Five Fictional Things Make a Post

[pedanther]

1. I have been to the cinema to see a movie for the first time since, according to my notes, July. The movie was Arrival, and it was worth going to see. I will probably go and see some more movies this month, because we have Rogue One arriving this week and then Moana in the post-Christmas summer season.
 

2. I finally got around to reading The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Edwards, which has been lurking in my to-read pile for years. The author is the wife of the film director Blake Edwards, aka the actor and singer Julie Andrews, and I'm pleased to be able to say I enjoyed it, although probably not as much as I would have when I was the target age and less capable of spotting the bits that are designed to impart important life lessons. Other things that stuck out to now-me that wouldn't have to child-me were the puns (especially having recently read the bit in Summer in Orcus where the child protagonist is scornful of the kind of puns adult fantasy writers put in children's fantasy), and the wise token adult's attitude to the designated adversary's concerns, which I felt should have had a hashtag on them saying "#notallhumans". I was very pleased that the designated adversary turned out to be not evil, just doing his best in very trying circumstances, and that the token wise adult was shown to be a human being with his own flaws and blind spots (and that he started listening to his former adversary more by the end), but I felt it could have done with an explicit call out that even though the designated adversary turned out to be wrong about this specific group of humans he had perfectly valid reasons to be distrustful of humans in general.

(PS. I probably would have identified with one of the children when I was a child, but as an adult the designated antagonist is definitely my favourite character.)
 

3. Another thing that's been sitting on the shelf that I finally got around to is the Big Finish audio drama Storm Warning, the first of their series featuring Paul McGann as the eighth Doctor. It was okay, I guess? I mean, I enjoyed it, but I'm not in a big hurry to find out what happens next. (Although part of that's obviously because I'm starting the series fifteen years late, so I already know from fandom osmosis quite a bit about what happens next.) And, to be fair, I've never been all that good at audio dramas; I don't tend to find them engaging enough to sit still through.
 

4. The Rep Club Christmas Show has been and gone. I was involved only as an audience member, which I think may have been the right call. On top of the reasons for making that decision in the first place, I'm now in a position to tell that I enjoyed watching it once but it would probably have worn a bit thin through a month of rehearsals and performances. (It would also have been a crimp on my social life that I'd have regretted, in terms of things I've been able to go to on what would have been show nights.)

The next Rep Club production is, as I've mentioned, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. I've been cast as the socially awkward science nerd, which as you can imagine is going to be a stretch.
 

5. Fanfic rec: Third Wheel, in which Bruce Wayne makes his first official visit to Metropolis, and Lois Lane is assigned a celebrity profile that turns out to be more interesting than she expected, while Clark Kent investigates sightings of a mysterious bat-man.

"I've always wanted to learn how to fly," Clark said, sounding impressed.

"You should," Bruce said. "It's fun."

"It always seemed like it would be."

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

I think 'okay' is a fair enough assessment of Storm Warning, really. It has some fun bits, but the series does get better. And the more I listened, the more I found it much easier to get into the audio format, although, of course, that won't necessarily be the case for you, I realise. I usually listen to them on my mp3 player when I can't sleep, or I'm on a train or something like that.

[swordznsorcery.livejournal.com]

I bought "The Last Of The Really Great Whangdoodles" for a niece and nephew recently. The former was nine at the time, the latter eight, iirc. Jolly good feedback! I read it through a bit first, and it certainly seemed like fun. She's written another, called "Mandy", that is also supposed to be rather good.

"Storm Warning" is pretty good, but it's also really old. They've come on in leaps and bounds since then. I'd recommend trying one of the more recent ones. "Blood Of The Daleks" perhaps. That was the start of a new series, with a new companion.

[igenlode]

I got "Storm Warning" because it had Paul McGann, Gareth Thomas and airships in it -- loved it as a stand-alone drama (which is what I was expecting) until I got to the end, where all the alternate-history issues raised in the course of the story appeared to get brushed under the carpet. The idea that this was because it was just the set-up for a series and this stuff was going to be addressed much further down the line seemed like a pretty poor excuse to me at the time, I'm afraid; I got the next one in the series, which was all about the Cybermen (and still didn't address said issues), didn't like it so well, and never went any further :-(

I don't even remember what I was disgruntled about now -- only the feeling of being cheated...