My Blue Castle

It's sort of sad but also the way my life is going lately, when I end up being linked on an LJ of someone living in Chicago to something that is taking place in my town (sort of) ... but thanks to copperbadge 's monday linkie post ... I now have a ticket for a screening of a televised performance of the National Theater's production of Frankenstein starrring Benedict Cumberbatch!

He and Jonny Lee Miller are alternating Frankenstein and the monster/beast. Can't tell from my local performing arts center's crap description which way it'll be when I see it ... but whichever way it is cast I think it'll be fascinating. Read some review just now that said the script is  a bit weak, but time will tell I guess. So March 27th I'll be sitting here in Central PA watching a performance of a show in London (um. I'm assuming). Anyway...

Pretty much all anyone had to say were the words "Benedict Cumberbatch." LOL

Linkie: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/jan/17/a-monster-role-frankenstein-danny-boyle
( piccie under the cut. )

I don't talk too much about my love for Law and Order: Criminal Intent (I don't, do I?). It was first fandom that drove me to the internet in search of fellow fans. I came in some time in the middle of season five (in real time), but watched most of the episodes on USA in re-run. In fact it took me a while to even grasp that the show was still running on network TV!

And for a while I mainlined those episodes like a crack addict. I ordered my days around the airings. I had every episode title memorized. I can talk to you ad nauseum about the 25 or so pieces of art they rotated through all the early episodes. I found a happy little home on a sensible message board that wasn't all about squeeing over how HOT Vincent D'Onofrio is. We had actual sensible discussions, and the mods formed some connections with the show's staffers. The writers would do interviews with us once in a while. It was all good.

When season six rolled around, the show runner/head writer/co-developer Rene Balcer left the show, turning the reins over to longtime staff writer/playwright Warren Leight.

With Warren (in concert with Vincent) we got a lot more storylines over the next two years of a personal nature. The characters were frankly put through hell/kidnapped/imprisoned/etc. Hell, he brought in Marsha Norman to write/story edit a couple of bang up episodes! The trouble with putting your characters through every conceivable trauma is... there's no where left to take them. So...

Season nine begins in one week. Stay tuned to watch what's left of the fandom completely melt down.

It was announced some months ago, that the original cast -- Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe were leaving the show as was Eric Bogosian who came on board at the start of season six after the departure of Jamey Sheridan's Captain Deakins. Vincent has said he wanted to leave the show. I am not so sure Kathryn did but she's been a trooper, and Eric has said he's glad to have more time to pursue other projects. All we know for sure about the characters' futures is that the premiere two-parter "Loyalty" features "a death, a resignation, and a promotion."

But in the meantime, Twitter is full of postings like:

@USA_LawOrderCI NO GOREN and EAMES NO CRIMINAL INTENT! u destroyed the show! how dare u? Nichols SUCKS!!!

I am sad because the show I loved is changing, but it's been coming on for a couple years now.

The most vocal of the cranky fandom has sent marshmallow fluff to the set and to USA in protest of the changes made to the show. It's an interesting thing to observe for anyone looking at fandom's perceived entitlement.

Anyway...

here is the new face of Criminal Intent:



Goren and Eames... I will miss you. I will miss one of the most complex and subtle TV partnerships I've ever seen. That was my chief delight with the series. Two professional partners of different sexes w/o an ounce of sexual banter. Well maybe just a whiff of it now and then when they went undercover. [Oh, that deleted scene from "Shandeh" ... so much fun!] Although more often then not, when undercover they turned into bickering spouses! Eames, she was the strong stoic one. The one who was a better shot. Capable, even from the first episode of taking down a perp with a swift knee to the groin. And her male partner loved her for it. He loved to stand back and watch her take down perps twice her size. Goren was the quirky  thinker, the sensitive, the brooder, the child struggling to care for an ailing hospitalized parent.

In eight seasons, we never saw them share a meal together. He only ever called her by her first name ONCE. She has been calling him Bobby almost from the beginning.

They often didn't agree, but they worked through their differences and came to each others aid when needed. The were PARTNERS. I'm not even sure that they were even that close off the job. I'd like to think they went for drinks sometimes. There's a couple of canon mentions of that. But nothing terribly concrete. This is handy for fanfic, but somewhat frustrating when trying to stay true to canon.

So as the show prepares to bid farewell (one way or another) to Detective Alex Eames and Detective Robert Goren ... so do I. Vincent has said in interviews that his character gets a good end, and I hope so. I am very attached to these two fictional people, and I want canon to treat them as well as possible. I want to think of them off pursuing other things, off tackling other challenges. I'd prefer it if they were doing that together (in a non-shippy sense) but I think the last two seasons have been bringing us to this divergence point.

And this fan will miss them.

Every so often I rant and rave about The Blue Castle and try and make everyone read it. It's LM Montgomery (of Anne of Green Gables fame) writing a book for grownups.

Wherein we read about Valancy's Blue Castle for the first time:

Valancy, so cowed and subdued and overridden and snubbed in real life, was wont to let herself go rather splendidly in her day-dreams. Nobody in the Stirling clan, or its ramifications, suspected this, least of all her mother and Cousin Stickles. They never knew that Valancy had two homes--the ugly red brick box of a home, on Elm Street, and the Blue Castle in Spain. Valancy had lived spiritually in the Blue Castle ever since she could remember. She had been a very tiny child when she found herself possessed of it. Always, when she shut her eyes, she could see it plainly, with its turrets and banners on the pine-clad mountain height, wrapped in its faint, blue loveliness, against the sunset skies of a fair and unknown land. Everything wonderful and beautiful was in that castle. Jewels that queens might have worn; robes of moonlight and fire; couches of roses and gold; long flights of shallow marble steps, with great, white urns, and with slender, mist-clad maidens going up and down them; courts, marble-pillared, where shimmering fountains fell and nightingales sang among the myrtles; halls of mirrors that reflected only handsome knights and lovely women--herself the loveliest of all, for whose glance men died. All that supported her through the boredom of her days was the hope of going on a dream spree at night. Most, if not all, of the Stirlings would have died of horror if they had known half the things Valancy did in her Blue Castle.

For one thing she had quite a few lovers in it. Oh, only one at a time. One who wooed her with all the romantic ardour of the age of chivalry and won her after long devotion and many deeds of derring-do, and was wedded to her with pomp and circumstance in the great, banner-hung chapel of the Blue Castle.

At twelve, this lover was a fair lad with golden curls and heavenly blue eyes. At fifteen, he was tall and dark and pale, but still necessarily handsome. At twenty, he was ascetic, dreamy, spiritual. At twenty-five, he had a clean-cut jaw, slightly grim, and a face strong and rugged rather than handsome. Valancy never grew older than twenty-five in her Blue Castle, but recently--very recently--her hero had had reddish, tawny hair, a twisted smile and a mysterious past.

I don't say Valancy deliberately murdered these lovers as she outgrew them. One simply faded away as another came. Things are very convenient in this respect in Blue Castles.

But, on this morning of her day of fate, Valancy could not find the key of her Blue Castle. Reality pressed on her too hardly, barking at her heels like a maddening little dog. She was twenty-nine, lonely, undesired, ill-favoured--the only homely girl in a handsome clan, with no past and no future. As far as she could look back, life was drab and colourless, with not one single crimson or purple spot anywhere. As far as she could look forward it seemed certain to be just the same until she was nothing but a solitary, little withered leaf clinging to a wintry bough. The moment when a woman realises that she has nothing to live for--neither love, duty, purpose nor hope--holds for her the bitterness of death.

It's a really uplifting tale so far, isn't it! LOL.

But after various convenient plot twists, Valancy grows a backbone, throws off her familal ball and chain, and goes to work for the town drunk, whose daughter is dying of TB (or some such wasting lung disease) after the death of her illegitimate baby.

I promise there's a happy ending ... (having something to do with that mysterious red-head with the past. Also there are moving pictures, Chinese fried chicken, bobbed hair, and patent medicines. Also canoes...).

But meanwhile, she is out in the backwoods taking care of Cissy who is rapidly dying.

ENTER MY YULETIDE FIC OF AWESOME!!!!!!

Someone wrote me the loveliest Valancy, Cissy fic called Where the Winter Roses Grow.

It is sad, and beatiful and I just love it to pieces.

It made me cry. I sorta love that. I can't wait to read the other two Blue Castle fics.

Forget the giant cuddly slippers, and the crop-a-dile, and all the milk glass in the world, it's my favorite Christmas Gift!!!

p.s. the lovely australians have provided The Blue Castle full text if you're curious!!

It's my last day of work until next year (the 4th I think, whatever that monday is, but I'm not looking that far ahead, no Sir).

To celebrate ... well, I'm making my own celebration. I am going to leave early and go downtown to that theater I used to work for ... and treat myself to a screening of "It's a Wonderful Life."

At a very dark time in my life... my best friend was dead, the guy I liked was getting it on with his leading lady, and I was all but flunking out of college ... mostly 'cause I was so depressed I spent most of every day in bed. I could only sleep in the daylight back then. Long story short ... for a while there (and I have no concept of HOW long) I was pretty messed up ... but then... long about this time of year, I watched the endless showings of IAWL on TV and somehow started to pull myself out of the deep darkness.

So the movie's kind of a touchstone for me.

I have it on DVD and could stay home and watch it... but something is calling me to go out with other people, munch on vast quantities of popcorn, and watch this film.

Appropriate, no? Especially for a film all about how you need other people in your life.

I always cry at the end... what sets me off fluctuates... sometimes it's "I've been saving this money in case I ever get me a divorce..." ... sometimes it's "I busted-a the juke-box..." ...but always always when we get to "my brother... the richest man in town..."

And that's me today... the richest girl in town... real life friends ... dear on-line friends... friends near and friends far... and really... what more do I need ... except maybe a cocktail from time to time!!!!

I LOVE YOU GUYS.

That small still voice in my head that always speaks the truth said to me the other day ... "treat yourself and others gently..."

So HEE HAW and MERRY CHRISTMAS ... HAPPY HOLIDAYS ... HAPPY VACATION ... HAPPY WEDNESDAY ... Whatever you celebrate or don't celebrate... remember that there is light on the other side of the darkness...

Love and Hugs from me to you.