A whole spate of excellent fannish happenings, in fandoms new and old.

Being a brief summary of my current fannish activities and obsessions:

The Borgias

I am absolutely in love with this show. I started watching for Holliday Grainger because she was Meg in one episode of Robin Hood, and I love her to death.  I'm not sorry I did. It's beautiful and dark and complicated and interesting.  I think I'm a little in love with Cesare Borgia already, with all of his lovely moral ambiguity and the terrible things he does out of loyalty to his family.... mostly his father.  Did I mention that frickin' Jeremy Irons is Rodrigo Borgia (and also the pope)?  He does a fantastic job at it.  Holliday's portrayal of Lucretzia is a little terrifying it's so good. She's young and innocent and breathtakingly pretty, but she shows signs of being incredibly politically adept, and part of me can't wait to see her become just as ruthless (we'll call it... "opportunistic") as the rest of her family is. Also, Joanne Whaley, having aged beautifully, is in it as the mother of Rodrigo's children, and I've thought she was awesome since I was like... eight.

I haven't seen the most recent episode, and writing this, I'm really feeling the lack.

Game of Thrones

Having had quite enough of the wait time between installments of epic fantasy series reading Wheel of Time, and having heard that George R.R. Martin takes a notoriously long time between his novels, I have not yet read any of the Song of Ice and Fire series of which this new HBO series is an adaptation.  However, that didn't keep me from loving it.  Sean Bean is fantastic, the world is big and dark and lush and interesting, and it's got teeth.  I can't wait to see where this is going. Also, there's the additional pleasure of the fact that several actors from shows I love popped up... I don't think I'm ever going to get over seeing Harry Lloyd, who I can't help but see as Will Scarlett, as a prissy, quietly ruthless blond. Jason Momoa (Ronan Dex from SGA) as a leader of a tribe of barbarian horsemen was a bit easier for me to wrap my brain around (and not bad on the eyes, either...).

Community

And now for something completely different. skillsontoast bought me the first season of Community for my birthday, and I love her for it. I teach at community colleges, so I am alternately horribly offended and nearly dying of laughter every single episode.  It's tonally similar to Arrested Development, which I also loved, in that it makes merciless fun of its subjects while at the same time maintaining and odd kind of affection for them. I love Troy and Abed's friendship, I love Britta, and I think that Jeff Winger is a horrible, awful, brilliant human being who is amazingly fun to watch.  The episodes have high rewatch value (I think I've seen the paintball episode five times now...) and the show manages to surprise me (either by making characters so much better or so much worse than I thought they were) with a good degree of regularity.  I like that in my sitcoms.

Doctor Who

For the first time, I got to watch an episode of Doctor Who on the day it aired in Britain on cable TV.  (Thank you, BBC America...) They went to America to film, which was pretty obvious from the gorgeous Southwestern vistas they've got in some of the scenes.  (And the Doctor in a stetson is love.) It was odd watching it alone, but I had a good time.  I like Amy and Rory, River Song isn't as obnoxious to me as she is to some, and Mark Sheppard (who's in Firefly, Supernatural, and pretty much everything else that's awesome...) is in the opening two-parter as somewhat of a... temporary companion.  It seems like a fun opening story with high stakes (it's the Doctor... he wouldn't be interested otherwise...) and a thorny twist on the "don't tell the Doctor about his own future" thing.  I'd say what, but as River Song says... "Spoilers..."

Fringe

Why have I not been watching this show forever?  It's got a lot of things that I love about the X-Files with tight, focused writing, an fascinating unfolding mythology, and great character relationships.  Peter and Walter's father-son dynamic, even in this first season, is one of the most unusual parent child dynamics I've ever seen. And Olivia is... so very awesome.  I want her to sit down and have a drink with Scully and talk about the kinds of crazy they have to deal with in their jobs.

Pirates

*flail* In less than a month, On Stranger Tides will be in theaters.   I can barely speak I'm so excited. I'm watching trailers, browsing through the sudden rush of PotC merchandise and Hot Topic and Disneyland, obsessing unduly over challenges on potc_land, and trying to make headway on my poor, neglected potc_bigbang fic, which I did, finally, last night.  Rough drafts are due tomorrow, and I don't think that I'm going to be able to get through everything I need, not by a long shot, but I'll be able to hand over a draft with outlined scenes in places where there's just empty space right now.  It should be enough.

Speaking of which, as of last night, here's my potc_bigbang progress:



How am I going to get to the end by tomorrow, you ask?  Well, first of all, it's just a draft, and I don't have to hit the word count in the draft, and second, I have access to a lot of caffeine and an deep and abiding love for the bits of the story I want to tell next.