There and back again

I saw the trailer for Troy, which looks nifty. (Wolfgang Petersen would be not embarassing contemporary director we exported to the States, as opposed to Roland "Independence Day" Emmerich.) With movies like Das Boot and Enemy Mine in his resumé, I'm reasonably certain he can handle his warfare in an uncheesy way. I do wonder whether they will keep the dehuminisation of Achilles, his dragging Hector's corpse around the walls of Troy.

Moreover, a kind soul gave me several of the RotK music clips, and The End of all Things and The Grey Havens made me sniffle in advance. God knows how I'll make it through the film without dissolving into tears entirely. I'm usually not the type to cry in the cinema, about a book or in front of the TV screen, but certain things make me each and every time. Londo in The Fall of Centauri Prime. (Actually, Londo makes me cry in season 5 even when he isn't on the damn screen, in Sleeping in Light, during Vir's story about him.) Davydd in Sharon Penman's novel The Reckoning. And I fear, I very much fear, that Frodo, Sam, Gollum et al. will join the club.

In order to cheer myself up, I read on older story of honorh's, which puts a film noir detective in Middle-Earth. (He's been hired by Lobelia Sackville-Baggins to investigate Bilbo's dissappearance, since Lobelia figures she can frame Frodo for it.) Great fun, and it's here.

Scott Summers is a character who gets as even director Bryan Singer admits too little screen time in the X-Men movies, which is why I'm greatful for excellent fanfic like penknife's. In Home Maintanance, set just pre-X2 with flashbacks to Scott's teenage days, we get good views of the relationship with Xavier, on adult Scott dealing with Bobby, John and Rogue, on teenage Scott trying to figure out his own emotions... it's a gem. I especially admire the realistic, layered way both teenage and adult characters are described. Not too many writers can do this.

Speaking of things not many writers can do: yahtzee63 wrote a Harry Potter future fic, which accomplishes several feats at once.
A) It's set in a world where Voldemort has won, and plausibly so. Which shouldn't have surprised me; Yahtzee created a very impressive dystopia for her Buffyverse story Phoenix Burning.
B) Among other things, it features a pairing which usually not just squicks me but has me chanting "why should she, and why should he? It's so out of character for both". Yes, it's Hermione/Snape. How does Yahtzee pull this one off? Firstly by not beautifying Snape inwardly or outwardly, and not changing (adult, thank God) Hermione into a simpering Gothic heroine. She has her reasons for the relationship, and they're neither romantic nor due to Snape suddenly becoming sexually irresistable. (Why Yahtzee can make me believe Hermione/Snape - albeit under very specific circumstances - but not Wolverine/Rogue is a bit of a mystery to me.)
C) As with all of Yahtzee's stories, this one combines An Actual Plot with character exploration.

Curious? It's called The Bloody Stare of Mars.