Five Series
29 August 2021 12:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlode(very old meme picked up at random from betweensunandmoon)
Pick five series and then answer the questions. Don't look at the questions before you choose!
1. Which is your favorite series from your list? And why?
... Possibly "Blake's 7", because that was my first introduction to the concept of fandom, and was associated with events that literally changed my life and have affected my writing ever since. I'm not sure if that is a reason for 'favourite'. 'Most significant', maybe?
2. If you were to pair two characters from 1 and 4, who would they be?
If I had to imagine two characters getting romantically involved cross-universe... maybe Kevin Laine and Anna? Kevin's bright, quick and mischievous, which would probably go down well with Anna, and he does have a sensitive and protective streak, which she needs. And he doesn't have any in-canon love interests, apart from a brief casual encounter with Ivor's daughter Liane, who actually has more than a little in common with Anna...
3. What is one thing you'd like to change about 3's plotline?
Apart from the obvious (not having the entire cast massacred...) I'd like to bring Blake back for more than a couple of cameos in the second half of the show -- give some idea of where he was and what he was doing, even if the crew never do manage to catch up with him or he refuses to return.
4. If both main characters of 2 and 5 were falling off a cliff, which one would you save?
'Both' main characters? Neither series is centred around a single protagonist... I suppose Lucy is probably the nearest thing to the main viewpoint character in Narnia (although she only really appears in three of the seven books!), with Titty taking a similar role in "Swallows and Amazons", given more or less identical caveats. (It's interesting that in both cases it's the imaginative little sister and not the older boy who is 'head of the family' who gets chosen as viewpoint character.)
So if it were a choice between Lucy and Titty -- probably Titty. (Besides, people *have* been known to magically survive falling off a cliff in Narnia: c.f. "Prince Caspian"! There isn't any magic to rescue the Swallows from their own mistakes...)
5. Which event was the most horrible for you in 1?
Diarmuid's death on the battlefield. Although it's horrible in an unbearably tragically beautiful sort of way, so maybe Jennifer's stony rejection of her son in the name of free will, which always feels like a slap in the face. (How is he supposed to choose love of his own will when she refuses to give him any?)
Jennifer's rape and desecration at the hands of a god probably ought to count, but somehow it doesn't -- it's a terrible thing, but it's external and it's ultimately survivable. (And partly, I think, it's that we don't really know her all that well at that point in the story; she could be any woman, and it would be bad, but we don't have all that much emotional connection with her. Whereas Diarmuid is vivid and charismatic and impossible, and clearly sidekick material rather than a main protagonist, so lacking in Plot Armour...)
6. Which is your least favorite character of 2?
Interesting question. There really aren't any 'villains' (unless you count George Owdon in the two 'Coot Club' stories, or I suppose Black Jake in "Peter Duck", and they're fairly two-dimensional and don't appear much). Peggy is always underwritten, but then Ransome manages to bring her to life as a character in her own right in "Winter Holiday" -- albeit by the drastic expedient of removing Nancy from the action altogether, and forcing Peggy into the situation of trying to fill her missing sister's shoes!
I think possibly Dorothea, poor girl, because I did find her pretty annoying (with hindsight, she reminds me rather of some of the members of fanfiction.net, especially with the tendency to plan huge epics and then only write a few paragraphs or at best a chapter or two!) She basically represents an exaggerated view of what it's like "to be a writer", with her wildly overblown prose and habits of daydreaming reality into improbable situations -- and as a writer myself, I didn't find her at all convincing, and I suppose felt attacked by the author's implicitly inviting us to laugh at her. Which is odd, because of course Ransome was himself a writer, and Dorothea is generally reckoned to represent his own childhood self-insert, or at least Dick and Dorothea between them.
7. If the antagonist of 3 were to rape the main character of 1, what would you do?
Well, again you come up against the question of most of these series simply not having a definite 'main character'...!
Servalan, on the other hand, is more than capable of raping anyone -- and having him like it, or else ;-p The classic rapacious Black Widow... but I'm just not sure who you would credibly pick out as 'the main character' on Fionavar.
Paul Schafer is probably the least able to cope with Servalan on an emotional/sexual level, since he's already all tied into knots in that respect; I think he'd probably have a breakdown, or even more of one. As to what *I* would do (as a writer, or a reader, or a protagonist?) -- there's precious little I could do to the Supreme Commander on any level. She has her vulnerabilities, but not in any way that would be of any good where I was concerned. And I certainly wouldn't be qualified to help Paul, other than by simply pretending that the whole thing hadn't happened and trying to behave as normally towards him as possible.
So I suspect that's the answer: I'd do nothing and try to pretend nothing had happened...
8. What song reminds you of 5?
An odd question. Probably one of the mediaeval carols that remind me of Pauline Baynes' illustrations: the Boar's Head Carol?
Pick five series and then answer the questions. Don't look at the questions before you choose!
- Fionavar
- Swallows and Amazons
- Blake's 7
- Frozen
- Narnia
1. Which is your favorite series from your list? And why?
... Possibly "Blake's 7", because that was my first introduction to the concept of fandom, and was associated with events that literally changed my life and have affected my writing ever since. I'm not sure if that is a reason for 'favourite'. 'Most significant', maybe?
2. If you were to pair two characters from 1 and 4, who would they be?
If I had to imagine two characters getting romantically involved cross-universe... maybe Kevin Laine and Anna? Kevin's bright, quick and mischievous, which would probably go down well with Anna, and he does have a sensitive and protective streak, which she needs. And he doesn't have any in-canon love interests, apart from a brief casual encounter with Ivor's daughter Liane, who actually has more than a little in common with Anna...
3. What is one thing you'd like to change about 3's plotline?
Apart from the obvious (not having the entire cast massacred...) I'd like to bring Blake back for more than a couple of cameos in the second half of the show -- give some idea of where he was and what he was doing, even if the crew never do manage to catch up with him or he refuses to return.
4. If both main characters of 2 and 5 were falling off a cliff, which one would you save?
'Both' main characters? Neither series is centred around a single protagonist... I suppose Lucy is probably the nearest thing to the main viewpoint character in Narnia (although she only really appears in three of the seven books!), with Titty taking a similar role in "Swallows and Amazons", given more or less identical caveats. (It's interesting that in both cases it's the imaginative little sister and not the older boy who is 'head of the family' who gets chosen as viewpoint character.)
So if it were a choice between Lucy and Titty -- probably Titty. (Besides, people *have* been known to magically survive falling off a cliff in Narnia: c.f. "Prince Caspian"! There isn't any magic to rescue the Swallows from their own mistakes...)
5. Which event was the most horrible for you in 1?
Diarmuid's death on the battlefield. Although it's horrible in an unbearably tragically beautiful sort of way, so maybe Jennifer's stony rejection of her son in the name of free will, which always feels like a slap in the face. (How is he supposed to choose love of his own will when she refuses to give him any?)
Jennifer's rape and desecration at the hands of a god probably ought to count, but somehow it doesn't -- it's a terrible thing, but it's external and it's ultimately survivable. (And partly, I think, it's that we don't really know her all that well at that point in the story; she could be any woman, and it would be bad, but we don't have all that much emotional connection with her. Whereas Diarmuid is vivid and charismatic and impossible, and clearly sidekick material rather than a main protagonist, so lacking in Plot Armour...)
6. Which is your least favorite character of 2?
Interesting question. There really aren't any 'villains' (unless you count George Owdon in the two 'Coot Club' stories, or I suppose Black Jake in "Peter Duck", and they're fairly two-dimensional and don't appear much). Peggy is always underwritten, but then Ransome manages to bring her to life as a character in her own right in "Winter Holiday" -- albeit by the drastic expedient of removing Nancy from the action altogether, and forcing Peggy into the situation of trying to fill her missing sister's shoes!
I think possibly Dorothea, poor girl, because I did find her pretty annoying (with hindsight, she reminds me rather of some of the members of fanfiction.net, especially with the tendency to plan huge epics and then only write a few paragraphs or at best a chapter or two!) She basically represents an exaggerated view of what it's like "to be a writer", with her wildly overblown prose and habits of daydreaming reality into improbable situations -- and as a writer myself, I didn't find her at all convincing, and I suppose felt attacked by the author's implicitly inviting us to laugh at her. Which is odd, because of course Ransome was himself a writer, and Dorothea is generally reckoned to represent his own childhood self-insert, or at least Dick and Dorothea between them.
7. If the antagonist of 3 were to rape the main character of 1, what would you do?
Well, again you come up against the question of most of these series simply not having a definite 'main character'...!
Servalan, on the other hand, is more than capable of raping anyone -- and having him like it, or else ;-p The classic rapacious Black Widow... but I'm just not sure who you would credibly pick out as 'the main character' on Fionavar.
Paul Schafer is probably the least able to cope with Servalan on an emotional/sexual level, since he's already all tied into knots in that respect; I think he'd probably have a breakdown, or even more of one. As to what *I* would do (as a writer, or a reader, or a protagonist?) -- there's precious little I could do to the Supreme Commander on any level. She has her vulnerabilities, but not in any way that would be of any good where I was concerned. And I certainly wouldn't be qualified to help Paul, other than by simply pretending that the whole thing hadn't happened and trying to behave as normally towards him as possible.
So I suspect that's the answer: I'd do nothing and try to pretend nothing had happened...
8. What song reminds you of 5?
An odd question. Probably one of the mediaeval carols that remind me of Pauline Baynes' illustrations: the Boar's Head Carol?
no subject
Date: 2021-08-30 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-30 11:35 pm (UTC)I think I've probably seen more post-Gauda-Prime Blake stories than S3/4 ones, and to be honest I can see why. Very few fans are interested in Blake's politics (which tend to get dismissed as 'idealism' or 'fanaticism'), so a story about Blake struggling against injustice *again* without the resources or the banter of the "Liberator" isn't going to have much appeal. And given the general tone of S3 & 4, it's pretty much going to have to end badly -- we know that the 'good guys' are losing ground at this point, and Blake clearly didn't manage to set up any kind of network successful enough for Avon to have heard about it. So at best it's probably going to be a question of winning a battle with implications of losing the war.
The one big hook left by canon is the question of how and when S4 Blake got that prominent facial scar, and I'd guess that a lot of post-"Star One" Blake stories probably concentrate on that...
no subject
Date: 2021-08-31 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-04 02:07 am (UTC)Good point -- and it's probably a blind spot of which readers from outside Western Europe are much more conscious. (I was certainly conscious that the US-based fandom tended to write the characters as much more gushy and emotional than the original, but I'm not sure if that's due to lack of a cultural 'stiff upper lip' or just being young and female!)
To be fair, I'm not sure we get all that much of a glimpse into how the resistance movements glimpsed in canon actually work, either, which is what fanfic is based upon.
*awkward look*
So, erm... how well did I manage it in "Blue Remembered Hills", then? I don't remember putting an awful lot of thought into what the resistance was actually doing (not much, so far as I remember); I was more interested in building Erik up as a mad-scientist manipulator, which seemed a plausible role for him in a B7 context...
no subject
Date: 2021-09-04 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-05 12:25 am (UTC)I'm glad those sections worked -- your comments brought it home to me that I for one hadn't given any real thought to that element of the story, or to what on earth the 'resistance' was actually supposed to achieve :-(
no subject
Date: 2021-08-31 06:14 pm (UTC)Complete AU post season 2 - takes the crew to another galaxy. Contains lots of Blake and Avon, and a fight against injustice of a totally different kind.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-31 06:43 pm (UTC)It's excellent. It manages to provide fresh conflict and give Blake something to *do*, and to achieve an impressive amount of world-building in what is basically an original SF universe.
Unfortunately I seem to remember that the online upload, which I did come across at one point, never got beyond about halfway before the author gave up in exhaustion -- in the comments she was saying something about continuing, but she never did. So while it looks as if the whole book is there, it isn't.
(And my ISP has started blocking hermit.org because the site supposedly contravenes its 'Gambling Filter', so I'm no longer in a position to check; I can't find the story on AO3.)
So I can't really recommend it to
no subject
Date: 2021-08-31 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-01 08:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-30 05:54 pm (UTC)I was so pleased when the movies had him just as she drew him!
If I could get a new copy of those posters, I'd buy one tomorrow.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-31 06:22 pm (UTC)I feel that it's the sort of fannish thing one would expect to find out there, but at a quick glance I couldn't find any trace of poster reproductions for sale, even on http://www.paulinebaynes.com (although the navigation links to individual items on that site don't seem to work for me).
no subject
Date: 2021-08-31 08:26 pm (UTC)There may be no good digital copies in existence for them to use to make a good quality print.