Jaye's Musings

1. Have you ever been in a hurricane or typhoon? Which one, when and where?
I've been through a few hurricanes, thought fortunately never a truly major one. The most memorable was when I lived in Hampton Roads, VA when Hurricane Floyd hit in 1999. Just the week before, there had been a lingering hurricane/tropical storm that had brought a week of solid rain just as we were moving into our new house. Then right before schools were due to start, Hurricane Floyd arrived and caused the usual damage as well as coastal flooding on already saturated ground. A tornado that spawned from Floyd hit what was due to be my youngest son's kindergarten class, taking off the roof.

2. Have you ever been near an erupting volcano? Which one, when and where?
No, although I was on one of the very last flights to cross from the US to Europe before they shut down airspace due to the erupting volcano on Iceland. And although it wasn't erupting, I did climb Mt Vesuvius and stood at the rim to see steam and gas vents rising from the caldera.

3. Are there tornadoes where you live? Has a tornado come near you?
Tornadoes aren't common where I am now in PA, although not unheard of. But I did live in Tornado Alley in Lubbock Texas when I first came to the States. A couple of months after arriving in Lubbock, my husband and I were driving from the AF base where we lived into Lubbock and for no apparent reason the traffic slowed. Off to our right was a funnel cloud slowly getting longer and longer. The sky was green-ish black and looked as if it was boiling. We got to our destination, the local mall, and from store to store listened to the radio as reports of that tornado had hit a trailer park and was heading to the base. I later found out that it had gone between the two runways on base, causing minimal damage. There were a further few occasions while I lived there that we had tornado warnings and spent a good few ours in the hallway with blankets and radio, but that was the only tornado I've actually seen.

4. Have you experienced severe flooding? When and where?
It seems seems AF bases are magnets for bad weather. When I lived in northern California back in the mid-90s, there was severe flooding along the Yuba and Sutter rivers. We were fortunate enough to live on base which was away from the rivers and slightly higher elevation. Many people in the local towns were evacuated to base and my son's school didn't reopen after the winter break because it was an emergency shelter. We had to take my other son to a doctor's appointment and crossed the Yuba River. The road bridge parallels the rail bridge and is near the same height and despite the levies the water was just a couple of feet, perhaps, below the rail bridge as I looked across and almost to the top of the levies. One of the nearby levies did burst, and a friend's house (he wasn't occupying it at the time) had several feet of water come through.

5. What is the most extreme weather you have ever experienced?
I would say, as a matter of consistent extreme weather, it would have to be Lubbock, TX. Even without the threat of tornadoes, I had never -- and still haven't really -- seen storms as intense as those I experienced there. To the point that when I was describing them to my best friend back in England, she gibly dismissed them as 'how bad can a thunderstorm get'. I was proved right, however, a few years later when she spent a year in Houston and called me up after a particularly severe storm there telling me how right I was and how sorry she was for not believing how intense Texas thunderstorms can be.

So, I decided to challenge myself a bit and dip my toes into something a bit different and try a bingo card. What I liked about this particular challenge is that while the prompts themselves are gen-rated, the fics/fanworks don't need to be, there were plenty of categories and you can opt-out of some that don't appeal, to complete the challenge I can do as little as one line or fill the whole card, and most importantly, there are no deadlines!

I will be posting the fic to the relevant character's journal (or here, if it's not a character I usually write) and then linking here. I will post a link to genprompt_bingo when I've done one line. The fics may or may not have anything to do with current roleplay.

( Bingo card is behind the cut: )

Day 13. Favorite childhood show

You expect me to pick just one?

From when I was really small, there were these:

The Clangers

The Wombles

and Roobarb and Custard

Then as I got a bit older, there was, of course:

Grange Hill. Of course, there was Blue Peter ("Get Down, Shep!"> which I think every kid in the UK watched at some point....it's been on since 1958!

And then there was The Adventures of Black Beauty

The longest childhood favourite, has to be Doctor Who. Jon Pertwee was my first Doctor, and I watched all the way through my childhood until it was cancelled with Sylvestor McCoy. Of course, I picked it up again with the new series, but my affection for Classic Who is enduring. My favourite Doctor, who happened to come along during my impressionable teen years was Peter Davidson.

It was as a teen my fannish self blossomed, though I knew nothing about fandom back then. Just that my friends and I would examine every angle of a new episode the next day at school. Some of those shows are still favourites today Blakes 7, Robin of Sherwood, Dick Turpin, and The Professionals.

So, yes, it's kind of impossible to pick single a favourite.


Questions are here.

So after a very nice vacation to Italy, including a few days wandering around one of my favourite cities, Rome and home to England I've needed to get my writing kickstarted again. This continuing meme has helped in the past so hopefully it will again do the trick.

Day 12. An episode you’ve watched more than 5 times

( Read more... )


Questions are here.

This fun series of time-travelling (we don't call it time-travel) shenanigans has evolved into a series of some 10 books and several short stories that fit in between.

Series List

( In the words of the late British Historian, Arnold Toynbee, history is... )

It does suffer a little, as all long series tend to, with becoming a bit repetitive in the later books, but the humour, characters, and action manage to not make it dull. The later short stories diverge a little by focusing on more minor characters rather than Max, like Markham, Mrs. Mack and Enderby, and a trip to space. If I had one complaint, however, it would be the series villain, Clive Ronan. While he starts out as a really good villain, he should have been defeated long ago, but instead he just keeps coming back and is becoming more of a caricature and a new 'big bad' is needed (or even 'little bads' as St Mary's get into enough trouble on their own without a villain seeking to disrupt their plans!)

I give it 9/10

1.Is there a particular historical period or event, anywhere in the world, that fascinates you? Oh, so many. Ancient Greece, Roman Britain, and Medieval Europe would probably be my top three

2. Would you like to visit that time, or live in it permanently, or does the whole idea make you want to run screaming? Visit = Ancient Greece and Roman Britain....Run screaming from Medieval Europe.

3. What's the best piece of historical writing, nonfiction or fiction, you've ever read? Definitely Sharon Kay Penman's books. "The Sunne in Splendour" is a exceptional recounting of the life of Richard III. But my favourite is "When Christ and His Saints Slept" which chronicles the war between King Stephen and Empress Maude and begins her Plantagenet series.

4. What's the worst? I can't remember the author, but I once read a novel about Attila the Hun that was laughably awful. I read about 50 pages and threw it away. Conn Iggulden's "Gates of Rome" was a real disappointment, filled with inaccuracies, which was a shame because I really like his "Conqueror" series.

5.Is there a historical site you would love to visit? Well, I've been fortunate enough to visit quite a few on my 'must-see' list, but still very much on there is Greece (Athens, Sparta, Delphi, and Thermopylae). I would also love to visit Petra.

Day 09. Best scene ever

My favourite hasn't really changed from my original answer. Those two scenes from Highlander are seared into my memory.

But there is another, from Blake's 7 that had such an impact on me from the moment I saw it, and it's probably a major reason why I do enjoy unresolved, shock endings so much. In the series finale, Having found their long-lost leader, Blake, our heroes get surrounded by the enemy Federation. Believing Blake has betrayed them, Avon kills him and stands motionless over his body. The others, Vila, Dayna, Tarrant, and Soolin come under fire from the Federation troopers and one-by-one they go down. The troopers surround Avon, he looks up and raises his blaster, and....

Roll credits (to the sound of blaster fire).

The BBC first broadcast this episode about a week before Christmas, and there was a much larger than normal spike in suicides that Christmas, and the bleak, hopeless ending where the heroes lose was pointed to as a major contributing factor.

Other favourite scenes from my some of my favourite shows are:

Black Sails There are many wonderful, powerful scenes in throughout the series. It took me a while to get into it though for one reason or another. But at the end of the first season Captain Flint kills his quartermaster, Gates, in a wonderfully acted confrontation. Given that the reason I started watching Black Sails in the first place was because Mark Ryan (Nasir in Robin of Sherwood) played Gates, it's rather odd that his death really got me hooked, but again it was because it showed they weren't reticent about doing the unexpected -- which they went on to prove several times -- although it did take me several more seasons before I warmed up to Flint even a little bit.

Speaking of Robin of Sherwood, there are two scenes that are breath-taking, both are from the episode "The Greatest Enemy". The first features Nasir. Several of the Merries have been captured by Gisburne. Nasir steals into the village where they are being held to rescue them. He kills at least ten of the Sheriff's men before he's even discovered, and once he is, kills several more. He is only stopped when he finds the guards have the Merries at swordpoint and, by this time, surrounded by the guards and completely outnumbered, and from a signal from (I think) Will Scarlett he very reluctantly surrenders. It was a brilliant showcase of Nasir's skills and the loyalty that he'd developed for his friends. The second is Robin's death, which is an iconic scene from the series. Standing on a hill with Marian, surrounded by the Sheriff and his men, and down to his last arrow. The Sheriff, fearing a trap has his men ready as Robin fires into the air before being cut down.

ne last one, and for a change of pace, no death in this one! There are so many best scenes and/or wongs in Galavant that it's hard to narrow down to just a few, let alone one. But one of my top ones, just for the sheer novelty value is "Love Makes the World Brand New" sung by Gareth and what makes that astounding is that Gareth is played by Vinnie Jones, noted hardman, always the prone-to-violence brute even before he turned to acting...there was a very good reason he was called Vinnie "The Psycho" Jones when he played football. So, Vinnie singing a love song is just the funniest thing ever!!

1. Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas – which one do you use?
I prefer to use Happy Holidays. I have friends of various religious beliefs (and non-belief) and it covers everything. At work, as I'm basically in customer service position, in a very conservative Christian area, I do default to Merry (or Happy) Christmas. It saves a lot of time and discussion that I don't wish to have at that moment.

2. Do you own an ugly Christmas sweater?
No I don't..and I want one! I used to have one years ago before ugly Christmas sweaters were ironically cool.

3. Do you celebrate the Winter Solstice?
I don't celebrate it as some of my Pagan friends do, but I do acknowledge and welcome it as a sign that the days grow longer once again.

4. Now that you are ‘in the know,’ what would you leave out for St. Nick on the 24th?
I'm a traditionalist in this respect. In the UK, we leave out mince pies and sherry or whisky for the man. It's only proper.

5. Tired of the snow and icky weather yet? For those fortunate folks in the other hemisphere, are you tired of the humidity and hot
It's been mostly rain, so far, but I'd much prefer that for the rest of the winter than snow. I don't mind the cold so much, but I can do without the bad weather.

Day 07. Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show

Well, nothing has changed from my original answers, and as with the favourite episode question I don't recall particular episodes as bad, rather there are parts or ideas that might carry over a few episodes that are weak or don't work for me.

DC's Legends of Tomorrow: The entire first season was awful. The big bad, Vandal Savage, was for all the build up, very underwhelming, and the less said about the Hawk couple the better. The only three things that saved it at all for me was Captain Cold's and Heatwave's grouchy snarkiness and, on the bad guy side, Damien Darhk who turned out to be a lot funner since his time on "Arrow". Thankfully, the show saw where the cast's talents lay and lightened up, taking a much more crack approach to the stories in following seasons. Now, it's a fun, sometimes silly, but always entertaining.

Once Upon a Time: At one point I would have said the arc with Ursula and Cruella de Ville was the worst of the show as really it did nothing for the show in general, but then along came Season 7 and that was atrocious. Not only did it get rid of many of the characters I'd loved from previous seasons and completely change the three that they did keep, who just happen to be my three favourites, but with only a few exceptions, the new characters were weak and in a couple of instances by even weaker actors. They should not have been renewed for that final season and left it on a high.

Lucifer: There were a few weak episodes in Season 3, when the fact that it was a show about the Lord of Hell seemed to take a back seat to being a police procedural and Lucifer just not doing much. A lot of it felt like filler episodes. And of course, there was the ridiculous attempt at a love triangle between Lucifer, Chloe, and Cain. Plus not enough Maze! That said, the finale blew it out of the park! And if Netflix hadn't picked it up, just the fact that it is such a cliffhanger, I would probably name that as my least favourite episode despite that it is likely to become a favourite.

Over the past two or three years, Joe Abercrombie has become one of my favourite authors and one I will run out and buy whenever he has a new book out, as well as the Kindle version and Audiobook. He write dirty, dark, brutal fantasy, but for all the violence and messiness, his characters are so very real, none perfect, all very flawed.

His books are:
The First Law Trilogy:
The Blade Itself
Before They Are Hanged
Last Argument of Kings

Standalone but set in the same world:
Best Served Cold
The Heroes
Red Country

Sharp Ends (a collection of short stories set in the same world),

( You have to realistic about these things*. )

All in all, if you like your fantasy dirty and bloody, enjoy certain tropes being turned on their head, with engaging, flawed characters, and can overlook the author's weakness (though improving) in writing women, it's definitely worth a read...and one of the few series (next review will be the other) that I will recommend to anyone who shows the slightest interest in fantasy or swords.

I give it a 9.5/10

(* Quote from Ninefingers throughout the series)