Easter fun

One of many catch-up entries...

Easter was very quiet, but I needed the quiet since the week before was so frustratingly busy and I hadn't been feeling well, between bouts of mild nausea and mild diarrhea. But we went to Mass at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes in Newton, which was very lovely. It was sad that we couldn't be at Holy Trinity, but it seems they're bringing the Latin Mass back there since the church is still technically open; I guess the historical society getting their foot in the door bought the building some time, and things are so darn crowded at MIL that the diocesan wonks have had to cave in and allow a Latin Mass there. Only catch is, they have it at nine a.m. at Holy Trinity, which is a bit early and often my dad has to work for a few hours Sunday mornings, watering plants.

For Easter dinner, we tried something different: we went to the local Cracker Barrel, late in the evening when they were less crowded. Their ham is a little salty but otherwise *VERY* delicious. When we got back, we watched the end of the BBC version of "Emma", the next installment in their presentation of "The Complete Works of Jane Austen", featuring Kate Beckinsale as Emma. I almost didn't recognize her, but then again, I've only seen her in the "Underworld" movies, thus she looked a little odd in a muslin Empire gown and with normal make-up, instead of black leather and vampiric pallor. Naturally, my wierd little brain got itself onto the idea of writing a Regency-style vampire romance novel, maybe even with a vampiric Emma who tries to pair up sires and potential childes. I'm sure our Jane would raise her eyebrows and have some razor-sharp witticism for that!

That afternoon, I put up an egg tree outside, but in a spirit of doing something different, I hung the eggs on a wire-frame white Christmas-type tree covered with white lights. Very pretty when it's lit up, and you can see the eggs very well. The lights behind some of them even manage to make them glow a little.

TV writers' strike at an end, now comes the catch-up

You have no idea how glad I was to hear that the writers' strike was over as of the end of February, especially since the serieses I regularly watch have been jam-packed with engaging continous storylines.

I was also delighted to hear that "Criminal Minds" was one of the first shows to go back into production right away. I'm looking forward to the new episodes, and I'm hoping to God they resolve some of this season's plot twists amicably. The sub-plot involving Hotchner's marriage going on the rocks makes me want to scream. Reason? I hate divorce sub-plots. They're over-done and since I believe marriage is forever, unless one of the partners is abusive, adulterous, or too immature and unwilling to get help for themself for any or all of the above. I think Haley Hotchner fits the last category, sort of, if she's unable to accept the fact that she's married to a modern day St. George or a human version of St. Michael, and that his work helps keep her safe from the dragons out there; don't know what happened to her, she seemed fine with her husband's wonky work schedule for the first two seasons, now all of a sudden she can't deal with it. I'm tempted to write a Dresden Files (book universe)/Criminal Minds crossover in which Haley meets Charity Carpenter, who gives her a lit-tle talk about being fortunate to be married to a metaphoric dragon-slayer. I'm speaking as a kid whose dad worked crazy hours, thus I don't see that it's a collossal big deal: when I was younger, I sometimes didn't see my dad for days during May and December, since those were the busy seasons. I'm hoping the season finale features a case in which Haley falls into the talons of one of those metaphoric dragons and either gets eaten (and thus the divorce nonsense becomes moot point, but then poor Hotchner has to raise his son by himself, but that could make for a "Lone Wolf and Cub"/"Road to Perdition" scenario) or Hotchner saves her life and *HOPEFULLY* she gets over her little hissy fit and realizes how bloody lucky she is to be married to this guy.

Hoo, that was a long rant, but I needed to get it off my chest. Other serieses I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to see where they go:

"Moonlight" -- How long is Mick's cure going to last? Is Beth going to get over being mad at him for not turning her boyfriend after he was attacked? I remember when the most recent episode aired, back around Christmas, in the prologue, there was a clip of this bit, and I remember calling out, "He won't do it because this isn't 'Hellsing'!" just as a geeky thing to do. But seriously (If you can be serious about the mythos of a series...), I think Mick did the decent thing, since it wouldn't have been Beth's boyfriend's choice to become a vampire, and I think he'd probably rankle a little at being the childe to the guy he suspects of being a rival for Beth's affections. That and... well, I don't think he'd take too well to being one of the walking undead.

"Supernatural" -- I was concerned that the strike would cancel out the ending to this season and ruin the clever time constraint that the Winchester Brothers are running against. I like the "real-time" idea we have going on the time Dean has to find his way out of the deal he made with the Crossroad Demon, and it would have been a terrible shame if they'd had to quickly commission a novel or something to keep up the element of realism in this little twist, though if they'd had to resort to that, it would be better than just leaving us hanging. The question remains, how are the boys going to pull it off? In the meantime, the new episode, set to air April 25th, sounds like a hoot: it's supposedly going to involve a "reality" show about ghost hunting, and I've heard that it's Eric Kripke's way of taking a playful swipe at those annoying "reality" shows, since he's not a fan of them by any account.

Matrix Refugee and the crossover of peril

Okay... getting my hands on a copy of Small Favor, aka TDF 10, will be happening in hopefully less than twelve hours. I might even take an early bus to get to Burlington to pick up my pre-order. So, I'm tiding myself over by re-rereading the books and short stories. I'm halfway through White Night and I doubt I'll finish it by tomorrow, so I might re-reread the short stories before I go to bed... So, I thought I'd look around for some (sssshhh! Don't tell Jim Butcher's rules-lawyers) fanfiction.

Maybe there's a reason they're not too keen on fanfiction. Maybe, unwittingly, they're trying to protect us from badfic.

For chuckles, I went on ff.n, aka the Pit of Voles, to see what I could see. I should have heeded the warning of a young new poster on the Jim Butcher forums.

I offer this for your perusal:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3657032/1/Two_Wizards_One_Name

Yes, it's a Harry Potter crossover. Mind you, I think it *could* work, but it would take a lot of dancing around to rectify the vast differences between the two universes. For starters: the magic doesn't even work the same way. Jim Butcher pretty much based the Dresden-verse magic on the laws of physics and made it plausible, plus he used a lot of concepts from actual magic as it's practised. It's the sort of stuff you could almost see happening, he's presented it so credibly. J.K. Rowlings pretty much used random ideas, though she *did* borrow concepts from mythology and folklore for her critters. Plus, HP wizards practically live in the Never-Never, while most TDF wizards live in a world not much unlike ours, aside from the odd occurrances that happen under the regular folks' noses.

Aside from that...

Grammar is wonky. So is spelling, up to and including character names (Who's this "Karen Murphy" that's working with Harry. Commas appear only randomly. Characterization of the non-original characters is a bit off, though Harry Dresden has a few lines that are almost Jim Butcher-worthy ("I don’t think it was Publishers Clearing House here with a check" -- that made me giggle). And let's not get started on Katrina "Kat" James; thankfully, she doesn't hog the limelight (much), and we aren't saddled with a lengthy and urplish description of her looks, but there is something about her that twigs my Mary Sue-dar. Oh, and when talking about Mab and Maeve (man, she correctly spelled the one I thought the fankiddies would mangle...), just what are the "Saide"? I thought they were the Sidhe?

It's not GAFF-worthy, and the author *is* only sixteen, plus I think she's only just exploring the Dresden-verse, so I'm trying not to be hard on her.