Oh, Hai!

I suspect as my response was "what's wrong with that" I've missed the point of this meme. Nevertheless,





take the WHAT BAD BOOK ARE YOU test.


and go to mewing.net. not as good as reading a good book, but way better than a bad one.


I think THE HOBBIT is cool, myself.

I'm writing poetry again. English Literature is afraid.

Meanwhile, THE GOLDEN COMPASS is a really, really good book and I recommend it to anyone who likes fantasy and hasn't read it yet. I'm about 100 pages from the end and really enjoying the ride but I think the people behind the film adaptation completely screwed the pooch. Also, if like me, you've heard bad things about Pullman's religious beef, so far I haven't found it much of an issue. Unless you find any criticism of organized religion offensive (in which case, you won't enjoy THE NAME OF THE ROSE either), I think Pullman's much-discussed atheism isn't really apparent in this book. I'm not sure I'll continue with HIS DARK MATERIALS: I don't really have the time or the money these days and I've heard that the final volume isn't that great. There's a certain attraction to leaving while the party is still fun.

And You Thought Romeo And Juliet Had Problems

I've been thinking a lot about character and relationships in fiction lately.

I'm trying to kick-start my very stalled novel and wondering why I'm having trouble coming up with a male character that interests me at the same time. That's a post for another time, though. Right now I want to reflect on what drew me towards FARSCAPE, which is still and will probably stay my favourite genre SF TV of all time. There are three really good reasons for that.

One is named John Cricton.

The other is named Aeryn Sun.

And the third is John and Aeryn together.

Although I loved John Crichton, I quickly came to adore Aeryn Sun but John gets first place because if it weren't for the way Ben Browder filled out his grey tee in "Til The Blood Runs Clear", I would never have hung around to discover the cleverest, most daring, most utterly bent TV ever. Not only did FARSCAPE have muppets, it had sexually active muppets. Watching FARSCAPE was the cantina scene in STAR WARS on uppers and a six-pack of XXXX, a 90-episode-long antidote to decades of stultifying STAR TREK and Faux-Trek navel-gazing about the nature of man and his place in the universe. FARSCAPE was Thomas Hobbes in outer space, a universe where life was nasty, brutish and too, too often short. It even had its own Leviathan.

And the only reason I tuned in originally was because I thought Ben Browder had a nice chest.

Sometimes, it really is about the marketing.

Aeryn Sun isn't the reason I stayed. Not entirely - I love John Crichton: saviour and destroyer of the universe; fate's personal whipping boy; somehow still the most hopeful person in the room. But I bleed for Aeryn Sun. In a lot of ways, FARSCAPE is more her story than John's. He may be the hero but her arc is what gives shape to the journey and together they were magic.

Of all the rules of the genre that FARSCAPE broke, the one that gave me the most satisfaction was seeing John and Aeryn get together in Season One rather than spending years playing a will they/won't they game (X-FILES, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, STARGATE and every other fucking show on the planet). FARSCAPE was smart enough to acknowledge the blindingly obvious - that John and Aeryn fancied the arse off each other - and let them at it only to have them discover that good sex didn't solve your problems. After all, he's human (an alien) and she's not (human). It was never going to be easy.

But God, it was fun.