With a hey nonny nonny

Since Much Ado About Nothing, the Joss Whedon version, premiered at a film festival two days ago, the first reviews have been dropping in, and they are glowing. Clearly, filming Shakespeare with his favourite actors in twelve days is how Joss W. should spent all his spare time between big projects from now on. I vote for Richard III next, because it's going to take the BBC far longer to follow up The Hollow Crown with the York tetralogy, and also he can cast Enver Gjokaj as Richard. (Can't let have Alexis Denisof have all the leading roles, although, on second thought, why not? He still gets my vote for best male actor - other than the obvious ASH - to work with Joss Whedon.) (Sorry, James Marsters fans. He isn't bad. Just not in the same versatility department.)

Still on a theme of didn't-the-90s-give-us-some-fabulous-tv, since DS9_Rewatch reached the season 4 episode Bar Association, I had a lovely discussion about Quark. The "which fandoms to nominate for Yuletide?" debate has already started, which reminds me that during the last two years DS9 had been an option, and since it's an easy fandom for me to volunteer, I ended up getting two DS9 prompts in a row, with the result that one story which was supposed to be about Dax, Worf and Bashir ended up also starring Quark with as much page time as Bashir, and the other the other was basically How I Met My Ferengi: Odo's Tale. I'm going out on a limb here in guessing that if DS9 again makes the Yuletide cut and I again put it up as one of the fandoms I can write, my next Yuletide story will also include Quark. What can I say? He's just that irresistable to me.

Apropos the day

"Two other friends (...) and myself agreed to write each a story founded on some supernatural occurr

Allow me to geek out for a moment: Byron's copy of 'Frankenstein' with a handwritten dedication by Mary Shelley goes on sale at an auction! Haunted summer! One of the more creative laudanum-drenched get togethers of English writers while touring Switzerland! (Also a bad Highlander episode, but forget that one.) (The Ken Russell movie Gothic, otoh, is also historical nonsense but in Russell fashion outrageously entertaining nonsense. Have a look at the trailer. Anyway, the dedication is very formal - "Lord Byron", when later he's Albé (as a play on L.B.) - and I find it amusing and touching that nineteen-years-old Mary writes "from the author" instead of her name. She did publish anonymously at first, but this was a private inscription, not for the public eye, and yet. Her feelings about Byron were always mixed, never just dislike or sympathy but usually both at the same time, but either she wanted him to have a copy anyway or maybe he bought one and asked her for a dedication. (Byron mentions Frankenstein as a remarkable book in a letter to his publisher John Murray, in the larger context of denying writing The Vampyre which was by his only-for-a-short-while doctor John Polidori but also published anonymously at first and rumoured to be by Byron; Murray as Byron's publisher had an obvious interest in clearing up whether his author was cheating on him, so Byron went through the whole origin saga of the best horror fandom challenge fest ever at the Villa Diodati when Mary, Shelley and Mary's stepsister Claire dropped by.)

Moving to English writers some decades later, since two months ago I wrote some Bronte meta along similar lines, I was delighted today to discover this post on Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea and Wuthering Heights.