A Certain Slant of Light

Happy Halloween, everyone! It is a very cold Halloween here: I'm sitting inside watching snow fall past the sliding glass door. I suspect the prospective trick-or-treaters are undergoing agonies: I remember one Halloween, when I was a kindergartner, when thunderstorm succeeded thunderstorm all evening long and we only had time to trick-or-treat on one street. Awful!

Regardless of the weather, I had an excellent day at work today. My coworkers dressed up as Hansel, Gretel, and the witch, which was fun: we totally got a photo of Gretel pushing the witch in the oven as Hansel beamed in the background. It was pretty sweet.

And! And I got my trickortreatex stories! Four of them. Most exciting!

First, my gift story: Return to Innocence, Pirates of the Caribbean, Philip/Syrena,PG. This is about Syrena the mermaid and Philip the missionary, who were clearly the most interesting part of the entire movie: I know Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz did some stuff, but really, the mermaid/missionary love story is where it's at.

Second, an adorable Les Miserables ficlet: Thankfulness, Eponine/Cosette (Eponine => Cosette?), PG. Cosette gives Eponine an eclair, thereby winning her heart forever and also making me really, really want an eclair, because it sounds so delicious.

And two Rome fics! First, The Haunting of Lucius Vorenus, Antony/Vorenus (in a dream), briefly R. Antony is dead and far away in Egypt, but even now that he's returned to Rome, his spirit haunts Vorenus's dreams.

And finally, an adorable ficlet Preparing for War, Rome, PG. The author summarized it as Antony sizes up the newest recruit; but Vorenus is clearly sizing up Antony in return.

Finished the second season of Rome. It's beautifully done - the costumes and the sets and the excellent acting. However, it's quite clear that they only learned they weren't getting a third season sometimes around episode six: all of a sudden time starts galloping, and the show goes so fast its almost like a "Last season in Rome..." recap.

Nonetheless, everyone who dies gets a moment for a swan song. Even Cicero, despite the disturbing mobility of his eyebrows (they twitched whenever he spoke, I swear, it's like he had fuzzy wuzzy caterpillars on his forehead), gets a stoic, elegant death scene; Brutus, despite being woefully miscast, dies brilliantly (and is forgotten immediately, continuity being one of the big casualties of the turbo-speed) and Antony and Cleopatra, of course, take down the house.

( Some spoilers )

Rather to my surprise, the family Julii became my favorite characters - simply because they're so different than normal TV characters. Octavian in particular - he's terrible with people, and seems sometimes weak, and yet he's convincing as a leader. When he tries to be kind it ends up seeming cruel, and yet you can see he is trying, and it frustrates him that it doesn't work.

And then you have Octavia, who seems at first so weak but turns out to be tough, a survivor, and stubborn enough to stand up to her mother Atia (if not to win); and Atia herself, who is all sorts of things that generally point to Evil in TV characters (a meddling mother, a woman who sleeps around, shallow, seductive, vain, emotional) - and she really is all those things, it isn't a mask that falls away to show the viewer that she's really a big old softy inside. But she's still compelling, human, and indomitable: like her children, she gets back up no matter how many times she gets kicked down.

It's a brutal show, graphically violent; at least once an episode I end up watching through my fingers. But it's (mostly) necessary, given the historical period, and the show is so well done, with such lovely character work, which wouldn't be possible if the characters weren't dragged to such extremities. It's a pity it was canceled at the end of the second season; I would have loved to see what it would have gone on to be.

So I watched the first episode of Rome, and - STRANGELY COMPELLING. It's a blatant churning maelstrom of id and dominance games! Just like the ancient Romans themselves!

I always liked the Romans better than the Greeks. They never came up with highfalutin justifications for why they were so evil. And they built aqueducts! And roads! And useful things instead of silly little temples!

( A few more specific things )