Riverside stuff in the Live Long and Marry auction

ellen_kushner has just placed two items up for auction at livelongnmarry They are both spectactular and unique, and I urge people to go bid on them.

As Ellen says in the auction offers:

"I am the author of the Riverside books: Swordspoint, The Privilege of the Sword, and co-author (with Delia Sherman, to whom I am legally married in Massachusetts - and, if all goes well, in California) of The Fall of the Kings. This auction has inspired me to create a short script titled "A Riverside Marriage." It is set shortly before TFOTK, so characters include a young Theron Campion, Sofia, his mother, the Duchess Katherine (looking aggrieved) and various handsome young men. Richard St Vier & Alec Campion feature in the plot. It will be 8-10 pages long (I'm nearly done, but not quite)."

Ellen's books are what brought me to both fencing and Patty. Her stuff is special, and if you haven't read it, you should. If you have read it, you should go bid:

http://community.livejournal.com/livelongnmarry/159649.html
http://community.livejournal.com/livelongnmarry/159774.html

Metropolis is no longer lost

My parents took myself and four friends for see the Giorgio Moroder version of Metropolis for my 13th birthday.

I fell in love with it. I fell in love with False Maria as she tore at her dress, the sheer mouth pleasure of saying Yoshiwara's House of Sin, Rotwang's odd little house and the rotunda with nine doors, the sadness of the obsession over Hel whom we also know nothing of, the pleasure gardens and the sports complex. It was dreams of my city, a New York of elevated highways and biplanes and grief and love and god in the catacombs.

To say my love for it is fannish would be wrong. It's been a much more private affair. I still love the music of the Giorgio Moroder version -- it's easy to mock, but much of it is astoundingly smart. I have dragged people to see if for years. That version, later restorations every time they found another piece.

That's the thing -- Metropolis is recognized as one of the greatest films ever made, and it's been incomplete (the current publicly available restoration is believed to be only 75% complete and relies heavily on title cards and stills and lacks basic information on at least two subplots) and the missing material presumed lost since May 1927. Every once in a while a few more minutes of footage and some stills surface and another restoration is released, but Metropolis has always been shown with the knowledge that we will never know what it once was.

To love this film has been to love the elegance of loss.

When Patty and I went down to Philcon, we popped our heads into the movie room while it was showing. I was on my way to a late-night panel I was in no mood for. Patty, being gracious, was attending with me and we had a few minutes to kill

"I love this film," I told her "and I'm pissed they scheduled me against it."

The scene was when the Foreman urges the workers not to destroy the Machines for they will flood the City and kill their own children. It's an overwrought silent film moment at its finest, and without looking at her, I could feel Patty go still and be rapt with it, and it was such a great and special pleasure to me.

After we left, we realized people were MT3K'ing the film, which irked me. Metropolis is, as a silent film, of another time and place. But it was also of another time and place when it was first released. It has never not been eerie and haunting and odd. And since almost immediately after its German release, it has never not been lost.

Metropolis is no longer lost. I don't think there is a living person who cares about this film who ever expected to see it as it once was.

I'm in tears.

And Patty's first actual viewing of it will be how it was originally meant to be seen. Over eighty years later. That's fucking spectacular.

Thanks to coyotegoth for the heads up.

another auction item

I've added another item over at livelongnmarry.

It's probably only of interest to people on the friendslist and I offer it with some trepedation as I have mixed feelings about the work therein, but I think some of you might be interested and will get a kick out of it, and there's no better use for it other than using it to raise money in this way.

http://community.livejournal.com/livelongnmarry/162159.html

TW fic: A Strange Fashion of Forsaking (Jack/Ianto, NC-17)

Title: A Strange Fashion of Forsaking.
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Authors: rm & kalichan
Rating/Content: NC-17, porn with a soupçon of plot, d/s.
More Specific Warnings That Give the Story Away (for the Squickable Among You)( click here )

Summary: Ianto hates to see him leave, but loves to watch him go.
Author's Notes: Vague spoilers for 2x05: Adam, 2x10: From Out of the Rain & 2x12: Fragments; takes place somewhere in between 2x05 and 2x06: Reset. Title taken from a poem by Lucie Brock-Broido.
Personal, non-collective author's note: This kinda started off as crack!fic and became a love story. It's pretty out there and ridiculously dirty, but it's oddly sweet and I'm very fond of it.
Wordcount: ~4300

"You called, sir?" Ianto said, walking into Jack's office. "Or rather, you bellowed? We do have comlinks for....oh. You've...ah...lost your clothes, I see. Well, foreplay not quite dead, just on the critical list."

more Live Long and Marry

Bids on my auctions have reached a total of $225!

There is still time to bid on several of the items, including the newly added autographed Cthulhu Sex anthology and an artifact created with kalichan from descensus_hp!

http://community.livejournal.com/livelongnmarry/tag/seller:+rm

yay!

After two weeks without letters, I got two letters and a postcard from Patty. She's very sweet and writes incredibly evocative stuff about where she is working.

You will all laugh at me for this. She writes: "Your new stationary is very nice and dignified. It doesn't make me think of Captain Jack, but then you know him better."

Also, she taught me how to say pottery shards in Arabic.

NOw I am recording her weird audio files for her Ipod. I just sang her a cheesetastic version of Dancing Cheek to Cheek, which is one of those songs I'm always walking around singing, but it's somehow striking me as funnier than usual (mainly because I've never heard myself do it before -- god, I'm either the funniest person ever or the most annoying).