Still the result from my London expedition at the beginning of August. I didn't watch any of these plays, I just bought them in bookstores.

Pitcairn: play by Richard Bean. Flippantly described, it's an Age of Sails Lord of the Flies, featuring the most prominent mutineers of them all. More precisely: after the famous mutiny on the Bounty, some of the mutineers risked staying in Tahiti, and nine went on with Fletcher Christian, and 20 Polynesians, 14 of whom were women (and only three of these women were on board voluntarily, Christian and the other mutineers had simply kidnapped the rest) and ended up on Pitcairn. If you're read Caroline Alexander's The Bounty, for my money by far the best book both on the mutiny and its aftermath, you knew the Pitcairn story ended rather bloodily, with the question as to who killed whom and why depending on the various changing accounts the one European survivor, John Adams, gave when Pitcairn was finally found by the navy decades later. (For years after that, it never seems to have occurrred to any of the curious and Bounty-romantisizing people to interview any of the surviving Polynesian women, until one, nicknamed Jenny, who took the first chance she got to finally leave Pitcairn told her story, and it was anything but complimentary to the European mutineers.)

Now I've watched the three most famous movies on the Bounty mutiny (Laughton/Gable, Howard/Brando and Hopkins/Gibson as Bligh and Christian respectively, with the last movie the only one reflecting newer research and taking a pro Bligh approach, with the earlier two being all evil Captain versus heroic mutineers), and I've read some novels, but Bean's play is the first depiction focusing exclusively on the mutineers and Polynesians who ended up on Pitcairn, and my Lord of the Flies comparison is no hyperbole. Bean is also the first author who makes the Polynesians, both female and male, into characters, instead of presenting him as pretty, available and mostly silent and catalysts for the mutiny. He's also trying very hard to avoid the "noble savage" stereotype, not least by presenting them in their own context, where the Polynesians have their own social hierarchy (which the Europeans utterly ignore) and prejudices. Even though, they come across far more sympathetically than the Europeans, whose first idea on how to live their new Utopia is to enslave the Polynesian males, and whose falling out over the women never bothers with their choices. Bean's solution to what to make of the various contradictory accounts (Adams at various points said Christian had committed suicide, that he was killed by another Polynesian, or by another mutineer, that he became quickly hated or that he remained beloved till the end (the last story being told after Adams had gotten back into contact with people in England and had found out that the story of the mutiny was now firmly pro Christian, anti Bligh in the public consciousness; "Jenny" said all the Polynesians turned against the mutineers and that the women tried to escape Pitcairn by attempting to build a boat, which failed, something that's confirmed in the surviving writings of mutineer Edward Young who also mentions the women were punished for this) is to come up with a twist that I thought was unique to him until rereading Caroline Alexander's book, which mentioned that the very first dramatization of the discovery of Pitcairn had the very same twist. ( The twist in question, and more. )

The question of what exactly happened to cause the mutiny is never addressed, as it's not the point of the play. It's a story where everyone gets a fresh new start but due to the baggage they bring with them - the Europeans ideas of racial superiority, and the confusion of the fact that the women are sexually liberated with the idea that they don't care whom they have sex with, the Polynesians their own hierarchy which divides them from each other and stops them banding together until it is too late - it ends in a far worse state than the one they ran away from. One third into the play, when the Bounty is burned, both mutineers and Polynesians realise they are now in prison, locked together with each other when half of them wants to kill the other half, worse than a prison sentence in England would have been. As Utopia turns Dystopia stories go, this one is told viciously and efficiently. In a can't-turn-my-eyes-away manner; if it's ever staged where I can see it, I will.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: first of all, let me address something that annoys me in plenty of both negative and positive reviews of this play: said reviews treating JKR as the author. She's not. I repeat: she did not write this play, and never claimed she had. The credit on the cover is pretty clear: a two part stage play written by Jack Thorne based on an original new story by Thorne, J.K. Rowling and John Tiffany. Which makes Thorne the author, with input by JKR as well as John Tiffany as far as the storyline is concerned.

Maybe a comparison: The Empire Strikes Back. Script by Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett. George Lucas did not write it. Of course he had imput in the storyline, and he approved of the final result. But I can't count the number of criticisms of Lucas as a scriptwriter which sooner or later bring up the fact the ESB script was written by two solid veterans as an explanation why that movie is the favourite of most fans, who point to Leigh Brackett's Bogart-Bacall-Hawks past as having influenced the Han and Leia scenes, etc. By the same measure, it might be more useful to compare HP and the Cursed Child to earlier work by Thorne for the tv series Skins or his plays than it is to compare it to JKR's novels.

All of this being said, here we go: I enjoyed reading this two part play tremendously. I haven't read much Next Generation fanfiction to compare it too, but it should surprise me if previous takes on Scorpius Malfoy resemble this one, who is an adorable geek and very much his own character, not Draco or Sirius revisited. Now the last two HP novels had made me have some pity and sympathy for Draco and the Malfoys in general (with the caveat that joining a genocidal bastard voluntarily not being a good idea should have been kind of obvious), but this play finally made me like Draco, without negating or prettifying his previous history in the slightest. The adult interaction between him, Harry, Hermione and Ginny feels both plausible and satisfying to me. Harry with the best of intentions struggling with fatherhood and this textually explicitly being tied back to his being raised by the Dursleys on the one hand and having Albus Dumbledore for a mentor on the other also makes character sense to me. And while "son of famous man struggles with expectations, developes massive issues" is anything but new as a concept, I thought Albus Potter was a good variation of the theme. I also liked the Albus-Ginny parallels; they have a scene together that brings up Ginny's Tom Riddle experience just rightly.

Being a genre fan, I'm of course familiar with the central plot device - ( which is spoilery ) - with Star Trek, Farscape and Buffy all having done memorable episodes using it. Cursed Child offers ( Spoilers. ) It also fits with the fact that all ensemble characters, past and present, dead and alive, contribute to saving the world: hooray for team work!

Complaints: not really. I mean, Spoilery New Character is more of a plot device than a character, but otoh New Character triggers both the aforementioned Ginny and Albus scene, and has one with Harry which is totally my kind of messed up: ( in spoilery ways. ) I'm really looking forward to seeing this scene acted out on stage in a year or so when tickets become reasonably available.

You know, I'm so with the people who hope that in another decade or so, the books will get the tv series treatment, because the more I think about them, the more dissatisfying the film versions get. There's just sooo much missing, from book!Harry's snarky attitude to some of the most interesting subplots. Now I'm not saying the books were perfect, far from it, or that adaptions into another medium shouldn't/couldn't make different choices. But in the HP case, when they did dare to make changes, the changes in question tended to make things worse, not better.

One of the chief examples: the Slytherins in the battle of Hogwarts. The fact that none of the Slytherin students and of the teachers only one (Horace Slughorn) battles Voldemort & Co. along the other houses in the final battle has come in for (justified, imo, given the "we must unite" theme earlier) criticism. (Sidenote: doesn't mean I think the majority of Slytherin students should have stayed, that would have been unrealistic given what was previously established, but a couple of them? Absolutely.) The movie manages to make a questionable creator choice worse and manages to rob it of some of the good aspects. Compare and contrast:

Film: Voldemort telepathically tells everyone at Hogwarts either to surrender Harry to him, or be killed. Pansy Parkinson suggests to grab Harry and hand him over. Students of the other houses rise to place themselves protectively around Harry. McGonnegall gives the order to escort all the Slytherin students into the dungeons. Cheers from everyone else.

Book: Post-Snape's flight, McGonnegall tells a flustered Slughorn who asks what the hell just happened that Slytherin House will have to make a choice as to where their loyalty lies and that they should either stay and fight, or leave. Slughorn is somewhat panicked at the thought of going up against Voldemort. Voldemort does his telepathic "Surrender Potter, or else" demand thing. Pansy suggets handing over Harry. Non-Slytherin students surround Harry. McGonnegall orders Pansy and the rest of the Slytherin students to be escorted off the Hogwarts premises into Hogsmeade (cheers from the other houses); later adds the younger students of the other houses and anyone of the older ones who doesn't want to join the fight to the general evacuation. All the Slytherin students, the younger kids and some, but not many of the older ones leave. Slughorn supervises their evacuation from Hogwarts, then returns along some of the Hogsmeade inhabitants in time for Voldemort's second wave of attack on the castle. (Slughorn is still, as Harry notices when he passes him, in his emerald pyjamas.) There's no suggestion Slughorn shirks fighting; later Harry spots him battling Voldemort himself at McGonnegall's side. Now, in addition to the fact that escorting ALL the younger students off the premises of an impending brutal battlefield is a really good (and responsible) idea and that they should have kept it in the film version, at least in dialogue reference if they didn't want to show any evacuation scenes, here McGonnegall's "fight with us or leave" may be unkind but in a situation of impending batlte makes strategic sense (she can't afford anyone staying who is more willing to sabotage than fight), and it comes as a choice, not a preempting condemnation. Also, Aberforth Dumbledore, through whose pub all the students were evacuated, furiously asks Harry why they didn't keep some of the kids of the Death Eaters hostage. Harry replies that a) Voldemort wouldn't care (example to go by: Draco Malfoy, the reader might add), and b) not cool. Which I thought was a great case in point for the type of pragmatic compassion Harry has reached at this point of the saga. It also shows that Aberforth, while a good postumous counterpoint to Albus and delivering criticism of same that the reader is supposed to take seriusly, is no saint, either.

Speaking of Dumbledore criticism, the movies make the baffling choice of keeping some hints of his backstory but never bothering to deliver an explanation, which I think is the worst of both worlds. Either cut out the backstory altogether, or keep the entire Dumbledore backstory reveal. But just hinting there was something up with his family and then later via Aberforth that it has to do with their sister, without explaining exactly what, keeping the photos of the youthful Grindlewald and Dumbledore without any of their connection ever mentioned verbally, and cutting anything in the King's Cross conversation between Harry and Dumbledore that relates to Dumbledore's past and his deep regrets, his self loathing, only leaving Dumbledore in his usual wise mentor delivers exposition role...? Bah.


On another note: something that movies and (a lot of) fanfiction do have in common is that they remove not only Harry's tendency towards sarcasm but also Snape's pettiness. Seriously: Snape is still one of the most interesting and compelling characters of the saga to me, but he's the uncontested winner for "most petty" by far. Fanon usually goes with "but he had to maintain his cover!", but I very much doubt Voldemort's belief in Snape's loyalties depended on such gems as Snape making Harry copy detention notes on his father and Sirius in the year after Sirius' death. Fanon!Snape never does that kind of stuff. (Movie Snape didn't, either.)

Speaking of fanon, I've come across several stories in which Slughorn treats young Severus unfairly and ignores him while favouring Lily. Where the hell does this come from? What book canon gives us: Slughorn was into students who were either talented or socially well connected. Lily was one of his favourites (btw, The Half Blood Prince marks a switch from people telling Harry about his father to people, in this case Slughorn, telling him about his mother), but there is absolutely no indication he didn't also spot and encourage young Severus the potion genius. On the contrary. In the present, Slughorn immediately spots how gifted Hermione is and encourages her, never mind she's a Gryffindor. (As opposed to, you know, Severus Snape, whose behaviour towards Hermione varied between ignoring her, telling her she was an insufferable know-it-all in front of the class and insulting her physical appearance - "I can see no difference".) And then we get this scene, where Slughorn raves about Harry's gift with potions at one of his gatherings (due to, unknown to Slughorn, Harry having "The Half Blood Prince"'s text book):

"Instinctive, you know - like his mother! I've only ever taught a few with this kind of ability, I can tell you that, Sybill - why, even Severus -'
And to Harry's horror, Slughorn threw out an arm and seemed to scop Snape out of thin air towards them.
'Stop skulking and come and join us, Severus!' hiccoughed Slughorn happily. 'I was just talking about Harry's exeptional potion-making! Some credit must go to you, of course, you taught him for five years!"
Trapped, with Slughorn's arm around his shoulders, Snape looked down his hooked nose at Harry, his black eyes narrowed. 'Funny, I never had the impression that I managed to teach Potter anything at all.'

Leaving aside this is JKR at her comic best (and also foreshadowing, given the identity of "the Prince"), this certainly doesn't give me the impression Slughorn used to overlook Snape in Snape's student days, on the contrary. I bet he told him "stop skulking and come and join us, Severus" a lot. :) Consequently, I suspect the idea of Slughorn ignoring young Snape hails more from the subconscious or conscious fanon that child and teenage Severus didn't get any encouragement from not-evil people and therefore had no choice but to fall in with the Death Eaters.

Lastly, Horace Slughorn: non-evil Slytherin who never was a killer and doesn't die is generally an interesting creation. He's not without bias; his initial reactions to Muggleborns doing well is still a surprise, even if the second is to take to the gifted person in question, which makes him an hitherto unprecedented in between as far as the HP saga's fantasy racism depiction is concerned. (I.e. pre-Slughorn, you had on the one hand racists using the term "Mudblood", marked for future Voldemort service, and otoh non-racists utterly believing in equality). And of course, you can argue whether networking and collecting gifted and well connected students is what a teacher should do. But he deeply abhors murder (when we finally get the real memory of him and Tom Riddle, that's what shocks him out of Riddle's conversation - "Seven! Isn't it bad enough to think of killing one person? And in any case... bad enough to divide the soul... but to rip it into seven pieces..."), and while he loves his creature comforts and has an instinct to evade rather than confront past mistakes, he comes through and puts his life on the line when everything is at stake. And as opposed to McGonnegall and Snape, both of whom we see favour their own houses when teaching (while Snape does it more blatantly, McGonnegall is anything but free of this behaviour), Slughorn really seems to reward students according to their efforts; we see him repeatedly giving points to Gryffindor for academic brilliance whereas I'm struggling to recall an instant of McGonnegall giving points to Slytherin for the same reason.

With spoilers for all the books, so skip if you don't want to know. Having had to write Dumbledore meta during my December posting meme made me reread some Harry Potter - not books, I don't have the time, just a few select passages - and reminded me how much I like the (book) series. I don't actively dislike the movies, but I think they get some important things wrong - Ron comes immediately to mind - and by necessity of the format sometimes cut out some of the most interesting parts, definitely the backstory related ones. Prisoner of Azkaban missing the entire Marauder backstory, the "Snape's worst memory" flashback in Order of the Phoenix not including Lily (and thus missing why this particular encounter with the Marauders is Snape's worst memory), the entire Kreacher-related Regulus story, which makes for one of the most moving chapters in Deathly Hallows. (BTW, I love Snape as a character, but Regulus wins in the Death Eater redemption stakes. Turning against your dastardly Evil Overlord because he abused and tortured your house elf is far less likely than turning against him because he's threatening the love of your life. Mind you, Regulus then coming up with a suicidal plan to foil Voldemort all on his own was both brave and stupid, but no more so than some of the stuff other characters pull off.) Some of Dumbledore's backstory survives, but not all, and Harry has barely time to react to it where the book has him work through the realisation that Dumbledore was flawed and not always wise and right, which is a preparation for the final revelation re: Dumbledore's plans. It's something that works better in book format by its very nature - access to thought process of the pov character - but since they split up the final novel into two movies anyway, they could have tried to work more of this in.

An ongoing theme of the novels as Harry & Co. get older is what tv tropes calls "adults are people", by which I don't just mean "flawed", but complex, with histories, mistakes, and in the case of the villains, also virtues. Snape can be a horrible teacher who never emotionally gets over teenagerdom and an incredibly brave man who lived a lonely, tragic life. Remus Lupin, by contrast, is a wonderful teacher and lovely, nice man, but he also never mastered what Neville Longbottom did already in his first year at Hogwarts, standing up to your friends if your conscience disagrees with them. Sirius, like Snape, never grows out of emotional teenagerdom (unlike Snape, he has the Azkaban excuse), and is an incredibly loyal, loving friend. Narcissa Malfoy is a racist and quite likely murderous racist who at no point shows regrets for any of the victims and a dedicated mother risking it all for her son, in the full knowledge of what Voldemort would do to her if he found out and survived. Dumbledore, see December entry.

And here's one (of several) reason why I really like our chief protagonist: Harry may react with confusion and anger to some of this, but also with kindness and compassion. When he returns to Hogwarts in DH and thinks of Tom Riddle, Snape and himself as "the three lost boys" who found their home there, he doesn't yet know the truth about Snape, and acknowledges the commonality nonetheless; when Snape dies, Harry still doesn't know (though he's about to find out) but is there. And in his last conversation with Dumbledore, when he does know both the good and the bad the man has done, there is this short exchange which I love in how it shows Harry's changed perspective and position - when he tells Dumbledore something he, Harry, knows via his mental link with Voldemort, i.e. that Gellert Grindlewald died defying Voldemort when Voldemort was on the lookout for the Elder Wand. (The movies got that one wrong, too.) The is no reason to tell Dumbledore this but one: Dumbledore has just talked about his own guilt re: falling for Grindlewald in the first place. It's Harry providing comfort without declaring it as such. Whereas at the start of the book, when he reads the first of Dumbledore's obituaries, he finds it impossible to imagine Dumbledore as a youngster his own age, with a family and friendships, he's now responding to someone he can see that way: to the old man with a lifetime of regrets and the young man who fell in love both.

...because I'm in a bit of a hurry:

Generally I think authors should avoid arguing with readers on the internet, but in the case of JKR versus a homophobe, I approve.

And Marvelverse fanfiction:

An untitled vignette about Peggy and Howard and moral ambiguity in the early SHIELD days. Excellent!

Briefly, I flirted with linking one of my meta-as-fanfiction stories here, as they usually happen when I have issues and/or am on a collision course with a sizable majority in fandom re: characters and issues. (Cases in point: Five in One in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Discordance in Merlin fandom.) However, I'd be blatantly lying if I said I write these kind of stories for myself. They're very much an attempt to reach out and communicate what's bothering/captivating me in an entertaining way. However, every now and then I indulge myself with silliness and crack fic that usually unites more than one of my interests, and that definitely was the case with the story below, which happened due to me having some crossover ideas that made me smile. It's so self indulgent that I never uploaded it to a fanfiction archive and just posted it on lj and dw.

...welll, okay, one bit of it is perhaps meant seriously. Because I've seen on lj various attempt to sort the Beatles into Hogwarts. Some people invariably sort John Lennon into Slytherin and Paul McCartney into Gryffindor. Those people are wrong.

Title: Magical Mystery Tours

Disclaimer: Harry Potter owned by J.K. Rowling, Buffy the Vampire Slayer owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemies, X-Men owned by Marvel. Beatles owned by themselves, and certainly unrelated to their fictional counterparts here.

Summary: Three fictional universes the Beatles didn't end up in, or: how they fared at Hogwarts, who the Vampire Slayer of the 60s and 70s and her Watcher were and why Timothy Leary was so sure the Beatles were mutants.

Rating: PG 13 solely for swearing, discussed drug use and discussed adultery.

Characters: Albus Dumbledore, Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Maureen Starkey, Chris O'Dell and Brian Epstein.

Spoilers: Some for the Harry Potter books (and Dumbledore's backstory), basic ones for X-Men: First Class (the movie, not the comic), and only premise ones for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Author's note: Started out as a meme reply and got away from me. Considering the sheer silliness and gen-ness of the premise, I think even utter objecters to RPF are safe to read it.



( The rest of the days )

State of the selenak: was terribly busy yesterday, which included visiting several breathtakingly lovely towns in the Elsass/Alsace (German and French name for the province respectively, I don't know the English name, I'm afraid.) I made some great photos which I'll try to upload as soon as I have wi fi again. Did check on my mail in between, which brought me several nice comments on my Rarewomen story about Harmony, which made me happy, but so far the only people who liked my Remix story, which is one of those ambitous "I poured my heart and soul into this!" things, seem to have been my remixee and the beta reader. Never mind reviews, there aren't even other kudos. (Cue inner "but WHY?" wail of despair every time I check my mail.) This makes me profoundly depressed and in danger of getting whiny, so I shall stop and instead present some recs of other stories:

Breaking Bad:

Five Gifts for Holly White (and one she gave)

A great future fic giving us a plausible Holly growing up, which offers great glimpses at Skyler, Marie, Flynn and Gretchen as well.

Narcissa Through the Looking Glass

a Harry Potter/Game of Thrones crossover which not only pulls that premise of but does so in the backstory era for both sagas. Narcissa Not-yet-Malfoy but Black accidentally ends up with the Tully sisters, Catelyn and Lysa, and the result is eminently entertaining to read.

Because any combination of Catherine Tate and David Tennant is bound to make me smile with happiness which I want to share, and this includes her having to guess his character's name in the Harry Potter films:





The L.A. Times informes me that the last but one Elementary episode was indeed, as I had guessed, inspired by Philipp Seymour Hoffmann; the article is about than that, though, about how Elementary handles the drug recovery theme in general,


But long-term, consistent recovery is rare (...) because TV prefers the high drama of the addicted life. Sobriety, though personally challenging, is a cinematic bore. It's tough to win an Emmy by embodying serenity for an entire season. Even when dealing with recovery, writers go more for the big pivotal moments: The addict passing on sobriety's Splendid Life Lesson, the recovering alcoholic staring down a brimming shot glass.

"Elementary" has its share of pivotal moments, but they are invariably underplayed, woven into crime-solving story lines that allow the larger narrative to emerge with surprising power. It may be the best portrait of recovery on television.

(You can read the rest here.)

Nominations for the Rarewomen ficathon are discussed here; I wonder whether one can still nominate Judi Dench's M, or whether the fact her letter, if not herself shows upon the juggernaut of Bond/Q stories means she doesn't qualify as a rare woman anymore?

On to some fanfic recs:

Harry Potter:

One of the most fascinating aspects of the last HP novel was to me the backstory about Dumbledore (and relations); one of the more overlooked characters in the fannish HPverse, as far as an occasional visitor like myself can tell, is Horace Slughorn. (Despite the fact that, Phineas Nigellus the portrait aside, he's the one adult Slytherin character who as far as we know never at any point in his life went Dark Side and who consistently fights against Voldemort.) (I suppose it's the lack of sexiness?) So I was very glad to come across this little gem featuring Slughorn, Albus and Aberforth Dumbledore during events of Half-Blood Prince; you need to know the Deathly Hallows revealed backstory about the Dumbledores to understand what's going on between the brothers, but we're in Slughorn's pov, and it's a lovely character piece about three people - and a Christmas story to boot!

The Messenger


The Hobbit:

If you haven't read the novel and only know the movies, this one contains spoilers for the likely events of the third movie based on the book. It's a terrific Thorin character portrait.

but oh, my heart was flawed (7042 words) by lacking
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit (Jackson movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Characters: Thorin Oakenshield, Bilbo Baggins, Durin Family - Character, Dís, Frerin, Fíli, Kíli, Balin, Dwalin, Thranduil, Bard of Laketown, Galadriel
Additional Tags: Character Study, Canonical Character Death, Non-Chronological, Gold Sickness
Summary:

Thorin hopes the story of his life will not be told as a tragedy. And as he looks back on it all, watching for glimpses of sky through the swaying flap of his tent, it’s finally become clear to him that there was never another way for this to end.

Breaking Bad:

Jesse between seasons 2 and 3, in recovery. Or not.

12 Steps/2 Planes/1 Day at a Time (3373 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Breaking Bad
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Jane Margolis/Jesse Pinkman
Characters: Jesse Pinkman, Walter White
Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Drug Withdrawal, Recovery
Summary:

Jesse spends 45 days coming to terms with who he is and what he's done.

Skyfall:

The Road and the Room: an AU which departs from canon in the Westminster scene. Bond doesn't arrive at the inquiry in time, giving Silva the chance to abduct M. What then? It's an M pov throughout, her weary strength and sharpness captured fantastically well, Silva and Bond ring very true, and so does the way she relates to each. If you're easily triggered, there is a warning you should pay attention to, but to put it as unspoilery as possible, I found the potentially triggery thing that happens mid-story in character and handled in a non-gratitous manner, especially given the follow up.

Harry Potter

Undertow: It's hard to remember if you have to fight the current or swim with it to stay alive. Bellatrix, Narcissa and Andromeda during Deathly Hallows. The Black sisters have always intrigued me more than cousin Sirius, and this a poetic yet unsentimental and captivating take on them.

5 characters that wouldn't do karaoke (even if you paid them).

I'm assuming we're exempting "do karaoke or die a gruesome death!" situations, since most characters are attached enough to their lives to comply in that case. With this caveat, here are my replies:

1.) Rorschach (Watchmen). Never would he ever. Not even during the happiest days of his partnership with Daniel before he really became Rorschach. Everyone else in this ensemble, including Jon in disaffected god mode, though? They would.

2.) John Cavil (Battlestar Galactica). Absolutely not, especially since it's the kind of thing Ellen adores, with and without her full set of memories. Cavil's twisted feelings about Ellen being what they are, though, he enjoys watching her do it (and the bar where they meet in The Plan just before the attack is in fact a karaoke bar).

3.) Severus Snape (Harry Potter). Unless we're talking young Severus during the holidays before Lily broke up with him. I can see her persuading him to go to a karaoke bar (and of course during the holidays his Slytherin and her Gryffindor pals are far away, and they live in Muggle households). But definitely not after the Mudblood/Worst Day Ever incident, not for the rest of his life.

4.) Daniel Holtz (Angel the Series). When Holtz visits karaoke bars, it's to blow them up, and that's canon. You know, some of the things Connor did in s4 would have made Holtz immensely happy (i.e. anything to do with hurting Angel - that was the whole point of making Connor his instrument of revenge, after all), and some would appall him (if you must kill fellow human beings, Stephen, it's in the service of bringing vampires to justice, not to bring fallen Powers into the world), but nothing would pain him like this:



5.) Spock (Star Trek). That rumour about him singing the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins is clearly illogical slander. His main reason for not doing karaoke is that Spock is actually musical, and while he's reasonably good at playing the harp (canon!), he'd never torture sentient beings by making them listen to his vocals. He's too ethical for that.