I got to know her through an apa we were in together; through that, I was invited along with a pair of other writers to stay with her in Hatfield, where she had a fifteen-room house, before going to World Fantasy Con. It was Halloween. Her daughter, in high school at the time, breezed in the night before we left for the con to report that she and friends had been going around smashing people's Halloween pumpkins on their porches, and Jane laughed like a fellow teenager, making me feel that she was ageless. Also I wondered if smashing pumpkins was a thing. (There was a band called Smashing Pumpkins.)
On the drive to the con, I was in the front seat and two other writers in the back. Jane was talking writing as she drove. (Very fast.) I gained the impression that she respected everybody who was trying to write, wherever they were along the path, but impatient with those who wanted to have written. (Writers know what I mean, for example the folks who say, "I've an idea, but I'm too busy to sit down and write it. How about me telling it to you, you write it, and we'll split the profits?" or, further along the weedy path, plagiarists who seem to need to be known as writers but can't quite do the work themselves.)
Then she asked us what we were writing, and my friends in the back described their project--they wrote together as collaborators. Then it was my turn and I said I was writing a sequel in a sequence. She said, "How many books are in this sequence?" and I said, "One hundred and thirty-five notebooks." And she slewed around to look at me--while still driving. The car swerved with a dramatic swoop and my friends in the back got saucer-eyed, but Jane straightened out the wheel as she said, "Are they any good?" "Probably not," I said.
Which was oh so true--it's taken me another forty years of slow labor to learn to RE-write, still learning--but that aside, it was a pretty funny episode. She then at that con introduced me to the woman who would become my agent. Which turned out to be problematical to a painful degree, but that was not her fault.
Subsequent meetings were always at cons, or in New York, which included insider data on how the publishing world worked, as she knew all the editors of the day. What a force of nature she was! And how generous to those of us further back on the path!
1. What is place you have visited, or want to visit, that starts with D?
2. What is a food that you like, or don't like, that starts with R?
3. Own anything that starts with the letter M?
4. Know anyone whose name (first, middle, or last) that starts with N?
5. Favorite movie, book, TV show, or song whose title starts with T?
Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.
If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!
I saw a sailor once
shed his skin
as quickly as a crab
sloughs its shell.
He danced alone,
easy in his bones,
amid the coral memories
of his sunken ship.
When he opened his mouth,
little colored fish
swam in and out,
avoiding his brittle teeth,
his stripped and shining jaw.
They were quick and bright
as laughter,
running their zigzag course
through the silent syncopation
of the sea.
—Jane Yolen, "Metamorphosis" (1982)
Author:
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rhi /gryphonrhi on AO3Prompt: Betty Ross walks into a bar and meets... Scooter (The Muppets)
Fandoms: MCU, The Muppet Show
Word count: 1,923
Rating: Gen
Contents: No warnings needed
Summary: Dealing with Thaddeus 'Thunderbutt' Ross would put anyone in a mood. What Betty didn't understand was why the person coming in the door looked like his morning had been just as bad.
AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86548611
Written for Into A Bar and I hope y'all enjoying reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Hollywood Hotel (1937) is otherwise such a prefabricated meta-movie musical that neither
spatch nor I expected it to bust out with the three-minute jam of "Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)" that directly encouraged the legendary 1938 Carnegie Hall concert, but it justifies the entire film especially when it's chased by the integrated magic of the Benny Goodman Quartet on "I've Got a Heartful of Music." I pulled myself upright on the couch at the speed of Pavlov at the instantly recognizable Gene Krupa. The proto-Singin' in the Rain (1952) shenanigans of the plot also offer a chance to see the normally prim and mustached Allyn Joslyn as a clean-shaven, fast-talking publicity heel, in which capacity he is a sarcastic delight, but the total experience really shoots one of its feet off when it sets up a very funny and totally deserved parody of Gone with the Wind and then tops it with blackface. Just watch Lionel Hampton instead.It makes me happy to hear about the musical version of Pride, not least that the original miners and the lesbians and gays who supported them approve.
My mother wasn't joking about Mamdani repealing bedtime.
It took me way too long to get into this because I was too busy going Tran? Bautista?? Florin??? Brittany???? every time a supporting character popped up without an adequate reminder of who they were (like, here I am picturing Florin with the head of a crocodile and nothing the book said either proved or disproved it; imagine reading anything else like that, like, yeah, iirc, Hamlet is a hammerhead shark with robotic legs)(ilu Jamal) but once I stopped caring about that, I had a lot of fun. Just as propulsive as the other books. With a couple of those sneaky big feels that occasionally ambush Carl. And a clever resolution to the eleventh floor.
Contains some actual animal harm, like to actual animals. Plus the usual gore, violence, and conspicuous adherence to a gender binary, including, at one point, the phrase "female boots," like wtf, Dinniman, fucking slap that phrase into Google and put your eyeballs on some ladies footwear and fucking describe it. But even worse is that I think they were probably motorcycle boots and did not need to be gendered at all. Which could be said of a lot of things in this series.
spatch with his CD of Harpo Speaks! The Riverside Symphony Concert (1964/2026) which I had ordered for him the second I knew of its existence. Yesterday I did actually run screaming into the afternoon and took a couple of pictures to prove it.( Thankfully, summer's here. )
WERS played the Last Dinner Party's "Big Dog" (2026) and I have been playing it ever since. I haven't heard someone wail like that into a chorus since '90's PJ Harvey.
Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.
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common_nature (birbs!)
Signal boost:
- Via
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dw_community_promo - Folks are looking to start doing The Artist's Way together over at theartistsway, hop over and comment if you'd be interested in joining! Expected start on June 28th.
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This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Wednesday June 10, to midnight on Thursday, June 11. (8pm Eastern Time).
How are you doing?
I am OK.
14 (60.9%)
I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
9 (39.1%)
I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)
How many other humans live with you?
I am living single.
9 (39.1%)
One other person.
7 (30.4%)
More than one other person.
7 (30.4%)
Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer’s personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today’s post is with Ellipsis, who volunteers as a Tag Wrangler and also a Technical Assistant for the Communications Committee.
How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
I currently hold two roles with the OTW.
I wrangle tags on AO3 for a couple of smallish fandoms with lots of characters. So I’m frequently digging through wiki pages and scrubbing through episodes to figure out if the character someone tagged is from canon or an OC. It’s always very satisfying to provide new canonical character tags.
I am also the “Technical Assistant” for Communications. My primary responsibility there is managing the “OTW News By Email” automations. I set up all the automations and keep an eye out for and troubleshoot any issues; this occasionally involves reaching out to Systems or the newsletter service’s support team. I also help out if any subscribers reach out for help with their subscriptions. Beyond the “News By Email” stuff, I also help with investigating or suggesting other tech solutions for the Communications committee and occasionally help to write/research some of the more technical news posts.
What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
I do most of my focused volunteer work on the weekends, since I’ve got a full-time job during the week (and by the time I’m done work for the day and figure out food and whatnot I don’t have much time or energy left).
Every Saturday evening I work on Comms tasks. Exactly what I’m doing depends on what I’ve got on my plate. One thing I frequently work on is writing documentation about how the News By Email automation works. (Right now I manage everything myself but it’s important to make sure there is good documentation in case someone else has to hop in and do something.) I also researched and drafted a news post recently, which involved a lot of rounds of feedback from different committees since it was inspired by a request from Support and relates to AD&T. Other common tasks include helping answer support queries about the email subscription, adding new functionality (the ability to subscribe just to recruitment posts went live recently), and cleaning up unsubscribed users.
If something breaks or otherwise goes weird I’ll jump in outside of my standard hours, but most of the time things can wait.
Every other weekend I tend to do wrangling work sometime during the day on Saturday or Sunday. Often I’ll host or attend a “wrangling party” (set times when lots of folks wrangle and cheer each other on). During that time I’ll check through whatever new tags have come in for my fandoms and sort them accordingly. I’ve got a few fandoms with lots of characters, so there are almost always some new characters or relationships to make canonicals for. I’ll also occasionally dig through the additional tags to check if anything has gained enough usages to get a canonical.
What made you decide to volunteer?
I initially joined as a tag wrangler. As an avid reader of fic, a programmer, and someone who finds categorization interesting, I find the tag system on AO3 really awesome. So when I found out how it worked and that you could volunteer to wrangle tags, I started eagerly watching for recruitment posts. It took a couple rounds before there was a post that was recruiting for wranglers for a fandom I had experience with.
A couple of years ago (once I’d been a wrangler for a while), Communications was looking into sending out news posts by email. They asked for volunteers who were willing to be test subjects and report back on receiving emails. However, the services they were testing weren’t a good fit and they were running into a lot of issues. I got curious and fell down a research rabbit hole and suggested another service. The service was one that required a bit more technical knowhow, though, and the volunteers running the test weren’t comfortable setting it up, so I offered to test it out and report back. They ended up going with the service I suggested and asked me to help set it up for real. Then eventually Communications asked me if I was interested in officially joining the committee as a “Technical Assistant.”
What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
Executive functioning. I’ve got ADHD (and Autism) so I struggle with intrinsic motivation and easily lose track of time, especially when I’ve got a full-time job eating all my spoons (energy). When I first started volunteering, I had been laid off and was unemployed so I had a lot of spare time and energy. So finding the balance once I was back to working full time was tricky.
In the last year or so I’ve started being firmer on scheduling specific times to do my volunteer work to help avoid losing track completely. For Comms work, I have a scheduled time set up each week that I work. And at that time another Comms volunteer will poke me on the volunteer messaging service to check in and ask about what I’m doing that evening; having that sort of external check in is massively helpful for me. Signing up to host wrangling parties serves a similar purpose in giving me external accountability about being present at a specific time to wrangle.
What fannish things do you like to do?
Mostly reading so much fic. I started reading fanfiction when I was a kid, probably around 8 or 9 years old. One of my real-life friends introduced me to it and in their words they “created a monster.” (I don’t know exactly when I started reading because I no longer have the email I used at that time and my autistic kid brain was hung up on “you aren’t supposed to have an account if you aren’t 13” so I read for quite a while before getting my FFN account). I occasionally count up how many words I’m reading per week and I’m frequently somewhere around 200k words per week. (It varies a bit depending on the density of the fic and how much else I’ve got going on. When I’m unemployed, it goes way up.)
I try to leave lots of comments as my way of giving back to all the authors who provide all the wonderful fics I get to read for free. (I’ve recently started using the sticky note app on my phone to compose comments with blockquotes while I’m reading so I can call out favorite bits or “live react” a bit.)
Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you’d like, you can check out previous Five Things posts.
Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Ellipsis, who volunteers as a Tag Wrangler and also a Technical Assistant for the Communications Committee.
How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
I currently hold two roles with the OTW.
I wrangle tags on AO3 for a couple of smallish fandoms with lots of characters. So I’m frequently digging through wiki pages and scrubbing through episodes to figure out if the character someone tagged is from canon or an OC. It's always very satisfying to provide new canonical character tags.
I am also the "Technical Assistant" for Communications. My primary responsibility there is managing the "OTW News By Email" automations. I set up all the automations and keep an eye out for and troubleshoot any issues; this occasionally involves reaching out to Systems or the newsletter service’s support team. I also help out if any subscribers reach out for help with their subscriptions. Beyond the "News By Email" stuff, I also help with investigating or suggesting other tech solutions for the Communications committee and occasionally help to write/research some of the more technical news posts.
What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
I do most of my focused volunteer work on the weekends, since I’ve got a full-time job during the week (and by the time I’m done work for the day and figure out food and whatnot I don’t have much time or energy left).
Every Saturday evening I work on Comms tasks. Exactly what I’m doing depends on what I’ve got on my plate. One thing I frequently work on is writing documentation about how the News By Email automation works. (Right now I manage everything myself but it's important to make sure there is good documentation in case someone else has to hop in and do something.) I also researched and drafted a news post recently, which involved a lot of rounds of feedback from different committees since it was inspired by a request from Support and relates to AD&T. Other common tasks include helping answer support queries about the email subscription, adding new functionality (the ability to subscribe just to recruitment posts went live recently), and cleaning up unsubscribed users.
If something breaks or otherwise goes weird I’ll jump in outside of my standard hours, but most of the time things can wait.
Every other weekend I tend to do wrangling work sometime during the day on Saturday or Sunday. Often I’ll host or attend a "wrangling party" (set times when lots of folks wrangle and cheer each other on). During that time I’ll check through whatever new tags have come in for my fandoms and sort them accordingly. I’ve got a few fandoms with lots of characters, so there are almost always some new characters or relationships to make canonicals for. I’ll also occasionally dig through the additional tags to check if anything has gained enough usages to get a canonical.
What made you decide to volunteer?
I initially joined as a tag wrangler. As an avid reader of fic, a programmer, and someone who finds categorization interesting, I find the tag system on AO3 really awesome. So when I found out how it worked and that you could volunteer to wrangle tags, I started eagerly watching for recruitment posts. It took a couple rounds before there was a post that was recruiting for wranglers for a fandom I had experience with.
A couple of years ago (once I’d been a wrangler for a while), Communications was looking into sending out news posts by email. They asked for volunteers who were willing to be test subjects and report back on receiving emails. However, the services they were testing weren’t a good fit and they were running into a lot of issues. I got curious and fell down a research rabbit hole and suggested another service. The service was one that required a bit more technical knowhow, though, and the volunteers running the test weren’t comfortable setting it up, so I offered to test it out and report back. They ended up going with the service I suggested and asked me to help set it up for real. Then eventually Communications asked me if I was interested in officially joining the committee as a "Technical Assistant."
What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
Executive functioning. I’ve got ADHD (and Autism) so I struggle with intrinsic motivation and easily lose track of time, especially when I’ve got a full-time job eating all my spoons (energy). When I first started volunteering, I had been laid off and was unemployed so I had a lot of spare time and energy. So finding the balance once I was back to working full time was tricky.
In the last year or so I’ve started being firmer on scheduling specific times to do my volunteer work to help avoid losing track completely. For Comms work, I have a scheduled time set up each week that I work. And at that time another Comms volunteer will poke me on the volunteer messaging service to check in and ask about what I’m doing that evening; having that sort of external check in is massively helpful for me. Signing up to host wrangling parties serves a similar purpose in giving me external accountability about being present at a specific time to wrangle.
What fannish things do you like to do?
Mostly reading so much fic. I started reading fanfiction when I was a kid, probably around 8 or 9 years old. One of my real-life friends introduced me to it and in their words they "created a monster." (I don’t know exactly when I started reading because I no longer have the email I used at that time and my autistic kid brain was hung up on "you aren't supposed to have an account if you aren’t 13" so I read for quite a while before getting my FFN account). I occasionally count up how many words I’m reading per week and I’m frequently somewhere around 200k words per week. (It varies a bit depending on the density of the fic and how much else I’ve got going on. When I’m unemployed, it goes way up.)
I try to leave lots of comments as my way of giving back to all the authors who provide all the wonderful fics I get to read for free. (I’ve recently started using the sticky note app on my phone to compose comments with blockquotes while I’m reading so I can call out favorite bits or “live react” a bit.)
Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out previous Five Things posts.
The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.
I also drew a birthday card for my sister and mailed it today.
( Under the cut )