If I hadn't decided to let my addictional pic package for lj run out because of all the lj screw ups last year, I'd get me an Alex icon. Welcome back, show!

( The Trinity )

The AO3 meme is making the rounds again, and I would do it, except a checking reveals that other than one story, I have the same top ten most read stories as last year on that archive. The one exception: Patterns (Doctor Who) is out, and Five Things Which Never Happened Between Garak And Bashir (DS9) is in. I presume it got linked somewhere. (As it's an older story.) Or it benefited from a general revived interest in all things Trek. Anyway, it and the requivalent Kira & Dukat stories are my favourite examples of how to explore a canon relationship from various angles via AU in my own work, so colour me pleased.

Tomorrow this year's Remix Archive gets opened, and I'm both excited and gearing up to be fannishly angst-ridden. You know, the usual. :) Incidentally, as a reader, if I don't know the original story a remix is inspired by already, it depends on the remix whether or not I read it. If the remix is interesting, I'm curious about the spark, so to speak, but otherwise it tends to be a case of so many stories, so little time. One thing this particular ficathon guarantees is a high percentage of good stories, I've found, some of which completely work on their own, and some who get that extra dimension if you read them as commentary on the orignal and/or the source material. Which may have changed between the time the original story was written and the time the remixer gets to work, and that, too, can influence the second story a lot. I've written two stories this time, one for the regular Remix and one for Remix Madness. Both recognizably me, I think, but since neither has a Beatles song title, one is in a canon I haven't written before and the other in one I love but haven't written often, I'm offering to write a drabble for anyone guessing between tomorrow and reveal day which ones are mine on the subject of their choice.

****

Now I'm still standing by my reasons why as opposed to 90 percent of the fandom, I was distinctly underwhelmed by Loki in Thor and saw him mostly as a gigantic case of adolescent self pity, but none of those were directed against the actor who plays him, Tom Hiddleston, who now has written an absolutely charming article about superhero movies in general. D'awwwwwww. harmonyangel, this is the article for you!

(BTW: we're getting the Avengers next Thursday. Sometimes being in Europe does mean being ahead instead of behind.)


****

And a Being Human fanfic rec: The Life in a Day, or, one take at those fifty years Leo, Hal and Pearl shared.

In which your faithfull reviewer should have seen something coming but didn't and is positively impressed.

( Making History )

Unfortunately 4.05 remains beyond my reach after the first thirty or so minutes (I could watch until Yvonne started to show up in Hal's dreams as well), so I can't review it. Colour me frustrated, because until then, I had liked the episode. I also liked this week's, which luckily I could watch without further hindrances.

( On to the review! )

You know, I enjoy the current season, but still, it feels like we're back in season 1 territory emotionally and intellectually, which after the narrative heights of season 3 is... weird. It's not necessarily a bad choice and allows you to breathe which s3 did not, but all the same, there's this sense of - well, backslide. I'm trying to decide whether Miracle Day after Children of Earth or season 5 of Angel after season 4 (*waves s4 of AtS was the best* banner as determined as ever*) is the most appropriate comparison.

( Also, if your title is a Priestly pun you should have made the story more Priestley-esque )

If my theory is true, I must somehow make likeadeuce watch this show. If only so she can write the inevitable Shakespearean crossover.

( Once more into the breach )

If you're looking for the archive itself to browse at your own leisure, here it is. This is just a first bunch of recs, more to come!

History:

Still Climbing after Knowledge Infinite

In which young Will from Stratford hangs out with a couple of other Elizabethan playwrights, spars and flirts with Kit Marlowe, and figures out his own writing voice. Just delightful.

Todos Los Bienes Del Mundo (1598)

That Philipp II. during his brief time as Mary's husband in England got at least emotionally involved with his sister in law and future arch nemesis, Elizabeth, is a tantalizing possibility brought up now and then in biographies. (Not least because of the apocryphal story that he confessed as much.) Here is old Philipp reflecting on their youth, talking to his best enemy. Very well done, not least because it's believably from the Spanish pov.

American Gods:

The Man in the Gaberdine Suit

In which Shadow returns to America, meets gods old and new, and has a decision to make. Captures the style of the novel really well, and the (surviving) characters.

Being Human:

Passing Bells

A Nina pov, set after the third season, and a terrific character exploration of her and through her of the other characters and their situation. Bonus point for including Tom.

Deadwood:

The Outward Gift

Lovely exploration of the tender, damaged relationship between Joanie Stubbs and Calamity Jane. Awesome use of Charlie Utter as well.

Some Like It Hot:

Scenes from a floating oasis

In which, after the movie, four people on a yacht try to figure out what comes next. A charming ensemble story that showcases the ambiguities in everyone very well.

The Sarah Jane Adventures:

Queens of the Marsh

In which the inevitable happens and Rani meets the Rani as Our Heroes try to solve the latest weirdness, which involves alien frogs. It's the kind of story you can imagine on the show, and everyone is delightfully in character. Clyde's drawing talent is put to good use and Rani shows off her budding journalist skills which pleases me muchly.

Galaxy Quest

Episode Thirty Three: The Dark Reflection

In which Gwen, back in the day, gets the script for the Galaxy Quest version of the Mirrorverse episode and is awesome. I love this both for the way it is pretty realistic about tv writing (sadly not just in the 70s) and yet allows Gwen to play the game better than the sexist she's dealing with. It's funny, acerbic, and leaves you whistling. My head canon now, definitely.

The Borgias causes that interesting thing, historical fiction that is not yet based on the show (since the events depicted haven't happened there yet) but semi-influenced by it. If you don't mind being spoiled for history (which might or might not happen on the show), check them out!

In disputation: which is Lucrezia at five crucial points in her life.

And you could have it all, my empire of dirt: Cesare at the end.

Two meta recs:

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Jean-Luc Picard meta, which also touches on how Patrick Stewart made TNG real, and the changing ST universe throughout the show's run. I don't agree with all points, but as always, abigail_n writes so very well.

Being Human: Why Nina and Annie did the right thing. Comes with real life comparison, and makes a point you'd think self-evident, except that given fandom's throughout the second half of the last season, it apparantly was not.

I haven't watched the US version of Being Human, nor do I intent to, but even if you, oh reader, are not familiar with either the British or American one and have no intention of ever watching a single episode of BH, check out this post for a great demonstration of what "the male gaze" means, and how you can film two identical scenes in completely different ways, resulting in very different emotional content. (Err, spoilers for two scenes in the respective first seasons of both shows.) Hint: one is cheap exploitation, and the other is not.
***

A few more pictures under the cut, this time of arguably the people who had it worst in the entire Beatles saga, the three first wives of John, Ringo and George. I'm excepting Jane Asher her, not because she was never married to Paul but because she managed to never let being romantically involved with a Beatle be detrimental to her own life. Being accomplished and famous in her own right as an actress before, during and after the five years they were together undoubtedly helped, as did ignoring any demands to settle down (as opposed to Pattie Boyd, who gave up her modelling career when George asked). As did trying to keep her life with Paul as much separately from Paul's life with the group as was possible. (Jane Asher was and is famously discreet after her break-up with Paul, but the two times she said something on the record during the relationship - in Michael Braun's 1964 book about the Beatles en tour, Love Me Do, and in Hunter Davies' 1968 The Beatles she sounds more critical than any of the Beatle wives/girlfriends has gone on record with being and unequivocably states she has no intention of being "part of a gang".) But the way Cynthia Lennon, Pattie Harrison and Maureen Starkey dealt with the rock star wives life, how they became friends, failed each other and reconciled is a poignant drama of its own. It's a very 60s and early 70s tale from the female side as opposed to the male one.

( Wives and Friends )

Being Human: two quite different yet both eloquent meta posts:

Being Human, Season 3

Vampires and their cryptic bullshit

Both posts, though their interpretation of some characters wildly differ, say yes to s3 and its arc. It occured to me that one of the objections I've heard elsewhere was that "this isn't the show we were promised in the pilot", which immediately reminded me of one of the calmer Children of Earth criticisms (i.e. that CoE Torchwood was not "the show we were promised" in that it was quite different from the TW of Cyberwoman yore). It's a fair point to raise though I would say the difference between pilot Being Human and the first season is already pointed, and not simply because of the recasting of several roles. Still, I can see that if you basically signed on for a very charming supernatural sitcom, which is what you get in the pilot, then what the show turns into is most definitely not what you "were promised". I'm with abigail_n in one of the posts linked above, though, that with s3 the show has reached the story it was meant to tell. Of course, I feel that way about Children of Earth as well, so...

It's not that I think "dark" always equals good, by the way, on the contrary. For example, I'd say that parts of BSG's third and most definitely its fourth season drift too much into self indulgent angst for angst's sake territory, as does much of Farscape's fourth season (but not the concluding Peacekeeper Wars mini). But in the cases of season 3 of Being Human, Torchwood: Children of Earth or, for that matter, Angel's season 4 I felt the respective shows had each managed to follow a relentless narrative arc to its logical conclusion, to explore their characters more deeply and cast of (much) of the attributes that I was not on board with before - to tell a story only they could in this particular way.

What it comes down to, I guess, is that I don't mind not getting what "we were promised" if what we do get is something that appeals to me more. For that matter, season one DS9 while having potential is still quite different from later season DS9, and you could make a case that the "promise" of that first season show is most definitely not what it turns into later on. Take one of the goals established in the pilot: Sisko is explicitly told that one of the reasons for the Federation presence on DS9 is to woo Bajor into joining the Federation and to prepare the planet for this. One of the most crucial turning points in s5 is when they're all but set to do this in the season 5 episode Rapture and Sisko interrupts it, advising, declaring Bajor must not join the Federation. There is a larger plot reason for this and it pays off, but by the time the show wraps up in s7 Bajor still isn't a Federation member. Which is one of the things that makes DS9 uniquely DS9 - the way the whole joining the Federation and the Federation itself is problematized*, much of the narrative arcs given to non-Fed regular characters like Kira or Odo. My point is, the show DS9 developed into is narratively much richer and more interesting to me than the one arguably promised in the pilot, and if the pilot promise had been stuck to, it would have been a lesser DS9.

Sometimes you start a story in one direction, and you discover potential leading the story in quite different directions. It doesn't always mean the ensueing narrative is worth the departure. But it can be, and when it does, I am your devoted reader/listener/viewer.


* I have to add here that contrary to popular cliché DS9 was not the first Trek show to feature darker sides of the Federation, but TNG did this only sporadically and embedded in many more "bright side" episodes - Measure of a Man or The Drum Head were hardly setting the tones of their respective seasons. Still, they do exist, years before DS9, and that's why I always resent generalizations about pre-DS9 Trek that pretend they don't.