Maev Mac Coille

Writer with a Day Job, who doesn't drink tea. Or coffee. One of the @MerrySpinsters

Any opinions stated are mine and mine alone.

[Maev Mac Coille @ms_maev]

I have a play reading on 15 October, and, as is the way of all playwrights, I must devote my social media accounts to ruthless self-promotion.

Please come and hear my first science-fiction play, and then tell me what you think (nicely).

Tickets here: https://t.co/zEPGuQHBvZ

[Maev Mac Coille @ms_maev]

On the one hand, today is a real ‘sometimes London is just too big’ day (my friend in Surbition does not appreciate the journeys I take to get to her).

On the other, South Wimbledon tube station giving distinct “convince a man to kill someone for the insurance money” vibes.

[Maev Mac Coille @ms_maev]

My main thought upon watching Disclosure Day is that Spielberg must have been a huge X Files fan back in the day.

(And Colin Firth should never, ever have blue eyes, that was so unexpectedly unsettling).

[Maev Mac Coille @ms_maev]

I want to find out the back story that led to this play being written…because while it was enjoyable, at heart it was two hours of “Dear Actors, here’s why you really shouldn’t sleep with your co-stars. It might seem like a good idea at the time, but it never, ever is.”

[Maev Mac Coille @ms_maev]

I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy Stage Kiss - I am saying that the guy behind who managed to catch my hair in his massive combat boots (or whatever that was on the back of the seat) lessened the entertainment value somewhat.

[Maev Mac Coille @ms_maev]

“I’ve been lost in this part of South London before” is not a thought one wants to have after midnight.

Especially after a lengthy flight.

(My predicament is entirely the fault of whatever genius decided there no trains from Gatwick should stop south of the river after 11pm)

[Maev Mac Coille @ms_maev]

Not even four pages into the Tailor of Panama, and le Carré has already hit me with some nonsense about a woman’s breasts.

*sigh*

Why do so many male writers I otherwise enjoy know nothing about female anatomy (and apparently think breasts have an independent consciousness?)

[Maev Mac Coille @ms_maev]

@veepthroat Gary is objectively good at his job, to be fair.

Whether he’d be as good working for someone he didn’t have a weird psychosexual entanglement with, is maybe an open question.

[John Attridge @John_Attridge]

People don't seem to understand that "Chekhov's gun" is a metaphor. A gun doesn't literally have to go off in act 3. He's just saying that all plays should have guns in them

[Maev Mac Coille @ms_maev]

Do they hold hiss-along screenings anywhere? Like sing-alongs, but even more panto.

Because I could get really into that for the original Devil Wears Prada, especially with the stupid boyfriend.

[Maev Mac Coille @ms_maev]

I said I wouldn’t rant, and then I ranted.

If you can accept that Star Wars is a uniquely American cultural product (and it absolutely is, right down to the Vietnam war allegory), than you ought to be able to recognise the ways in Dracula is Irish.

[Maev Mac Coille @ms_maev]

I will not rant about how closely bound up Dracula - a great Victorian “maybe imperialism is actually bad” novel - with its fears of epidemics and parasitic aristocrats potentially destroying the world is with post-famine Irish cultural fears.

I won’t rant. But I could.

[Maev Mac Coille @ms_maev]

Which isn’t to say there aren’t other influences on the novel, because of course there are - the trial of Oscar Wilde (who Stoker knew well), the generalised fear of ‘the East’ that’s all over literature of this period, literary experimentation with the newspaper articles etc…

[Maev Mac Coille @ms_maev]

There should be a special word for when, after a week plus of existing as The Vessel of the Cough, you start to feel the teensiest bit like a human being again.

[Maev Mac Coille @ms_maev]

Saw someone suggesting Queen Maeve (though it should be Medb, really) for the new Euro banknotes.

Obviously she’s a hugely important mythological figure, and a role model for warmongering female leaders everywhere, but maybe not the best choice, for that exact reason?