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.

[fadagaski.livejournal.com]

Predictable liek woah: STAR TREK REBOOT.

[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.

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Harry Potter!

[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 :)

[vampire-kitten.livejournal.com]

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

Red Dwarf to some extent. Futurama. Charmed.

[leiascully.livejournal.com]

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

[absinthe-shadow.livejournal.com]

S&A!

[minttown1.livejournal.com]

M*A*S*H.

[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.

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

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

http://badspock.blogspot.com/

[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]

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.

[kuteki.livejournal.com]

Merlin!

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

[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)

[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.

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?