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I've been thinking about a couple mixes for this series for a while but kept getting held up on what to make the actual subject(s). This one kept going between a more general In the Woods mix and one for Cassie/Rob so I settled on making Rob the subject, though in some places it has a more general focus.

So I totally finished this a while ago and then never talked about it?

She can't write a book I won't love, and this one was supposed to be such a hard sell for me too. It had a couple issues for me and is probably my least favorite of the series (even as I find it difficult to rank her novels because they all feel so different from each other) but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I got invested in it. Scorcher is such a difficult character to like I don't think I would have gotten past the first couple pages if I wasn't already Tana-initiated, but by the end, regardless of how much I liked the guy, I felt for him a lot and I actually think it's the most complicated characterization she's pulled off since the first book. I find it hilarious that Frank Mackey's more long-winded and much funnier explanation for the nickname is somewhat contradicted by Scorcher himself, either out of pride or because he never realized the joke at his expense - I could see it being either way. (However Scorcher did not say "Goal!" even once during the novel, and I can easily believe that Frank is prone to exaggeration.)

The beauty of this novel, for me, was that we had an opportunity to see how Tana can develop a relationship as it's beginning, in all the little subtle ways; in In the Woods we only get a few pages of Rob and Cassie's blossoming friendship before it skips to them having known each other a couple years, in The Likeness you almost couldn't imagine there was a time when the grad student group had barely known each other, but she does just as well of making the potential for companionship a very poignant thing. Richie was an essential character because he added a more human dimension to Scorcher; I really liked how he took care of Richie balking out of the post-mortem, and I liked how Richie could take Scorcher's occasional macho b.s. and still come back sharing sandwiches and breath mints and not letting other people at the office talk crap about him.

( spoilery bits )


Aaand I finally finished S2 of Teen Wolf. It's still such a huge guilty pleasure and I'm crossing my fingers that there's oodles of fics that are better than the show, LOL. I really thought that the last third of S1/the first third or so of S2 was the best it had going; I was really more intrigued with the parts of season 2 when I had no fucking clue what was going on.

Stiles and his dad, though. They're always making me want to cry.

And I'm not really seeing anybody talk about it, but Colton Haynes apparently probably won't be back for S2? That sucks a lot. Gettin real sick of actors dropping out of shows for fuck sakes.

I don't know if anyone around here even cares, but holy crap, Skyfall. For the first third or so of the movie I was actually worried because the dialogue was a little uninspired and it felt kind of slow, but then right around when Javier Bardem comes in it starts to kick so much ass.



If I'm asked who my favorite Bond "girl" is, I will always snarkily reply that it's this BAMF. Can I just say that it makes me really really sad that we will probably never get a prequel spinoff that is all about M? Sure, she isn't exactly supposed to have been an agent who ever put a lot of time "in the field" but she's still a badass. There's a scene closing on the final action sequence in the new film when she and Bond have to make do with a limited supply of weapons, and I wasn't sure but it looked to me like she was supposed to be making Molotov cocktails out of light bulbs, among other things. Everything about Judi Dench's presence is every bit as formidable as Daniel Craig's, if not more; maybe it's that her arsenal is always a little more intangible and mysterious.

I've seen several of the older Bond films and my memory of her in Goldeneye is really vague, but the relationship between M and Bond has been one of my very favorite things about the new movies, and not just because the development of a character like Bond seems to usually be peppered with FATHER FIGURES EVERYWHERE and not a woman to be seen. So when the trailer rolled out and made it look basically like M would be by far the most important woman in this film, I was stoked, and it did not disappoint. We're invited to ponder her inner conflicts, probably more than we're wondering what's going on with Bond; she does some stuff she shouldn't do, she does some stuff she should do, sometimes it's about James and sometimes it's not.

As for Bardem's character, he was far (so very far) and away the most memorable and well played villain of this trilogy. Ben Whishaw was pretty enjoyable as Q (and he looks adorable in a pair of glasses). And since I'm forgetting to actually talk about James Bond regarding a James Bond movie, there's some fitting and poignant follow-up on his status as an orphan (which was only briefly mentioned in CR).

It's a Sam Mendes movie therefore Thomas Newman did the score, and I'll have to give it another listen, but my first impression is that the soundtrack had some pretty good moments. And the last act of the film, due to location as well as cinematography, looks gorgeous. I JUST LIKED IT A LOT, I REALLY DID.

-These first two are old old comment fics that I just never got around to archiving on my own journal, the delay somewhat explained by the fact that one is Halloween-themed and I figured I should crosspost it around Halloween but then kept forgetting...In short, I fail.


Title: Animation
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Kirk/Uhura
Rating: PG-13 (?)
Summary: "It's just the way it's always been: He starts going through the motions like somebody's interested and they'll start to realize that they are."


( x )




Title: In the Room Where You Sleep
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters/Pairings: Kara, Lee, Zak; Kara/Lee
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Commentfic inspired by a Halloween-themed post over at no_takebacks (AU'd in our universe, naturally).


( x )





-Now, I'm normally a little scared of fic prompts (heh) and didn't expect to write actual fic for that meme, but apparently I'm in a mood. These are kinda written-on-the-fly but hopefully fun.


Title: A Very Short Engagement
Fandom: Dublin Murder Squad (In The Woods/The Likeness - AU)
Pairing: Cassie/Rob
Prompt: kdbleu wanted Rob/Cassie for "pretending to be married." It ended up going more pretend couple, but oh well.


( x )




Title: Because You Asked So Nicely
Fandom: Dublin Murder Squad (In the Woods)
Characters: Cassie, Rob
Prompt: cosetteferaud wanted "truth or dare" for Cassie/Rob; context didn't really allow for actual shippiness but I guess that might have been expected.


( x )




Title: In Which The Doctor Believes That Penicillin Was a Far More Useful Accidental Discovery
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica/Star Trek XI
Characters/Pairings: Kirk, McCoy, Starbuck, Spock (Kara/McCoy barely referenced)
Prompt: jolinar_rosha asked for bodyswap for Trek or BSG; it ended up Rising Sign-'verse, oops.


( x )

I'm officially getting pretty bummed about the lowering activity on LJ lately, especially after realizing how much more actual discussion used to go on in fandom. I don't know, I was just thinking about how back around when I was in college there would be the occasional post just throwing out meta thoughts about a pairing in a ship-centered comm, but fandom comms seem to strictly be for announcing fanworks/news now. Unless this is all in my head/I'm looking in the wrong places, I don't know. (no_takebacks isn't as lively as it used to be, but it's still the exception to the rule and there's more actual discussiony stuff in that sub-fandom than any other fandom I'm in.) And yeah, there's plenty of discussion on Tumblr, but I'm mostly just not motivated to socialize on Tumblr except with people I already know from LJ :/

( talkin about some movies I've watched on that evil netflix lately... )

And I saw Dredd, which did so poorly in the box office it's already out of theaters here but was definitely worth seeing, if mostly for Lena Headey playing a pretty amazing baddie. Though it's definitely not for those who can't handle gore. There are some beautifully done slow motion scenes to illustrate the effect of a drug (appropriately called "slo-mo"); there are a lot of pointless slow-motion action sequences out there that bore the hell out of me but the use of it made actual sense in this film.

Oh, and Looper, I expected it to be good and it was quite good. Emily Blunt's character takes a little while to come in but she's pretty fantastic. I really liked the part when she...abused the use of the frog alarm thingies. LOL.
In general, there was something about the world-building of it that I thought was impressively nuanced. I tend to be against the Chekhov's Gun tip about writing because in real life there are useless objects and inconsequential dialogue all the time; you have to make things unrealistic enough that it's entertaining but to expect every object or piece of information to be part of the arsenal seems ridiculous to me (Tarantino fan speaking). And this was an example of a film that can enter in a fact about its universe without it being because it will be important and also without it being showing off; it allows us to take for granted just as much or as little as the characters do.
Also, I expected to be really distracted by JGL's prosthetics but I was over it like two minutes in.

I feel like it's becoming a trend in book covers to have photographs of models (not sure what else to call them) rather than more traditional art. Like this. I don't know if I like it, though in the realm of fantasy a lot of the cover art is rarely that attractive to begin with :/ (I am of course really picky about book covers, though. It makes me cringe when the only edition I can get is one that I don't like.)

Sooo I'm about eight episodes into Teen Wolf because half of Tumblr is really into it and IDK IDK. ( Read more... )

And I watched a couple movies, starting with one called Three.

( 3 )

Also watched The Man Who Wasn't There, a neo-noir by the Coen Brothers. Very noir, very Coen Brothers. I could go on and on about my mixed feelings about the noir tropes and how impatient I can be with them sometimes, but this is one that definitely worked for me because there was such a sense that you were supposed to find it a little ridiculous and funny how deep of a hole the main character gets dug into, without it quite being a comedy.

Title: Dry the Rain
(2/2)
Characters/Pairings: Kara Thrace, Zak Adama, Lee Adama, Bill Adama. Kara/Lee, Kara/Zak.
Summary: "Family" is a risky word.
[part one]

So, for my Tana French people, I have to pass on these little tibits somebody shared on Tumblr. Um. ( cut for In the Woods spoilers )


I really can't believe I haven't cracked open Broken Harbor yet, but I'm in the middle of a couple trilogies I think I want to finish first.

I've already seen The Dark Knight Rises twice. It might actually be my personal favorite of the Nolan trilogy and I was not expecting that.
I do sort of wish I could be totally eating crow about Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. I think she's a good actress and did a good job; she just didn't blow me away. On the other hand, I kept forgetting Marion Cotillard was even going to be in this movie and I think I was under the impression Joseph Gordon-Levitt was in a pretty small role, and they both ended up being these awesome characters. But basically the last fifteen minutes or so just steamrolled me through SO MANY FEELINGS and it felt as definitive as a last installment should.


That movie meme: ( Look at all the important movies I haven't seen... )