The Prometheus dvd is out in my part of the world, and so I rewatched the film plus the cut and alternate scenes on said dvd. ( Some spoilery thoughts. )

Disclaimer: I invoke the death of the author principle for this one. Meaning: no, I don't claim anyone - scriptwriters, producers, directors, actors - involved in the production of the last three Bond movies actually intended any of this. Also, I'm well aware you can read the films very differently (including as a long exercise in misogyny); my own, different interpretation is undoubtedly influenced by what I want to see. But then, this is how we read any myths, those born of current pop culture as much as those created by the ancient Greeks. * This being said: here is the story I, personally, saw Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall creating.

( The Queen and her Knight in the Underworld )

*If Aristophanes' comedies are anything to go buy, Euripides' female characters were seen as a slander on the sex and women bashing - and if your fellow ancient Greeks think you're a misogynist, um... - but today Euripides' female characters stand out as the most interesting, subversive and agenda-having of all Greek tragedy has to offer.

Skyler White is not one of those characters you fall in love with at first sight. Or second sight. She's not a witty quipper, a female warrior or a morally ambiguous male (though her own moral ambiguity will unfold in the course of the show); when we meet her, she's the pregnant and dominating wife of the main character whom he has to hide things from, read: coming close to the macho male's worst nightmare without being "cool" in a way viewers of either gender can identify with. Why, she even is busy typing a story for her creative writing class while absent mindedly giving her husband a hand job. (The most common summary for the White marriage pre show usually reads "Skyler has emasculated Walt".) And it's not until the last third of the first season that Skyler starts to get scenes outside of the "Walt lies to Skyler"/"Skyler has an inkling she's lied to and investigates" paramater. So no, I'm not surprised Skyler drew hostility. Back when I marathoned the show, I saw her mostly as a commentary on Walter through the first season until, again, the last third, was pleasantly surprised to get more development in the second, but really fell in love in the third. By now, she's become my favourite Breaking Bad character. And the show, which as opposed to certain other shows which started promisingly but then narrowed their focus to one or two main characters and flattened the others (*cough* Dexter *cough*) widened its focus and detailed narrative attention (from which Skyler, Hank, Marie, and various gentlemen in the meth business all benefited), gave me plenty of reasons. Some of the more prominent ones are below the cut.

( How to fall love with Skyler White in six easy steps )

Something that recently occured to me: fans tend to be either one true story or multiverse people, and the inevitable mingling is where many kerfuffles come from. Let me illustrate what I mean.

Back when the first X-Men films were released, and brought a whole bunch of new fans to the Marvelverse, including yours truly, there were also, more than once, complaints that characterisations that applied to the movieverse were transferred to the comicverse and vice versa in fanfiction. (Comicverse: Wolverine is short. Movieverse: He's Hugh Jackman. Comicverse: Rogue is Mystique's daughter (sort of), starts out as villain before switching teams (this is especially important for Carol Danvers aka Ms Marvel's backstory). Movieverse: completely different backstory, basically different character with same name and mutant ability. And so forth.) This turned out to be the case with more or less every comicbook based film which also inspired fandom, most recently The Avengers, hence the occasional "where the hell does this motormouth prankster Clint characterisation come from?" (from movieverse only fans, bewildered at fanfic) versus "this is not my Clint" (from comicverse first fans). And so forth. Now given that comics in themselves are pretty characterisation flexible (depending in which era and by which writer just about anyone gets written, just whisper the names "Grant Morrison" and "Xorn" into a Magneto fan's ear), you'd think the idea of "similar archetypes, different interpretations" goes down easier than with, say, book fans - who have a novel (or series of novels) authored by only one person and limited to a definite beginning and ending) faced with film adaptions which make sometimes completely different choices in terms of characterisation and storylines. As there is no One Definite Text as the origin. But not always. And I understand that, because I'm in the process of discovering that while I'm usually capable of enjoying more than one 'verse at the same time, I, too, can get irritated when something I see belonging to one particular universe gets unquestioningly transferred to another.

Sometimes it's not just via fanfiction but also via canon. A few months back I read a post comparing the reboot Star Trek and the way Spock Prime as a scriptwriter embodying deus ex machina keeps telling reboot Kirk and later reboot Spock they're meant for each other with Avengers fanfic that transfers the relationship between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers from the comics (where they have decades of backstory) to the movieverse (where they don't, have only just met and didn't exactly hit it off, with by the end of the film only just starting a more peacable relationship), and I thought, bingo, she's on to something. I mean, I enjoyed the reboot film. A lot. I also enjoyed the tension-ridden scenes with reboot Kirk and reboot Spock. But the relationship between Kirk and Spock in the original Star Trek didn't start out as bffs (or enemies, for that matter), you know; in the second ST pilot, it was Gary Mitchell, not Spock (or McCoy), who was Kirk's best buddy, and in the early episodes afterwards they were still light years away from the point where Kirk risks his ship and remaining crew to on the off chance of getting Spock's soul home to Vulcan, as he does in ST III. Yes, their friendship defines them both and is deeper etc. everything Spock Prime says it is - but it's one earned through years and years together. Telling the reboot versions this is their destiny basically forces something on characters and audience which hasn't been earned yet. (And reminds me uncomfortably of everything I hated in the last season of Fringe.) And instead of making me root for this relationship, it makes me interested in all the other relationships the characters have instead. Reboot Kirk and Pike? Kirk and Bones? Kirk and Sulu? Bring it on. Reboot Spock and Uhura? Reboot Spock and Bones? Want more. But I consciously avoided anything reboot Kirk/Spock centric. Then again, I was never a K/S slasher even in their original incarnations, though I loved their friendship as much as the next Trekker.

With The Avengers, you can tell the difference between pre- and post-movie fiction with some characterisation and character appearances fairly easily. (If Bruce has a prominent role in the story, it's written post movie; pre-movie stories usually avoid featuring him at all. If Natasha is a silent ninja, it's pre-movie written.) And my own reaction if it comes to shippery fanfic as opposed to tasty team gen fic is to keep movieverse and comicverse shipping strictly separate, especially when it comes to Tony/Steve, which in the comicverse is a relationship I'm basically taking for granted (much like Magneto/Xavier) as existing emotionally at least, whereas in the movieverse I can't see it at all. (Meanwhile, the exact reverse is true for Tony/Bruce in their respective incarnations.) I have no problem of shipping differently for different incarnations and verses in this case; it reminds me of the Lord of the Rings where I found movieverse Aragorn and Boromir as slashy as hell whereas I never thought they were in the book. But what I find intriguing is the urge to transfer/ to insist on relationships in a big part of fandom. (Let's count Orci & Kurtzman, the scriptwriters for the Reboot, as fandom here.) (Joss Whedon is of course a fanboy as well, but he's a cheerful multishipper by nature who enjoys coming up with new ships, so that's different.) So Kirk and Spock have to have the closest relationship in their lives with each other because it was that way in the story fans originally imprinted on - even though as yet there is no sign of it in the new version of the story (and in fact the closest relationship they have are with other people, McCoy and Uhura respectively). That supposes there is a One True Way the story must go, even though circumstances are altered.

Going back a few millennia: if you look at Greek drama, all based on the same myths, characterisations and storylines can differ considerably. Sophocles' Elektra is not Euripides Elektra (who is married, among other things). Even the same author chan cheerfully retcon himself and provide alternate interpretations. In Euripides' The Trojan Women, Helen is definitely there, the genuine article, Leda's daughter, and a canny survivor who talks Menelaos around into forgiving her. In Helen in Egypt the same Euripides tells us Helen never was in Troy at all but in Egypt through the whole Trojan War. I don't think any Greek author would have pulled off a drama where it turns out there was no Trojan War at all, though. Or where Hector and Achilles were the best of friends. Then again, you never know.

What I'm getting at with all these asides: I think much of the audience is flexible enough to accept different versions of a story/characters/relationships existing - up to a point. (See also: kerfuffle about Elementary aka the one with Lucy Liu as Watson before the show even started.) But at the same time, you have this need to cling to core elements which are regarded as indispensable, so that they must be there even if they don't really fit the new story (yet). Just what those elements are may differ from verse to verse, but I wouldn't be suprised if a survey, which I don't have time to do, would end up concluding in each case, they are a romance/deep friendship which can be interpreted as such.

And that, in turn, makes me wonder: who is it that people ship? The characters or a platonic ideal of them that can be stronger than what's actually shown on the page/screen? In this context, the development of Clint Barton/ Phil Coulson as a popular slash pairing was fascinating, because there was absolutely no basis for it whatsoever other than two lines of dialogue about a third party (Thor) and whether or not Barton should shoot him. This was the amount of their interaction in Thor, during which they weren't even on screen at the same time. They had no interaction at all in The Avengers. But the need for the pairing to exist is so powerful that once it came into existence, it became a self feeding juggernaut moving on despite the utter lack of source material, while dialogue referring to Coulson having had a romantic relationship with a cellist in Portland was reinterpreted as a joke about Clint or a cover story or whatever, simply anything that does not refute Clint/Coulson as a pairing. Given this extreme example of the triumph of platonic ideal over source material, the whole transfer of comicverse Tony/Steve or Prime verse Kirk/Spock onto their counterparts, no matter whether or not the transfer actually fits, really isn't that surprising, I suppose.

I had the great luck of reading Wuthering Heights without any expectations whatsoever. What I mean by that is: being German, it wasn't a part of our literary canon we had to read, so I didn't encounter it in school (though I was still a teenager when reading it - I simply came across it in the library, started and couldn't put it down), I had never heard about the characters before and had not seen any of the film versions. Given that a lot of the time when I come across references to WH, I have the impression that the people in question either haven't read the book at all or came to it because they had to and/or expecting a romance and not surprisingly were bewildered by what they found (WH not being a romance in the sense we use the word), and given that I am by no means immune to the effect of coming to a literary, cinematic or tv work via hype/raised expectations and then feeling let down not so much by the content on its own merit but by the wrong expectations, I think that's very lucky indeed. (Vide my Jane Austen reaction; I didn't read any Jane A. until I did know her reputation, that she was the greatest of the great, P & P was supposed to be the epitome of novels, Lizzie and Darcy the pairing of pairings, etc., etc., and that may have contributed to my "well, yes, it was fun to read - and?" reaction when I finally got around to it.) (I take it in recent years WH also had the misfortune of being liked by Stephanie Meyer, but really, that has nothing to do with anyone's reactions predating Twilight.)

It's been a few decades since I was a teenager, and here are some reasons why I still love Wuthering Heights in my jaded 43rd year of life, which also hopefully explain the "have you actually read the book?" reaction I often have when encountering said references. (Also why I think most of the films get it completely wrong.) (Not least for missing the book's sense of humour.)

( I’m come home: I’d lost my way on the moor )

As threatened, some ponderings on villains and which ones do and don't make me like or even love them. And, not always related: which kind of redemption stories, both in canon and fanfic, work for me and which one's don't. First, a disclaimer: I know some people declare they prefer the villains on general principle and declare the heroes to be bland and dull by comparison. That's not the case for me. If I find I only like the villain in a story and he/she is the only interesting person in it, I say goodbye to the show/film/book in question, the faster the older I get, because a good ensemble is getting more and more important to me.

So: villains. Those I like come in many different flavours. There are the lunatic EvilMcEvils, who need not be boring in their complete evilness and often lunacy if served with a defined time frame; when this happens in a visual medium and they're played by good and charismatic actors, they can be both scary and immensly entertaining. Examples who come to mind are the Emperor Caligula in I, Claudius and his sci fi twin, the Emperor Cartagia in Babylon 5, or Kronos in Highlander. (Take your bows, John Hurt, Wortham Krimmer and Valentine Pelka.) They're far from the only reasons why I love the episodes they're in, but they definitely contribute. But note: they're actually in only a few episodes, the fact that I find them scary and compelling doesn't change the fact it's their victims and Our Heroes I root for, and when they meet their demise, I'm glad. Any longer stay in the story, and either their scariness or the main characters' competence and/or believability would suffer.

Then there are the Evil Overlords and Overladies who are quite sane (except for the whole ruling-the-'verse ambition part, though some of them are happy with just efficient assasindom) and comfortable in their villaindom. They can, but don't have to be Magnificent Bastards (tm), and again, if we're talking visual medium, a good actor helps. So do competence, intelligence and wit. As opposed to the lunatics, their livespan in the story need not be limited in order for both the story and the villain to work. Temporary alliances with the heroes in order to defeat a third party are possible but won't ever last and are not to be confused with a redemption story; this type of villain, as mentioned, is comfortable in their skin and sees no need to change anything about themselves. Examples I've enjoyed watching or reading about include the Empress Livia (I, Claudius again), the Mayor of Sunnydale (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Milady de Winter (The Three Musketeers), Servalan (Blake's 7) or Lilah Morgan and Holland Manners (both from Angel).

Next, we get the tragic, layered and/or emotionally torn villains, frequently mixing company with antiheroes and sometimes crossing lines from and back to plain old heroes, and here it gets tricky, and I get more choosy as the years pass. A tragic, sympathetic villain often (but not always) has a traumatic background story: next to unbeatable in this regard is Magneto's Holocaust childhood in any incarnation of the X-Men. (Of course, it also comes with its own date problem, i.e. the reason why Magneto already had to be de-aged by Plot Device a couple of times in comicverse continuity in order to maintain physical strength - the fixed date of a real life historic event, from which we are further and further away.) Not that a traumatic past, even a Holocaust trauma, automatically creates a sympathetic character. Just look at Ultimate!Magneto, or rather, don't. (Mark Millar does his usual thing, if you must know.) This type of villain usually comes with the conviction that they're really working for the greater good, not just their own (key difference to the Magnificent Bastards), their methods for them are justified by said greater good (this is where they're mixing company wiht the antiheroes and sometimes the heroes), but they can have doubts about this, waver or even change their mind; also, they often have lasting attachments to other people, and more than one. However, all this being said, they, and this makes them villains, however tragic, are responsible for the deaths and/or ruin of a great many people, and in the most interesting stories, we're not simply told about this by a few measly lines but get to know their victims as people, who didn't volunteer to be character X's sacrifice for the greater good/punchbag for personal trauma/whatever and had their own lives before having the bad luck to encounter said villain. Other than movieverse and most times 616 comicverse Magneto, villains of this type who made me love them include Ben Linus from Lost or Arvin Sloane from Alias, and Kai Winn on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

And then there are the villains whom I don't love at all and don't like as people, either, but whom I can find interesting as a character and thus end up writing about. When I look at examples, I realise something they share, as different as they otherwise are from each other: a Me ME ME teenage frame of mind that extends far beyond actual teenage years, which comes with a tendency to blame everyone but themselves for their miseries, utter refusal to acknowledge any responsibility and an ever narrower capacity for attachment, that starts out being genuinenly there but as the character devolves includes fewer and fewer people, until only themselves are left. These type of villains might, in other circumstances, have not become villains - that helps making them interesting to me - but aren't tragic (for me, mileage as always varies) because they pass up chance after chance to change said circumstances because that would involve accepting some responsibility instead of blaming everyone else. Primarly examples: Warren Mears in Buffy, Morgana on Merlin and now Loki in Thor and Avengers. There is of course a big difference in how fandom at large responded to Warren on the one hand and Morgana & Loki on the other: Warren wasn't woobified. His own idea of himself was never shared by a majority of fandom. Morgana's and Loki's ideas of themselves, on the other hand, if fanfic and posts are anything to go by, are shared by a great many fans. And all generalisations are broad, I know, and can be unfair, but I rather suspect the reason for this isn't that Warren behaved worse than Morgana or Loki (Loki wins for attempted global genocide in Thor; his attempted conquest bodycount in Avengers and Morgana's by the end of season 4 should be about equal, and all three - Warren, Morgana and Loki, that is - are guilty of mindrape), but that the later two are played by very attractive actors and Warren (pace, Adam Busch! I enjoyed your performance and your guest appearance on The Sarah Connor Chronicles as well!) is not; also, Warren, about whose parents we know next to nothing (other than his mother moved to Sunnydale during Buffy's last two high school years or so), who doesn't have a sibling and who dominates his small group of peers (i.e. Andrew and Jonathan) offers no identification potential for the inner 13 years old temper tantrum throwing tale of "nobody understands me and Daddy doesn't love me enough!".

Now, if you get attached to a character, you usually want that character to stick around and achieve some modicum of happiness for himself/herself. Which is at the root of a great many redemption stories; not so much the need to bring the character to a state where he or she realises their actions (or at least some of them) were wrong and consequently tries to atone for them. Why do I think that? Because I've read a lot of fanfic in many a fandom, and the most popular pattern for redemption stories is this:

1) Not-much-longer-a-villain X saves the life of hero Y (usually the person the author wants to pair X with.)

2) Y and assorted other heroes are impressed in varying degrees; then they find out, if they don't know already, about the incredibly tragic backstory of X

3) Shame at the magnitude of X's sufferings in the past ensues (often, but not always, one of the hero types is held responsible for at least some of X's trauma and now gets punished accordingly)

4) X is redeemed (or rather justified, because clearly, he/she was more sinned against than sinning anyway!); happy sex with Y ensues.

Note that what's utterly missing is X being confronted by his/her victims other than Y and/or whomever of Y's friends they wronged, and these people usually, upon realising the tragic past, forgive X post haste. Characters who refuse to be impressed by X's turnabout and still hold X' deeds against him/her for some reasons are, if they are allowed in the narrative at all, the new villains of the story.

Which brings me back from fanfic to canon sources. Which don't always equal redemption with universal hugs and joyful sex, for some reason. Or even see redemption as the only way for a sympathetic and/or interesting villain to continue in the story. itsnotmymind once observed that one of the reasons why Faith's story on BTVS and ATS is probably the best redemption story the shows did is that Faith never was a regular, and thus didn't have to appear in every episode. Which meant it was possible for her to turn herself in and go to prison for several seasons, which wouldn't have been possible for, say, Willow. (Or Spike, leaving the later's vampire nature aside.) That's true, but Ben Linus on Lost and Arvin Sloane on Alias were regulars on their respective shows. If Alias had ended after the fourth season, you could say both got sort-of-redemption stories in the sense that they both started as villains and ended as sort-of-allies and also in a state of atonment (of sorts); since season 5 of Alias turned Sloane's story around again, he went back to villaindom. Even so, the difference between Ben and Arvin on the one hand and Loki/Morgana/Warren on the other is that pesky self awareness and responsibility thing, along with more-than-one-attachment ability. Not that Mr. Linus and Mr. Sloane don't have their massive self delusions at times as well, but they are aware that the main responsibility for what their life became lies with them. (See also: Sloane, in one of the ever popular taking-place-in-the-mind-of-characters episodes, telling his daughter Nadia in his own head that whatever he was in the past, now "I am a monster, and monsters have no place in this world".) They're also capable of voicing regrets over their actions, and, to a degree, change their behaviour (again: to a degree). Most importantly, though: their narrative doesn't let them off the hook. If the majority of Lost characters distrusts, loathes and resents Ben through several seasons, it's because of his own actions; ditto for Sloane, and at no point does the show imply the other characters are just mean and unfair to hold something like murder, manipulation and lots and lots of mind games against a fellow.

Cynical side note: the fact that Ron Rifkin and Michael Emerson were among the very best actors of the cast, with only one other actor of the same age group competing for the title, but neither of them young and particularly attractive probably helped with the comparative lack of fandom woobiefication, but the fact it didn't happen probably helped me maintain my Sloane and Benjamin Linus love.

But if accepting responsibility is such an important criterium for my personal affections, what, long time readers of my ramblings may ask, what about Battlestar Galactica's Gaius Baltar? What indeed, because accepting blame really isn't his strong suit, and as late as season 3, we have it as on screen canon (as voiced by William Adama near the end of the episode where he and Roslin torture Baltar for a confession) that Gaius sees himself as the wronged party here instead of the wrongdoer. So why do I have such issues with Loki and Morgana pulling that stunt but not with Baltar? Well, the fact that fandom didn't woobify and excuse Gaius B. probably helped, but so did his other characteristics, and the way his story played out on the show. Gaius could be petty on occasion, but by and large not malicious, and while he had a big accepting responsibility problem for the longest time, his chosen method of avoidance wasn't blaming either humans or Cylons for his miseries. In fact, he was one of the very few characters on that show who at no point succumbed to group hate and who as early as early s2 declared the entire cycle of vengeance and counter vengeance between humans and Cylons senseless and stupid (in a conversation with Head!Six on Kobol). Also, the show gave him neither the big dramatic heroic death atoning for his wrongs, nor did it make him into a moustache twirling villain (a la original Baltar in the old BSG) dying in punishment; what happened to him was simultanously the worst and the best thing for him, something he'd run from and tried to escape all his life. I wouldn't call it redemption, but it was by far the most successful personal arc completed in the very shaky way the show wrapped up. And showed you can tell a story of someone responsible for a lot of misery in an interesting way without falling into standard narrative patterns or easy cop-outs, and without ever handwaving the magnitude of what this person did away.

Back to fanfiction once more: one of my earliest Jossverse stories was Five Things Which Never Happened To Warren (using the "Five Things" format worked great with Warren, who in some makes better and in some as bad or even worse choices than in canon), and by now, Morgana has been prominent in or the central focus of five of my so far fourteen Merlin stories. As I said: I find these people interesting to write about. But none of these stories falls under the "everyone realises how wrong they were about X" type of story. (The first Morgana-centric story, Discordance, which was written in the hiatus between s2 and s3, i.e. before Morgana became a villain on the show, was actually inspired by frustration about fanon!Morgana whom I couldn't see bearing much resemblance to the character on the show even then.) Neither are they demonizations; I hope Morgana and Warren come across as capable of more than one emotion and as complicated individuals in said stories. It's just that the fictional examinations of the characters I wanted to read, and consequently wrote, weren't "X was so wronged by everyone and right all along! Team X all the way!" type of stories, but instead stories that took into account what canon has told us these characters were capable of. And I probably will end up writing about Loki sooner or later, despite yet having to feel any love of the character, because the type of Loki stories I'd be interested in reading just don't seem to get written, either.

***

Having ended up on an Avengers note yet again, two meta recs: Lovely, thoughtful meta on the film here and here.

Rewatching the Breaking Bad pilot for the first time since marathoning the show was interesting. Back then, I remember thinking that it did a great job of getting across the central premise and to introduce Walter White as the central character, but also that the other characters were very sketched, not yet fleshed out. Which is normal for a pilot. Where most writers have an idea about who they want their central character to be, but not yet about the supporting cast other than their plot functions; that comes after actual casting and once the show is given a season proper in most cases, I think. But going back to the pilot, I would modify my original assassment; while none of the others has yet depth, it's amazing how well what we see here holds up compared to what we find out later. ( More spoilery observations follow. )

A few days ago kalypso posted that this was the first Easter without Doctor Who on tv since the series got relaunched. While this caused a brief emotional tally on the lines on "huh, true; I don't miss it, though; am looking forward to the next season in the sense of expecting to be entertained, but the emotional distance to all characters factor has not changed, so there is no "I want more, and I want it now!" on my part".

However, you know which show I really, really miss, so that I grabbed my shiny dvds of same and rewatched episodes and wish there'd be new ones already even though they won't be on screen for months and months? Merlin.

What I started my rewatch with, btw, wasn't the start of the show, or the most recent season (4) of epicness, but s3, which I remembered as a mixed affair, with parts I loved and parts that made me headdesk. Said impression didn't change. Unfunny slapstick violence still extremely unfunny: check; lovely Merlin and Gwen friendship scenes: still extremely lovely and shiny. And so forth. Seriously, not only is the Gwen and Merlin detective duo friendship one of my favourite things about the show but it makes for an immediate disconnect if any fanfic (usually of the Merlin/Arthur kind) tries to sell me on Merlin secretly seething with jealousy and resentment. Or vice versa. They adore, respect and tease each other (and oh, btw, fully support each other's respective relationships with Arthur) and it's lovely to watch, so after grumbling "where's the fanfic" I decided that the next thing I'm writing in this fandom, whenever that will be, will focus on the Gwen and Merlin relationship.

While several aspects of s3 remain frustrating, one writerly decision I continue to be grateful for and regard as very rewarding is not to push the reboot button re: Kilgarrah. ( Spoiler cut just in case )

Something that's only possible to wonder about with the knowledge of s4 events to come is Uther in s3. Now back when I marathoned the first two seasons, one fandom complaint I agreed with was that the excuses the show found to keep Uther around were increasingly flimsy on a Watsonian level for the Doylist "we love having Tony Head in the cast". ( Contemplations spoilery for s3 and s4 ensue. )

Something else that occured to me when rewatching s3 episodes it that this is a show which definitely sides on the self-fulfilling part of "are prophecies reliable?" Both for Morgana and Merlin. Merlin as opposed to Morgana doesn't have a natural gift of precognition and thus needs artificial aid for future visions, and The Crystal Cave, one of the two occasions where he does get a look at the future via such means, to use a bad pun, really crystalizes the idea that such visions are dangerous when used as a guide line and his actions to avoid them are in fact what makes them come true. Morgana's ( vision of some spoilery things relating to Gwen )

similarly cause actions that in the end all contribute to making that vision come true, and of course her response to being told ( spoilery stuff in s4 about her own future )

has a similar effect. It's hard to say whether or not ther Merlinverse is one where the future is actually predetermined because in all these cases, you can always argue that the characters choosing to ignore the future visions instead of actively seeking to avoid them would have left them unfulfilled. Or, as Vir puts it in a (prophetic) dream of Londo Mollari's on Babylon 5, maybe prophecy is a guess you make come true and otherwise a dream stays just that, a dream.

Lastly: someone give the directors and camera guys awards already, because even haters would have to admit this is one of the best-looking shows around.

In which a perfectly fine episode confirms me in a resolution.

( Read more... )

One of my enduring DS9 issues, faithful reader of these ramblings, is the way the show deals, or doesn't, with what it chose to inflict on Benjamin Sisko's biological mother Sarah. Unfortunately, I never did more than rant about it and to write two drabbles. So you can imagine how savagely thrilled I was upon discovering a fantastic and lengthy Sarah pov has been written:

The Price of Prophecy

That, as the kids don't say these days, because "this" annoys me for some reason. All of it. Also, I'm impressed that the author pulls off an interesting more dimensional Prophet as well while she's at it, which, given that this is Sarah's pov and given what said Prophet does to Sarah, is no mean feat. (I have no problems with screwed up superbeings. I only have a problem when the narrative demands we're to take them unquestioningly for good while ignoring the incredibly skeevy things it lets said superbeings do.)


Because I rarely can think of one of my beloved space stations without thinking of the other: one of the most intriguing prompts at queer-fest is the question what it life as a transsexual in Centauri society would be like. I am baffled and intrigued. Given that the Centauri have many centuries of space travel behind them by the time we meet them, one would assume the purely medical side won't be a problem. On the one hand, the Romans in space Centauri are evidently a patriarchy: polygamy works only in the one man, several women direction, not the other way around, Londo (provided the Emperor, i.e. a man higher in the hierarchy, gives his permission) can divorce his wives, but they can't divorce him, and so forth. Which would point to a society where to transition from female to male is impossible (not medically, but law-wise, because it radically changes your legal status), and from male to female a social taboo because again, you change social status radically, only higher to lower. Given how status obsessed most of Centauri society comes across, this makes it likely that such operations would happen, but illegaly and probably off planet.

( More spoilerly for B5 musings on this ensue )