Somewhere Different Now

Hello, y'all!  In an effort to be the change I wish to see in the world, I am going to try to make my LJ a livelier place by posting more often.  My flist has been sadly quiet lately.  I don't really like tumblr as a platform, but I find myself spending tons of time there because it is so lively, plus it's easy to look and reblog even when I feel too tired/uninteresting/incoherent to write a post here.  Nevertheless, I am going to try to get my rear in gear and actually post, even if it's only about the latest movie I've watched.

I saw Now You See Me in the movie theater today.  I was excited about it based on the trailers, but the not so hot rating on Rotten Tomatoes kept my expectations on the low side.  I ended up really enjoying it.  I would recommend it if you like the following:

• magicians!


• heists


• twisty plots with surprises, including some of the sort that I didn't see coming but which made so much sense after the reveal


• Mark Ruffalo


• other attractive cast members


• Morgan Freeman


• Michael Caine


• moral grey areas that allow us to root for both the magicians pulling off criminal schemes and the cops investigating them


• a sense of wonder


• a Robin Hood sensibility that fits well with our post-economic crash times

On the minus side, the characterization was a little thin for many of the characters, and I actively wanted the two lead cops' relationship to remain platonic despite the film apparently feeling the need to shoehorn in some romance.  That's a fairly minor gripe, though.  In certain respects, it is reminiscent of The Prestige.  Now You See Me is not as good as that, but then, The Prestige has David Bowie playing Nicola Tesla, and I don't think it's possible for anything to live up to that.  I don't want to risk spoilers by saying to much, but if anyone else has seen this movie and wants to talk about it, I'd love to.

Speaking of things one doesn't want spoiled, I have been having far too much fun with schadenfreude while reading people's social media reactions to this week's episode of Game of Thrones.  All these sweet summer children who apparently expected characters to survive!  However, I really need to make reading books 4 & 5 a priority, because I just got accidentally spoiled about a future character death, and I'd like to keep that from happening anymore.

Also on the topic of things that can rip out hearts, I continue to adore bendingsignpost's Sherlock/John fic Bel Canto, which is a fusion with The Phantom of the Opera.  The fusion of the canons works way better and less crackily than I might have expected.  This fic is also stuffed with complex interpersonal conflict between characters who each have validity to their viewpoint, danger, insight into both the major and minor characters, powerful prose, occasional bits of humor and sweetness, and heartache.  Far too much heartache.  It's a WIP, but there are only two chapters remaining and they update weekly.

I have a rec for a Sherlock fic with an unlikely premise that manages to be magnificent.  I'm apparently a bit late on this bandwagon, but if you haven't read The Deepest Secret Nobody Knows by flecalicious yet, I encourage you to remedy that now. 

I've always felt that the interactions between Sally Donovan and Sherlock suggested some sort of personal past between them.   This fic takes the premise that a one-night stand over four years before ASIP left Sally pregnant with Sherlock's baby.  She chooses to have the baby and raise the child alone.  It's not the sort of kid-fic that's mostly cooing over how cute little children are, so I think it's worthwhile even if you're not usually into kid-fic. 

This story has a wonderfully layered depiction of Sally that slots perfectly into canon but makes her into a complex, sympathetic (but still flawed) person.  All the other characters hit just the right notes too.  This story is full of all the messy emotions around bringing a new life into the world and around people who have ended up tied to each other without entirely choosing it.  The fic's last few scenes are just devastatingly good. 

While I'm reccing not quite new fics with unusual backstories for the characters, I really enjoyed the cracktastic kinkmeme story Captain John Watson, wherein John is the son of Captain Jack Harkness. 

Someday, I will make a post that is not largely about Sherlock.  Today is not that day.  New fandom has wrapped its tentacles around my brain in a major way.  Today, I have some recs for you.  Some of them are even about things other than Sherlock!

First, a piece of crack!fic that sent me into absolute fits of laughter:  Aptronyms by elapsedspiral .  This is a slight AU where, as the summary says, Mr Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson are characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Mr Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson are the unfortunate sods named after them.   When you get to the end, I hope you'll agree with me that we have a new catchphrase!  You'll know the one I mean.

Second, a delightful vid by humansrsuperior starring Sherlock's Coat of Great Sexiness.  I can't figure out how to embed this player, so here's a link to the relevant LJ entry.  All coat, all the time.  The vid is free of major spoilers, so if there is anyone reading this who is (a) still on the fence about whether to watch Sherlock, and (b) attracted to men and/or long, dramatic coats, this might convince you.  Watch it swirl!

Now, a Merlin rec!  I wanted to make sure all the Merlin folks on this list have seen rosa_acicularis 's  amazing Merlin fic, Goose Girl.  It's got richly layered emotions, plenty of Rosa's trademark wit, and a wonderful character who is sort of an OC and sort of someone you know.  There's also a fierce goose.  It's set post-S1.

Here's a fascinating NY Times article about a practice in Afghanistan of disguising girls as boys.  Some of them wear boys' clothes in order to work to help their families out with income, but others are presented as boys largely because of the social stigma on families without sons. Even when the child's original gender is an open secret among friends, there are still social benefits to simply appearing to have a son.  Most of these young people are supposed to revert back to femininity at puberty or when their parents arrange a marriage, with varying degrees of success and happiness. 

Now, a bit of yammering about my subconscious (you can skip if you like).  A few nights ago I actually dreamed I was in Afghanistan.  I don't remember any details, but I think it was in the context of visiting there rather than being Afghan.  I am somewhat concerned that my subconscious may be attempting to emulate John Watson in hopes that this will cause Benedict Cumberbatch to become my flatmate.  Sadly, it doesn't work that way.  At least strange dreams are preferable to a psychosomatic limp. 

Last night I had even stranger dreams.  Perhaps inspired by the lovely Sherlock/His Dark Materials fusion fic, "Theory and Practice," I dreamt about the Firefly crew in a universe where everyone has daemons*.  In a rare instance of awareness that I was dreaming, I kept realizing that my sleeping mind was assigning Mal a daemon that didn't quite suit him (golden eagle, then tiger) and insisting that the dream give him a  different one.  I wish I could tell you what brilliant ideas my brain eventually cooked up for who would have what species of daemon, but that got lost in the transition to the next dream.  (What would their daemons actually be? Mal, I think, would have a coyote.  River would be either a cat or some sort of bird, perhaps an owl.  Kaylee strikes me as an otter.  Anyone else have opinions?)

After half-waking, I transitioned to a school stress dream.  I haven't had one of those in a while, though I have teaching stress dreams not infrequently.  When I do dream about being in school, most often it's at the college level with some sort of test I didn't study for/paper I didn't write/classroom I can't find as the plot.  Last night, however, I dreamed about being in high school. I went to one of the classes assigned to me on the first day and was really upset when it was WAY too easy and beneath my level.  Everyone else in the class seemed ludicrously dumb. I was worried I was going to be stuck in that class all semester, bored out of my skull, and I had no idea where the office was or how to change my schedule.  My brain seems to think I need to do more with my life.

How about one more bit of Sherlock silliness for anyone still with me?  Sherlock demonstrates how to dance the robot.  It made me giggle like a crazy person.


*In Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, daemons are external manifestations of a person's soul, taking the form of animals.

Last night, I had the late night urge to combine my new muffin pan with the blueberries I'd bought at the previous week's farmers' market. Blueberry cinnamon muffins happened.  Yum!  I am the Evil Midnight Muffin Maker What Makes Muffins at Midnight. (Anyone who gets that The Tick reference gets +5 points.)

Today, I did a nice hike up Bishop's Peak, ran some errands, bought more produce at the big Farmers' Market/street fair in SLO, and settled in at Linnaea's Cafe to try to accomplish a bit of work on the Jack/Doctor fic I'm writing.  It turned out that there was going to be live music, a fairly common occurrence at the cafe, and generally a welcome one.  The woman onstage tonight had a lovely voice and a "folk funk" (her description) sound that I was really digging.  Then, a few songs in, she announced, "this song is about River Tam."

I did a double-take.  Yes, she meant Firefly's River Tam.  I had serendipitously shown up at a geek concert in a non-convention venue, as another audience member more prepared than me soon proved by donning a Jayne hat.  The concert included several more songs, maybe a third of the ones she played, vaguely or not-so-vaguely referencing Firefly mixed in with the more standard singer-songwriter fare.  The non-filk songs often had a humorous touch ("You're like an avocado, baby.  You're only really good for one day.")  She also played an anthem about being a geek, featuring percussion played on a manual typewriter.  I repeat:  manual typewriter percussion. 

Her name is Marian Call, and you should check her out!  You can listen to some of her music streaming on her website.

The concert must have helped with the fannish brainwaves, because even though my fic only had half my attention, I finally managed to write a version I like of a scene that had been giving me trouble.  Hooray!

Bonus geek moment of the week:  I wandered into a local bead store a few days ago, just to see what was in there (answer:  beads).  The woman behind the counter became the first stranger to ever speak in recognition of the small TARDIS pin on my purse.  

I bring you some interesting things from around the internet.

-News that sounds like the start of a movie:  Neuroscientist who studies the brains of psychopaths discovers that he has multiple murderers in his family tree.  He tests himself and finds that both his brain activity and some genes match traits of psychopaths.  In movies, this discovery would fairly quickly lead to a murder spree.  In real life, it led to an NPR article and some thankfulness for a happy childhood, which makes the nasty inherited traits much less likely to be expressed.

-Doctor Who Series 5 Can-Can.  This is a really fun, fast-paced video putting the entirety of Series 5 to the familiar can-can tune.  Why?  Why not!



It was made by elderberryink , and the LJ post where you can comment or find the downloadable version is here.

-The amount I relate to this blog post is scary and sad.

-This macro makes great use of photoshop to show the most popular hangout in the Whoniverse.(SPOILERS though The Big Bang)

-Science says to drink more coffee!   There is some evidence that it might lower the risk of Alzheimer's, though the jury is still out. 

AT LONG LAST, I HAVE INTERNET AT HOME AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  JESUS H. CHRIST IN A ZEPPELIN, I AM SO OUTRAGEOUSLY HAPPY! 

Happy enough that I want to do this dance:



After one of the dimwits at AT&T finally told me that the dsl service I was receiving just fine three weeks ago absolutely couldn't be restored (*shakes fist at corporate idiocy*),  I bit the bullet and called Comcast yesterday about cable internet.  It costs a fair amount more than dsl, which is not good for me right now, but it's worth it.  Ordering by phone was easy and fairly quick, and they scheduled a technician to come out and make it happen the very next day.  (That technician arrived two hours later than the end of the time window they told me, but when he arrived he was rather hot, so that was something.)  Look how easy that was. 

Now I have beautiful, blazing fast internet that I can access from my own sofa, bed, kitchen, or any other location in the house.  It's like I'm living in the 21st century or something!   I want to pet the internet and whisper "my precioussssss" to it. 

Here is one of the many shiny things that I can once again view in the privacy of my home:  a brilliant fan-made map of the TARDIS.  It's gorgeous, intricate, funny, and sometimes even poignant.  This, kids, is why fandom is awesome.

My mother likes sending me links to silly things online.  Imagine my surprise when one day she sent me a link leading to An Archive of Our Own (AO3)!  Had she discovered my fanfiction habit?  Was she coming out of the closet about a fanfic habit of her own?  No on both counts, thank heavens.  The link was for Wait Wait Don't Eat Me, a fic about NPR's news quiz show, Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me*, reporting on the zombie apocalypse.  Let me say that again:  National Public Radio fanfic, with zombies.  It's utterly hilarious!  The voices for all of the hosts and panelists are exactly right, and I cracked up at the news about what various politicians and other famous people were doing in response to the zombie hordes.  A zombie calls in to be a listener contestant.  The consequences of giving too little on the pledge drive are revealed. 

Still curious about where on Earth my mother located this, I checked the Wait Wait website and found that they had linked to the fic on their twitter feed.  I know that my mother uses Twitter to follow some people (our phone conversations frequently include discussing the latest news from Neil Gaiman as if he were a family friend), so I am choosing to assume that she found the story through that tweet. 

God, I love the Internet!  (Other awesome and COMPLETELY unrelated internet stuff:  DW writer Paul Cornell's blog post the other day denouncing the perception encouraged by the media that to be Christian is to be homophobic.  Well said, Paul!  It bothers me that the most hateful strand of the Christian faith is so often the loudest, and it bothers me that the media discourse just amplifies these strident voices who do NOT speak for the Jesus I see in the Bible, nor do they speak for me.  Like Paul, I'm a person of faith, and I am in favor of GLBT rights.  Passionately so.  I know many other Christians of various sorts who feel the same.  As a more or less Quaker person, I might worship quietly, but I refuse to be silent in standing up for the rights of others.  I don't feel the need to talk about my faith a whole lot in the secular world, but I do get tired of hearing atheists and agnostics who are allies on the political and social issues I care about assuming that intelligence, logic, compassion, open-mindedness, and progressivism are antithetical to belief in a higher power.  Stop with the pigeonholing, people.)

*For those of you who aren't in the US or aren't public radio listeners, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me is a weekly news quiz comedy show with a combination of listeners phoning in, regular panelists, and celebrity guests.  It's well worth checking out the podcast if you aren't in an area where you can hear it broadcast.  Even without zombie apocalpyse, it makes me laugh out loud every week.  It helps that Peter Sagal, the host, is apparently a huge geek.

Doctor Who and Torchwood do darkness really well.  Many of us here in fandom like it to some extent:  why else would we be watching a show about the last survivor of an otherwise extinct people?  We create fics and other fanworks that delve to the depths of the shows' angst potential.  However, in these anxious days as we await The End of Time, I think it's worth remembering how much joy and love exist in this show and this fandom. 

With that in mind, I wanted to link to some fics and vids that fill me with happiness every single time.  I could call this a rec post, but since I'm not making any effort to stick to lesser-known works I think it might be better called a reminder post.  My goal is less to help you find something new (although you may) than to remind you of how much fun this show and this fandom can be.  Some of this stuff is sweet and entirely fluffy, some briefly acknowledges the darkness but moves thoroughly into hope, and some is just zany crack to bring you laughs.

Check out these fics and vids.  Smile.  If you feel inspired, comment with a link to whatever in Doctor Who fandom fills you with joy (or post about it in your own journal).  If you aren't feeling like fics or vids, rec something else, like a picspam, fanmix, macro, meta post, or whatever gives you the warm fuzzies and/or the giggles.  Share the celebration!

( Fics )

( Vids )

(Note: I've had to go back and fiddle with editing this entry's formatting and such after posting. Sorry to anyone who saw it funny looking, without cuts, or otherwise annoying.)

I'm going to Dragoncon next weekend!  Will any of y'all be there?  I'm looking forward to it, although the crowds might be even more crazy than usual due to some big name guests (Leonard Nimoy!  Patrick Stewart!  Adam Savage from Mythbusters!  William Shatner!   I'm glad I'm not in charge of crowd management.)  Gareth David-Lloyd will ( the rest of this sentence cut for CoE spoilers, just in case. )

    I'm also thoroughly excited about the chance to see my family, who live in Atlanta and will also attend the con.  (Well, my dad and brother will attend the con full time.   My mom will probably come for a few hours one day to see Adam Savage and look at costumes.)   

I saw District 9 this week.  It was amazing!  (No spoilers in my discussion, no promises about comments.)  The premise is innovative. (Alien spaceship parks over Johannesburg, but the aliens inside are impoverished and disorganized.  They end up living in a shanty town in Jo'burg.  The movie hinges around an effort to evict them for relocation to a farther away camp.)  The treatment of social issues is complex.  The acting is superb.  The effects are great, integrating so well into the documentary-style film that you don't notice them.  This is what science fiction is for:  thought-provoking movies that can also feature a giant robot throwing a car.  Plus, I lived in South Africa for five months during a semester abroad in college, so parts of the movie were a trip down memory lane but with added aliens.  I highly recommend it, with the caveat that the severely squeamish might want to stay away.  There are some intensely gross scenes of illness and quite a bit of violence.

While I'm recommending things, I'd like to direct you to the book Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve.  It's young adult (but entirely suitable for adults) post-apocalyptic steampunk about moving cities that eat other cities.  There are also airships!  And cyborgs!  That premise alone may be enough to send you to your local book store, but it's not just a cool idea.  It's a thrilling adventure that I found hard to put down, but it's really more about the fascinating characters and their complex moral dilemmas.   The warning for this one is that I came about thisclose to crying on the Tube while reading it.  Tissues are your friends!

I often find fan videos disappointing, but this one was wonderfully crafted.  The images are attuned to both the lyrics and the pace of the music.  The song is from the musical Rent, and I've thought of it before as a great song for the aftermath of Doomsday.   Warning:  contains sorrow!