Vidding and other sundries
Dude, vidding Torchwood is hard.
Can it really be that I know the canon so much less well than Who? My canon knowledge is usually pretty good, but I've watched all of New Who like, at least six or seven times, and Torchwood... only two or three times all the way through. As well, with Torchwood, I have a lot of informational knowledge (plot, etc) but not a lot of visual knowledge, whereas I can close my eyes and see the scenes unfolding if I think about a New Who episode.
Also vidding Jack and Ianto -- all their good scenes together are... in my head? Seriously, it's a whole barrel of other issues than writing. In vidding, I cannot just move them around like puppets! (Well, I probably could if I were, a) better and b) had better software, but STILL.) And all their scenes have... not a wide range of position? Nor do they really... touch each other casually? And Ianto, at least, seems to have very few scenes alone, so they're not all-purpose/re-purposable, as it were.
I persevere, but damn.
Here, have some top 5s:
For such_heights
Top five Doctor moments!
Okay, for this one, I decided to do New Who only.
1. TEN
You know... I loved being you. Back when I first started, at the very beginning, I was always trying to be old and grumpy and important, like you do when you're young. And then I was you... and it was all dashing about and playing cricket and my voice going all squeaky when I shouted... I still do that! The voice thing, I got that from you. Oh! (puts his foot on the console) and the trainers and... (reaches in his pocket and takes out his glasses and puts them on.)... snap. 'Cause you know what, Doctor? You were my Doctor.
FIVE
(Tips his hat) To days to come.
TEN
All my love to long ago.
[Time Crash]
2. DOCTOR
Don't play games with me! You just killed someone I liked, that is not a safe place to stand. I'm the Doctor and you're in the biggest library in the universe. Look me up.
After a short pause, the shadows withdraw.
[Forests of the Dead]
3. DOCTOR
Two hearts. Two hearts, she's like me. If we wait... If we just wait...
He looks at Martha for support.
MARTHA
There's no sign, Doctor. There is no regeneration. She's like you, but... maybe not enough.
DOCTOR
No. Too much. That's the truth of it. She was too much like me.
(He gently puts Jenny to the ground and kisses her one last time. Then he gets up, walks to General Cobb and picks up his gun. He stands there, panting from anger and despair, pointing the gun at Cobb's head. Martha and Donna are shocked to see what he's doing. But then he lowers the gun and crouches down to Cobb.) I never would. Have you got that? I never would! (He stands up again and addresses both fighting parties.) When you start this new world. This world of Human and Hath... remember that! Make the foundation of this society. A man who never would! (He throws away the gun and sits back to Jenny's body.)
[The Doctor's Daughter]
4. THE DOCTOR
Rose... Before I go, I just wanna tell you, you were fantastic.(smiles at her, so proud) Absolutely fantastic. And d'you know what?
Rose shakes her head. The Doctor grins.
THE DOCTOR (CONT'D)
So was I.
[Parting of the Ways]
5. THE DOCTOR
By the ancient rites of combat, I forbid you to scavenge here for the rest of time. And when go you back to the stars and tell others of this planet... when you tell them of its riches - its people - its potential. When you talk of the Earth, then make sure that you tell them this: It - is - defended.
[The Christmas Invasion]
Honorable Mentions: Basically every single moment in the Doctor Who comic "The Forgotten" by Tony Lee. But I figured comic canon didn't count. Then there's One's regen into Two; the Doctor to the Master at the end of S3: "Regenerate!"; the fucked up shit he pulls on the Family of Blood (I love my Approaching Storm!); the "I think you can safely assume I've danced" at the end of The Empty Child moment, or the moment he takes Jack's gun, leaving him with a banana; the moment he says, "I'm the Doctor; Run for your life!" in Rose; Five's reaction to the death of Adric; "Goodbye, Sarah Jane. MySarah Jane" at the end of School Reunion; Seven and Ace, like the entire run; and the power of theatre speech + the 57 academics just punched the air line in The Shakespeare Code; the water pistol in The Fires of Pompeii… I could go on. Oh, and crying after losing Rose on Doomsday. Don't cry, emo timelord!
For verasteine
Top five favourite quotes!
This is really hard, and really can change at any time. Also, I was a little uncertain as to what was meant? Quotes for life? One liners? Things I say all the time that I've stolen from other sources? Lines I particularly liked? Anyway. I picked a variety of things off the top of my head that I thought sort of reflected the fannish experience, either being from things that I am currently in the act of fanning, or things that reflect how I like to think of all these stories.
1. "Everything has its time. And everything ends." Doctor Who
2. "Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it." [Bertoldt Brecht]
3. And in the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end
And all is always now. [T.S. Eliot]
4. "Go then. There are other worlds than these." [Stephen King, The Gunslinger]
5. "To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well. It's unwise, though, to think you know how it's going to go, or how it's going to end. That's to be known only when it's over. And even when it's over, even when it's somebody else's life, somebody who lived a hundred years ago, whose story I've heard told time and again, while I'm hearing it I hope and fear as if I didn't know how it would end; and so I live the story and it lives in me. That's as good a way as I know to outwit death. Stories are what death thinks he puts an end to. He can't understand that they end in him, but they don't end with him. Other people's stories may become part of your own, the foundation of it, the ground it goes on." [Ursula LeGuin, Gifts]
For itcamefromjapan
Top five moments at which you fell completely in love - with a character, episode, fandom, etc.
1. Doctor Who. Really from the cold open, but cemented when The Doctor turns to Rose and says, "I'm the Doctor, run for your life!" Really cemented when he says, "Did I mention, it also travels in time." AND THEN NAILED TO THE FABRIC OF SPACE AND TIME in "End of the World" when they watch it explode and then go have chips. Never have I loved a show this much.
2. Firefly. The moment that Mal kicks the guy into the fanblade. IT WAS ALL OVER. Damn, I miss that show. It doesn't have a bad moment as far as I'm concerned.
3. All About Spike: the archive. IT WAS ALL SO ORGANIZED. It had this printable function. I COULD READ FOREVER.
4. Tenth Doctor. Everything from the Sycorax spaceship onwards. THE FENCING. OMG.
5. The shot of Gandalf riding through the Shire at the very beginning of Fellowship of the Ring. IT LOOKED SO PERFECT.
Honorable mentions: Friday Night Lights, the moment when Jason's wheeled off the field in the first ep, and everyone's standing up, praying to their pagan football deities. Veronica Mars & Logan Echolls: that moment in the hotel when they kiss. BEING HUMAN - only everything. The West Wing, when Bartlett comes in at the end of the 1st episode and tells people what's what.
For coyotegoth
Top five death scenes
1. Durga's death in Pather Panchali, a Bengali film by Satyajit Ray.
2. Arnie's Terminator in Terminator 2
(won't embed but watch it here.
3. Spock in The Wrath of Khan. I have been, and always will be your friend. *sob*
4. Fred in Angel. DAMN YOU JOSS WHEDON. (Wesley, Joyce, Angel, Tara all get honorable mentions. It'd have been Joyce up front, but we don't really see her die, just the reaction to it.) Can't find a link, sadly.
5. This is a book, but Katherine Patterson's "Bridge to Terabithia" still makes me cry.
I also want to throw out a mention for Boys Don't Cry here; I sobbed my way through that death scene too. But it's… upsetting because of RL, not because of the movie, you know? Also Glory, when everyone's getting massacred. And then there's My Girl which made me cry at the death of Macaulay Culkin, like, wtf? Also, um, Hedwig, in Harry Potter. And every single death in The West Wing. Mercutio in Romeo & Juliet. Man, this is hard. Oh, Alec's death in the last short story in collected in "Swordspoint"... hmm...
For jlh
Five things you didn't think you'd like at first/before you watched them but totally loved. TV/movie/books/music/whatever.
1. Harry Potter. Read the first book in a bookstore the year it came out, and went, "eh!" Later, after Book Three, my mom gave me a box set of the 1st three for xmas, and I read 'em in one night, and was hooked. Was at the bookstore at 9am for Book 4, the day it came out, and midnight-lined it for every one after that.
2. Snowcrash. I tried to read this book 11 times before I liked it; then one day in Cleveland, I was looking through a friend's bookshelf - saw it, picked it up, and was hooked. It's one of my favorite things now. Still can't explain what happened there.
3. Electronica/cheesy raver music, like happy hardcore. I used to hate this shit, and being raver adjacent in the halcyon days of the early 'oughts, had to listen to a lot of it. And then I was like, oh… I really like this. It's bouncy and happy and makes me smile. This turned into a ridiculous liking for really ridiculous bubblegum pop. Sad, no?
4. Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Series. I picked up the first, tried it, hated it, tried it again, hated it, tried it a third time: LOVED IT. (I'm sensing a pattern here.) I don’t know why it is that my first impression of a book isn't always reliable, but I'm persistent. It's like a wall that I just have to knock through before I like something, and I usually know that I'm gonna, so I keep trying. It's hard going though, to keep trying to acquire the taste, especially when there are so many things I just, well, love right off the bat. With books, I often try. With TV, if I don't like it right at first, I pretty much won't bother with it.
5. Cheese. Literally. I used to really dislike cheese. Also nuts. Now I love both like whoa.
P.S. How much do I want to teach this course? How much do I want to take this course? SO MUCH.
Can it really be that I know the canon so much less well than Who? My canon knowledge is usually pretty good, but I've watched all of New Who like, at least six or seven times, and Torchwood... only two or three times all the way through. As well, with Torchwood, I have a lot of informational knowledge (plot, etc) but not a lot of visual knowledge, whereas I can close my eyes and see the scenes unfolding if I think about a New Who episode.
Also vidding Jack and Ianto -- all their good scenes together are... in my head? Seriously, it's a whole barrel of other issues than writing. In vidding, I cannot just move them around like puppets! (Well, I probably could if I were, a) better and b) had better software, but STILL.) And all their scenes have... not a wide range of position? Nor do they really... touch each other casually? And Ianto, at least, seems to have very few scenes alone, so they're not all-purpose/re-purposable, as it were.
I persevere, but damn.
Here, have some top 5s:
For such_heights
Top five Doctor moments!
Okay, for this one, I decided to do New Who only.
1. TEN
You know... I loved being you. Back when I first started, at the very beginning, I was always trying to be old and grumpy and important, like you do when you're young. And then I was you... and it was all dashing about and playing cricket and my voice going all squeaky when I shouted... I still do that! The voice thing, I got that from you. Oh! (puts his foot on the console) and the trainers and... (reaches in his pocket and takes out his glasses and puts them on.)... snap. 'Cause you know what, Doctor? You were my Doctor.
FIVE
(Tips his hat) To days to come.
TEN
All my love to long ago.
[Time Crash]
2. DOCTOR
Don't play games with me! You just killed someone I liked, that is not a safe place to stand. I'm the Doctor and you're in the biggest library in the universe. Look me up.
After a short pause, the shadows withdraw.
[Forests of the Dead]
3. DOCTOR
Two hearts. Two hearts, she's like me. If we wait... If we just wait...
He looks at Martha for support.
MARTHA
There's no sign, Doctor. There is no regeneration. She's like you, but... maybe not enough.
DOCTOR
No. Too much. That's the truth of it. She was too much like me.
(He gently puts Jenny to the ground and kisses her one last time. Then he gets up, walks to General Cobb and picks up his gun. He stands there, panting from anger and despair, pointing the gun at Cobb's head. Martha and Donna are shocked to see what he's doing. But then he lowers the gun and crouches down to Cobb.) I never would. Have you got that? I never would! (He stands up again and addresses both fighting parties.) When you start this new world. This world of Human and Hath... remember that! Make the foundation of this society. A man who never would! (He throws away the gun and sits back to Jenny's body.)
[The Doctor's Daughter]
4. THE DOCTOR
Rose... Before I go, I just wanna tell you, you were fantastic.(smiles at her, so proud) Absolutely fantastic. And d'you know what?
Rose shakes her head. The Doctor grins.
THE DOCTOR (CONT'D)
So was I.
[Parting of the Ways]
5. THE DOCTOR
By the ancient rites of combat, I forbid you to scavenge here for the rest of time. And when go you back to the stars and tell others of this planet... when you tell them of its riches - its people - its potential. When you talk of the Earth, then make sure that you tell them this: It - is - defended.
[The Christmas Invasion]
Honorable Mentions: Basically every single moment in the Doctor Who comic "The Forgotten" by Tony Lee. But I figured comic canon didn't count. Then there's One's regen into Two; the Doctor to the Master at the end of S3: "Regenerate!"; the fucked up shit he pulls on the Family of Blood (I love my Approaching Storm!); the "I think you can safely assume I've danced" at the end of The Empty Child moment, or the moment he takes Jack's gun, leaving him with a banana; the moment he says, "I'm the Doctor; Run for your life!" in Rose; Five's reaction to the death of Adric; "Goodbye, Sarah Jane. MySarah Jane" at the end of School Reunion; Seven and Ace, like the entire run; and the power of theatre speech + the 57 academics just punched the air line in The Shakespeare Code; the water pistol in The Fires of Pompeii… I could go on. Oh, and crying after losing Rose on Doomsday. Don't cry, emo timelord!
For verasteine
Top five favourite quotes!
This is really hard, and really can change at any time. Also, I was a little uncertain as to what was meant? Quotes for life? One liners? Things I say all the time that I've stolen from other sources? Lines I particularly liked? Anyway. I picked a variety of things off the top of my head that I thought sort of reflected the fannish experience, either being from things that I am currently in the act of fanning, or things that reflect how I like to think of all these stories.
1. "Everything has its time. And everything ends." Doctor Who
2. "Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it." [Bertoldt Brecht]
3. And in the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end
And all is always now. [T.S. Eliot]
4. "Go then. There are other worlds than these." [Stephen King, The Gunslinger]
5. "To see that your life is a story while you're in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well. It's unwise, though, to think you know how it's going to go, or how it's going to end. That's to be known only when it's over. And even when it's over, even when it's somebody else's life, somebody who lived a hundred years ago, whose story I've heard told time and again, while I'm hearing it I hope and fear as if I didn't know how it would end; and so I live the story and it lives in me. That's as good a way as I know to outwit death. Stories are what death thinks he puts an end to. He can't understand that they end in him, but they don't end with him. Other people's stories may become part of your own, the foundation of it, the ground it goes on." [Ursula LeGuin, Gifts]
For itcamefromjapan
Top five moments at which you fell completely in love - with a character, episode, fandom, etc.
1. Doctor Who. Really from the cold open, but cemented when The Doctor turns to Rose and says, "I'm the Doctor, run for your life!" Really cemented when he says, "Did I mention, it also travels in time." AND THEN NAILED TO THE FABRIC OF SPACE AND TIME in "End of the World" when they watch it explode and then go have chips. Never have I loved a show this much.
2. Firefly. The moment that Mal kicks the guy into the fanblade. IT WAS ALL OVER. Damn, I miss that show. It doesn't have a bad moment as far as I'm concerned.
3. All About Spike: the archive. IT WAS ALL SO ORGANIZED. It had this printable function. I COULD READ FOREVER.
4. Tenth Doctor. Everything from the Sycorax spaceship onwards. THE FENCING. OMG.
5. The shot of Gandalf riding through the Shire at the very beginning of Fellowship of the Ring. IT LOOKED SO PERFECT.
Honorable mentions: Friday Night Lights, the moment when Jason's wheeled off the field in the first ep, and everyone's standing up, praying to their pagan football deities. Veronica Mars & Logan Echolls: that moment in the hotel when they kiss. BEING HUMAN - only everything. The West Wing, when Bartlett comes in at the end of the 1st episode and tells people what's what.
For coyotegoth
Top five death scenes
1. Durga's death in Pather Panchali, a Bengali film by Satyajit Ray.
Click to view2. Arnie's Terminator in Terminator 2
(won't embed but watch it here.
3. Spock in The Wrath of Khan. I have been, and always will be your friend. *sob*
4. Fred in Angel. DAMN YOU JOSS WHEDON. (Wesley, Joyce, Angel, Tara all get honorable mentions. It'd have been Joyce up front, but we don't really see her die, just the reaction to it.) Can't find a link, sadly.
5. This is a book, but Katherine Patterson's "Bridge to Terabithia" still makes me cry.
I also want to throw out a mention for Boys Don't Cry here; I sobbed my way through that death scene too. But it's… upsetting because of RL, not because of the movie, you know? Also Glory, when everyone's getting massacred. And then there's My Girl which made me cry at the death of Macaulay Culkin, like, wtf? Also, um, Hedwig, in Harry Potter. And every single death in The West Wing. Mercutio in Romeo & Juliet. Man, this is hard. Oh, Alec's death in the last short story in collected in "Swordspoint"... hmm...
For jlh
Five things you didn't think you'd like at first/before you watched them but totally loved. TV/movie/books/music/whatever.
1. Harry Potter. Read the first book in a bookstore the year it came out, and went, "eh!" Later, after Book Three, my mom gave me a box set of the 1st three for xmas, and I read 'em in one night, and was hooked. Was at the bookstore at 9am for Book 4, the day it came out, and midnight-lined it for every one after that.
2. Snowcrash. I tried to read this book 11 times before I liked it; then one day in Cleveland, I was looking through a friend's bookshelf - saw it, picked it up, and was hooked. It's one of my favorite things now. Still can't explain what happened there.
3. Electronica/cheesy raver music, like happy hardcore. I used to hate this shit, and being raver adjacent in the halcyon days of the early 'oughts, had to listen to a lot of it. And then I was like, oh… I really like this. It's bouncy and happy and makes me smile. This turned into a ridiculous liking for really ridiculous bubblegum pop. Sad, no?
4. Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Series. I picked up the first, tried it, hated it, tried it again, hated it, tried it a third time: LOVED IT. (I'm sensing a pattern here.) I don’t know why it is that my first impression of a book isn't always reliable, but I'm persistent. It's like a wall that I just have to knock through before I like something, and I usually know that I'm gonna, so I keep trying. It's hard going though, to keep trying to acquire the taste, especially when there are so many things I just, well, love right off the bat. With books, I often try. With TV, if I don't like it right at first, I pretty much won't bother with it.
5. Cheese. Literally. I used to really dislike cheese. Also nuts. Now I love both like whoa.
P.S. How much do I want to teach this course? How much do I want to take this course? SO MUCH.