Briefly...
Feb. 21st, 2006 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
So, I hear BSG cornered some Saturn nominations, including both James' (Bamber and Callis) for best supporting actor, and Katee Sackhoff for best supporting actress. I'd show my partiality and root for Callis (and not just because I think the writing for Baltar has been better than the writing for Lee this season), except they're running against Terry Quinn as Locke in Lost, and I'm sorry, but based solely on the first season which I've seen, he totally deserves to win. It's galling enough Ron Rifkin never got nominated in all the years for the fabulous stuff he did as Sloane on Alias; very gratifying that at least his spiritual cousin over on that other J.J. show has been recognized.
Meanwhile, I've watched Where The Truth Lies, which is a well-done neo noir, with not one but two period settings; the Fifties, when the murder in question takes place, and the Seventies, when our main narrator tries to solve it. It's based on a novel which I haven't read, so I can't say how faithful an adaption it is, but Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth are great as the two comedians whose double act in the 50s ends with the discovery of a nude dead woman in their hotel suite. Their 70s incarnations as seedy self-loathing has-beens are particularly striking. Alison Lohman as former fan, reporter and mystery solver is pale in comparison, but she holds her own in the two quiet, touching scenes her character has with the dead girl's mother, which brings in an element rarely found in noirs, the grieving family of the murder victim. (Unless the family members are suspects, of course, but that isn't the case here.) If I have any complaint, then that the identity of the killer is a bit of a punchline.
And while we're talking complaints: found an excellent rant by Kita about one of my pet peeves in any fandom regarding a certain kind of feedback for fanfiction.
Meanwhile, I've watched Where The Truth Lies, which is a well-done neo noir, with not one but two period settings; the Fifties, when the murder in question takes place, and the Seventies, when our main narrator tries to solve it. It's based on a novel which I haven't read, so I can't say how faithful an adaption it is, but Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth are great as the two comedians whose double act in the 50s ends with the discovery of a nude dead woman in their hotel suite. Their 70s incarnations as seedy self-loathing has-beens are particularly striking. Alison Lohman as former fan, reporter and mystery solver is pale in comparison, but she holds her own in the two quiet, touching scenes her character has with the dead girl's mother, which brings in an element rarely found in noirs, the grieving family of the murder victim. (Unless the family members are suspects, of course, but that isn't the case here.) If I have any complaint, then that the identity of the killer is a bit of a punchline.
And while we're talking complaints: found an excellent rant by Kita about one of my pet peeves in any fandom regarding a certain kind of feedback for fanfiction.
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Date: 2006-02-21 08:45 pm (UTC)I never know what to do with feedback that says "I don't like the time period you've chosen to write in" or "I hate your main character but...." It's not like I can change time periods! And you know, I probably think my main character is interesting, and that's not one of the things that's going to change.
The other thing that drives me mad is people who say they hate the canon. Because that's sort of what I'm stuck with, right?
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Date: 2006-02-21 11:50 pm (UTC)ITA with Kita's posts and the comments here -- I haven't run into this THAT much, b/c I tend to focus on a character that OMG EVERYBODY LOVES!!! But there's this other character (call her Mary Sue, most of the fandom does) who I happen to like a lot, and always write sympathetically. Whenever I write fic featuring Mary Sue,
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Date: 2006-02-22 07:07 am (UTC)But yeah, otherwise writing for an audience favourite would make you safe in this regard. I'm trying to think whether I ever wrote in a fandom where I centered on a character everyone loves, and the only thing I can come up with is HL and Methos, because most of my HL fanfics have him in them, but then again, he's never the pov, and in several of them, the focus is more on Cassandra, who was hated like you wouldn't believe (it really rivals anything in the Jossverse) for daring to hate Methos because he raped, brainwashed and enslaved her and murdered her entire tribe back in the day.
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Date: 2006-02-22 08:20 am (UTC)Shippers and slashers...
I think I'm one of the rare people who will read/write both ship, slash and gen for charcters I like.
Carter in Stargate gets some really nasty flack from the Jack/Daniel fans. AS Jack loves her canonically, the first thing they have to do is to 'prove' why she is evil/nasty/going to betray him/he only pretends. (Not all of them, I hasten to add, but it certainly happens far too often)
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Date: 2006-02-22 12:18 pm (UTC)A good thing, too, that neither Avon nor Blake had an ongoing het love interest in the show. (I wonder whether Anna Grant would have fared fare differently in fanfic if she had been around longer...) However, more recently I've been revising my opinion as to whether this is a slash-related phenomenon, because of the explosion of Harry/Hermione-'shippers related fury after the publication of HBP...
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Date: 2006-02-22 12:51 pm (UTC)I think shippers can hate slashers just as much, (but the virulance isn't usually as strong as the canon tends to back the shippers), but as for the poor copyright holder who dares to write the story she always intended to write...
(I always thought there were hints about Ron and Hermoine going way back, but that's just me.)
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Date: 2006-02-22 01:23 pm (UTC)I tend to go for fannish underdogs (i.e. those not beloved by the majority of fandom), hence Connor, Darla and Buffy herself in the Jossverse, as opposed to Wesley, Giles, or Spike, and as for Star Trek in its many incarnations - well, looking at my Trek stories, they mostly feature Quark and Kai Winn, though I also wrote about audience favourites Garak and Bashir...
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Date: 2006-02-22 02:11 pm (UTC)As for the poor copyright holder, I just ran across some wank in which people were complaining about JKR daring to speak out about her authorial intent, and how this made her an arrogant bully. Hrrrm -- ok?
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Date: 2006-02-22 02:16 pm (UTC)yes and no -- she's attracted more fans, so the negative comments are in the minority, but they negative views are still very vocal (of course, I tried putting her in a triangle with two other characters everybody loves -- emulating canon of course, where she was in the way of AT LEAST three popular 'ships that I can think of off the top of my head).
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Date: 2006-02-22 06:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-22 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-22 02:58 pm (UTC)