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(it was about the third false alarm i'd personally had that month - i was still in high school and they happened a lot, and you also regularly heard them walking around any city, with a bunch of disgruntled people muttering on the sidewalk waiting to go back to their job. PLUS on the previous play i'd gone to see, they'd had an electrical problem and the lights had gone out. the actors had bravely kept on playing, but eventually the stage manager had appeared on stage and said "i'm sorry... we can't bring the lights back on, we have to stop the play".)

so anyway. the fire alarm went off right as we were about to go into the theater. the entire crowd went 'uggghhh' and stood hoping it'd stop, but no such luck: one of the actors appeared, smiling in that obviously stressed out way when you hope everything will be fine, and said that by law we had to evacuate the building and they hoped the problem would be fixed asap so we could start the play.

so we poured out. it was a beautiful, warm night in the south of france, and there were like benches and low walls and stuff so that at least anybody who needed to sit down could sit down. and we waited. the fire alarm stopped. general relief! and then it started again. general groan.

people in the crowd were starting to get mad. one lady, who looked very right-wing, started loudly saying stuff like 'this is what we get these days with local government funding, no need to ask whose fault THAT is' (we had a left-wing president at the time). people side-eyed her, said nothing, but as she kept making those comments one man went 'listen, ma'am, can you please stop' and they started debating at the top of their voices.

then a homeless guy arrived and, seeing us all gathered here, whipped out his guitar and started busking for money. some people groaned, others appreciated the distraction from the political debate. until he started asking us what we were all doing here and, hearing the debate, directly addressed the two people fighting, putting in his two cents.

at this point some of us were starting to realize what was actually going on, but most of the crowd still had no idea.

but no one was getting too nervous because the various arguments stayed pretty mild- just exciting enough to be super engaging. eventually the actor from before reappeared, told the debating people to calm down, nervously confirmed we still couldn't go back inside, and offered to do a monologue from romeo & juliet while we waited. the homeless guy loudly approved, the two debating people looked awkward. he launched into his monologue, with one fellow actress as juliet, but they kinda botched it and a third actor arrived, berating them for not learning their lines AND not understanding the true meaning of the text. then, since it looked like we wouldn't get to go back into the theater (by then it had been over an hour anyway) they started awkwardly telling us what their version of much ado would have been like, and it sounded hilariously terrible (a wwi version with bombs raining on the characters the whole time...?)

the right-wing lady from earlier eventually loudly scoffed and said this was a disaster and SHE could do better, SHE had studied shakespeare in school, thank you very much. she did a few lines from another play (lear, i think?) and it wasn't half bad, the actors clapped. everyone was kinda pleased she'd stopped her shit. then the homeless guy did it too, a much longer monologue, and that's when even people very slow on the uptake realized (the crowd had been murmuring between themselves for a while already) that this was the play.

the pointless debates, the awkward busking, the actors doing bits of other plays and then arguing about it, this was 'much ado about nothing', stripped of everything but its title.

now that the cat was out of the bag, the actors (including the right-wing lady, the left-wing guy and the homeless guy) did an actual scene from much ado, the end scene where they dance and sing. and then they bowed and it was over! but they were still like, standing in the middle of the audience, and over these two hours we had gotten really familiar with them all, since a lot of non-actor people had interjected and tried to get in the middle of the debate and either frowned at the busking guy or encouraged him, etc etc. the usual barrier between actors and audience had been obliterated! so everytone started asking questions, and they happily stuck around for the spontaneous round of interviewing, which we got to understood was how this 'play' usually concluded.

"what if the fake political debate got TOO heated?" was asked by many people. they said there were other hidden actors in the crowd who could divert into other directions if it got out of hand, not just the busking man. "what if it rained so that we couldn't all just stand around outside for two hours?" then the play would have been for real cancelled, and they would have explained to the crowd inside the theater what they were supposed to be doing. the right-wing lady got a lot of compliments for being particularly convincing, and also a lot of awed comments regarding what a stressful, even actually dangerous role it is- going into a crowd and starting shit on purpose. "what about the people who left, thinking the play was actually ruined?" yeah, they lost part of their audience every night, but usually the promise of a juicy debate just as the wait got a little long got most of the crowd to stick around until the rest of it started happening.

Art by Armand Vallée (1884-1960), French painter, was also a fashion designer, poster designer, illustrator, and cartoonist. Specialized in naughty scenes as, a pencil virtuoso, he worked for many illustrated newspapers: “Fantasio,” “la vie Parisienne,” “Ridendo,” and “And Ric et Rac.”

It has some genuinely fascinating stuff to say about gender, and I feel like it's worth looking at/thinking about in the context of Historical Gender Stuff. This 100 year old book has the following to say:

"The truth is that some young gentlemen would rather they had been born young ladies: they cannot admit this openly, because in the male world to confess as much would lead to instant ostracism if not worse; but they cannot conceal it either, and by preferring the company of girls, and soft, feminine clothing, and by flinching during the rough pursuits to which all boys, willing or no, are occasionally heirs, they attract opprobrium."

"Such boys weep too readily for their fellows' tastes - weeping is a great crime among boys unless it is generally admitted that circumstances left little choice - and are hounded for that reason."

"Just as there are girls who had rather been boys - we all know examples of the type - there are boys who, in a kinder world, would have been born into the gender more suited to their dispositions."

"Many young people of this sort are riven with a guilt they do not deserve but have been forced, by the conventions of society, to adopt; they are confused, ashamed and thoroughly unhappy."

"The ideal thing to do would be to treat these cases on their merits, send them to girls' schools, and so on. (The same thing should happen with those girls who would rather be young gentlemen.) Boys of this sort are girls in any case-in all respects save one."

Written for @steddiemicrofic!

[ AO3 ]

'PRIDE' wc: 481 | rated: T | cw: N/A | Tags: Getting Together, Rain, Storms, Eddie is a wet cat, good thing Steve likes wet cats

Eddie's luck takes a classical bad turn, but that doesn't last for long.

There’s rain soaked through every molecule associated with Eddie as he stands on Steve Harrington’s doorstep. His van sits empty and dead ten minutes down the street, incapable of taking the blame due to the infirm of old age.

Steve hasn’t answered the door, because Eddie hasn’t knocked, or touched the doorbell, or yelled at the top of his lungs that he’s going to drown in this fucking downpour if somebody doesn’t save him.

He was on his way home from a job when his beautiful, guileless baby broke down. He’s not going back there for help. Around here, the only other person he knows is Steve, who is as distant as he is manfully polite when paying him for services rendered, and despite everything about himself, Eddie has always wanted to impress him.

Thunder cracks and the wind blows colder, and he shivers so hard his knuckles just barely brush the door, but the minuscule noise it makes breaks the ice. He swallows his pride and knocks loudly, like throwing authority into it will save his image.

It takes a few times, but eventually the door swings open. Warmth radiates like a magic barrier between them, separating their worlds. Steve looks him up and down while Eddie does the same back—the guy’s in sweatpants and a wrinkly t-shirt. His hair is sticking up. Eddie might swallow his tongue.

“C’mon,” Steve says, grabbing him by the wrist and pulling—Eddie stumbles across the threshold. “What happened to you?”

He sounds grossed out, maybe by the wet cold thing in his hand. Eddie tries not to feel like a sewer rat.

“Van broke down. It’s raining.”

Steve turns his face away to yawn like a snake unhinging its jaw, then grabs the front of Eddie’s vest and starts pulling layers off.

“I can do it myself?” Eddie asks, instead of says, because Steve’s so efficient he’s got him down to his t-shirt and jeans before his mouth catches up.

“Sucks to do it yourself,” Steve mutters, tugging at Eddie’s belt like the cuffs will just open. “What’s up with this?”

Eddie can only give in. It’s warm in here, and Steve’s looking real good while he’s being so handsy. He undoes his belt and Steve continues, getting him down to his shorts, then claps his hands on his shoulders.

“Hot shower?” he asks, already steering Eddie towards the stairs.

“Sure,” he agrees feebly. The place is empty, but it’s still way above his paygrade—he’s too naked to walk through Steve’s house.

“I gotta shower too,” Steve says. Eddie shrugs. “Maybe I could warm you up.”

Eddie doesn’t respond to the joke until Steve shuts the door behind them both. He must’ve caught Eddie looking, but he’s also turning on the water and pulling his shirt and sweats off, so clearly Eddie’s dreaming.

I personally hate any kind morality thought policing. I'm not Catholic or religious and I do not feel guilty over my thoughts. You are not an inherently evil person because you saw two athletes in an interview and went "Hmmm...... what if...." The Feds are not going to come banging down your door because you wrote about one band member dicking down the other and sent it to your friend.

Wondering about other people's lives is very human. Being nosy about their personal lives is very normal. People have been writing fiction about other people's lives since the dawn of time. Some people even manage to write New York Times Bestselling Books that are "historical fiction" or "alternate reality." It does not make you inherently bad to be curious about the details of someone's personal life. That's being human. Being nosy is kind of fun.

The problem, however, comes with the ways in which people engage with it, and involve the real people in this. Harassing an musician's real girlfriend because it doesn't fit into the RPF ship. Showing up at real sporting events holding signs about how certain teammates should kiss. Trying to get actors to sign art of them fucking their coworker. Flooding social media with comments using the celebrity's full name and speculation. There's a line, there's a fourth wall, and there's fandom etiquette.

I hate the question of "Is RPF ethical" because it feels like morality thought policing. Post your fics on locked accounts, censor someone's name when you tweet about it, blow up your groupchat with hundreds of "DID YOU SEE THE WAY THEY LOOKED AT EACH OTHER??" texts. It's not inherently evil to wonder what other people are doing when they're out of the spotlight. Kill the cop in your mind.

Every now and then a difficult period like this comes along: so it's time to request some assistance.

I've kind of been neglecting my vision for the past year or so, aware that I needed new glasses (and to go have a consult for possible eye-related surgery), but putting it off... and now the situation has, as it were, come home to roost.

The other day, when I was typing something and then (to check it before posting) had to pick up the Mac and hold it up to my nose to see what I'd typed... I realized that if this went on much longer, even with dictation (because after you dictate, you still have to edit...), I wouldn't be able to write.

That would be bad.

I need to go see my Eye Lady, get examined, and get both sets of glasses re-fitted with new prescriptions. This—as usual, each time it needs to be done every year and a half or two years, due to Weird Eyes—is going to run into a low-four-figure-ish kind of money. And due to other recent unexpected medical expenses, right now there's not enough dosh around (or spondoolicks or whatever term you prefer...) to get things sorted.

Therefore: can I get people interested in keeping a writer, you know, writing (as I've got three novels working at once at the moment...), to consider doing one of these things?

(a) Go over to Ebooks Direct and buy a book. (Or a bundle. Or a gift card for somebody else who might like my work.) And if you do: thanks so much!

(b) Stop by my Ko-Fi and drop a little something in the pot. It'll be most appreciated.

And if you can't do either of the above:

(c) Reblog this and let other people see it?

Edward Hopper, Rooftops, 1926. Watercolor and graphite pencil on paper.