oh, write back and tell them we look like writers

Well, that was pretty swell, wasn't it?

[The voice is a cheery one. Kay's sitting out in the living room of the house, chatting into the book with a stack of papers on either side of her. Seemed like a good day to try editing somewhere other than her room.]

It was great seeing everyone at the opening of Cloud Nine on Friday. Weekends from here on out, think about stopping in and...what the--?

[Someone listening especially carefully would have heard a muffled bang, the sound of a door being forced open. She stares up at the three shining metal men walking toward her, inexorably toward her, her eyes wide with a dawning horror. Their build is familiar; their modus operandi, more so. These ones travel in packs, but no one said fiction was perfect. Her voice grows higher and quieter, closer to a breath than anything, a note of panic entering her words.]

Oh, my God, you aren't--you can't be--

[But they keep coming toward her, with solemn steps, and she's convinced entirely that she knows what they are. Droids, sure, but more importantly--far more importantly--a Fury. She hadn't known it was Furies that collected people to take them away.]

Oh, my God.

I wrote you.

[The journal feed cuts off then, and very soon, there's nothing left but a floor and davenport scattered liberally with sheets of white paper, covered in typeset words marked over with blue pencil.]

( ooc note )

You know what this place could use? A nightclub.

Don't get me wrong, I like Good Spirits a lot, but you can't exactly go there for dinner and dancing. The pizzeria seems like it has room for musicians, but pizza's not exactly ritzy. Sometimes you just want to go somewhere nice and hear a good band, you know? Putting a Tex Beneke record on just isn't the same.

It wouldn't even have to be dance music all the time, either. Just some piano music, like--oh, what's his name--Chopin plays would be nice. We probably don't have enough musicians here to make a full-sized band anyway.

I'm not asking for the Stork Club here--Lord knows I wouldn't get in if I was--but there oughta be something else to do here at night. For the most part, this place is great, but it's kind of a one-horse town when it comes to entertainment.

Have any of you read J. R. R. Tolkien's work? I can't recommend it highly enough--I really--oh, it's just great, you ought to read it. I read a book a night, I just couldn't put them down.

I mean, The Hobbit was a good book, no denying that, I read it when it came out, but these Lord of the Rings stories of his are above and beyond in quality. There's a grandeur to them that I really wasn't expecting at all, because--well, The Hobbit is great, don't get me wrong, but it's great in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way. It's for children as much as adults, and it's a little jokier, I guess. Which is good, I've always loved Alice, but The Lord of the Rings has such a larger scale, and the storyline's just so rich--

The language just soars, and the characters are so--so well-realized. I don't want to ruin the ending for anyone, but when Eowyn's at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, she's--oh, I really don't want to give it away, because it's so satisfying when you get there, but it's genius. We ought to have more strong female characters like her out there, she's really just wonderful--I love when the women get to fight, too. And she gets to do so much--

[And she pauses, because she's starting to get a little carried away with the excitement of OMG EOWYN IS SO COOL, YOU GUYS, because of course Eowyn is Kay's favourite.]

In any case, they were excellent. I'm going to start them all over again tonight, they deserve a second pass. [And that way, she can read them aloud to Mildmay.]

((OOC: The Fellowship of the Ring is first published in the middle of 1954, so all of this is SO NEW AND EXCITING for Kay, all thanks to Ingrid making mention of the series back on Thursday. NB: I don't actually know much about LotR, so if I fuck up anywhere, it's decidedly an OOC mistake, not an IC one. DX))

All right, I give up. Did I die in my sleep? They always told me about clouds and white angel wings when I was a girl, though nothing says they had to be right about that--it's not like any of them had died before. This place has the white gowns, at least, so that's a point in favor of the theory.

But maybe it isn't Heaven--let's see, what're the other options? The future? I always imagined more city and less wildlife, and I wouldn't've figured on wings as the next big fad, but this isn't bad looking, for a future. Another planet entirely? Doesn't really explain the wings. An alternate dimension? Could explain the wings, if there're alternate dimensions out there where everyone has wings. Hell, maybe it's the past, though I think they skipped the Time of the Bird People back in history class.

Maybe I've just fallen into Wonderland.

An ever-expanding series of lists regarding bits of pop culture--books, movies, television shows, songs, magazines, etc.--that Kay's familiar with. Where it refers to the "present," please assume I mean 1953.

Figuring out her age for any of these events is fairly easy: subtract a decade, then subtract one year, and the last one or two numbers are her age. (You could also just subtract eleven, but I'm not good at math, so it takes me slightly longer to do it that way. >>) In 1933, for example, she's 22. Any years before 1911 don't count.

And she was born on a Thursday, fun fact. She's certainly gone far, considering she's here in Luceti. ♥

( dream a little dream of )

Legend
Friend
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ - I'd say hello to them on the street.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ - They're all right.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ - A friend.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ - A good friend.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ - Jules.

Foe
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ - Not exactly ideal company.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ - A pain in the neck.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ - A real creep.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ - I'd watch my back around them.
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ - Better to stay the hell away.

( nuts to geography )

The collected works of the authors at Incredible Tales are awfully silly-sounding to our ears on the whole, because they're very simple parodies of the titles of real benchmark works of science fiction. Albert Macklin has written such classics as "1001: First Odyssey" and "Me, Android," while Herbert Rossoff can lay claim to "I Have No Voice so I Must Shout" and "Quantity of the Monster."

In an effort to have all of Kay and Julius' canonical works* in one place for easy reference, along with some I've made up based off Moore and Kuttner's own bibliography, I've made a list here of their stories with publishing dates in parentheses. At some point, I might add in summaries, IDK.

*By canonical, I mean that the title of the work appears on one of the Incredible Tales mockup covers, which you can see at the Incredible Tales link above.

(You may also notice that none of their canonical stories are based off actual Moore and Kuttner tales. My theory is that titling something "Gyre and Gimble in the Wabe" would have been too obscure a joke for science fiction fans in comparison to "The Venusian Chronicles"--they had the choice between immediately clear references or actually referencing Moore and Kuttner, and they picked the former. In their place, I would, too. I, however, am not constrained by the desire to make sure most people get the joke immediately because I'm both pretentious and obsessed, and so all their non-canonical work is based off Moore and Kuttner's actual output. It's also a lot easier for me than trying to come up with more massively important scifi stories to riff off of.)

K.C. Hunter and Julius Eaton: Major Works

( eljay cut just in case )
¶ "Gyre and Gimble in the Wabe" (February, 1943), one of Kay and Julius' most famous stories, after "Mimsy Were the Borogoves."
¶ "Verdict Day" (first published in Incredible Tales in August and September, 1943, later the title story in a collection from 1952), after "Judgment Night."
¶ "Two-Fisted Machine" (February, 1951), after "Two-Handed Engine." NB: While I've mostly been sticking to the real-world dates of publication for these stories, I've moved this one up four years, because I can't reference it if I don't, and I have Things I would really like to Do with it.

Or, "this is why Kay hates your crazy modern music with its shouty singing and its loud guitars." (I'm not going to lie, this is only tangentially related to her, though it does address her tastes in music, is kind of relevant? IDK, theoretical reader (I am not convinced that anyone not me is ever going to read this, and that's probably okay), I just love writing up supplemental materials, and this is one of my favourite tricks in the world.)

When many Americans think of the music of the 1950s, songs like "Rock Around the Clock" come to mind. (Fun fact: While "Rock Around the Clock" is generally referred to as the first rock'n'roll song, "Rocket 88" by Ike Turner beats it to the punch by three years. Elvis Presley's "That's All Right" gets brought up on occasion, too, and quite a few other songs. Rock music: It is a fun, if murky, business.) Throw in some Elvis, some Little Richard, some doo wop, maybe a little Buddy Holly, and you can probably call it a day. That's the 50s in music.

(Did you know I love archive footage? Because I love archive footage. But that's a digression, lol. But seriously, if there's anyone reading this, do consider watching some of those youtube links, because there's such great value in seeing the actual performers around the time of recording.)

The way we talk about the 50s does a disservice to the decade, though. Talking rock'n'roll and rhythm'n'blues ignores what a huge swath of the public was listening to at the time. I'm not one to say "oh, but can't we think of the mainstream white adult audience some more?" in general, but to really understand the music of the 50s--and more importantly here, to understand Kay--I have to. So here, meet your new superstar:

( oh, you pretty thing )

I just want somewhere to put it, so why the fuck not. Plus, some of them are going to end up being very firmly Luceti!verse Kay. (None of them are really solely Farverse, though it'd be fun to do a purely Farverse set sometime. No, wait, #29 is Farverse if I use "Some Enchanted Evening." Hold on, I'll pick out a different song.) (Also, I gotta say, using semi-colons is starting to feel like cheating here.)

This is the third set from here. I'm just doing it for fun.

( silly little one-line stories )

( notes )