Meanwhile...

On a somewhat more cheerful note, I managed to get my Rarewoman ficathon story done, which meant a return to an old fandom I haven't been writing in for eons, and that proved to be joyful and relaxing. Thus fortified, I started Robert Cara's multivolume The Years of Lyndon Johnson biographies reccomended to me several times over, and so far, Robert Caro strkes me as the best type of biographer: one who sets his subject in the context of the era said subject is living in, and one who while unafraid to show his subject's (massive) dark side also describes, in great detail, amazing achievements. So you get, for example, young LBJ the college election stealing sinister breaker of people, blackmailer and sadist described in detail by former fellow students, while simultanously getting young LBJ the inspiring teacher who (because he had to finance being at college to begin with, took teaching jobs in between terms) teaches Mexican-American kids to speak English and is still remembered with fondness and awe.

I'm also going to watch Cap II again in a few hours, because I was that much entranced by the movie. It feels odd, though, when going through other people's reviews and realise, not for the first time, that 99% of them contain a good deal of capslocking and "feels" (still dislike that word; am a proponent of "feelings" all the way) about Person In The Title, which wasn't what made the movie for me at all. I mean, I'm sorry for SPOILER, given what happened to him, but it's the vague kind of general sympathy that comes with the awful situation of someone whom, as a person in general, you don't have feelings about one way or the other. I seem to be that way with all the Sebastian Stan characters, be they Jefferson in Once Upon A Time, Jack in Kings, or TJ Hammond in Political Animals. As most of the fannish output in the various fandoms tends to be centered around Stan's characters, this puts me always in something of a looking for needles in haystacks position when trying to find fanfic that's not about any of them. One day he and Tom Hiddleston will be in the same film/show, and then there will be nothing for me at all in terms of fic dealing with everyone else whom I'll invariably be more interested in.

Battle of the Richards?

Walking home after rewatching The Winter Soldier, I check twitter and what do I find? Just a day or so after it was announced that Martin Freeman will play Richard III. , the BBC confirms that Benedict Cumberbatch will play Richard III on screen, the small screen, that is, in the It's Hard Out There For A York the follow up to their Hollow Crown filming of Shakespeare's histories, to wit, the Henry VI plays plus Richard III.

I must confess I had a moment of amusement. Not that either gentleman isn't a fine actor, but still. Also, I can just hear the BBC staff meeting where they wonder which actor to hire to replicate the Hiddleston-fans-go-Shakespeare effect, and of course they pick BC. Now can we hear who'll play Margaret of Anjou? *still hopes for Amanda Hale* Anyway, given the fannish tendency to pair up characters played by Cumberbatch with John Watson and/or characters played by Martin Freeman in crossover fanfiction, I await with bated breath CumberRichard's meeting with a doctor returned from the wars. Or a hobbit. Or himself from another universe.