nineveh_uk

I am taking the keywords in this to be 'in progress'. An idea in my head or notes jotted down, or even several pages of scenes, does not count for the purpose; this is basically the top of the pile that are most likely to be finished/actively worked on any time soon.

Corsica This is the untitled Wimsey/Harry Potter crossover fic about to have the mpreg ruthlessly cut, currently standing at c.85,000 words. It is not in fact going to be finished any time soon because there is still a lot to go, but I really, really want to finish this, and I really, really ought to make a push to finish this. I know where it's going, who the murderer is (because it is Wimsey/HP crossover crack-turned-casefic), I even know the final scene. I just have to write it all... I have no idea how much longer it will be, but I think it is unlikely to come in at less than another 20,000 words of plot, plus going back and taking out the mpreg and dealing with the narrative ramifications of that.

The Whispering Grass Non-crack, non-crossover, a take on a familiar fic scenario for Tanz der Vampire, i.e. how the Count came to accidentally murder his wife in a scenario that is basically Fields of Gold: the sick version. So classic angst-fic, really. I've got notes for pretty much the whole thing, I just have to write it up... This might be a recurring theme.

In the Studio. Yuri on Ice as observed by figure skating commentators. Three chapters posted, just one to go. I'm going to attempt to finish it this weekend; it shouldn't take long, just needs discipline and to re-watch episodes 11 and 12.

Round and Golden. Yakov-centric account of the unfortunate incident in Turin when Victor and Chris were teenagers. Another one for which I rapidly jotted down notes of the whole thing, but haven't moved on to doing the complete version. But it shouldn't take too long to finish.

Rostelecom hotel room. Untitled fic as to how Victor manoeuvres Yuuri into sharing a hotel room in Moscow and what happens when they get there. Half-written, know what's happening in the second half, just haven't bloody written it.

The Immovable Object In which Miles Vorkosigan meets the only power that might be able to stop him: the Vorkosiverse equivalent of the UKBA. The fact that the Vorkosiverse equivalent of the UKBA are the good guys in this story might give you indication as to how I feel about the narrative attitude some facets of Miles' character in the later books. And now all together - lots of notes, know where it's going, need to write up the remaining 80%...
And now time to get on with the day so I can do some of it!

On AO3, An Archetypal Schloss. Patrick Leigh Fermor/Tanz der Vampire crossover.

Caught in the wilds in treacherous weather, Patrick Leigh Fermor seeks shelter in a Transylvanian castle. It's not the first schloss that Patrick has visited in the course of his journey on foot through central Europe, but is he prepared for the perilous hospitality of the Graf von Krolock and his son?

This fic is the fault of white_hart, whose comment "But why does no-one appear to have written a crossover between Patrick Leigh Fermor's Between the Woods and the Water and Rocky Horror?" gave me the idea of this fic before I had read any more of Leigh Fermor than the extracts of Mani in my Greek guide book. Then she lent me the books. I have since purchased my own, as they are terrific in their own right and not simply as begetters of crackfic.

There is still no crossover between Between the Woods and the Water and Rocky Horror, but I hope that this is close enough to serve.

A note on the canons:

Patrick Leigh Fermor's books A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water* (together with a third posthumously-published volume I haven't read yet) are the account of one of history's great gap years, as 18 year old Patrick sets out to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. En route he stays in a wide range of barns, inns, a Salvation Army hostel, with a host of friendly people from bargemen to students to woodcutters, and in the schlosses of a string of aristocratic relics of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where he is mentored by his older hosts and entertained by their offspring. The books, written over 50 years after the journey, are a fascinating look back at a world that was about to vanish entirely, a fact of which the older author is painfully aware, and the youth oblivious. In 1933, young Patrick's adventures had the charm of novelty, but he was also evidently tremendously personally engaging, and it can't have hurt that he was rather good-looking.

Tanz der Vampire is a German-language musical that follows the adventures of Alfred, the young assistant to a vampire-hunting professor, as they go horribly wrong. Attempting to save an innkeeper's daughter from the clutches of the vampire Count von Krolock, Alfred finds himself a guest at the Count's castle where he experiences some very bad dreams, gets hit on by the Count's son, and fails to save the girl. The girl didn't want to be saved, anyway.

*Not Death Twixt the Woods and the Water, that's the Harriet Vane crossover.

Did you know that Total Eclipse of the Heart was originally written as a love-song for a never-happened musical version of Nosferatu? Me neither. Nor did I know that it had subsequently been used in a different musical, the Austrian Tanz der Vampire (link in English), a musical version of Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers, of which I was a teenage fan* in my ‘read/watch everything about vampires’ stage.

I learned this fact at the end of last week, and inevitably therefore have been enlivening working through the massive ironing backlog** while watching said musical on YouTube. Fortunately I don’t know Meat Loaf’s oeuvre, so I haven’t spotted the songs recycled from that. It’s all magnificently bonkers and surprisingly entertaining, and I really want to see it live, except that would mean going to Germany because there was a disastrously re-written Broadway production in the early 2000s that has torpedoed any further English language attempts for the foreseeable future. Anyway, Total Eclipse of the Heart makes far more sense once it’s about vampires, the German version would be an amazing karaoke duet, here it is. This version doesn’t have subtitles, but you don’t really need them to get the sense of the massive OTT-ness, complete with swirly cape action.



Sadly I fear the literal video version of this song, fun as it is, would be less engaging:

(Long intro)
Sometimes in the night I wander round on the stage and there’s nothing much to do.
(Long intro)
Sometimes in the night the audience wishes that something else would happen on stage.
(Long intro)
Sometimes in the night I cling onto a pillar that looks randomly like a totem pole.

Etc.

*I have also just realised that the plot of TFVK is a sort of mirror version of Keats’ Eve of St Agnes.

**All summer clothes now washed, ironed, and put away, hurrah!