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ravenHey, internets. You know those things that I, for lack of a better term, will call television sci-fi tropes? Not the whole scope of TV tropes, but those things that are just a necessary feature of a certain kind of show: Buffy, SG-1 and Atlantis, to a lesser extent TNG, Voyager and the X-Files monster-of-the-weeks? Like, body swaps, telepathy, alternate universes where everyone has different hair, benevolent-aliens-who-are-actually-evil, gender swaps (although, actually, no fandom I can think of has canonically done this), everyone gets turned into children, etc. That kind of thing. Would y'all mind thinking up the ones I've missed? I promise there is a reason I'm asking, it's just... too embarrassing to go into right now.
Also, while I'm here,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jacinthsong has been worrying about a plot hole in the Buffyverse. When Buffy dies in "The Gift", why is no new Slayer called? After pondering this for some time - and after my realising that while Memory Alpha is a wonderful resource on many levels, it does not have the answer to all life's questions - we decided that, probably, only the first death counts. Or otherwise they could have just kept ducking Buffy in a tank of water and solved the problem that way. (Or, as she was the one-girl-in-all-the-world, and not in-Southern-California, maybe the new Slayer was called in Mongolia and beat up demonically possessed yaks.) Life is hard, when filled with such quandaries as these.
In other news, I'm still here. Getting myself out of this whole horrible mess by deliberately Revising, Applying For Jobs, or Watching Star Trek, and Nothing Else, with a side order of Not Crying. Not crying takes a lot of effort, but I'm getting better at it. Last weekend, I went down to Bristol to seevampire_kitten and shimgray, and it was very lovely; I went on a train that had come from Glasgow and was going to Penzance and there was nowhere to sit and the toilets had all gone boom and people were turning feral. It was an unpleasant experience, but I liked Bristol - the last time I was there was in 2004, and the less said about that the better, I suspect, but I liked the city. It has an excess of hills and precariously-positioned greenery that reminds me of San Francisco, down to the small signs reminding you to leave your handbrake on if you want to live. Funny, really - if my life had gone even slightly differently I'd still be living in Bristol now, most likely, and miserably at that.
Shim and I were going to go the Banksy exhbition at the city museum, but failed at this on account of the two-hour queues to get in (it's a free exhbition; even though we didn't get to go, it makes me happy in an obscure way that people were queueing two hours in humid heat for a free art exhibition) and spent the day mostly wandering, with interludes in cafés and bookshops that may or may not have led to my acquiring thirteen books, which is, perhaps, slightly excessive. Have since returned to grim north, read three of them, taken too many baths to count, discovered the joys of listening to BBC iPlayer whilst in said baths, run out of TNG and started on Deep Space Nine, applied for a job, oh my god my life is so exciting I could explode.
So as not to finish on a dull note, I steal a meme frommusesfool: Name a fandom, and I'll give you the scoop on at least three of my unpopular opinions related to that fandom.
As she says, if you ask about a fandom I don't know, I shall feel absolutely no compunction in making shit up.
Also, while I'm here,
jacinthsong has been worrying about a plot hole in the Buffyverse. When Buffy dies in "The Gift", why is no new Slayer called? After pondering this for some time - and after my realising that while Memory Alpha is a wonderful resource on many levels, it does not have the answer to all life's questions - we decided that, probably, only the first death counts. Or otherwise they could have just kept ducking Buffy in a tank of water and solved the problem that way. (Or, as she was the one-girl-in-all-the-world, and not in-Southern-California, maybe the new Slayer was called in Mongolia and beat up demonically possessed yaks.) Life is hard, when filled with such quandaries as these.In other news, I'm still here. Getting myself out of this whole horrible mess by deliberately Revising, Applying For Jobs, or Watching Star Trek, and Nothing Else, with a side order of Not Crying. Not crying takes a lot of effort, but I'm getting better at it. Last weekend, I went down to Bristol to see
vampire_kitten and shimgray, and it was very lovely; I went on a train that had come from Glasgow and was going to Penzance and there was nowhere to sit and the toilets had all gone boom and people were turning feral. It was an unpleasant experience, but I liked Bristol - the last time I was there was in 2004, and the less said about that the better, I suspect, but I liked the city. It has an excess of hills and precariously-positioned greenery that reminds me of San Francisco, down to the small signs reminding you to leave your handbrake on if you want to live. Funny, really - if my life had gone even slightly differently I'd still be living in Bristol now, most likely, and miserably at that. Shim and I were going to go the Banksy exhbition at the city museum, but failed at this on account of the two-hour queues to get in (it's a free exhbition; even though we didn't get to go, it makes me happy in an obscure way that people were queueing two hours in humid heat for a free art exhibition) and spent the day mostly wandering, with interludes in cafés and bookshops that may or may not have led to my acquiring thirteen books, which is, perhaps, slightly excessive. Have since returned to grim north, read three of them, taken too many baths to count, discovered the joys of listening to BBC iPlayer whilst in said baths, run out of TNG and started on Deep Space Nine, applied for a job, oh my god my life is so exciting I could explode.
So as not to finish on a dull note, I steal a meme from
musesfool: Name a fandom, and I'll give you the scoop on at least three of my unpopular opinions related to that fandom.As she says, if you ask about a fandom I don't know, I shall feel absolutely no compunction in making shit up.
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on 2009-06-23 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-23 05:20 pm (UTC)So much yes!
(Also, I hear you on 3.)
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on 2009-06-23 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-23 05:31 pm (UTC)2. Klinger never should have stopped wearing dresses!
3. Hawkeye probably carried on being crazy after the war. No, wait, everyone on the planet thinks that. :)
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on 2009-06-23 05:31 pm (UTC)How can 2 be unpopular? Scotty is awesome!
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on 2009-06-23 05:32 pm (UTC)(okay, I am getting slightly overexcited BUT STILL)
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on 2009-06-23 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-23 05:52 pm (UTC)Just for everyone's information, the phone conversation in which she realised this was the CUTEST THING EVER.
maybe the new Slayer was called in Mongolia and beat up demonically possessed yaks
Buuuut unfortunately Amy pointed out that s7 claims that the Watchers and the First between them rounded up/killed all the slayers and potentials. (Including the ONE NON-ANGLOPHONE IN ALL THE WORLD, oh Buffy) So if there was another one she would either have been found or killed, triggering another one, and so one. She also said something else I can't remember the citation for, so I am hoping shweis just stalking your journal and will pop up helpfully at this point. I think it really is a plot hole...
I can't think of any more tropes (Red Dwarf does have gender-swaps! And mpreg!), but you did just remind me of the Voyager semi-AU episodes where Janeway is EVIL and this is conveyed by DYKE HAIR. Now I am cackling a bit to myself.
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on 2009-06-23 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-23 05:56 pm (UTC)It is also daft because THAT'S NOT A RUSSIAN ACCENT. Or not a Russian accent anyone I know has recognised as such, I am open to corrections. You can plausibly interpret "nuclear wessels" as hypercorrection, but him actually not being able to pronounce vs is just...what.
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on 2009-06-23 06:24 pm (UTC)I know you will either a) appreciate this or b) already have seen it
on 2009-06-23 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-23 06:46 pm (UTC)Skiffy tropes I cannot believe anyone has pointed out - coming back from the future to leave a message that our current heroes will inevitably ignore slightly. I think Stargate did this a few times. But yes, bascially: time travel in order just to put the characters into neat new clothes.
And three unpopular opinions about Doctor Who!
(Also you should watch DS9. It is fabulous, although I'm not getting the love everyone has for Sisko, as he's sort of... meh. I would watch the Quark and Odo Adventures, or the Major Kira Being Rubbish But Hotter Than Jadzia Dax Show, of Julian Bashier - Galactic Playboy! anyday.
Okay, I am the only person in the world to adore the Star Trek reboot and go mad about Deep Space Nine. This is why you should watch it, it's wonderfully distracting and very silly and sort of made of win. Apparently there is a mirror universe episode! Major Kira is in leather! I am obsessed with a really unpopular character! Ahem.)
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on 2009-06-23 07:07 pm (UTC)ETA: Also, I think the genderswap thing may be more common in anime -- at least, I seem to remember there being at least one anime in which the main character turns into a girl every time he gets wet or something like that. But, wow, such a glaring omission, that such a popular fanfic trope hasn't made it onscreen when even mpreg shows up as a plot point on occasion. I can remember a movie called Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde but that's the only direct genderswap I can remember that wasn't bodyswap-with-incidental-gendershift.
GIP
on 2009-06-23 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-23 07:16 pm (UTC)EtA: Oh, and speaking of SF genre tropes, the Tabula Rasa plot? Who are we and what are we doing and what happened to our memories and how can we get them back?
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on 2009-06-23 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-23 07:34 pm (UTC)Good luck with job hunting and everything else. *hugs*
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on 2009-06-23 07:40 pm (UTC)Scotty!!!! ♥ ♥ ♥
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on 2009-06-23 08:06 pm (UTC)2. I buy it. I'd love to see the reasons for the differences between Prime!Scotty and nu!Scotty.
3. I suppose they were trying to keep the same kind of jokes going, like calling Spock a hobgoblin. Xenophobic in a really literal sense.
In fact, I'll go one step further and say the tone of the movie was a little lighter than it perhaps should have been. The first 10 minutes is a beautiful picture of death, darkness, despair, etc., followed by suicidal 11 year olds and racial hatred against a minor. And then we get ... humour. It's fun, but I still find the juxtaposition jarring in a notgood way.
/babble
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on 2009-06-23 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-23 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2009-06-23 08:43 pm (UTC)Are you considering genderswap to be "mind in the same body but the body's now the opposite gender" or "mind now in someone else's body, and that person is of the opposite gender"? Because if it's the latter, I present to you: FARSCAPE.
(Pretty much if you ever think something wild and crazy hasn't been canonically done, Farscape probably did it. :D)
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on 2009-06-23 09:02 pm (UTC)I did. Gosh, that sounds smart of me...
Was it the thing about how everyone in S7 seems to be angsting over what will happen if buffy is killed, especially the potentials, but no-one even tells Faith about the uber-vamps. But then they have lots of world ending to worry about, so possibly they weren't thinking straight.
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on 2009-06-23 09:04 pm (UTC)I was assuming she meant the first, because a lot of things play with the second (off the top of my head, Futurama and It's a Boy Girl Thing)