we have therapy tomorrow it's too late to screw

[raven]

Hey, 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, 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.

Comments

[deathbyshinies.livejournal.com]

I would like three unpopular opinions about LOTR!

(I would also like more Star Trek recs the next time you feel like posting any - really enjoyed your last roundup of them.)

[janne.livejournal.com]

So many comments... did somebody mention the TOS episode where Kirks body is taken over by a woman? (Turnabout Intruder, I do believe). Terribly sexist, alas.

[hawkmoth.livejournal.com]

Hah! I bet I have a print-out of Susan's dice buried somewhere in the archives.

And then there's the whole motif of Susan and Ann's "Hurt/Comforter:" A border of weeping Spocks and bleeding AJs.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

And Trill!

[annikah.livejournal.com]

The IMDB goofs page (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0796366/goofs) for Star Trek XI attempts to explain Checkov's accent:

'Chekov's Russian accent is sometimes perceived to have a major flaw in it. In Russian, there is no "W" sound, but there is a very, very common "V" sound (although heavily rounded with shades of "w"). As a result of this, his labored way of transforming his V's into W's might seem incorrect, but when speaking English, native Russian speakers will sometimes transpose V's and W's, e.g. "Ve are wery happy to be here".'

I actually haven't known any Russians to know if this is true, or not. Hm. I've been rewatching TOS eps, and young!Chekov's accent seems to be more over the top. The computer, at least, should have been able to understand him.

Hooray 1 & 2! I fail to see how they are unpopular.

Re: subject line: I see what you did thar

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

People already asked for all of the unpopular-opinions fandoms that I would've asked for! Um. Black Books? Is there even enough of a fandom to count?

Re: subject line: I see what you did thar

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Heh! unfortunately, I have only three opinions about Black Books, unpopular or not.

1. Bernard! <33333!

2. Manny! <3333!

3. SIMON PEGG! <3333!

Hey, I'm consistent. :P

[marymac.livejournal.com]

I've heard Poles do it, cause Polish reverses the two sounds, but not so much Russians.

Put it down to stress?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I think you're right - it's a plot hole, but one that can be nicely fanwanked.

I have not seen evil!Janeway! srsly. Also, Enterprise has mpreg too. This makes me SO HAPPY.

Re: I know you will either a) appreciate this or b) already have seen it

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

d'awwwww! Someone should start a girlband called Spock and the Spockettes.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Speaking of coming back from the future, you remember the SG-1 episode about that? The one called "2010"? Does it freak you the fuck out that it's nearly 2010? It's supposed to be TEH FUTURE, omg!

Doctor Who, hmmmm.

1. I like evil!darkside!Ten. I know everyone else was getting tired of the lonely god schtick, but I lapped it up. Oh, Tennant. Be still, my heart.

2. I liked Last of the Time Lords! No one else seemed to. But I thought it was fab.

3. Er. Matt Smith is a tiny wee baby with a tiny wee baby face. This may not be an unpopular opinion per se. But tiny! wee! yes.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I forgot! I have just downloaded the first five DS9 eps. Bet you anything you like that this time next week I'm a raving fangirl.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yes! Yes, that's a good one. SG-1 does it twice, if I recall - "Tin Man" and "Fragile Balance".

I think gender swap is rare because it's hard to do on live action television - easier in print.

[tieleen.livejournal.com]

What! Scotty's awesome. Who would dare say otherwise?

(Not quite entirely as awesome as his little alien friend. But very nearly.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*squish* thankyou.

Merlin!

1. I don't like Arthur very much. He's okay, yes. But I find it hard to even ship Arthur/Merlin, because I don't think he's very interesting.

2. Ditto Uther, actually. I like him, because he's mult-dimensional, and I love Tony Head, but somehow I don't want to read fic about him or get excited about him or anything.

3. I am finding it very, very difficult to see how Morgana can go evil. I know that the legend says she will, and the fandom sort of assumes she will, but her character in the show is smart, driven, compassionate, not evil - and I wonder whether therein lies the set-up for an unexpected twist.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Mind in same body, I was thinking, but I will take your Farscape rec under advisement. :) Everyone tells me to watch that show.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

1. I really don't like Ents. Stupid bloody tree people, who do they think they are, giving all the other vegetation a bad reputation.

2. And hobbits. Going about being short, I don't know. And with hairy feet. Man-hating feminists.

3. And that bit, right, where the plane crashes into Middle Earth and the survivors spend six seasons running around being chased by polar bears? What's with that?

I haven't, er, read it. Or seen it. *shame*

(Hey, no problem. I will do another batch later in the week, but today's favourite is Paradise Found (http://skywaterblue.dreamwidth.org/912745.html) - lovely piece of Gaila backstory.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

No, and I'd forgotten about that too! There's a New Who episode with the same plot, too.

[icepixie]

Everyone tells me to watch that show.

Heh. There's a reason. You would totally love it.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Living_Witness_(episode), mostly. I honestly cannot remember if that episode is the good crack or the bad crack.

Oooooo, in terms of tropes - a character who is significantly less cool than the others and kinda a parody of the series' obsessive fans? Andrew in Buffy, Lt Barclay in Trek, umm. Don't know about this one.

[fyrdrakken]

SG1 also has an AU!Carter coming for a visit in an early season, brings back the android SG1 team (and promptly kills them all off), and has an episode in the 9th or 10th season where a rip in the spacetime continuum leads to hordes of AU!SG1s showing up at the SGC. And SGA gives us an AU!McKay in one ep and a set of replicator-created clones in IIRC 4th season (who, like O'Neill 2.0, were created by aliens who wanted to experiment on SGC people without their absence being noted and initially thought they were the originals).

Well, see, gender swap shouldn't be any harder than casting for juvenile versions of main cast members for flashback episodes. And in some cases there's bound to be a cheat option where the actor in question has an opposite-gender sibling with a strong resemblance. (I'm reminded of a story I heard from the filming of X-Men 2, where Hugh Jackman's sister came to visit the set one day and for a joke they put her in a Logan outfit and gave her the Wolverine hairdo and sent her on for a take instead of her brother. Apparently the resemblance was so strong that it took a few minutes for the crew to notice.)

I'm starting to consider that you may have hit on something where fandom is interested in something that live action programs aren't all that keen on touching. You see lots of transvestite comedy, or angsty serious indy flicks about transsexuals, and I can remember one movie of the died-but-sent-back-to-earth-for-final-chance-at-correcting-unfinished-business where the individual in question was given the last-minute handicap of being sent back as a woman instead (I can't remember the title, but Ellen Barkin played the woman he wound up becoming), but I'm thinking the genderbender plot is verging on serious!issues territory in filmic terms, and hence not as likely to show up in SF/fantasy TV.

[fyrdrakken]

3. It has been pointed out elsewhere that Morgana is being given the standard "women with too much power need to stay under male control or they turn EVIL" plot arc -- specifically, attention was drawn to Morgana being lied to by Gaius and drugged in an attempt to keep her powers from manifesting, whereas Merlin gets advice and training and assistance in actually using his abilities. Basically the thing where men try to keep women on a leash and when they finally figure it out / get sick of it and lash out it gets pointed to as proof that women can't be trusted with power and that the men were totally justified in the repressive actions that actually caused the rebellion and/or lack of control. (I did an entire meta rant on that topic after seeing the third X-Men movie.)