I feel this question demands answers in different categories, such as:

a) Animals which are fictional in the sense that they, these particular individual animals, never lived (so, for example, a novel in which Bucchephalus, Alexander the Great’s horse, plays the leading role would be out) (not that Buccephalus would be my choice anyway)

b) Animals which are fictional in the sense that their species never existed (the inevitable Star Wars: The Porg’s Tale would be in)

There also should be subdivision c) for Animals which aren’t really animals but enchanted humans (think Frog Prince), but are in animal form for the majority or totality of the story and thus subject to animal rules. Here I’d also include someone like the Disney animated movie version of Robin Hood, for while fox Robin (aka Best Robin Ever!!!!) is a fox within the movie, he’s based on a human; ditto for Basil the Sherlock Holmes avatar, and so forth.

Bearing this in mind:

a) Well, the rabbits from Watership Down (the novel) are hard to beat in my fictional love. They are three dimensional characters, with their quirks, flaws and strengths, and I feel Adams makes them come across as animals, not thinly disguised humans. However, I can’t single out one more than the others in my affections, and thus I move on to fictional cats. Neil Gaiman’s fondness for cats inspired various memorable felines (some divine, some not), but my undisputed favourite of these is the one from Coraline. I knew I loved it the moment I read the reply to Coraline’s question about the name.

b) I’m as vulnerable to the allure of dragons as the next fantasy inclined person. My favourites among dragons include Fuchur (I think the English translation renamed him Falkor, but I never read Ende in English, so I only know by osmosis) from Michael Ende’s Never-ending Story, but even more an earlier Ende dragon, or rather, half-dragon, Nepomuk from Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer. (Cassiopeia the turtle in Ende’s Momo is nifty, too.) But there is a fictional animal in this particular sense that I love even more than any dragon: why, the last unicorn, of course, of Peter S. Beagle fame. No other unicorn ever made me love them except this one.

c) Matthew the Raven in Sandman (another Gaiman character, though his earlier human self came from The Swamp Thing and, I believe, thus Alan Moore), competing with Sheila the bird from the cartoon series Sindbad I watched as a child („Sindbad, Sindbad, schau, wieviel Glück dieses Kind hat…“), a girl changed into a bird pre-series who doesn’t get changed back until the end and tries to keep the kid version of Sindbad the sailor alive in between. The earlier mentioned Robin Hood the fox comes close, but not quite.


The other days

Ian McShane has been cast as Mr. Wednesday in Bryan Fuller's tv version of American Gods. This is a gift from the casting heavens, and I'm now at the "I WANT IT NOW WHY ISN'T IT 2017 ALREADY" stage about this show.

However, it occurs to me that I should employ spoiler cuts when raving about how this is perfect, because not everyone has read Neil Gaiman's novel. ( Spoilers for American Gods, the book, ensue. )

Something else the casting reminded me off: someone really needs to write that crossover where Jimmy McGill meets Mr. Wednesday, for all the obvious reasons.

And now for a couple of fanfiction recs:

Doctor Who:

once upon a time in nazi-occupied france:

"He's sitting in a cafe in Vichy France (he was aiming for 2042) and waiting for his lunch when Missy plops down in the chair opposite him." This is a conversation they've had before, it's just the first time they've both been able to consider it.

In which the Twelfth Doctor, post Clara, meets Missy again. This is one of those stories which manages to do justice to the long history between the Doctor and the Master, and to write them specifically in these particular regenerations, not interchangable with earlier ones. It's perfect. (BTW, my favourite details is that Twelve got himself the flame throwing guitar from Mad Max, because he so would.)

Black Sails

Both recs are spoilery for 3.06, so with due deference to those friends on my list whom I've managed to convert into watching the show but who haven't arrived there yet, I shall hide them beneath ( a cut. )

Monday was a great, if very hot, day to s how Bamberg & Franconian Switzerland to jesuswasbatman, Tuesday was for going back to Munich and various rl stuff, so I couldn't get more than my Borgias review finished, and the next few days will be busy as well before the departure to the grand journey of the year on Sunday, so I shall post my book reviews now, before RL strikes again:

Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold: Death by Silver. I hestitate to call this Steampunk because there are actually no gadgety technical inventions in this particular Victorian tale; rather, it is an Alternate Universe with magic in it. Otherwise, it's a good old fashioned Whodunit with two gay detectives (well, technically one is a detective, one is a metaphysician), and also, courtesy of a lot of crucial flashbacks, an entry in the boarding-school-was-hell genre I mostly associate with British writers and their memoirs, since one of our two heroes originally gets hired by the father of their mutual public school nemesis who used to bully them horribly back in the day.

The book reads well paced, and the characters are engaging; I liked both Julian and Ned (who, btw, already have a sexual relationship when the novel starts; the hindrances to be overcome by them as far as their relationship is concerned are emotional in nature), and I thought the authors did something interesting in the way they use Victor (aka the public school bully of old) in the present. Usually such characters either end up as supervillains and/or total losers, or they do a complete U-Turn after having a moral awakening, atone for their bullying by becoming heroes. Whereas while adult, present day Victor doesn't fall in either category. As an adult, he's capable of positve traits and relationships as well, but he clearly never realised that what he did at school was truly horrible, or that Julian and Ned have good reason to despise him (as opposed to going through the old boy, well met school chum routine). Which strikes me as psychologically plausible. Also, the book never belittles just how badly the public school events were, and that Ned and Julian have a right to feel about them they way they do. The sense of powerlessness when the system backs the people having power over you (and indeed produced the abuse of power) in the flashbacks is truly frightening.

In the present day, I was especially intrigued by Victor's wife, of whom we see alas little, but her few scenes hint at so much more that I wish someone would write fanfiction about her. The various suspects and the killer are delivered in a familiar-yet-not-way that comes with liking your Victorian mysteries, and giving them your own spin. Just a great way to pass the time on a lengthy train journey, which was how I read the novel last week.


Neil Gaiman: The Ocean at the end of the Lane. Speaking of familiar-yet-not tropes, this is unmistakable a Gaiman tale: every day life mingling with myths, passive point of view character encountering vibrant supernaturals, cats, a child's emotional landscape intensely written. In the first person, which previously I had only read in short stories of this author, who preferred third person in his longer texts, and in some ways, this feels more like a long short story or novella than an novel. Which I don't mean critically, btw. I'm just remembering my teacher drumming into us that a novella is defined by its focus on one particular "singular event" whereas a novel deals with a longer tale of multiple focus events.

I read it quickly, and loved reading it, which includes loving to be scared. The most disturbing sequence accesses what I think must be an atavistic fear in children and adults alike: your parents turning against you and the realisation of your complete powerlessness, the sense of being trapped. I don't remember who wrote about the difference in the authorial voice of Tom Sawyer versus the one in Huckleberry Finn that in the first novel, the author is looking back on childhood from an adult pov, from the outside, with amusement and affection and awareness of how it felt, to be sure, but definitely from the outside; whereas Huckleberry Finn pullls of creating a child's point of view from the inside. The Ocean at the End of the Lane has a framing narration in which our narrator, who is nameless like the second Mrs. de Winter, is an adult looking back, while the main story is set at a point where he's seven years old; and strangely enough, Gaiman pulls off both at the same time. I.e. you are aware, and believe, that this is an adult looking back on how he felt as a child, with the added difference the years make, but at the same time, the child's feelings and thoughts come across as unfiltered and true.

I think it's perfectly accessible and compelling if you've never read a story by this author before, but if you have, you're bound to be either delighted or annoyed at various points when encountering, shall we say, certain elements one might have read elsewhere in other shapes. Count me in the delighted category: meaning, when I figured out who the Hempstocks had to be, I went "but of course! That's great!" rather than "Here he goes again". (A bit like realising that Silas is a vampire in The Graveyard Book despite the fact nobody at any point in The Graveyard Book calls him that and the word is never used in the narration, either.) I was also tickled by the occasional historical allusion, as when a character mentions "Dickon and Geoffrey and John" as one king's sons, or "Red Rufus" as another king. It's the kind of thing that works if you're aware of the reference but doesn't distract if you're not.

There is a passage in which the narrator brings up the difference between the children's books he reads and enjoys and myths he also reads and loves just that bit better - liking myths because the rules are so different, or rather, there aren't any, the just aren't rewarded, gods are not role models or even good, they just are. He brings up a story of Hathor (the Egyptian goddess) which I hadn't been familiar with, which could be an actual myth or one Neil Gaiman just made up, but one of the reasons why I love his style is that neither would surprise me. And The Ocean at the End of the Lane, while being marketed as his first adult novel since Anansi Boys, to me feels like both a children's book - not just because of the child protagonist, because it does fit the genre - and a myth - because the supernatural entitities in it, be they helpful or damaging, aren't declared to be good or evil, "they just are", to use a frequent Gaimanism.

Lastly: just as you can rely on the cats in Neil Gaiman stories being written with sympathy, he really seems to have an issue with birds. Not that I blame him. Those beaks are scary.

...in 2013, 2014 or thereabouts:

1.) Wolf Hall. Why not A Place of Greater Safety, damm it? Riding on the Tudor craze with a much better novel as the basis, but since Cromwell's pov is a great part of what makes the novel, I'm not sure this will work in the medium of a tv show in the same way. And they need to find a very good actor for Cromwell, though the BBC has a good track record there. I also hope for a good Wolsey.

2.) War of the Roses Cousins series, aka the one about the war of the roses from the women's pov. Which would thrill me as a premise, except it's based on Philippa Gregory's novels. I've read them. Um. They're better than her Tudor ones? But still not very good. Her Elizabeth Woodville, who is, I take it, to be the central character of the show, is an example of how love for a character can actually result in making the character less interesting. See also: her Catherine of Aragorn and Mary Boleyn. (By comparison, the Elizabeth Woodville from Sharon Penman's The Sunne in Splendour, who isn't meant to be the heroine of the tale, is a wonderful example of a morally ambiguous, layered character, just as interesting as her also layered husband, Edward IV. Gregory's Elizabeth of Perfect Perfection pales by comparison.) To be fair: ironically enough I thought Philippa Gregory manages a genuinenly interesting Richard III., neither the Evil McEvil of Tudor tradition nor the White Knight of Misunderstoodness. Also, for all that I dislike her making Elizabeth and her mother have actual magical powers, the scene where Elizabeth Woodville and her daughter, Elizabeth of York, put a very specific curse of what's supposed to happen to the one guilty of killing her son(s), and indeed all his descendants, impressed me because as she goes on you realise that the curse comes true.... through the fates of the Tudor dynasty. I.e. young Elizabeth of York has inadvertendly sealed the fate of her own children and their children. Anyway, there are adaptions that transcend their source material (the first season of Dexter was definitely one of those), and maybe this will happen with the War of the Roses series, too. Here's hoping.

3.) A Casual Vacancy, based on J.K. Rowling's novel. This I can see work very well as a miniseries. It's an ensemble story told in multiple povs, which will suit the tv format and offer a lot of good roles. It also offers the kind of terse social commentary that goes with a lot of good British tv. I wonder whether, say, Jimmy McGovern adapting it would be too much of a good thing (i.e. McGovern's anger + Rowling's anger in this particular novel), or whether he'd balance the polemic with the humanity. Or maybe it will be several scriptwriters. I know that RTD isn't doing anything but Wizards & Aliens because of his partner's health situation, but maybe an episode or two?

4.) American Gods. Neil Gaiman mentioned in his blog a month or so ago that preparations are still ongoing. I'm continuing to look forward to the result, whenever it will be broadcast.

I may have squeed somewhat loudly when hearing Neil Gaiman would write another Doctor Who episode (PLEASE PLEASE THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY ONE), and am of course very gratified to hear The Doctor's Wife won the Hugo. Not just because it was my favourite episode from last season but because it instantly became one of my all time favourites.

Now, in The Doctor's Wife, we hear about a Time Lord named the Corsair (who changes gender, thus making fannish speculation canon that Time Lords can do that when regenerating - love N.G.), and because he's Gaiman, Neil the übercool kindly wrote Eleven Things You Probably Didn't Know About The Corsair. (Make sure you read the entire post which includes a wonderful RTD reaction to same at the bottom.)

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. )

It's a busy week - in a good way - for me, hence no posting until now. However, I do get online and enjoy reading great posts like this: 

Neil Gaiman about growing up with C.S.Lewis, J.R.R.   Tolkien and C.G. Chesterton

I love it when writers manage go convey such a detailed sense of what reading and experiencing other books feels like.  And the way Gaiman captures the what the (in themselves very different) styles and worlds of Lewis, Tolkien and Chesterton evoke is magnificent.

I also enjoy a good dissing now and them,  and in  this post, which actually is a praise of C.S. Forresters non-Hornblower novels, legionseagle sums up the ever popular Regency/Napoleonic Wars era novels and tv shows thusly:

Given that the Napoleonic wars is Not My Period, but is the subject of an awful lot of popular literature and TV I've consumed over the years, I've formed the view that notwithstanding Napoleon's command of the Continent's resources, tactical genius and overwhelming superiority in numbers, the poor little Corsican bugger never stood a chance, trapped as he was between Hornblower's crushing man-pain at sea and the chips on Sharpe's shoulders on land.

Ah yes.:) See, that's one more reason why I'm eager for Jo Graham's trilogy set in the Napoleonic era to be published. They center around a woman, Elza aka Ida St. Elme, are from the French pov and will reveal how Dutch-turned-French female common sense and bisexual confidence  were more than a match for Hornblower's man pain AND Sharpe's chip on the shoulder...

In which Neil Gaiman does what Neil Gaiman does, and I feel smug (in a good way) because I hoped one of the key plot twists would be the case since I heard the title.

( So you do call me that? )

Name the five best uses of Shakespeare’s work (faithful adaptations, plots inspired by his work, references to one of his plays/sonnets).

It's impossible to narrow it down to five, and "best" is a tricky denomination, but here are five that stayed with me the most. Also I tried to avoid making this a list of favourite film versions of Shakespeare plays, which would be another question.


1) A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest in Neil Gaiman's Sandman (as well as the use of William Shakespeare as a character, still probably my favourite fictional version of Will S.). These two plays who are themselves very meta, containing plays-within-plays, the magic of stagecraft versus real magic and so forth, work terrifically juxtaposed with the Sandman themes. Plus I've said it before, I'll say it again: Neil Gaiman is the only author to pull off a use of Prospero's final monologue, traditionally regarded as Shakespeare's goodbye, use it as his own farewell to his opus magnum and make that feel not pretentious but entirely apropriate.

2.) Othello in the film Stage Beauty. Stage Beauty is anything but a straightforward and accurate historical film (just try to date it when you know anything about the Restoration and the characters therein, who flit through the film despite being sometimes decades too late or too early for their appearance), but hey, neither were any of Shakespeare's histories. What it does provide is a great story doing marvellous things with acting, gender, sex and jealousy (the one fuelled by professional ambition and identity issues as well as the more sexual type), and that as much as anything makes Othello the perfect choice for the play-within-the-story. The use of Desdemona's death scene throughout, the question as to who plays Desdemona, how to play Desdemona, and how to play Othello, it's all really essential to the plot, and no other scene but the one between Desdemona and Othello could provide nearly as much suspense for the climactic highlight at the end.

3.) West Side Story (as an adaption of Romeo and Juliet brought into the then present and made into a musical). Thank you, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. (With a side of Arthur Laurents for the script and Jeremy Robbins for the original choreography.) The marvelous thing is that this works entirely as its own piece and yet when you map it against the Shakespeare play you see how entirely bit for bit it is matched. Oh, and it still cracks me up that Laurents is proud (arguably justifiably so) that he got Will one better in giving Anita a damn good reason not to deliver the right message when in Romeo and Juliet it's simply a case of bad luck that Brother Laurence's letter doesn't reach Romeo in time.

4.) Chimes at Midnight by Orson Welles. The reason why this is here despite my declaration of "no straightforward film versions" above is that Chimes isn't. Orson W., about the only director/scriptwriter who would, after a lifetime of preoccupation and previous attempts to wrangle the Henries down, used the two parts of Henry IV, bits of Merry Wives and a bit from Henry V and put it together in what is essentially a new play, The Tragedie of Sir John Falstaff. He did it with his usual post-Kane obstacles of no money and having the actors available only intermittendly as favours because he charmed them into gallivanting off with him to Spain or whereever he happened to be shooting, and created something fantastic out of it. (Francois Truffaut reviewed the film thusly, summing it up as: "I can't help being a genius, I'm dying: love me.")

5.)Hamlet in In the Bleak Midwinter (detailed raving just linked) by Kenneth Branagh. Best use of Hamlet in a film I've seen (and no, I still haven't watched Slings and Arrows - I'll get there, I promise!), including Banagh's own straightforward take on the Danish play later, it manages to be both hysterically funny and genuinenly moving at different points, says a lot about acting from an actor/director's pov in a way that simultanously pokes fun at himself (and which better play than the one where an amateur aristo lectures actors on how to play to use for that one?) and is heartfelt, and if I didn't love the film for all those reasons already, I'd always love it because Ophelia gets to slap Hamlet in the get-the-to-a-nunnery scene.

BONUS 6.), because I have to: THIS. The rehearsal photos aren't half bad, either. *shamelessly objectifies*

Recently, I browsed through this book in a store, when in the second foreword (not the one by Pterry, the next one) I came across a description of Neil Gaiman as "bearing a startling resemblance to Dr. Gaius Baltar of Battlestar Galactica fame in voice, looks and manner, only slightly less agitated". Hm, thought I, despite being a fan of Mr. G. and somewhat fond of Gaius B. this had not occured to me before, but on the other hand, let's check out the evidence:

( Cousins? )

At the very least, I am now wondering about just where Neil Gaiman's story telling abilities come from. :)

Apropos, the other day I reread The Kindly Ones and The Wake, aka the conclusion of the Sandman saga, and found it as awesome and rich as ever. I'm also more affected by Lyta Hall than ever and wish I had the Lyta standalone The Furies by Mike Carey here, but monanotlisa has it. The Kindly Ones is as much, if not more, Lyta's tragedy as it is Morpheus'. ( Spoiler for a classic Greek tragedy, Sandman style, ensue. ) Lyta haunted me then - which resulted in my Angel/Sandman crossover, Ouroborous, where she and Connor collide and end up helping each other come to terms with their pasts and presents - and I find she still haunts me now.