Fannish UP!date
Busy, busy first half of the week-end, but a lovely relaxing Sunday to even the score. Husband and I got married exactly one year ago today, which is a peculiar sensation, to say the least; receiving cards from parents and family members saying "happy anniversary" invariably invokes thoughts of ancient married couples, and is making me feel suddenly older than I am...
Speaking of old married couples: we went to see Pixar's new one, "Up!", today. Well, yes, I realize in the rest of the civilized world it's not all that new anymore, but Belgium is often a bit behind on the movie front, especially when it comes to kids' movies. Maybe the fact that those have to be dubbed and subtitled in Dutch and French has something to do with it, or else we're just a bit backward, I don't know. In any case, the movie (pun intended) simply blew me away; if I had any doubt that Disney's taking over Pixar would affect the quality of their productions, that doubt has now vanished completely. As with their previous films, I was very much impressed by how they manage to infuse their stories with a quite deep message - deep for a children's movie, at least - without being at all preachy about it, and without making their endings so "Disney-ishly" happy it stops being realistic. Comparing it to my other favorites 'The Incredibles' ("It's okay to be ordinary, but it's just as okay to be special") and 'Ratatouille' ("Criticizing is easy, it's doing something that's hard, and even if the result is not great, the attempt in itself is always worthwhile"), I'd say I'm finding 'Up!' the best one yet. Testimony to that is the fact it made me - me, the person who never sheds a tear over anything on the screen, who is physically incapable of crying in a theatre! - blubber like a baby during the entire first twenty minutes and most of the last ten of the film. Which was, actually, somewhat embarrassing, given that there was a ten-year old girl next to me who didn't bat an eyelash the entire time. *g* I don't know why, but it seems that the older I'm getting, the more themes like aging and losing a partner and so on are affecting me - which is a bit scary, knowing that I haven't even reached thirty yet...
On the fannish front: I actually wanted to start up some kind of meta-ish meme thing about relationships and intimacy in fanfic, but alas, it's late and my brain is pretty much fried due to the wine I had during our anniversary dinner... So the meme will have to wait until later this week or next week-end. The reason I'd like to do it, is, that my attempt to experiment with various genres of fic has now taken me to the stage where I'm trying to write a story with explicit sex. That's to say, the story features the act of sex, but not an explicit description of the sex itself, which makes it less than pr0n but probably more than PG-13. *g* And it's hard - unexpectedly so - but also a lovely thing to be writing, and it made me start asking myself all kinds of questions about writing and reading fics involving relationships, which I'd love to discuss with y'all. So - stay tuned for that meme!
As a small prelude to it - I've been wanting for ages to do that other meme that's been doing the rounds on and off around here, being the "shag, marry, cliff" one. In case there's still anyone who doesn't know it: the bottom line is you get three fictional characters, and you have to choose which of the three you want to marry, shag, or chuck off a cliff. So, here goes:
Speaking of old married couples: we went to see Pixar's new one, "Up!", today. Well, yes, I realize in the rest of the civilized world it's not all that new anymore, but Belgium is often a bit behind on the movie front, especially when it comes to kids' movies. Maybe the fact that those have to be dubbed and subtitled in Dutch and French has something to do with it, or else we're just a bit backward, I don't know. In any case, the movie (pun intended) simply blew me away; if I had any doubt that Disney's taking over Pixar would affect the quality of their productions, that doubt has now vanished completely. As with their previous films, I was very much impressed by how they manage to infuse their stories with a quite deep message - deep for a children's movie, at least - without being at all preachy about it, and without making their endings so "Disney-ishly" happy it stops being realistic. Comparing it to my other favorites 'The Incredibles' ("It's okay to be ordinary, but it's just as okay to be special") and 'Ratatouille' ("Criticizing is easy, it's doing something that's hard, and even if the result is not great, the attempt in itself is always worthwhile"), I'd say I'm finding 'Up!' the best one yet. Testimony to that is the fact it made me - me, the person who never sheds a tear over anything on the screen, who is physically incapable of crying in a theatre! - blubber like a baby during the entire first twenty minutes and most of the last ten of the film. Which was, actually, somewhat embarrassing, given that there was a ten-year old girl next to me who didn't bat an eyelash the entire time. *g* I don't know why, but it seems that the older I'm getting, the more themes like aging and losing a partner and so on are affecting me - which is a bit scary, knowing that I haven't even reached thirty yet...
On the fannish front: I actually wanted to start up some kind of meta-ish meme thing about relationships and intimacy in fanfic, but alas, it's late and my brain is pretty much fried due to the wine I had during our anniversary dinner... So the meme will have to wait until later this week or next week-end. The reason I'd like to do it, is, that my attempt to experiment with various genres of fic has now taken me to the stage where I'm trying to write a story with explicit sex. That's to say, the story features the act of sex, but not an explicit description of the sex itself, which makes it less than pr0n but probably more than PG-13. *g* And it's hard - unexpectedly so - but also a lovely thing to be writing, and it made me start asking myself all kinds of questions about writing and reading fics involving relationships, which I'd love to discuss with y'all. So - stay tuned for that meme!
As a small prelude to it - I've been wanting for ages to do that other meme that's been doing the rounds on and off around here, being the "shag, marry, cliff" one. In case there's still anyone who doesn't know it: the bottom line is you get three fictional characters, and you have to choose which of the three you want to marry, shag, or chuck off a cliff. So, here goes:
- Name 3 or more - male - fictional characters from any of my fandoms (Babylon 5, Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, New Who, Star Wars, Harry Potter, LOTR, ... all qualify). If you list more than 3 names, add a fourth, fifth, etc. option next to the marry/shag/cliff ones. I'll then discuss my choices in a next post.
- If you wanna join in the silliness, leave a comment telling me your fandoms (and, if relevant, whether you want male and/or female characters listed) and I'll give you characters to choose from!