I had a musing sort of post lined up for this week, about my Germany experience, but events of the week have offered other material. But fear not! You shall not escape it. I have it noted down for next week.
I went to a see a production of Ruddigore today, which is my favorite of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Gothic ambiance, patter songs, true love, and lots of singing and dancing. What more do you need? It’s playing for another weekend, so if you’re in Seattle, I heartily recommend going and seeing it.
I mention it also because of something of a joke in our family. I read an interview recently where a popular author had (in the reporter’s words) a “typical messed-up childhood” and I promptly told my parents that they’d messed my writing career by not messing up my childhood. I realized today that they totally did mess me up, though. Mum is a gigantic G&S fan, and would play her records all the time when I was a child. Ruddigore has a song that was one of her favorites to sing snatches of, all of which sank into my impressionable little brain. I mean, who else is raised on Gilbert and Sullivan, for God’s sake? 😉
The other interesting thing I encountered today was a fun interview on NPR. (Which my parents also linked to me, bless them.) The station played a teaser in anticipation of the story as I was driving to the store, and I have to admit, it made me mistily imagine a day when maybe I’ll be on NPR too. (That messed up childhood again, man. After every weekend of an entire childhood spent listening to it, that would be some kind of glorious, crowning achievement for me. Screw TV talk shows! WEEKEND EDITION INTERVIEW, MAN.)
If you have the time to listen to the whole interview, it’s really a lot of fun. It makes me want to join some kind of werewolf roundtable, just to discuss the different things you can do with them. For instance, I totally agree that werewolf sex seems better than vampire sex. On the other hand, the whole thing with making lycanthropy an aspect of our baser urges is something I purposely chose not to do with mine, because I wanted to tell a different kind of story.
The best part is his answer to the research question. I plan to save that answer to quote if I ever get it. After all, as I’d mentioned in earlier posts, if your werewolves are a metaphor, about all you need is that they’re recognizably werewolves. So you might need to be aware of some conventions, so you don’t completely confuse readers with gold bullets, but researching historical conceptions of werewolves is only as useful as having examples of old metaphors to pattern your own on is. If you already have your metaphor in mind, off you go!
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