Did I ever mention the time that I found out my lecturer was the ghost in one of my classmate’s home town?
Righto. So a couple years ago I took a Myths and Legends class for uni. The lecturer was this really incredible guy. Loved history. Dressed, everyday, to the nines. Top hat, waistcoat, leather shoes etc. In one of the introductory classes he had us share stories we had heard, local myths and legends from the towns we grew up in. I was studying in Ballarat, an Australian town with a rich ghost history and so it made sense that a lot of people had answers. This one girl, however, grew up in a small rural town a couple hours away and talked about the ghost she knew of from when she was in high school. Every night, at the same time of night (about 3am), people recounted seeing a Victorian man walk across the golf field. This one was particularly interesting because she had seen herself. That is, where other people had just heard these stories, she knew that what had been talked about was real.
This was when he turned red. It had turned out that when he was studying for his undergrad he was living in this particular town. Not many people knew him because he didn’t grow up there. He would spend countless nights up late working and so to wind would go on long late night walks. At 3am, every night. In the full garb he wore everyday.
It had turned out that him being the stand out that he was, had birthed a legend. He had known about it but never did he think it would catch up with him.
The real irony is there is plenty of fanfiction that goes through more rigorous editing than some published fiction. So the difference in quality between fanfiction and “professional writing” is totally arbitrary and made up. Except that some things that are more expensive are worse.
Honestly, it’s just me. My mom used to beta for me but she has health problems that make it so she can’t focus for long and I write so much and so often that she was burdened by it. So I took up editing myself.
And I edit so much. I go over each chapter I write at least 5 times during the editing process. And in that process I’m fixing mistakes and adding details to scenes that I feel are stiff. I can add a few thousand words depending on how the editing goes.
And it’s a lot of hard work. Especially since it’s never perfect and people are still pointing out my mistakes.
I have a fic that’s been averaging 20,000 words a chapter recently and it’s harder to catch those mistakes because of the sheer size of the chapters, but I try my best.
There’s so much effort that go into this. I started a long time ago, and only began posting online maybe 8 years ago. My writing has improved a lot since then, which is necessary if I’m to edit my own content. I pick up most of my mistakes now and I am confident that most people wouldn’t be able to see Grammar errors because even those proficient in English don’t see every mistake.
It really annoys me when people claim fanfic isn’t important. I have an impact. It’s not large or even all that special, but there are groups of people in specific fandoms, who share specific interests, and they look to me to make their fandom experience better, even if it’s just a little bit. That might not seem important to the big wigs out there, but to me it’s a big deal. I’ve participated in something much larger than I am, and it matters to someone.
I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.
The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.
So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”
1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.
Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.
Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! Hewrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.
It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.
dude had guts, someone needs to update his Wikipedia page
Agatha Christie has this really interesting and, imo, underrated series of short tales that has been referred to as “Quin and Satterthwaite: Love Detectives.” Our pov character is Mr. Satthertwhite, who is initially described as such:
“
Mr. Satterthwaite was sixty-two– a little bent, dried-up man with a peering face oddly elf like, and an intense and inordinate interest in other people’s lives. All his life, so to speak, he had sat in the front row of the stalls watching various dramas of human nature unfold before him. His role had always been that of the onlooker. Only now,with old age holding him in its clutch, he found himself increasingly critical of the drama submitted to him. He demanded now something a little out of the common.”
But later we also get these:
“The masculine side of Mr. Satterthwaite spoke there, but the feminine side (for Mr. Satterthwaite had a large share of femininity) was equally interested in another question. Why did Mrs. Portal dye her hair? No other man would probably have known that she dyed her hair, but Mr. Satterthwaite knew.”
“
Mr. Satterthwaite had a very feminine side to his nature”
You see why I headcanon this character as nb, right?
So, the thing is that
Satterthwaite keeps running into this dude:
“Framed in the doorway stood a man’s figure, tall and slender. To Mr. Satterthwaite, watching, he appeared by some curious effect of the stained glass above the door, to be dressed in every colour of the rainbow. Then,as he stepped forward, he showed himself to be a thin dark man dressed in motoring clothes.
“
Mr. Harley Quin always appears, by some trick of light, to be dressed as a harlequin. That is because he’s some sort of spirit who is, honestly, really bad at passing as human (if he’s even trying. By the point in which a person refuses a ride home by saying “thanks, but I’ll go back by the same path I came from” and walking towards an abyss, I think it’s fair to say he’s no longer concerned with pretending to be human.) He’s really mysterious, as ghosts or fae or whatever the hell he actually is, tend to be. But he is mostly benevolent, and has a soft spot for distressed lovers. That’s where the connection comes in. He chose
Satterthwaite
as his human agent.
Satterthwaite
keeps running into situations in which a crime has been commited, or some really strange misunderstanding is happening, and as a result a couple’s happiness is being threatened. Alone, Satterthwaite
can’t make heads or tails of the mystery. But then Quin materializes out of nowhere, and they talk things through, and somehow Quin acts as a catalyst. He never gives away the solution, but somehow, by talking with him Satterthwaite solves the puzzle and realizes which action must be taken to make justice and let the couple reach its happy ending.
And ever since the idea of a 21st century version of these characters struck me a few months ago, I can’t stop thinking about it? A series in which a spirit played by a dark skinned actor (I know that Agatha Christie likely used “dark” to mean dark hair, but 8 years old me pictured Quin as black, and that’s how I’ll always see him) gets a bored elderly nb person to help him to solve mysteries and rescue couples, who in this version would also be really diverse? Can someone please get on that?
@covecaller I’m thinking about this again, and it’s all your fault, due to your posts about nb detectives.
This is an amazing idea??? OMG
Also, I can’t TELL you how much I adore the Harley Quin stories and yet they seem to get sidelined, both popularly and in more academic examinations, even those that are specifically concerned with looking at gender (at least the ones I’ve come across)
But guys MR SATTERTHWAITE AND HARLEY QUIN ARE SO QUEER and Mr Satterthwaite LOVES Harley Quin so much?????? I have never been so moved by an emotional bond in a Christie story *gross sobbing*
How have I never heard of these? I’ve read the Poirot and Miss Marple and even the Tommy and Tuppence stories! *goes to google Mr Satterthwaite*
Joining in with the love for the Satterthwaite/Quin stories! Other good stuff to know:
Supposedly these were among Christie’s own favourite characters, but her publishers didn’t let her write as many as she wanted to.
Quin is pretty strongly implied in the later stories to be Hermes; in some cases he’s there to conduct someone to the afterlife, when Satterthwaite can’t save them.
The other day I was washing my hands and another woman came out the stall a couple seconds after I did. She wasn’t cis, and a different woman waiting for someone to finish up looked angry and opened her mouth to say something. Before she could, I smiled real friendly a this woman who’s just trynna wash her hands and told her I loved her skirt, and we started talking clothes.
The waiting woman was still clearly pissed but she didn’t say anything because she knew I wouldn’t have her back. That’s all it took to keep some poor lady just trynna scrub up from getting harassed.
Sometimes doing the right thing is really hard and kinda scary. Other times all it takes is making it clear that you won’t support someone’s nastiness. It’s a little enough thing to do your part.
Mooncustafer 