Thank you!
Pretend it's two days ago. Thank you to everyone who sent me birthday wishes, or an LJ gift, or an actual gift, or money to buy myself a gift. You're all awesome, and I'm sorry I didn't reply to you before now.
I had a lovely, quiet birthday. Stayed in, didn't really do anything special, had drunken risotto for dinner with a bottle of delicious cheap white. Today, my not-quite-on-my-birthday-but-close-enough self-present arrived - I found a super cheap copy of the steelbook special edition of Wanted on eBay, and am sitting here watching my way through the extras as I type. Roughly $40 brand new, I got it for $12, lightly used, postage included.
I have more swag arriving over the next couple of weeks thanks to a gift voucher for fishpond.com.au (thanks
lefaym!) I have a bunch of books and the Jane Eyre film on the way.
Re: Jane Eyre, I loved it, and, because I'm lazy, I'm gonna c/p what I said about it in an email here:
After being sidetracked by other things for a couple of months, I've finally broken out the Bronte again. I reread Jane Eyre first, mainly because it's a story I first read aged eight, and have revisited many times since, and I wanted to refresh my memory prior to watching the Michael Fassbender film, which is really excellent, by the way. He delivers an amazingly edgy performance - there's a constant aura of, not necessarily violence, but wildness about him. Like he's an injured, distrustful animal, striking out just to test those around him. It's not a perfect film - I think they should have stuck to showing it chronologically, rather than flashing back, since at least one time jump is confusing to anyone unfamiliar with the story and I had to explain to Emma that it *was* a flashback, not just a new location - but the acting and casting are superb, it's visually stunning and the score/soundwork are beautifully haunting and understated.
I've already had someone rec the miniseries from about six years back, so I'll probably d/l that next time I'm in Sydney.
Does anyone know where all the fic is, by the way? I presume, like Austen, that there are corners of the internet where all the Jane/Rochester is hiding, and that, because it's an old-school fandom, AO3 is way too new and cool for them. (Austen, for example, has the Derbyshire Writers' Guild, which has been going for a decade or so, online, at least.) I know it's possible to write amazing pastiches, and I'll take any and all recs, only pausing to offer my own rec, for those who like Bronte AND X-Men: First Class.
The changeling; or, Charles Xavier (a novel by a lady) by aesc. It's not just a copy/paste of X-Men characters into a Bronte story. It's something new and wonderful and special that takes elements from both canons and crafts an incredible fusion fic. The rhythms of he language and sentence structure are beautifully Bronte, and the melancholy and almost otherworldliness from Jane Eyre infuses the story and creates a very similar tone. There are story points that tip the hat to Bronte, but the story itself isn't married to them. aesc hasn't forced one canon's characters to fit another canon's mold, rather, she's honoured the spirit of Bronte and the characters of XMFC and combined them in a way that's beautiful and strange. I think it's genuinely one of the best and most unique AUs that I've read in the fandom.
Anyway, sorry that this post has been shambolic, thank you to everyone for birthday stuff, and I'll try and post something a bit more coherent in the next few days. :)
This entry was originally posted at http://iamshadow.dreamwidth.org/362314.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I had a lovely, quiet birthday. Stayed in, didn't really do anything special, had drunken risotto for dinner with a bottle of delicious cheap white. Today, my not-quite-on-my-birthday-but-close-enough self-present arrived - I found a super cheap copy of the steelbook special edition of Wanted on eBay, and am sitting here watching my way through the extras as I type. Roughly $40 brand new, I got it for $12, lightly used, postage included.
I have more swag arriving over the next couple of weeks thanks to a gift voucher for fishpond.com.au (thanks
lefaym!) I have a bunch of books and the Jane Eyre film on the way.
Re: Jane Eyre, I loved it, and, because I'm lazy, I'm gonna c/p what I said about it in an email here:
After being sidetracked by other things for a couple of months, I've finally broken out the Bronte again. I reread Jane Eyre first, mainly because it's a story I first read aged eight, and have revisited many times since, and I wanted to refresh my memory prior to watching the Michael Fassbender film, which is really excellent, by the way. He delivers an amazingly edgy performance - there's a constant aura of, not necessarily violence, but wildness about him. Like he's an injured, distrustful animal, striking out just to test those around him. It's not a perfect film - I think they should have stuck to showing it chronologically, rather than flashing back, since at least one time jump is confusing to anyone unfamiliar with the story and I had to explain to Emma that it *was* a flashback, not just a new location - but the acting and casting are superb, it's visually stunning and the score/soundwork are beautifully haunting and understated.
I've already had someone rec the miniseries from about six years back, so I'll probably d/l that next time I'm in Sydney.
Does anyone know where all the fic is, by the way? I presume, like Austen, that there are corners of the internet where all the Jane/Rochester is hiding, and that, because it's an old-school fandom, AO3 is way too new and cool for them. (Austen, for example, has the Derbyshire Writers' Guild, which has been going for a decade or so, online, at least.) I know it's possible to write amazing pastiches, and I'll take any and all recs, only pausing to offer my own rec, for those who like Bronte AND X-Men: First Class.
The changeling; or, Charles Xavier (a novel by a lady) by aesc. It's not just a copy/paste of X-Men characters into a Bronte story. It's something new and wonderful and special that takes elements from both canons and crafts an incredible fusion fic. The rhythms of he language and sentence structure are beautifully Bronte, and the melancholy and almost otherworldliness from Jane Eyre infuses the story and creates a very similar tone. There are story points that tip the hat to Bronte, but the story itself isn't married to them. aesc hasn't forced one canon's characters to fit another canon's mold, rather, she's honoured the spirit of Bronte and the characters of XMFC and combined them in a way that's beautiful and strange. I think it's genuinely one of the best and most unique AUs that I've read in the fandom.
Anyway, sorry that this post has been shambolic, thank you to everyone for birthday stuff, and I'll try and post something a bit more coherent in the next few days. :)
This entry was originally posted at http://iamshadow.dreamwidth.org/362314.html. Please comment there using OpenID.