Um. I didn't mean to disappear off the face of the Earth livejournal so completely, but life got a bit hectic since January. (In an extremely boring and uninspiring way, I should probably hasten to add.) Apart from work there's the bookkeeping class I'm still not very sure about, but have to do homework and study a bit for nonetheless, A. is keeping me busy with Russian and Russian homework and we're working on vocabulary at the moment, which is something I actually am sure about and enjoy doing, so I try to make more than a half-assed, just-scraping-by effort, and L. has been sending me texts to translate that I keep agreeing to do even if before I'd already have said that I don't have time, not even so much because of the money, but because I'm still hoping the experience might come in useful eventually. And although the weather is doing its best to sabotage me at the moment, I'm at least trying to squeeze the occasional hiking tour into the schedule to keep me sane, because the last couple of times I went out with G., alcoholism suddenly started to look quite tempting. (Kidding. There's absolutely no chance I'm going there, but, tempting.)

Oh, and the Meta from Hell (tm), which surprisingly is actually still going somewhere and there isn't even a 'RTD meta draft 5' yet, so, go me.

[Rewatch-status: DW S1: even better than I remembered. S2... a bit meh-ish maybe, because I'm not really into the more blatantly romantic Doctor/Rose angle. School Reunion is still lovely though, the Cybermen two-parter is also very good, The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit has some interesting ideas, and in my admittedly unpopular opinion 90% of Love & Monsters is among the best things RTD has written for DW overall and the best episode he wrote for S2. (The remaining 10% being the actual physical realisation of the Abzorbaloff, and the 'sex life' joke, which personally I still don't find all that horribly offensive, but I hate having to feel defensive all the time for loving the episode, so.) I don't much care for the Cybermen vs. Daleks extravaganza of the S2 finale, and I can't even say I found the Doctor/Rose part particularly touching after the first time I watched it, but Love & Monsters kills me every time, even before the final reveal of Elton's mother's death. You see these people connecting, and maybe it isn't much, maybe it isn't special in the greater scheme of things, but it says so much about how amazing it is that these connections can happen at all when they are so inherently fragile and there is so much that can go wrong, and how important they are. It's starts out as such a light, funny episode on the surface, but it has this strong dark undercurrent that makes it actually quite brutal, and really,'love and monsters' is TW in a nutshell. Human connections in an environment that is fundamentally hostile to them in every sense. There is a thematic connection there IMO, and it's not just structural similarities like Gwen and the Weevil, which is reminiscent of Elton and whatever the monster at the beginning of the episode is called, as well as the forgetting/remembering theme, or Gwen, like Elton, stumbling into something that opens a whole new world up to her in the best and the worst sense, triggering a sort of existentialist crisis. Not to mention that in Cyberwoman 'love' and 'monster' are actually thematic keywords of a sort. I'm not saying it's deliberate, but themes do carry over.

I'm in the middle of TW S1 now, and it's funny, because I always said, and I still do think that's true, that thematically TW never changed as radically as people sometimes claim, but going back, there is at least a bit of a sense of 'aw, they're all still so young and innocent' about it, especially in the first few episodes. Also realised that I have, like, sub-sub-zero interest in pre-Cyberwoman Ianto, although admittedly that might be because the whole coffee-(boy)-angle has been too thoroughly tainted by the post-CoE wank as far as I'm concerned. The character only becomes interesting when you see what goes on beneath the surface, and it's a brilliant set-up that in the long run gives Jack/Ianto some depth, although I have no idea if that was even deliberate, since I seem to remember reading that originally Ianto wasn't meant to survive the episode? Speaking of shipping, though, JB and EM have the kind of off-the-scale chemistry in Ghost Mashine that makes me wonder every time about what Jack/Gwen could have been like if they'd really gone for that angle, and I still don't understand what happened afterwards that led to all those painfully awkward UST-or-whatever-that-was scenes later on...)]

(Also, not that this is particularly relevant, since I'll still be primarily posting here, but since the AO3 officially allows meta now, I got myself an account and am going to upload at least the longer, more coherent pieces eventually...)

 

How did I manage to miss this vid for three years? (Although looking at the date I can actually see how that might have happened...) Brilliant. Dark, but very much to the point. I especially love how she uses footage from S1 to CoE and it fits just perfectly. (Download link is here.)

# While it's still 2012 — A happy New Year, everyone!

# Still coughing, but today I got so stir crazy that I went for a short hiking tour regardless, and it doesn't seem to have done much damage. And the day was absolutely, although perhaps somewhat unseasonably, gorgeous (see below).

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# Christmas was okay-ish. Spent the 24th with the parents and a good part of the 25th baking our traditional Mohnstrudel, which for once did turn out really well. (Especially gratifying since last time I made if for my sister's birthday 1) the yeast dough didn't really rise and 2) I fell asleep, because by the time I put it in the oven it was well past midnight, and the damn thing very nearly burned. Stayed at home on the 26th, though, since I didn't want to pass the cold on to the nieces, and I wasn't really up to so much family, either.

# Merlin, again, because the more I actually think about it, the more the ending annoys me. It is a cheap cop-out in the end, not to mention manipulative both on a Watsonian and Doylist level.

An Arthur not days/hours away from death and despite everything grateful for Merlin doing everything to save his life would have asked harder questions about more specific instances, like if they would even be in this place if Merlin hadn't lied to his face a mere eight episodes earlier. And it's simply not true that Arthur would just have chopped Merlin's head of if he'd found out. Uther would have, no doubt about that, but if Merlin had sat Arthur down some time after Uther's death and said something along the lines of, well, at the time we didn't want you to kill his father, but what you learned from Morgause was actually true, ask Gaius if you don't believe me? Merlin is a classic case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions, and he can go on blaming himself for Arthur right along with Morgana. But does the show intend for us to see it that way?

And the audience is too distracted by the fanservice and too busy sniffing and hunting for tissues to notice that, or that the issue of magic and the old religion was quite a bit more complex than a teary 'But I did it all for you'.

Once again, right until the end, Arthur has no agency whatever, getting himself killed in a war that he could very likely have been avoided if only he'd known all the facts.

Gah. Enough said.

# Downloaded the DW Christmas episode, because, hey, it's been more than a year and a half, maybe I've changed my mind? Except things never happens like that, do they?

# Spent a rather indecent amount of money on a fjällräven parka and feel really kind of guilty. Granted, two thirds of it were gift vouchers I got from the parents and sister for Christmas, but still...

# Started the fourth draft of the Meta from Hell (tm). Every time I open the damn thing after a couple of months and look at it, somehow a complete re-write or at least rearrangement seems to be necessary. Kill me now, please.

 

Merlin finale... ( Mixed feelings )

In conclusion... Bye, show. After the increasing frustration of the last years I can't say I'll miss you very much, but you had your moments; it's a pity that as a whole you never really managed to live up to them.

It's been a while since I used this journal for more day-to-day blogging, so there are probably only 1-2 people still around who know what I'm talking about, but if anyone remembers the horse I complained about not so infrequently... Ch. (her owner) had her put to sleep yesterday. She had a (typical, stupid, stupid, stupid, and she should have been quieter at her somewhat advanced age) accident a month ago, and, from what I gathered (Ch. and I haven't been talking since Sunday, only texting back and forth, to avoid mutual breaking into tears), it turned out at the check-up after three weeks of stable rest that she almost completely tore a major tendon in her left foreleg. I googled that kind of injury yesterday, and while it's apparently not impossible to heal, to do so takes up to a year of stable rest with very, very limited, controlled movement, that is, no paddock or pasture, and she's already over 25, not trained, and has osteoarthrosis in her hind legs... And she's used to being outside with the other horses. From what Ch. said the vet told her that the chances of recovery are minimal and that she'd never be able to walk without pain. It wasn't my decision to make, which I'm incredibly grateful for, but it was probably for the best...

I drove out for a last visit on Tuesday, let her walk for a bit, since she wanted to, stop by the other horses on the paddock, let her eat apples off the ground and fed her lots of carrots, both of which was forbidden for the last year or so, because she has — had, that is — Cushing's syndrome, but at this point it obviously didn't make a difference any longer. I hope she enjoyed it at least a bit.


So, all in all, it's been a pretty shitty week so far...


( I don't have many pictures of her uploaded, but here are a few old ones... )

Firstly — Merlin 5.05, where things are finally getting serious. (And a bit more ambitious than ~comic relief~, thank God.) The one minor quibble I have is that I seem to remember that Arthur was already more respectful towards magic/the old religion, but my memories are more than a bit fuzzy here because for the last couple of seasons I haven't exactly been watching very attentively. This aside, The Disir is the best and strongest episode in a very long while, and it made me go from meh to genuinely curious what kind of an ending we are heading towards.

( spoilers )


Secondly, picture spam. This is from my brief and too-soon-over holiday last week, before the snow. From Hallstatt up to the Wiesberghaus (1.884m). I only regret not taking pictures on my way up when it was still sunny... (In case anyone is interested, this (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) is what it looked like on top. I'm only linking these pictures because they're really crap photography-wise, but there is little you can do if the sky is completely colourless/white...)

( descent into the mist )

More backlog clearing...

I didn't actually mean to disappear for another two months, but life has been... Hard to say, really. Partly busy, partly depressing, and partly just going through it day after day and just not feeling that any of it is particularly worth writing about. ( Read more... )

~*~*~

A few uninspired pictures from the two of the three hiking tours I actually managed during my holiday. During the second week it rained nonstop for two days, after which it looked like this higher up: (The lake is at 1154 m.)

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These are from last Sunday, although after last week at work it feels so much longer than that. From Mitterlengau up the Schusterkogel, and then along the rim of the valley via Teufelssprung and Hohe Penhab back down again. The mood is very different here, because while the mountains are about the same height, this is slate rather than limestone, so there are alpine meadows right up until 2.000+ m. (Which personally I'm not so very fond of, because cows? Large heavy animals with pointy horns, and not always so peaceful, especially when they're in a herd with their calves. I'd definitely prefer them behind fences. At least it was apparently still too early in the year for them to be all the way up, so most of the hike was blessedly bovine-free...)

This was also the most relaxed tour, because I didn't put any pressure on myself, but let myself stop for taking pictures, breaks, or just to sit down and enjoying the view for a bit, because I knew I had to drive back to Vienna the next day and really, really didn't want to leave. I don't remember having felt so at peace for a long time, although sadly last week killed that mood pretty fast.

Horses, for a change. At least better than cows, although I try to keep a respectful distance too...



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Finally sorted out and uploaded (although admittedly still rather indiscriminately) my pictures from last week's hiking tours in Salzburg to flickr. They're really nothing much photography-wise, all credit is due to the sheer gorgeousness of the landscape, but I enjoyed that time so much that my sense of self-critique refuses to cooperate. Hence, picture spam.

My level of fitness, or rather lack thereof, still makes 1.000+ m of hight difference a bit of an exercise in masochism, but I've never been to Salzburg this early in the year, and not only was it still incredibly quiet and peaceful — even on a Sunday I was more or less alone for most of the day and only met a handful of hikers towards the end of the tour —, but it caught me by surprise how much spring still lingers up in the mountains. Above 1.700, 1.800 m there were still plenty of snowfields, and in other places you could still see the pressed-down dried grass where the snow had molten only recently, with the first flowers coming out.

This batch of pictures is from Monday when we had a heatwave and I got up at 4:30ish and started out at 6:15 in the morning to avoid the worst of the heat, up to the Passauer Hütte. (Which I forgot to take a picture of, but you can sorta kinda see on a high resolution version of the tenth picture, where the right edge of the clouds meets the top of the mountain.) The pictures were taken on the way down, so they're in reverse order, snow and rocks to tree-line and flowers...

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