solitary_summer | (no subject) (Reply)

The cat and I will definitely have to work on our relationship... Yesterday night she jumped me in best Hobbes-style when I came home, vehemently insisted on coming inside, and after a while fell asleep beneath my desk. Then we went through the same spiel again; I put her outside, but was already too wide awake & spent the next one and a half hours or so reading before there was any possibility of going back to sleep.

So I'm finally up at almost 11, a good part of the day gone; with half a headache and feeling anything but rested.

It wouldn't be so bad, but there's my father's birthday, and family dinner, and I only came home just before midnight yesterday after making yet another cake (Apfelschnitte)...

Damn autumn birthdays. One cake per weekend, it seems...

Andromeda, Harper/Delete: Boring. Bad. Only remotely interesting scene was the last one, when it's revealed just how ruthlessly captain heroic had not only been gambling his own life, but also his crew's without ever bothering to inform them, and how matter-of-factly he shrugs off their justifiably horrified reactions. This, in retrospect throws a slightly different light on Dylan's line about how it must have irritated Tyr that he hadn't been able to influence him more, because it's entirely untrue. The Dylan who comes out of his three hundred year slumber is shaped by Rhade's betrayal, and subsequently, by Tyr, trying to live up to Tyr's expectations, to prove himself superior, to succeed where he'd failed with Rhade. Of course there were issues he could not and would never concede, - perhaps not even so much out of any abstract ethical considerations, but because conceding would have meant defeat - but in more subtle ways Tyr did a lot to bring out the harder and colder sides of his character, constantly pushing him, and the irony (or tragedy) is, that apparently only Tyr had enough weight to stand up to him and at least occasionally make him question himself and his motivations; Rommie will never be disloyal, Trance sees him as a means of salvation from some horrible future, and, scheming goddess that she is, only pushes him indirections that suit her plans and will support him unless he threatens them, and at this point neither Beka (whom he is no longer dependent upon) nor Harper have much influence any longer. And Dylan himself... he probably misses the constant challenge at least as much as the tentative friendship; trying to outwit Caleb you could see a mixture of adrenaline, deadly focus and sheer enjoyment perhaps tinged with some nostalgia and a twisted kind of regret that winning was too easy...

It might almost persuade me that someone hasn't quite given up on a more shaded characterisation.

Or else this is me, in a pathetic attempt of trying to make sense of a crappy episode of an increasingly crappy show.

Smallville, 'Slumber' First impression: rape of two perfectly good innocent REM songs... Everybody Hurts should not ever be used in an attempt to compensate for TW & KK's lack of acting skills and/or chemistry. However, the 'dream' was a good idea, at least as far as Smallville standards go. Especially the Lex dream sequence was truly startling by its intensity and emotional directness, as well as revealing, seeing as it comes from Clark's subconscious mind and shows that he has finally realised that he's made an epic-scale mistake with Lex, very likely irreversible by this time; also his fear and regret at the possibility of losing Lex's ~~love~~ friendship, which was interesting insofar as it had never been really made clear what Lex means to Clark, who has a tendency to throw around the word friendship in a very casual manner and with very little substance behind.

The contrast with their other scene together couldn't be more stark - back to careful superficialities skirting around the real issue.

[ETA: On a second viewing it occurs to me that Clark's 'We both know appearances can be deceiving, Lex. ' is as close as he's ever come to even hinting at the truth; a marked change of attitude apparently under the impression of his dream.]

Greek lawyers are going to sue, because Oliver Stone portrayed Alexander as bisexual? Oh please. I honestly can't imagine there's a court that wouldn't laugh in their collective face. The man's been dead for 2300something years, as likely as not was bisexual, though neither can be conclusively proved... In whose name are they going to sue, anyway? I'm aware this ties into the whole modern political conflict about Northern Greece/Macedonia, but from a historical point of view this embracing of Alexander while at the same time celebrating ancient Greece as the birthplace of democracy and whatnot is something of a tour de force and really rather ridiculous, because (regardless of whether or not Alexander spoke Greek), um, Chaironeia? Thebes? Antipatros, Demetrios Poliorketes, Greece occupied by Macedonian garrisons? de facto end of Greek democracy and end of the independence and political importance of the Greek city states? That's Alexander, too. A Macedonian king on the Achaemenid throne to whom the squabbles of the Greek city-states would have been a very minor problem, and probably of equally little interest, had he lived longer.

On second thoughts, by all means, go ahead. It might be fun to see a bunch of homophobic asshats without even a smattering of historical knowledge make fools of themselves in public.

[ETA: On the other hand... when I said I dreaded Alexcander becoming a fandom? This is what I meant. Gah. Fangirls with slash-coloured googles, as little historical knowledge as abovementioned lawyers and no concept of cultural differences. ::headdesk::]