PMRP Summer Radio Mystery Theater approaches!

The Post-Meridian Radio Players are getting close to their performance date for their Summer Radio Mystery Theater show!

The pieces:

From The Burns and Allen Show - "Gracie Takes Up Crime-Solving!"

Gracie's fascination with the radio detective show "The Tall Man" inspires her to change careers and drag hubby George into an investigation of the local postman's missing 1928 Ford Essex!

Written by George Burns
Directed by Brad Smith

Featuring Jared Hite as Bill Goodman!

Sorry, Wrong Number!

After overhearing a murder plot on the telephone, Mrs. Stevenson tries in vain to alert the authorities, but no one seems willing to listen to—let alone believe—her story until it is too late!

Directed by Neil Marsh
Original script by Lucille Fletcher

Featuring rigel* in the starring role of Mrs. Stevenson!

And The Hound of the Baskervilles

A rural doctor from Devonshire enlists the aid of Sherlock Holmes to protect the new lord of Baskerville Hall from a sinister threat: a demonic hound!

Directed by Jess Viator
Original script by Murray Burnett
Adapted from the novel by A. Conan Doyle
Performance adaptation by Jeremy Holstein

Featuring Jared Hite as Sir Henry Baskerville!

Performance Dates
Friday, July 27th, 2012 @ 7:30pm
Saturday, July 28th, 2012 @ 2:00pm (matinee)
Saturday, July 28th, 2012 @ 7:30pm

Location
Urban Promise Church of Somerville
204 Elm Street, Somerville, MA

Besides being excited for the shows themselves, I am excited to see Jared play two such different characters. The Burns and Allen piece intends to imitate the original as much as possible, so Bill Goodman is the first role he's ever gotten based on his considerable skill as a mimic. And I've always loved The Hound of the Baskervilles as a story, so I was incredibly pysched that he got to be in that.

I will be attending two of the three performances, the Friday night show and the Saturday matinee. If anyone would care to join me, I would love the company, and would be interested in making plans for dinner and lunch beforehand. So please let me know once you've reserved your tickets, which you may do here on the show website.

Jared in PMRP!

The Post-Meridian Radio Players just announced their cast lists for their Summer Radio Mystery Theater! I am very proud to say that Jared will be playing not one but two parts across the three pieces featured in this show. In the production of "Gracie Takes Up Crime-Solving," drawn from the Burns and Allen show, he will be playing the womanizing charmer Bill Goodman. Personally I thought his reading at the audition for that part was phenomenal, so I'm really glad he got it. This piece will be directed by usernamenumber*, and I'm so happy for him that he'll get a chance to work under Brad's direction. Additionally, the other day he was offered the role of Sir Henry Baskerville in another of the three pieces The Hound of the Baskervilles. I am a huge fan of that novel, so that's really cool. He'll be in excellent company, too. Congratulations to rigel* for getting the lead in Sorry, Wrong Number, directed by the awesome audioboy. And most of the other cast members are names I recognize from previous productions Jared did with Theatre@First, such as the amazing Leslie Drescher, who was Rosalind and Caroline Bingley. Jared's wanted to get into voice acting for a long time now, and I know he loves working with this group, so I'm extremely happy for him. It makes me so proud to see his name on the cast lists here on the show website.

Jared and went to see the last production that PMRP put on, when they did an episode of Red Shift and a reading of The Day the Earth Stood Still. I'd never been to an audio drama performance before, so I didn't know what to expect. They lined the edge of the stage with microphones and had a row of chairs along the back where the actors waited until it was their time to move up and speak. The sound effects were handled by the techies over the sound system, like in a regular play. The actors were sort of in costume too, which was interesting. I was impressed to learn that oakenguy* was one of the writers of well-written and hilarious Red Shift script. All the actors were very funny and did a great job, but the highlight of the show for me was lediva*, talking in the WEIRDEST sort of strangled-off nerd voice, playing a violently obsessed fan from a race of acid-spitting aliens. It was an interesting experience, and one I will be repeating when I attend the Summer Radio Mystery Theater. It will be July 27th and 28th, both nights at 8PM and then a 2PM matinee on Saturday. I hope you'll join me there for Jared's PMRP debut!

International Steampunk City 2012

Jared and I just got back from a day spent at the International Steampunk City Fair held in downtown Waltham. I have to say, I love that this thing exists. Steampunk is a slightly obscure subculture, and a very geeky one at that. And yet the town authorities are cool enough to see the connection it can make to Waltham's history of watchmaking and development with the Industrial Revolution. And all the artists and artisans in this style get a venue with a ton of support to display their wares and their work. And geeks like me, who eat this stuff up, get to experience it for ten bucks and a short walk from my house. I think that's incredibly cool. I feel like, slowly but surely, various aspects of geek culture are going more and more mainstream, and over time we'll get more and more people who are open to fantastic stuff like this.

I had a lot of fun there. I loved walking around looking at the art pieces and the items for sale, and we attended some interesting panels too. Steam Fashion was great for definitional things, like a good, solid way to define the subculture and the aesthetic of steampunk as "the long (around one hundred thirty years) 19th Century," and the ideas behind the "ragamuffin," "aristocrat," "adventurer," "soldier," and "professorial" steam fashion styles. Thrifty Costuming had a lot of information I already knew-- at this point I'm a pretty experienced thrift store scourer --but also gave me a lot of great pointers for DIY props and pieces. They emphasized deconstruction very heavily, using pieces of things to build new things. I especially liked the idea of taking soft leather purses and cutting off the embellishments so as to turn them into belt pouches; a couple of the presenters had done that and I never would have guessed that they were repurposed modern items. I even picked up a battered old purse at the thrift store to try it out with and make a present for Jared.

We walked all over the town today, and though my feet are aching now, I'm very happy to have gotten that much exercise. I also loved the people-watching, seeing all the people going by in their costumes. It's really a great idea, and it supports the Charles River Museum of Industry too! So it's socially responsible as well as good geeky fun. :-D

Pride and Prejudice and elsewise

Yowza, busy here. Lots of the things on the plate right now, which has lead to a lot of running around. And in what little free time I've had I've wasted on TV Tropes. I am mostly fascinated by the ones about behind-the-scenes things of the writer's process. Nobody is surprised.

So, things. I forgot to talk about seeing Jared's show Pride and Prejudice last Saturday. I screwed up the planning for the outing; I really should have suggested we meet at the restaurant at six rather than six-thirty, but the service kept us waiting for forty-five minutes anyway until we got after people to just bring us our meals with boxes so we could get to the theater on time. I was pretty pissed about that, though as I said I should have planned better. We did manage to get there on time and I actually enjoyed the show very much. There were a lot of good actors in it, and I liked the costumes and the theory behind the set design, even if it didn't always quite work with the space. It was also quite thrilling to see Jared, Tegan, and Jenn on a big fancy professional stage like that. Jared himself was great, turning in a fairly difference performance from his previous work, Bingley's sweet naivete a real departure from the Angry Authority Figures he's mostly been cast as. I am going again tomorrow night, hopefully with less trouble around eating beforehand. I am admiring this group a great deal, and I hope I get to be in one of their productions before long.

I had my first read through for Sherlock Holmes last night. I was not at all as good as I wanted to be starting off, for some reason I felt very stiff and not very expressive, so the first half of the script I was a little disappointed in myself. Paranoia setting in me makes want to prevent anyone from regretting my casting. But the second half I did a lot better with, so hopefully nobody was too disappointed. I am confident I will warm up soon. I finally have my rehearsal schedule, which takes two or three days a week. Sadly, frequent Thursday rehearsals mean I will miss out on ballet class that night rather often for the next few months. This makes me sad, as I don't want to hold back my progress, and I like the Thursday night teacher as well as the Tuesday night one. But at least I can start planning things.

Like GM meetings, for example. The Stand is cast and sent, and I plan on doing all the printing on my own, but I'd like to have a meeting where we go over plot stuff and make a plan of who will be running what. Paranoia needs more. We unfortunately have not cast yet, but it's such a silly larp that even though it has a story the character sheets don't need a ton of time to read or plan about. And costuming is almost without exception "red shirt, black pants," so no need to give people lead time on that. But we need to refamiliarize ourselves with the game, we haven't run it in two years, organize all the materials, and figure out how the printing's going to get done. Fortunately I think we can get on this in pretty short order.

Readying The Stand for Festival, and Pride and Prejudice opening

I sent out all the character sheets for The Stand. I'm pleased with myself for getting them out a month in advance, because it gives people time to read all the materials (there's a fair bit of them) and to get their costuming together. I hope my players like them.

I wrote a short play last semester about two characters, a PC and an NPC, in The Stand. My teacher liked it and I was happy with how it came out. It occurs to me that there's probably more ten minute plays I could get out of the characters in this game. Something between Tall Bear and Negahse'wey, for example. Hmm. Might be worth thinking about. I do want to write more ten minute plays, and they get easier to perform all in an evening of theater when they're related in some way.

I am excited to get cast in the games I'm playing, Jesriah and Folding the River. They both sounds like they're going to be awesome. I desire very strongly to costume these games out of my own closet. I have made a number of interesting acquisitions from thrift stores over the last few months, fortunately none expensive but they do add up after a while, that I would really like to make use of. Both to justify their purchase and to prevent me from spending any more on costuming in the near future! ;-)

Tonight is the opening of the play that Jared, Tegan, and Jenn are in, Pride and Prejudice. Unfortunately I won't be able to be there tonight, but I know it will be great and I'm really excited to see it. I am going with a large group Saturday night, so anyone who'd care to come with company is welcome to join us. I'll be going again next Friday night, and have yet to make plans to join anyone, so please let me know if you'll be there then. Jared shaved off his beloved beard for this role, so go if only to ensure that its sacrifice will not be in vain!

Musing on body image drawn out of an unlikely place

A couple of years ago, Jared introduced me to an Internet reviewer of movies and video games who calls himself Spoony. He's pretty funny and has a good eye for evaluating media, so I've come to be a follower of his site, The Spoony Experiment.

For a while, he was dating a woman who helped him produce his videos during the course of their relationship. Spoony projects an air of being a lonely, horny gamer geek as part of his reviewer persona, so I hadn't been aware that he even had a girlfriend for most of the time I've been watching. Apparently a lot of his fans developed a distaste for her, I'm not sure why. I guess some of them started disliking things Spoony began doing in his work, and in typical misogynist Internet troll fashion, they started blaming her influence despite her probably having nothing to do with it, calling her "Yoko," because of course they couldn't just disagree with their hero's artistic choices, it had to be the fault of that harpy in his life. And of course, they starting running down her appearance because you can't criticize a woman without bringing that up. She showed up in one of his videos once, and was immediately met with a flood of comments about how fat and ugly she was. There are not too many images of her on the web these days, I gather because of a purge in response to that outpouring of cruelty. They are no longer together now, but I only just heard about this stomach-turning little saga. Which has gotten me thinking about something tangentially related that I want to talk about now.

I will say that the woman is not beautiful, at least not to my tastes. Coarse features, a little too heavily made up, and kind of a blocky build. I am not bringing this because I am in any way suggesting that they way they treated her was acceptable. It's one thing to hold a private opinion, it's quite another to treat someone like they've committed a trespass against you simply for daring to appear in public when they don't conform to your personal aesthetic. She's not here to decorate your world, assholes.

The reason I bring it up is because, also as part of the lonely, horny gamer geek persona, Spoony spends a decent chunk of time going on about how hot various female characters are in the course of his reviews. And in general, given that these are media figures and artists' renderings, those characters tend to conform to the very mainstream notion of beauty, suggesting that slavish devotion to the ideal that makes so many women feel like they can never possibly measure up. And yet, for as much as he goes on and on about characters that look like that, he was involved, and apparently happy, with a woman who was in no way like that ideal.

The extremity of that contrast has got me thinking, and this is the reason I'm writing this entry. Because of the omnipresence of the tall thin stacked woman with delicate features held up as the beautiful ideal by the media, a lot of women struggle with the notion that this really is the best kind of beauty. This is something I certainly wrestle with myself. I have a hard time letting go of the notion that the current beauty ideal has attained its primacy because that's what people, at least most people, genuinely like best. And that if I don't conform to it myself, then at best someone who wants me is "settling" for being less attracted?

And yet. How often do we encounter people attracted to woman who drool over media figures and yet are in a relationship with a more average-looking woman who they clearly adore? Where does that come from? That's not the message we have driven home all the time.

Jared's take on it was that, at least for him, there are many kinds of beauty that he finds attractive. Yes, Airbrushed Skinny Stacked Celebrity Woman is definitely appealing. But she's just one kind of appealing, perhaps one that he is less likely to encounter in real life and so much be enjoyed in her media context. But she's not better than the other kinds of appealing that women can be. He just enjoys her as well as all the other kinds.

That's it for Jared, anyway. I'm sure it's different for other people. But I do think a fairly universal truth of it is, as much as the media and advertising may suggest to the contrary, I think most real people genuinely don't hold up one notion of beauty as the "best" or "most desirable." And even if a person does find a "more idealized" appearance technically more attractive, appearance becomes genuinely less important in the wake of more the more significant qualities of personhood. It may be that we don't actually need to teach each other to stop fixating on unattainable beauty, because we're not actually all that fixated on it. We just need to keep from internalizing the idea that that's actually what others want and expect us to be.

No one in my life thinks I'm not good enough the way I am. So I need to stop being afraid of something that's not there.

It's not a new idea I'm talking about here. It's just a hard one that I, and I think other people as well, have a hard time holding in my head. But there's evidence of it everywhere, if we just believe the evidence of our eyes.

Productivity machine

I was a productive little worker Bee over the last few days. I set several goals for myself to accomplish this weekend and I believe I managed every one of them. What I have done includes:

- Finishing my first assignment for screenwriting
- Writing an additional scene for Tailor
- Incorporating ten thousand steps of walking into my routine
- Making headway into my sewing text
- Starting the first Hipster Feminist plot line
- Cleaning my room

I have also consumed several gallons of apple cider in an effort to stave off my chronic dehydration, but that's probably not an accomplishment so much.

Still that leaves a number of things. First and foremost, I need to do my first assignment for science fiction and fantasy. Unfortunately I put this off a lot in favor of the screenwriting assignment, so I don't have a ton of time left for this. I'll chunk this out better for the second round of assignments.

I also really have to edit that additional scene for Tailor. In my desire to just get it done, I broke with my usual pattern of tweaking as I go and instead just banged out the scene from start to finish. Jared and Kindness were the first to read it, and they both gave the extremely spot-on criticism that there isn't enough conflict in the scene. There needs to be more of a struggle for the information to come out, as it is information Kenneth would want to conceal. Plus, conflict raises tension, always necessary for drama. Kenneth is the character Jared is playing, and in the course of developing his performance he tends to internalize a very well-defined idea of who his character is, and Kenneth just spilling his guts wasn't in the conception he'd gotten of the man. Kindness is a man of excellent artistic taste, who I thank for being Palamon-like enough to give it to me straight, both on the positives and the negatives of what he sees in my pieces. I was lucky they were my first responders to the scene, because now I know what I have to do to fix it.

Now that I've taken the plunge and begun the first-ever tweet chain plot for Hipster Feminist, I need to be on top of where the action's going. I am now two tweets in, so there's no going back. ;-) I haven't done as much working out of the storyline or the tweets illustrating thereof as I would have liked, so I have to get on it. They tend to come out funnier when I come up with them in advance and I can tweak them into optimum shape.

Biweekly Theater Writing Challenge #13.10 - Tom confronts Kenneth and learns who he really is

This is a scene for Tailor that I've had in my head for a while now, of Tom confronting Kenneth about his part in the mystery and learning who the poor old drunk really is. It's in very rough form right now, as I just wrote it last night and haven't edited it at all, but I'm glad I banged it out.

As I mentioned, the other night I recorded Plesser and Jared in their respective roles of Tom and Kenneth. They were so great I wanted to work on more of their interaction, so this long-awaited scene came into being. I am working on setting up a strong parallelism in the story between Alice and Bethany, and I want to echo it to a slightly lesser extent with Tom and Kenneth, that the older, broken man sees some of who he used to be in the intrepid younger man. I'm also glad to get a little more dialogue for Emma and Bethany in by way of the flashback. I loved the slightly sad, carefully controlled, weight-of-the-world tone rigel* used when playing Emma, so I think knowing about the style she was going to use informed how I wrote her here. Also, I am just excited to have more acting opportunity for Carolyn, who is shaping up so nicely and putting such amazing sincerity and passion into the part.

KENNETH: Jesus Christ! You!

TOM: What were you doing out that other night?

KENNETH: What? Let me go!

TOM: Not until you talk to me! When I ran into you on the road, what were you doing?

KENNETH: None of your business!

TOM: I was up at the Loring’s place, just like you said. And I think you were too.

KENNETH: What are you talking about?

TOM: You were the one who broke in, weren’t you?

KENNETH: Screw off!

TOM: You had your arm hurt just like the burglar. You were hanging around just outside the grounds. And you’re too hot after anything to do with that family.

KENNETH: Oh, you got no idea!

TOM: What do you have against the Lorings?

KENNETH: Plenty, boy!

TOM: Did you want something from them? Money? What did they ever do to you?

KENNETH: More than you’ll ever know! So leave me to my own business!

TOM: Tell me what you’re up to.

KENNETH: No!

TOM: I could have the police after you in a minute! You were real sore against Miss Emma, weren’t you?

KENNETH: So what if I was?

TOM: Because she’s dead, that’s what! Because somebody killed her, and I think it was you!

KENNETH: Me? I didn’t do nothing to her!

TOM: You broke into her house and went digging through her things. We know what you were after, Kenneth. We found Emma’s papers. She was looking into the death of Bethany Loring.

KENNETH: I know that!

TOM: What did you want with those papers? Did you have something to do with that too?

KENNETH: You don’t know what you’re on about!

TOM: Did you want to hurt that girl too?

KENNETH: I never! I wanted to marry her!

TOM: What?

KENNETH: You think you know everything just because that little niece let you in? Think you’re so damn clever! You don’t know a bit of what went on in that house! I never would have hurt that girl in a thousand years. Bethany and me… we were… we loved each other.

TOM: How did you know her?

KENNETH: We worked there. My old man was Loring’s valet. I was a stable boy. Her father had me give Bethany her riding lessons, and we got to talking. She was about my age, and such a nice girl… we fell in love.

TOM: Nobody ever told me about Bethany having a sweetheart.

KENNETH: We kept it secret of, course. We had to! Her father never would have stood for it. He had bigger plans for his baby girl than some ruffian minding horses. We didn’t know how we were going to be together, but then...

TOM: What changed?

KENNETH: Emma found us out.

(Flashback effect.)

EMMA: Bethany? Mrs. Warren told me you’d gone out to the stables. Bethany?

(Sound of footsteps. Pause.)

BETHANY: Emma!

EMMA: Oh, Bethany…

BETHANY: What are you doing here?

EMMA: Looking for you. I wondered why you were suddenly so devoted to your riding lessons.

KENNETH: Oh, please, miss…

BETHANY: Emma, you can’t tell anyone.

EMMA: Bethany, what are you doing?

KENNETH: Miss, you don’t understand.

BETHANY: I love him, and he loves me.

EMMA: I see. How long has this been going on?

KENNETH: Since last spring, miss.

EMMA: Oh, good heavens. I see we’re all such practiced secret keepers.

BETHANY: Father would never understand. He’d only separate us!

KENNETH: I swear, miss, I only mean to be good to your sister. I’d never bring her to any harm. I love her, miss.

BETHANY: Please, Emma.

EMMA: (Sighing.) Very well, dear.

(Flashback effect.)

KENNETH: I kept waiting for her old man or her big brother to come down on us, but they never did, so I suppose she kept her promise. She never spoke to us about it again until we found out about what Mr. Loring was planning.

TOM: The arranged marriage.

KENNETH: Yes. How do you know that?

TOM: It was in Emma’s papers.

KENNETH: She said she was going to help us. Help us get away, so we could be together. She hatched this plan for me to whisk Bethany away from her coming out ball and slip away into the night. She said she had something that if Loring ever came after us, we could make sure he’d stay away.

TOM: What was that?

KENNETH: I don’t know, Emma never told me. But I trusted her, that cold bitch, for all the good it did. So I did what she said, and waited for Bethany just outside the party. I waited for hours, it felt like. All night. Then I heard how they found her, all broken like that… I never got to see her again.

TOM: What went wrong?

KENNETH: That’s the devil of it! I don’t know! I was there at the garden gate just like we planned, but she never came to meet me.

TOM: Emma still blamed you.

KENNETH: For letting it happen. Afterward she chased me off. Dismissed me from my job and told me never to show my face at Loring’s End again. The hag didn’t know who to blame so she settled on me.

TOM: And you swear you didn’t have anything to do with it?

KENNETH: I was a stupid boy, Tom, just like you are. But I loved her, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t have done to keep her safe.

TOM: And not Miss Emma either?

KENNETH: I didn’t kill her. More like she killed me. Swear on poor Bethany’s grave.

TOM: Then… help me.

KENNETH: Help you?

TOM: Yes. Help me figure out what’s going on here. It may be the only way to ever know what really happened to Bethany.

KENNETH: And… you won’t turn me in to the cops?

TOM: If what you say is true, no, I won’t. Just work with me. We’ve got almost twenty years of secrets to dig through here. I need all the help I can get.

(Pause.)

TOM: And then there’s Miss Alice. She’s a real nice girl, Kenneth. She needs all the help she can get too.

KENNETH: For all the good an old drunk like me can do you… I’ll help you how I can.

TOM: Thank you. Listen, I’m sorry about how Miss Emma treated you. But I think she hurt just like you do. Whatever she was doing, I think she just wanted to know what happened too.

KENNETH: Might be.

TOM: She must have thought about her a lot. When she came to me, she wanted me to make a copy of Bethany’s gown. She gave me this picture of her.

KENNETH: Picture? Could I… could I see it?

(Crinkling as TOM produces the clipping and hands it to KENNETH.)

KENNETH: Haven’t seen her in years. Didn’t have no pictures of her. Afraid I was going to forget what she looked like. (Pause.) My God, she was beautiful.

TOM: I’m sorry.

KENNETH: Not as sorry as I am. Go on now, Tom. I’ll be seeing you around. Let’s make it in the daylight next time, with no more shoving.

Musing on larps I could write

Harrumph. I know I'm not supposed to be focusing on this, but I am feeling frustrated and restless, so I welcome anything that might relieve it a bit, and right now, I want to muse about larps and larp writing.

Currently my name is listed as author for six larps. They are, in chronological order, Alice, Oz, Paranoia, The Labor Wars, Resonance, and The Stand. Alice, Oz, and The Stand I wrote alone. The other three I was a member of the writing team, The Labor Wars and Resonance with Alleged Entertainment, Paranoia with Bernie, Joe, lightgamer*, and witticaster*. I find I write best when there is a clear hierarchy of creative control in a game. It is not easy for me to collaborate well, so it helps if I don't see the project as "my idea" when I do. As a guest of Alleged's, fleshing out notions conceived by another person, I did not have the problem where I was so invested in the concept that didn't want to concede to someone else's idea. Paranoia was Bernie's baby, which also made it easier to step back. I'm not so good at working with others on projects that are MY idea unless there is a clear understanding that I get the final word.

Most of those larps have or will have been run quite a bit. Alice has run five times, Oz has run six. The Stand and Paranoia will have their third runs at Festival, while at Intercon Resonance will have its fourth. The Labor Wars has only run once, which I know I would like to put on again if time and my co-writers permit. I tend to be very concerned about whether or not a game has run too many times recently, as I have a fear of the larp not filling. That's why Alice has not come out in a couple years now, and I think Oz should not come out again anytime soon either. Which makes me itch for a new piece to debut. I love the feeling of people rushing to play in my larp, and I get a huge amount of validation for my work when players enjoy the piece.

I have several concepts for larps that I could write. Some of them have been rolling around in my head for several years and for some reason I just never got to them. It's worth mentioning that I thought of most of these considerably before The Stand, which had the weirdest genesis ever-- I just found myself bored at work one day thinking about how I liked cowboys, and would like to write a cowboy larp. I was suddenly jotting down ideas and becoming engaged, when I became struck with the desire to bid it for Intercon. It was that bidding that forced me to work on it as opposed to any other game, which is why it got finished while these others are still just ideas.

I know someday I must write that Peter Pan larp that I've always been talking about, to complete my planned triptych of larps based on what are most likely the three most iconic children's stories in the Western Canon. I will call the game simply Pan, both to fit with the punchiness of Alice and Oz, and to fit in with a notion I am adopting from the movie Hook that Pan is used as a title. The trouble is, while I have a few vague conceptual ideas, and I think I want to go with a kind of fairyland setting, I don't really know what the plot is. I went into writing most of my other games with an idea of that already, so I think that may be what's been stopping me from really digging into it.

Imperium has really been nagging at me. I love the Ancient Roman setting, and I am really enjoying the possibilities that are open to me because I have decided to have my characters be only vague analogues to figures from Roman history so I can deal with some of the same issues but take them in totally different directions. I've had a couple really exciting ideas in the last few days, which pull me more and more towards wanting to work on it, but as it's currently my newest idea, maybe it shouldn't get priority. I am amused by the fact that I seem to write "series" of games-- there's my children's-story-inspired triptych, and apparently there's also my pseudo-historical period games like this one and The Stand.

Jared and I have been working on and off for years on our New York Mafia game, Men of Respect. I love the transitional period in the history of Italian-American gangs, the time immediately post-World War II in which the Godfather is set, after the Golden Age was over but before things just devolved into plain old street crime. We have a lot of work done and a ton of good ideas, but probably because we've never set a work schedule for it we've only ever managed to chip away at it off and on. Maybe the time is approaching to set meetings for it and lay deadlines, because this I think has the potential to be a truly epic game. (I wonder if it counts among the "pseudo-historical" type.)

Then there's one that I have never talked about much because I'm not sure if it's a good or workable idea, but it's been kicking around in my head for several years now. It is tentatively called Jabberwocky, and would be designed as a sequel to my first game Alice. Suggested to me by Jared, it would be examining what happened to the state of Wonderland now that the Jabberwock is gone. I've always been unsure about it for several reasons. First, larp sequels are a tricky proposition. It's hard for them not to spoil the content of the previous game. Also, I'm concerned what the hook would be now that the one hopeful thread that had been in the storyline has by now left Wonderland to never come back. I don't think I want to just tell a story of lots of horrible people fighting to screw one another. But maybe the story can be that without the major suppressing force of hope there, there's a chance of people rising out of the despair that holds them there. Alice was a rather successful game, liked by the majority of its players, so maybe there is an audience for this one.

Lastly, as I mentioned recently, I would love to write a small short game that I could put together quickly and easily just to have something new and fun to run. I am imagining it as a two-hour game where the players are explicitly confined to a tightly limited space with an interactive environment that facilitates the movement of the plot. The trouble is, I have no idea what the circumstance or the story should be. That's always my problem when I come up with the project without already having an idea for it. Somebody give me a scenario, and if I feel inspired by it, I would love to write a quick, short, fun larp for it.

Five years

Today is my fifth year anniversary with Jared.

Thank you, best friend. <3

Minecraft humor

So Jared has succumbed to the Minecraft bug, and finally bought the full version. Unfortunately he keeps dying every time he makes any progress, so at the moment his little piece of the Minecraft world isn't very developed. He doesn't have a house yet, just a shelter he dug out of a hillside. I said he lived in a hobbit hole, but when he told me he doesn't really have anything in it, I said he was more like a caveman. When he started going on about how much work it takes to build a house and make yourself a bed and how the bare ground with no floor or carpeting isn't so bad, I was horrified and said he was a Minecraft hobo. So I took on the persona of his nagging Minecraft cave-wife, and went on about how he'd be eating raw chicken and punching sheep for wool without me to take care of him, and if he found any diamond he was NOT going to make some stupid tool with it, he was going to give it to me in thanks for all I put up with being his cave-wife. Oh, and how I should have married that nice Minecrafter over the hillock who had boots and a pair of shears already. He responded by wishing he'd stayed a bachelor with nobody nagging him to sleep in a bed already or not try eating rotten zombie meat just to see what it tasted like, and oh, if only an enderman would carry him away and spare him from his domestic hell. I seriously wish I recorded the conversation, because it was absolutely hilarious.



I should have married this Minecrafter. I bet he'd lay a carpet for me.

Friends in Pride and Prejudice!

A number of friends recently got the good news that they were cast in Theatre@First's upcoming production of Pride and Prejudice! Jared will be playing the role of Mr. Bingley, the handsome, amiable friend and foil to the acerbic Mr. Darcy. Tegan has been cast in the role of Jane Bennett, the sister of the heroine Elizabeth and the lady with whom Mr. Bingley falls in love. And Jenn will be featured in the dancing ensemble. I'm looking forward to see how the show turns out; Jared hasn't done much non-classical theater before. I think To Think of Nothing is his only contemporary piece, and that tries to emulate the must older style! So it'll be neat to hear him in something non-Shakespearean. The performances are at the Somerville Theater on March 23rd, 24th, and 30th at 8PM and then March 31st at 2PM. I hope you all can join me in coming out to see them!

Sewing project progress: pink checked dress muslin, part II, and Jared's checked apron, part V

Last night I sewed my very first darts into my pink check dress muslin. I followed captainecchi*'s pointers on how to fix and sew them, and I would have taken hazliya*'s suggestion on pinking off the extra fabric inside, but my pinking shears were ridiculously dull. I wonder if it's possible to get them sharpened. Anyway, the process went quite smoothly. I worked according to the SEW, CLIP, PRESS method that supposedly professionial sewists use, where after ever seam you sew in, you immediately clip the threads and take it to the ironing board to press it. Well, I tied several knots in the tails before clipping like Lise suggested, but still. It did seem to slow things down a little-- my instinct would have been to do all the seams, then clip all the ends, then press everything --but it results in crisp-looking seams. I will work to get into the habit of this.

I also attached the muslin interfacing to the shoulder facings. The pattern recommends you use fusible interfacing, but I didn't have any, so I just repurposed this white muslin I had and sewed it to the pink check pieces.

I would have kept going, except the next step is to add a zipper for the back, which I still need to buy. My mom has offered to take me to a sewing supply store while I'm home for Thanksgiving, so maybe I'll take a scrap of the pink check home with me to look for a good color match.

Oh, and I also more or less finished Jared's black and white apron. I found better material for the neck and back straps-- it kind of reminds me of that woven nylon material that dog leashes are made out of, only thinner --and attached them the other day to Jared's specifications. He'd like me to put a plain black pocket on the front it, but other than that the piece is done.

Unfortunately I made a lot of mistakes with this. The biggest one I think was finishing the sides of the check before putting seam binding on them. It made for a whole bunch of layers of material in one small spot, which made the binding harder to attach and the machine have a harder time piercing through. Ah, well. At least I learned a lot, and still Jared is happy with it even if it's not the best-made thing ever.

Second-round Intercon signups tomorrow

Tomorrow at 7PM second-round Intercon signups open. My first round I signed up for Feast of the Minotaur because it looked to be filling fast, and I'm really glad I got in. It sounds like a fantastic game and there's lots of cool people in it, so it should be a fun time. I've decided that if I get cast as a slave girl, which is a possibility, I will wear the crinkly tan prisoner dress Steph wore when the Duchess of Gloucester was arrested in Margaret. Maybe I'll cut it to knee-length, we'll see. At any rate, I am really excited for that game.

That means I am booked for Friday night with that and Saturday night with running Resonance. This is the only game I've ever run at Intercon that has always filled first round! Yay for us. But that means I still have three slots open. I think this may finally be the year that I don't overload myself with games, so I think I will only sign up for one more thing. My first choice for the morning on Saturday was A Garden of Forking Paths, which also already filled-- congratulations, AE! --so I think I will be sleeping in for the first time in years. I never play Sunday games, so that leaves Saturday afternoon. I think it will be An Evening Aboard the HMS Eden for me. Jared and I like to try to have one game a con together, and we both thought this one sounded fun. I have a weaknesses for Victorian literary pastiches, and I have only ever played one other, LXHS. I think that will make for just the right amount of occupied time, and maybe I won't be so utterly blown by the end of the weekend.

Casting probably won't happen for a long time yet, but I would love it if this year I got to use some of the things I picked up just becuase "they're sure to make a good costume someday." My ballerina-like, peachy-pink pixie dress, for one. The real mink fur stole I found at Savers once. My cream and gold halter-style Cordelia dress. The old-fashioned ivory wedding dress I simply had to have when I found it in the course of shopping for Margaret. (Will have to post pictures of that one.) I even have a bustle I picked up for three dollars at the otherwise-disappointing Brandeis costume department sale. Probably out of luck for Feast of the Minotaur, which takes place in ancient Greece, but who knows, I could see any of these pieces being possibly useful for HMS Eden. I could get cast as Miss Havisham and get to swan around mournfully in the wedding gown, or something!

ninja_report* also sent out a call for registration to Festival of the Larps recently. Early registration helps give an idea of attendance, which helps estimate per-timeslot player counts, so it would help her out if you can indicate that you're coming now. I must say, all this thinking of Intercon and Festival makes me itch to get back to larp writing. I have purposefully held off working on my newest idea Imperium, a vaguely I, Claudius-inspired larp set in Ancient Rome, because I wanted to focus on schoolwork and playwrighting. But now that I've finished my last assignment for the semester, and classes don't start up again until January... I find myself tempted to switch gears, at least temporarily while school is not in session. I'd love to have a new game to debut at Festival. I guess I just worry that I won't have enough time to write that and the stuff school will require of me between now and April. But the temptation, she is strong... I guess I'll have to think about it and come to a decision sooner rather than later, so I leave myself enough time to write and bid if I end up doing the crazy thing...

Impressions of the Intercon L schedule

The schedule of games for Intercon L is now available for viewing. I'm on bid com, so I knew all of these things were going to run already, but now the schedule is available for everyone to see. As is my custom at this stage of con preparation, I will now go over my current thoughts for what my signup plan shall be.

Friday night I think my preference is for Feast of the Minotaur. It's written by Andandi Gandolfi, who has an excellent track record, and I like the Ancient Greek mythology setting based around the myth of Theseus. Also interesting to me is Colonel Sebastian T. Rawhide's Circus of the Spectacular, which is a classic I've heard very good things about. I've already played in House of the Rising Sun and I highly recommend it to those of you who are pondering your own options for Friday night. Venezia will probably have a test run at Brandeis before Intercon rolls around, and I will try it then.

Saturday morning, I'd go for Garden of Forking Paths. This is the work of my sometime coauthors emp42ress*, natbudin*, and simplewordsmith* taking the "your choices affect the nature of your game" concept touched on in Resonance to an even greater extreme, with simultaneous runs of the same scenario affecting where everyone else's scenario ends up. I'm not sure how it's going to work exactly, but I know this group does amazing, envelope-pushing work and I'm always game to play something they've written. Failing that, I still haven't gotten into a run of Concordance Station written by readerofposts*, or if all else fails I could always sleep in.

Saturday afternoon the options are not leaping out at me. I would probably go for An Evening Aboard the HMS Eden. It sounds interesting, being a pastiche of Victorian literary characters aboard a cruise ship, and even so Jared thinks he's going to sign up for it, and it would be nice for us to have a game together. I confess I'm curious about Nat and Vik's Harmony Quest, despite the fact that I've technically been spoiled on it and when I first heard about it I was certain it wouldn't be my kind of game. Still, there's a morbid streak in me that wants to know just how uncomfortable I'd be. Also I've heard it's well done for the style of game it is, and as was said by at least five members of bid com, I trust Nat. Probably won't go for it, but the thought has crossed my mind. I also have some curiosity as to how The Linfarn Run is, being an intimate Brit game, though I'm not really interested in Firefly.

Saturday evening I will be running Resonance with the aforementioned writers from Alleged Entertainment. We're quite proud of this unusual sort of game, so if you haven't played yet it might be worth your while. Of the games going up concurrently with it, I'm quite sorry I won't be able to play in Port Hidalgo, a well-regarded pirate adventure, and I've heard good things about Roanoke, a game about the Sir Walter Raleigh's colony in Virginia. I tend to like period games.

Sunday morning the only thing that particularly interested me I've already played (GM Space) and so will be observing my usual Sunday-of-the-con tradition of collapsing in an exhausted heap. I do recommend GM Space as probably the funniest larp I've ever played, however, so keep it in mind if you've never been in it.

And that's my plan. Not sure what my first signup will be; logic dictates that Garden, as the game with the fewest number of slots, should be my first choice, so probably I'll go for that. Feast is the other possibility, because although it's large I'm very excited to play it. First round signups open November 2nd, so put it on your calendars, everyone.

Bridgewater Larp Day concluded

Bridgewater Larp Day is accomplished. It turned out to be a pretty good event that I had a lot of fun with, despite the fact that I wasn't feeling particularly healthy or energetic. Congrats to EB for organizing it. Oz ran well, if a little on the quick side, lasting about three hours rather than four. I guess everyone pushed their plots very fast! Everyone did seem extremely busy, which is my usual marker of people enjoying their play experience. It would have been notable if for no other reason than katiescarlett29*, who has been trepidatious about larping, seemed to have a good time! She was cast as Dorothy, which tends to be a very good newbie role, and got into her plot and connected with the other larpers around her. I was also amused by how people seemed to be constantly putting the environmental cataclysm on the back burner; I'm very glad they were that engaged with their individual plots, but you'd expect a little more concern for the threat to the entirety of the universe. ;-)

After Oz, I finally got to play in House of the Rising Sun, which has been Jared and EB's project for the last year. I was very excited, and the game itself did not disappoint. House is a dark, angst-filled game, perfect for people who like emotional extremity and dramatic scenes in larps. I really enjoyed the presence of the ghosts, and the way the walls between their world and ours slowly broke down as the game went on. I was in a privileged position of being able to see the ghosts straight off, which made for some fun freaking out, and it gave me an interesting position to glimpse into the struggles and closet skeletons of everyone around me. I was also really luck to be in it with such a great group of players; morethings5*, captainecchi*, electric_d_monk*, wired_lizard*, mllelaurel*, April, Nick, vortexofchaos*, darkoni, kamianya*, Alison, and more. I have some minor criticisms about issues in certain characters' back stories, but they are mostly literary stylistic points that don't affect the thrust of the narrative too much. All in all, though, I highly recommend this game, as long as you're not bothered by dark content. I'm really proud of EB and Jared for putting this together. This is Jared's first finished four-hour larp, and I'm incredibly happy for him that it went so well. Well done, my love. :-)

Please let this coming week be calmer...

At last, the week of ceaseless theater and theater prep is over. I went to all four shows of As You Like It, which turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable production. There was lots of good acting and great humor as I was hoping there would be, and it was also nice to be reminded just how good Jared is. I haven't seen him act in a while, and I was incredibly proud of the performance he turned in as Oliver, the hero's wicked elder brother who reforms by the end to marry the heroine's cute cousin. He seems to have enjoyed it too, as they were a great group to work with and he very much liked his part. usernamenumber too is particuarly worth a mention in his hilarious portrayal of Touchstone who was easily everyone's favorite part of the play. My favorites of his line readings were his scary-heavy-metal-voice "DOTH MY SIMPLE VISAGE CONTENT YOU?" and "Thou art in a perilous state, shepheeeeeeeerd!' The picnic on Saturday made it even better. We ended up in a group of over twenty people, with lots and lots of delicious food to share. It doesn't get much better than combining three of the best things in the world, food, friends, and theater.

I hope this coming week is lower-key. Even if I'm enjoying the things I'm doing, constantly having to run from one thing to the next is a surefire way to stress me out. I'm still a little residually edgy. But on the plus side, I will soon be able to release the cast list for Merely Players, which I am very excited for. Had a very productive meeting with Dave to make sure we were on the same page, and I think things are going to work out very well. He was great to talk to and I think he'll be great for everyone involved in the show to work with. My parents are also coming in, and I know they're going to need my help with some stuff they need to get done while they're here. More work, I guess, but it will be nice to see them. Here's hoping I get a minute to catch my breath after the week I've had.

Intense week of theater

Gah. Things started getting busy last Thursday and won't let up until the end of this coming weekend. We got Jared successfully moved into his new place with an intrepid team of him, Bernie, Steph, and myself. It actually went pretty smoothly except for the actual travel, because traffic was so awful it took three times as long to get anywhere as it should have. But I'm glad to have gotten it taken care of, and I think it's been nice for Jared to be in Somerville since he's in tech week for his show.

The show is going to be going up this coming weekend. I promised to attend all four performances starting on Thursday, the Saturday of which the big potluck picnic will be. I am excited, but I need to be ready and in organizational mode to make sure everything goes off all right. Hope to see as many lovely friends as possible there!

As for my own activities, this past weekend I spent finishing my latest homework assignment and recovering from a blindingly bad migraine. Saturday and Sunday I spent working, but I woke up on Labor Day with a halo in my right eye that I only noticed when I tried to go back to my school reading. Soon the headache set in on the left side of my head, followed by waves of nausea and vomiting. If Bernie hadn't been able to quickly run me over some Excedrin Migraine, I don't know what I would have done. I've only just started getting migraines about a year and a half ago, and even then I've only ever had four or five, but that was easily the worst one I've ever had. I had recently experienced a lot of the factors that contribute to getting migraines-- stress, long hours staring at a computer screen, hormonal changes due to my prescription running out and being unable to get a timely refill appointment --but it does kind of make me nervous that they seem to have become worse with every episode. It may be something worth addressing with a doctor, before I end up with an aneurysm or something.

Auditions for Merely Players are tomorrow night. I was a little nervous at first, as not very many people had contacted me with interest in coming out, but now it looks like things will be fine. I'm very excited to nail down a cast for this. I have not gotten the name of a single person I wouldn't like to cast, so I fear if I get many more I'm going to run into the same painful situation as I did with To Think of Nothing-- more fantastic people than I can use. The decision maker will probably end up being comparing it to Dave's cast list for Margaret and taking those with smaller parts of who didn't get parts in his show, which was my plan all along.

I also am trying out for a couple of things myself. I found a production of Titus and a production of Romeo and Juliet that have an open call. I wish they weren't this week, as it doesn't leave me a ton of time to prepare, but them's the breaks sometimes. I am not terribly optimistic, as I've tried out for a lot of things this summer that I didn't get in, but you never know unless you try. That is the closest I can get to being hopeful, I suppose, being convinced it's futile but keeping at it anyway. It's probably the only thing keeping my functional, given what a pessimist I really am.

So much to do

Brain is kind of racing today. I have been ridiculously busy over the last few days, and the time devoted to that stuff has made it so I haven't had the time to do a lot of other stuff that also needs doing. After I get off of work today I will be running over to Jared's house to help him move to Rule 34 in Somerville. It shouldn't be too hard, we will be a crew of four and all we have to room is the contents of a bedroom and a couple boxes of kosher cookware. But there's so much more to do, and stuff that needs to be done now rather than later. I have to cast Oz for its run on the 25th, I have to finish my homework for the upcoming due date, I have to remember to schedule an appointment to renew my prescriptions... and none of it can be put off.

I am going to be the proverbial headless chicken this weekend. So much for enjoying Labor Day.

Saturday picnic for As You Like It

 
As you may know, Jared is going to be portraying the wicked elder brother Oliver in a production of As You Like It. usernamenumber* is in this show as well as Touchstone, one of Shakespeare's awesome fools. It will be going up in Seven Hills Park in Davis Square the weekend of September 8th - 11th. I would like to plan a lovely potluck picnic dinner in the park before the show on Saturday the 10th and I would like you all to be there with me. The show is at 8PM, so I figured we could arrive in the park around 6, and play and eat and hang out together in the park for a while before we watch. Please let me know if you can come that day, and if you would like to make anything for the picnic, that would be very welcome! And feel free to bring anyone else you know you might like to come.

I am looking forward to your company, so I hope you all can join me there! Remember, the show is FREE. And if you can't come on Saturday but can come to another night, let me know that too, as I'll be going to all four shows and would be glad to make separate plans with you as well. :-