Snowflake Challenge, part six

[sophia_sol]

DAY TWELVE: "rec at least three fanworks that you think would make a good intro into XYZ fandom."

Egads this is hard. I don't think I ever enter fandoms through sensible means. I just throw myself in and flounder until I figure out what the hell's going on. Which means I am very bad at judging what would make a good intro for other people!

How about this? How about I choose a fandom for which I have exactly three fanworks bookmarked and rec those three? I think that sounds like an excellent plan.

Let's see -- I will go with If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, because it is fascinating and because the fics generally stand alone -- the fics are more about the structural conceit than anything. It's really good times! And it's the kind of fandom that exists for the purpose of being meta. :D

If on a Yuletide morn, a reader (10588 words) by norah
Chapters: 11/11
Fandom: If on a winter's night a traveler - Calvino, The Book of Life, Henry Fool (1997), Arcadia - Stoppard, Carter Beats the Devil, Soon I Will Be Invincible
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: You, Simon Grim, Jesus of Nazareth, Hannah, Valentine - Character, Septimus Hodge, Lady Cook, Phoebe, Annabelle Carter, Lily, Fatale
Summary: You are about to begin reading your Yuletide story.

I Want (The Valium Remix) (411 words) by redsnake05
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore | If on a winter's night a traveller - Italo Calvino
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Summary: I just want to read a book, that's all.

Only the Third Story in this Forsaken Fandom Whose Title Does Not Begin with If (5836 words) by seekingferret
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore | If on a winter's night a traveller - Italo Calvino, 1/0, 2666
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Manuel (1/0)/Original Female Character, Lotaria/Ermes Marana
Characters: Lotaria, Ermes Marana, Ludmilla (Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore), Tailsteak, Benno von Archimboldi, the Writer, Il Lettore | The Reader, Manuel (1/0)
Summary: You've decided to write If on a winter's night a traveler fanfic. Oh, you poor, poor soul. This can only end in blood and tears. If it even ends at all. You can write an ending, can't you?

DAY THIRTEEN: "share a favorite piece of original canon."

This one is hard for me, in a number of ways! First, I have a LOT of fandoms. And second, the level of attention I pay to canon is usually a lot lower than the attention I pay to fandom. Um. I'll skip bandom, because I'm even fuzzier on the canon here than usual, and go to -- let's go with JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT. You are familiar with this already (at least vaguely) from my default icon! That right there is JOSEPH, wearing his amazing technicolor dreamcoat!

JatATD is a musical, which has a movie made of it. It is the movie I will be talking about, because that's the only format I know it in. It is my favourite movie in the world! And it has been for MANY A YEAR. In fact it is one of, like, three movies I actually own. (my dedication to the art of movies, it is so strong. NOT.)(in fact I cannot even play my copy of JatATD, because it's VHS and I don't own a VHS player. I don't even have a television.)

The joy of JatATD is for the most part in two places. First, the music. The music is fantastic, totally catchy, totally fun, in a wide variety of musical styles and with wonderfully sly and hilarious and occasionally really gorgeous and meaningful lyrics. The sort of music that one can just happily listen to FOREVER. It's at the point these days that if you were to start the movie playing I'd be able to sing along with basically the entire thing from beginning to end. (so you probably don't ever want to watch this movie with me, is what I'm saying)

Second, the META. Oh my god, the meta. It is not possible to talk about the many many many ways this movie is meta. I'm not going to try. Let me just say: SO META. So much wall-breaking! So much ridiculousness! So much UTTER DELIGHTFULNESS!

I am not really being at all coherent when talking about this movie, which is frustrating. Because I've seen it so many times I feel like I should have intelligent things to say about it! But I think actually I've seen it so many times that I'd actually have more to say if it were the first or second time I'd seen it. Because I've been having thoughts about this movie for so much of my life that those thoughts are just a part of the way I automatically approach the movie. The thoughts aren't new and shiny and share-worthy; they just feel normal to me. So I don't even know where to start. And even if I DID know where to start I couldn't write anything because there would be too much to say.

So let me finish by saying I just actually genuinely love EVERY SINGLE DAMN THING about this movie. ALL OF IT. It is so glorious. Hearts in my eyes forever, folks.

Comments

[sylvaine]

I just looked up If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, and, wow, that sounds like a fun read. :D Also, I now feel entirely prepared to read the fic! :P

...you know, I was CONVINCED the person in your icon was a woman. THE MORE YOU KNOW. *puts JatATD on to-watch list*

[sophia_sol]

Yeah, the fic and the fandom have totally convinced me I need to read If On A Winter's Night A Traveler too!

Ahahaha, wow, I never actually thought to look at the icon like that! It amuses me muchly. :) I hope you enjoy JatATD!

[surexit]

I haven't seen the film, but we have a very old copy of the musical that always used to be the only CD that everyone in the car could agree on when driving ten hours up to Scotland for our family holiday. UGH I LOVE THAT MUSIC SO MUCH. ♥

[sophia_sol]

SO MUCH LOVE FOR THE MUSIC. It is great. You should totally look up the movie sometime! Although it might be really weird for you, because I bet you've come up with your own ideas of what it ought to look like, from listening to the CD so much.

(Plus, I own the CD as well as the movie, and the first time I listened to the CD I couldn't get over how it was wrong -- the voices were not the correct voices of the characters! I could not deal! This is the danger of being too familiar with something...)

[surexit]

My main idea of what Joseph on the CD looks like is HILARIOUS. The singer's possibly a famous musical singer? Anyway, he has flowing blonde locks, and is generally rather ridiculous-looking. :D

Oh, it would be quite weird if the songs sound different. :(

[sophia_sol]

Ahahaha! If your CD is the same as mine, the lead singer is Donny Osmond, who I gather was something of a teen heartthrob once upon a time? But dude, Joseph with long blond hair is just WRONG. 0.o

The songs sounding different is weird and distressing, yes!

[surexit]

Nope, Jason Donovan, who delivers the 'I look handsome, I look smart, I am a walking work of art' line with such utterly convicted smugness that no one out of me and my brothers thinks his brothers were in the wrong.

[sophia_sol]

...WHOA. WHOA. He looks SO WRONG. JOSEPHHHHH THAT IS NOT YOU.

(Donny Osmond does an excellent air of smugness himself. I do not blame the brothers either!)

[surexit]

HE IS THE ONLY JOSEPH YOU BLASPHEMER. LOOK AT HIS MAGNIFICENT HAIR.

(Oh God, seriously. DEAR BROTHERS: ALTHOUGH I DO NOT SUPPORT SELLING YOUR BROTHER AS A SLAVE, YOU ARE PRETTY MUCH IN THE RIGHT APART FROM THAT.)

[sophia_sol]

I THINK YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT WHICH OF US BLASPHEMES. DONNY OSMOND'S GLORIOUS LOCKS ARE CLEARLY SUPERIOR.

Here, have a link to the Donny Osmond version of Joseph singing about how handsome and smart he looks and tell me that's not spectacularly well-done.

The brothers definitely have good justification for their hate. I only hope that Joseph was at least somewhat deserving of the reconciliation at the end -- only I really don't think he was, because he plays a really quite mean trick on them to prove they're now "honest men". Joseph just spends a very long time in this musical being totally arrogant. "It's just that I have not been wrong before!" "But who this man could be I do not know!" And so forth. Even "Close Every Door," which is a lovely song, and a beautiful expression of strength in the face of fear, contains rather a lot of that arrogance, because he is so sure that God is on his side: "For I have been promised a land of my own." And he sounds very sure of that; it's not just him whistling in the dark.

It's interesting, that the musical quite happily goes out of its way to make Joseph a not particularly likeable person, despite Joseph being the ostensible main character of the piece. Although one could make the argument that there are three main characters: Joseph, the brothers (as one entity, although there is also individuality between them), and the narrator. (but perhaps the latter doesn't come across in quite the same way with only the audio? The narrator, in the movie, does quite a lot of personal interaction with the various characters!) And of them, none of them are exactly paragons of virtue and likeableness. In fact there's not a character in the whole musical I can think of who's a decent person. Perhaps Pharaoh gets closest, but he has too much vanity and sense of his own importance, so not so much.

(oh gosh, shut me up, I have seen this musical TOO MANY TIMES and have TOO MANY THOUGHTS)

[surexit]

I THINK YOU WILL FIND IT IS YOU WHO IS WRONG.

That is pretty lovely. BUT STILL WRONG. Also with lots of eyeshadow and charmingness. BUT STILL WRONG. Also, heeeeeeeey Single Black Brother, wow your existence in order to sing the calypso song is... bleurgh.

Oh God that trick he plays at the end is just horrendous. AND HE'S SO SMUG ABOUT THAT AS WELL. 'Hahahaha I will make them grovel!"

goes out of its way to make Joseph a not particularly likeable person
I've always thought it was unintentional, but that's because I think Lloyd Webber's a toad and I don't trust his characterisation abilities. I AM PROBABLY BEING UNFAIR.

I've seen it on stage as well (only once professionally, three of four times because various relatives were in it at various times), so I have a good sense of the narrator as a character. Although maybe not as much as the film, she looks awesome in that clip.

[sophia_sol]

NOPE YOU ARE STILL WRONG.

I went and looked up Donovan on youtube, and yeah, he's a good singer and all, but he is NOT JOSEPH.

Yyyeah, the Single Black Brother's existence is a little bit...problematic. *sigh* Although I do enjoy the fact that one of the brothers is just randomly black with no explanation whatsoever -- it reminds me of another favourite childhood musical of mine, Cinderella, where they just cast all the characters any which race they wanted with no care for familial relationships, and it was super great. Though Cinderella does it really well because it pervades the entire cast, where Joseph just has the one.

It is entirely possible Lloyd Webber's a toad and it was unintentional! I'm not saying he went out of the way to make Joseph not particularly likeable, just that the musical does. Because it clearly does! Even if Lloyd Webber didn't think he was doing it!

The narrator in the film is amazing, and one of the great tragedies of my life is that the cd version of the musical that I have, though it has the RIGHT JOSEPH, has someone extremely different as the narrator. But in the film she's constantly interacting with the characters, and she's always hanging out with the brothers and having good times with them, and smacking Joseph down when he tries to climb out of the pit they throw him into, and just generally being hilarious and awesome. ILHER.

[surexit]

I would enjoy the random blackness if it wasn't for basically the express purpose of signing a calypso song, like he was just there. But as it is... :(

Ah, got you! Yeah, for sure, Joseph's a dick.

I may watch it just to see Joseph being smacked down into the pit. :O

[sophia_sol]

And I was looking at youtube videos of Jason Donovan (to figure out the answer to your evil question) and as far as I can tell, his production also cast a single black brother as Judah. So apparently it's a widespread problem among productions of Joseph. :(((

I'm sorry, apparently I LIED! The narrator merely sits happily on the stone wall of the pit while Joseph tries (and fails) to climb out and doesn't try to help him. (...it is entirely possible I have known and loved this movie for so long that I can no longer see the actual movie over how strong my headcanon is. It is a problem!)

[surexit]

Oh, the black brother's a production feature, yep! When I saw it done that was not a feature, and neither were the women wearing hijab - the world has moved on a tiny bit.

THAT IS AWESOME. The music is still wrong, but. Awesome.

[sophia_sol]

...OH MY GOD I AM SO DENSE. HIJAB. THAT THE WOMEN ARE WEARING. THAT IS WHAT IS GOING ON. In my defense when I first saw the movie I had no idea what hijab was, and by the time I knew, the movie was already such a part of my mental landscape that I didn't think to recontextualize it. BUT STILL. *headdeskking forever*

[surexit]

Hahaha. :D That's the first time I've seen it and I was like, "...Hmmmm."

But that happens to me all the time with things I saw when I was tiny. :D