shallowness

Fic recs in the following fandoms: Arrival, Belle (2013), Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, The Mentalist and Original works.

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The Other Bennet Sister double-bill

(Sorry, I’ve realised my brain has been stuck on calling it ‘The Other Bennet Girl’, which is wrong.)

Chapter 7

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Chapter 8

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The Other Bennet Sister

1.4/Chapter 4

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1.5/Chapter 5

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Fanvid and fanfiction recs in the following fandoms: Everything, Everywhere All At Once, Farscape, Harry Potter, Marvel Cinematic Universe and Twisters.

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As I said I wanted to, I went to see Hamnet and it lived up to my expectations – ( Read more... ) And yeah, I know there's been a backlash subsequently, and some valid criticisms have been made too.

I knew less about Song Sung Blue going in, ( Read more... ) Sometimes it’s too broad, but it is warm hearted.

I posted about it more fully here, but I went to see the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring on a big screen, and it was well worth it, even though there was no break, and it required planning and having to put up with some people’s smartphone addiction. The ticket was cheaper than it normally is for films at that cinema at that time. Is this what cinema has to do to keep going – hark back to the glory days of a quarter of a century ago? If the other two have been released, they weren't in my neck of the woods, I think.

I don't know if I'll be doing this monthly, we'll see what the year brings. I'm glad it's February, personally.

As with last year, I won’t be doing the writing meme separately, because once again the only fanfiction that I posted in 2025 were three-sentence ficathon fills, all ten of them coming to a total of 1,108 words (which would make a respectable-for-me word count for one fic once upon a time.) Four were original works, two were from Mansfield Park, one the 2007 Persuasion adaptation, one Harry Potter, one St. Trinian’s and one for Wicked – Part 1. They can be found here. I don’t think I really wrote much else fictionwise over the year, perhaps some other drafts for the three-sentence ficathon, and some editing. Let’s hope 3SF inspires something and, ideally, something I watch or read sparks a fic.

I reposted seven fics (all ficlets), five of which are in the same collection, and there are still fics that need to be reposted here and at AO3.

My version of the fandom meme

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Double the usual amount of recs for fanfiction and fanvids in the following fandoms: The Big Country (1958), Firefly, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Much Ado About Nothing, Original works, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and What Maisie Knew.

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I’ve reposted the ‘Photographs and Memories’ collection of ficlets here (and on AO3) over the past month.

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Two out of the three films I saw did that all too rare thing: being a film that foregrounds female experience from a female perspective (admittedly, that phrase came more to mind for the second film than the first.) Should also note that two female scriptwriters were involved in adapting film no. 3, which has an equal number of female and male main characters, at least.

Materialists is well worth seeing, but it’s no Past Lives is its problem. Nailing down what it is is also tricky, because calling it a romantic comedy doesn’t quite cut it. Although it shares something with Nora Ephron’s work and is in dialogue with some of Jane Austen’s concerns, it feels like something separate to the New York-set romcoms I’ve watched for decades. I found some of the talk about dating and matchmaking darkly funny, but it has dramatic elements and romantic fantasy elements. For my tastes, it was sometimes too didactic - who talks like that, even allowing for a financier using the language of business deals, and a stage actor being influenced by the plays he’s performed? It has dialogue that would have worked in a stage play, but then it’s as beautifully shot as Past Lives was – follow Johnson’s Lucy’s outfits.

I think this is the first thing I’ve seen Johnson in, and she was good as the materialist Lucy, working out what she wants; Pedro Pascal is having quite the summer being in this, F4 and Eddington, although maybe those films are all just released so closely in the UK, playing ‘unicorn’ Harry; while Chris Evans is a joy on screen (though I snorted at his John claiming to be 37. Wrong side of 40, sir.)

Sorry, Baby has been given a 15 certificate in the UK and the BBFC’s reasoning for that should be a good guide as to whether it’s triggering, which it might be. It’s a drama, but also mordantly and absurdly funny, about a young woman, Agnes, to whom a bad thing (her words, mine would be more trenchant) happened. Her most important relationship is with her best friend, who makes different choices to hers and moves away. It feels authentic. It’s non-chronological and the choices about what to show or not and when, and how to use dialogue from another time over silent scenes is judicious. Eva Victor wrote, directed and played the lead, and I hope gets a chance at a second feature, because there were so many smart details in this. Naomi Ackie is good as supportive BFF Liddy.

Naomi Ackie also appears in The Thursday Murder Club, which I saw at my local arthouse cinema, as it’s doing/had a brief limited run in cinemas, which may just be in the UK, before dropping on Netflix. The upside of watching it in a cinema was the communal chuckling, because it is amusing until it remembers it’s about murder. The audience skewed older, and some of them clearly hadn’t been in the cinema for a while, complaining about all the adverts, trailers, reminders not to talk and BBFC thing (which may be why a film like this has a limited cinema run.) It’s professionally made and features lots of big names, some things have been dropped or tweaked for the running time, and maybe some of the characters flattened, but that’s what you have to expect with adaptations, and overall it was entertaining.

In July 2007, I wanted to commemorate having 500 posts memorised on my Livejournal. So, I wrote five ficlets, none rated higher than PG. See below for title, fandom and other details. The overall title and theme for the collection comes from the ER episode, 'Photographs and Memories'.

Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, and I make no profit from this fan-written fiction.

Photographs and Memories one: we'll cross the seven seas
Swallows and Amazons, Universal. 358 words. Nancy, gen, post-series future fic.

Photographs and Memories two: paint it black
ER, Universal. 389 words. Neela (Neela/Ray), spoilers for all of season 13.

Photographs and Memories three: greet the day
Harry Potter (book canon, but with a nod to the movies), Universal. 504 words. Luna, gen. Spoilers for Deathly Hallows, but set during Chamber of Secrets.

Photographs and Memories four: superabundance
Sky High, Universal. 146 words. Warren, gen. Set post movie.

Photographs and Memories five: dressed in our finest scarlet and gold
Harry Potter, PG. 432 words. Angelina, (Angelina/Fred). Angst. Set post Deathly Hallows.