Of fannish things (or, OMG look at the tags!)

[nialla42]

Real life stuff has been keeping me from posting about fannish stuff, so this is sort of a catch-up post.

Went to see Wreck It Ralph at my local theater Thursday night. It's a cute film, with lots of gamer in-jokes that even an oldster like me who played Pac-Man back in the day could get. I mean, they even had Pong in it if you look carefully. If

Comments

[sg_wonderland]

Re: Downton Abbey. If you're referring to the Christmas special where

spoiler, spoiler, spoiler

Matthew and Mary in the swirling snow, yes, it did air here in the US.

[nialla42]

For some reason my friend missed it. She said she was a bit thrown at it jumping straight to marriage prep in series 3, but thought perhaps they'd finally settled offscreen.

One of our mutual friends had already checked out both seasons of Downton Abbey from my library, so I told her to make puppy dog eyes at our friend to watch the special in the series 2 disc.

[sg_wonderland]

i was raving about Downton to a friend and she said "I don't really care for shows about rich people." I'm like, you missed the whole point of the show. I love the below stairs storylines as much as I enjoy the rich people problems.

But I've also always been a sucker for anything set in England, Ireland or Scotland.

[nialla42]

The downstairs stuff is much more interesting. Bates is probably one of my favorite characters, though the very naughty Thomas is also entertaining.

What's interesting to me is you see the heir to the estate marrying an American heiress for her money, because they mainly just have the land and the title, not the money to keep it going. This was pretty common then, and from what I understand, the modern day estates often have a similar issue with cash flow. They have land and title, but nothing to spend on much needed repairs on the "old pile".

[sg_wonderland]

Cornelia Vanderbilt was probably the most famous of the American heiresses who married into the English aristocracy.

Highclere Castle, the real Downton Abbey, was saved in a similar way except that Almina was British, not American. She wasn't titled but had a huge fortune to fall back on. I recently read a fascinating book about her.

http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Almina-Real-Downton-Abbey/dp/0770435629