Somewhere Different Now

Three unrelated items make a post!

1) These pictures from a dog grooming competition, wherein people trim, sculpt, and dye their dogs' fur into elaborate designs, are right on the boundary between hilarious and disturbing.  I have so many questions:  How do they make the dogs stand still for all this?  Who does this to their animal?  Why don't they just take up crafting (with nonliving materials)? How can I cleanse my brain of the image of the dog with the Yoda head and an Ewok on its butt?  Which of these dogs is most likely to murder its owners in their sleep for what they did to it?

2) I just finished reading Cold Magic by Kate Elliott, which I highly recommend.  Firstly, because the worldbuilding is really cool and inventive.  It takes place in 1837 in a world with the bones of our world, but radically different in ways both magical (magic is undeniably real here), physical (the Ice Age never really ended, so sea levels are lower and ice sheets cover northern Europe), and historical (the Roman Empire persisted for centuries longer and seemingly without Christianity ever becoming a big thing, and a disaster drove large numbers of people from the wealthy Mali empire into Europe a few hundred years ago, resulting in fusions of European and African cultures and bloodlines).  The world is so different that I'm not sure whether this book can really be called an alternate history fantasy or if it's more of a high fantasy.  Either way, very cool stuff.  Secondly, it's a rare treat to have fantasy, especially historical fantasy, with a racially diverse cast, and this book has diversity in spades.  Characters of color outnumber the white ones by a fair amount. (Incidentally, the cover of the edition I own whitewashes the protagonist.  WTF, publisher?  Why those blue eyes?)  Thirdly, I found it a very entertaining read.  There were a few sections that were kind of a series of minimally related events happening, but overall I found it gripping.

3) I'm excited about the new season of Game of Thrones coming up soon.  In honor of that, here is a video proving that using Autotune to make characters sing doesn't have to be exclusively the realm of ridiculous "They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard" sorts of things.  This vid gives me lots of feels, although that is partially because it is a lot of Daenerys and Jon Snow's faces.  I just have a lot of emotions about their faces.  (The vid spoils only S1.)

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.