*poof*

[whynot]

+ Pullman, you PRAT! Roger ain't more than a red herring -- it was PAN. OH MY GOD. MY HEART. I love how Lyra doesn't look away, not from Pan as she drifted away, not from that other thing she didn't look away from (I forget). Stare of loyal compassion! Love it.

+ BALTHAMOS/BARUCH 4EVA

+ Also Lyra/Will 4eva. I kind of wanted to roll my eyes at Pullman for beating in how happy ("melting with happiness"!) and in love ("heavy and soft with love"!) the two are. But. I kind of can't, because I just find the whole affair heart-warming to the max. I adore how happy and in love they are. Which is why the end BROKE ME. Oh, Pullman. You don't pull any punches, and I love and hate you for it. You don't cheat us out of a story.

+ I'm still kind of having a hard time picturing what the mulefa look like in my head. I just take it at face value that they're fun at parties.

+ I am a-squee at Pullman's breadth of knowledge of cultures. I love the alternate parallel names! Skraelings and Muscovites and and Tartars and Afric and the Republic of Texas (which really did exist?!) and speaking Nipponese, OH MY. I am a huge geek when it comes to these things. I love little details like these, like the Dutch roots of the Gyptians and the trepanning. Also, I applaud how he doesn't vilify a whole race, and that there's people of all races (and species, come to that) on either side of the conflict. And, more importantly, there's bad people even on the good side and all sorts of inbetween.

+ Iorek eating Lee sends all sorts of chills down my spine. It's creepy and beautiful and touching and creepy.

+ Asriel and Mrs. Coulter... deserved it? I tend to think so, but geez, what a fate. I would like to see fic about their ghosts in the black hole, falling for ever and ever and ever. That's shivers up the spine.

As for the movie, suffice to say I didn't like it (but I will go on). I couldn't make out the characters for all the expository dialogue. When will they stop telling the story and start acting? Well, they never did. I wanted to hit the girl who played Lyra, especially when she screamed. Least emotional screams ever. Yes, where were her emotions? Argh. Kidman, Sir Ian, and the dude who played Lee Scoresby were alright, but kinda hammy. The best thing about the movie was DANIEL CRAIG. Who makes a PERFECT LORD ASRIEL. Just as I imagined, seriously. Lord Craig is one sexy motherfucker. Well, I guess Pantalaimon was good too, but he's CGI, so he doesn't count.

Oh, and Billy Costa! Now he had attitude. I wanted to see more of him, and was sore disappointed to see he had already gotten intercisoned. Billy, we hardly knew ye!

On that note, I'm much intrigued by this community: withdaemons. It's not so much a crossover, just what it would be like if the characters in your fandom had daemons.

The Merry Go Round Broke Down by Merlin Missy. Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. PG. Effectively a sequel. I love the movie to death and I kind of love this fic to death too. This fic is a gumshoe story, also a commentary on the state of animation today, also a spot-the-cartoon game of varying levels, also HILARIOUS and kind of the best thing ever. Cartoon slapstick and circular logic has never transposed so well to the written word. OH MY GOD YOU GUYS HAVE TO READ IT YOU HAVE TO YOU HAVE TO.

So Much More Than That by jengrrrl. Mean Girls. Regina/Cady, PG13. The Regina voice is spot-on. It's fun to read, and obnoxiously charming.

Comments

[vagabondsal.livejournal.com]

Hey, that's Es' community! You should join it, as she's good people and she loev daemons long time.

Also, if you like alterna-worlds with what-if cultural paradigms, you should totes pick up Kim Stanley Robinson's magisterial The Years of Rice and Salt, being a record of the history of the world after the Great Plague annihilated the denizens of the land of Firanja, i.e. Europe. Cultural geekery meets geopolitical counterfactuals on the grand scale. :Dd

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

Ya, I've been wondering which fandom I'd like to daemonize. That will have to stay on the backburner until my trope fic is finished, which - as these things go - now feature completely different characters than I previously planned. Whee.

I further looked up the years of rice and salt and it sounds FASCINATING. I absolutely will keep an eye out for it. Thank you for the heads-up! I had actually considered asking in this post for scifi/fantasy/geekery-in-general reading recommendations as my appetite for it over the summer appears to have grown, so this is pretty much bunches of yay.