Emerging bleary-eyed from a lot of reading, I bring reccomendations. (Well, the first part of them anyway. More to follow.) As for my own stories, both the recipients liked them and wrote lovely things about them at their own journals (their summaries of what the stories are about are better than mine, drat!), which makes me glad, but not too many other people so far bothered to check them out so far, woe. Ah well. Self, you knew this would happen, a rare fandom is a rare fandom, and within rare fandoms, at least in one case you picked a subject you knew maybe only recipient and yourself are interested in. (But I still want other people to read both stories, she sniffles, they mean so much to me this year!)

However, as a reader, I'm in unqualified ecstasy. Have a first bunch of recs (excluding, of course, my gifts which I have already talked about).

History/Hunger Games: The Sticking Place

Yes, you read the fandoms right. Someone wrote an ingenious fusion of the Hunger Games premise with the 15th century. In the Fifth Hunger Games, Lucrezia Borgia, Richard (III.) of York, Marguerite d'Anjou and poor Henry of Lancaster are all tributes. It sounds like crack, but the characters are played, err, written straight, and of course it has to end the way it does.

History: The most pleasant tale of Lady Bessy

Four titles Elizabeth of York never held, and one she did. The "Five Things" format applied to the woman who was the last Planatagenet princess and the first Tudor queen, but rarely gets fictional or biographical attention. This year, she got several stories. This one which applies the "Five Things" format in ingenious ways is my favourite.

A Place of Greater Safety: Parallel or Together

In which Camille Desmoulins tries to bring Robespierre and Danton together. It doesn't work out the way he expected. The characterisations ring very true to Hilary Mantel's novel, and it does something I've been secretly and not so secretly hoping for when reading the actual book, where it didn't but could have. :)

Babylon 5:

The Subtle Arrangement of Stones: the Babylon 5 story I never knew was missing in my life, but retrospectively it so was, and oh, how it wins at Yuletide! Set during the first season. Londo, G'Kar and Delenn are kidnapped by the Homeguard, and it's up to their valiant aides, Vir, Na'Toth and Lennier to rescue them. The characterisations and - as invevitable given the characters in question - the bickering are top notch, the format (Garibaldi interviewing everyone for the security files afterwards) ingenious, and it fits into canon beautifully. I loved this to bits.

The Price of a Favour: Timov in the days of Cartagia. I'm always thrilled to find fic dealing with my favourite B5 one episode character, and this was great.

In Flagrante: three times Londo and G'Kar are caught in the act. One happy, one angry, one sad. Alternatively funny and heartbreaking, as Londo and G'Kar are wont to be.

James Bond: Protégé

M passes on what she learned. Contains two of my favourite things, M backstory and Eve Moneypenny fleshing out. I loved it.

Elementary (which had 21 new stories in Yuletide - hooray!):

Three Anniversaries: A Love Story: Not all great love stories are about romance is the summary the author gives, and this one celebrates the (platonic) friendship between Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson through the years. Present and future fic that feels true to where the characters are now and where they could be through the years, and has that same restraint and understated affection I find appealing on the show.

The Long Summer: this one is an ensemble fic that uses a frustrating case to show Holmes' relationships to Watson, Gregson, Bell and deliver an excellent Holmes character exploration to boot.

Greek Mythology: this year one of the requests was for a story about Ariadne and Icarus growing up together in Crete. This resulted in a dozen or so great tales, and it feels unfair to single one out, but this is my favourite of them all:

Thirteen Views Of A Labyrinth: They are not so very different, Ariadne and Pasiphaë, Icarus and Daedalus, Ariadne and Icarus. This has fantastic world building and awe-inspiring characterisations of everyone, is full of shades of grey and surprising yet sense making twists on the myths. I admire it so much.

The Count of Monte-Cristo: Constant.

It's a rare story which takes one of the source canon's villains - in this case Fernand Mondego, the later Count de Morcerf - and fleshes him out without going the excuse and woobiefication road. This story accomplishes it.

New Tricks: New Tricks for Old Dogs (or Five Alternate Universes Where Sandra Pullman Was Always Awesome)

What the title says. :) Wonderful banter and character voices in every universe.

Prometheus: Satellites: Three events in the life of Peter Weyland. Dysfunctional family relationships are my soft spot, and they rarely come more messed up than with Weyland, Meredith Vickers and David 8. This story gives us some background for this, in a Weyland, Meredith and David pov respectively, and it's fascinating.

For some recent, in recent days I got more spam on lj than I got otherwise in five years. Are we due for another breakdown?


Until then, have some links, both fanfiction and meta:

Prometheus:


Persephone . It's post-movie fic by legendary-in-several-fandoms Yahtzee, developing the complicated relationship between ( those characters alive by the end of the film ), it's long, and it's layered. What are you still doing here instead of reading it?

Galaxy Quest:


The Headaches, the Heartaches, the Backaches, the Flops. Gwen DeMarco and the first rise and fall of Galaxy Quest. What I appreciate especially about the world buildling is that for all that Galaxy Quest obviously takes the majority of its inspiration from Star Trek, the fictional show is one of the late 70s (i.e. presumably, like the original Battlestar Galactica, made to cash into the Star Wars craze), not 60s as ST was, and this story remembers that. Characterisation wise, this is very plausible, giving us younger versions of the people we meet in the film, and catches the film's atmosphere perfectly in its mixture between funny and poignant.


Gone With The Wind:

Scarlett O'Hara meta. I love discussing Scarlett, and had fun doing so in the comments.


Sherlock, Elementary, The Avengers, Batman:


How not to act as part of the creative team, take one:


Jonathan Ross disses Elementary, Mark Gattiss agrees. Now my own take on this is that Sherlock for all its flaws is undoubtedly the more original and better written show, but so far I like Elementary more because it gives me leads and a relationship I can honestly cheer for. But even if I loathed every second of screen time Elementary ever broadcasts, I'd still consider this bad form, because the one thing you don't do is dissing the competition in public. It only makes you look petty and pisses off those fans of your show who enjoy both. Which brings me to:

How not to act as part of the creative team, take two:

Wally Pfister (cinematographer for Christopher Nolan) disses The Avengers, calling it "an appalling film". Again, obviously I'm biased (guess which superhero film I saw multiple times this summer and own the dvd of? Not The Dark Knight Rises), but that's not the point. However, luckily this particular dissing also caused a response that may serve as a lesson:

How to actually act as part of the creative team (especially as the head of one):

To wit, Joss Whedon's response, also quoted in the article I linked. He only said, when asked about Pfister's remark: “I’m sorry to hear it, I’m a fan.” Now I don't care if you think The Avengers was a waste of space, but this is brilliant, PR wise. It a) avoids pissing off fans of Nolan's Batman trilogy, who may or may not also like The Avengers, b) utterly avoids responding to Pfister's more specific criticism (about the camera angles used in The Avengers), and c) instead makes Whedon look modest and classy, and Pfister look even more petty and envious. The man hasn't been writing dialogue since decades for nothing.:)

Since most of these stories are set post-movie, they are inevitably spoilery when described. Hence ( a spoiler cut for all the recs. )

This was another film which deeply divided my flist into nays and yays..  As it finally was released in Germany yesterday, I watched it myself, and am firmly among the yays. It's an individual reaction. You may not share it.  But let me explain why I loved a great deal of what I saw.

( Read more... )

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. )