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

[taraljc.livejournal.com]

My friends and I have, for the last 15 years or so, referred to these as "story dice" plots. And susanmgarrett even had physical dice you could roll. IT WAS AWESOME. I even ran a story dice challenge (http://www.loony-archivist.com/svffr/dice_challenge.htm) in SV fandom, waaaaaay back when.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

AMNESIA. How could I forget.

[fadagaski.livejournal.com]

Predictable liek woah: STAR TREK REBOOT.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Not that unpopular, but:

1. Kirk/McCoy is the new pairing of the revolution, not Kirk/Spock - I mean, it's nice an' all, and traditional, but omg-so-bff, yes.

2. Scotty is the best thing ever to live. No one else agrees with me on this, except possibly thistlerose, but dude. He is, and there should be fic and icons and SHRINES IN HIS HONOUR.

3. The canonical making fun of Chekov's accent bothers me a bit. Because, sure, the "nuclear wessels" thing was funny way back when, but in this version he's a kid and he's on a starship filled with people who are all older than him, and it seems kind of puppy-kicking.

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

cliche_bingo (whose sign-ups, damn it, have closed early) has a list of fic cliches here (http://community.livejournal.com/cliche_bingo/1136.html), many of which are sci-fi tropes.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

...you read my mind on that one. *g*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you, that's lightened my day. Magical healing cock, indeed.

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Harry Potter!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You know, it's so long since I've been active in HP fandom that I've forgotten which of my opinions actually are unpopular. So have three opinions that are possibly maybe vaguely controversial, yes.

1. Draco is boring. Boring, boring, boring. He's just a spoilt rich kid, and that's kind of it. I don't mean to say he's cardboard, either - he's boring in the way that real spoilt rich kids are boring.

2. JKR is great at writing women. She writes tonnes of awesome women - Hermione, Ginny, Tonks, Molly, Fleur, Lily, Luna, I love them all.

3. Sirius/Remus = OTP. Yeah, I don't do shipping wars, yeah, I am much too grown up for that sort of thing, yeah, Tonks, but damn, my heart. OTP OTP OTP and no one will ever convince me otherwise.

[lazyclaire.livejournal.com]

Buffy's first death activated Kendra's slayer powers and thus passed the Slayer Lineage onto her. She became the Chosen One, so when she died, Faith's powers became activated. Faith was the new Chosen One and so a new slayer could only have been activated by her death. Or a spell by Uber-Willow, as seen in the Grand Finale... Either :)

Buffy still had her powers, because if she didn't, the series would have been much much shorter, but her second death didn't activate a new Slayer because she wasn't the Chosen One per say anymore. Her first death + rebirth created a glitch in the pattern and basically messed everything up :)

Also, while walking in North London, I saw a graffiti of a Dalek which looked a lot like Banksy's and that said 'Obey!' under it. It was probably not a real Banksy, but hey, it made me happy :)

For your fandom meme, please tell me about your Unpopular Buffy Opinions! Or New Who. Or both. As you please :)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Aha, thank you. So in short: the second one didn't count. Heh. Worth it, so we could have Faith.

My unpopular Buffy opinons!

1. Spike = dull. Oh, so dull. I had a theory that Buffy's boyfriends only were interesting when they weren't with her - so Angel was cool on his own series, and Spike was interesting before the whole Buffy/Spike thing, and Riley never got to be interesting at all.

2. Giles should never have left. He was my favourite. :)

3. Aaaand, for the big one: The Gift should have been the series finale. I mean, Once More With Feeling and Tabula Rasa were awesome, but other than them, and maybe Storyteller, I think the first five seasons were all we needed, really.

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

although, actually, no fandom I can think of has canonically done this

Red Dwarf to some extent. Futurama. Charmed.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen the other two, but I'd forgotten about Red Dwarf... I think I had that mentally pigeonholed in "alternate universe".

[leiascully.livejournal.com]

There's totally an episode of The X-Files called "Genderbender". Nick Lea gender-bent!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yes! Yes, I had totally forgotten that!

[absinthe-shadow.livejournal.com]

S&A!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, Chloe, I don't have unpopular opinions about S&A! My opinions about S&A are basically "Geoffrey omg <3333!". Have three opinions other than that:

1. Anna = win. Anna should have gone to Bolivia and then come back and joined Theatre Sans Argent and yelled at Geoffrey and Ellen about their lack of business sense and maybe lived happily ever after with Nahum.

2. Ellen totally took her chameleon to Montreal with her. Or if she didn't, they got a new one and named it Sloane.

3. Darren is in love with Geoffrey. He thinks no one knows.

[minttown1.livejournal.com]

M*A*S*H.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

1. Hawkeye/Trapper > Hawkeye/BJ. Oh, the flame wars we (didn't) have over that! :P

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. :)

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

my realising that while Memory Alpha is a wonderful resource on many levels, it does not have the answer to all life's questions
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.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's a lot of allcaps.

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

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

http://badspock.blogspot.com/

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.

[hathy-col.livejournal.com]

Um, vaguely remember an interview that the Slayerness had sort of skipped a generation, so to speak, but Buffy still had powers because... of. Becuase. er. Indeed.

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.)

[fyrdrakken]

I was a hearty DS9 fan back in the day (it was the one series in the franchise that tipped me over into fullbore fannishness) and the Reboot has rekindled my Trek love. So You Are Not Alone.

[fyrdrakken]

The clone-or-other-duplicate trope (possibly said duplicate is in fact an android). Sometimes part of a universe-jump plot, to give multiple copies of the same character from slightly different universes interacting with each other. (SG verse does this a lot. But a fanvid I found myself with a download of not too long ago is basically all about duplicates from various fandoms. Doctor Who, BtVS, Farscape, SG1 and SGA, maybe some others I forget.)

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.

[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.

[kuteki.livejournal.com]

Merlin!

Good luck with job hunting and everything else. *hugs*

[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.

[icepixie]

gender swaps (although, actually, no fandom I can think of has canonically done this)

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)

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

mind now in someone else's body, and that person is of the opposite gender

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)

[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.)

[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.)

[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.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

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