Pebbles in the water

What with the news of there being a Tina Turner musical coming soon, I popped in one of her CDs in to listen (and sing along to) and have decided that I should put together a guess-list for the songs that I want to make it into the musical, arranged roughly from DEFINITELY MAKING IT IN to DEFINITELY NOT MAKING IT IN.

First of all, "What's Love Got to with It" and "Proud Mary" are definitely making it in, 100% guaranteed.



( Cut for length, lots of embeds. )

So there's a direct-to-DVD movie called A Mermaid's Tale that came out a few months ago, about a girl who befriends a mermaid, and Jerry O'Connell plays the girl's dad. The film itself is kinda embarrassing in that basic, a-minimum-amount-of-effort-was-made kind of way, but the thing that offends me the most of the entire venture is the following:

This is what the mermaid looks like. (She's the one on the right, and in this scene she has legs.) She's pretty, and pretty typical for a teenager/young woman.

( Screencap behind the cut. )

This is what the mermaid looks like on the DVD cover.

( DVD cover behind the cut. )

Jukebox musicals are a mixed bag, but when I saw that there's going to a jukebox musical based on Tina Turner's life premiering in London next year, my reaction was pretty much just YES THIS IS A THING I NEED GIVE IT TO ME NOW



My needs are easy sometimes.

Julia Fox's Sister Queens: Katherine of Aragorn and Juana, Queen of Castile is a readable, straightforward biography of the sisters Juana and Katherine, daughters of the most Catholic monarchs Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragorn. As a combined biography it's fine, if a little one-sided since there's more known information about Katherine than Juana, but it did leave me wondering why it had to be a combined biography at all, and of these two specific ladies.

Like, in comparison, Nancy Goldstone's Four Queens talks about all four sisters as they were involved in marriages across Western Europe and caused intersecting points of interest, while her Catherine & Marguerite combined biography was done so to highlight the conflict between mother and daughter. Fox's book could very well have chosen to talk about all five of Isabella and Ferdinand's kids, giving a wider scope to the Spanish relationships, but she picked Juana and Katherine, who weren't that close and weren't even involved in direct conflict with each other because....?

Maybe it's to highlight their differing experiences as queens, which then turned to similarity as they suffered under the men who had power of them. There is something interesting in that -- I did like the portions pointing out that despite Juana being a queen regnant, she was treated very, absurdly differently from Katherine, who was "merely" a queen consort. But although I very much enjoyed reading about these women, I couldn't quite figure out what the book was trying to do by putting their stories side by side.

That said, the stuff I did like was the book's pushing into the forefront Juana and Katherine's upbringing under their passionate and driven parents, and how it would've influenced their choices as queen (seemingly Katherine more than Juana, which made for reading the later drama with Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn some freshness), plus its defense of Juana against her reputation as Juana the Mad. Good stuff, and only mildly perplexing.

I really need to get into better habit of archiving my tumblr fics, in case they get swallowed by the tumblr langoliers.

These are a bunch of timestamps of my Rogue One fic A Single Monk in Good Standing Must be in Want of Bro arranged in chronological order, instead of posting order.

( Timestamp #1: Missing scene between atelier convo and Foss Day. )

( Timestamp #2: Mystery of the starbird charm. )

( Timestamp #3: At the open door gathering. )

( Timestamp #4: Futurefic, a moment up on the wall. )

Yuletide nominations are open! Because of that, I went through my trusty 'ol notebook where I sometimes jot down fandoms to consider for Yuletide. Among the fandoms I'd listed was John Wick.

Before I make my nominations, I check the fanfic landscape over on AO3, to see if the fandom qualifies and what sort of fic is common and if, perhaps, the fic I want has already been written but I missed it. AND! In the case of John Wick, the fic I want HAS been written, and it's WONDERFUL and HIT ALL MY BUTTONS that it might as well be an early Yuletide gift to myself. T_T

John Wick - Fourteen by x_art - John Wick/Winston - Not Rated* - 12,000+ words
Summary: They were wrong about him. His life had never been a before and after. It just was, and that’s the way it always would be, whether he liked it or not.

*I'd personally rate it T for mild, non-graphic violence.

The fic itself follows in snapshots John and Winston over the years, from John's initial interest in Winston rebuffed, through John's service to Viggo and the rise of his bogeyman reputation, through Helen, through the events of the two films, to afterward. The prose is sparse but that enables it to be hella brisk, moving over the various events and checkpoints efficiently.

Multiple times I was worried that the fic would end before I could get my satisfaction, but it didn't, and just kept going on (that wonderful Child's Play fic I got my first year in Yuletide did something similar, I LOVE IT) so my itch is firmly, wonderfully scratched. FICWRITERS ARE WONDERFUL, BLESS Y'ALL.

Keith Hopkins & Mary Beard's The Colosseum is a wee tiny book (<200 pages, large font, lots of illustrations) that was quick to get through, though enjoyable and witty. I feel like about 85% of the book is about Things People Believe About The Colosseum That Are Probably Wrong, which isn't so much a correction of popular thought, but rather a useful compilation and acknowledgement of popular thought with a critical analysis of it on top of the likelihood of said things being true.

There's very little hard history about the Colosseum, so the book explores more of the cultural and social history that has been retained from antiquity to modern times, with a healthy dose of the Victorian romanticism of the building, plus (more cool for me!) the "rediscovery" of the Colosseum during the Renaissance... It's just so fascinating that there was a whole stretch of time where people forgot what the Colosseum was even for, i.e. how common memory works, even for something as huge and distinctively Roman as the great amphitheatre.

Also, Hopkins and Beard talk a lot about current tourism around the Colosseum (rather critically, to my surprise), plus Ridley Scott's Gladiator (I still find it hilarious), and even namecheck THAT Beyonce/Pink/Britney Pepsi ad, among the Colosseum's many examples of cultural impact. Overall, it's a fun, light little book for easy reading, and really funny throughout.

As a follow-up, I'm currently watching Beard's BBC documentary Meet the Romans which is my first time I've heard her speak. She's such a delight, and I think afterward I'm going to rewatch Gladiator while imagining her watching it and commentating throughout.

It's a mild miracle that I watched Your Name completely unspoiled, considering.

( Cut for SPOILERSSSSS. )