(no subject)

( TNA: )

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There's something very wrong, when, in the whole world of football, when someone says 'Davide' I know they mean Ginola. Whose haircut really works.

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Y'all fail, none of you told me that Zydrunas Savickis finally won the world's strongest man last year. I am a-glee.

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Human Target:

So why am I not deluged in Ames / Guerrero fic? Come on, peeps, young ingénue, old stager who takes them under their wing, despite the fact that said old stager is a grumpy, grumpy man. Also, Ames is ever so pretty.

Now I grant I didn't like Ames to start with, sorry, whingy young and nowhere near as good at the crime thing as she thinks she is do not endear me. 'Taking Ames' converted me though since it let her be competent.

Or, people don't want to write 'shippy fic, I am more than happy with Guerrero + Ames gen.

(I also don't doubt that if Ames had been a man, I'd be deluged, but I'm cynical like that.)

Or, failing that ( 'Taking Ames' spoilers )

The Much Delayed Book Meme

Day 13 - My Favourite Writer

Alexandre Dumas, père - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas,_p%C3%A8re

Which, you know, is going some for a writer I've only ever read in translation. One day my French will be good enough to read them in the original.

He's such a fantastic writer, in every sense of the word. He makes long-changed corners of the world come to life, and you're placed so much there that you can feel the wind and smell the air.

And his characters, they're real, damn it, they live and feel and breathe (when I read 'The Dumas Club' I felt what can only be described as a terrible sense of recognition when faced wit the volume and passion of the arguments about certain characters). It's all of them, from the glorious main characters, to their servants to randoms. For instance, in 'The Three Musketeers' there's a chapter called, rather gloriously 'Chapter 16 - In Which M. Seguier, Keeper Of The Seals, Looks More Than Once For The Bell, In Order To Ring It, As He Did Before'. This character never appears again as far as I'm aware but we get his backstory, how he became a penitent who was advised to ring a bell every time his demons attacked (his demons being wicked, carnal thoughts) and how he drove the monks batty by ringing excessively frequently, and how having to search the Queen for a letter only brings out the worst in him. Now mostly, the chapter is used to show that the Queen is beset by enemies, that the King is a dunce and that the Cardinal is a glorious viper, but this one of character gets more backstory than several sidekicks in far too many books I have read.

While there are good guys and bad guys in his books, it does tend to be more 'no-one is entirely good or evil, particularly our heroes', because when the author frequently makes asides that boil down to 'our heroes live in dangerous times and are doing their best, and their version of right is probably not ours', it's a sign that they might well not be glorious heroes of gloriousness.

His books go forwards, determinedly, even through the bits that I assume were written as padding because he was broke and being paid by the line.

He combines plot and character/world building better than any other author I can think of, and does it with wit, verve and panache.

Somehow, he even managed to get Jacques Chirac to wax poetic, as he did when Dumas was interred in the Pantheon. I leave you with his words - "With you, we were D'Artagnan, Monte Cristo, or Balsamo, riding along the roads of France, touring battlefields, visiting palaces and castles — with you, we dream."

( The Other Days )