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Thursday, January 2nd, 2020
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10:18 pm - Collected Fanfiction Post
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| Saturday, January 28th, 2012
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7:10 pm - Barbara Hambly: Patriot Hearts (Book Review)
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I like Barbara Hambly's books, and trust her as an author, so when some years ago I saw one titled "Patriot Hearts" I browsed a bit despite the title, and emerged intrigued enough to want to read the entire novel. Due to circumstance, I couldn't do so until now.
Patriot Hearts deals with the Founding Mothers, so to speak: Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison and Sally Hemmings. It's not linear, with the framing narration being Dolley waiting for the British soldiers to sack the capital, and then flashbacks - but always not in chronological order - to the lives of the First Ladies (who weren't called that then) as well as the woman whose precise role in Jefferson's life has been hotly debated ever since, with, I hear, not even DNA testing on her descendants laying the debate at rest among the no-he-didn't die-hards.
What I admire most about the novel is indeed not just the choice of Sally as the fourth "Founding Mother" but that thematic importance, the fact of slavery and the treatment of the increasing black population in the former colonies as just as much a part of the new United States as its struggle with Britain, or the aftermath of the French Revolution. Barbara Hambly also avoids my pet peeve in historical novels, i.e. the prejudices and various isms are only displayed by the villains, while the sympathetic characters are all years ahead of their time. Her Martha Washington is completely on board with the system, sometimes afraid of slave uprisings and horrified when it turns out her husband set his slaves free in his will. Dolley Madison as a Quaker starts out being against slavery but compromises once she marries Madison and while sometimes uneasy about the fact she now owns people accepts it as part of her life.
Presenting the Sally/Jefferson relationship, however, had to be the greatest narrative challenge (i.e. doing so in the historical context but without prettifying the circumstances). Here the fact we're solely in the women's pov throughout the book pays off best, because I can't imagine this would have been possible to do if we had been in Jefferson's pov instead of Sally's. The fact that she's his slave, that he owns her and her family never goes away from her consciousness. By letting the relationship start in Paris Hambly manages to give Sally some degree of consent possibility (as she's not a slave in France, which is why her brother once Jefferson's tenure as ambassador ends announces he wants to stay there as a free man rather than to return to Virginia as a slave) while also showing its limits; her Sally unromantically but realistically despite actually loving Jefferson wants to stay in France as well once she gets pregnant but has the bad luck that this decision coincides with the storming of the Bastille, and under these conditions life with Jefferson is still safer for her and her child. Later, back in Virginia, Sally is in an in between state of love and hate most of the time, and one of my complaints about the book is that I would have wished for an entire novel about Sally; not because the other ladies aren't interesting - they are, very much so! - but because I wanted more of her.
The other immediate observation I have is that this is a book primarily written for American readers who already know their Founding fathers. Now, history education in Germany treats the American revolution and subsequent early years only briefly, as a sideshow/prelude to the main world changing event which is the French Revolution. Which means that basically you're only told it happened and the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence. What else I know about it I got from historical fiction, i.e. the musical 1776, the drama "The General from America" and Lion Feuchtwanger's novel "Proud Destiny" which is mainly about Beaumarchais and Franklin in Paris. This means I was lacking some of the context that I guess would be self evident for American readers, plus the various men didn't nearly come alive for me as much as the women did. (Presumably because they already live as archetypes in the American consciousness?) This works somewhat for Jefferson because he's supposed to be enigmatic and frustrating, but I couldn't tell you much about Washington and Adams as people based on this book alone (so I'm doubly grateful for 1776), and only something about James Madison.
Given, however, that the women come across vividly, this is a minor complaint. Again, Hambly avoids the mistake of giving them all a standard ahead of their time personality. Abigail is passionate about politics, while Martha sees them as shortening her husband's life and despises them yet is a natural at the art of diplomacy between hotheaded politicians in her salon. Dolley probably has the most sparkling personality between them while Sally has to adopt a quiet demeanor as a survival technique but comes across as very passionate about just about everything beneath it.
If pressed, I'd say it's more an interlocked collection of fictional portraits than a novel, which isn't a criticism. Definitely worth reading.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/748289.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood:  impressed
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| Friday, January 27th, 2012
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12:07 am - Talking of books...
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It's a busy week - in a good way - for me, hence no posting until now. However, I do get online and enjoy reading great posts like this:
Neil Gaiman about growing up with C.S.Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.G. Chesterton
I love it when writers manage go convey such a detailed sense of what reading and experiencing other books feels like. And the way Gaiman captures the what the (in themselves very different) styles and worlds of Lewis, Tolkien and Chesterton evoke is magnificent.
I also enjoy a good dissing now and them, and in this post, which actually is a praise of C.S. Forresters non-Hornblower novels, ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) legionseagle sums up the ever popular Regency/Napoleonic Wars era novels and tv shows thusly:
Given that the Napoleonic wars is Not My Period, but is the subject of an awful lot of popular literature and TV I've consumed over the years, I've formed the view that notwithstanding Napoleon's command of the Continent's resources, tactical genius and overwhelming superiority in numbers, the poor little Corsican bugger never stood a chance, trapped as he was between Hornblower's crushing man-pain at sea and the chips on Sharpe's shoulders on land.
Ah yes.:) See, that's one more reason why I'm eager for Jo Graham's trilogy set in the Napoleonic era to be published. They center around a woman, Elza aka Ida St. Elme, are from the French pov and will reveal how Dutch-turned-French female common sense and bisexual confidence were more than a match for Hornblower's man pain AND Sharpe's chip on the shoulder...
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/748266.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood:  busy
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| Sunday, January 22nd, 2012
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8:11 pm - Vid recs
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I seem to be unable to watch non YouTube vids on my ipad. Is this just mine or due to a general Apple business policy? It's especially frustrating given that festivids is online. Thankfully, this morning before I left Bamberg I could hijack the APs computer and watch at least some of the vids. Which is why you get some recs; the master list is here.
Babylon 5:
Binary Orbit
A Londo/G'Kar vid! Clearly, the universe loves me. Well, sometimes.:) It captures the comic and the tragic, the epic and the petty of the relationship at the core of the show (for me) so very, very well.
Doctor Who and spin offs:
Awake my soul
A vid celebrating the one and only Sarah Jane Smith and the actress who brought her to life, Elisabeth Sladen. Our Sarah Jane. The kind of vid that reduces you to a puddle, in the best way.
The King's Speech:
Fixing a hole
Lionel and Bertie to the tune of a Beatles song. Of course I couldn't resist it!
Stand by me
Head full of doubt/heart full of promise
Captures one of my favourite films and the characters in it beautifully.
Since it will be another week before I'm reunited with my regular computer in Munich, I shall hope that the Ipad stops its boycott so I can watch more awesome vids.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/747875.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood: busy
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| Saturday, January 21st, 2012
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6:21 pm - Fringe 4.09
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4:49 pm - Fannish 5: Five Favourite Meta-by-Canons
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5 greatest (or favorite) examples of breaking the fourth wall, or canon material going meta.
Sometimes it's very borderline, somewhere between meta-ness and fourth wall breaking, which are really not the same thing. (Incidentally, for Brecht readers: does fourth wall in breaking in tv shows count as episches Theater?) I find most overt fourth wall breaking self satisfied, and intelligent meta in an ongoing canon is tricky to pull off without coming across as too masturbatory, too. However, here are five examples that please this particular viewer and reader very much indeed.
1.) Babylon 5: Sleeping in Light, the final episode, very near the end includes a tiny cameo by the show's creator and writer, J.M. Straczynski. ( Spoiler: ) Now all the gods in the Centauri pantheon now that JMS could, in some of his writing, be infuriating or smug when trying for meta (A View from the Gallery comes to mind, but it's by no means the only example), but that tiny scene was and remains to me earned, incredibly touching and very apropos.
2.) Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Storyteller. I could have choosen Superstar as easily; both are episodes written Jane Espenson which tackle the show itself and certain well-loved fanfic clichés (not just of BTVS fandom, of all fandoms) with gusto and wit. Indeed it's very enlightening to watch both as a double feature. andraste wrote a fabulous essay about them which if you haven't already I all urge you to read right now. To quote from it: If Jonathan behaves like Mary Sue - the fan within the story - then Andrew behaves like the fan outside the story, analysing the relationships and histories of the group just as we do. (Note the reversal of the external/internal there.) He treats the gang as if they're a shiny new fandom whose canon he's plunging into, even memorising their dialogue and postulating slashy UST. (All the better to write fanfiction ...) The reason why I picked Storyteller in the end for this meme is that it actually is both meta and fourth wall breaking: at one point Andrew addresses us, the audience directly, and it's one of the few examples which totally works for me.
3.) The X-Files: Jose Chung's From Outer Space, written by Darin Morgan, and one of my all time favourite episodes of the entire show. It's a standalone story (sort of), told by various unreliable narrators, and within the episode, you also have a novelist (the Jose Chung of the title) writing a book about the whole event. This was a third season episode, so by that point there were a lot of X-Files tropes it could parody with relish, BUT, and that's crucial, it did so without ruining the premise. And the comments from Chung's book on Mulder and Scully as people will never not be funny. :)
4.) Galaxy Quest. Which manages at the same time to be a spoof directed mainly, but not exclusively, at Star Trek and an affectionate love declaration; and both poked fun and celebrated fandom. I was torn as to whether or not to include because, as opposed to the other examples, it wasn't meta created by the original writers/producers, but it is such an from-the-inside thing that I declare it unavoidable on such a list. Hard to single out one particular meta moment, but it's got to be either Gwen complaining about the writer of the episode, Guy worrying about being a red shirt, or Alexander observing Jason managed to get his shirt off.
5.) Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. I was in varying degrees entertained and intrigued by the other Rushdie novels I read, but this one is the only of his which I really, really love. At the time he wrote it, the idea of a storyteller silenced had an obvious personal resonance, and Kattam Shud works as a Khomeini avatar, but this children's book works splendidly if you have not the slightest idea about its author's biography. It has a fairy tale/fantasy quest structure while at the same time going meta on these stories, and stories in general, every bit of the way; the characters are both themselves and archetypes; and Rushdie puns like a madman and alludes to everything from Bollywood films to the Kathāsaritsāgara,from Lewis Caroll to the Beatles. ("They are the Eggheads. He is the Walrus.")
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/747490.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood:  mellow
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| Friday, January 20th, 2012
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2:33 pm - J. Edgar (Film Review)
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Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.
Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.
So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
Philipp Larkin's poem Annus Mirabilis has been much on my mind lately due to various lively discussions with naraht, who created this wonderfully apropos icon (poor Brian!). When I watched Clint Eastwood's film J. Edgar last night, it inevitably crept up in my subconscious as well, and not just because 1963 is actually the year in which the film starts. (Different associations for Americans and Europeans: for Americans, it's the year of the Kennedy association first and foremost, not the year the Swinging Sixties started.) It goes backwards and forewards from this point onwards, and Eastwood isn't always success pulling off the non-linear time structure, but for the most part, it works for me. And seems to fit Hoover very well, circling round and round around his obsessions. Not so coincidentally, when he gets to choose a time period himself, he goes the Lindbergh case and trial, the Thirties, the Thirties as he sees them, with heroics, clear good-bad divisions and himself admired in the heroic role. He's progressively more ill at ease later; by the time he dictates a hate filled "anonymous" letter to Martin Luther King, even his life long loyal secretary is aware Edgar has lost the plot.
The film, I find, does a good job of not postulating all of Hoover's behavior is due to the fact he's a gay man with a lot of internalized homophobia living in an oppressive society which he helps making even more oppressive. (Note: the script is by Dustin Lance Black, who wrote Milk.) Nonetheless, there are of course connections, in the way Hoover responds to listening to King having enthusiastic sex, in the way he mockingly reads a love letter from Eleanor Roosevelt to a female lover, only to keep it long beyond blackmail use as it says something he himself can't bring himself to say out loud. It's definitely too late for J.Edgar. And then again, he does manage a life long relationship with the long-suffering, gorgeous Clyde Tolson.
It's a relationship that visually lives in restraint, making the touching of fingers or Clyde handing over a hankerchief for Edgar to press against his lips breathtakingly intimate. (Not that Eastwood plays coy subtext cames; when Hoover contemplates marriage out loud, Tolson reacts as you'd expect a lover to, and what connects them is spelled out physically as well as verbally.) Gestures say a lot in this film in general; when Hoover's mother, played by Judi Dench at her most icy, say "I'd rather have a dead son than a daffodil", she and Edgar are both looking in the same mirror, and later, after her death, he looks in the same mirror again, wearing her dress, and it's to Eastwood's and di Caprio's credit that this scene doesn't come across as a man-in-drag joke but as saying it all about what Hoover carries with him from his mother.
Throughout the film, though, this isn't presented as excusing what Hoover does to other people, or rendering the paranoia, the megalomania and the thirst for publicity glory (as Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent who shot Dillinger, found out to his peril) harmless. Young Edgar bonding with his future secretary Helen Gandy over a passion for order and new filing systems is endearing and ominous at the same time, because thanks to the film's non-linear structure you're all too aware where this is leading too. The 1919 bombs are real enough, but not too long after you see Edgar observing two of his men beating and kicking a suspected anarchist, and the US post 9/11 parallels are rather obvious as you've got Hoover seeing communist in everything and everyone he feels even the slightest bit discomforted by for the rest of his life.
In terms of Eastwood as a director, this isn't in a best of category, but it's good enough (Bridges of Madison County level, I'd say, only here it's a m/m relationship at the center). It's neither a J'Accuse nor an Apologia Per Vitam Suam; though you do end up feeling sorry for Hoover as well as for everyone else. Not because 1963 was too late for him, but because it always was, throughout his life.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/747163.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood:  contemplative
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9:30 am - Because apparently I'm still bothered...
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...to quote a Catherine Tate character.
Now, I believe in constructive criticism instead of in just complaining. So I tried to find a way to fix what to me is the giant plot hole of season 6 that works with all of Moffat's other established plot points.
( Resulting ideas under the cut )
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/746839.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood:  determined
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| Thursday, January 19th, 2012
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12:03 pm - Breaking Bad, season 1
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What I knew beforehand via fannish osmosis and enthusiastic media: the show's basic premise as laid out in the pilot (chemistry teacher, devoted husband and father, is diagnosed with third degree lung cancer, decides to solve financial situation by cooking meth), and that, as every article mentioning the show brings up, this is a story where over the course of several seasons the main character goes from hero the audience roots for to antihero to villain the audience is supposed to root against. This intrigued me, because while many a show gets that reaction for their main character inadvertendly (sometimes something yours truly finds unfair, sometimes something I understand), it's pretty daring to go for it deliberately. Not to mention that it could simply happen that no matter what crap the main character pulls, the audience, having once decided they love him, keeps on loving him (hello there, Tony Soprano), and/or they accuse the writers of writing him ooc and go into denial about canon. (Male form used deliberately. While there are a few female characters fandom responds to this way, they are very very rare, and it's more usual to condemm a female character for even a small percentage of the kind of behaviour that's generously accepted in a male.)
After finding out that the first season only has seven episodes, I decided to marathon it before rl takes me away on the road again. The resulting impression:
( beneath the spoilery cut )
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/746562.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood: impressed
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| Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
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3:50 pm - Hm.
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There seems to be a consensus across rightist on leftist lines re: The Iron Lady, to wit: Meryl Streep great, film mediocre, though the objections to the later come from different angles. For every complaint from the right that the film offers too much Thatcher in dementia now and not enough Thatcher in charge back then and that this is degrading, there's a complaint from the left that the film doesn't bother with politics at all, never offers reasons why Margaret T. was so hated and just namechecks various events of her reign era of goverment, instead using the dementia as an easy way to gain sympathy. The various reviews I've read offer variations of these positions, but no third thesis. Oh, and one review mentioned there was a montage in which the falling of the wall and German reunification is presented as part of Thatcher's triumphs. If that's true and Helmut Kohl ever gets to watch this film, he's likely to have a stroke at this point. (Between Thatcher's infamous cabinet meeting with lots of analysis of how it's in our national character to start the Fourth Reich immediately upon reunification and Churchill's dictum of having "the Hun" either at your throat or at your feet still applied, and Kohl's not that great sense of humour, that's a relatively safe bet.)
Now, when I reviewed the earlier Thatcher biopics, "The Long Road to Finchley" (young Maggie versus the boys' club of Tory inner politics; hint: she wins), and "Margaret" (Thatcher in her last year of power versus the boys club, take II: hint: she loses) , I noticed neither actually shows much of Margaret Thatcher having power. Gaining and losing it offers more of a natural dramatic arc, but I assumed The Iron Lady, covering more years, was bound to offer more on the ruling years, until I heard about the dementia frame. Not having actually watched the film yet, it's seems to me Phylida Law, the director, tried to have her cake and eat it: on the one hand, a biopic of a politician that covered much of its subjects life, but on the other, a narrative that did not have to bother with doing so in an in depth manner because much of the screen time is devoted to a point where you can only show the personal, not the political. One of the reviews, searching for a comparative loved/hated male iconic figure in politics to make a point about gender, wondered how the Americans would have reacted if an English actor had played Ronald Reagan in the firm grip of Alzheimer's while Reagan was still alive. I guess the the answer to this is much indignation, but then I'm not sure how much Reagan was hated by what passes for the left in US politics to begin with. Also I'm pretty sure Phyllida Law wasn't acting out of internalized sexism and/or hidden Thatcher resentment but because she found the idea that the one so powerful Margaret Thatcher is now steadily losing her mind poignant and thought it would make her easier to sympathize with across party lines. Would she have done the same in a biopic about a man? Would anyone? Hm.
Generally speaking, I think it's still easier for scriptwriters, actors and directors to present male characters in a critical yet compelling fashion while trusting their audience will be captivated even if it doesn't "identify with", whatever that means. I'm thinking of Capote a few years ago in which both script and central performance are not trying to milk sympathy for Truman Capote at all, on the contrary, they highlight his unsympathetic sides. (And they easily could have gone the other way - say, shown via flashback or Harper Lee conversations some bits of Capote's truly ghastly childhood.) Instead, they trusted that Capote and the story of how he came to write Cold Blood, the relationship to one of the two murderers that developed and its bizarre twist on the writer/muse tale would be compelling enough without the audience liking Truman Capote. I can't think of a comparable film about a real life female famous person.
Of course, if you tell the story of a woman and highlight her negative sides the way Capote did Truman Capote's, you have to deal with the added baggage of sexism through the ages - are you or aren't you feeding it, etc. Some of the Iron Lady reviews did some soul searching along the lines of "when X said that Margaret Thatcher was the one woman it was okay for feminists to hate, was that not mightily unfair?" and either decided that because Margaret T. never showed any interest in the cause or in female solidarity, she was not entitled to solidarity now, or decided that yes, in as much as she was a woman working her way to the top under hostile conditions, she also counts as a case feminists can be proud of. I'm always uneasy with such assertions as "the one woman it's okay to hate" anyway. Then again, I also don't think female politicians should be exempt from criticism. In the case of Margaret Thatcher, any fictional take on her that was neither a hagiography of the Sainted Maggie nor a Portrait of the PM As A Middle-Aged Demon was bound to be resented by one of the two main political camps, but I wish one could have been found that had the courage to do more than offer a spectacular central performance; a film which actually tried to capture some of the era its set in, some of the passions and politics, would be a start.
Then again: I haven't watched it yet. Maybe the reviews are wrong and there is something of that there. I guess I'll have to find out.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/746386.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood: pensive
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| Tuesday, January 17th, 2012
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7:42 pm - Dancing the Plague away
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Last weekend I was invited by a friend to attend something I hadn't witnessed before, though I live for more than twenty years in Munich now, and it's something that originated here: the
Schäfflertanz, a folk dance which, as legend has it, originated in the time of the Plague; originally it was supposed to signifiy the air was clear again and people were healthy once more. The one I witnessed took place in a Munich suburb, and despite the cold, it was enormous fun to watch. Pictorial evidence below the cut!
( Dance, magic dance )
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/746059.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood:  dorky
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12:35 pm - and lo, fandom delivered
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Considering I finished The Reichenbach Fall with my immediate reaction neither being "aw, John" (I did feel sorry for him, but that wasn't the first thing I thought of), nor "aw, Sherlock" (though this season finally made me care for him, and thus I felt for him, too - but again, not the first consideration), but "ZOMG MOLLY HOOPER I LOVE YOU", I am delighted that a measily two days later, there is both Molly centric fanfiction and Molly meta for me to choose from and recccomend.
The meta
The Mourning Woman : The fanfiction: Molly takes care of business throughout her life.
I think what I love best in what this season did with Molly is that they didn't rewrite the character by making her suddenly reveal super ninja powers or, as was guessed by many a fan, the secret M behind Moriarty, but that they used the established traits that got ridiculed in s1 and showed the quiet strength behind them. I love variety in the female characters I'm fond of, and "butt-kicking chick" isn't the only type I can root for.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/745833.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood: pleased
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| Monday, January 16th, 2012
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3:01 pm - The Good Wife 3.13 and Downton Abbey, season 1
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See, I'm used to having the CIA presented as interfering baddies in shows centered around FBI agents, and the FBI presented as annoying interferers in shows centered around CIA agents, but I think The Good Wife has to be given pioneer credit for being the first show to make a recurring villain out of the U.S. Treasury.
( Bitcoin for Dummies )
In other news, I felt like enjoying some costume drama, so I got around to watching the first season of Downton Abbey. (Before anyone mentions it in the comments: yes, I've heard the second season wasn't good by fannish osmosis.) For some reason I had assumed the show to be a spoof, Blackadder style, but it wasn't, it was played straight, and a very enjoyable Edwardian soap it was, too. Later I found out that the creator, Jullian Fellowes, was the scriptwriter for Gosford Park, which figures. It does a reasonably good job of acknowledging this is a society on the brink of change - and that change is necessary - though you still get the benevolent patriarch, and the bark-is-worse-than-her-bite dowager duchess. Still, I appreciated such details as Violet's medical knowledge and the way it was used, or the season long subplot of Sybil supporting Gwen's effort to become a secretary instead of staying a housemaid all her life. And of course Anna and Mr. Bates were a pair of after my Anne and Captain Wentworth loving heart.
Working on a Watsonian level but annoying on a Doylist one if you let yourself think about it: yes, we do get two sympathetic progressive and left-leaning characters - the socialist chauffeur and Sybil - but it's still a fact that the two servants who keep pointing out "why should our lives revolve around people who hardly know our name?" and that all this part of the family talk is hogwash given the peope from upstairs can fire you at any moment are the two villains of the season. And one of them is the only gay character around (well, except for a one episode guest star).
All this being said: the characters all come across as three dimensional, villains included, and that's no mean thing given how formulaic a series covering such well-tread ground could get.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/745557.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood: content
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1:13 pm - Sherlock 2.03
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In which Steve "Blind Banker" Thompson defies expectations and delivers a splendid episode. Given that the second season's weakest ep was the middle one again - written by Gatiss this time - I would be open to the theory that it's a middle episode rather than a writer thing, except that Thompsons s6 of New Who pirate episode also sucked. Still: he more than delivered with Sherlock 2.03, and I doff my deerstalker to him.
( All good fairy tales )
In conclusion: last season I didn't know whether or not I would continue with the show. After this season, I know I will!
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/745386.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood: impressed
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| Friday, January 13th, 2012
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10:49 pm - Fannish 5: 5 happy endings that you don't like
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A challenge after my own heart. :) Bear in mind that one person's deserved and wonderful happy ending is another person's out of character travesty and/or unearned easy fix, mileage will vary, etc., etc. Also, before Ashes to Ashes, Life on Mars would have been on the list, but now it's not, due to the AtA revelations later. Now, let's have a go:
1.) All's Well That Ends Well tied with Measure for Measure. Bertram in the former is the kind of guy who makes Bassiano and Gratiano from Merchant of Venice look like price catches, and it will never not irritate me that Helena, for some bemusing reason in love with him, ends up married to him. As for the later, yes, ambiguous silence from Isabella is ambiguous, and much depends on the stage production, but still. Isabella is a woman who most emphatically did not want to get married and then randomly is by ducal power. Angelo/Mariana is also questionable but at least Angelo, while a villain and a wannabe rapist, has still more depth than Bertram plus Mariana's social lot is improved by the arrangement. In conclusion: later Shakespeare was in a cynical mood about the obligatory marriages at the end of nominal comedies, wasn't he?
2.) The endings of the last two seasons of Dexter. About I've complained enough in this journal, so I'll leave it at that. (If you're new to my ramblings and want an explanation why I had a problem with the ending of the fifth season already, here is the old post.)
3.) The Wedding of River Song, New Who season 6. Detailed explanation as to why here . Short version: I felt emotionally disengaged throughout except in three scenes, and because Amy and Rory had not been given the chance of believable emotional reaction throughout the season, these three felt unearned in a larger context. And for the second season in a row (s5: the cracks, which are universe-threatening important, except for all the standalone eps where the Doctor isn't bothered by their existence; s6: the little girl in the season opener whom he doesn't look for because if he did, the whole backstory would fall into pieces, but he doesn't know that yet), crucial bits of the build up and solution depend on the Doctor acting competely ooc for Doylist reasons without Moffat bothering to come up with a Watsonian explanation.
4.) Lindsey Davis: Rebels and Traitors. It's a perfectly good and satisfying novel until the ending, doing what I had in vain hoped The Devil's Whore miniseries would do in terms of the English Civil War and a female main character, and then all of a sudden there is a complete tone shift in narrative voice, characterisation and emphasis. It's just really bizarre. If you don't mind being spoiled for the ending, check out my review here.
5.) Alias. Not Sydney's personal fate. But yeah, everything else about the finale, and much - but not all! - about season 5 in general. (The ending of s4 would have been SO MUCH BETTER as a series finale, I'll never stop saying that.) (And it's not just the First Generation Spies fangirl in me talking.) However, the nature of the show was such that several finale issues are fixable in headcanon, so I'm not nearly as disgruntled with Alias' ending as I am with the other examples. Still, doesn't mean I like it.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/744851.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood:  groggy
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| Thursday, January 12th, 2012
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8:35 pm - Oh for a muse of fire, indeed
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Sherlock 2.02: watched it, was less than enthusiastic about it. I mean, it had its moments, and it was nice to see Russell Tovey again, plus I must say tanned!Lestrade looks even more attractive than regular Lestrade, but well, I checked my watch a couple of times instead of being scared when I should have been, and I doubt I'll ever watch it again. This being said, bonus points to Gatiss for female!Dr. Mortimer and female!Stapleton, and also seeing Dartmoor reminded me of being quite taken by Devon a few years back when I made my all around Britain journey. As far as Mark Gatiss episodes go, he has done worse, he has done better. (I still say he should stick to acting.) Basically: it was okay, but no more. And next we await the return of the celebrated author of "The Blind Banker" and "The Only Bad Pirate Episode Ever".
Also yesterday I met an Oxfordian who kept harrassing me, no matter what I told him about my Will-from-Stratford allegiances. "Even a profiler on the internet proved it HAS to be Edward de Vere!" he wailed. "EVERYONE agrees by now." Just to make my evening complete, someone told me the theatre of my hometown staged Macbeth last year with a programm saying it was by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. And a third party asked me whether I had watched the Emmerich film. See, the drawback of real life is you can't just click on another link or switch off the computer. The best statement of the evening, though: "THIS WILLIAM VON SHAKESPEARE DID NOT EXIST, I TELL YOU!" Seriously, he called him "William von Shakespeare". See, that kind of thing would never happen to Christopher Marlowe. Excuse me, von Marlowe.
On to more fun things. The first time I saw a screen depiction of Nikola Tesla wasn't in Sanctuary but in The Prestige, where I didn't realise until afterwards, when reviews pointed it out, that he was played by David Bowie. (And magnetically, too, no pun intended, it's just that I seriously didn't recognize Bowie.) Here's an article about Bowie and Tesla, , for those of us fond of both.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/744455.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood:  cranky
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| Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
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6:03 pm - Innsbruck
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Yours truly has resumed her life of travel. Today I am in lovely, lovely Innsbruck, Austria, where sunshine and fresh snow compete with Austrian baroque at its finest. Have a gander below the cut.
( Read more... )
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/744372.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood:  energetic
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| Tuesday, January 10th, 2012
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3:24 pm - Two recs
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Ashes to Ashes/Torchwood:
Duty's to be done: you may recall me mentioning now and then how s2 of AtA made me long for a Torchwood crossover in which Gwen Cooper ends up in the Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes verse. Well, imagine my glee when I discovered someone wrote just this, and spendidly so! As one of three crossovers; I'm not familiar with the other two fandoms in question (Inspector Morse and Castle), but the AtA characters are drawn so well that I read and enjoyed them anyway. And Gwen in the AtA verse was just superb, and you must read it at once! (Comes complete with John Simm as Sam Tyler and as the Master related gag, of course.)
Damages:
Damage, a wonderfully intense vid about Patty and Ellen which I found via naraht.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/743881.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood: excited
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| Monday, January 9th, 2012
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6:00 pm - The Good Wife 3.12
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1:50 pm - Fannish 5: 5 characters or couples you wish could have gotten a happy/happier ending.
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I'll go for characters, and it's a trickier question than it appears to be at first glance. Because sometimes the unhappy ending is the RIGHT ending, no matter how much your love for the character makes you hurt for it. Prime example: Londo Mollari, who is my favourite tv character of all time. But a happy, or even happier ending for Londo would have been completely wrong for his story. So instead of picking a bunch of my darlings whom regardless of story necessity I wish to be happy, I'll try for characters who could have gotten happier endings in their respective universes without compromising the story told.
( Spoilers for Lost, Farscape, Merlin, BSG and Twin Peaks )
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/743384.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
current mood: annoyed
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exhausted