Links to all fanfiction I've written in various fandoms. That I'm admitting to.

( Alias )


( Angel the Series )


( Babylon 5 )

( Battlestar Galactica )


( Breaking Bad )

( Buffy the Vampire Slayer )

( Citizen Kane )

( David Copperfield )



( Doctor Who )

( Farscape )

( Earth: Final Conflict )

( Heroes )

( Highlander: The Series )

( Historical Fiction )

( Lost )

( MCU )
( Merlin )

( Mythology )


( Once upon a time )

( Order of the Air )

( Penny Dreadful )

( Rome )

( Star Trek: The Original Series )


( Star Trek: Deep Space Nine )


( Star Trek: Discovery )


( Star Trek: The Next Generation )

( Star Wars )

( Sunset Boulevard )

( The Americans )

( The Beatles )

( The Borgias )

( The Godfather )

( The Medici )


( Torchwood )

( X-Men )

( The West Wing )


( Crossovers )

The Unsent Letters Exchange is online! I participated for the first time this year, and received a lovely story in one of my older fandoms, The Borgias: Amor Vincit Omnia, which consists of a series of letters written by Giulia Farnese to Lucrezia near the end of season 1. The Giulia & Lucrezia relationship was one of my favourite elements of the series and I was sad that the show let it fade it to the background after s1, so I treasure fanfiction focusing on it, all the more if it's so clever and affectionately written.

I myself wrote two stories in two different fandoms, and since neither of them involves a single Prussian, I'm going to let you guess.

Meanwhile, here are some early favourites among the other stories:

Good Omens: Tokens of Esteem: exccerpts from Crowley and Aziraphale through the millennia, witch historical tie-ins to die for.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel the Series: Notes I'll never pass: letters from Faith to Buffy from prison, painting a portrait of Faith's ongoing redemption arc as well.

Sherlock Holmes Stories: Nuts and Bolts: Dr. Watson corresponds with his publisher and gains an editor. A real gem.

"If your fic were an album, what would the track list be?"

From muccamukk:

1. The popular, catchy one: Teachers, about Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano, written after I had marathoned The Clone Wars. It's by far my most popular fanfiction, which was such a weird experience after being grateful to get into double digits with kudos at all in fandoms less popular than Star Wars. And with a story that's not about a romantic pairing (either het or slash)! I still can't believe it.

2. The obscure early one no one bought at the time: Facets, which was my second Alias (the tv show, not the comic) story and an Arvin Sloane character portrait, for a given value of "no one" - all four of us who were really into Sloane liked it. :)

3. The "experimental" one, written when you were possibly on some substance: Ten leagues beyond the wild world's end , which was the answer to a challenge; likeadeuce had dared me to connect Hank McCoy (X-Men comics edition) to Elizabeth Swann (Pirates of the Caribbean). This was the result, which plays a bit with two timelines as well.

4. The slushy one: Miracles, which is my unabashedly sentimental take on what a Babylon 5 Christmas Special, Centauri edition, would be like - set in late s3, after A rock cried out, no hiding place left poor Vir badly bruised in both the physical and emotional sense.

5. The brash, loud one, mid album: Five in One, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer tale about Spike from the pov of his (canonical) victims, which was the first time I consciously wrote (angry) meta via fanfiction. I mean, I otherwise avoided the Spike Wars at the time they were waged, and these days the point I was trying to make feels more than redundant, but at the time this was the result of reading one too many "Spike never diid anything wrong" posts and stories.

6. The one born of your depressive introspection: Last one before closing (Angel, Wesley in late s5 which should tell you all you need to know). This one come to be because bimo asked for a story featuring Wesley and Lorne. I suspect she wanted something uplifting. Instead...

7. The bitter one about your ex/former manager/cat: Second Coming, which isn't about any of the above, but it's definitely me being bitter about one of my few DS9 pet peeves, the s7 Sarah Sisko story and how it was (not) dealt with.

8. The one only you like, you insular weirdo: Fear no more (The May-December Remix): "only me" would be going too far, but it's probably the least popular of my stories in a reasonably big fandom (DS9), and still one of my favourites. It takes a bit of backstory for Dax from one of the (deservedly) least popular DS9 eps as its basis, and was my attempt to do something with an older man/young woman pairing that felt real to me.

9. The genre-hopping crossover hit: Tea and Sympathy, which is probably (in terms of kudos) my most successful crossover, imagining a friendship between Guinan from Star Trek: The Next Generatiion and the Doctor (from Doctor Who). Though the genre in this one is pretty straightforward (i.e. a crossover). If, otoh, I put the emphasis on "genre-hopping" instead of crossover, then probably The Lay of Sir William of Daira, which is a Merlin story that both qualifies as an entry into the "crack fic" (it's unabashedly silly), the "fleshing out one shot character", and the minor character pov genres. I was having great fun writing it, and I'm pleased it still gets read.

10. The one where you tried to be "modern": when yours truly had only a very few fanfic stories beneath her belt, starting ouit with missing scenes and daringly advancing to stories with a plot, Death and the Maiden (Hilghlander) was the first time I tried to write something non-linear, it was definitely the darkest thing I ever wrote until that point, and it was also me trying out different tenses in a story written in a language not my own. I suppose this qualifes as trying to be "modern" at the time?

11. The anthemic final track:Anthemic, hm? Well, Falling Towards Apotheosis, aka my attempt to write the ultimate Penny Dreadful story as well as the ending to satisfy my epic needs certainly qualifies in ambition.

This trailer for an upcoming Supergirl tv show (which I hadn't known was upcoming) awoke powerful Lois & Clark nostalgia in me - a DC tv show which doesn't go for grimdark but for joy and dorkiness in its characters? Bring it on! This looks delightful.


Better Call Saul:

Eleven (13432 words) by AddioKira
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Better Call Saul (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Saul Goodman | Jimmy McGill/Kim Wexler
Characters: Kim Wexler, Jimmy McGill, Howard Hamlin, Burt, Ernie, Mrs. Nguyen, Mrs. Landry, Daniel
Additional Tags: Anxiety, friends or more than friends?, Sex Dreams, car theft, Flashbacks
Summary:

Kim waits outside of Judge Murray's courtroom for Jimmy to arrive.

Kim and her relationship with Jimmy before, during, after the show, not in linear fashion. Fantastic Kim and Jimmy characterisation. Dammit, show, why did you manage to make me care so much?

BtVS/AtS:

In Imbolic (1617 words) by duh_i_write
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Drusilla/Spike
Characters: Darla (AtS), Spike (BtVS), Drusilla (BtVS)
Additional Tags: Vampire Family, Canon-Typical Violence, Paganism, Non-Graphic Violence, Background Relationships, Episode Related
Summary:

If China taught Darla nothing, it was that a little sentiment remained in her, like the last mouthful of blood that remained stubbornly in the vein, thick and bitter.

The time after Angel(us) had left and before Darla, Drusilla and Spike parted ways has always intrigued me but rarely gets written about in fanfic, or it did the last time I looked. This story addresses this lack beautifully. Darla, you're still my favourite vampire of them all.

This was a prompt by endeni; a comparison which wouldn't have occured to me. Though when I think about it, I can see some parallels. To start with some technical trivia: DS9's key writers - Ira Behr, Ron Moore, Hans Beimler - had all started out and graduated, so to speak, on TNG, but became far more influential in the spin-off. AtS similarly started out with several Buffy writers - David Greenwalt being the most important one for the first three seasons, after which he left, but also David Fury and later Steven DeKnight -, though it's important to note that the writer who in retrospect, taking all five seasons into account, had been the most crucial one, Tim Minear, had never worked on BTVS. (I'm open for a Greenwalt versus Minear debate, of course, as to who was more responsible for sharping AtS.) Both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Angel: The Series were spin-offs, and their "mother shows", so to speak (TNG as well as TOS here for DS9), were more widely watched and popular at the time, while the spin-offs were generally regarded as darker and more serialized.

Mind you: the cliché that TNG was the fluffy reset button show to DS9's serialized and serious storytelling is as wrong as claiming Angel was darker than Buffy in general. Point in question: AtS' third season ran in tandem to Buffy's sixth. If you watched both, you know what I'm getting at here. AtS at least until Wesley got his throat cut looked downright frivolous by comparison to season 6 of BtVS. And TNG started to ongoing relationships and actual consequences in a Trek show thing; they didn't do it as consequently as DS9 was to do later, but pioneers rarely do. Still, as with every cliché that in its exaggaration is wrong, there's also a part that's true.

DS9, even in its early seasons where there were far more one shot episodes than later, was by the very nature of its set up different and darker. The Enterprise could come and go and was elsewhere the next week. DS9 was a space station next to a planet which had been suffering through a brutal occupation for 60 years, which was a forming influence to one of the regulars - who'd turn out to be in many way the key regular of the show, Kira Nerys -, which meant an ongoing situation even before new problems showed up. Its leading character, Benjamin Sisko, started out as a grieving widower and as a father with his son. (Picard had had tragedies in his life pre show, like the loss of the Stargazer and Jack Crusher's death, but they weren't something as defining the character from the get go as Sisko's losses and his relationship to his son were.) Kira's struggle to reconcile her freedom fighter/terrorist (this pre 9/11 show used both terms) past with her present were as ongoing as her relationships with various Cardassians, her former mortal enemies. Dax was a centuries old symbiotic being. O'Brien's past with Cardassians influences him in the present, even Bashir, the archetypical young freshman type among the regulars, turns out to have had a past and a secret. Among the recurring characeters, there's notably Garak, and Garak's gradually revealed past, the reasons for his exile on DS9 and the ways in which he did and didn't try to end it - you could say DS9, from the outset, had among other themes the way its characters past formed, burdened and even partially broke them in varying degrees, and how this influenced their present.

Angel from the beginning wanted to be something other than BTVS, version II, and succeeded (in season 1 there is still a sense of the writers trying to find their feet, but from the get go, the show does have its own voice), and one of the ways in which it did this was by a similar past/present situation. Of course, it had at its main character a centuries old vampire with an extremely bloody past and not a teenager trying to have a future, but this thematic treatment was true not just for Angel himself. "The past, she doesn't let go, does she?"' asks the short lived Doyle in the first half of the first season, and no, it doesn't. Doyle has something to atone for and does so promptly since he's quickly written out for, forgive the pun, Doylist reasons. But so does his successor, Wesley, who becomes as key to what AtS became as Kira does on DS9. Wesley on BTVS had been primarily used as a comic relief character in season 3 where he was introduced, but what happened to him then - failing his first assignment as a Watcher, falling out with the Council - is what he carries with him into AtS where it has far more long term results. When Wesley first shows up mid s1 he's still prone to comic relief scenes. But before the season is over, he'll have been tortured by Faith and then offered the choice of handing her over and getting his Watcher status back, which he refuses. Which is still but a prologue given that the show overall has in store for Wesley. Even Cordelia, the youngest of the original regulars, has her past as a reigning and very skillfully cruel high school queen as something to make up for. Of the later regular additions, Gunn is forced to stake his sister who has been turned in to a vampire in his introduction, and Fred has spent years in an alternate dimension that caused her to go ever so slightly mad. Again, as with DS9, the very nature of the set up means that dealing with your past (or running away from it, but even then it usually shows up to haunt you) is something ingrained in the regulars.

Another shared trait: while the "mother shows" , TNG and BTVS, do keep their basic set up formula, the spin-offs don't as a shift happens. By which I mean: yes, Buffy & Co. leave high school after season 3, and, say, season 1 and season 6 are very, very different. But Buffy being the Slayer, needing the save the world, struggling to unite this with living in it as a teenager and then young woman, that stays. TNG at the end has put its regulars through some significant changes - Picard and his Borg experience, also Picard's changing relationship to his crew, Worf and fatherhood, plus he's in a new relationship with Deanna Troi as the show ends, the difference between Data in the pilot and Data at the end is highlighted by the three eras nature of the show finale - but the "Enterprise encounters problem, solves problem, moves on" set up did not change. Meanwhile, DS9's last three seasons are about the building and then erupting Dominion War (while there had been wars in the backstory of TOS and TNG characters, present day war for longer than an episode, at the end of which it was successfully stopped, was unheard of and hugely controversial at the time because it touched on a core ST premise, that the Federation Utopia was strong enough to prevent things from escalating this far). As for the original stated goal, Sisko, who in the pilot was charged with bringing Bajor into the Federation, not only ended up outright rejecting this (for prophecy reasons) but ended the dilemma betwen being the Emissary and a Starfleet officer by ending to be the later and becoming a sort of divine entity. (This wasn't Sisko's idea, I hasten to add, there were plot reasons, I know. Still: miles away from what he started out to do.) With AtS, the "redemption through saving people" premise from the start gradually drew in the background; not that the character stopped helping people, but season 4, the most serialized of the AtS seasons where one episode was directly followed by the next, had at its core a father/son tragedy where saving ended up only possible through a massive deception/selling out, while season 5 had altered the original format so radically that the characters started by running the chief antagonist's business and ended up triggering another apocalypse.

Now, none of this means that the spin-offs were Frank Miller style grimdark. They had comedy epsiodes, they had their regulars fond of banter and bickering throughout. (AtS wasn't afraid to put something like The Girl in Question, which made relentless fun of two of its male regulars, Angel and Spike, and included an affectionate dig at one of the mother show's most famous tragic scenes beside, only three episodes before the apocalyptic finale and after one of the regulars had already died.) (Meanwhile, the less said about DS9's THe Emperor's New Cloak in season 7, the better. Love s7, but not that episode.) But there was certainly a general darker streak and pessimisim about happy endings at work than the mother shows, by and large, subscribed to. None of this makes one better than the other. That was just the glory of them: that they could coexist in their fictional verses, offering the viewers not an either/or, but a both/and to watch.


December Talking Meme: The Other Days

The AV Club has posted their list of ten vampire centric tv series episodes; as they put it, they might not be the 10 best episodes, but they’re the 10 episodes that’ll help you understand what the show’s all about—without having to watch the whole thing.

Naturally, I found myself arguing with some of the choices for series I'm familiar with. Not in a "never! not this one!" way, on the contrary, these are good choices; in a "hm, I'm not sure this fits the criteria" way.

For example: Being Human (original UK version, naturally), season 2, episode 7, Damage: On the one hand, I can totally see their argument. ( Which is spoilery. )

My own choice would be episode 3.05 The Longest Day. And no, it's not just because my darling Nina has a central role in it. It examines what it means in this universe to be a vampire not just via Mitchell but via ( spoilery people )


Their choice for Angel is: Are you now or have you ever been? Again, I agree with their arguments : it stands on its own (i.e. is accessible for newbies), tells a self contained story while at the same time showing an important step in the main vampire character's development, and the paranoia demon as 50s metaphor works; indeed, as the poster says, the demon is hardly necessary.

Which is perhaps why it wouldn't be my choice. Angel being a vampire is not touched upon in the episode, either. That he's immortal, yes, but it would work just as well with, say, a Highlander type of immortal - and the episodes should say something about what this particular series makes of vampires, how it uses them. ( Spoilery objections and alternate choices follow nonetheless. )

No argument at all with Closer than Sisters for Penny Dreadful. Because Eva Green acting the hell out of everyone and Vanessa having messed up relationships with Mina and Malcolm so is what this show is about. :) What do you mean, there is no vampire activity at all in this episode?

New or not new?

( Spoilers for one particular type of sex scene in Buffy, Angel, The Good Wife, The Sopranos and now Outlander ensue )

Today's fandomsecrets has, for about the fifth or sixth time that I recall, a secret involving Once Upon A Time character Regina Mills aka The Evil Queen and the fact that back in season 1, she had a non-consensual sexual relationship with a male supporting character (he was the one non-consenting). Now Regina did a lot of other villainous things (including ordering massacres), but I don't think any of them, with the arguable exception of her gaslighting her son, is brought up and argued about more. (I may be wrong about that, since I try to keep away from most OuaT fannish discussions unless I know the people in question.) Cue usual "oh no she didn't!"/"oh yes she did", as well as "if she was a male character, this wouldn't even be a question" (both from the "oh yes she did" side in the sense that a male ruler ordering a female prisoner who is revolted by him into his bedchamber would not be interpreted as anything but a rapist, and from the "oh no she didn't" side (which argues that male fictional rapists get excused all the time). In between, someone points out that Regina did a whole lot of other stuff which doesn't get argued about, and why is rape treated as the ultimate crime? Good question, and not just regarding Regina. It's the crime most often named when people argue why they can't root for the redemption of character X and/or the crime most argued to not even have been committed by X from people who want said character redeemed (or see him, and in rarer cases her, already as good).

Now I think that "more/less evil" isn't a criteria you can put on rape versus, say, murder. They're both heinous actions. But it's still worth noting that as far as fannish discussions are concerned, the killing score of sympathetic villains/morally ambiguous characters seems to bother fans a whole lot less than if their canon shows them committing, or trying to committ, a rape. At a guess, part of this is that fantasy violence (especially if the canon avoids showing much of the resulting dead bodies and gore) is easier to dissociate from real life, while rape is not. And then, there is probably the fear: "I like this character, maybe I even love him/her or fantasize about him/her, I want this character to succeed, to win, to be loved - but this character committed rape. What does this say about me? Therefore, this character hasn't really committed rape. The fantasy surroundings make it not count. Or I take the Doylist appraoch and declare it was the writers (whereas the character's other actions which endeared him/her to me in the first place were of course Watsonian and only the character). Or: the character was himself/herself a victim and so traumatized that she/he can't be held accountable for their actions. Or the ever popular: hero X did something just as bad, so there!"

I decided to do some self inventory and see which of the characters whom I like (in varying degrees ranging "mildly fond" to "love and adore") comitted rape in their canons, and how fannish discussion (if it exists at all) handles that. Let's start with the Romans, because if you are in a slave owning society, and among the owners, and also not in a show that deliberately avoids the issue, chances are that you're guilty as charged, but even so, some characters go above and beyond:

Rome: Mark Antony, definitely. One of his very first scenes shows him having sex with a peasant woman against a tree mid-travelling. I doubt he bothered to ask her first. There is also an episode in which he wants to have sex before getting out of bed, Atia is not in the mood and orders one of her slaves to accommodate him. Which btw means Atia is enabling said rape. Also a rapist: Pullo. Who is in love with his slave (later freedwoman, even later wife) when having sex with her but doesn't bother to ask for her consent, either and is shocked when finding out that upon being freed, she wants to marry a fellow slave (cue death of male slave). I'm fond of Mark Antony, Atia and Pullo. I think the only one whose actions get debated in this context is Pullo, with the argument being "but he thought Eirene was already in love with him!" and/or "different times". Well, yes, different times, and presumably he did think she was in love with him until disabused of the notion. He still didn't ask, and she was his property at the time, to do with as he pleased. The scene as shown also had her enduring, not responding, to his caresses.

Spartacus: nearly every Roman character, sooner or later, but re: the topic in question, let's stick with Batiatus and Lucretia, both of whom use their slaves as sexual toys for themselves and for other people. I don't think I've seen anyone saying Batiatus isn't guilty, but I did some some debate around Lucretia, specifically, her relationship with the gladiator Crixus. (The debate nexter brings up all the other slaves Lucretia and Batiatus use to turn themselves on at all.) The "oh no she didn't" argument usually goes thusly: she developed genuine feelings for him, then she thought he also loved her, and then there was that one time where she didn't have sex with him when he didn't want to because she was concerned for his life (plot reasons). This ignores that Spartacus isn't subtle about the whole ownership point: Crixus and Lucretia first start to have sex because she orders him to, he is her property, and the fact she doesn't insist that one time doesn't negate all the other times. (Not to mention Lucretia's reaction once she finds out Crixus loves someone else.) Lucretia is played by Lucy Lawless, and she was one of my favourite characters on the show. She's also, no question about it, a rapist. (Ditto, of course, her husband, whom I was also fond of, horrible person who he was.)

Moving on to contemporary shows with long lived characters:

Highlander: Methos, obviously. Universal fannish favourite, and for quite a while, he was mine, too. (Then Amanda overtook him.) (I still like Methos a lot, though.) He's also, no question about it, a rapist, over a really long time. And wouldn't you know, while fandom never tried to explain the pillaging part in "rape and pillage" away, or the massacring of "tens of thousands", au contraire, thought that Methos' Bronze Age raider past made him even more interesting than he'd already been, it solved the "rape" part by vilifying the surviving victim of same and/or write stories in which Methos was the one raped (by other characters), which made him so traumatized that he, da capo, al fine. Oh, and of course times were different.

Buffy and Angel: oh, the can of worms to dwarf most others, and I really don't want the discussion to end up in a reiteration of the Spike Wars, but it would be cheating not to bring the Buffyverse up. So: Angel(us): definitely a rapist, and not just in a metaphorical bloodsucking vampire way. (There are the servant girl in the Amends flashback and Holtz' wife, and the implication is certainly that there were others.) (And driving mortal Drusilla into insanity culminated in Angel and Darla having sex in front of her before Angel turned her; what do you want to bet they left it at taking her blood?) Spike: see above re: Spike Wars, avoidance of same. But even leaving out Seeing Red, he mentioned multiple rapes in Never Leave Me, which however often gets dismissed as "he just wanted to get Buffy to stake him on that occasion" (well, yes, but that doesn't mean he made that up; over at AtS, near the end of Damages, a key Spike self realization is his admittance that while he wasn't Dana's tormentor, he did do similar things to a great many other people). Darla: while we don't see her having on screen sex with an unwilling victim, she certainly gets a kick of watching her darling boy doing so. Faith: when about to strangle Xander, she sexually assaulted him as well (and he did say no repeatedly). I do like Angel, Spike and Faith, a lot. Darla is my overall AtS favourite.

Torchwood: my own assumption when watching the Torchwood pilot, in which, among other things, Owen uses a alien pheromene McGuffin to make himself sexually irresistable when going out) was that when he used it on the boyfriend of the girl he'd been hitting on, he made a quick getaway as opposed to having a threesome, so that on this particular occasion, no sex took place. However, the original intention certainly had been to have sex with the girl, who showed no inclination to respond to his overtures before he used the pheromene McGuffin. Which, yes, makes Owen an attempted rapist (and since I doubt this was the first time he used the McGuffin, I'd be ready to drop the "attempted".) Owen was my favourite TW character during the first two seasons.

Being Human: Mitchell and Hal, step forward. Definitely, like Angelus, guilty of rape in the literally sexual as well as the blood taking vampire sense. Neither of them were my favourites in their canons, but I definitely had times of being fond of both, and my Mitchell issues weren't due to him having raped people (also my Mitchell issues were brilliantly resolved by canon, but that's another story).

Once upon a Time: and we're back to Regina. Who isn't my favourite, but I like her and am certainly on board with her current storyline. In addition to being a multiple murderer, guilty of mental and physical torture on various occasions, and the kidnapper to dwarf all other kidnappers (it's hard to beat transferring everyone in Storybrooke from one dimension to another in order to play out her fantasy scenario, but Regina is also a kidnapper on the mundane literal level, see also: Hansel and Gretel, Owen), she is most definitely a rapist.

And now for the future - including the wretched Prophets of DS9 would be cheating, because while they do committ rape I never could stand them, and they're not fannishly popular, either, so they don't qualify.

Babylon 5: I was going back and thro whether or not to include this example, because it's not sexual non-con, and if you start to include fantasy metaphors, you don't have to bother to differentiate with all the vampires between literal rape and blood taking to begin with. But still: what happens in the episode Dust to Dust is a mental assault/violation which gets textually, on screen, called a rape (Bester, who ought to know, explains the effect of Dust that way in the exposition scene early on), so I'll include it. Anyway, the perpetrator, G'Kar, who hits rock bottom here, followed by enlightenment, is most definitely among my favourite B5 characters.


In conclusion: I seem to be fond of a lot of fictional rapists. (Or fictional versions of historical characters, in the Roman cases.) The fact they raped people isn't why I like them, obviously, but neither did it stop me from liking them (or prevent me from ever developing sympathy, in the cases where the rapes happen early on). Whereas I don't think there is a rapist among the few fictional characters I have a visceral loathing for, come to think of it, which presumably goes to show rape isn't one of my triggers, at least not in the sense of reacting with "I no longer like this character" or "I have to explain this away in order to continue liking this character". I think my own inner self justification for this, beyond "but they're interesting", is to keep their victims in mind (and in both Methos' and Spike's cases, write fanfiction from their pov). (The other day I came across yet another variation of "but how rude and horrid are the Charmings and the rest of Storybrooke for not wanting to have dinner with Regina mid season 2" . Err. Just about anyone from the Enchanted Forest, with the exception of Rumplestilskin who did his share to form her and besides is guilty of centuries more crimes, is justified in not wanting to socialize with Regina for the rest of their lives. ) (Though since Regina has interesting interactions with other characters, I'm glad some are around her anyway.) And not to prettify anything they've done. Especially when/if I want them to redeem themselves.

Darth Real Life is battling me, which is why I'm still behind with the replies etc, but have two links:

Angel:

Why We Fight: An Essay on Truth and Purpose: meta on the season 5 episode Why We Fight in the broader context of the show. Why We Fight is unpopular in the fandom when last I looked, but I always liked it - it does some genuinenly original things with its WWII setting, for starters, and it contains one of my favourite scenes between Angel and Spike. (Spike, in conclusion to Lawson's fate and the fact Angel just made him swim the rest of the way to the coast: "You really are a dick." Angel, with a gesture that makes it clear Spike will have to swim, too: "Yes, I really am.") This is a very good post that reminds me of ye olde days when there was good AtS meta to be had in addition to BTVS meta.


Breaking Bad and The Other Sixties Band (sort of):

Behold Hank, Jesse and Keith Richards in the same room, here. Okay, the actors and He Who Will Survive The Apocalypse, but come on, this is begging for crack fic. What scenario would bring Jesse Pinkman, Hank Schroeder and Keef together?

Day 30 - Saddest character death.


And we conclude with a horrible dilemma of a question, given that the media I consume offers really a lot of death scenes, now that I think of it. However, let me specify in order to narrow the criteria: "saddest death" is absolutely not the same as "most shocking" or "most surprising". And of course, one viewer's sobfest is another viewers "hooray!" or "why hasn't X croaked it already?" Not to mention that there are some deaths which may be sad but also feel right, even necessary, i.e. no matter my fondness for the characters, I would have felt like the narrative was cheating or not giving them their due if they hadn't died. ( Spoilery examples for season 3 of AtS, season 4 of BSG and season 5 of SFU follow which are therefore not my choice. )

My other criteria for "saddest death": I have to be emotionally very invested in the characters involved. For example, among the many, many deaths that happen in Lost, the one I'd give the "saddest death scene in Lost" award ( happens in season 3 and is spoilery for same, then compared to two from season 4 ) It's not in any way an objective judgment or one dependent on writing, acting or directing of the scenes in question, but then "saddest" asks for an emotional judgment.

After trying my best to narrow it down, I came up with four scenes in close competition, which you'll find under the cut.

( Spoilers for season 2 of Torchwood, season 4 of Battlestar Galactica, season 1 of Deadwood and season 1 and 5 of The Wire ensue )



( The rest of the days )