No topics for the busiest of holidays and the day before that, thank God, which allows me to read what everyone else has written, and thus you get links today. :)

Poetic meta on Jackie Tyler, the Ninth Doctor and Rose as Demeter, Hades and Persephone.

The Inner Light as a TNG highlight. TNG and Picard love are always lovely to read.

It's been literally decades since I've read the Silmarillion, but I still found this hysterical and want penknife to write the Southern Gothic versions of Lord of the Rings as well:

Leaving Bliss, aka Galadriel's backstory from the Silmarillion, the Southern way. :)

But if you want to know the beginning of it, you have to go back to my grandparents. Grandpa Finny (and if you're confusing him already with Uncle Fenny and his brothers Fin and Little Finny, you aren't from Bliss yourself) was always keen on having sons.

You know, many an actor doesn't, independent on how good or bad they are in their chosen craft, provide very interesting interviews. They do them because it's their duty when promoting the latest film/tv show/theatre project they're involved in, but the result often reads no more interesting than the latest PR release from whatever production company is responsible for the film/tv show/theatre project in question. And I have sympathy for that, because providing interesting conversation with total strangers isn't easy, and that's assuming the interviewers aren't the obnoxious type who poke for intimate details. But still: I'm extra thrilled when coming across genuinenly interesting interviews. Which quite often happens when Patrick Stewart is involved.

Here is a recent great example, by the LA Times and apropos the latest TNG anniversary. What's expecially endearing to me is his geeking out about Hollywood history and identifying the Paramount office where specific Sunset Boulevard scenes were shot at as still in use when they were shooting Next Gen at Paramount. (And his making off with the office letters.) But really, it's just an all around enjoyable interview to read. Also, his joke about the next X-Men film being just Magneto and Xavier talking cracks me up, not least because I know a couple of fans including yours truly who'd so be there for that. :)

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My latest wave of Jossverse nostalgia trigged by meta and fanfiction alike, to wit:

BTVS:

Buffy and Faith in Bad Girls/Consequences. Meta which manages to be fair to both girls. (Much rarer than you'd think. I remember reading, at the time, a certain BNF's pronouncement that Buffy was behaving "like Stalin", which meant I could never take anything she wrote seriously again.)

AtS:

as one mourneth for an only son: fantastic Connor fanfiction, covering all his stages from Steven to Connor to new memories!Connor Reilly to Rembering!Connor. Connor and Darla: still my favourites. And it's much rarer to find someone writing the former well than the later.

As was to be expected, the recent Doctor Who episode has already inspired fanfic. Two lovely episode tags, celebrating that most Whovian of 'ships the episode deals with:

Wonderfully and fearfully made

The conjugal bed

And a meta love declaration for that same ship: Bigger on the inside.

Neil Gaiman blogged about writing the episode: Adventures in the Screen Trade.

His blog entry also includes a number of thank yous, and because some of the fannish reception played his script out against the Moff's, just as back in the Rusty days, when the Moff was the star guest author, Moffat's scripts were played out against RTD's, and because this pitching writer against writer annoys me to no end, I'm just that much more a fan of Neil G. for not playing that game and instead including these two thank yous in his blog entry:

(M)ost of all to the Oodfather, Steven Moffatt, who encouraged me in my madness, rescued me when I told him I’d written too many drafts and couldn’t do it again, gave the script several of its best lines, and who even rapidly rewrote a couple of scenes at the last minute when locations vanished due to budget.

So much, btw, and I say this with a mea culpa of my own, for my and other's suspicion the Moff does not edit the scripts. The iDalek episode, Curse of the Black Spot and the Sherlock ep The Blind Banker still suck, though. And here is Gaiman's other thank you that warmed my heart:

And thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you, to Russell T. Davies, who brought Doctor Who back from the void and put it back together and sent it back into the future with its mission in place: to entertain, amaze and induce wonder in its audience while sending a certain number of them to watch from the relative safety of behind the sofa.

Thus basking in writerly love for the franchise and each other, I'm heading back to real life business and work.

Which five canons would you not want to live in, and why?


Great Maker, as Londo Mollari would say, only five? I wouldn't want to live in most canons of the films and shows I love. And even more not in shows I have only mild or no positive feelings for. But okay then, some of the worst cases of DO NOT WANT TO BE THERE. (Except as a reader/viewer.)


1.) Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Look, it's percentages. Maaaaaaybe I'd be one of the people to survive the robocalypse, but even then, it's a terrible post apocalyptic life, and that's assuming I'd end up free and with the resistance.

2.) Battlestar Galactica. New BSG, actually, though I wouldn't want to live in the canon of the old one, either. My survival chances wouldn't be much better, and even if I did survive for all of the show, I'd have to listen to Adama's inspiring speeches and clap my hands before ending up in that spoilery place under those spoilery conditions. Thanks, but no thanks.

3.) Watchmen (either book or film version). Have you read/seen Watchmen? Next question. Although: visiting the Watchmenverse where Rorschach is on the run form all the violet-eyed soulmates who really understand him, call him Walter, save him and/or explain why he needs to get back together with Daniel would be kind of entertaining. In a gruesome way.

4.) Blake's 7. I'm neither a supercomputer built by Ensor or an evil overlady. (Shush, you.) Thus, the chances I'd be able to exist without either being a drugged citizen or a short-lived resistence fighter are partically zero. Thanks, but no, thanks.

5.) Lord of the Rings. (Again, both book and film version.) Look, I love the Shire. I'd still be out of there way faster than Bilbo if I had to live there for the rest of my life. Ditto for Rohan and Gondor. Visits, yes, living, no. And as for the Elves and the last homely home, which is at least writer-friendly... methinks I'd be tempted to start a revolution and argue for a more equal distribution of wealth between elves and the younger races and end up being cast out anyway.

...and speaking of canons I'd rather not live in, a meta rec:


Sherlock: an excellent meta post which articulates, among many other things, why I just can't join the love train for the show and the character far better than I did.