lirazel: Cordelia Chase from Angel smiling ([tv] cordy!)
[personal profile] lirazel
I have not felt like watching anything serious for the last couples of weeks, so what did I decide to do instead? I am watching Due South for the first time since it was airing! The show was my family's favorite when I was a kid, and I have memories of the characters and the vibes, but I have zero memory of the details. It's been really fun revisiting it and I am currently ten episodes in.

Is this show good? Not by any objective standard. Is it profoundly silly? It sure is! But y'all, I love Benton Fraser so much. As a child, I imprinted on him like a little baby ducking, and my affection is even more intense now. He's such a doof! And so good! I love men who are just so good! He's like Clark Kent if Clark Kent was even more of a loser and also Canadian and also had a deaf wolf as a pet.

I also do love RayV a whole whole lot and I am thoroughly enjoying these episodes even if I am looking forward to season 3 and the shippy goodness.

For those who are not aware of this Canadian cop show from the 90s, it started off as a one-off TV movie in which Paul Gross is Benton Fraser, a Mountie whose Mountie father gets murdered and he has to track down the murderers in Chicago. While there he meets Ray Vecchio, who is a central casting Italian-American cop and very funny. They have a typical odd couple partnership, and end up uncovering a big conspiracy back in Canada that implicates so many powerful people that Fraser pretty much has to just to get out of the country for a while, so he goes back to Canada, where he works at the consulate and solves ridiculous crimes with his deaf wolf Diefenbaker and with RayV.

However! In season 3, RayV leaves the show (for reasons I'm not clear on) and who do we get instead? A very young Callum Keith Rennie as Ray Kowalsky (RayK) who has ridiculously good chemistry with Gross. Ostensibly the show doesn't change--it's still overly earnest Mountie solves crimes with streetwise Chicago cop--but the dynamic is completely different. Fraser and RayV are buddies and such fun together and they love each other a lot, but Fraser and RayK are major slashbait. Like one of the great Western TV slash ships a la Starsky and Hutch and the Man from UNCLE dudes. And once I get to their seasons, I am going to need all the fic recs, especially the stuff that was written in the 90s and early 2000s.

As I said, despite its extreme silliness, I am having a lot of fun. The show (so far) has aged incredibly well in that Fraser's whole thing is that he believes in people who are written off by everyone else, so in the first few episodes, we get him standing up for a Black boy with a criminal record, a Latina immigrant mother whose children get taken away from her, a working class white guy single father who is involved in an insurance scam, a Chinese immigrant man whose son is being targeted by organized crime, and a white kid who's just out of juvie and is trying to turn his life around. Fraser is like, "This person is in difficult circumstances and is either innocent or is being coerced into something they don't want to do, and if we give them a chance, they will do the right thing." AND HE IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

He chooses to live in a really "bad" area of town because it allows him to walk to work (which probably doesn't make sense from an actual-geography-of-Chicago perspective but who cares?) and while we get lots of jokes about crime, in actuality, we end up seeing that the people who live in this neighborhood are just people who are struggling.

I love it so much. I truly feel if this show was airing today, it would be hated by conservatives and decried as too woke.

This all ends up softening the fact that this show is a cop show. It doesn't feel like copaganda in the way most cop shows do, which is probably why I can enjoy it so much.

It's full of 90s music--I keep getting surprised by the songs they include. Is that Tracy Chapman? It sure is! Is that Sarah McLachlan? Hey, it's the 90's! (Honestly there's so much Sarah McLachlan. Omg they're actually playing the Crash Test Dummies' "Superman"? Of course they are! My jaw absolutely dropped when I recognized Loreena McKennitt! I mean, I wasn't that surprised her music was included because it's a Canadian show from the 90s, and that was certainly her heyday, but I was gobsmacked that the song in question was "Prospero's Speech" and not one of her more familiar songs.

Honestly, the 90s music and fashion and just general vibes are making me so nostalgic. I know that the 90s were not that great for everyone, but I was a child then, so it makes sense that it feels like a simpler time to me. This is what the world is supposed to look like! Because it's the world I got used to as a child! It's really nice to reivist it in this way.

The one thing that kind of annoys me is the women thing. The truly main cast is just Fraser, his wolf, and whichever Ray he's working with at the moment. But there's also the people back at Ray's precinct office--his male boss, his two annoying male coworkers, and the very competent lady cop who actually does most of the work. I like Elaine a lot! But she develops a crush on Fraser at the beginning and that kind of becomes her thing? Besides being competent? I am hoping she'll get other things to do as the show carries on.

Honestly, too many of the women in the show fall in love with Fraser. And on the one hand, I can certainly understand this! I am also in love with Fraser! He has ruined me for men! He's just so good and so pretty! I like that the show is like, "Actually, despite what some people say, women don't always go for the bad boy--if you give them a really righteous and pretty man, they will fall for him hard." Which I appreciate! But I feel like they push the joke too far.

Because the joke is that Fraser loves and respects women and treats them like actual human beings, but as soon as they start hitting on him or expressing interest in him, he has no idea how to handle it. He's so awkward!

And like, obviously fandom read this as, "Look at this poor gay man who doesn't know how to deal with female romantic/sexual attention." But the show doesn't actually know he's gay, which is hilarious to me because he is so gay. Like, there are a couple of moments so far in which it seems to imply that he might actually be interested in a woman, and I am like, "Give me a break." It's not remotely convincing.

Anyway, it's not a huge complaint because the women who show up (like the immigrant mother or another mother whose boyfriend MARK RUFFALO is trying to sell their baby yes you actually read those words with your own two eyes) are treated respectfully and like real people. It's just the women around the edges who fall for Fraser too easily.

I actually really liked the amoral reporter lady we met in one of the first episodes who isn't in love with Fraser, and I think it would have been really fun if she'd become recurring. She would have been a nice balance for Elaine. But alas! The main cast is male!

The guest stars are wild, though! So many familiar faces! In the first ten episodes, we have been visited by Eric Schweig (Uncas from The Last of the Mohicans, who I am very fond of), Leslie Nielsen (as another mountie), Teri Polo (aka First Lady Helen Santos from The West Wing), baby Mark Ruffalo (okay, he's in his mid-20s, but he looks like a baby to me), and baby Ryan Phillippe (who probably was a teenager at the time). I so look forward to seeing who else pops up!

I imagine the show would be grating for Canadians because Fraser is such a cliche, and a great deal of the humor of the show comes from the contrast between him and his Chicago setting. But I choose to view the show as less "isn't it funny when a Canadian has to navigate Chicago?" and instead "isn't it funny when this very particular individual who has lived in the Yukon his whole life and was raised by his librarian grandparents has to navigate Chicago?"

So yeah, enjoying the show a lot, looking forward to seeing how things develop, and definitely anticipating the future slash of it all!
osprey_archer: (books)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
[personal profile] rachelmanija suggested a list of Forgotten Newbery Books that Are Really Worth Reading, so I’ve compiled my top ten, listed here in order of year of publication. For obvious reasons, this list skews toward the older books, and I tried to pick ones that I felt have been really forgotten, although it turns out that it can be a bit hard to tell if a book has been truly forgotten or if I, personally, just hadn’t happened to heard of it before this project.


1. Marjorie Hill Allee's Jane’s Island, 1932. Come for an engaging story that also meditates on women’s place in the sciences and society, stay for lovely description of life around the Wood’s Hole research station, and also for the cranky German scientist who is VERY shell-shocked from World War I and FIRMLY intends to prove that nature is red in tooth and claw.

2. Dorothy P. Lathrop’s The Fairy Circus, 1932. FAIRIES put on a CIRCUS with the aid of WOODLAND CREATURES. What more could you want from a book!

3. Erick Berry’s Winged Girl of Knossos, 1934. Have you always wanted a retelling of the tale of Theseus and the minotaur crossed with Daedalus and Icarus with a genderswapped Icarus who is a tomboy in the tomboy-welcoming culture of ancient Crete? Yes you have.

4. Christine Weston’s Bhimsa, The Dancing Bear, 1946. Two boys (one English and one Indian) go adventuring across India in the company of their friend Bhimsa, the dancing bear. A fun adventure story.

5. Cyrus Fisher’s The Avion My Uncle Flew, 1947. An adventure story set in post-World War II France, featuring a glider and some secret Nazis in the mountains and the most impressive literary trick I’ve seen in a Newbery book, or indeed in pretty much any book ever. (I talk about it at more length in the review but don’t want to spoil it here.)

6. Claire Huchet Bishop's Pancakes-Paris, 1948. In post-war Paris, a young boy gets a box of pancake mix from some American soldiers, and makes pancakes for his mother and sister for Mardi Gras. That’s it! That’s the story.

7. Louise Rankin's Daughter of the Mountains, 1949. When a young Tibetan girl’s beloved dog is stolen, she chases him all the way across Tibet and into India to get him back. Super fun adventure story. No one is the least bit fazed at the idea of a girl having an adventure.

8. Jennie Lindquist's The Golden Name Day, 1956. Nancy spends a year with her Swedish-American relatives and they get up to all sorts of lovely escapades. Beautiful illustrations by Garth Williams, who you may be familiar with from the Little House series. There should be more books which are just about characters having a fantastic time.

9. Mari Sandoz's The Horsecatcher, 1957. A Cheyenne boy wants to become a horsecatcher rather than a warrior. I’m not planning a companion post to the Problem of Tomboys about Boys Who Don’t Want to Do Classic Boy Things, but if I were, this book would be on it. Fascinating evocation of our hero’s world.

10. Cynthia Rylant's A Fine White Dust, 1987. Kind of an outlier on this list, which is mostly adventure stories and people having good times stories. This one is a realistic fiction story about a boy growing up in the South who falls in love with a traveling preacher. VERY intense. EXTREMELY gay. Never admits to being gay but nonetheless one of the gayest books I’ve ever read. Very short. I read most of it in one lunch break and spent that entire lunch break internally keening because it is VERY STRESSFUL but in a good way.

(no subject)

Sep. 9th, 2025 09:42 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] a_c_fiorucci, [personal profile] ruric, [personal profile] veejane and [personal profile] vehemently!

Daily Happiness

Sep. 8th, 2025 11:25 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck headdesking (karkat headdesk)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Today marks one full week since I decided to start taking an early morning walk. I have been enjoying it very much and it currently works with my sleep and work schedules, so I'll be keeping it up. We've been in the habit of taking an evening walk every day for years, and a year or so I ago started making it two walks a day on weekends, but I'd never tried to make it a daily thing.

2. Today I actually took a walk at lunch as well, but I'm not sure how often I'll do that, at least in this weather. It was cooler than it has been, but still in the low 80s, and the area around my work doesn't have a lot of shady streets so I was in direct sun most of the time and ended up getting back to work sweatier than I'd prefer, but I did stop at 85C and get a delicious lavender taro latte on my way, so that was nice. I will definitely be taking a lunchtime walk on cooler days, and maybe even some not so cool days, depending on how I feel. It felt good to get up from my desk for more than just a quick run to the restroom or to go downstairs and buy a drink (I do get up for a few minutes every hour, but it's still a lot of sitting).

3. We had a nice dinner at Disneyland. The park was actually not that crowded and the weather was really pleasant (we didn't get down there until around eight, so the sun was down, but it wasn't as muggy as it has been the last few times we've been at night, including Saturday) and even traffic getting down there was pretty light.

4. Woke up to find Gemma in bed with me the other morning. Usually it's Molly!

the Royal Purrcy

Sep. 9th, 2025 12:16 am
mecurtin: face of tuxedo tabby cat Purrcy looking smugly happy (purrcy face)
[personal profile] mecurtin
At one point Purrcy was looking very regal as he stre-e-e-e-etched his arms out in front of him & crossed his paws, but by the time I got over to take his picture his expression was kind of vacant. That probably just makes it more authentically royal.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby sits on the back of a brown sofa, stretching his arms out in front of him almost as long as his entire body and crossing his paws delicately at the end.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Sep. 9th, 2025 12:01 am
mecurtin: 3 of GRRM's Hugo Award statues (hugos)
[personal profile] mecurtin
Beth and I went to Worldcon! And then spent another week in Seattle.

I had a great time at Worldcon, much better than last year at Glasgow where I spent almost all my time at the Business Meeting That Would Not Die. This year all but one short session of the BM was held online & ahead of time, it was *great*. A bunch of the Usual Suspects complained that the online meeting was scheduled Against the Rules and we should have been able to vote about it (and wait another year) but I say, meh, this way I got Worldcon back & also attendance was 3 times as high as at regular Business Meetings, so there.

Beth put her foot down & said I couldn't go to Worldcon without getting a scooter, and she was completely right. In the first place, any venue that can hold 6-10K people has really long halls, that's just math. In the second place, downtown Seattle is REALLY hilly.

The con wasn't able to rent scooters (due to competition from cruises) so I rented one myself that was brought to the hotel, and wow ... it's been decades since I've had that sense of freedom and speed. Once I got an experienced scooter-driver to tell me how to get in&out of elevators, that is. I'm seriously considering bringing a scooter-costume to LACon, dressing the scooter up as a rocket ship, because you can go really fast down the hallway (if it's mostly empty, of course).

It's so cool! And it's been so long, so very long since moving around has been anything but painful & draining for me, it was really freeing to have it be *fun*.

Martha Wells was the Worldcon Guest of Honor, so she spoke a bunch of times and I was one of a big crowd of people following her around like ... not ducklings, ducklings don't travel in enormous mobs. Devotees, anyway. And we got together and talked, and shared stickers and things, & talked about Murderbut & her other works.

And WOW, I was seriously shocked & disappointed at how many fen over the age of 50 seem incapable of not calling Murderbot "he", wtf. Although Mr Dr Science consistently starts off using they/them, then has to correct himself.

In addition to Martha Wells, I went to panels on "Food in History—The Impact of Spice" (packed to the gunwales! it was great), "Beyond the Torment Nexus" (even more packed, people sitting on the floor), "Centuries of Marriage" (disappointingly centered on Western Europe in the last 500 years, except Shauna Lawless had good info on Ireland c 11th-12th c, with much more marriage flexibility than WEur standard). Maybe I went to others? It's kind of a blur.

I saw [personal profile] gwyn ! I saw [personal profile] seekingferret ! I saw [personal profile] bethbethbeth ! there were probably other people but cons make my brain kind of mushy. And there were a bunch of other people who aren't on DW, too.

I got to cruise through the dealer's room and chat with vendors every time I bought something. I made several passes through the Art Show to look and to bid on some small things -- I'm under orders from Mr Dr not to get more things that go on walls until I find more walls to put them on. I chatted with people about the upcoming Worldcons in LA (Anaheim) & Montreal, and possible ones in Edmonton, Brisbane, and Dublin. It's doing to be a LONG time after LA before there's another one in the US, folks.

We stayed in Seattle for another week after Worldcon. One of the things I did was travel to West Seattle and have lunch with [personal profile] gwyn under relaxed conditions, which was really nice. Then toward the weekend I went out toward Bellevue and stayed there for a few days, including finally meeting [personal profile] cruisedirector & her husband, after knowing them online for *decades*. It was great to see them at last, and their Home By The Lake, and to talk about life and fandom for a few hours.

A plan to get together with a bunch of people from college got cancelled when the hostess came down with covid, but that just meant I had a bit more time to rest & write up a few things before getting Beth, dropping off the car, and heading back to the airport for a frankly exhausting trip back. Beth & I continue our NOVID record: we didn't mask *all* the time, just in most of the crowded situations (airport, airplane aka flying virus box, inside crowded rooms at con), on Whale Watch boat. Oh, we saw orcas! They were super cool, totally worth it.

The cat was *very* glad to see us. Mr Dr was, too: he did better at taking care of himself than he'd been last year, while still failing at some tasks.

MCU15 > prompt tables

Sep. 8th, 2025 11:12 pm
flareonfury: (Darcy/Steve)
[personal profile] flareonfury posting in [site community profile] dw_community_promo
MCU15 banner
GOAL: Write 15 fanfics (100 words mim.) for 15 different prompts.
CLAIMING: NO LIMIT! ANYTHING (CHARACTER/PLACE/PAIRING/CROSSOVER/ETC)!!
PLEASE JOIN 
[community profile] mcu15!!!

The Island of Constant Death

Sep. 8th, 2025 08:20 pm
yourlibrarian: Angel and Spike Speak no Evil (BUF-SpeakNoEvil-preetybird)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian
1) During a recent episode of Death in Paradise it struck us how apt the lyrics of Hotel California were for anyone visiting Saint Marie. Read more... )

2) Rather puzzling what is and is not available on Britbox. I was amused by the caption for the show Landward as "the long running series" when only 2 seasons, from two non-consecutive years, are available. I was also sad that For the Love of Dogs is a continuing show but Britbox only has up until 2016 available. (Shame about Paul O'Grady, who I'd not heard of before seeing the series, but who died still making it in 2023).

3) Another Silent Witness guest star back from the dead in a different role. Mrs. Hall From All Creatures. I noticed that they went all out for S20, with a costly and pivotal final episode. Read more... )

4) Teaching students to fact check might be the best way to teach them to reason about what they're reading.

5) More travel photos of Agate Beach sunsets, Oregon trees and flowers and the McKenzie River.

Poll #33589 Kudos Footer-539
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Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 3

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(no subject)

Sep. 8th, 2025 08:20 pm
seekingferret: Two warning signs one above the other. 1) Falling Rocks. 2) Falling Rocs. (Default)
[personal profile] seekingferret
from a member of my shul, and I think this is AWESOME

pumpkinkingmod: (pic#8274963)
[personal profile] pumpkinkingmod posting in [community profile] trickortreatex
Nominations are closed, but please don't worry if your tags haven't been processed yet. The schedule includes three days for me to finish that up before signups open :)

If I have any questions about the lingering tags, I'll make a clarification post, so stay tuned!
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
The adventure begins. :)





(Alternately, I have misidentified the bag and it's really mohair?!)

Weekend reading pt. 2

Sep. 8th, 2025 07:04 pm
troisoiseaux: (reading 10)
[personal profile] troisoiseaux
Finished Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya, a memoir about her relationship to books and the ways this has intertwined with her lifelong mental health struggles, leading up to a nervous breakdown triggered by an inability to write her dissertation and resulting in a period where she was literally unable to read anything, which she names "bibliophobia." Each chapter structured around a different piece of writing of some personal significance: the Anne of Green Gables books, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, A.S. Byatt's Possession, Anne Carson's poem "The Glass Essay", Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being, Child Ballad 78 ("The Unquiet Grave"), Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai. Most of Chihaya's "framework" books(/poems) were ones I haven't read (yet— I've put holds on The Bluest Eye and Possession, both of which I've long vaguely intended to get around to reading), which was an incidental aspect of this that I actually really liked— less, I don't know, distracting? than if she'd been writing about books I personally had a strong connection to...? Interesting to read a book about the things we seek from books - salvation or explanations or distraction or whatever - because the chance of a mental ouroboros (seeking xyz from a book about seeking xyz from books) is high to inevitable.

And it’s not attached to a creep

Sep. 8th, 2025 10:50 pm
shadowhive: (Liar Liar Krowfang)
[personal profile] shadowhive
I’m back from my cinema adventure so now it’s post time.

Before that, last night I decided to watch The Conjuring. The new film made me curious cause I’d not seen them before. I saw the first two were on Netflix, so I decided to watch it. My thoughts on it? It was pretty good. I mean it is a haunted house film so it does play out much like you’d expect. There’s a creepy basement, a child makes an invisible friend, someone gets possessed and they have to perform an exorcism. (The poor cute dog dies😭) It hits all the tropes, but it does them well. And also there’s a creepy doll which for some reason the ghost from the house can communicate with? I can tell why Annabelle got a spin off cause that thing looks creepy but also… why would anyone have that in their house??

Today I had weird manic energy in the morning (as evidenced in the spooky season post. Thankfully the weather was good so I headed to town.

First main stop was Tesco and I handed the UFB in. They asked if I wanted to be notified, so I should get a letter at some point. But they both let me have a new one and refunded me as well which was nice.

I got the new Fantastic 4 comic from there, a Minecraft magazine (cause it had a cool torch) and they had one of the new Lego Animal Crossing sets reduced so I got it. It’s Goldie’s Cozy house which is a tiny house with just Goldie. I might build it up later, if not then tomorrow. I also got the meal deal cause I was there and it was ok, though they had Fanta bottles with the horror icons on! Fruit twist had the grabber so that’s the one I got.

When I came out it was raining so I sheltered in a charity shop, got a lil bandana for Naryu (and a book for mums friend). Then I went in smyths. I’d seen they had the Byers House Funko bitty set back in stock so I picked that up cause it’s cute. (I have no other bittys I might have to get them) and I got a lil thing with Jack from Nightmare before Christmas in a coffin. They also had, though too high to reach, Shadow as a buccaneer which I didn’t know was a thing and I want. I mean look at him,

I then went to the cinema. I had forgot my phone cause I charged it (oops) but thankfully I had the email with the code still.

The trailers for both films were mostly uninteresting, though I did see in the Tron Ares one Evan Peters. I knew he was I. It I just didn’t know what role he was playing.

Now thoughts on films, Honey Don’t and Jaws.

Read more... )

There’s a maker festival in town Saturday and I picked something up about it to look at one the train. I had been considering going, but I saw there’s gonna be some of the robots from robot wars there! That makes me super curious so I might go, unless another storm hits.

Capclave!

Sep. 8th, 2025 04:41 pm
mrissa: (Default)
[personal profile] mrissa
 

I have my schedule for Capclave! I'm doing three panels and a reading (should probably figure out what I'm reading...). Here's what we've got:

The Power of Places. Friday, 5:00. Every work of fiction has a setting.  This is especially true of science fiction and fantasy where the settings are imaginary – other planets and fantasy realms. How do writers decide on a setting and communicate it to the reader? What makes some settings seem real while others mere painted backdrops? How does society help to shape the world around it? What writers have effective settings and what techniques do they use?

The Absolute Boss. Friday, 7:00. Much of SF/Fantasy has Galactic Emperors and Kings of fantasy kingdoms. We have Disney Princesses but not Disney Elected Leaders. Many plots feature the Return of the King. Why are there so few democracies in SF/Fantasy?  What does it mean when our entertainments focus on absolute rulers? 

Author Reading, Marissa Lingen. Saturday, 3:00.

Hopeful Fiction for Dark Times. Saturday, 4:00. The world seems to be in a dark place, such that "peddling hope" could appear irresponsible. Panelists will talk about hopepunk, cozy fantasy, and other forms of "lighter" fiction, giving examples, and talking about how hope is particularly important. 

carenejeans: (Default)
[personal profile] carenejeans
Quote of the Day:

"Notes aren’t a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process."

--Richard Feynman, from an anecdote in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, by James Gleick (1992)


Today's Writing:

A lot of staring a the screen, and an alibi sentence. 8-/


Tally

Days 1-6 )

Day 7: [personal profile] badly_knitted, [personal profile] brithistorian, [personal profile] carenejeans, [personal profile] china_shop, [personal profile] cornerofmadness, [personal profile] goddess47, [personal profile] sanguinity, [personal profile] sylvanwitch, [personal profile] trobadora, [personal profile] yasaman, [personal profile] ysilme

Day 8: [personal profile] china_shop


Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

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