Kindle Worlds: Do fan fiction writers want to make money?
Read more here.
These women make some interesting points. It’s nice to know that there are other fan fiction writers who are no longer in their teens and who stay with their fandoms over many years.
Blog Platform Designed for Book Lovers – BookLikes
Read more here.
Marry, Date or Dump: Sherlock Holmes
Read more here.
In this case, I’d marry Watson, date Holmes and dump Moriarty.
The new Doctor
So… For the first time I found out almost immediately about who the new doctor will be. In the past, I’ve just stumbled across the news online at some point after the announcement. Unfortunately, I’m really disappointed. I don’t care about the actor’s age or colour, as long as it is a man (I’d love to see a female Time Lord – perhaps The Doctor’s Daughter – but not the actual Doctor). Somehow though, this man doesn’t look like the Doctor at all. Not to me. Sigh.
To be fair though, I wasn’t all that keen on Clara when she first showed up and now I really like her. In fact, I didn’t like Donna either, in The Runaway Bride. I really didn’t see what the big deal was, but after a while, Donna became my favorite companion (well, her and Rory). So who knows? Maybe Peter Capaldi will surprise me, but right now I’m not feeling very happy about one of my favorite tv series.
Marry, Date or Dump: Hamlet, Meme
Since I found this “Tumblr-ish” meme on WordPress, I decided to do it here. Who would you marry, dump or date in Hamlet – Horatio, Laertes or Hamlet?
Hamlet, John Barrymore
I’d marry Horatio, date Laertes and dump Hamlet.
Who will be the new Doctor?
Since finding out that Matt Smith is leaving Dr Who (and wondering why), I’ve been considering who I’d like to see as the new Doctor. I came up with a few ideas. Most people may not agree with me. Still, it’s been fun thinking about it.
First I’d like to add that I’m not in favour of a female Doctor. If we’re to have a female Time Lord (Time Lady?) it would be great to have a spin-off series, like The Sarah Jane Adventures or Torchwood, about the Doctor’s daughter, Jenny. I should also mention that I’m not an expert on the series since I’ve only been watching it since the beginning of the new Dr Who series. Christopher Eccleston was my first (and favorite) Doctor. If I’ve missed something that’s already happened, then I’ll be grateful if someone would point it out to me.
So here goes:
My first suggestion is a bit – different. I’ve often thought that it would be interesting to have a very young-looking Doctor, exactly because inside, he’s really very old. Since I don’t know of many English child actors, I’ll just suggest one that I have seen on tv in the past few years:
Harry Miles (Archie Arless in Lark Rise to Candleford). I don’t know exactly how old he is, but I imagine he’ll be a teenager by now and as such would be very suitable as this ‘young-old’ Doctor. Though I’m sure there are other equally suitable young actors, aged 12-15 who might look the part and be talented enough to handle the role. I doubt if this will happen though, so maybe there could be just one episode in which the Doctor’s regeneration takes a little longer and he ends up being a boy for a number of hours, before ending up the way he’s supposed to be. Or – since this is science fiction – there could be some other reason for the Doctor’s temporary rejuvenation.
Harry Miles
My second suggestion may not be very realistic either, but I can’t resist making it anyway:
Aidan Turner. As most people know he’s appeared in Being Human, Desperate Romantics and The Hobbit. He’s hot and if he can play a vampire, struggling to remain human and a hot and cute dwarf, he could probably handle playing the Doctor.
Next candidate is Allen Leech mostly known for his role in Downton Abbey, as Tom Branson, the chauffeur who fell in love with his employer’s daughter, lady Sybil. Sybil and Tom were, incidentally, among my favorite Downton Abbey characters along with Sybil’s grandmother, Violet Crawley and Sybil’s sister Edith.
Shaun Evans (Endevour) is a new acquaintance for me. I watched the last episode of the first season of Endevour only a few weeks ago and I must say I liked this series better than the original Inspector Morse series, probably because I’m crazy about historic series. I also like the young Morse better than the old one. And I think he’d make a good Doctor.
Finally, my main suggestions:
George Rainsford (known from Waking the Dead and Call the Midwife.) Something about him just reminds me of the Doctor. Of course it’s obvious that he looks a bit like the Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison. Plus he’s cute. 🙂
George Rainsford
So there you have them. My most serious suggestions to replace Matt Smith as Dr Who. I’m just briefly going to mention a few runners-up: Don Gilet and Shaun Parkes. They’ve both appeared on the show already and maybe that automatically disqualifies them, though a candidate I’ve seen mentioned a lot lately, Russell Tovey, has been on the show too, so why not? I would definitely like to see Russell Tovey as the Doctor if that’s what happens. In the meantime we can only wait and see.
Who would you like to see as the new Doctor?
Les revenants, French tv series
Recently, I finished watching a really good French tv series. Swedish television had taken the rather unusual decision of airing it only online, perhaps as a sort of trial to see how popular it would get. I thought it was great. No more keeping track of time, just watching whenever I liked.
The series is about a town where strange things happen. It lies idyllically in the mountains, somewhere in France. Perhaps a French viewer can be more specific about which region it is, or perhaps it’s been left intentionally vague. I’ve seen other series like that.
The first episode begins with a teenage girl wandering around rather dazed in the countryside. She is seen climbing up from a slope, onto a road. She has no memory of how she ended up there. Her last memories are of being on a school trip, on a bus.
She makes her way home and meets her mother inside, telling her she understands if she’s been worried, but something’s happened and she doesn’t remember what. Her mother manages to keep her calm, and embraces her daughter, but we soon learn that the girl, Camille, has been dead for four years, following a tragic accident while on a school trip. Despite that, she seems exactly as she was four years earlier.
Camille only learns about that when her twin sister (!), Léna arrives home, rather late. Léna has a hysterical outburst and Camille is upset too. The family can think of no explanation for Camille’s return.
I won’t go into all the main characters, but Camille is probably ‘the’ main character so I thought I’d describe her more in depth. Léna has had a really hard time dealing with losing her sister and has rebelled against her parents, but she finds it even harder to accept her sister’s return. The two sisters have a falling out.
In later episodes we learn more about the two sisters and also about a number of other characters, some who have returned from the dead, among them a sinister little boy, a good looking young guy, who played in a band, but who, we are told, killed himself on the night before his wedding and a serial killer.
Some of the returned have no families to return to, having died ten, or even, in one case, thirty-five years earlier.
I’ll just end by saying a few words about the name of the series. In French it’s called Les revenants (“the returning”) and in Swedish it’s been given a name that is one of our words for ghosts (literally meaning ‘those who walk again’, or ‘someone who walks again’). I think that’s a bit of a misnomer, in a way. These people are not like traditional ghosts, though somehow, they seem to be able to get around in mysterious ways. However, we never get to see them going through a wall, or anything like that. You never get the impression they are not flesh and blood. They can eat (to begin with, they’re quite hungry), fight, have sex, but have a difficult time sleeping, though some are able to, as time goes by.
If you get a chance to see this series, I can really recommend it. It’s fascinating, creepy but not too terrifying (if it had been, I wouldn’t have been able to watch it). The tension builds slowly with little details adding to the feeling of dread.
Edit: Here is a link to a gallery with images of the main characters. Just click the image to see the next.
Female role models in tv, movies and books
I recently read an article about positive female role models in movies. In general, there is a lack of good female role models so I think the short list in the article is a good starting point in changing that. I began to wonder which female characters I would deem positive and came up with this list (some of which were in the original article):
Ellen Ripley/Sigourney Weaver, the Alien movies (especially the first and second)
I read that Ripley was originally meant to be a male character, which figures. What man would write a female character like Ripley? Or anyone? Which is too bad, because I think that any woman who was physically capable would have done exactly the same things Ripley did. All she did was save her own life and those her adopted kid/s and try to pay a corrupt corporation back for killing her crewmates and setting them all up to bring back a lethal weapon in the form of an ‘exo lifeform’.
Erin Brockovich/Julia Roberts in the movie by the same name
Erin Brockovich is an unedcuated rather simple woman who stumbles across corruption and finds that she wants to do something about and then does exactly that. Simple enough, but at least when I watched the movie, I was impressed with her development from someone who just wanted to make a living to someone with a conscience. Normally, I don’t like Julia Roberts, so I was surprised to find that I liked this movie and the main character.
Olive Hoover/Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
Olive is anything but a cliche. You might say that her grandfather is not really the kind of person who should have been helping her create her act for the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, and you’d think someone would have thought of that before the actual pageant, but I guess then there wouldn’t have been much of a movie. In any case, Olive is an amazing kid and several other characters in the movie are quite unusual and interesting too.
Catherine Morland, Northanger Abbey
Catherine is adventurous, imaginative and though I understand she’s supposed to be a parody of the typical heroine of a ‘gothic’ novel, I really like her. She’s fun and human and flawed, but in general, just nice and you find yourself rooting for her throughout the novel.
Anne Elliot, Persuasion
Anne is also quite different from the other Jane Austen heroines, which is probably why she and Catherine are my two favorite characters from Jane Austen’s books. Poor Anne has been rather too obedient to her family and that has left her in the unenviable situation of being unmarried at the old age of 26. She spends her life trying to help her family and keeping them from bankruptcy. Then when she gets a second chance at life, she’s strong enough to go against her snobbish family and do what she wants for a change.
Beatrice Eliott/Stella Gonet, The House of Eliott
In the first episode of the House of Elliot, Beatrice and her sister Evangeline are basically slaves to their selfish father, but when he dies – which he does during the first five minutes or so of the first episode – Beatrice is the one who quickly finds a way for the sisters to support themselves, doing something they’re both good at and enjoy doing. Beatrice is fun, tough and the sort of person you really root for, except when she’s mean to Jack.
Trudy Joplin/Olivia Brown, Miami Vice
Trudy is the most fun member of the Miami Vice team. Crockett and Tubbs may be sizzling hot, but Trudy is fun, tough and cool. I love her outfits (when she’s not playing prostitute in sting operations).
The rest of my list:
Constance Peterson, Spellbound
Alicia Huberman, Notorious
Tracy Turnblad, Hairspray
Jane Eyre, in the movie by the same name.
Alice, Alice in Wonderland
Miss Froy, Alice Henderson, The Lady Vanishes
Eowyn, LOTR
Stephanie Plum, Lula, Grandma Mazur/mormor Mazur, One for the Money
Veronica Mars, Cindy “Mac” McKenzie, Veronica Mars
From Downton Abbey:
Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham
Lady Sybil Crawley
Lucy Pevensie, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe + Prince Caspian + Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Morgan, Cutthroat Island
Janet, Charmed Lives, Diana Wynne Jones
Tea with Mussolini: Most of the female characters.
As you can see this is a mix of characters from movies, tv series and books. They’re in no particular order, chronological or otherwise. I just put them in as I thought of them. Some are from the early 19th century, others from this year or last year and the rest from anything in between. Considering how long a period of time this is (nearly two hundred years) you could say that it’s a pitifully short list, but of course I’ve probably overlooked several great characters that I might have come up with if I’d taken more time to consider. Also, it’s just characters from the English-speaking world. Anyway, for what it’s worth, this is my list. Do you have one too?
