelly or Donald O'Connor, but it could be awesome.

And also I agree with her, that is awesome, and Enya knows Hollywood has always put way too much emphasis on looks, right? But on the other hand, SITR is a film about Hollywood, and actually problematizes the question of looks - you know, not thoroughly, but a bit - in the form of Lina. Don's looks, particularly, are important to the plot.

And on a note of I'm-running-out-of-hands, if theater lets people who don't meet ridiculous beauty standards compete specifically because they can't be seen then in other words... it's not actually fighting those standards at all, it's just saying 'here, you can PRETEND that you DO conform to these stupid fascist beauty standards'. From a point of view of challenging ridiculous beauty standards, you kinda need to be able to tell what people look like.

And finally, leaving all that behind, Chi said she might go see it just to piss me off. And I realized that since this production will be in Finnish, and I know Singin' in the Rain pretty much by heart, seeing it would actually probably be a pretty cool way to improve my Finnish. And even if it didn't make much difference to my skillz, it would be fascinating and my prior knowledge (coupled with incredibly elementary Finnish skillz, LOL) should enable me to follow the events onstage. So if she meant that I might tag along. If that won't take away too much from your satisfaction at pissing me off, shiroi_chi.

Wax tells me some fools are putting on a Finnish stage version of Singin' in the Rain, my favorite movie.



It's eminently suited to stage, don't get me wrong. The problem is that apparently Don and Cosmo are being played by fat middle-aged guys. Leaving aside the athletic DANCE MASTERY exhibited by these characters, that's still foolish.

The entire plot of SITR hinges on this dude



being the hottest heartthrob in Hollywood, which is why they cast Gene Kelly who, aging though he was, kind of was.

So... come on, seriously you guys.



You guys. Seriously.




OT3 represent ♥

Yes, for Yuletide I was rather ironically assigned to write fanfiction for my oldest OTP3, the one canon I essentially know by heart (I'm very glad I was, though)!

You're the Cream in My Coffee is ≈8400 words (or you can see it on the Yuletide site). mecurtin graciously provided a last-minute pinch-hit beta for which she has earned lots of undying gratitude, since she saved my sanity when I was panicking and enabled me to post on time.

Any Singin' in the Rain story must be a musical, of course, and having used up all the excess music from the soundtrack the last time I wrote it, I went to research period music. That research helped shape the course of the story (and provided the title!) and I got quite caught up in it. Which brings me to the real point of this post. I've been dying to share my awesome 20s music for a month! And therefore I present:

• The soundtrack playlist I made on YouTube to provide an audio reference for the numerous songs quoted or name-checked in the story is reproduced with this downloadable rar file: You're the Cream in My Coffee [rar, password "timothy"] (In a few cases, the download is a different version of the song; and there are just a couple of extras that I couldn't bring myself to take off the soundtrack, though I ended up not mentioning them in the text).



• But there were plenty of songs I liked which didn't make the story, so here's a bonus: The Roaring 20s! [rar, password timothy] Also a couple of er, surprises that aren't period-accurate but simply couldn't be excluded from my extended writing playlist.

My most exciting discovery was Helen Kane, who is the original Boop-Boop-a-Doop girl! So called because she coined the phrase in her first hit, which catapulted her to megastardom pretty much immediately, and her signature 'boop-a-doop' style scat is audible in all the songs of hers in those files (which is... quite a few!). Betty Boop was an utterly shameless ripoff of her, with the dude who invented it hiring some other chick to imitate her voice for the cartoon. She sued, but the case didn't make it before a jury because a judge threw it out after the defense dug up an essentially completely unknown blues singer who had also, while singing scat, "booped" (and since she didn't invent it, the imitation of her voice, verbal tics, and even appearance apparently wasn't a ripoff). Methinks (said Wax) that someone paid off the judge. Whatever, I gather (thanx Wiki ♥) that she lived a long and happy life as a restauranteur after retiring from showbiz, so that's okay.

ETA! ( tracklists )

Because I first started to memorize Singin' in the Rain when I was so wee that I don't actually remember the first time I watched it, certain things about it I have always taken for granted without really noticing them. For instance, when I watched it for about the 100th time yesterday I realised the lines in Gene Kelly's face mean he is old, and then I found out thanks to IMDb that, though they're playing age-mates, he was 40 when the film was released and Donald O'Connor was 27. Debbie Reynolds was 20, but she says in the commentary track that she was 18 when she met Gene or signed onto the project, I forget which. So she's playing her age, but I think Don and Cosmo are both meant to be somewhere around the average of O'Connor and Kelly - maybe 33, 35.

Now I have this nagging urge to write an AU where they're their physical ages and aren't lifelong friends. I'm not really sure what I'd do with that, except it would be a chance to see Don and Cosmo as strangers - if I can even imagine that. Maybe putting them into the plot of The Dancing Cavalier, because I've always wondered about the rest of the modern section outside of the "Broadway Melody" number.

Sadly, there's not a very, er, active fandom to appreciate my efforts (tree falling in a fandom forest completely empty of readers?), although the audience for SITR OT3 is pretty dedicated and steady, if not numerous. I still get a regular trickle of feedback on the semi-epic I posted four years ago, practically like clockwork.

Some of these you've seen before if you're on my friendslist. I just thought I'd like to offer up some spares that aren't doing anyone any good on my harddrive. I haven't shared any icons since guinevere33's and my ex-community vanished. No comments necessary, but credit is.



( Read more... )

last night i was prompted to make caps of the gene kelly/cyd charisse green-dress dance number from singin' in the rain. it's a really sexy and fun dance. and man, do i want her costume.



i have an .avi of the movie, if anyone wants it.

i'm not surprised no one got the quote from don't eat the pictures, but what about singin in the rain?  come ON, people, honestly!

1. "You're not through!" "Why, with your face and figure you could dig ditches."

that's kathy and cosmo to don after the disastrous premiere of the dueling cavalier, before they decide to turn it into a musical. 

DON:  thanks, guys, but i'm through.  after the dueling cavalier no one'd pay to see me jump off the woolworth building into a damp rag.
KATHY: don, you're NOT through!

...etc.  i'm very disappointed in you!

8. "Let's count noses." "Okay, one nose, two nose, three noses..." "No no no, I meant people."

that's maria and the count in don't eat the pictures, a childhood favorite in which the cast of sesame street are locked in the met overnight.