LadySilver's Fanfic

Viewing: The original 1940 film Gaslight has been uploaded to YouTube so I watched that this week. It would have been better with a more subtle and charismatic actor playing the husband, because he was too villainous even when he was supposed to be persuasive. However, the core concept was very frightening to watch, and lent the film greater suspense than I expected.

Meanwhile, it took until Series Eight, which has a weak reputation, for me to get the version of Doctor Who I always secretly wanted, with the towering toxicity of a Doctor/companion dynamic on overdrive. Twelve and Clara are insane about each other, and every second is riveting. I am eager to see how it all shakes out and am enjoying Capaldi's Doctor so much. The Doctor being older just works so well for me. It's like the story has finally clicked for me. This is also the first time in watching where I have felt really keen to go back and check out the classic run to get all the lore that feeds into this.

Cooking: I have a lot of random ingredients in my pantry, so as I reorganized everything I have decided to select one item at a time and figure out what to use it in. So one randomly regifted cup of red rice got made into Cajun red rice. Honestly, I see no meaningful difference between red and brown rice, so that part was a little whatever, but the dish was tasty.

Reading: I was in an antique shop this week which had old paperbacks for 50 cents each, and I scooped up a few. I'm extremely done with literary fiction for the moment, as every damn one published seems to require a downer ending to prove its worthiness or something. So I grabbed two pulpy romantic suspense (also called gothic) novels, one Inspector Finch mystery (which is apparently gothic-adjacent), one historical novel by Daphne Du Maurier (The Glass-Blowers) and two works of science fiction (2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke and Dragonsdawn by Anne McCaffrey).

I read Dragonflight when I was about fourteen, and was so impressed by the time travel portion that I forgave it all else. I also never read another Pern novel because I didn't want to spoil the effect with subpar sequels (I was very nervous about sequels growing up, which I think carried forward into my enjoyment of cancelled TV - you can't screw up the ending if there isn't one). I have no idea if it would hold up.

But at least I have a stack of books which might qualify as escapist in some way or another.

Just to keep my motivation somewhat high, writing wise:

The last chapter of In Abeyance had eight scenes left to finish this morning. It is now down to seven.*

The next chapter of Sidelined feels overlong, so I think I will split it at a logical point I found. If so, that only has six scenes left to do.

*Edit: Down to six! Thank you, cheerleaders!

Another YouTube upload I discovered, and since it was only six episodes long, I gave it a try. After all, it has Stringer Bell and Jane Bennett hunting vampires. There was no way I didn't want to see that. And Susannah Harker was a revelation as Angie, who is so reserved and yet so destroyed, with the darkest backstory of anyone in the show. Having only seen her playing sweet Jane, it was so fascinating to watch.

Idris Elba as Vaughan was also great, but less surprising to me. There was also Philip Quast as the sardonic, scary as hell priest leading the team, who started out fairly background but whose role expanded at the end.

The first episode is somewhat dry, as it prefers to focus on Everyman Copper Michael (played by Jack Davenport, who I guess is famous from a bunch of stuff I've never seen), newly initiated into the vampire hunting life when his best friend Jack is turned. Between the show's avoidance of actual vampire discussion (the word is never used in any episode) and the requirement of setting up Michael's ordinary life before it all goes to hell, it's mostly just getting the pieces in position, but as of the second episode it turns into an extremely dark, gripping procedural with 90s conspiracy overtones.

It's also an unusual take on vampire warfare because the vampires rarely get their hands dirty, preferring to manipulate humans to do their work for them. They are organized and scientifically-minded, trying to preserve their increasingly self-destructive food supply. Meanwhile, their food supply objects to losing their status as the dominant predator of the world. It's a very cold premise, that keeps borrowing 90s headlines to lend a sense of realism to proceedings. There are definitely victims of the vampires, but they don't kill to feed, so the war is a vicious, silent struggle for dominance while regular people wander clueless, occasionally used as pawns or guinea pigs. Meanwhile, Michael looks on in horror, unsure if he's completely buying in or not, and toying with the hope of getting fired.

The writing throughout is quite subtle, and it rarely spells things out for the audience, which I appreciated a lot. Further thoughts under a cut. ( Read more... )