A Day In The Life

Yuletide Letter

2025-10-12T11:30:46Z

Dear Yuletide Writer,

we share at least one fandom, which is great, and I'm really grateful you take the time and trouble to write a story for me. All the prompts are just suggestions; if you have very different ideas featuring the same central characters, go for them. Also, I enjoy a broad range from fluff to angst, so whatever suits you best works fine with me.

DNW:

- bashing of canon pairings or characters in general. By which I don't mean the characters have to like each and everyone - a great number of those I've nominated can be described as prickly jerks, among other things, and it would be entirely ic for them to say something negative about people they canonically can't stand - but there's a difference between that and the narrative giving me the impression to go along with said opinions.

- Alpha/Beta/Omega scenarios, watersports, infantilisation. Really not my thing, sorry.

Likes:

- competence, competent people appreciating each other

- deep loyalty and not blindly accepting orders

- flirting/seduction via wordplay and banter (if it works for you with the characters in question)

- for the darker push/pull dynamics: moments of tenderness and understanding in between the fighting/one upman shipping (without abandoning the anger)

- for the relationships, both non-romantic and if you like romantic, that are gentler and harmonious by nature: making it clear each has their own life and agenda as well

- some humor amidst the angst (especially if the character in question displays it in canon)

The question of AUs: depends. "What if this key canon event did not happen?" can lead to great character and dynamics exploration, some of which made it into my specific prompts, but I do want to recognize the characters. Half of those I nominated are from historical canons, and the history is part of the fascination the canon has for me. ) However, if you feel inspired to, say, write Cecily Neville, space captain, and manage to do it in a way that gives me gripping analogues to the historical situations: be my guest!

How much or how little sex: I'm cool with anything you feel comfortable with, from detailed sex to the proverbial fade out after a kiss. Or no sex at all (given that most of my prompts are non-romantic in nature), as long as the story explores the emotional dynamics in an intense way.

( Cecily Duology - Annie Garthwaite )

( Foundation (TV) )

( Alien: Earth )

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Alien: Earth 1.08

2025-09-29T09:39:42Z

Darth Real Life hounds my every step these days, but I did manage to watch the ( Alien: Earth )

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Alien: Earth 1.07

2025-09-18T14:28:50Z

In which it's very useful to know the numbers of pi by heart. Or eye.

( What have you done? )

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Alien: Earth 1.06 und Foundation 3.10

2025-09-12T11:33:00Z

Alien: Earth:

The internet tells me Sigourney Weaver is watching Alien: Earth and is as enthralled as yours truly. Now if that isn't a compliment to Noah Hawley et al, I don't know what is.

( Spoilers are on a quest to use the creepiest Peter Pan quotes in every episode )

Foundation

Is the first season finale necessitating that the next season has to start without a century like time jump. Also, yowsers.

( ...while the worst are full of passionate intensity )

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Alien: Earth 1.05

2025-09-04T15:11:51Z

No sooner did I finish with episodes 1-4 that episode 5 got dropped. I’m currently travelling (for work, not fun) and only intermittently online, but I did have the chance to watch it.

( In Space, No One…. )

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More books, more tv

2025-09-03T07:49:25Z

More books:

Stella Duffy: The Purple Shroud. The sequel to her novel Theodora, this one covering the time from when Theodora becomes Empress to her death. It's as readable as the first one, though I have a few nitpicks. Not about what I feared - the novel Theodora keeps morally ambiguous, and it confronts head on that once you are in power, you cannot simultanously be "one of the people", no matter how low you were originally born or how disadvantaged a life you've lived until this point. Doesn't mean your decisions can't benefit the disadvantaged, but you yourself are no longer one of them. So far, so good, and in case I hadn't mentioned it before, Duffy's characterisation of Narses is my favourite after Gillian Bradshaw's, and Thedora's relationship with him, ditto; they're firm allies from before she married Justinian, but they also sometimes have different opinions, and his ultimate loyalty is to Justinian, not to her. Also, Antonina (Belisarius' wife) in several lhistorical novels of the period tends to be presented as a none too bright promiscuous tool of Theodora's, and not so here, where they are friends, but up to a point, and Antonina has her priorities which are neither about her sex life nor about Theodora.

( Spoilery Nitpick is Spoilery Because Not Historical )

Naomi Novik: Spinning Silver. I've heard many good things about this one but didn't get around do reading it before now. Turns out it is absolutely worth the hype. I had been charmed by Novik's Temeraire saga, though less so the more books were published and stopped reading before Laurence and Temeraire got to Australia. This novel, by contrast, didn't just charm me but made me fall in love and start it all over again as soon as I was done. Rather unusually for what I've read of Novik's novels so far, almost the entire main cast is female, and she even pulls off multiple first person narrations without this reader getting confused as to who is narrating which passage (note: in my copy, this isn't marked with "Name of Character" to signal a pov switch), because the individual voices are that individual.

The setting is vaguely Russian, using various fairy tale elements (Rumpelstiskin, Cinderella, Baba Yaga) to weave something new. The main narrating ladies are: 1.) Miryem, daughter of a Jewish moneylender who isn't very good at moneylending due to being too kind and exploitable by his antisemitic village, who takes over the moneylending business, makes a success out of it and makes the fateful for fairy tales boast of being able to turn silver into gold, which gets overheard by a Staryk (= essentially fairy for the purposes of this novel) Lord who decides to take her up on it, 2.) Wanda, downtrodden but strong and determined daughter of a drunken and abusive farmer who is in debt to Miryem, which causes her to work for Miryem, 3.) Irina, daughter of the provincial Duke who through a plot device involving Miryem's business with the Staryk lord sees a chance to gain power by marrying Irina to the young Tsar despite said young Tsar's very sinister reputation. There are more first person narrators among the supporting cast, but these are the three main characters who drive the narrative, who have to use their wits to first survive increasingly dangerous situations and then get a step ahead and actually defeat the cause of said situations, and who along the way form relationships with other characters (and each other) that help them achieving this. It''s really, spinning metaphors being inevitable, a fantastic and brilliant yarn, and every time I thought "hang on, I can see where this is going, but how does that work with Character X' previously established behavior", the novel surprised me by making it work in the best way.

More tv:

Alien: Earth, episodes 1.01 - 1.04: Not a sequel but a prequel, setting wise, though made with an awareness that most of the audience will be familiar with at least the first few Alien movies. Mind you, with the heavy emphasis on AI beings already introduced in the pilot I thought, hang on, to which Ridley Scott cult movie is this supposed to be a prequel to? (Four episodes later: leaving aside the four years limit on the life span of Replicants in Blade Runner, this actually would work in a kind of shared early Ridley Scott films universe.) Not that Alien and its sequels don't have robots (robots here being used as a collective noun for various different AIs in human shape) as important parts of the plot, of course, but this show really puts them centre stage (perhaps recalling David was one of the key elements of Prometheus that worked even for people who disliked the movie?), and it absolutely works. It also so far provides a good remix of core elements. Ripley in I think not one but two of the Alien movies said that the company (not just Wayland-Yutani which she originally worked for, but also its successors in the movie plots) were the true monsters, given that the Xenomorphs "just" follow their instincts but Wayland-Yutani et al sacrifice fellow human beings for greed. If this was late 1970s and early 1980s scepticism of capitalism and where it's going, well, now we the audience live in the world of tech bros and politicians not even trying to hide their corruption anymore but boasting of it, and so this tv series so far doiubles and triples down on Ripley's observation. Not just the good old Xenomorph but newly introduced creatures like the T-Ocelius deliver the creeps, horrors and scares, sure, as they go after their organic victims, but the character you really loathe and with every episode more wish to fall to an extremely unpleasant fate is the resident main tech bro billionaire, Boy Kavalier (what he really calls himself), so covinced of his own brilliance, so utterly unconcerned with any empathy whatsoever, and seeing both human and synthetic workers as his property.

(Future eras may write their film and tv thesis about tech bro villains from Glass Onion onwards.)

But any genre that involves horror needs sympathetic characters as well, characters the audience cares for and wants to survive, not getting torn apart by the Xenomorph (and other murderous species). Which is where this show also excels, ( but saying why gets too spoilery to talk about it above cut. )

World building wise, the Earth as presented by this show no longer has nation states, it's run by five cooperations (this reminded me of what Mike Duncan did for the Mars part in his Podcast Revolutions, and he couldn't have known), with Weyland-Yutani as one of the older powerful ones and Boy Kavalier's company, inevitably named Prodigy, as the newbie which together with another new company changed the "Triumvirate" to "The Five". Democracy, of course, is also a thing of the past. For once, North America isn't a location (so far), instead, the Weyland-Yutani vessel in the series pilot crashes down on what used to be Thailand, and Boy Kavalier's lair seems to be located somewhere in South Asia (Vietnam, I'd say, given the scenery) as well. We all know how a Xenomorph looks in the various stages of its existence by now, but the design team came up with four other creepy species as well which are new and are excellent at bringing on body horror. Though like I said: the truest revulsion is created by human greed. Contrasted, which makes it compelling and not nihilistic, by the capacity of doing better than that, by artificial and human beings alike.

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Sigourney Weaver at 70

2019-10-08T15:50:50Z

The great Sigourney Weaver turns 70 today. Like a great many viewers, I first encountered her as Ripley in Alien, and ensuing sequels. Think about the four movies of the franchise as you will - my own takes are on Alien and Aliens here and on Alien³ and Alien: Resurrection here -, I think there can be general agreement that SW never brought less than her A-Game. She made Ripley so intensely memorable that you believed every moment with her in it, no matter whether she faced outsized monsters or human greed - or her own humanity. Or saved her cat. There are so many iconic Ripley scenes; one that stuck deepest with me doesn't feature, strictly speaking, Ellen Ripley, but Ripley8 from Alien: Resurrection, in the sequence where she finds out what the number on her means. Trigger warning for massive body horror, but it's what Weaver does with her face that makes it so visceral to me:

She's a superb comedienne as well - in Working Girl, for example, and wonderfully so in Galaxy Quest. Gwen de Marco speaks for all of us here:

(This episode is badly written!" is what I constantly want to say about the present, but alas...)

Lastly, some funny interview moments:

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Prometheus Revisited

2012-12-08T07:03:39Z

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. )

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Prometheus (Film Review)

2012-08-10T04:14:59Z

This was another film which deeply divided my flist into nays and yays.. As it finally was released in Germany yesterday, I watched it myself, and am firmly among the yays. It's an individual reaction. You may not share it. But let me explain why I loved a great deal of what I saw.

( Read more... )

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Myths old and new in fictions old and new

2012-05-28T12:43:13Z

I must admit I'm starting to get quite anticipatory for Prometheus. At first I was spectical, because our man Ridley is a hit and miss kind of director: meaning that for every Blade Runner and Thelma and Louise, there's a G.I. Jane and Kingdom of Heaven. He always delivers on the visuals, and I happen to prefer Alien over James Cameron's Aliens, but as I said: it's a gamble. Though the trailer was admittedly very tasty. Then I read that Damon Lindelof wrote the script, and now I'm really intrigued. Speaking as someone who watched Lost all the way and for all the ups and downs never failed to find it interesting. (Well, except for the episode about the origin of Jack's tattoo in season 3.) (Sidenote: I always find it irritating when Lost is seen as J.J. Abrams' baby, because as far as I can tell, Abrams never had anything to do with it anymore after setting up the pilot and some initial few things, whereas Lindelof was the showrunner through out, so both credit and blame should be laid at his doorstep.) And Lindelof certainly can write mythic, mysterious and deliver interesting ensembles. As long as there's no love triangle involved, and he gets to play to his strengths (especially with ambiguous characters and ones that prove nice and kind by no means equal dull - hello, Hurley!

And speaking of the joys and terrors of anticipation, does anyone know whether there are any news on the proposed American Gods tv series? Because that will be to me what Game of Thrones is to, well, GoT fans. I recently reread the book, and decided that of Gaiman's non-comicbook writings, tv episodes excluded, I still love this novel best. The Graveyard Book immediately after, but American Gods first among the novels. Back in the day I came to it straight from Sandman, and I used to wonder whether that was the reason, because there are obvious world building similarities - the premise that all gods of every religion exist, came into being because of the faith of various people and fade away as the belief in them fades so they have to take up a variety of crumy (or not so crummy) jobs to still access emotions and survive, plus Gaiman's interpretation of various deities in Sandman (primarily Odin and Loki, but also Bastet on the Egyptian side) is very similar-down-to-identical to the one he gives in American Gods. And let me tell you, these are by far my favourite interpretations of said Norse deities, especially of Odin. (Back when I started to read Marvel comics, I felt terribly let down, which was fortunate because by the time Thor the film came along I had learned to completely dissassociate the Marvel characters from the myth characters and for the most part, certain issues aside, could enjoy the Marvel versions on their own merits without expecting them to be like the beings of Norse myths.) Mr. Wednesday is such a marvellous character/interpretation of Odin, manipulative, ambigous-to-downright-villainous and yet incredibly compelling, and when Shadow at the end after having figured out Wednesday's scheme(s) and what Wednesday did still admits he misses him, without the narrative excusing Wednesday, it captures the effect on this particular reader precisely.

But ten years later, and so many other books later, American Gods still hasn't dated for me. ( Lots of book spoilers follow. )

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Fannish 5: Five Scariest Villains

2011-11-12T08:41:50Z

5 Scariest Villians (as opposed to Favorite Villians)

1.) Arthur (John Lithgow) aka Trinity from Dexter, season 4. Visceral performance, and arguably the scariest of Dexter's seasonal opponents. ( Spoilery reasons why ensue. )

2.) The Borg in their first three Star Trek: TNG appearances. Unfortunately, this is something later watchers won't be able to appreciate, not only because of the later overexposure of the Borg on both Voyager and TNG but also because the overall tv viewing context today is too different. But in Q Who and Best of Both Worlds I + II, the Borg scared the hell out of me because a villain like this hadn't been done on Star Trek before. The idea of assimilation, losing free will and personality and (as demonstrated via Picard) the idea that somewhere in the back of your mind your old self is still there and powerless to prevent it was incredibly shudderworthy to me, as were the original Borg's uninterestedness in the usual villain trappings like posturing or declarations, or gloating. They just came, assimilated and went. (And as mentioned multiple times before, the fact this happened to the main character who afterwards had to deal with it instead of being cured by the reset button was completely new for Star Trek, if par the course now, heightening the effectiveness of the Borg as scary villains even more.)

3.) Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Never mind Lord Voldemort, standard evil overlord that he was. Umbridge the teacher in pink scared the hell out of me during Harry's first detention with her, when he realised what writing "I must not tell lies" over and over again really means. There are other reasons why Umbridge is such an effective villain - until this point in the saga, Hogwarts is still mostly fairytale refuge land for Harry (never mind the annual scares), and she strips it bit for bit of any joyful elements and turns it into a bureaucratic fascist nightmare - but this scene, which despite the magical element in it is as real a depiction of child abuse as you're likely to find, both in Umbridge's demeanour and Harry's reaction, is what makes me shudder to this day when I think of it.

4.) The Gentlemen from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Hush. I know I nominate them every time such a question is asked, but it's still true: they really are the most effective fairy tale monsters on tv. (And wisely Joss never tried to reprise them.) It's not the skeletal look, it's the ( spoilery thing they do ) that makes all the difference.

5.) The Alien in Alien. Again, a classic which probably won't work on today's viewers, especially if they've watched one of the later Alien movies first. I think it was Stephen King who once observed that if the original Star Wars was, despite the sci fi exterior, a fairy tale, the original Alien was, again, despite the sci fi exterior, a horror movie. Taking its time, artfully directed by Ridley Scott, and to me far more emotionally real than Cameron's more popular follow up because the grumpy crew of the Nostromo doesn't speak in stylized movie banter as the Marines in Aliens do, they're not soldiers, you know people like them and they're in no way prepared to handle what happens to them. And the Alien, in its first appearance and subsequently celebrated H.R. Giger design, in three stages, is a Freudian nightmare that combines just the right amount of actual exposure with letting the audience imagination do the work. (As opposed to the sequels where you see the beasties all the time.) It's a force of nature that can't be reasoned with and treats humans as breeding ground if it doesn't treat them as dinner, and it really looks, well, utterly alien, which was news in the 70s when aliens still very much looked like puppets and/or men in suits. It gave me nightmares for months.

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Fannish5: Kickass Female Characters

2010-09-04T14:07:18Z

I have the feeling I did this once before, but no time to check, plus what the hell, it's always fun to rave about the women. Qualification: I'm choosing to interpret as referring to females who can do the kicking of the aforementioned backside both literally and figuratively. So ladies who could rule the universe by force of personality, cleverness and manipulative skills like Laura Roslin or Livia Drusilla won't show up; they're in a class of their own.

1) Abigail Brand (originally Astonishing X-Men, now Marvelverse at large). See icon. Green-haired, tough, abrasive, willing to put her life on the line along with everyone else's, with a gift for sarcasm and (so far) great taste in men. Has even mastered the art of admitting of having been wrong and drawing consequences, which is rare in ruthless types. I love her quite a lot.

2) River Song (Doctor Who). Was interesting in her first outing which due to timey-wimeyness was also her end, and became downright fascinating in the last season when we got to know her better; can wear space suits, uniform and evening wardrobe with the same aplomb and is played by the vibrant Alex Kingston. "Hello, Sweetie" will never sound the same again. :)

3.) Sarah Connor (The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the first two Terminator films). Transforming herself from hunted teenage waitress to warrior woman, Sarah picked up a lot of intimacy issues on the way, not to mention poetic if disturbing dreams. I love that she loves stories, which is rare in an action heroine, that she bonds with strangers but has difficulties with her nearest and dearest, and that she tries not just to win a fight but to do so without losing sight of what she fights for. Oh, Sarah.

4.) Ellen Ripley (Alien and subsequent sequels). Like Sarah, Ripley didn't start out as a warrior. She was the space equivalent of a trucker, and one of several reasons why I'm in the minority who prefers Alien over Aliens is that the crew of the Nostromo strikes me as much more real - they aren't marines who banter in movie speak, they are people doing their jobs who have been together far too long. (Also, more British actors.) And it's far from obvious or signaled that Ripley will be the one to survive. But survive she does, and while her life becomes one out of time nightmare in which she keeps being reborn, she never loses her humanity. I ♥ Ripley.

5.) Xena (Xena: Warrior Princess). Actually, most of the women of that show, but Xena is in a class of her own. Cheerfully anachronistic as her show was, she did the dark-haired brooding former villain seeking redemption stick before Angel and various imitations of same, and she did it (more often than not) better. Lucy Lawless gave her a fierce joy in fighting that ex-villains not often get to display, a deadpan sense of humour and a confident sexuality.

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Meme from Tartanshell: Whose fandom is it anyway?

2009-10-22T07:57:32Z

Choose ten characters. What fandoms would they participate in, and in what ways?

1.) I already did a post on clearly both movieverse Magneto and Xavier being Doctor Who fans, complete with highly scientific poll as to which Doctors and which Companions they like best. Expanding on that, I'd say Erik Lehnsherr to this day argues Genesis of the Daleks with Charles online and and has dispatched Mystique to Simbabe to investigate those rumours that there are copies of the lost Second Doctor episodes there. He could only sell her on this by telling her she might as well kill Mugabe while she was in the country, but by all means had to retrieve the tapes.

2.) Severus Snape, growing up with a Muggle father as he did, had off course access to 70s and early 80s tv. You know what this means, don't you? Young Severus was a Blake's 7 fan. Only Lily knew, of course, because he'd never have confessed it to his Slytherin friends; he just used Avon's one liners to great effect without them recognizing the origin. He used to write Avon/Cally fanfic under a pseudonym for fanzines and then broke it off. During his time as a Death Eater, he was severely tempted to go after Chris Boucher for Gauda Prime, but the thought of Voldemort figuring out the reason held him back. Later, at Hogwarts, he came around to regarding Blake as a great finale. At least Avon didn't have to teach kids as a punishment.

3.) Arvin Sloane's secret vice, as opposed to the more obvious ones, are Andrew Llyod Webber musicals, especially The Phantom of the Opera. He has all kinds of recordings, went to see it every time he was in London for an Alliance meeting and when really depressed finds reading Erik/Christine OTP fanfic complete with Raoul bashing cheers him up to no end. He'd never write it, though. On the other hand, he nearly got into a flame war on the subject why older manipulative mentor types with a killing record might not be the ideal partner for young talented ingenues. The other person just couldn't see Erik did it all for Christine's own good and that she'd never become such a stellar soprano without him; and why should the occasional posing as her father be a bad thing?

4.) Darla was really into Wilkie Collins novels back in the 19th century and had a bet running with Angelus as to what the nature of Sir Percy's secret was, though her favourite of his novels wasn't The Woman in White, it was Armadale. In the 20th century, she discovered the film Theatre of Blood and thought it was a marvellous idea, very inspirational. Only instead of killing off critics by staging Shakespearean deaths, she celebrated her ongoing Collins fannishness by killing off critics who insisted that he just wrote cheap potboilers by staging Collins murders. Also prevented murders which really should have been allowed to succeed for everyone's good, like the death of blond Alan in Armadale, oh yes. Wilkie Collins' reputation with literature professors improved; his critics literally died away. Clearly, fandom is not powerless.

5.) Alex Drake was a big Professionals fan as a girl, read Bodie/Doyle slashfic though she didn't write it, and made character and relationship soundmixes. She also catches Martin Shaw on stage when she can. Well, she did when she was living in the present, that is. Since her trip to the past, she found she couldn't stand watching The Professionals on screen anymore, for some reason, and instead distracts herself by watching Dallas, annoying her teammates by predicting plot twists and reconciling them by inventing drinking games.

6.) Toshiko Sato was a big Battlestar Galactica (new) fan, creating some of the best vids in fandom and writing lengthy, thoughtful meta. She was secretly a Kara/Leoben shipper (secretely because she knew how screwed up that was, and so used another handle when talking about that ship), but her vids were either Roslin-centric or ensemble. She was tempted to ask Jack about the Final Five and how it all ended but in the end didn't, and died not knowing.

7.) Abigail Brand is familiar enough with Star Wars to get Hank's references and respond accordingly, but she's really a fan of the Alien franchise. Ripley was and is her idol. She has all editions of all four movies on dvd and Sigourney Weaver's autograph, though she claimed her geeky boyfriend wanted it. In her non-existant spare time, she writes furious posts in online forums as to why there shouldn't be a fifth one.

8.) John Connor actually tries to stay away from sci fi, but one day caught a BSG episode, and, well, it all ended with him arguing in Television Without Pity why Cylons were completely implausible but Boomer was screwed over as a character anyway and should have gotten a redemption arc. He'd never tell his mother but has a feeling Cameron knows.

9.) Martha Jones stays away from medical shows except House; she and Tom regularly mock the medicine during episodes, but they never miss one, and though Hugh Laurie's American accent still occasionally weirds her out - after all, she watched Blackadder as a girl - she has a huge crush on him. Sometimes she checks the internet for Shakespeare fanfic and never knows whether she's dissapointed or relieved that there don't appear any Shakespeare/Dark Lady stories available.

10.) Vince Matsuka is a big Star Trek fan, which isn't a secret, and mods a Kira/Odo shipping community, which is, since he always tells everyone he's just in it for the chance to get naked photos of the female actors. He also gets into regular flame wars with Kira/Dukat shippers and with someone with a goverment computer IP who wants the discussion to get back to whether the Enterprise could beat the Death Star, with the online handle of LemonLymon.

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Bad-ass women, competent people and moments that make me want to punch people

2009-08-09T22:12:20Z

( Bad-Ass Women have some AXM and SCC spoilers and are more general in other fandoms )

( Competent Characters have B5, West Wing, Farscape and Alias spoilers, but none for The Order )

( People get punched for stuff that happens in s3 of BSG, s3 of B5, s2 of AtS, s1 of Star Trek and s1 of Heroes )

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