Multifandom recs

[selenak]

Discworld:

The BBC is currently broadcasting a radio version of Night Watch, available on iplayer for us non-British folks, and I'm listening, enthralled, to the first episode.

Blake's 7:

If you're a B7 fan, chances are you've already read this, but if you have not: a great new essay, on B7, Blake, Gareth Thomas and Chris Boucher. It's passionate and highly enjoyable to read. (Minus a few unneccessary swipes at non-B7 topics such as John Crichton, Clara Oswald and David Tennant's performance as Richard II. But it would be a boring internet life if we agreed on everything with the people we agree on some things. :)

Stephen King:

Handy and amusing flowchart showing how all the novels and characters are connected.

MCU

The Lingering Reminders: hands down one of the best, most even handed post-Civil War stories, in which Tony Stark runs across one of Peggy Carter's old mates. No, not that one. The author's take on old Jack Thompson feels extremely plausible, and there's a hilarious inside gag if you're familiar with the Spider-man mythology. (If you're not, you'll still be amused.) Great mixture of humor and angst all around.

Shakespeare:

Sons of York: Great take on Shakespeare's version of the York family, specifically the two Richards, father and son.

Comments

[oracne]

I had NOT seen the B7 article!!! Thank you so much!!!

[selenak]

You're welcome!

[luminosity]

Speaking of the Stephen King flowchart, I wish someone had done that when Heinlein combined all of his worlds/universes in Number of the Beast. *sigh*

[selenak]

:) Never read any Heinlein, but from what I hear via osmosis, I get a faint sense of the problem there...

[jesuswasbatman]

Come to think of it I didn't mention the praise for Boucher in my post because I don't think I've ever seen anyone bashing Boucher in fandom, at least not in relation to B7. (Apparently his characterisation of Leela in his Doctor Who prose novels is a lot darker than many Who fans would like to think of her, but that's the only negative thing I've seen about him.) But on the other hand, it may have partly been in response to people who praise Nation. It's an odd and revealing phenomenon that people who are casual fans of Doctor Who and Blake's 7 think Nation is a genius, while people who are deep enough fans to have seen every surviving story and read/watched off-screen interviews are rather less respectful of him (having noticed how similar his stories can be, and heard about how little he actually contributed to certain work that he was credited scriptwriter on.)

[selenak]

I haven't seen anyone bashing Boucher, either; the only B7 related criticism I did see came from a Vila fan who thought that Boucher was dumbing down Vila in his scripts for the sake of comedy, as opposed to Nation's original conception of him. Otherwise, I recall only praise. Though undoubtedly as you say among more casual fans Terry Nation simply has the far better name recognition "creator of the Dales/creator of Blake's 7", I've even someone call him "the JMS of B7" which, err, really not. So I assume the essay's author ran into this a couple of times and reacted to it, because script editing as a creative contribution really is still more undervalued than not. (If not vilified as messing with genius - see, for example, the Harlan Ellison tale about his original script for "City on the Edge of Forever" for TOS, a case where, pace Ellison, I think the script changes were for the better - one reason that episode became a classic is that "Kirk has to let Edith Keeler die" element, which if McCoy had done it for him would not be the same.