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Hurricane Helene has come and gone.

Here in my part of the subtropics it was a complete nothing, for which I'm thankful. A day off work, a four-hour period of gusty winds and resulting tree trash in the yard, and nothing else. (Well, there was anxiety, because I hate hurricanes, but that's a me thing.)

However, the storm has been unbelievably devastating elsewhere. The west coast of Florida had storm surge well away from the actual landfall, so there's big damage on the Tampa Bay-area barrier islands. But I am more worried about the historic rainfall and winds in Helene's path through Georgia, and the apocalyptic floods in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. I know so many people in Asheville and surrounding towns, and their lives are going to be absolutely upended for the next months, or years.

A candle is lit for them. :(

Televisual watching: I've started and am keeping up with Agatha All Along -- I enjoy the performances and the direction, although it's not exactly my genre. I've also started watching A Very Royal Scandal,
wherein Michael Sheen is doing a great but repulsive job as Prince Andrew and, in a small role, my fave Alex Jennings is killing it as Sir Edward Young, the senior courtier on the Queen's team.

Alex Jennings also gave a lovely commentary on the occasion of the great Dame Maggie Smith's death. Her passing is sad, and the harbinger of the end of a generation -- only Dame Judi and Dame Julie Andrews are left. I've been thinking about the only time I saw Dame Maggie onstage in Alan Bennett's The Lady in the Van; the absolute control of character, voice, and story she had! She was remarkable for sixty years, a one-off, wit and acid and beauty all her life. What a great woman.

Lastly, I had one more Twisters fic in me: "Indiscreet", Tyler/Kate. This started out as a scene, which led to me thinking of that fandom staple structure Five Times X Happened and One Time It Didn't; as I wrote, however, it just turned into Five Times Tyler and Kate Did Not Know the Meaning of the Word 'Discretion.' There is no One Time They Did. ;)

Hugs to all, and may the next week be a good one.

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!

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!

I am zipping by with a fic-in-progress recommendation (which, as we know, is always a bit dangerous). But anyway!

I did not watch the Agatha Christie's Miss Marple series when it was running (2004 was the beginning with Geraldine McEwan; 2009 was when Julia McKenzie took over; it ended in 2013). Part of that is my own uninterest in Christie's main detectives, other than my own beloved Tommy and Tuppence; part of that is because I read about how the series shoehorned Miss Marple into a Tommy-and-Tuppence story, rendering Tuppence a heavy drinker to boot, and I was and am offended at the very idea.

However, Fan of Note Leupagus recently watched one of the latter episodes with Julia McKenzie, "The Secret of Chimneys" (which wasn't even a Marple story to begin with), and they were struck all of a heap by the performance of Stephen Dillane as Inspector Finch, police officer of the episode. Mr. Dillane (who's about 14 or 15 years younger than Julia McKenzie) 100% played Finch as a) Miss Marple's No 1 Fanboy, and b) head over heels almost at first sight; Ms. McKenzie played Marple as charmed and confused. Here is the first Tumblr post to summarize and illustrate this performance; here is a clip from the episode, wherein the Romance Coding is very, very strong.

So anyway Leupagus has begun an ongoing fic, the absolute ultimate in slow-burns because Miss Marple has an enormous blind spot when it comes to her own heart and Finch has his own issues and idolizes her besides. As of this posting Leupagus is at Chapter 11; new chapters drop fairly regularly, as in, almost every day. The fic is "For Which the First Was Made,", and if you like older folk in love and having less than zero idea how to deal with it, much less speak it to the beloved, here you go.

Happy weekend!

For my own pleasure I'm going to explore the Loki Season 2 finale. My non-spoilery response: fucking beautifully done, perfectly forecasted, stunning, heartbreaking.

Spoilers ahead!

( Read more... )

Two televisual notes:

1) I, the person who does not binge, has binged Good Omens 2. Non-spoilery thoughts: well, that was All the Hee! until it wasn't, there at the end of Episode 6; Tennant and Sheen, Sheen and Tennant, a team to rival some of the all-time great teams; a guest star in Episode 3 and a guest star (of a League, heh) in Episode 4 made me unreasonably happy; GIVE US SEASON THREE, FINISH THE STORY, for real for real. (Mr. Gaiman has stated that he's ready to write the concluding chapter/series as soon as the strike's over if Amazon renews the show.)

2) I have finished Series/Season 2 of Almost Paradise, which did some fun stuff; the episode titled "Uncoupled" was especially delightful, and it went to places and tropes I was NOT expecting. I continue to love Christian Kane, and the hint of a canonical relationship setting up at the end of the season made me ponder -- has CK had a real onscreen romantic relationship in the series he's worked in? (I'm not sure I would count Darla or Angel, but you might.) The OT3 of Leverage and Leverage: Redemption is subtextual, with writers and producers not quite admitting the Parker/Hardison/Eliot of it all. I can't remember The Librarians well enough, although I vaguely remember him flirting with Cassandra.

So, anyway, it's fun to see him play the kind of storyline I haven't seen him play but have imagined in fanfiction. ;)

Hugs, and good thoughts for a good start to August.

Tonight here in the States, the penultimate episode of Endeavour airs.

It's bittersweet, this ending. Baby Morse (well, he's hardly a baby any longer) has been broken so that we see where the grouchy elder Morse has come from. Because I know the spoilers from when the series aired in the UK, I know that we'll learn (alas) why Fred Thursday is never mentioned in Morse. Still, as always I love the beauty of the show and the brilliance of Shaun Evans, Roger Allam, et al. I think the ending will work, and we'll always have nine series of wonderfulness to hold onto.

The other great British detective I've been spending time with is Adam Dalgliesh. I've rewatched Series Two of Dalgliesh -- I heart Bertie Carvel so, so much -- and I've managed to read five of the later P.D. James novels.

For many years I've bounced off the James novels, but now that I have BCarvel in my mind's eye and ear, I can soldier on (at least with the later novels). I realize why I've had such difficulty in the past, though: there's something not just austere but also rather humorless in James's work, which is also my only qualm with the Dalgliesh series. It's hard to understand how James would have liked Jane Austen so much, because those Austenian delicious ironies are just not present in P.D. James' work at all. Ah well, I'm still fascinated by the attention PDJ pays to enclosed societies (church, hospital, Cornish island, etc) and the way she analyzes the faultlines therein.

Still, I love the TV show more (you know, because Bertie Carvel), and unless or until the producers and writers give us Emma Lavenham, I am happy to ship TV Adam Dalgliesh and TV Kate Miskin.

So I've written this: "Proper Date," in a world where after Series 2's "The Murder Room," Kate Miskin goes off to work elsewhere and she and Adam try to date. If only their schedules would cooperate.... (This is also set in the late 70s, as is the TV show so far.)

Who's your favorite TV version of a great British detective? Whoever it is, may you enjoy the question. Hugs to all.

Work has started back in earnest, alas. I've done this job for a long, long time, and I fear I have lost the spark. But on we go.

I've a list of media to watch -- I do not binge, but watch maybe an hour every other night -- but I do enjoy the weekly drops of Leverage: Redemption and Abbott Elementary, and I need to start this season of All Creatures Great and Small. Christian Kane as Eliot and Sam West as Siegfried are lights in this no-spark January.

(In fact, after watching a Leverage: Redemption episode last week, I pulled out an old Christian Kane CD to hear that mellifluous voice. I'm tempted to do an Angel rewatch of the first 2 seasons, and then the Wes/Lilah arc....)

And I'd love to write a few short fics, but I'm not feeling any inspiration. Again, no spark. But on we go.

What's giving you joy this January? Hugs, and may you have more of it.

Sunday evening, and I've reached a turning point in this last month of the year -- work shifting a bit and then a couple of weeks of break, social events (what?), and time to address some of the nagging issues in my house.

(The first issue is tree trimming. The second issue: probably replacing the loveseat, which Miss Adventure has thoroughly trashed in her not-quite-three years with me.)

But oh, I am dragging indeed. I need a proper vacation and a Jeeves to take care of all those aforementioned nagging issues, and neither is on the horizon.

What else...I watched the Amazon Prime TV movie Your Christmas or Mine, which is a Brit-com about two young lovers from different classes who through the magic of Crimbo farce find themselves at the other's home for Christmas. I watched it because my forever fave Alex Jennings and Harriet Walter are in it, and they are the best parts of the film by far, as if they wandered in from a better Brit-com but decided to stay and do the best they could with their stock roles. Also, Alex remains gorgeous, which of course I already knew. ;)

But because of that, I think I might drag out my Christmas decorations tonight. It's not much, but I do find myself cheered by the lights and glitter.

May you have a bright and shiny start to your week.

My plans to post more in 2022 have not been wildly successful, I confess...

Work's been crazy, and it's the time of year when life admin (like, doing my taxes online whilst Miss Adventure barked for two straight hours) has piled up. So much life admin. I look at my to-do list and scream internally a lot.

But otherwise -- I wish I felt fannish about something and could fic, but I mostly don't. I am watching off and on Abbott Elementary; I have been watching Series Two of All Creatures Great and Small (Sam West as Siegfried, love love love); I rewatched the 2016 National Theatre Twelfth Night (Oliver Chris and Tamara Lawrance, sigh); I'm going back to rewatch Wandavision before the next Doctor Strange movie. That's about all the pop culture I've been consuming.

Oh, and I've started listening to the Audible Sandman (Part One for now) while I knit.

Travel is supposedly in my immediate future, and I'll post afterwards. Maybe. Probably. :)

Cheers to all, and a happy week ahead!