More Memeage

[thisbluespirit]

Edit: Sorry, LJ was refusing to cut everything the other day and now it's done it again.  Sorry about the long entry, but I am not playing about with it any more.  And it's eaten the links again.  *goes off to hit things*

I got this off persiflage_1 a couple of days ago and have been busy. In fact, really I am still busy, but there we go.

Meme One
Comment to this entry and I'll pick three of your fandoms. You must then update your journal and answer the following questions:
01: What got you into this fandom in the first place?
02: Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
03: Favourite episodes/books/movies/etc.?
04: Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
05: Do you think that more people should get into this fandom?

And persiflage_1 gave me these three: Doctor Who, Spooks, Chalet School

1. My friend told me to watch it and I'd secretly wanted to for years, but no one else in my house did. I was instantly hooked (by the last five minutes of The Happiness Patrol and Silver Nemesis if you want to no. So no one is the Doctor for me quite like Sylvester).

2. I haven't moved on yet and that was 1988. Doctor Who? Move on? DW can be just about anything. It's a bit big to avoid even if I tried.

3. Ohh, don't ask. Ghostlight, Robots of Death, Caves of Androzani, the first episode, The Aztecs, Androids of Tara, The War Games, DW & the Silurians, Inferno, Enlightenment, Vengeance on Varos, Curse of Fenric, Blink, Genesis of the Daleks, Terror of the Zygons, Pyramids of Mars, The War Machines. So, so many. It would be much quicker to list the ones I don't like. (Um. 42 and... well, I do get upset by The Nightmare of Eden, because there's a really nice script that's been buried in there, but for once there's no rescuing it. And some of the Doctor-less 60s episodes I keep myself occupied by knitting at the same time. And that's not even starting on the audios (The Chimes of Midnight, DW and the Pirates, The One Doctor?) or the books.

4. Fanfiction, as anyone reading this will surely know. Some discussion, I suppose, but I don't hang on forums because of experiencing 90s internet fandom where explaining that you like Sylvester McCoy's Doctor left you wide open to nastiness and abuse.

5. It's certainly big enough to take them.

*

Spooks:

1. My attention was caught by the trailers when it started. Plus, I'd just seen Matthew Mcfadyen in The Way We Live Now and he was so good in it, I was interested to see him in something else.

2. I'm happy to keep watching for the moment. There are few other drama shows around as good as this one. (Just please some more of that so wry humour in S8, and if the current casting rumour going round isn't true, well... Spooks fans will send in terrorist postcards to Kudos or something. Heh.)

3. I actually waffled for a whole post about my favourite episode, because it is brilliant, here. I also love 4.5 The Book, which has a nice plotline and the Ruth/Harry subplot really comes out into the open for the first time and it's a long time before Jo gets to be this fun again; 4.10 (Diana: another trapped on the grid episode and a lot of it centred on Ruth); the first episode got me hooked. (I love the bit with the cat, if nothing else) and others.

4. I have written DW/Spooks crossovers and visit spooky_doings occasionally.

5. Yes. It's not really obscure, although British, I suppose. But yes. Even in the misery of S5, it was still sharper than most other things.

*

Chalet School (Oh dear...) (This is the Chalet School series by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer).

1. I bought The New Mistress at the Chalet School at a school book fair and read a couple more out of the library. Then when I was ill as a teenager, for a bit my Granny would often buy me one when she came up during the week. (I'm only 2 short of the full set - Armada, I hasten to add, before someone thinks my house is worth breaking into, which it would be if I had the full set of hbks!!) I used to read them to remind myself that I did want to get well and go back to school, sometimes. (All the details about lessons and handing out of stationery and things.)

2. Well, I was probably about 7 then and I'm now [...] and I'm not giving away the books. They're just rather addictive. They go into such detail of the running of the school and all the characters and there's just something about them, especially the Austria books. Comfort reading? Plus, once you get into it, you can't help but love the Chalet School Cliches, without which no CS story is complete.

3. The Chalet School in Exile used to be my favourite, far and away. Now maybe The School at the Chalet, The Head Girl of the Chalet School, Gay Lambert at the CS and The CS Reunion. Really, I like Madge, Grizel and Miss Wilson a lot, among others. And wonder to myself what happened to Polly Herriot.

4. Well, last year my friend made of a member of the Friends of the Chalet School for a year, which was fun. (I got her a prequel off the back of it this Christmas). But other than a half-written Xover, no, not really.

5. Erm. I think that depends how you feel about old-fashioned girls' school series, but these are definitely the best ones I've read. (And I did do Malory Towers, St Clares, Dimsie and a couple others.)

So: Meme Two

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.

persiflage_1

*collapses, exhausted* This meme was supposed to be the short option of things I could do. LJ decided to be awkward and ate it and then my computer crashed and then my Mum rang... I really should have just gone ahead and started writing the story no one will want to read. In fact, I'm going to now!

Comments

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I'm sorry LJ's been obstreperous for you! *kicks it*

I've never read any Chalet School books - but I did beta-read hhertzoff's tardis_bigbang fic for her last year (specifically because I didn't know CS and she wanted to see if it worked okay for a non-CS reader. Well I could barely leave it alone I enjoyed it so much. But I still haven't got around to reading the books. (I suspect I might not enjoy it quite so much without the presence of SJS, Jo and Ace!)

[thisbluespirit]

Heh. I've learnt to do everything but the cut in html - looks like I'll have to get on and manage to get that right, since it seems to be objecting to my efforts.

And I feel a lot better now I gave in and typed part of the story up. Much less insane and I thought it would only aggravate the trouble (it often does).

Hmm. I don't know. It's very hard to say, but you don't mind children's books and the Austria ones (hhertzof's was set in the Switzerland years) do make you want to go and live there in the 1930s. Try The School at the Chalet. It's short and you'll get the idea. You'll either not want to bother or you'll find it addictive. And there are lot of interesting characters, particularly at the start. Madge Bettany begins the school when the Bettanys lose their parents. It's 1925, she's 26 and a single female and it seems a mad undertaking to go out to Austria and start a school. And you'll be through one of those in 2 minutes, so I won't worry about giving you a rec in this case!

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear you're feeling better after typing up some of the story...

I'll have to see what CS books the library has.

[thisbluespirit]

Hee. Just don't start with no. 60 or something!!! It's confusing...

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

The library has a copy of 'The School at the Chalet' but it's on loan at present...

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember the days when McCoy would be mentioned on rec.arts.drwho, and there'd be the sound of several people, myself included, trying not to say anything for fear of setting off the hatedom.

I'd like a go at the fandom meme.

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, indeed. It was a little safer on adwc, but even so... :-)

Okay: Doctor Who, Discword, Jasper fforde.

[ravenskyewalker.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember the days when McCoy would be mentioned on rec.arts.drwho, and there'd be the sound of several people, myself included, trying not to say anything for fear of setting off the hatedom.

OTOH, there were other people, such as myself, who constantly tried to counteract the McCoy-hate, because I was then and still am an unrepentant McCoy lover. Erm... Seventh Doctor lover? (No, too full of double entendre. Heh.) That was during 1994-5, though, and I ran away from online DW fandom around 1996-7.

Several years ago (early 2000s, before New Who), I checked what was left of r.a.dw and saw some truly psychotic McCoy-hatred being ranted, which made me post there for the first time in eons and comment something like "It's been this many years and WHY are you still doing this?!"

Mind you, I melted down due to Real Life and fandom hatred converging rather horribly and behaved atrociously back in late 1995. Mercifully, I'm no longer quite the person I was back then, and have learned to control the impulse to rantrantRANT. These days, I'm less about using the 'net as an outlet for rage, and more about trying to behave in a way that my workplace wouldn't glare at (except for my randy posts on my favorite message board, SMAS, heh heh). I've also learned to do fandom on my own terms -- embrace what I want to; ignore the rest. So that's good.

Enough with the confessional, though. *grin*

[thisbluespirit]

Then you were probably gone by the time I arrived, from late 1995-mid1998. :-(

Oh, well, I was leapt into a argument without checking the original post. And, as a newbie I once wrote in CAPS LOCKS. Oo-er. :lol:

radw was fun as long as you didn't come out and admit McCoy was your favourite doctor and you really liked The Happiness Patrol...

[belantana.livejournal.com]

Okay, what is going on here?? What I read on my friends page is the meme about Wodehouse, crossovers, Liz/Brig etc, and then when I follow THE SAME POST to your journal, I get the meme about Who, Spooks & Chalet School.

I don't know how on earth you did that, but I'm super impressed.

[thisbluespirit]

No, it's cos it only cut half the post, as you worked out, I think! It's the very opposite of impressive. :-)

Do you want either meme back?

[belantana.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the half that it didn't cut only exists in the cut version. I think it is the cut-text text? Bizarre.

ANYWAY. Enough of my obsession with html - best of luck in your efforts to defeat it. :)

No thanks on the meme front - I do quite enough rambling about my interests in other people's journals, and I still have your childhood books meme saved to do one day!

[thisbluespirit]

Oh. You're right. That is interesting.

Right now, I can't be bothered with it. It did it last time I tried to post something and I had to delete the post. I shall see if I can master the cut in html and fix it presently. I appreciate you efforts.

I suspected you might not.

I'm going to write some more of this fic that no one will want to read. :-D (I got a new old DW Dvd the other day, as you may have noticed, and it's done strange things to my brain. I'm unsure whether it's good or bad, but I like both fics. And the drabble...)

[belantana.livejournal.com]

I love to read your fics that no one wants to read! And anything which does strange things to your brain has to be good, if those strange things involve writing fics... yes, thus goes my logic-train...

Well, my weekend-work is clearly not getting done, so I'm going to bed. Goodnight!

[thisbluespirit]

Hmm. See two posts back (Remnants). That was an AU Happy Ending, but it got all plotty and made me wonder about what happened in the non AU version. And it's all characters from that serial and then obscure UNIT characters and continuity and 1970s Torchwood and... You see what I mean? Fic nobody will want to read!!!

If LJ lets up, I will explain. It's partly normal fic things, but always because the serial seems to be playing some sort of game with the script and that intrigues me.

[pedanther]

I want to read that! "Remnants" made me wonder about the non-AU version as well - and if you write it, I don't have to!

[thisbluespirit]

Ooh, fic one person wants to read!!

(And, hey, I'm a sensitive soul who needs a 'That was good and you didn't do too badly writing dodgy accents for Mrs Tyler back there' if people go reading things. :-D)

Heh. Thanks! I had better, really, because it seemed to give jjpor an attack of the plot bunnies, too and he's surrounded by them at the moment anyway.

*sighs* Somehow suspect that no one else's version would include Crichton's aunt, though...

[pedanther]

Oops, I didn't get around to commenting on "Remnants", did I?

It was good, and you didn't do badly on Mrs Tyler's accent, and I liked your version of Crichton (especially his reaction to the probably-inevitable moment where somebody tries to make him feel inferior about not being the Brig), and the bits where Colby's reflecting on what's happened and what he possibly might have done about it. And I find that I like a good "Where was Torchwood while [old school adventure] was going on?" story, which this was.


...and I can confirm that my hypothetical attempt would have had a distinct aunt shortage. Now I really want to read this...

[thisbluespirit]

Thank you! :-D I hadn't had any feedback yet on the take on Image and the characters involved, so I appreciated that! It's just as well, because Mrs Tyler's in this one a bit more (John, too). (I've taken the plunge, whereas last time I kept both Tylers out of sight as far as I could. I'm a bit cowardly on Dodgy Accents after the allo allo story.) Yes, the best Torchwood vs old school UNIT story is of course, Ground Rules though!!

I don't think it'll be long. I've already got ch1 done. (Yes, sorry, it is long enough to need chapters... I know I was being all grim and still I get people's aunts demanding to be involved. :lol:

[belantana.livejournal.com]

Another one guilty of having read and not commented - I felt very inadequate in doing so! But I do always grin a bit when Torchwood gets defeated. :) I'm glad you're enjoying writing continuations...

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, thanks. Don't worry. I understand you couldn't tell me whether I had Colby right or had nailed the dodginess of that universal DW yokel accent. ;-)

[thisbluespirit]

And now the missing bit doesn't exist at all... Is this progress? That's it, I'm writing a story!!

[pedanther]

I am also seeing this! On my friends page and the main journal page, meme 1 is hidden by cut-text, but meme 2 is visible; and if I click through to the entry&comments page, meme 1 is visible but meme 2 disappears.

[belantana.livejournal.com]

Heee, I am tempted to suggest lost_spook leave it as a monument to exactly how capable lj is at screwing up posts.

[thisbluespirit]

Heh heh. I like that suggestion, but it since this is the second post in a row, I need to do something about it. Or, radical suggestion, write very short posts

No, I'd never manage that.

[belantana.livejournal.com]

Short posts? Ridiculous! You must do no such thing! :)

[thisbluespirit]

Quick, investigate the disappearing meme!

Hmm. I'll have to have a play later.

[pedanther]

I do get upset by The Nightmare of Eden, because there's a really nice script that's been buried in there

Yes! 'Nightmare of Eden' really bugs me, because if you just concentrate on the words, the villain had the potential to be quite interesting, but he's played as a two-dimensional maniac with a really silly accent.

(I think - possibly controversially - that Soldeed in 'The Horns of Nimon' had some of the same potential, had he not been played by an actor who was locked in a Battle of the Ham with Tom Baker. But nearly everything else about 'The Horns of Nimon' is so terrible that it's hard to be sure.)

[thisbluespirit]

I haven't seen The Horns of Nimon yet, but The Nightmare of Eden has more than one really quite interesting sf idea and, yes, the villain with the stupid accent for no reason who should have been a bit more 3d, shall we say.

[pedanther]

Gay Lambert

...if I ask for more information, will I regret it?

[thisbluespirit]

No. It was written in 1944. Honestly. ;-)

[paranoidangel]

For some reason I completely missed the Chalet School books when I was little, despite reading all the Enid Blyton boarding school books and loving them. I've caught up on all the CS books now though.

And me please for the second meme.

[thisbluespirit]

I hope you didn't read them all at once! Mountain accident, Middles prank, marry-a-doctor and all those other Elinorisms. I do love them, though. (Malory Towers comes second, but the CS wins out on length and pure addictiveness and the fact that the cliches just don't matter against everything else).

Okay: Harry (Sullivan), Harry (Pearce), Sarah Jane, Hobbit and Blogging.

[paranoidangel]

No, it took me a couple of years. I re-read Mallory Towers recently and didn't like it nearly as much as Chalet School.

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Heheh - as an unrepentant Season 17 lover, I'll make the terrible confession that I kind of like Horns of Nimon and Nightmare of Eden. But then again, I confessed recently to liking Creature from the Pit too - luckily, it wasn't on one of the forums where they burn you at the stake for that sort of thing. Er, moving on...

Some more oldschool Who/70s Torchwood stuff is definitely on my to-do list...which is a fairly lengthy list these days, so I'm sure your version will be written long before I get round to it. In any case, if/when I do do it, I'll take care not to overlap with anything you might want to write in the same area.

To fling out a bunny I may never use, for your consideration; how does the Master and TWood teaming up to bring down the Doctor sound to you? Naturally, they're planning all along to double-cross each other in the end (poor TWood - the Master'll eat them for breakfast!)...

[thisbluespirit]

Well, I haven't seen The Horns of Nimon yet. I always thought it looked fun, so I can't comment. But The Nightmare of Eden is frustrating because there's actually a really good script and it's witty and has a bit of depth here and there and it gets murdered by everything. It makes me want to make them reshoot it NOW, but it's a bit late. I've also never seen Creature, but I usually have a soft spot for unloved stories. And, see the bit above about being on radw in the late 90s. I'll never go round doing the stake-burning. (Steak burning, possibly, if I was writing something...)

I love your idea, but it's more you than me - you'll have to do it. I have a little Master story that I need to do, if all these big plot bunnies wouldn't keep sitting on me, but it's a solo Master story in which he gets his plans frustrated by Jane Austen. (When I wrote TTR/Storytime! Pride and Prejudice, he was being Mr Collins and told Sarah that he'd met Miss Austen and she was rather too observant for his liking. It's haunted me ever since. :-D)

[thisbluespirit]

Whoops, sorry - did you want a meme?

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Er, you can do the second meme for me, if you like. I'm not sure if I have any fandoms other than Who listed on my profile...

I agree with you on Nightmare of Eden; I mean, I like it as it is, while making no claims that it's, like _good_ or anything (which I suppose is my attitude for most of Season 17, apart from Destiny of the Daleks, which really doesn't do much for me, and City of Death, which I really do think is one of the classics of Who and will evangelise on behalf of, ad nauseam), but it is a deceptively deep and clever story that is let down in a lot of ways by the execution of it. Creature from the Pit is a bit the same; there's a great story in there, packed full of funny lines, but a lot of people can't see past the godawful production values, dodgy acting and Tom in self-indulgent mode. Had either script been made a couple of seasons earlier, I think they'd be getting talked about in the same breath as stuff like Talons, but there really was a lot wrong with the show by the end of Tom's tenure, as much as I like it. JNT and co, when they took over in Season 18, actually had a plan to turn it around, but with hindsight it might have been the wrong plan...oh well... although I do like Season 18 as well, taken on its own perhaps-dubious terms...

All I can say is, if any of this makes me out of touch with fandom or anything (and I don't really try to keep track of the shifting fashions and ideological struggles, preferring to exist in my own little bubble), I'd rather not be in touch! XD

[thisbluespirit]

Okay: Brigadier, UNIT, Torchwood, dragons, Romana.

Don't worry, I have no idea what the current fashion is - I don't think DWM is all that much of an indication. I just like the ones I like. ;-) And these include some odd ones, too. I've got Destiny lined up for when I get to it - another new old ep, which is exciting, even if it isn't supposed to be much good. I've been saving it to watch in order, because I did think I would get there a little bit quicker than this. And I don't hate Nightmare, it just really annoys me, because usually if there's a good script, it'll come through despite everything else. And I hate the script murder. (I mean, it has one of my favourite lines ever, the one about the Doctor's supposed employers going out of business years ago:
Doctor "I wondered why I hadn't been paid!"
Capt: "That's not good enough."
Doctor: "That's what I said.")

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

LOL - and it's the way Tom Baker tells them, as well; he had that knack of saying lines like that as if he'd just thought of them, which they say is one of the hallmarks of a really skilled comedian. And there's that one about Romana having to rewire the incredibly complex machine in three minutes, and she just sort of looks and goes, "Well, I'll need a screwdriver".(which the Discontinuity Guide by Paul Cornell at al listed as a "dialogue disaster"; then again, I have a magpie-like lack of discrimination when it comes to clever and semi-clever one-liners...). Which, come to think of it, is a fairly cop-outty, handwavy way of resolving a major crisis, however much it makes me snicker, so that's probably what they meant.

Another thing, which occurred to me even before I started writing that nuclear fic, is that the actor playing the main baddie looks a little bit like Peter Sellers, and with the dark glasses and the crazy/bad Germanic accent, he reminds me greatly of Dr Strangelove, only rubbish (to be honest, I find the good doctor the least good of the three characters Sellers plays in that film; Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, by contrast, is very much The Man).

I'll go and reply to that meme before I embarrassingly start quoting dialogue from the film again... :-D

[thisbluespirit]

I'm so sorry, I really have about as little knowledge of Dr Strangelove as it's possible to have, so that was pretty much lost on me. :-/

I'm still trying to decide whether I quite like Colby's "You must think my head zips up at the back!" or whether it's a really stupid line and it's been two weeks now. :-) Some of these things really are subjective. I don't think Romana's screwdriver line should fall into the dialogue disaster category. (Although that book is responsible for making me notice every time someone says 'We must act!' which I don't think is a good thing.)

You can quote dialogue if you like. LJ might eat your meme or cut it in half, so why not? It's new to me. ;-D

[jjpor.livejournal.com]

Well, I could try and quote the whole film to save you from having to watch it...or not... ;-D

Yeah, I think one person's rib-tickling one-liner is another person's clunker; it's a personal thing; I think a lot of Tom Baker's funniest lines were as much down to his delivery as the actual writing, so just quoting them doesn't always do them justice. Yeah, "We must act!" For the record, I quite like that one about the head zipping up at the back.

[thisbluespirit]

Heh. Quite right. My jury's still out, taking their time over that one, although I defnitely like "I think you have an industrial relations incident." :-D

[pedanther]

There are some good bits in 'Creature from the Pit' - for one thing, it's the story with the teaspoon routine that culminates in the line they named the whofic archive after.

(And which leads to a nice callback in 'Horns of Nimon', where the Doctor tells Romana to see what she makes of the Nimon's technology, and she immediately pulls out a teaspoon.)


poor TWood - the Master'll eat them for breakfast!

I don't know about that - my recollection of Seventies!Master is that he had a bad habit of underestimating his allies, and then the Doctor had always wound up having to rescue him...

[thisbluespirit]

Heh. That's neat. I still haven't seen either, so I can't comment. :-)

No, no, he does manage to outwit the Sea Devils, at least (I think). And Torchwood I expect he could manage. It's just Autons, Axons, Daleks, Daemons and so on he has difficulties with. Although the complications of the Master plotting with and against Torchwood and then having to play along with UNIT and / or the Doctor to get himself out again, would probably be fun. And very him, too.

[pedanther]

True, he generally doesn't have much trouble with Earthlings. (And especially Earthlings with the kind of mindset Torchwood has - remembering that bureaucrat in 'The Claws of Axos', for instance.)