Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings

Because my f-list knows the answers to Important Questions:

a) What is the female equivalent of a "Lord Mayor"? Is she a "lady" or a "mayoress" or neither or both?

b) In your opinion: when did lube become an every-day product that can be bought in your friendly neighbourhood drugstore? I read "Life on Mars" slash occasionally, and whenever I encounter the casual mention of lube in the nightstand drawer, it strikes me as somewhat off. Wouldn't vaseline be more likely? I've honestly no idea - I can be dead wrong here. I just remember that when I was in my teens in the 1990s, it was "vaseline" that was associated with anal sex, because "lube" wasn't around all that much and could be only purchased in the rather more, ah, specialised shops. (When I was 17, I read about the use of Crisco as the product for anal fisting in a gay mag, and my then best friend and I bought some in a sex shop and used it to bake a cherry cake. We thought it was hilarious. But that's just by the bye.)

My last post was in September! How did that happen?

Happy New Year, dear f-list! I've been lurking around here lately once again and if I commented on some long-forgotten post of any of you, that's because I was skipping=thousands and losing track of how far back I went.

So, what have I been up to?

Mainly, I've fallen in love with Philip Glenister at last (but he's had it coming) and been catching up on his work. I fell in love with him over "Cranford" and, dare I say it, Mr. Carter is by no means a less worthy candidate for my eternal* devotion than Mr. Darcy was. Even more worthy. - Jane Austen's never sold me on the Mr. Darcy character, even though Colin Firth did.

As a result, I have watched "Cranford" over and over again**, have rewatched "State of Play"*** and have started watching "Vanity Fair" (the BBC mini series with Philip Glenister). So: Becky Sharp - how great is she? I love that woman. I read somewhere that the script didn't smooth out the character's edges in the BBC production as they did for the Reese Witherspoon film, and I am baffled: what is there to smooth? Seriously, I vaguely realise that I'm supposed to find Becky's conduct somewhat reprehensible and her character questionable, but so far, apart from the fact that she wants to benefit from her acquaintance with rich people and seeks them out purposefully - just like just about everyone else in the story does - there's nothing about her that I find in the least questionable. And, though this might be due to Natasha Little's performance, I don't find her overly flirty, either. More sort of naturally sparkly and witty. - Quite unlike the horribly, painfully dull Amelia. Were they going for shy and quiet? Because what happened is that she's stupid and dull. And even the marvellous Philip Glenister, despite being my love of the hour, can't save Capt. Dobbin from being a painful bore, too.
The heading of this post, BTW, is inspired by the "Vanity Fair" Captains, whose interjections of "Damn it!" make me quite tingly inside.

*as in: two-three months
**the good bits
***the good bits

Anyway. Philip Glenister. What I actually wanted to say was that I was checking out lifein1973, came across a challenge I couldn't resist, and so I actually wrote something.

It's The Life On Mars Cracked out Crossover Challenge, and the prompt that tickled my fancy was:

Eats, Shoots and Leaves: Sam is actually stuck in a comma.

This in itself is fucking brilliant. And I came up with the following:

( Don't worry, despite appearances, this is NOT an emo poem )

That was both more and less difficult than one should think. After I decided to give it a try and started writing, I realised that it went quite well. The tricky bit, obviously, was the middle where I had to make both parts fit - I fiddled with it for ages. At some point I gave up in despair and tried a different approach, this time with plot, which wasn't easier at all. But there is a plot. Two plots even:

( Read more... )

I wish I could get back into the swing of creative writing. But every time I write something, I feel it's so inadequate that I give up. In despair. Woe!

So, I've been fandom-hopping lately, never staying long enough to get involved with a new fandom and only checking them out superficially. And so I don't have much to say with profound fannish contents and instead I've made some screencaps. They are brought to you by a realisation that had dawned after I've been watching Life on Mars. A trend has been developing that is as unexpected as it is alarming: I realised that I found Gene Hunt quite irresistible. - An, to use Sam's famous quote, "overweight, over-the-hill, nicotine-stained, borderline alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding" - and that despite the fact that I've always thought I like the skinny, fragile artsy types. And then I realised that it had happened before, when I was watching Blackpool, where the sleazy, sexist homophobe Ripley Holden quite managed to charm me. It wasn't much of a stretch to draw the parallels, and to illustrate my point, I've made screencaps of the relevant scenes. The post is quite picture-heavy (30+), but it's got some nakedness and chest-touching as redeeming features.

( Meet the crime-citizen interface consultants )