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At last, here we go. My season is about to start --

For values of 'about' meaning that yes, it's marginally cooler now but the actual proper turn of the season in the swampland is a good two or three weeks away. But it's better. Marginally.

I'm clinging to the goodness of autumn, because oh my God I have been battered by friends' bad news the past couple of weeks. I don't know about you, but there's something destabilizing about wave after wave of bad news. Even if there's a day or two where everything seems fine, I'm hypervigilant. Anxious as damnit.

Oh well.

Otherwise, I have a list of, like, fifteen shows to watch on my streaming services, but I have not been able to bring myself to watch anything -- other than Hit Man, the Richard Linklater movie starring and co-written by Glen Powell. It's well done, Powell's great, and I've been thinking about the movie's lightly drawn take on identity and role-playing. It was fun.

But because I have been anxious as damnit, I've finished the Twisters series I've been writing, and for the sake of completion, I'll link the last two fics:
*"Best Moves," wherein everyone conspires against Tyler for his own good and also, there's a dog;
*"Best Days (Slight Return)," which is the end of the story. (A happy end, and the characters will go on to have great lives. Because I'm anxious and I want them to be fine.)

Anyway! We persevere! Hugs to all, and a good beginning to your autumn.

September at last! September at last!

Of course, because I'm in the swampy subtropics, autumn is more like six weeks away. (I cannot tell you how high the dewpoint is here, but it's the kind of steam where a step out the door brings on the sweat.) But the light is changing at last, and I can see my favorite season coming.

Besides work and anxiety, I've started watching Kaos on Netflix. It's basically a modern AU of Greek mythology; Zeus (played by Jeff Goldblum) is King of the Gods, he's married to Hera (played by Janet McTeer), etc. etc, but he's a tyrant. His old "friend" Prometheus, played brilliantly by my fave Stephen Dillane, is at once a prisoner, the narrator of the show, and orchestrator of a plot against the gods. What follows is, like the title says, something chaotic.

There are a LOT of characters and threads, maybe too many for my taste. It's dark and comic at the same time. But three episodes in, I'm intrigued.

I don't see myself being fannish about it, however. Right now my fandom activity is in Twisters. Two links:

*The fanvids are very heavy on Taylor Swift, which doesn't entirely surprise me. ;) One of my favorites is this Kate/Tyler vid, "Cowboy Like Me". The vid does a great job of showcasing why I love this pairing.

And I've started a followup to "Best Days", the freeform fic I wrote which is after canon. The new fic is what happens when the new tornado season starts and what Kate and Tyler have to figure out: "Best Laid Plans", Chapter One.
EDITED TO ADD: And the second and final chapter is up too.

Happy weekend, happy week ahead!

In case anyone hasn't seen this --

It was announced today that director Jamie Lloyd is bringing Shakespeare to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, taking advantage of the interim between Frozen and Hercules.

First up in December and January -- Sigourney Weaver as Prospero (or Prospera).

The second show is of course the one that made me shout with joy. Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell, Benedick and Beatrice, Much Ado in February and March.

I knew a big stage announcement was coming because he'd mentioned it obliquely a couple of months ago, but this, oh my God, THIS.

Since it's Drury Lane (1990+ seats) and I signed up for priority booking, we'll see if I can get tickets when booking opens for Much Ado in a few weeks. We persevere!!

Happy middle of your week. :)

Fifteen things for 15 June and my fifteenth post of the year:

1) My fave Alex Jennings has been given a CBE in this year's Birthday Honours List. Hurray for Alex! Well past time!
2) Other cool folk have been honored too, like Dame Imelda Staunton, but let's be real, we know where my heart lies.
3) It's amusing me that this is the "birthday" honours list, because KCIII's actual birthday is in November, but I guess this is his birthday observed.
4) After sustained hideous heat, the subtropics where I am have transitioned to ordinary hideous heat. However, we're not getting the rain we need, and I miss it.
5) No real news about stuff I've watched. I'm behind on Doctor Who (although I caught the episode with Rogue, which was cute), and I haven't started Bridgerton Series Three yet.
6) This is because instead I've been slowly getting through more of The Tunnel, also known as Let's Torture (Emotionally and Otherwise) Karl and Elise, the Show. I've now watched four episodes of the final Series Three and, because I read Wikipedia and know the ending, am not entirely sure I have the fortitude to finish the last two episodes...
7)... Even though Stephen Dillane suffers so prettily!
8) We will see.
9) The Night Manager Series Two has just started filming, but that's a year away, and heaven alone knows when Dalgliesh Series Three comes out (although it has FINISHED filming).
10) Am contemplating another Medium blogpost about style, but while I'm thinking, I've also been sorting through clothes to send to Goodwill and clothes to send to ThredUp.
11) In the ThredUp pile for consignment will also be a v.v.expensive handbag that I still think is cool but does not work for my life, alas. Better to let it go to someone else than to stay in my wardrobe.
12) This summer has been profoundly expensive, I must say. First, a new roof; this past week, several thousand dollars of tree-trimming.
13) Besides the fact that I don't want to retire in the subtropics, this house will be too expensive to maintain once I've retired. Time to save for the move (in just under two years).
14) So my summer projects are writing, cutting back on Diet Coke, and taking a bunch of Pilates classes, none of which are interesting to record here at Dreamwidth.
15) Let us close, then, by saying that Miss Adventure and I wish you a happy third week of June!

I have always loved the spymasters, deeply compromised as they always, always are.

I mean, I love spy stories in general, as I wrote about here in this very journal. Both of my longest-running fic series (Investigations and Acquisitions for Giles/Anya and the early-series world of Spooks, the Power stories for Mycroft/Anthea) are in part espionage stories. Masterful Fucked-Up Master Spies! It's one of my things!

So, in the course of my Stephen Dillane spring, I have discovered that Mr. Dillane has played two different spymasters in recent(ish) series. I've tried both of them.

*Alex Rider, a series on Amazon Prime with a third and final season dropping in a week or so -- this trailer for Series One has a few snippets of Dillane as Alan Blunt (the Man in a Three-Piece Suit with a beard and only a few lines), who's supposedly head of a super-secret branch of MI6. He's not the focus of the story in any way, however; the titular character, a teenage wunderkind named Alex Rider who becomes a spy like his (dead) parents and (soon dead) uncle, gets all the screentime. I am too old to enjoy a teen-centered action show.

With that being said, I'll probably watch a few more episodes, with heavy use of the fast-forward option, because Dillane's Alan Blunt is a quintessential spymaster -- well-dressed! sardonic! ruthless! -- albeit with apparently a kinder edge than the Anthony Horowitz source books or the movie version. That is very much my jam.

*Red Election, showing in the US on Hulu, is one ten-episode season: its trailer here sets up the basic story. MI5 (ah, Thames House, albeit with different sets than Spooks), led by spymaster William Ogilvy played by Dillane, gets swept up in a plot connected to Scottish independence. The focus of the v. LeCarre-styled action is Ogilvy's MI5-agent daughter Beatrice, played by Lydia Leonard, and her Danish-agent counterpart, with assistance from Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as another MI5 lead agent; the Prime Minister in the show is played by v. cute James D'Arcy, btw.

I am fairly sure that Dillane's character is going to turn out to be a baddie, but I don't care (much). In all the Thames House scenes, he is v much a Grey Man, in grey suits and oversized glasses, the lighting making him look his age whilst he is nevertheless ruthless as fuck. However, this greyness is a disguise for who he really is (except he's still ruthless as fuck). In Episode One, for instance, there's a sequence where his daughter comes to his house for dinner, which he's cooking; here, in softer, more golden light, he looks ten years younger, and he's wearing a soft black button-down shirt and black jeans, which readers of I&A might remember was always Giles's spy-gear. There's a shot in this scene sequence where he leans back in his chair, firelight aglow all around him and glinting off the glasses he has pushed to the top of his head, and when I saw it I literally made a noise that alarmed Miss Adventure. THIS IS MY JAM. (Second episode, he wears a tux. Come on! I am only human!)

So that's my spring with the spymasters so far. ;)

(I am still watching The Tunnel, too, although the end of Series One all but broke me. Stop torturing Karl, show!)

Wishing you an April filled with things you love!

Recently I've been thinking a lot about detectives -- in TV and books, mostly.

There are certain idiosyncratic truths: I'm less interested in hardboiled than in the more cozy British-Golden-Age types; even so, the really uber-twee cozies of the past decade or so are not to my taste. I'm also less interested in police detectives in books although I'm usually in favor of them in TV series. I prefer series to standalones.

But what I realize is that for me, there are two tiers of detective series. The second tier is where I'm invested in the detectives but I'm not hugely invested in the mysteries themselves. This could be anything from Deanna Raybourn's Veronica Speedwell book series, where I happily follow Veronica and Stoker (and my darling Tiberius) but the actual crime-solving bits are very hit-or-miss for me, to my current nighttime viewing of Series One of 2012's The Tunnel.

I adore Stephen Dillane as Karl Roebuck, rumpled, sarky mensch albeit with one fatal flaw (about as faithful in love as a tomcat, c'mon, Karl, get it together), and I'm thoroughly enjoying Clemence Poesy as his French counterpart/sometime detecting partner Elyse, cool, bisexual, and on the spectrum. My heart belongs to detective pairs in love, but in this case I actually am delighted by Karl and Elyse's friendship which has absolutely no sexual tension whatsoever.

The first series, however, has an ongoing Big Bad mystery with smaller mysteries set up by the villain, and...I find it hard to care. Stuff's happening, fine, but let's get back to Karl and Elyse.

The top tier of detective series for me is where I do care about both the detective(s) and the mysteries. My personal gold standard is the Wimsey novels with the exception of The Five Red Herrings and, sadly, The Nine Tailors. I'd say the first two series of Sherlock hit this top tier for me in four of the six episodes. (The less said about "The Blind Banker," the better, even though Bertie Carvel's in it.) Weirdly, too, the original run of The X-Files works for me with the Monster of the Week episodes, less so with the myth-arc stuff.

(Of course, if you look at my ficcing, from Giles/Anya on, it's detecting and spies all the way, so...)

Do you have a favorite detective series? I hope you get to spend time with it soon. :)

Oh my god I'm so tired and it's only Tuesday.

Let's move on, for we persevere.

1) My TBR pile totters unsafely near my desk (or rather, my main TBR pile, with a secondary TBR pile in a spare room), and it's really out of control.
2) So what do I want to read now? I want to order some random Margery Allingham non-Campion mystery from the 30s. Why am I like this. Why.
3) My five months of not buying clothes is underway -- one month successfully down! But because I have excepted scarves and shoes from my no-buy policy, have I been scoping out potential purchases to replace or fill in gaps? OF COURSE I HAVE.
4) Miss Adventure has been going to a doggie daycare once (or sometimes twice) a week for three+ years, and it is the bright spot in her week. Alas, however, it is closing, and the only alternative will be less boutique and more of a hassle to get to and from. Still, she needs her socializing.
5) And the good thing about the alternative daycare is that there is an actual proper pool, and from April to October she can swim in the afternoons. She LOVES swimming.
6) The azaleas and camellias are out, here in the subtropics, and they are brave in pinks from pale to fuchsia. I do love a bright, bright pink.

Wishing you a happy week!

It was chilly in the subtropics overnight, which meant I worried about my thermostat setting (I have a heat pump, which is highly efficient until 40 degrees F and then...is not.) Now the subtropics are getting a tropical wave of warmth, which means it will be uncomfortable next weekend. Sigh...

But otherwise, I am back at work, hanging on by the very tips of my fingers.

What I'm reading: Miss Dior by Justine Picardie, which focuses on Catherine Dior and her relationship to her brother Christian. I'm in the section where Catherine, who was a member of the French Resistance in WWII, was sent to Ravensbruck, so it's not exactly light entertainment.

What I'm watching: All Creatures Great and Small (the season the UK just had), the occasional Marple mystery on Britbox, and still Slow Horses. But does anyone else struggle in watching new shows? I am v. busy and I just don't have a lot of time....

Lastly, I'm thinking about British theatre and the two (!) new productions of Oedipus in Fall 2024 and Winter 2025, as well as trying to cajole my travel buddy into seeing the Brian Cox-led Long Day's Journey into Night in May. (I will skip Player-Kings, wherein Ian McKellan plays Falstaff. I fucking hate Falstaff.)

So -- hope everyone has a great week ahead!

We're a day past the solstice, and light is returning.

For a person who hates summer, this is not an unalloyed blessing, but I do understand that others like the sun more than I do. ;) And there is power in the change of seasons and the cycles of time and light.

My own week past has been a quiet one, with extra Pilates classes, a trip to the local art museum, and a few sessions of decluttering, which will intensify in the next weeks. I got all my holiday shopping done and posted ten days ago, too, and while I have a Boxing Day party to attend and a day trip on the 28th with a pal, my schedule is otherwise un-booked.

But today is my major Christmas gift to myself -- a deep-tissue massage to dig out the worst of the stress gone by.

I wish you a gift that brings you joy and ease, and I wish you light in the next few days.

Four unrelated things:

1) I am five days into a nasty cold. Of course I tested multiple times for Covid, but nope, it's just an old-fashioned streaming ugh of a rhinovirus. Worked all through it (wearing a mask for coming in contact with others, and making liberal use of hand sanitizer), and now I am so worn out. The cold is starting to fade, however.

2) I am so, so sad to hear about Matthew Perry's passing. In the 90s I did watch Friends (and was deeply invested in Chandler/Monica), and Chandler was my favorite; Matthew Perry invested him with so many layers, and his physical and verbal comic acuity was so specific and delightful that I enjoyed a character type I sometimes have trouble with. (See: Xander Harris.) I also enjoyed him on the short-lived Studio 90 on the Sunset Strip.

I recommend Daniel Fienberg's 'Critic's Appreciation' in the Hollywood Reporter for a beautifully drawn reading of Perry's gifts.

3) With a topic-shift worthy of one of Tom Hiddleston's Loki hairflips: Loki Episodes 3 and 4, oh my God. Spoiler-free: Episode 3 worked best for me when we were with Loki, Mobius, and Sylvie, but I also loved the visuals, the costumes and the sets for that ep; Episode 4 WHAT THE HELL WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO ME. Really well done, show.

4) I've been thinking a lot about Dalgliesh and what a relationship between TV!Dalgliesh and TV!Kate (who are different from the books) would look like. I also ran across several mentions of P.D. James's Dalgliesh and a quote from Graham Greene about the artist and the detective having a "sliver of ice" in his heart. Well then. I have written a little fic on the topic: "Sliver of Ice," wherein Adam thinks a lot, as is his wont, and makes a decision.

Look, I just like thinking about Bertie Carvel's Dalgliesh, it's a thing.

Anyway, happy Sunday to all, and I leave you with hugs and a quote from Loki in Episode 4: "Hope is hard." In these fraught days, it's true, but it's also something to hold on to.