Beyond Selidor

Happy New Year to everyone! Matthias and I saw out 2023 in our usual way — with canapes, champagne, and films at home, and it was cheerful and relaxing and cosy. I wasn't quite intending to wake up at 7am, but in the end it was nice to be up and about in the very first sliver of the morning, drinking tea, eating a cooked breakfast, and chatting about which books with which we planned to start our 2024 reading. We then went out for a looping, 5km walk along the river and through the sleepy suburban streets, and back — via the coffee rig in the market square — past the cathedral, drenched in silvery sunlight, watching the canal boats and swans drift by. Here's a little photoset of the transition from one year to the next.

It being 1st January means two things: Yuletide reveals, and the start of snowflake_challenge. I'm planning to participate in a low key way in the challenge this year: I'll do all the prompts, but I'm not going to link them in the comm. I know this goes somewhat against the spirit of the thing, but I found dealing with the increased replies overwhelming at times last year, and this feels like a compromise that will keep things manageable. But more on Snowflake later: let's get to the Yuletide recs!

I only make rec posts for the exchange once authors have been revealed, because it feels unfair to share all these things I've enjoyed without the authors getting credit, hence why I always wait until 1st January. I'm pleased to see that several of my favourite fics that I'm reccing from this year's collection are written by friends!

( Nine recs behind the cut — mainly book fandoms )

I wrote four fics this year — my main assignment, two treats in the main collection, and one treat in the Madness collection, which seem to have been well received, so from my perspective, this has been a good Yuletide all around: a great gift, a good reception for my own writing, and a collection with some fantastic pieces of work.

( My four fics behind the cut )



Today's prompt is:

In your own space, update your fandom information.

My intro post remains up to date, which is pleasing. Something which I had been intending to do for last year's challenge, but which never happened, was writing a template post for fanwork exchange letters, with prompts for all the fandoms I'm likely to request. The idea was that this would save me time and avoid the need to go trawling back through multiple previous letters. I can obviously update it with new fandoms if I decide to request them. I'm really happy that the template letter post is all set up — it should save me a huge amount of time in the future.

And that's snowflake_challenge Day 1 completed!

Day Nineteen: Favorite non-human female character

Cameron Phillips (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)

Do you remember this meme? I'm sorry for completely dropping the ball on it, but things elsewhere got so hectic that I lost the will to blog. Anyway, I'm picking this meme up again today.

Can a cyborg be said to have a gender? I don't care, because I'm going with Cameron anyway. Certainly the other characters in the show call her 'she', and that's good enough for me.

One of the things I love about Cameron is that, just like the human characters on the show, she grows and changes, and lives, even if she is made of wires and metal and computer chips. Her motives are opaque, and the other characters frequently wonder if they should trust her at all. In Cameron the show's theme of the tension between fixed destiny and free will finds its purest expression: she was literally created for a single purpose (to kill John Connor, and, by extension, all the hopes of humanity), and then she was remade for another. However, as the show progresses, Cameron reveals that her old programming is returning, but that she is actively fighting it and choosing to defend John (and humanity) because it's what she wants to do.

Summer Glau, the actress who played Cameron, has said that she had her own interpretation of what drove Cameron and where her loyalties truly lay, but that she wanted to leave it up to the audience to draw their own conclusions. It's certainly possible to read Cameron's actions as antagonistic or at least as muddying the moral clarity of John's cause. However, I've always been of the belief that once Cameron developed the ability to override her own programming, she developed something close to a moral compass and the ability to perceive and understand emotions. Once she had these, she was unable to avoid empathising with human beings.

I've always felt strongly that where most stories of human and non-human interaction fall down is in the characterisation of the non-humans. Writers always feel that they have to make them essentially humans with fangs, humans with wings, humans made of metal and so on. This, to me, is wrong. Human morality is tied up with human mortality. If you live forever, if you're invulnerable, if your existence isn't even really living, why would you feel things in the same way as a human being? I prefer it when non-human characters regard humanity with a sort of baffled wonder, and if they grow in their understanding of humanity while never becoming human themselves. This is Cameron Phillips in a nutshell. Every note in her interaction with her human charges is perfect, and my only regret in her characterisation is that the show's cancellation meant viewers never really got a chance to know what moved and drove her.

( The other days )

Also, please check out my latest post on my reviews blog. It's an essay on The Fall, and I'd be interested to discuss it with you either here or on the post itself.

1. This fic.

2. This vid.

3. This song.



Oh, what the hell, this song too.