Many a tale...

[selenak]

The Yuletide 2020 Fandoms tagset is up, and I'm eagerly browsing, after being pleased as punch Team Fredericians scored again, our Enlightenment/Circle of Voltaire nominations were also accepted, and someone other than me brought in more Watchmen (TV) nominations, which means more characters to request. Now due to those 18th Century Prussians I'm invested in, I checked out the RPF section first. Since the decade or so I've been following Yuletide, I've seen present day English politicians nominated repeatedly, but this Yuletide, someone put up four Germans. Among them Marcus Söder. Clearly Nockherberg-Fans. I doubt, though, that anything will be able to match this publicly broadcast RPF of El Marco.

I'm also tickled that there's nominated Middle High German Minnesänger RPF, under the subsection "Music and Bands". Bring on the Walther von der Vogelweide/Reinmar feud, say I.

In the tv section, I experienced nostalgia though the fandoms in question are just a few years old, to wit, The Americans and Bates Motel. I also saw a lot of fandoms where I mentally go "won't offer and likely not request, but do hope someone else writes in it!", including some I only come across recently, like Harlots. Of the novels, I hope someone will tackle The Hunchback of Notre Dame, because the book characterisation is so different from just about all film versions I've seen, and also, yay for an Oracle Glass nomination, that's probably my favourite Judith Merkle Riley novel. I see Rumpelstilzchen the fairy tale got nominated and shall be interested to find out whether it's possible to do something to rival Once Upon A Time's Cora for the Miller's daughter in my heart.

In other news, via elisi:

Watch on YouTube

I have mixed feelings. I mean, I could not watch this show until the Dubya years were coming to an end because I felt then that the difference between reality and fiction was too great. Now? The difference is so big that the fiction could take place on another planet. And surely, a reality where The West Wing has taken place (where there is no Tea Party, and Republicans in Congress are largely minded to work with Democrats when it comes to creating laws), the current state of the US would not have happened. Also, of course, The West Wing has its flaws that have nothing to do with who's currently President. But then again: the cast is endearing, and good lord I'm in the market for idealism and calls to act on it. What's more, the trailer promises me Jed and Toby scenes. These two characters in the same room, argueing (or, rarely, just talking) were my favourite aspect of the show, and my big unwritten story in this fandom would still be an aftermath for them where Toby is so irritated about his pardon that he drives to New Hampshire to have it out with the (ex) President and they get snowed in so he really has to stay and can't storm off, and they're forced to talk it out. (Not being able to write it, I wrote this instead.) So: cautiously looking forward to it.

Comments

[elisi]

That is an awesome trailer, even if it does seem to take place on another planet, as you note.

Also I definitely didn't flag it up, so unsure where you came across it. But happy to have seen it, even if they all look SO OLD. :(

ETA: Meant to comment on this also:

after being pleased as punch Team Fredericians scored again
It's a complete sidebar, but when I was your I lived for a couple of years in Fredericia (in Denmark) so I had to do a lengthy doubletake. :)

[selenak]

Huh, I could have sworn I saw it ata your journal!

Ah, but age does not wither their infinite variety. :)

And yes, well, if George II's oldest son Frederick hadn't died before his father, the Georgian era might have become the Frederician era in Brtain simultanously to the Frederician Rokoko times in Germany. :)

[elisi]

Well, I have now found their appearance on The Late Show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDKpq0ditcE

:)

(There are more parts, but this is the only one I have watched so far.)

[kore]

I mean, I could not watch this show until the Dubya years were coming to an end because I felt then that the difference between reality and fiction was too great. Now? The difference is so big that the fiction could take place on another planet

Yeah, unlike nearly all of my friends, I just don't like Sorkin's writing style. But for me it just also hurt way too much to watch, in real time.

[sovay]

I'm also tickled that there's nominated Middle High German Minnesänger RPF, under the subsection "Music and Bands".

That's great.

[watervole]

I won't be able to rewatch the West Wing until there's a Democrat president again. Just too painful.

[iberiandoctor]

I am side-eyeing your Team Fredericians/Enlightenment/Circle of Voltaire prompts, as you all well know; depending on how my December goes, I might come stick my toe in. (As cahn knows, I will bring porn, at least. And occasionally pining.)

I will offer Notre Dame de Paris if someone requests it -- it's a very challenging book, filled with all the best and nastiest Hugo things, and I think it'd be fun to write!

[selenak]

Porn and pining are just what we need in this fandom. :) If you manage, it'll be much appreciated.

It's been years and years since I read Notre Dame de Paris, but I remember some things vividly - the sheer oppportunism of Gringoir, the "He, too, had a tragic ending: he married" and Hugo's general take on Phoebus as a shallow jerk whom Esmeralda just never sees through and who swans away being just fine, for example, and Claude Frollo as a far more interesting character than the various takes on him on film (not a morally better one; just more complicated). Ditto for his relationship with Quasimodo. And of course the entire Court of the Miracles scenes were oddly familiar to me because I had read the Angelique novels first which in retrospect I see somewhat draw on these.

[lokifan]

I entirely share all your West Wing feelings, haha. But also honestly seeing them all together and delivering those lines I already felt FEELINGS so I'm sure I'll watch it and cry a bit. Though already the "you're not plain-spoken, you're not just folks, do not, do not, do not act like it" gave me such a pang for Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren and how they've been punished for their intelligence.