Trismegistus

Challenge #13

Make a rec list of fanworks! Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

So I decided to do something a little different for this and post 10 of my favorite fanworks by musical artists of or about other artists, books, TV shows, or movies.

Beck - Rollins Power Sauce and Ozzy
These two tracks are off of Stereopathetic Soulmanure, a Beck album many people probably don't even know exists. He recorded it in 1994 and it's wonderful and possibly the weirdest thing he's ever done. I love how these tracks simultaneously tease and pay homage to their subjects.

Bloodhound Gang - Your Only Friends Are Make Believe
Bloodhound Gang is snotty and crude and probably not for everyone (including, sometimes, me), but I do love this winking send-up of Mr. Rogers set to the music from Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf. (Caveat: This is the official music video but I have no idea what's actually in it, so viewer beware.)

Grimes - Geidi Primes
Back before Grimes was *blech* Elon's baby mama she was a musical genius recording solo albums in her bedroom. Geidi Primes was the first, it's heavily inspired by Dune, and it is a phenomenal piece of music even if you don't know anything about the subject material. "Feyd Rautha Dark Heart" (starting at 12:52) is the best Siouxsie and the Banshees track not actually written by Siouxsie and the Banshees and "Shadout Mapes" (starting at 24:15) is one of the creepiest, most atmospheric, wonderful things I've ever heard.

Iced Earth - The Dark Saga
Basically, it's Spawn. And it's excellent.

Pillows - Kim Deal
I have probably listened to this love song to Kim Deal and her songwriting more than any other track on earth. It's simultaneously a Pillows song and a Breeders song, and the lyrics are wonderful both in terms of the words themselves and the artistry of the vowel rhyming that's going on. I freaking love this song.

Presidents of the United States of America - Mach 5
Being an ode to, if not Speed Racer itself, the excitement and joy of being a little kid and watching the Speed Racer opening title. This track is off of PUSA's second album; did you know they recorded at least four other albums after that?

Rasputina - Sweet Sister Temperance
Melora Creager is so talented; no one can create a pre-1850 American gothic mood like her. This song is an homage to Emily Dickinson, and sort of encapsulates what I love about both Rasputina and that poet.

Toadies - Polly Jean
This is so, so obviously a love song to P.J. Harvey and I love it. (And P.J. And Toadies.)

これで以上です。

Challenge #12
Tell Us about a Personal Win.

I made a list of goals for the Day 2 challenge. A lot of them, though, are "Do XYZ by the end of the year" whereas people who study things like motivation, habit creation, and human psychology recommend framing goals so that your progress is more immediately achievable and observable. (Oops!) In the interest of getting my goals closer to the latter, ( let's see where my wins are three weeks on: )
So, yeah, a lot of wins so far!

これで以上です。

Challenge #6

In your own space, share a favourite piece of original canon (a show, a specific TV episode, a storyline, a book or series, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much. . Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

It's no secret that I've had Good Omens on the brain since I finished watching S2. This is a gratifying surprise, because I'd initially been quite skeptical of the idea that an S2 was even necessary, let alone that I would like it. Additionally, I've always suspected that the things I like most about the novel originated with Pratchett, and that without that essential Pratchett-ness, the Gaiman-ness I do like would be outweighed by the Gaiman-ness I don't.

Here's how the first episode convinced me otherwise:

(N.B.: Spoilers for Good Omens Season 2, episode 1 "The Arrival" and The Sandman issue 6 "24 Hours".)

Gaiman doesn't so much imagine new stories as recycle elements from existing ones in interesting ways (which I like about his stuff) and he has a definite thing for body horror, frequently body horror happening to female bodies (which I very much don't like about his stuff).

The former is in evidence throughout S2, and is probably one of the reason I like it so much, and why I feel it fits so well with the OG novel. But S2 episode 1 introduces some new characters, namely the female owner of a vinyl store who has an unrequited crush on the female owner of a coffee shop. Partway through the episode, they end up getting magically trapped in the coffee shop, whose owner begins freaking out because they have no way to contact the outside world and her abusive girlfriend is not going to be happy that shes out of touch. It's at this point I started thinking Oh god, no, because lesbians, abuse, forced confinement in a food establishment? I'd seen this before.

Specifically, in "24 Hours", the sixth issue of Gaiman's Sandman, in which a sociopath uses a magical amulet to trap a group of people in a diner and toy with them until they lose their minds. One of those patrons is a lesbian who's come there after having struck her girlfriend during an argument. While trapped inside, she's sexually menaced by one of the straight patrons and it's implied that she's dubconned into having sex with one or more them. Gaiman has her stab her eyes out with a pair of skewers in the issue's climax. Hers is the most graphic death, and the only graphic nudity, in the issue.

Even back in the late '90s, when it was generally cool to use casual homophobia for shocks or "humor" in mainstream media, and when pretty much every non-straight couple's plot arc seemingly had to end in tragedy, I remember being pissed off at how Gaiman treated this character.

So I was viscerally uncomfortable when our two new Good Omens S2 characters got locked into that coffee shop, because Gaiman recycles elements from existing stories. This was Good Omens and 2024, so I knew whatever happened to them was unlikely to be as bad as what happened in "24 Hours", but whatever "it" was going to be, I didn't think it would be good.

Imagine, then, my surprise when the two characters have an awkward, but civil conversation, and work together to get out. Maybe these two scenes are completely unrelated. Maybe Gaiman wasn't even thinking about "24 Hours" when he wrote "The Arrival". But given how recycling bits of older stories is his thing, and given how much he recycles bits from older stories throughout S2, I like to think Gaiman was thinking about that scene—and consciously undoing his mistakes from 30 years ago. Either way, that's how I'm choosing to think of it unless/until I have evidence to the contrary.

And while it's by far not the only thing in that first episode that convinced me to keep watching, it was an important one.

これで以上です。

Challenge #9

Rec Us Your Newest Thing. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Right now, everything old is my Newest Thing again. Maybe it's because chez lebateleur has recently emerged from the bout of seasonal illness we thought we'd successfully avoided, or the recent snowfall (the most accumulation since 2016 🥳), but my recent fandom consumption is very old favorite focused.( Read more... )

As far as earworms go, I have been all over Pádraic Keane, Páraic Mac Donnchadha, and Macdara Ó Faoláin's live album Beo since the first time I heard it. These guys get what the tunes are about (And as one Bandcamp commentator put it, that bass drone.) It's good, good stuff.

これで以上です。

Challenge #7

Make a list of fannish and/or creative resources. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Want to record a podfic, edit together a soundtrack, or do something else cool with audio? Audacity is where it's at.

Forget Goodreads. If you want to retrieve trivia about a book or find on-point recommendations of similar things to read that you'll probably like, LibraryThing is where it's at.

Forget Microsoft. If you want to write, log your media consumption, or make a few icons, LibreOffice and Open Office are where it's at.


これで以上です。

Challenge #4

IceBreaker Challenge! Tell us about yourself. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I feel like I covered the broad "about me" topics in my response to Day 1, so here's a bit more about me at the micro level. As of January 8, 2024, the most recent:

• Book I've read is Martin Scott's Thraxas and the Warrior Monks, which I finished a couple of hours ago.
• Song I've listened to is "I Hold The Sound" off of The Thermal's The Body, the Blood, the Machine.
• Television I've watched is Our Flag Means Death season 2, episode 3.
• Thing I've written is 142 words in response to one of the prompts I got here. 😎
• Game I've played is Baldur's Gate 2.
• Irish flute tune I've learned is Old Man Dillon.
• Deck I've read with was Eric Tecce's Shadow Light Tarot
• Calligraphy script I've practiced was Carolingian minuscule.
• Fountain pen ink I've used is Diamine Inks' Meadow.
• Food I've eaten was carrot lemon leek soup, which I cooked tonight.

これで以上です。

Challenge #2

In your own space, set yourself some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Behold: ( A List of 24 Goals for 2024. )

これで以上です。