Postcards from Oz - AU Edition

Warning: Somewhat self-indulgent fic ramblings ahead.

This being said, I am currently experiencing an unusual but lovely influx of kudos for all of my old The Nice Guys fic and can only assume it must have to do at least something with people enjoying Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary so very much they check out Gosling's other movies.

Which amuses and delights me to no end. And trust me, feedback even for stories now almost a decade old does matter. Mainly because it makes me feel less like an idiot, as I am one of those folks to who worry a lot. Themes, characterization, general quality of writing. You name it.

There is this one Nice Guys story that made me stop posting any fanfic for almost a decade. Christmas gift exchange, very difficult prompt which I knew would lead straight into a minefield. Still I wrote, to the very best of my abilities, pouring a lot of heart and research into the damn little thing, only to learn that the original recipient apparently disliked their gift so strongly that they ghosted me. Not even a "Thank you for trying". And when they finally decided to drop by a good nine months after publication it was partly to tell me how offensive, inaccurate and uninformed my story was. Public comment on AO3 when the underlying issue could have been easily resolved via a brief private exchange right after posting. I'm always willing to talk stuff over, learn and fix problems.

Strangely enough, and very ironically so, the story in question is also the one which keeps getting more kudos and bookmarks than any other I have ever written.

I am not sure what to make of that, other than "Yeah, feedback does matter to bruised writerly egos. A lot." :)

Cavendish and I are watching a lot of retro TV at the moment, most recently some of the Classic DW box sets we treated ourselves to for Christmas.

Yesterday we finished "Inferno", which took me by surprise with its outstanding dark B horror movie qualities and memorable guest characters. No wonder the adventure's script writer Don Houghton later wrote several feature films for Hammer Films.

As a 3rd Doctor adventure, "Inferno" starts out pretty regular with Three, still earthbound and working with UNIT, acting as scientific advisor to an ambitious drilling project (German-last-name-bearing mad scientist included) aiming at piercing the Earth's crust to harness energy. Hubris, mutations, death and chaos occur, and finally a TARDIS malfunction which lands Three in a dystopian, fascist parallel universe.

And that parallel universe is easily one of the bleakest things I've ever seen on DW, new series included. Mostly because of how the script tilts and twists the previously established characterizations, with the changes ranging from subtle but consequential (for example the just slightly altered chemistry between Dr. Petra Williams and Greg Sutton) to the really big ones (Liz and the Brigadier, logical and chilling)

Definitely worth seeing.

Oh, and I love Liz Shaw as a companion. Smart, sensible, no nonsense. In her depiction as a female scientist clearly ahead of her time. Too bad this adventure already marks Caroline John's departure from the show.

Fic meme as snagged from thisbluespirit , selenak and astrogirl  :)

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for starting a fic title? One fic per line, ‘A’ and 'The’ do not count for 'a’ and ’t’. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

A - And Then You Know (Nice Guys. Just a day in the life of Holly March)

B -
C -
D -
E -

F - The Fabric That God Weaves (Doctor Who.Human beings are time-blind.)


G -
H -
J -
K -


L -Light as a Feather (Nice Guys. Last Christmas, March had phoned from a restaurant on South Flower street.)


M -Mimesis (ST: DS9. Essentially it's spin control.)


N - Not There - Yet (Farscape. John spiraling and Rygel… well, being Rygel. John has never been all that much into horror movies.)

O -

P - Prometheus's Wake (Farscape. Uncle John has shown mankind a glimpse of the universe, stolen the fire and torn the lid off the tricky box.)


Q -
R -

S - Shadows (SW. After Qui-Gon's death, Obi-Wan is coming to terms with his role as Anakin's new master.)


T - True Grit (Dairy Aisle Ghosts) (Nice Guys.Holland March must have some neighbours, right?)

U -
V -
W -
X -
Y -
Z -

Last Saturday, Cavendish and I took advantage of the long weekend and went to see the “New Objectivity” (“Neue Sachlickeit” in German) exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim, just a couple of days before the exhibition’s closing date on March, 9th.

In short, a great day out. Fantastic art and after that a nice stroll through the inner city of Mannheim, including a visit to Mannheim Baroque Palace, which is one of the largest palaces in Europe and nowadays serves as one of the main buildings to host the city’s university.

Pleasant and safe train ride back home.

I have no words for how I felt when, two days later, on Rose Monday, around lunch time the news broke that two people had just been killed in a deliberate attack by a 40-year-old German who had driven his car right into the crowds at Mannheim’s main city centre shopping area.

In light of this, it took me a while to decide whether I really wanted to post an entry that was originally intended to be nothing more than an artsy picture spam with a few extra words how poignant, inspired and incredibly well curated “The New Objectivity - A Centennial -2024/11/22 - 2025/03/09” is as an exhibition.

I’ve been wondering whether I should get back into some sort of (semi) regular posting mode instead of just lurking and leaving the odd occasional comment in friends’ journals.  Mostly, I’d like to have some sort of record of the various things that I watched or read during these *cough* interesting times. Also, I’d love to let people know I am still out there and enjoying their posts. So, here we go, just for starters.

Recent movies:
Better Man, Juror #2

Recent shows:
For All Mankind, SW: Skeleton Crew,  The Good Place

Recent books:
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriél Garcia Márquez (which I started ages ago, completely unrelated to the current Netflix adaption), and could only now bring myself to finish.

Current books (non fiction):
Post-Aufklärungsgesellschaft by German Professor of philosophy and didactics at TU Dresden, Markus Tiedemann, in which Tiedemann makes a quite convincing case for the age of enlightenment being one of humanity’s greatest achievements before setting out to argue how and why we are currently about to throw away all the humanist and secular-rationalist principles that we, as a society, have gained.

Current books (fiction):
Antichristie by Mithu Sanyal, in which a fifty-ish screenwriter of half German, half Indian descent working on an anti-imperialist, politically correct take on adapting an Agatha Christie crime novel gets transported to early 20^th century London and involved with leading revolutionary Indian nationalists of that time.

Celebrating your 45th birthday at a time when the German federal state that you live in is also the federal state with the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases (1041 so far, and rising) is a pretty strange experience, I can tell you. Filled with a kind of decisions I wouldn’t have dreamed of a month ago.

Cavendish and I are, luckily, still young enough not to fall into any of the high risk groups; however it’s a different matter with our 75+ parents, especially with my father-in-law, who is terminally ill with colon cancer.

So we are thinking a lot about risk minimising measures these days, for example stuff like cancelling our reservation for the super-nice but also somewhat crowded Indian restaurant where we had originally wanted to take my own Dad on Saturday for a slightly belated birthday dinner. The restaurant owner, who is of the loveliest, helpful and most welcoming type you can imagine, is having a three course takeaway meal prepared for us now, so that we can enjoy at least part of what their sumptuous weekend buffet has to offer without having to consume our food in a room full of people.

Not that I believe contracting SARS-CoV-2 right at this point is all that likely, the case numbers even here in North-Rhine Westphalia are still too low for that. But what I believe in are the accumulated effects of people’s behaviour. Science, mathematics and expert projections. Everything coming down to the inconvenient, unpleasant fact that every decision with potential to slow down the virus’s spread is a good decision and a responsible one.

Thus I’m still rather torn about the Lichtburg Essen’s decision to have their great Star Trek: Wrath of Khan screening on March 11th take place exactly as scheduled. (The theatre usually holds 1250 people but apparently managed to keep the audience under 1000 by cancelling evening ticket sales and not putting any returned tickets back into sale.) William Shatner, in his late eighties now and still very much William Shatner as you know, love, or hate him, is touring Europe with Wrath of Khan at the moment. Movie screening followed by extensive Q&A stage program.

The film, with its opening scenes taking place on Kirk’s birthday, is a wonderful film to see on your own birthday. Especially if you are someone like me for whom Star Trek has been there all their lives. (One of my earliest conscious memories of watching TV is a Star Trek one, my Dad was watching, I was about three years old and sitting next to him on the sofa.)

Cavendish and I had bought our tickets sometime last September, practically as soon as we had seen the event first announced. Very much looking foward to it and learning that, against all odds, Wrath of Khan would definitely take place, we decided to go (The ratio behind this being that it was just the two of us, and it would be several days before we would meet with any of our parents again.)

Wonderful evening, full of fun, excitement and the priceless experience of feeling like the Star Trek loving kid I once was all over again. But a lot of anxiety and scruples before and after.

To quote Mr. Spock: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.