nobody knows it but you've got a secret

I've been asked by a couple of people what I think about the death of Diana Wynne Jones. The funny thing is, the last time I wrote about her, I was in a snit because I thought she was rubbish on race. I still do think she's rubbish on race. But, then, I say this a lot - I only get angry with people who are worth it. The reason I was personally offended by this was because in every other respect her books are lovely: so original and interesting and fluidly imaginative. I'm not in the same boat as those who are remembering her as a beloved childhood author - I read only a couple of her novels as a child, and actually read most of them for the first time at the end of last year - but the world is a sorrier and sadder place for not having her in it.

This lovely tribute to her by Neil Gaiman has the unexpected note that Nick Mallory, from Deep Secret and The Merlin Conspiracy, was based on the young Gaiman! How delightful. I adore Deep Secret, as you all know; that makes it even more real to me.

musesfool is doing a meme where you talk about five some fictional characters beginning with a given letter and offered me the letter K, so I am going to cheat slightly and point out that Nick's and Maree's real names are ( spoiler for Deep Secret )

so I can write about them.

-Nick and Maree Mallory (Diana Wynne Jones' Magids series). I love them both, but especially Maree, who is so brilliantly, teenagedly ridiculous - she's carelessly self-obsessed, she's mooning idiotically after her ex-boyfriend - but at the same time she's passionate, she cares about books, she adores her dad, and whether at a given moment she hates or loves Rupert, she does it with all the intensity possible. That's one thing I love about DWJ - her ability to write a whole, fleshed-out character as replete with contradictions as all the real people you meet.

-Keiko O'Brien (Deep Space Nine). I always liked the way DS9 handles Keiko, especially the way it portrays her unhappiness at having to give up her career because of living on Deep Space Nine. It feels real to me. I love her especially in "Accession" (thank you, gavagai, for stepping up with Memory Alpha didn't), when she's returned from Bajor and Miles is overcompensating by spending every waking hour with her - so she engineers him and Bashir into going off to the holodeck together and enjoys the peace and quiet. That's what DS9 does best, I think - its small domestic dramas are as carefully handled as its space battles.

-Kingsley Shacklebolt (HP) - I do love Kingsley Shacklebolt. I love that he calms everyone the fuck down when they need it, and that he's the bodyguard of the Muggle Prime Minister. I didn't really like the purple-robe thing, in the films, but then forthwritten and I fixed that.

-James T. Kirk - is actually not my favourite of the TOS characters by a long shot. But in the reboot, I do think Chris Pine does a fabulous job with him, strikes just the right balance between cocky and annoying, and I adore how fandom writes his relationship with just about everyone - with Spock, with McCoy, but specially with Uhura.

For music, she gave me the letter E:

Natalie Merchant - Everyday Is Like Sunday

One of the few instances of a cover I like much better than the original. This is a song about growing up in a northern English seaside town. Shockingly, I relate to it.

Placebo - Every You Every Me

I have immensely fond memories of this song. In the summer of 2005, hathy_col had just passed her driving test and was driving a white Skoda with holes in the floor. Nothing deterred, we drove around West Lancs with this song turned up to eleven, and grinned at each other on something borrowed something blue / every me every you. Yes, now everyone's vidding this song to clips from "The Big Bang", but we thought of it first.

Dar Williams - Empire

Gorgeous voice, beautiful imagery and scathing post-colonial critique. I love her so.

Regina Spektor - Eet

I have no earthly idea what this song is about, but I like it.


I should go to bed. Have made progress on Remix, if you define progress as reading everything your remixee has ever written, and failing to find a hook upon lots of agonising, and then having a strange 3am-in-the-bathtub thought that is a great idea and will totally work and has only the minor drawback of probably making the remixee totally livid. I mean, it would me, if I were the remixee. Bah.