Some - only some - of the delightful stories up at trickortreatex:

Babylon 5:

Haunted in Small Ways: in which Vir and Lennier see people who aren't there. Or do they?

Moments of Transition, Moments of Revelation: The AU I've been hankering for for eons, in which Sheridan does not return from Z'ha'dum, so Delenn and Ivanova have to carry on alone. Enter Neroon!

Ghosts

And things that go bump in the night: Trying to plan for Halloween in a house full of ghosts should be much, much easier than this. Alison pov, with the entire ensemble getting great moments.

Sandman (TV)

A place for one (or two): lovely Lucienne and Dream friendship story.

A good night's sleep: which modern Johanna Constantine can finally get.


Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

So this is Halloween Five times Christine Chapel planned Halloween, and one time she didn’t have to. As charming and warm-hearted as the show at its best.

West Wing:

Dead Man's Creek: in which Bartlet makes the gang go to a Republican-voting town on Halloween, because of course he does.

Keith Richards' memoirs aren't the only ones published during the last ten days. So, it seems, were Mark Twain's, the first volume of three anyway, after a hundred year wait as decreed by the author. I have just one question: who will read the audio version?

Speaking of recitations, last year I made a post of favourite Edgar Allan Poe readings for Halloween. This year, I'll answer a meme.

Five of your favorite characters are going to a Halloween party. What costumes are they wearing?


1.) Arvin Sloane (Alias). Well, there was a childhood incident; his parents wouldn't let him go trick or treating as Harry Lime from The Third Man, saying that this was not a proper Halloween disguise and he needed to pick an exciting monster instead, thereby utterly missing the point and causing young Arvin to sulk and rewrite the ending of The Third Man yet again in his head so that Harry gets away with it and convinces Holly to get away with him as well, because clearly friendship should trump moral scruples and what kind of an ending was getting shot by your best friend underground anyway? As an adult, he wore of course a number of disguises in the line of duty but left the dressing up for Halloween to Emily, who loved handing out candy to the visiting children. There was one exception, the time after Laura/Irina's supposed death when Jack was held in custody and Sydney was staying with the Sloanes. Emily wanted to take her trick or treating but broke her leg the week before. So Arvin swallowed his dignity, donned a Long John Silver disguise and took Sydney trick-or-treating. Emily didn't ask him why he picked a pirate. Sydney did, and he smiled and told her she'd make an excellent Jim Hawkins.

2.) Abigail Brand (Astonishing X-Men and Marvelverse at large). Hank said it would build team spirit, which made her wonder whether he wasn't aware she'd read the files, and thus knew how Halloween celebrations with the X-Men usually turned out. But after the utter mess Gyrich had made, S.W.O.R.D. definitely needed... something. Maybe something silly. So she agreed to a Halloween party. She didn't intend to wear a costume at all, prepared for the jokes on how her usual appearance was enough to put fear into anyone's heart who worked for her, not least because she regarded that as a tribute to her efficiency, but then Hisako, who seemed to regard the fact they had each other's mobile phone numbers as an excuse to text her constantly, informed her that "Professor McCoy had looked very depressed" the last time he visited. So, purely in the interest of building team spirit, and certainly not because she wanted to cheer her boyfriend up, Abigail Brand exchanged a few more SMS with Hisako. When Hank arrived to pick her up for the Halloween party, she told him he was not under any circumstances to take pictures. And then she stepped outside of her quarters, in the costume based on the photos Hisako had sent. She had asked about the exact length of the scarf and whether or not the hat was optional, but it was that or the costume with all the question marks and the rainbow colours, so really, there was no choice. In any case, the grin on Hank's face was worth it, not least because the prospect of those teeth on her skin always turned her on.
Maybe she would wear the "Doctor" costume more than once, after all.

3.) C.J. Cregg (The West Wing) denies the incident with the Morticia Addams costume ever happened. Even if Toby has photos. And anyway, everyone experiments in college, don't they?

4.) Andrew Wells (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) will never forget that special, special Sunnydale Halloween where he wore a Jedi costume, newly aquired from a British guy named Rayne who blew in and out of town pretty quickly. The Force was with Andrew that night, he'll have you know. Even the fact that his older brother Tucker had picked the Darth Vader costume and nearly strangled him that night couldn't spoil it. Andrew will never wear another costume on Halloween again, just in case the incident ever repeats itself.

5.) Amanda (Highlander: The Series) sometimes sees Halloween as a very lucrative opportunity (almost too easy for some b&e) and sometimes gets hit by melancholy and unwanted flashbacks to her time with Kenneth when watching the children. Either way, dressing up and partying is a good idea for a distraction, no matter whom she wants to distract. Her favourite Halloween came in the year after The Rocky Horror Show took the stage. Fitz, who had a good voice and fancied himself a rock star at times, got a part in it and promptly got into trouble with one of the leads, from which Duncan had to bail him out. To cut a long story short, it ended with Amanda wanting to raid the costumes because one of them had a real jewel on its shapely leather, but she didn't want to tell Duncan that, so instead she suggested that he, Fitz and herself should just wear them for one Halloween night, for the hell of it. (Three guesses whom she cast as Rocky. She herself wasn't Janet, of course. She was Frank'n Furter. It was a fun, fun night, and she did end up with the jewel.

Name 5 episodes or movies that would be most appropriate to watch on Halloween.

My pleasure. As a German who knows Halloween only from tv and the movies, you know, though in the last decade or so it started to come into fashion here as well.

1) Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Hush. BTVS did a couple of genuine Halloween-set episodes, but sadly, none of the three are above avarage as far as I'm concerned. On the other hand, Hush presents the scariest one-episode-only monsters the show ever came up with, and manages to work both as a standalone and an arc episode, introducing a new character (Tara) and pushing several relationships forward while being completely accessible to new viewers who never watched a single Buffy episode. When I try to get people hooked on BTVS, I usually start with Hush rather than with an episode of the earlier seasons, though then I go back. It's the first of Joss' "experimental" episodes, and while my favourite of those is Restless, Hush will never stop being awesome. And scary. And funny. And - everything.

2) E.T.: this choice of movie is because that's where I encountered Halloween for the first time, during the sequence where Elliot & Co. take E.T. out and nobody minds because everyone is in disguise. As a child, I thought it had to be carneval, until I figured out this was different holiday. Anyway: E.T. is Spielberg at his unabashed purest and best. It's sentimental as hell, absolutely, but you know, it works. Elliot meeting E.T. for the first time. Michael and Gertie doing the same. The children riding their bicycles across the moon. "Phone home." And E.T. walking through an American city during Halloween, spotting someone disguised as Yoda and immediately running after a presumed fellow alien is funny and touching and a clever little tip on the hat to Spielberg's buddy George L., who, this being the early 80s, was having the time of his life.

3) Ed Wood: I raved about this one a bit in my Orson Welles post, and it deserves its own post of fannish adoration, which this is not. My favourite movie by Tim Burton, my favourite movie starring Johnny Depp, one of my favourite Hollywood-on-Hollywood movies, a love declaration to the losers in the film business. And Martin Landau is absolutely amazing as the aged and soon to die horror legend Bela Lugosi, whose friendship with Ed Wood is the heart of the film. (His daughter Juliet, our very own Drusilla, isn't half bad in her pre-Dru debut as one of Ed's actresses, either.) Aside from the fact the films which made Ed Wood (in)famous were, with the exception of "Glen or Glenda", horror movies, this is Halloween material because a key sequence - Ed spending Halloween with Bela Lugosi - takes place then. Sadly, I didn't find this particular scene on Youtube, but I did find their first encounter, which I present to you instead:



4) Doctor Who: Blink: I still would have given the Hugo to Human Nature, but if you want to watch a DW episode on Halloween, this one is perfect. It's a standalone from the point of view of a character only in this episode, so newbies who never watched the show before can tune in without a problem, it's arguably scriptwriter Moffat at his scariest - and he has some competition for himself - while also providing a happy ending, offers endearing characters, ingenious use of the show's time-travel premise, coins a phrase ("timey-wimey") and ensures you'll never look at a statue the same way again.

5) Farscape: Kansas:: it was this or Babylon 5's Day of the Dead, both of which do rely on the viewers being aware of the characters' past, so as opposed to the earlier tv examples, this isn't one for newbies. Kansas takes place in the middle of Farscape's fourth season, and troubled as this season was, I loved individual episodes such as this one and the next one, Terra Firma. In Kansas, our leading character John Crichton has finally made it back to Earth, with some alien friends - but not yet in the right time. It's Halloween which means like E.T., his alien friends don't stand out and everyone has a chance to explore, while Crichton inevitably comes across his parents and his younger self. Kansas has some predictably hilarious culture clash moments but also deeply touching ones, such as Crichton seeing his (dead in the present) mother, or his boyish self. My two favourite scenes are probably Rygel going on a sugar high with all the Halloween sweets (see icon) and Chiana seducing young John who mishears her name as "Karen Shaw" (a moment of inspired retcon, because present day John did say two seasons earlier he lost his virginity to a girl named Karen Shaw). In an uneven season, it's an episode full of fun and grace and offering a rare angst relief for the characters. And it's Farscape. Which mean's it's wild. The perfect Halloween conclusion.