Beth Winter

It's safe to say I'm enjoying my time off, in the "blissed out on the couch with complete collection of JD Robb ebooks" kind of way. Which means I haven't been reading much Yuletide except Those That Matter.

The Feats of Monsters (1914 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Tiger & Bunny
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Yuri Petrov | Lunatic, Mr. Legend, Kaburagi T. Kotetsu | Wild Tiger
Summary:

Yuri watched three times as a monster saved an innocent, only to realize that the third time he was the monster himself.

This is the fic that had me giggling far, far too much :D I loved Tiger & Bunny and thought Lunatic was hopelessly underutilised (but that might have been just because he hit all my buttons at once). I asked for gen, got just that and IC adorableness to boot.

Fortune, Fate, Freedom (2365 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Echo Bazaar
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Cheesemonger, Player (Echo Bazaar)
Summary:

Are we the sum of our choices, or are we our fate?

I got choose-your-own-adventure! Fantastic multi-branching storyline with my favourite Cheesemonger from Echo Bazaaar.

Dream to Dream (1509 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Echo Bazaar
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: The Delicious Friend
Summary:

A day in the life of a delicious friend.

This was a Treat (I'm not sure which of the above two was my main fic, and since my request went out for pinch hit anyway, that doesn't quite matter), and it's a gem. The author got the Echo Bazaar voice down pat, and there are kitties galore <3

And one rec, because this fic is FANTASTIC and even if you don't know the fandom, you should read it. And listen to the songs. Because yes, she wrote and recorded the songs to boot :D

The Big Gay Episode (8086 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Horrible Histories
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Rattus Rattus, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, Richard Barnfield, William Shakespeare, James I of England, Philippe d'Orleans, Chevalier de Lorraine, Elisabeth Charlotte von der Pfalz, Henry IV of England, Sir John Falstaff, Richard II of England, Eleanor Charlotte Butler, Sarah Posonby, Basil I of Byzantium, Michael III of Byzantium, Franz Schubert, Goethe, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, Alexander Hamilton, Oscar Wilde, The Grim Reaper (Horrible Histories), Charles II of England, Samuel Pepys, Hortense Mancini
Summary:

The cast and crew of Horrible Histories CBBC takes the piss out of Gay and Lesbian history. Sketches include: “Internatyonal Man of Myfterie”, “The Lesbians who Don’t Do Anything”, “Henry Bollingbroke Doesn’t Like Dick”, and three new Savage Songs!

(Bonus: I somehow managed to miss the fact Horrible Histories was at the Proms this year. Full broadcast here, which is glorious and a good intro to Horrible Histories, and the usual suspects should watch it AT ONCE.)

I produced a mediocre number of stories for Yuletide, and at least two are of the "...it's you, isn't it?" kind, so feel free to guess in the comments!

After three months of trying, and thanks to zenicurean, I my Echo Bazaar character is now in possession of a Starveling Cat.

reynardine is probably not the only person who wondered about why I tweet inane rhymes about that creature, so, below, an Echo Bazaar primer plus extra musings.

( Echo Bazaar basics )

Starveling Cat!
Starveling Cat!
It knows what we think
And we don't like that!

( Me and Echo Bazaar )

Oh, and I love the Starveling Cat: Another resident of Fallen London wishes you to look after this deranged and monstrous clot of spitting mangy fur. The Starveling Cat has moved into your Lodgings. May God have mercy on your souls.

I'm still in studying hell (fingers crossed on Saturday, please!) but concert schedules have their own rhythm. I don't remember that much from the one on Monday, but that is mostly because I was fading with blood pressure swings. I hope they didn't think I was asleep ~.~ I did notice that Jakub had new photos in the background slideshow - including ones from the Oberhausen concert where they let him open the second act as Phantom. I just about fell over when I saw that part!

(It did feature the one and only Wenn Liebe in Dir Ist as a Sarah-Herbert duet, because our second Alfred skipped out at the last moment and Sarah was in the audience anyway.)

Other people's clips:

One Song Glory - I do like the take on the song.

Till I Hear You Sing Once More - ...yes, you're one of my favourite Phantoms, stop making me interested in Paint Never Dries!

And that goes double for you, dear girl.

I Dreamed a Dream - EDYTA ♥

A Heart Full of Love - driving home the point that he should have been in Les Mis.

And the greatest surprise: the ushers/stagehands, a pair of complete newcomers, looking both all of 16, and bringing the house down with Boote in der Nacht. Go kids!

WHY DIDN'T I KNOW ABOUT THIS???

On top of the exhaustion I've managed to catch a cold, but with the short-handed team at work, I had to muddle through it. Packages to everyone waiting for them will be sent today ♥

I've spent the week glued to Twitter, mainly, catching up on the Japan news. At help_japan there are several thousand wonderful offers you can bid on, all money to go to charity (and donated by you to one of several reputable charities directly, so that you can be sure money isn't mislaid). I still have one free slot on my fanfic offer - your chance to get, for a donation, fanfic written in any obscure fandom we share, to your specification :)

I've seen misinformation that as a rich country, Japan doesn't need donations; I'll let UNICEF explain how for the first time in 46 years, this major charity contributor country needs help on its own.

Flat update: all furniture that needed putting together, is put together. Still not clean, because the cleaning lady was off sick, but that's on Monday. Most importantly - it's hooked up to the internet, and thus classes as livable :D Which is a good thing, because I've been informed someone is going to be sleeping in my room here on Friday. Oops?

Finally, I've had problems with LiveJournal notifications since March 1st. Now that I've switched to Gmail and some delayed ones came through, it may be resolved, but if I missed your response to a comment - or your entry, in my fog of exhaustion and illness - please let me know!

...I've spent the day glued to Twitter and news sites. It looks like things are mostly in hand by now, and my hat is most definitely off to Japanese engineers and emergency responders - it seems incredible that after a disaster like this the death toll isn't in the tens of thousands.

Everyone I know is all right, though shaken. InFocus has pictures. At #18, it really hit me hard: "Dammit, I have photos of this place. I was there." That, and the news that the Tokyo theatre of my favourite revue remains open all night for theatregoers who can't get home when the trains aren't running, a performance of Romeo et Juliette suspended during intermission.

(And Twitter consensus seems to be that the Red Cross may be the optimal donation route for the time being.)

Recs later, because I'm still hyperventilating over my two gifts :D

Gazing into the Abyss - Archduchess Sophie and Death, and oh, a perfect arc for her, showing her strength and mind and emotion. (Also, I believe I spy a Japanese Death ♥)

Raindrops - Yes. That would be MY Oscar and Alain ♥ Fwee doesn't begin to describe it.

A few people on my f-list have already linked to Elizabeth Moon's diatribe on why immigrants should shut up and change to be just like everyone else. I didn't comment on it, because I literally couldn't find the words.

Shweta Narayan says it more eloquently than I ever could.

I have the luck of spending most of my childhood in a country where others are like me, and of a multi-cultural education from the cradle. But I was also a Slav travelling in Western Europe just after communism ended. I was nine years old, in a supermarket in Paris, and I talked to my mother in halting, broken French, because I knew that if I spoke Polish, everyone in the shop would stare and follow us to make sure we didn't steal anything.

As a backup for when I have neither newspaper nor a physical book on my commute, I have MobiReader installed on both my phones (the personal Toodo and professional Lucheni). I have a variety of free e-books to tide me over, and I tend to pick things that are either not too engrossing - like Dickens - or that come in small chunks, since each time I'm looking at my 10-minute commute or a similar period of waiting for someone. The other factor in favour of short reading times is the smallness of the phones' screens, especially Lucheni's.

Guess which phone I loaded up with Helen S. Wright's A Matter of Oaths.

The thing is, it's her only book. She published it in 1988, and she's only now gearing up to write another. (She's arkessian@Dreamwidth.) I. Can't. Wait.

A Matter of Oaths is a space opera without infodumps, a political novel with a spare cast, a tapestry condensed into the one thread of weave and one of weft that still conveys it all. There's the man who broke an oath, but he cannot remember why he broke it, because the punishment is taking away your memories. There is the woman who refuses to acknowledge age, weakness, or anything but the strength of her will. (Rallya, incidentally, is awesome.) There are all those mysteries that - just like in real life - pass by on the edges, and you don't have time to look because of how fast you're rushing by. My eyes hurt, significantly, from staring at the small screen once I was done.

(And there's definitely something for the slash fans. And for fans of strong female characters not defined by either their sexuality or reproductive potential. And both romance and platonic friendship and everything in between.)

And best of all: it's out of print, but Helen made it available as an ebook, for free, in PDF and e-Pub and MobiReader.

Helen S. Wright, A Matter of Oaths

(Mind you, after this much fun out of it, I dropped a few quid in her PayPal tip jar. And if it were reprinted, I'd buy it. In a heartbeat.)

Beautiful interactive painting from the National Palace Museum (Republic of China). Also offering very pretty Year of the Tiger wallpapers.

(China's another place I'd love to make it to, based on my grandfather's tales. Language barrier scares me a bit, but then a colleague was there recently on his own and managed fine...)