The Old Blue Box

Guess who's bored?

That AO3 meme everyone's been doing. Took away all the fanart and translations for this one.

1. Under what rating do you write most?

• General - 103 (81.75%)


• Teen - 22 (17.46%)


• Mature - 1 (0.79%)

Mind you, there is some fic not posted on AO3. There would be another item on that list if there was. Iykyk.

2. What are your top 3 fandoms?

1. Doctor Who (1963) - 32 (25.40%)


2. Anders als die Andern (1919) - 22 (17.46%)


3. Ich und die Kaiserin (1933) - 18 (14.29%)

No surprise that Doctor Who (classic) wins. Over a fourth of the fics posted! Also no surprise that everyone's favourite gay violinists and my one-person-fandom are hanging out in the top 3. I was expecting more Sir Lancelot.

3. What is your top character you write about?
Went with a top 3.

1. Ian Chesterton - 19 (15.08%)


2. Barbara Wright - 17 (13.49%)


3. Kurt Sivers - 16 (12.70%)

Bonkers! Kurt is right behind Barbara (also I wasn't expecting Ian to be above her.)

4. What are the 3 top pairings?

1. Paul Körner/Kurt Sivers - 16 (12.70%)


2. Ian Chesterton/Barbara Wright - 11 (8.73%)


3. Ian Chesterton & Barbara Wright - 3 (2.38%)

The Barbarian love is real. But the gay violinists are thriving.

5. What are the top 3 additional tags?

1. Prompt Fill - 110 (87.30%)


2. 3 Sentence Ficathon - 60 (47.62%)


3. Microfic - 50 (39.68%)

While I knew there was going to be a shitton of Prompt Fill, I wasn't expecting it to be over 100. Or that many microfics/3 sentence fics for 3SF. I did post the all seperately.

Other interesting thing:

• Have 126 fics posted.


• Out of the 27 fandoms, only 11 have more than one fic posted (8 have more than 2).


• That makes 16 fandoms with only one fic.


• Of those 16 fandom, 2 have my fic as the only work. 2 have other works, but they're fanart and/or fanvids. One I know there's more fic out there. One has a placeholder as the other work, so it doesn't count.


• Have written 5 crossovers.

Wasn't expecting to get into René Cresté's filmography (of Judex and Tih Minh [1]), let alone actually finding things that feature him, and then bam! Two Feuillade movies on the Internet Archive, this one by Léonce Perret [2] and one Perret comedy short that I thought was lost but it was sitting on YouTube for months. Cresté looks so young and so tense in front of the camera (one of his first film roles) that he felt like a completely different person!

Back to Dernier amour, it's the age-old story of a retired actress falling in love with a younger man.

It's clear Ninon (Valentine Petit, Mrs. Perret) didn't retire because she wanted to, in the first minutes of the movie she reminisces about her career, looking at old pictures of her former glory and does a little song and dance routine. She clearly yearns to perform again. She also has two buddies who butt heads over who gets to marry her and she thinks it's hilarious. So far, it looks like a romcom.



And then Roger (René "Judex" Cresté) happens. He's a film director, and makes Ninon the request to shoot his historical drama in her large, beautiful gardens. And she's smitten. He's charming and artistically-inclined (and hot). He's also engaged to this girl and that girl knows where this is going. Ninon doesn't know this.




A romance blossoms, Roger breaks his engagement, moves to Ninon's villa. They're cute and playful (seriously, maybe it's because Cresté and Reine Dessort, the fiancé, have little screen time together, but he and Petit have great chemistry).




It's a lie. It's clear Ninon lives him, but Roger just wants to have the comfortable life of a wealthy man.



The ex-fiancé is dying of grief and Roger is urged to go back to her. The truth comes out. Ninon lets him go. She goes back to her old life, and will never forget (their "love"? his deceit?), and he gets a happy ending, since the ex-fiancé-now-fiancé-again gets better. Honestly, good for that girl, but he's no good lol

(For all of Judex's brooding, the man's heart is buttery soft and is ultimately in the right place. Roger is one heck of a charmer, all smiles and pretty words, and he sucks. No wonder audiences liked Cresté so much, even before Judex, even before he made movies. Dude just slips into roles live gloves. Except that one short, but again, baby's first time onscreen.)

(Also, Valentine Petit is no joke. Singer, dancer and film actress for over 10 years! She was a joy! And then broke my heart.)

I love the way this movie uses mirrors. Ninon sits in front of it, watches her face, stretches the skin around her eyes. Her age was what forced her to retire. Isn't show business great? Another scene with Roger, as he waxes poetry to Ninon over the phone, and his fiancé looks on, unseen by him, but seen by us because of the mirror. I'm easily amused.



Shots are framed by foreground elements (mostly plants) like a book illustration. Characters move from foreground to background effortlessly.



And it's a movie that features movies as an important... thing. I would've loved more of it. The shooting of the historical drama is delightful (great arm flailing, very director). And the scene at the studio. The camera doesn't move at all except in this scene, a pan over the Gaumont studio (they gotta pimp themselves), where they're filming a drama, a comedy and an historical epic at the same time! It's all staged ofc, but it's still fun. It is what made Die grosse Sehnsucht for me.



I could not gif the sweep for the life of me D:

It isn't amazing, but I was pleasantly surprised [3]. Worth a watch if one's curious about what Judex was doing before he donned the cape.

[1] Is it any good? I'm a little on the fence on watching it.
[2] Now on the Internet Archive :D
[3] Also surprised by how long this is o_o