ng_moonmoth

This was originated by china_shop, who asked interested readers to look at the 20 most recent fanwork titles on their AO3 accont and answer some questions about them.

I'm not on AO3, but I see no reason this need be limited by platform or by type of creative work. My creative outlet is filk -- very approximately defined as the folk music of science fiction and fantasy fandom, and characterized by an intentional minimization of the boundary between "performer" and "listener". That's close enough for me.

So I went through my catalog, and pulled out the most recent songs I wrote new lyrics for that I'm currently likely to perform. I came up with 22, and the oldest two are ones that I like and perform frequently. I didn't want to toss them, so I decided that was "close enough for filk". Here are the questions and the results:

1. How many are you happy with?
   Fourteen. Those are marked with "1" in the first column of numbers.
2. How many are... not great?
   Five. Those are marked with "2" in the first column of numbers. The remaining three are just "meh" -- not particularly good, but not "I wish it was better", either. So not worth changing.
3. How many did you scramble for at the last minute?
   Seven. Those are marked with "3" in the second column of numbers. "Hey Murphy, Do You Sing?" was an at-convention songwriting contest entry, and it was already the last minute when I got enough of the song done to title it. "Big Tech Diary" and "In Virginia's Mountains" didn't change the words that formed the source song title. Using title word replacement on "Creative Writing Lesson" would have produced a "huh?" title. And title word replacement on the other three would have been spoilery. I don't care to go there.
4. How many did you know before you started writing/creating, or near the beginning?
   Thirteen. "The Earworm" was another attempt at a songwriting contest entry, but one I was pretty sure I was going to fail at. Creating parody lyrics over the span of a weekend is almost certainly doomed when the source lyric credits include Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, and Stephen Sondheim -- never mind getting ready to sing the result to Leonard Bernstein's music passably well. But the idea was enchanting enough to me that I stuck with it, and the contest theme fit well enough as a title once it started taking shape."Librarian, Anonymous" was another doomed songwriting contest entry -- this one, because tragic songs don't do well in the voting. But I got it done in time, and decided it was good enough to keep. Once again, the title came into shape at the same time the song did.
5. How many are quotes from songs or poems?
   None are direct quotes, but eight are of parodies or transformative works where replacing the words of the title drawn from the source lyrics with the corresponding words in my lyrics produced a suitable title, and one more ("Pointless?"), where the source title suits the song well but does not appear in the source lyrics, had a natural and pleasing equivalent description of my theme.
6. How many are other quotes?
   None. Trying to hang a quote on something that people are going to refer to by what the song is about, or something in the content, doesn't work for me.
7. Which best reflects the plot of the story/content of the fanwork?
   "Servicers of the Machine".
8. Which best reflects the theme of the story/fanwork?
   "Ragnarok".
9. Which best reflects the character voice of the story/POV of the fanwork?
   "Night on the Town".
10. Which is your favourite?
    "Pointless?" The question mark is part of the title; it doesn't denote any uncertainty about my choice.

Here's an alphabetical list of the song titles:

2	3	Beneath Sasquan Skies
	3	Big Tech Diary
2	3	Bob's Sitrep
2	3	Creative Writing Lesson
		The Earworm
	4	Fantasy Home
1	4	The Golem Song	5 The Dreidel Song
1	3	Hey Murphy, Do You Sing?
2	3	In Virginia's Mountains
1	4	Kitchen [Classified]
1		Librarian, Anonymous
1	4	Night on the Town
1	4	Plush Cthulhu	5 Rubber Duckie
1	4	Pointless?	5 Boundless?
1	4	Ragnarok	5 Camelot
1	4	Servicers of the Machine	5 Acolytes of the Machine
1	4	Ship and Stone	5 Ship of Stone
2	3	Sunday Morning – Filkers Take Warning
1	4	Sunken Land of R'lyeh	5 Mary Ellen Carter
1	4	Teddy Bears' Ballgame	5 Teddy Bears' Picnic
1	4	A True SF Fan	5 A Heavy Dragoon
1	4	The Whedonist Retreat

Pool! [Pool?]

RIght here in River City! (Well, the Platte does flow through Lincoln and Omaha, after all.)

But actually on the screen of your electronic device. Anyone who's interested in getting some of the poems in ysabetwordsmith's current Half Price Sale, focusing on the Shiv and Broken Angels threads, is welcome to join.

I have been interested in "The Highest-Paid Professional Women" since I prompted it, and fuzzyred was inclined to "Survive the Recovery". I am declaring those to be the first targets of this pool. Total at quarter-price is $156.

If anyone wants to join, I will contribute enough to make sure we get to $100 and make the quarter-price target. More may be forthcoming if needed to hit the targets.

As usual, once you join the pool with a contribution that is significant to you, you are welcome to sponsor additional poetry and take advantage of the quarter-price offer for those. If enough is put in to sponsor the initial targets, you are welcome to suggest additional targets.

OK, who's interested?

Been a while since I joined in on any of the non-friending memes. Lots of people are doing this one right now, and I had fun with it the last time, so here goes again:

Ask me my top five anything.

As usual, I won't promise to answer anything I consider too personal, or personally identifying. But as long as I can be creative enough, I might be able to come up with something. Also, I am picking out my personal favorites, with no implication that they are the best of their category. Just that I like them the best, or value the most.

ysabetwordsmith, a prolific and excellent crowdfunded poet, is offering here a grand buffet of their year's production this week. All poetry is half-price at any amount, and quarter-price if a sufficient purchase is made.

People who wish to combine forces to reach the quarter-price discount may do so. By annual tradition, I pick a list of purchases that interest me, and then open a pool so that anyone else who wishes to sponsor poetry at quarter-price may do so. If you are interested in something on my list, just let me know how much you wish to contribute. If you are interested in something else, please let me know, and include a meaningful amount toward the pool for its targets, and the pool will add your target to its list if you are unable to fund it completely.

The pool closes Friday evening; I will find out when the cutoff is for sponsorship and use the same cutoff for pledges. Please fund your pledges via PayPal promptly; I will check to see when I should have them in hand for forwarding.

OK, here's my list. I have included the quarter-price amounts for each poem. Poetry Fishbowl regulars probably know the storylines. For others, the author has resources on the web, available via links from the sale page, where you can find out about the storylines and sample previously published poems. Hope many of you decide to participate!

Poems I wish to sponsor:

To Know Without the Intellect (An Army of One)  $24.75
The Lord's Night (Frankenstein's Family)             $43
Interspecies Communication Issues (Aquariana) $10
                                                                            ---------
Pool opening amount                                           $77.75

The other thing I focus on is sequences of poems, where one poem starts a thread on which other poems follow and depend. The pool will open, and I an  willing to contribute to, any of these threads that draw attention:

The Hollow Way
The Restoration of Order ($62.75); A Nation of Inconsistencies ($19.50); Connect Us with Each Other($22)
Total: $104.25

Polychrome Heroics (Mallory): Any Direction You Choose ($61.75)
Polychrome Heroics (Rutledge): Because We Are All Unique ($105)

Polychrome Heroics (Shiv)
If You Don't Stick Up for Them ($20); Getting Close to a New Guy ($10); The Supreme Quality for Leadership ($57.75)
Total: $87.75

This is some of Shiv's early history.

Polychrome Heroics (Shiv)
The Making of a Wonderful Sculpture ($22)
This Knife's Sharp Constancy ($33)
Parts You Didn't Even Know You Had ($21.75)

These are prerequisites with individual dependent poems.

These from rainydaysandmondays, who found me on findingfriends recently:

spaghetti al carbonara
Quite a bit more fat than I usually care for with my pasta. Alfredo sauce, particularly the debased versions served up at many places that want to have pasta on their menu, or want you to think they're Italian (takes direct aim at corporate chains), is something else I feel the same way about.

The name of the dish is interesting. Marcella Hazan, whose cookbook Classic Italian Cooking I treasure, includes some history with her recipe for the dish. It was apparently what the coal miners (carbonari) commonly ordered after making their deliveries.

WoW
You're probably referencing Worlds of Warcraft here. I never got much into computer gaming. Spending all day staring into a computer monitor and trying to figure out what the code I just wrote was actually doing, and why that didn't necessarily match up with what it was supposed to do, left me interested in doing something that wasn't just more staring into a screen and pushing buttons.

But I can't see that string of characters without thinking about Teddy Ruxpin.

Toy Story 4
Saw the first three. Haven't seen this one yet. Looking forward to it.

These are from redsixwing:

hue: I have encountered it most often in the context of color theory, where it denotes the axis of some additive color models that, in more colloquial terms, describes "what color it is". At the same time, though, it makes an appearance in the phrase "hue and cry", where it represents a public signal that a crime has just been committed. And Huế is a city in central Vietnam that was very much in the news when I was a teenager, being the site of one of the longest and bloodiest battles during the Tet offensive of the war in progress at the time.

passage: What comes to mind for me is its use to designate a small, cohesive part of a creative work -- a story, a poem, a piece of music. Identifying key passages and seeing how they connect is something that helps me understand the work. Also coming to mind was the well-known and very popular song, "Northwest Passage", by Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers.

wasps: We have a few in the neighborhood. One time, they built a nest under our eaves, which we left alone through the warm season and knocked down without incident in the rainier, colder part of the year. A significant component of the diet of the ones we have in the area is meat. This means that when I am outside (where we do the stinky stuff) grinding the chopped liver I make for Passover, I often get some wasps coming over because they smell something good to eat. Makes the job a bit more interesting.

There's a "three things" meme going around these days, where you ask someone for three things you might or might not know much about, and then write about them in your blog. I got these fromzhelana.

Pikachu: Pokémon didn't enter the scene until I was solidly adult and had some young niblings. A few of them got sort of into them, but not so much. I'm active in science fiction fandom, and there are enough Pikachu references there (also costuming and cosplay) that I get the overall idea. I wasn't sure why Pikachu was so popular, but it turns out he was the original Pokémon that appeared in the first episode, and just about every one after that.
the Cherokee: The white folks' version of their history paints a picture of "Indians" who were quick to adopt the mannerisms and customs of the Europeans they came into contact with and become "civilized". Sequoyah, who formaized Cherokee orthography, is prominent. The Trail of Tears gets mentioned, but  there's not much mentioned about why they chose to relocate.

This is nothing like the Cherokee version, and I know there is a big difference. My limited understanding of the summary of that version is of a community that believed that by acculturating and acceding to demands of the people invading their land, they would somehow be able to retain that land and many of their customs -- and were repeatedly and violently betrayed in that end. Many of them were eventually relocated to a land that was nothing like what they had left, and in which they felt out of place and disconnected from the land. Those scars stay with them today. There isn't much to "appreciate" there the way the white folks' version would have it. (Disclaimer: I'm "white folks". I acknowledge what "my people" did to their people. I don't much like it.)
hippopotomuses: I saw this word went elsewhere as well, and the Latin meaning got covered there. My description is "the deadliest wild animal in its range". This comes about because crocodiles, which are common in hippo habitat, eat baby hippos. So adult hippos will sit on and drown any crocodile they can spot and catch. Meanwhile, because water transportation is pretty much the only practical way to get around in hippo country, dugout canoes have long been a popular way to get around. But, to a hippo, those look a lot like crocodiles, and get the same treatment. Which leads to lots of folks getting tossed out of those canoes and drowned or mangled by a hippo.

 

Would you like three words of your own? Please let me know in a comment, and I'll give you a set. And probably ask for another one myself, if you don't mind.

Initial post on what I'm doing here.

49. Do you believe in destiny? If so, what do you believe is yours?

Not at all. We call our own shots. And we can always choose to listen, or not, to anyone's idea of who we "were meant to be". Including our own.

Initial post on what I'm doing here.

47. What do you believe is the meaning of your life?

Purpose. Goals. Meaning. Destiny. All the implicit assumptions throughout this series of questions that one's life is incomplete without something beyond just being alive to make life worth living.

I don't associate any of those things with my life. I can have a purpose. I can have goals. I give my life meaning. (More on destiny coming soon). And I can change any of these things whenever, and however, I want. I'm alive, and that's all I need.

Initial post on what I'm doing here.

45. What do you want people to say about you at your funeral?

"My life is better for having known xyr." And yes, I would want the neopronoun to be what people would use.