Between the good and bad, that's where you'll find me, Reaching for Heaven

I've been on a bit of a hiatus from this journal, mostly because I've been busy, partly because I've been trying to let the dust settle after a kerfuffle earlier this week.

One thing that's kept me scurrying around doing errands, even when it was hot out: I needed a new pair of sandals badly, since the pair I was wearing simply were falling apart at the heels. But try finding a pair of *SENSIBLE SANDALS* these days when women seem to be wearing those flippy, frippy, strippy-strappy things that look like they're designed for tooling around the mall or showing off to ones galpals, and not necessarily walking a mile in. I don't/can't drive due to my sensory overload issues (trust me: I am all but a nervous wreck behind the wheel, plus cars are expensive to maintain), thus I buy shoes for their durability and comfort. Unfortunately I had to search through about five or six stores before I found a sensible style, similar to the pair I have. I did, however, get myself a few consolation prizes along the way, including: a Hello Kitty throw pillow with a black and white polka dot hairbow on one ear, and a black and white Hello Kitty throw blanket for the coming cold months, and... a bottle of TruBlood. Really! I have yet to drink it, and right now, it's sitting on my bookshelf, next to (I kid you not) a small crucifix!

Also, have been watching the 2009 version of "The Prisoner", featuring Jim Caviezel and Sir Ian McKellen (otherwise known to the carpe_ho_ras gang as "11-12's canon"). Cue yours truly making jokes about "Jesus and Gandalf in the same TV series". I'm rather glad I'm only passingly familiar with the Patrick McGoohan version from the 1960s, as this helped me approach it with a blank slate, though there again, I tend to be open-hearted towards most adaptations, unless it's hopelessly wonky (viz. the 2001 version of "The Time Machine" and the Ralph Bakshi animated versions of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings"). I enjoyed it immensely and am planning to rewatch it very soon: the visuals and the acting is utterly incredible. Still trying to figure a few things out, but that's what rewatches are for. Also, their use of some Beach Boys songs made me laugh (sort of a riff on the Patrick McGoohan version and its use of Beatles songs). I also found it rather interesting that 6 in both versions is played by a Catholic actor who's been known to turn down or request adjustments in roles which don't sit right with their comfort levels and their consciences; Patrick McGoohan rather famously turned down the role of James Bond because he wasn't comfortable with the character's more or less loose moral code, and Jim Caviezel has been known to gently insist that love scenes be toned down. (Note: this is by no means a judgment on love scenes in movies/TV; everyone has different comfort levels and consciences of varying sensitivities. I'm not always comfortable with certain things, so I just Look Away on certain bits. But I applaud actors who respect themselves by being true to their consciences, and I applaud directors who are willing to make adjustments in their creation in order to respect their actors.).

Also watching "Gankutsuou [The Count of Monte Cristo]", which I am thoroughly enjoying, even if the color scheme can make my eyes ache at times. The Count makes me think somewhat of a cross between a kinder, gentler Alucard and one of the elves from "Those Who Hunt Elves", while I'm having fun doing "Hey It's That Voice": the girl who voices Orihime in "Bleach" as Peppo, the guy who voiced Jet Black as one of the Count's manservants, Wendee Lee in several roles, the voice actress for the bitchy actress in the King of Swords arc of YnM in several other roles, Liam O'Brien aka. Hisoka from ditto as Albert's rival, Aramaki's VA as a random old man, and I think I might have heard Michael Ross (End of Evangelion!Fuyutsuki) in some random supporting part. To say nothing of increasingly ubiquitous Jonny Yong Bosch as Albert.

Of course this, coupled with re-rewatching the last two episodes of "Gormenghast" over the weekend, preparatory to intro'ing Titus Groan at the Mansion, has caused one headspace dweller to warn me that he's close to having an aneurysm over the sheer number of attractive young men that are in these series, particularly ones he's met at the Mansion.

Partly an addendum to my last post... Just been watching the televised version of Midnight Mass at the Vatican. At least for the recessional, they stepped up security: four men in suits, one of them the commander of the Swiss Guard, surrounded His Holiness, keeping eagle eyes on the crowd. Now, if they'd just done this to begin with...

This has inspired two things in me: the first and more serious (and more obvious) is to pray for the healing of that disturbed (and disturbing) woman. The second ties into one of the 12 Days of Fanfic ideas I'm tossing around: I'd decided to write a plotless sketch set in the Trinity Blood universe, centering around midnight Mass at the Vatican, with some mild Esther/Abel sweetness (mostly just friends, though I have a feeling the Church in the TB-verse may have relaxed the rule of celibacy in the clergy and the religious since the human population was partly wiped out). Now I'm holding a tracer bullet on a plot-bunny inspired by this evening's real-world incident; my concern though, would this fic be a little too close for comfort for some people, and would it come off like one of those wonkily-written "X disaster happens in the Y universe" fanfics that pop up every time there's some catastrophe, with X being the disaster/tragedy of the moment and Y representing the fanficer's pet fandom. Granted, my first publicly posted fanfic *ever* was a Matrix fic that I wrote during the aftermath of 9/11, when I was still trying to get my head around what was going on (the fic isn't my best effort, but one has to start somewhere...), I still hold some mental reservations about this kind of story: Does it take advantage or capitalize on a tragedy or a catastrophe? Or am I just overthinking things (as usual)?

Sidetrack: I've also confirmed my hunch that the creator of Trinity Blood, the late Sunao Yoshida, attended a Catholic high school; I'd suspected he was either raised Catholic or gone to a Catholic school, given how much he gets right about Catholicism (alongside how much he got sideways, not necessarily wrong. "Wrong" implies ignorance or coloring the facts or just plain ignoring the facts. For the last, see also "Dan Browned" on TVTropes.org). I've come to so much of an appreciation of the TB-verse that while re-watching the anime, I said under my breath, "If you're going to write about fictitious Vatican assassins -- and I swear, if you believed Hollywood and novelists of that bend, then the Vatican has more covert ops agents than the CIA, the KGB and MI6 combined -- this is the way to do it."

Also, there was a passage in His Holiness's sermon which made the Matrix fan side of me perk up its ears (yes, it still exists, even if the Matrix series doesn't quite hold the center of my fannish fixations right now). He spoke of "sleepers awakening from a dream world" and of course that made me think people awakening from the Matrix. I'm waiting for the translated text of the sermon to turn up on the Vatican's official website so I can share the exact words; I tried to find it elsewhere and I hit a couple of pages that made my anti-virus software go into defense mode. :: Growls::

And yes, I am up this late because I am waiting for someone rattling around the living room to Go To Bed so I can take my turn at being the Christmas Angel...