Recs for things
I've been reccing things to friends recently and I hate to let long-ish recs go unshared, so here you go.
Stargate SG1 (This is a TV show.)
THE COOLEST THING ABOUT STARGATE SG1 IS SAM CARTER OMG SHE'S AMAZING I WANT TO BE HER WHEN I GROW UP
One of my favourite things about SG1 is Ba'al being a dick -- he's such an asshole, but he's so entertaining to watch. I really love Vala, because she's so so great (you know how you love tricksters? Vala scratches that itch for me.) I love that they have female doctors who are fucking amazing at their jobs but allowed to have lives beyond it. (Ngl, I really enjoy when the team goes off base.)
I love the way it plays with myth and can get anything it want wrong because ALIENS! And I love that EVERYONE gets to be aliens: Egyptians gods? Aliens! Greek gods? Aliens! Norse gods? (Other) aliens! The Fae? (Other other) aliens! Arthuriana? (Yet another kind of) aliens! (Speaking of which, the last two seasons of SG1 is almost the entirety of English-langauge media dealing with Arthuriana that doesn't send my skin crawling.)
I love that a big theme of the series is freedom and not believeing wholesale in what religion tells you (but you can still find valid things in religion/spirituality. For example, there's a subplot at some point over Teal'c getting to practice Kelno'reem again even though he doesn't need to and how that makes him feel better. There's Tomin's entire arc. There's Daniel Ascension thing). Daniel Jackson's Revolving Door on Death and how even the characters acknowledge it is hilarious to me.
I like the sense of continuity in it. I like the feeling of found family the team gives me. I grew up on this show; it means a lot to me.
I'm not saying it doesn't have failings, I'm just saying I don't care. There 200+ episodes and although I have watched all of them at least two times, you don't have to. There's lots of lists of shortened watching order or watch-for-this-character lists. Sam, Teal'c and Vala are my favourite from the team (although Vala comes in S9/10) and I'm very fond of all the Asgards and Bra'tac outside the team. And like I said Ba'al is a very entertaining asshole.
French SFF (this wasn't so much a rec as a tangent on a point that I ended up cutting, but I do rec both of these with all my heart. Fantômette is a book series; Yoko Tsuno is a comics series.)
Fantômette is a Parisian vigilante of the no-superpowers super-detective kind. She's eighteen, her archnemesis is Le Masque d'Argent (think Doctor Doom) and she has zero patience for his bullshit. She's smart, she's kind and that one time she got TO GO TO SPACE YES. (You can tell this made a huge impression on me.) The books were for the most part published from the 60s to the 80s (a couple were published in the 2000s) and have been in print ever since. There are comics and a cartoon, too.
Yoko Tsuno is Belgian electrical engineer of Japanese-Chinese descent and she is also smart and kind and brave. Her many adventures include aliens on Earth, aliens in space, robots on Earth, robots in space, timetravel (via two different sort of means) and so much more. Growing up I was pretty sure her and Khâny were married and although they're not, as of the latest volume Khâny has confessed to Yoko that she wanted her child to look like Yoko, so make of that what you will.
Day Men (This is a comic series.)
Okay, so Day Men is about this dude David Reid, who is the Day Man for a vampire family. He's basically their enforcer during day time; he's human, so he gets to move around in daylight, which is a real good thing, because the vampires in this verse can't go out in the sun without bursting into flames (and if they fall asleep during the day, they're basically so much dead weight). Things go to hell rather rapidly, as the tenuous peace between the two vampire families in the US comes to an end and they declare war on each other. David, meanwhile, is stuck in the middle and trying to make right by everyone (even random folks caught in the crossfire) all while trying to figure out what is up with this fang trade business... (Also, I really enjoy the David and Casey friendship. There are a lot of interesting and interestingly messed-up relationships in this, but this one is not.)
A big draw of the series for me is the art. For one thing, the artist is the same throughout (and does the covers as far as I can tell) which tends to be pretty rare in North American comics. This contributes to giving the whole story an unified, coherent look. Plus, it's good art. It's clean and dynamic, while striking a good balance between realistic and stylised. I also enjoy the ligne claire aspects of it (/comics nerd). The composition is good, so is the colouring. Like, I know I've said it was pretty already, but it is pretty and I enjoy it a lot. I like that the characters have very distinctive visual identities, from Azalea's all white litheness to Lera's angry punk get-up, passing through David's sharp suits and Casey's more business casual attire. The fact that they all have different body types is also a great help with that. It doesn't hurt that a lot of the cast is attractive (and there's equal opportunity fanservice).
*shoves in general direction* This stuff, I like it.
This entry was originally posted at https://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/104309.html and has
comments over there.
Stargate SG1 (This is a TV show.)
THE COOLEST THING ABOUT STARGATE SG1 IS SAM CARTER OMG SHE'S AMAZING I WANT TO BE HER WHEN I GROW UP
One of my favourite things about SG1 is Ba'al being a dick -- he's such an asshole, but he's so entertaining to watch. I really love Vala, because she's so so great (you know how you love tricksters? Vala scratches that itch for me.) I love that they have female doctors who are fucking amazing at their jobs but allowed to have lives beyond it. (Ngl, I really enjoy when the team goes off base.)
I love the way it plays with myth and can get anything it want wrong because ALIENS! And I love that EVERYONE gets to be aliens: Egyptians gods? Aliens! Greek gods? Aliens! Norse gods? (Other) aliens! The Fae? (Other other) aliens! Arthuriana? (Yet another kind of) aliens! (Speaking of which, the last two seasons of SG1 is almost the entirety of English-langauge media dealing with Arthuriana that doesn't send my skin crawling.)
I love that a big theme of the series is freedom and not believeing wholesale in what religion tells you (but you can still find valid things in religion/spirituality. For example, there's a subplot at some point over Teal'c getting to practice Kelno'reem again even though he doesn't need to and how that makes him feel better. There's Tomin's entire arc. There's Daniel Ascension thing). Daniel Jackson's Revolving Door on Death and how even the characters acknowledge it is hilarious to me.
I like the sense of continuity in it. I like the feeling of found family the team gives me. I grew up on this show; it means a lot to me.
I'm not saying it doesn't have failings, I'm just saying I don't care. There 200+ episodes and although I have watched all of them at least two times, you don't have to. There's lots of lists of shortened watching order or watch-for-this-character lists. Sam, Teal'c and Vala are my favourite from the team (although Vala comes in S9/10) and I'm very fond of all the Asgards and Bra'tac outside the team. And like I said Ba'al is a very entertaining asshole.
French SFF (this wasn't so much a rec as a tangent on a point that I ended up cutting, but I do rec both of these with all my heart. Fantômette is a book series; Yoko Tsuno is a comics series.)
Fantômette is a Parisian vigilante of the no-superpowers super-detective kind. She's eighteen, her archnemesis is Le Masque d'Argent (think Doctor Doom) and she has zero patience for his bullshit. She's smart, she's kind and that one time she got TO GO TO SPACE YES. (You can tell this made a huge impression on me.) The books were for the most part published from the 60s to the 80s (a couple were published in the 2000s) and have been in print ever since. There are comics and a cartoon, too.
Yoko Tsuno is Belgian electrical engineer of Japanese-Chinese descent and she is also smart and kind and brave. Her many adventures include aliens on Earth, aliens in space, robots on Earth, robots in space, timetravel (via two different sort of means) and so much more. Growing up I was pretty sure her and Khâny were married and although they're not, as of the latest volume Khâny has confessed to Yoko that she wanted her child to look like Yoko, so make of that what you will.
Day Men (This is a comic series.)
Okay, so Day Men is about this dude David Reid, who is the Day Man for a vampire family. He's basically their enforcer during day time; he's human, so he gets to move around in daylight, which is a real good thing, because the vampires in this verse can't go out in the sun without bursting into flames (and if they fall asleep during the day, they're basically so much dead weight). Things go to hell rather rapidly, as the tenuous peace between the two vampire families in the US comes to an end and they declare war on each other. David, meanwhile, is stuck in the middle and trying to make right by everyone (even random folks caught in the crossfire) all while trying to figure out what is up with this fang trade business... (Also, I really enjoy the David and Casey friendship. There are a lot of interesting and interestingly messed-up relationships in this, but this one is not.)
A big draw of the series for me is the art. For one thing, the artist is the same throughout (and does the covers as far as I can tell) which tends to be pretty rare in North American comics. This contributes to giving the whole story an unified, coherent look. Plus, it's good art. It's clean and dynamic, while striking a good balance between realistic and stylised. I also enjoy the ligne claire aspects of it (/comics nerd). The composition is good, so is the colouring. Like, I know I've said it was pretty already, but it is pretty and I enjoy it a lot. I like that the characters have very distinctive visual identities, from Azalea's all white litheness to Lera's angry punk get-up, passing through David's sharp suits and Casey's more business casual attire. The fact that they all have different body types is also a great help with that. It doesn't hurt that a lot of the cast is attractive (and there's equal opportunity fanservice).
*shoves in general direction* This stuff, I like it.
This entry was originally posted at https://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/104309.html and has
comments over there.