Nenya Kanadka

WTF, there's a Castor in the first episode of season 2! I thought they didn't show up until the end of the season at Marion Bowles's house.

WHAT.

/things you notice on rewatch

So after watching the (very satisfying) Orphan Black series finale, I'm starting back at the beginning of the series again because I really wanted more of them all.

Holy shit! It's so weird seeing Sarah so wary of everyone that I now know she will come to consider her best friends and sisters. It's so weird seeing Art and Mrs S as semi-antagonists (not that they're evil, but that Sarah sees Art as getting in the way of her plans, and S as "unreasonably" keeping her from Kira, and the viewer doesn't yet know how trustworthy they are). Then to compare with S and Art's scenes with Sarah in the last couple episodes of the show...mind = blown.

And we haven't even met Helena yet! (Mid-episode 3 right now.)

Also it's so strange seeing Sarah as Beth now that I know enough about them to know how very not-Sarah she looks in Beth's outfits. The straight hair, the business-casual clothing...wow. And I care so much more about Beth's story this time around too (plus I know more about why she did what she did, of course). I'd forgotten, too, that it was Beth that got them together in the first place (after Katja looked her up), not Cosima as I'd somehow remembered it. But Sarah-as-Beth is the closest we get to actually seeing Beth onscreen for a good long while after this, until some of the later flashbacks. So it's sort of cool from that angle too.

I'm watching for the first time we see major or recurring show themes, like how soon Kira being unusual comes up, or S's network. The clone sickness was in episode 1 (Katja), and Felix has already met his morgue boyfriend. <3 No Dyad yet.

I may also have snagged seasons 3 & 4 on DVD off eBay, because as much as some of the later plot threads didn't grab me, I love everyone in this bar. And it's one of those shows that I kind of need to own, have on my shelf, watch in future when the urge strikes, remember that someone made this amazing thing, and lend to anyone who will let me press it on them. :P

I love these weirdos so much. <3

ETA: Cat icon! Apparently it's from the cover of one of those The Cat Who... mystery novels (which my grandmother used to send me, having somehow got the idea that I was into mysteries but not that I liked sci-fi; they were fun enough). And so pretty! Not half bad as a cartoon depiction of Kaylee, either. :D More here.

So we ended up not getting the cat burglar cat (Marge). Instead, while Mucca was away in New Brunswick for a week-long union convention, I met up with a cat we'd talked to one of the rescue agencies about, and looked at a few others (in from Saskatchewan! apparently that is a thing they do when there are more homes for cats on the coast and more cats in the prairies?). Settled on the lovely, lovely kitty from Cat's Cradle Animal Rescue. Her name is currently Marie but we're tossing around various other names for her.

She's a very brave cat, because immediately upon coming into our possession, she had to deal with an hour on the helicopter! (Usually it is not that long. Fog forced a detour. Even the humans were a bit grouchy by the time we got home.) She started going at her spay incision site (which had been mostly, but not entirely, healed up), probably from travel stress. Mucca's been detailing that on her blog, but I just wanted to post this ADORABLE picture. The home-made cone of shame + the little stretchy sock (sleeve of old long-sleeved tee) to further keep her from scratching turned out to give her a bit of a superhero look. Mucca's brother says it looks like we realized at the last moment that we didn't have a cosplay outfit for her:



Isn't she a darling? Look at that floof of a tail! It's like a cartoon kitty (Aristocats, anyone?). She's sweet-tempered and loving and friendly and adventurous, and I can't wait for her to feel a bit better so she can explore the house and get to play with her new toys (and humans).

Aforesaid brother arrived this morning with a whole kit of first aid supplies for her, including a proper transparent plastic cone. So she can see better now, and no longer looks like a superhero. Probably more comfortable, though!

KITTY! <3

Or, things people often get wrong when writing people like Nenya. ;-)

1) Red hair: Your red-haired character does NOT need to have ginger parents!

( Red hair is a recessive trait... )

But on television, soooooooo many families are wall-to-wall redheads if there's a ginger in the mix at all. This is pretty uncommon in real life! It throws me out of so many stories. It's much more likely for a couple of redheads to pop up in the middle of some browns and blondes.

So, Blossom family on Riverdale, I'm looking at you. (Though in that specific case, I have to laugh, because they're practically lampshading it at this point. Not only are a pair of fraternal twins and both parents redheads (the dad at least is less fire-engine red), about half the members of their board of directors are also redheads! It's a purely symbolic casting/hair dye choice by now--which, fair enough.)



2) Deaf people & lip reading: Your deaf character WILL NOT be able to understand people 24/7 based ONLY on lip reading.

They just won't.

Lip-reading (aka speachreading) is the skill of understanding speech from watching the movements of a speaker's mouth and face while they're talking. It is an extremely important part of the adaptive skillset of most deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Especially in combination with a clear voice, it adds tremendously to the amount of information a person can understand.

However! Only about a third of English language is visible on the lips at all. ( Did you say 'shoes', 'chews', or 'Jews'? )

A quick reference here has some of these thoughts in bullet-point form--might make a good bookmark or info sheet.

It's a good thing if you have your deaf character's friends and family face them when they speak! That's excellent. (Please do that in real life too!) But it can't be the only thing. And it's simply not plausible that they won't have developed other adaptive behaviours to understand the world around them.

Rewatched Spellbound last night. I really think it's going to become one of those movies that goes in the queue to be watched again every year or two. Peck is so pretty and Bergman is so determined!

It's really her movie, too, in the sense that she's the main protagonist and it's all told from her point of view. And pretty much from the moment she opens her mouth in the first scene where her male coworker is trying to get her to soften up to his romantic advances and she's like "Lol, no," I just really like Dr. Constance Peterson. (He tells her she's too cold and cerebral, and she asks if he's buttering her up; he says her "lack of emotion" is "fatal for her as a woman" and a doctor, and she says yes, yes, she's heard that from any number of amorous psychiatrists who toootally want to make her a better doctor. :D)

And she's the one who takes action to find out what's wrong with Ballantyne and try to get him some psychological help before the police lock him in the slammer. She's the one trying to figure out WTF is going on (while Gregory Peck is intermittently collapsing, staring off into space, being grouchy as fuck, or looking attractively dishevelled). And she doesn't give up. Not just because Peck is hot (though she certainly thinks so) but because she believes in his innocence and she isn't satisfied with the explanations she's getting. And then they get a happy ending, entirely due to her efforts, and Peck swoons a little less but still canonically "madly adores" her and thinks she's "brilliant."

So, I like her. She's cool. Bergman is hot. She gets the hot woobie. Very nice.

But then of course I run across someone being Wrong On The Internet about her. Okay, maybe Wrong In A Book? I was googling around to see if anyone had any opinions on Peck's more slashy roles, and came across some essay in a book on Google Books¹. Some kind of "queering the text" analysis of Hitchcock movies. And oh boy, are they wrong!

( cut for Spellbound spoilers )


It all starts to remind me of fans who decide that a female character has gotten in the way of their slash ship, so she must be a huge raging bitch (and that plant in the corner proves their faves are doing it). Or people who see an advertisement that features a beautiful, sexualized, perhaps vulnerable man, and go, "Oh wow! That's really homoerotic!" without stopping to think that, wait, straight and bi women just might have some interest in male beauty. Halfway through reading this thing, I said to myself, "Good lord. Some people just REALLY can't handle women being in charge." Women can't be assertive or take the lead role, especially not in a het relationship! No, there has to be some other explanation. He's gay. She's an alien agent of patriarchy. (I never did figure out why that was supposedly the case here.) Something. Anything, to prove a woman can't be the knight in shining armor.

I'm queer. I'm also a woman who really appreciates active female protagonists. I also enjoy a good dose of beautiful man occasionally, and if he's a little vulnerable along with his gorgeous broad shoulders and deep brown eyes and delicious ruffle-able hair, all the better. (I might, too, have a carefully-nursed pet peeve about how alpha male heroes are so much more common than dominant women and their pretty boy-toys in het romance.) I'm a m-slasher and a fem-slasher as long as the day is long. But it really gets my goat when people take a female hero I love and pretend all the awesome things about her don't exist.

Dr. Constance Peterson: brilliant, determined, gets the hot boy. And badly-conceived meta can go fuck off.


_________________________

(1) I've lost the link now, but I think it was for something called "Intimate Violence." I'm not opposed to queer theory generally, but just as I sometimes disagree with queer fandom meta, I had huge issues with this particular iteration of queer theory. It really felt like they were trying to force the facts to fit the thesis ("someone in this movie is queer and being oppressed by a straight woman, I just know it!") rather than the reverse.

(2) Even the 18-year-old son of Mucca's assistant lightkeeper feels that Guns of Navarone is pretty damn gay.

These have been fun so far on other people's journals. :D

Comment with one of my fandoms, and I'll tell you:

the character I least understand
interactions I enjoyed the most
the character who scares me the most
the character who is most like me
hottest looks character
one thing I dislike about my fave character
one thing I like about my hated character
a quote or scene that haunts me
a death that left me indifferent
a character I wish died but didn't
my ship that never sailed

I, er, maybe got a little carried away.



( 30 black & white icons from Gregory Peck's early career )

Also a thingy that I suppose one could use as a friends-only banner or one of those NaNoWriMo "You should be writing" inspirational graphics. (Once one had stopped wibbling in the corner, of course.)



:D

Mucca's on a Gregory Peck kick this week (one of which I fully approve), and has been showing me the woobie cut of various films. Today's was the slashy cut of The Guns of Navarone (1961).

Two points:

a) James Darren was Tiny Greek Private, omg. He was about twelve. Ahaha omg. <3 (I realize he was trying to get Serious Acting jobs at the time, instead of Teen Heartthrob ones, but since I first became aware of him as Vic Fontaine, my expectations were...not Tiny Earnest Murderstabby Kid. LOL.)

b) It was HELLA slashy. I mean, like. Starts out with two major m/m ships, and by the end of it Gregory Peck has reconciled with his estranged boyfriend from the original ship, and had chemistry with both members of the other ship (one of whom is David Niven: they shout at each other a lot, it's great).

There are lines like, "How long have you two been together?" and (woman, after asking Gregory Peck's Cretan boyfriend his salient details, then turning to Peck) "You're a lucky man." ("I know.") The canon het is very understated and not at all annoying, but it's really awfully slashy.

Oh, and c) Peck has a deeper voice than I remembered, and is almost as good at shouting at people as Paul McGann as William Bush is. :D

Hopefully get to watch The Scarlet & The Black later in the week. I remember really liking that one. (Yelling at Christopher Plummer in the Colloseum at night! Yess.)

sleepy wombatt


( five more colours )


silence to the death!


( five more colours + gone to Carlsbad )


hatpin tiem!


( five more colours + variant style )

I got the most lovely pile of presents in my stocking! (Jump to what I wrote.)

Fic: Hornblower (smutty) and Third Doctor (fluffy) and origfic lesbian SPACE pirates! <3 And the most adorable tiny Mrs. F- drabble for the_comfortable_courtesan! SQUEEE.

And art, and recs (Janeway, and Seven of Nine, and origfic f/f) and 2048 games! (More Janeway, more Seven! With the best picture choices evar.)

And icons!


Mockingbird (comics) by tarlanx


Firestorm (Jax) by falcon_horus and a matching Firestorm (Martin) one by me

If any of that looks fun, my stocking is over here and you're welcome to the icons or the fic recs or whatever. :D

---

Fic what I wrote: I wrote two fics (and a recs list). muccamukk talked me into kittens. I said, "But I don't know what to write!" and she said (picture the world's most adorable grin), "KITTENS!"

So I wrote kittens.


Title: Artemis At Sea for aqwt101
Fandom/Characters: Hornblower (TV miniseries); Hornblower/Bush, Styles
Rating/Word Count: 2600 words, gen/pre-slash
Summary: The ship's cat has kittens. Bush has opinions; Hornblower exhausts himself; Styles is given a heady commission. Started out meaning to be Hornblower vs kittens but ended up as Bush vs kittens. (Bush 0, kittens 2, ftr.)

Title: Tubbs, In Repose for schneefink
Fandom/Characters: Steerswoman (Rosemary Kirstein)/Neko Atsume crossover (yes really); Rowan, Willam, hints of Rowan/Bel and Willam/Corvus
Rating/Word Count: 2600 words, gen
Summary: Rowan vs Willam's "wizard cats." Spoilers through the end of the currently-published series (The Language of Power). My recipient asked for Rowan and Willam mentoring each other. This may have ended up more tilted in the "Rowan discovers new weird shit" direction. :P


In theory, there were several other stockings I wanted to fill. Quite possibly someday I will write Cordelia Vorkosigan vs the Cetagandan Embassy's bioengineered gift kitten, or Breq vs...any kitten at all. (Mucca: "What the hell does Breq do with a kitten??" Me: "Exactly! :D :D")


I also put together a lesbian romance (origfic f/f) recs list, since I've been reading so many of those lately. (Sometimes I want romance, and specifically want lady-loving romance. Fandom usually fills my m/m needs, and while my het needs are specific I usually know where to go for those. But I've been on an f/f binge lately and have been delighted with many of the results.) I should probably copy & paste the whole recs list in here at some point--maybe after I've read the last couple on the list, and a few of the ones recced to me in my stocking. (Notably, there was exactly one book that appeared on both lists. Since I've been waiting for Romancing The Inventor to exist for a couple of years, I don't mind. :D)