World Enough and Time

My Favourite Father-Child Relationships in Fiction:

1. Admiral Count Aral Vorkosigan and his son Miles, in the novels by Lois McMaster Bujold, especially The Warrior's Apprentice
   
   
2. Thor and Odin in Marvel's Thor comics - this one is all over the map, and seriously messed up.
   
   
3. Nick Fury and his son Nick Fury, from Marvel's Battle Scars.
   
   
4. Lymond and his son, in Pawn in Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett. Note how carefully I do not name the boy.
   
   
5. Walter Bishop and Peter Bishop, in Fringe.
   
   
   
   
6. Cyclops and Cable, in X-Men.
   
   
7. Noah Bennet and his daughter Clare, the cheerleader in Heroes.
   
   
8. Atticus Finch and Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird.
   
   
9. Fu Manchu and Shang Chi in Master of Kung Fu. Not that Fu Manchu was ever in the story much, but I liked the idea of him, the contrast between the father and the son.
   
   
10. Admiral Cairo Azarcon and his son Ryan, in Burndive by Karin Lowachee.
    

Ineresting how many characters in fiction either have no children, or have no parents, or have neither parents nor children.

The 30 Days of Torchwood meme:

( Day #1: Favourite Torchwood Member. )

One thing I love in storytelling is a protagonist who is a com man, especially if they end up being heroic, especially if their heroism is inadvertent or reluctant. Variations on the Trickster as a character. Thinking about Neal Caffrey of White Collar, who is a fine example of the type, I thought I'd make a list of my other favourite con men in fiction.

The list actually overlaps with other lists, like pirates - I'm making it a point to keep the two categories apart.

( My favourite con men... )

I enjoyed reading Science Fiction's 10 Most Epic Love Stories. I agree with some of the choices - though I never saw enough of Farscape or Cowboy Bebop to get to the romance, but I loved both insofar as I saw them and would agree on principle. The romance of Aral Vorkosigan and Cordelia Naismith is one of my favourites ever, and the Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese was great because Michael Biehn is about as hot as a guy can get. But generally speaking, my favourite characters in SF (Aral and Cordelia notwithstanding) don't get romances. Or if they do, they're lame, like Mulder and Scully - brilliant characters, weak romance. So, hmm... going purely from canon and discounting the above, discounting slash, saving comic book characters for a list another day, what would my choices be?

( fajrdrako's choice: The Ten Most Epic Love Stories in Science Fiction )

Looking at this list, I note that though they are love stories, only Wall-E ends with the lovers happily together ever after. I think there are two reasons for this: one is that in science fiction, generally speaking, women who are a love interest in the story usually achieve either a tragic death or a minor role - not attributes likely to attract me to them. And male/male (or even female/female) romances are primarily a feature of the past decade or so, though I almost listed Xena and Gabrielle among my choices, and didn't, because it wouldn't be honest: I never watched much Xena.

The other reason is that most science fiction is not romantic fiction. With some exceptions, my favourite SF isn't romantic SF. And SF isn't my favourite genre, anyway. Most men, when they write love stories, write about lovers being separated and torn apart, rather than lovers getting together, and most TV shows are written by men.

The article Oh No! Ten Shocking TV Deaths didn't contain any deaths that shocked me because I'd never seen any of them except Joyce Summers on Buffy. But it made me think: what would be my list of the most shocking deaths? I suppose most of them would be on Torchwood alone. And death in comics, though frequent and dramatic, is seldom shocking, because the characters come back. Except, occasionally, when they don't.¹

Since I don't watch enough television to get ten deaths from that alone, I'll make it deaths in fandom, in general. And what the heck, I'll make it a picspam. ( Cut for those who don't want spoilers for miscellaneous shows, books, and comics. )

Fannish Friday 5 - Jul. 17th, 2009
Name your five favorite geniuses - evil or otherwise - from any fandom

Funny. Most of my favourite heroes are geniuses, one way or another. Not so much the villains. Evil geniuses tend to fall into the 'stereotype' category, which I don't like.

1. The Doctor. I don't think this even needs comment.
   
2. Eugenides, in the novels by Megan Whalen Turner.
   
3. Forge. Seems he's fallen on hard times, but in his first few years as a Marvel mutant I loved the character. Mutant inventor, Storm's lover.
   
4. Miles Vorkosigan. I do prefer his father Aral, and though I am perfectly happy to believe that Aral is a political genius, we don't see much of that in action. In the Lois McMaster Bujold novels, we see Miles' career through his own eyes, and his delightful genius for Forward Momentum.
   
5. Francis Crawford of Lymond. The genius as Renaissance man - both literally and figuratively. A genius in music, mathematics, the military, strategy, languages, politics, and self-torture.
   

What, that's five already? You mean I can't list Tony Stark?

This was posted on one of the Doctor Who mailing lists as a survey for fans to fill out, and I figured I'd post it here:

My favourite story of the RTD era is... The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
My least favourite story has been... The Unquiet Dead
The RTD Doctor I prefer is ... Nine
My favourite companion has been... Captain Jack Harkness
My favourite moment has been... "Everybody lives" - though it's a hard call!
My least favourite moment... The Doctor dismantling Jack's Vortex Manipulator in "Last of the Time Lords" and "Journey's End"
My favourite new villain is... Mr FInch
My favourite returning old-school monster is... The Sontarans
My favourite new monster is... Reapers
My favourite RTD season has been... Series One
I know it will never happen but... Captain Jack stays with the Doctor
I think the Moffat era will be... Something to look forward to.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you who are mothers, and who have mothers, or have ever had mothers.

As a Mother's day Tribute I was going to list my ten favourite fictional mothers. So I did that. I had some trouble thinking of ten fictional mothers at all. Most protagonists are not mothers. Most protagonists do not have mothers, or if they do, they're like Stephanie Plum's mother - hardly central to the action. Granma Mazure is more fun, but she's in a grandmother role. Grandmother's get to be cool and funny. Mothers, when funny, tend to be irritating.

IMDB did a list of "beloved TV moms", and of the list, I have only seen one of them, and I have mixed feelings about her: Joyce Summer on Buffy. She has some great moments, but also too many bad ones. (I haven't forgiven her for trying to break up Buffy and Angel at the end of season 3.)

So if you want to hear my initial list of mothers:

• Sarah Connor - Trained her kid to be an outlaw and machine-killer, but in a good cause. Great action hero.
  
• Sybilla Crawford - Some Dunnett readers think Sybilla is the worst mother of all time, warping and abusing her child, and never telling him the truth that might have saved him. Personally, I think Sybilla is great, especially in The Game of Kings.
  
• Eleanor of Aquitaine - Mother of the most dysfunctional brood of Plantagenets! "What family doesn't have its ups and downs?" Her fictionality is arguable, but I'm thinking of fictional depictions.
  
• Lady Macduff - a small role, but delightfully maternal.
  
• Martha Kent - I loved her in season one of Smallville. Not so much in later seasons.
  
• Mystique - she tried to kill Kurt in infancy, but was good to Rogue, in an evil-supervillain-mother sort of way.
  
• Cordelia Naismith - maybe the best mother ever, especially in Barrayar, in which she fights a war to save her damaged unborn child.
  
• Kate Somerville - One of my favourite characters ever, on any scale. A Dunnett character in her own right, as well as being Philippa's mother.
  
• Sue Richards - of the Fantastic Four. A character who has suffered from many bad writers, but who has had good moments, too. She has never quite overcome the problem of being the token female in the group, but I've always had a soft spot for her.
  
• Jackie Tyler - Rose Tyler's mum. I love her for so many reasons, not least because she once slapped the Doctor's face for Rose's sake. I maybe love her best in "Love and Monsters".
  

Only two of these women are the protagonists in their own story - Sarah Connor and Cordelia Naismith - and they both cede way to their sons as protagonists in a longer series. Most are minor character in a larger picture.

Thinking harder, I came up with a few more names. Jane Eyre? I wasn't too crazy over her attitude to Adèle, but she was a conscientious caretaker - this hardly puts her into a 'favourite mother' status.

Amanda from Star Trek. What a wonderful mother.

Jessica Jones, mother of Luke Cage's kid. The Wikipedia article on her here seems a little out of date.

Aunt May from Spider-Man.

Maria Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, and Donna Sheridan in Mamma Mia!.

And on a spoiler note, isn't it wonderful that ( we are going to see... )

The Ten Best Kisses On Torchwood

...Picspam of my ten favourite Torchwood kisses. As it turns out, these are not necesarily my favourite pairings or my favourite moments, though some of them are. But Torchwood more than any other show I have ever seen has a wide variety of different kisses.

Most of the kisses we see in the show, numerically, are between Rhys and Gwen. I pretty much disqualified them because I love them all, and because they aren't usually plot related: they're just part of the loving relationship we consistently see between Gwen and Rhys. It would be like listing the air they breathe. And don't I wish Jack and Ianto kissed and touched and teased so easily, freely and often!

These choices range from the tender to the torrid. Your picks would probably not be the same as mine. After all, I left out that wonderful kiss between Jack and Ianto in "To the Last Man", and I can't help thinking it belonged here somewhere, but I couldn't think where to put it. Perhaps I should have listed the eleven best kisses... No. There are so many. This has to stop somewhere.

My picks:

( 10. Owen/Diane in  )

My choices of the best of 2008:

1. Best novel: Tie between Torchwood: Almost Prefect by James Goss and Finder's Keepers by Linnea Sinclair
   
2. Best non-fiction: Anything Goes by John Barrowman
   
3. Best movie: Mamma Mia! (And really difficult to choose between that and Quantum of Solace)
   
4. Best theatrical experience: The Music Man at the Stratford Festival. Second-best: seeing John Barrowman in person in How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?
   
5. Best TV series: Doctor Who. (I actually prefer Torchwood, but I think Doctor Who is the better show, and I love both.)
   
6. Best moment in Doctor Who: When the Doctor snapped his fingers at the end of "The Forest of Trees", and the TARDIS doors opened.
   
7. Best Musical Discovery: My Chemical Romance
   
8. Best Music Vid: Leah and Maggie's Doctor Who vid to Flobot's "Handlebars"
   
9. Best Thing that Happened: Being so kindly helped by my friends when my ankle was broken.