cops. mostly british.
This should be, like, three separate entries, but I've been so busy this week! My social life is freaking crazy right now.
(july 18! neko case concert! omg!)
1. Via baggers' Twitter feed: Meloni and Hargitay renew through Season 12.
Are you fucking serious? Have the two of you not fully funded your great-great-grandchildren's college trusts yet, or something?
I did enjoy the Gawker article referring to them as detectives Rapey and McLoosecannon, but omg, are you fucking serious, this show is going to be on forever, except it can't possibly get any worse unless it was all done in mime or became a cartoon, I don't even know what I feel about this.
2. The little Ashes to Ashes AU ficlet I wrote a while ago off of daygloparker's ficlet now has another companion piece, also awesome, so if you're up for some weirdness and/or some Alex/Gene, they go in this order:
un: i'm stuck with a valuable friend (daygloparker)
deux: rumours that are completely unsubstantiated (theonlytwin)
trois: no stranger to you and me (grenadine)
I still would really enjoy all of this being canon, btw.
3. I have finally finished all of the Inspector Lynley Mysteries, and I am feeling sort of bereft. Have some thoughts:
a. don't do anything heroic, barbara. think of the paperwork.
Barbara Havers, ladies and gentlemen. Awesome from start to finish. I saw the caravan park episode about a year before the rest of the series, and so when I watched 1x01, I was mildly surprised that Barbara wasn't the tiny, dauntless ray of sunshine she was in 5x02, so much as a tiny, nervous laser beam of rage and insecurity. But this show actually manages to connect point A and point B and have it all make perfect sense, and not diminish her at any point in her development, which, I mean, who pulls that off? She's happier and more confident at the end of the series, but she was never not awesome, and that makes me pretty damn happy, too.
You guys, seriously, Barbara Havers got shot, took her restitution money and spent it on ninja lessons.* Which probably explains why her preferred method of attack is "taking running leaps at people while screaming".
Love her.
* Okay, well, maybe it was really some self-defense/karate class thing, but I remember watching that scene and thinking "Oh, so she's actually a ninja now, on top of everything else?"
b. there's no more you and i, only us.
The other thing I remember very strongly from watching 5x02 was a tiny, tiny part near the end, when Barbara's been hit with a rock and Tommy finds her. And all through that episode, I was enjoying them as partners who were clearly good friends, and ha ha, isn't this funny that they're sharing a caravan, how cute, and then there was the end. And there's this one second when Tommy's got Barbara pulled out of the ditch, and he just touches her hair in this way, and WHOA, HANG ON, HOLD UP, THERE, because these people suddenly had A Past, and had Been Through Some Stuff, and I realized that I should probably watch this from the beginning.
And, man, so glad I did, because saying these two have Been Through Some Stuff is, like, the understatement of the century. They...are ridiculous. And obviously, I rewatched 5x02 in context, and now to me that moment is Tommy Lynley Maybe Realizing Some Things, which makes me love it even more because of how much I totally ship these two like a lunatic.
They have backstories! And development! Growing trust and mutuality! WHY SO AWESOME WITH THE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, I AM TOTALLY SPOILED NOW.
They're going to get married and have giant fights about Barbara's categorical refusal to ever use her title. It will be awesome.
c. that's right, you lot are on the way out
Man, nothing makes me feel more like an American than watching a show with stuff about country estates and vicars and cricket and hereditary nobility. I don't know if it's because Elizabeth George is an American writing about British people, or what, but sometimes the show is so British as to be close to parody, and at the same time the mysteries themselves are very British in form.
Every time they're at Tommy's family estate, part of me wants to drive around the grounds in the most obnoxious SUV I can find, blaring rap music and destroying the shrubbery. Tommy's family are lovely (if fucked-up), but the idea of hereditary nobility deeply offends some part of my nature. About as much as it does for Barbara, actually. Which is just another reason to love her.
So, that's another series of books I've ruined by watching the adaptations first. I'm probably not going to try reading the books, and there's a bunch of reasons for that, but mostly it just won't be the same, and I'm attached to the TV versions now, so. I read the first book of the series that Wire in the Blood is based on, and it was...okay (if ridiculously disturbing, the first episode of the series, which I think is the most disturbing, is based on the first book, and the book is, like, nine million times worse. Ugh.) but I'm not planning on reading any more of those.
Anyway, there were a few interesting differences between the two:
1. Book!Tony and Book!Carol are mostly the same as TV!Tony and TV!Carol, but there's some differences. I never really believed in the series that Tony was anywhere near crossing the line into actually turning into one of the people he studies, but in the book, that's mentioned quite explicitly. Also, there's some sexual dysfunction stuff going on there that isn't (explicitly, anyway) in the series, thank God. Book!Carol is the same in all the particulars, but at some level she just isn't Carol, and, I mean, there's not much you can do about that. In the series, Carol seems pretty put-together and stable, and there's less of that in the book. Also, I didn't get the impression that book!Carol knew seventy different ways to tell you to fuck off using only glances and eye-rolls, but she is pretty snarky in both. Book!Carol has perfect auditory recall, which is kind of awesome. And Nelson, her cat, is black, not orange, in the books. Which is minor, until you realize that putting Hermione Norris in scenes with a black cat would probably invite a ton of unwanted Bewitched references.
2. The book's mystery plays out mostly like the episode, except at the end. Angelica ends up dying from the stab wound Tony gives her in the book, and the end of the book he's all emo and alone and making comparisons between himself and Angelica. Whereas in the series, Angelica is alive, and by the second episode Tony's broken any hold she had over him, and seems just way less broken.
3. It's explicit in the book that Tony and Carol want each other. Like, completely and totally, mentioned straight-out from both their POV's, hilariously explicit. And yet I prefer the series for UST, because they had to take all of those thoughts and turn them into looks and gestures, which is somehow way more compelling.
However, there was this:
"He looked so vulnerable and falliable, his shoulders slumped, his head down, that Carol's impulses overrode the decision she'd taken only minutes before to play it cool. She stepped forward and Tony into a tight hug. "If anyone can do it, you can," she whispered, rubbing the side of her head against his chin like a cat marking its territory."
YEAH. SO.
SO, after all these British cops, I think it's high time to move on to spiiiiiiiies, don't you?
(july 18! neko case concert! omg!)
1. Via baggers' Twitter feed: Meloni and Hargitay renew through Season 12.
Are you fucking serious? Have the two of you not fully funded your great-great-grandchildren's college trusts yet, or something?
I did enjoy the Gawker article referring to them as detectives Rapey and McLoosecannon, but omg, are you fucking serious, this show is going to be on forever, except it can't possibly get any worse unless it was all done in mime or became a cartoon, I don't even know what I feel about this.
2. The little Ashes to Ashes AU ficlet I wrote a while ago off of daygloparker's ficlet now has another companion piece, also awesome, so if you're up for some weirdness and/or some Alex/Gene, they go in this order:
un: i'm stuck with a valuable friend (daygloparker)
deux: rumours that are completely unsubstantiated (theonlytwin)
trois: no stranger to you and me (grenadine)
I still would really enjoy all of this being canon, btw.
3. I have finally finished all of the Inspector Lynley Mysteries, and I am feeling sort of bereft. Have some thoughts:
a. don't do anything heroic, barbara. think of the paperwork.
Barbara Havers, ladies and gentlemen. Awesome from start to finish. I saw the caravan park episode about a year before the rest of the series, and so when I watched 1x01, I was mildly surprised that Barbara wasn't the tiny, dauntless ray of sunshine she was in 5x02, so much as a tiny, nervous laser beam of rage and insecurity. But this show actually manages to connect point A and point B and have it all make perfect sense, and not diminish her at any point in her development, which, I mean, who pulls that off? She's happier and more confident at the end of the series, but she was never not awesome, and that makes me pretty damn happy, too.
You guys, seriously, Barbara Havers got shot, took her restitution money and spent it on ninja lessons.* Which probably explains why her preferred method of attack is "taking running leaps at people while screaming".
Love her.
* Okay, well, maybe it was really some self-defense/karate class thing, but I remember watching that scene and thinking "Oh, so she's actually a ninja now, on top of everything else?"
b. there's no more you and i, only us.
The other thing I remember very strongly from watching 5x02 was a tiny, tiny part near the end, when Barbara's been hit with a rock and Tommy finds her. And all through that episode, I was enjoying them as partners who were clearly good friends, and ha ha, isn't this funny that they're sharing a caravan, how cute, and then there was the end. And there's this one second when Tommy's got Barbara pulled out of the ditch, and he just touches her hair in this way, and WHOA, HANG ON, HOLD UP, THERE, because these people suddenly had A Past, and had Been Through Some Stuff, and I realized that I should probably watch this from the beginning.
And, man, so glad I did, because saying these two have Been Through Some Stuff is, like, the understatement of the century. They...are ridiculous. And obviously, I rewatched 5x02 in context, and now to me that moment is Tommy Lynley Maybe Realizing Some Things, which makes me love it even more because of how much I totally ship these two like a lunatic.
They have backstories! And development! Growing trust and mutuality! WHY SO AWESOME WITH THE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, I AM TOTALLY SPOILED NOW.
They're going to get married and have giant fights about Barbara's categorical refusal to ever use her title. It will be awesome.
c. that's right, you lot are on the way out
Man, nothing makes me feel more like an American than watching a show with stuff about country estates and vicars and cricket and hereditary nobility. I don't know if it's because Elizabeth George is an American writing about British people, or what, but sometimes the show is so British as to be close to parody, and at the same time the mysteries themselves are very British in form.
Every time they're at Tommy's family estate, part of me wants to drive around the grounds in the most obnoxious SUV I can find, blaring rap music and destroying the shrubbery. Tommy's family are lovely (if fucked-up), but the idea of hereditary nobility deeply offends some part of my nature. About as much as it does for Barbara, actually. Which is just another reason to love her.
So, that's another series of books I've ruined by watching the adaptations first. I'm probably not going to try reading the books, and there's a bunch of reasons for that, but mostly it just won't be the same, and I'm attached to the TV versions now, so. I read the first book of the series that Wire in the Blood is based on, and it was...okay (if ridiculously disturbing, the first episode of the series, which I think is the most disturbing, is based on the first book, and the book is, like, nine million times worse. Ugh.) but I'm not planning on reading any more of those.
Anyway, there were a few interesting differences between the two:
1. Book!Tony and Book!Carol are mostly the same as TV!Tony and TV!Carol, but there's some differences. I never really believed in the series that Tony was anywhere near crossing the line into actually turning into one of the people he studies, but in the book, that's mentioned quite explicitly. Also, there's some sexual dysfunction stuff going on there that isn't (explicitly, anyway) in the series, thank God. Book!Carol is the same in all the particulars, but at some level she just isn't Carol, and, I mean, there's not much you can do about that. In the series, Carol seems pretty put-together and stable, and there's less of that in the book. Also, I didn't get the impression that book!Carol knew seventy different ways to tell you to fuck off using only glances and eye-rolls, but she is pretty snarky in both. Book!Carol has perfect auditory recall, which is kind of awesome. And Nelson, her cat, is black, not orange, in the books. Which is minor, until you realize that putting Hermione Norris in scenes with a black cat would probably invite a ton of unwanted Bewitched references.
2. The book's mystery plays out mostly like the episode, except at the end. Angelica ends up dying from the stab wound Tony gives her in the book, and the end of the book he's all emo and alone and making comparisons between himself and Angelica. Whereas in the series, Angelica is alive, and by the second episode Tony's broken any hold she had over him, and seems just way less broken.
3. It's explicit in the book that Tony and Carol want each other. Like, completely and totally, mentioned straight-out from both their POV's, hilariously explicit. And yet I prefer the series for UST, because they had to take all of those thoughts and turn them into looks and gestures, which is somehow way more compelling.
However, there was this:
"He looked so vulnerable and falliable, his shoulders slumped, his head down, that Carol's impulses overrode the decision she'd taken only minutes before to play it cool. She stepped forward and Tony into a tight hug. "If anyone can do it, you can," she whispered, rubbing the side of her head against his chin like a cat marking its territory."
YEAH. SO.
SO, after all these British cops, I think it's high time to move on to spiiiiiiiies, don't you?