Sarcasm is an adjusted stress reaction.

There was a should-have-been-good film adaptation of Wolves done about '85, but I don't know who by.

When the BBC got stupid and decided to kill off the Radio 4 Children's Serial, the last serial was all the Dido books - Black Hearts through to I think the Cuckoo Tree. It was fabulous, but I've never been able to find it anywhere.

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Oh, I've seen it! It had Stephanie Beacham as Miss Slighcarp, and a bizarre steampunk chariot chase, and YET managed to be quite terrible.

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YES! Film4 show it on Monday afternoons without fail. And I watch it every now and then and think it's not as bad as I thought it was, and then it is.

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episkopos.livejournal.com

Was that the one with Richard O'Brien in?

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Yes. He was James.

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Billie Piper's a wee tiny bit old for Dido, you madwoman. She's ten at the start and sixteen by the end and no makeup is that good!

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Yes, but obviously Dido would be aged up (like Jim was in The Ruby in the Smoke -- too expensive to have a child actor in a lead role when the rest of the cast are adults -- and then there's the rule that Billie Piper has to play every third female lead in a period/literary piece, no matter how inappropriate the part.

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This is painfully true. *has not watched The Ruby in the Smoke due to flail about inappropriateness of casting in general*

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It's not that Billie's bad in "Ruby", it's more that somehow the scripts for that and Mansfield Park got mixed up, so her Sally was demure and quiet, and her Fanny was romping and outspoken.

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The promos gave me a severe case of 'Oh God, my childhood' and I studied Mansfield bloody Park for A-Level so I was never, ever, even-at-gunpoint going to watch it. I think I did wisely, by that description.

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The best thing you can say about Mansfield Park is that Michelle Ryan is quite good as Maria, and holds her own in the pout-off, even with Billie and Hayley Atwell as the competition.

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In fairness to them all, they really hadn't a lot to work with. A more one-dimensional pack of women Austen never wrote.

Sadly, CCEA decreed it was Mansfield Park or Tess of the D'Urberville's that year, so we actually got off lightly. For values of lightly that include your friend drawing detailed gravestones for every single character and herself while getting an ever more manic look.

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ravenskyewalker.livejournal.com

I adored The Wolves of Willoughby Chase back around 1978. I never knew at that time that there had been sequels, though I wanted to read the rest of the story. It took me until I was an adult to check on that, but now can't recall how many books were in the series, and I've never tracked them down. I really should do that, shouldn't I? ... Yes.

(Weird little detail: I remember classmates taunting me because I loved a book with Chase in the title, and one of the guys who despised me at that age had that as his last name, so this apparently meant something big to them. Uh-huh. Great way to try to wreck the memory of a good story...)

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I only found out that there was a whole series recently, and I was lucky enough to find the first four in a secondhand bookstore. I'm just a bit scared of moving beyond the familiar two...

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We Dido/Simon shippers, all four of us, support you in e-mail.

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(The Billie Piper thing was just to annoy you!)

When I was a kid I shipped Simon/Bonnie, but now I think I ship Bonnie/Sylvia, and Simon's free for Dido.

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I have been typing my comments through a haze of the oppressed's despairing tears. Or it could be early spring allergies, I'm not certain which.

"When I was a kid I shipped Simon/Bonnie, but now I think I ship Bonnie/Sylvia, and Simon's free for Dido."

I always felt a bit wrong for shipping Bonnie/Sylvia since they're cousins and all, but really, how can you not? And the Dido/Simon is quite strong by the time we get to (spoiler) in Dido and Pa, so.

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I have been typing my comments through a haze of the oppressed's despairing tears. Or it could be early spring allergies, I'm not certain which.

THOSE ARE THE TEARS OF OPPRESSION! THEY TASTE LIKE LEMONS AND SOUR YOGHURT!

NOW I SHALL PUT ON "BECAUSE WE WANT TO" AND DANCE!

I always felt a bit wrong for shipping Bonnie/Sylvia since they're cousins and all, but really, how can you not?

Likewise, but my ~~vague reading~~ extensive research tells me that no one would have thought twice about it back then, on account of lesbians not existing and all.

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"NOW I SHALL PUT ON "BECAUSE WE WANT TO" AND DANCE!"

OH GOD OF ISRAEL WHY WHY WHY *dives out nearest window, realizes impact of gesture somewhat blunted by being on first floor, shakes dirty half-melted snow and dead twigs from hair and slinks back inside*

"Likewise, but my ~~vague reading~~ extensive research tells me that no one would have thought twice about it back then, on account of lesbians not existing and all."

If Joan Aiken didn't want us to ship them, she would never have made one of them a bold, enterprising, fiercely protective tomboy with a trigger temper and crack shooting aim, and the other a gentle, delicate, ladylike little orphan in need of emotional succor. She was totally askin' for it.

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She does have a few elderly little old ladies in pairs in her stories...
And all of her little old ladies are awesome.

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I love her old ladies. And I don't usually gravitate toward tomboy characters, but I love Dido.

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I think possibly the only person in that timeline of books that I love more is Arabis. And that's nearly 100% due to her having a hawk.

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I will always be very grateful to the unnamed, distraught little girl who wrote to JA after reading Black Hearts in Battersea and begged her not to kill Dido off.

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She was going to kill her off? Oh my.
Wonderful distraught little girl, definitely!

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I saw her mention it in an interview ages back: She'd definitely meant Dido to have drowned, then she got the letter and began having second thoughts. Huzzah. :-)

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