Meme meme
If you want me to talk about something, I will!
In the meantime, here are two things I was asked to talk about!
highfantastical asked: I would LOVE you to talk about Geoffrey and Ellen! Have your thoughts/sympathies changed with time?
Geoffrey Tennant and Ellen Fanshaw are two of the main characters of the Canadian show Slings & Arrows, which is wonderful and is one of my favourite television shows of all time. It's about Shakespeare! And small town theatre! And true love! it's beautiful. Anyway, here they are, with Oliver, the third member of their triumvirate:
Their relationship is - oh, it's terrible. It's all crying and screaming and yelling. They are both actors, they both have an operatic tendency towards melodrama, their relationship is terrible for both of their mental health but particularly Geoffrey's - in the clip above, Geoffrey is literally one day away from the psychotic break that's going to destroy his career - and when everything finally falls apart it's probably for the best.
But, here's the thing, and this is a trope I love: they're miserable without each other. Calmer, but miserable. Seven years go by and Geoffrey makes a full recovery; Ellen keeps on acting, worries about being asked to play the nurse rather than Juliet, and they're miserable. When they come back together, it takes time - it takes time, and therapy, and lots more yelling, and ridiculous fights about skulls and impotence and After Eight mints! - but oh, goodness, when they make it, they're beautiful together, they set everything alight. I love them. (And, I mean, it helps that Slings & Arrows is wonderfully written, but it also helps that Paul Gross and Martha Burns are actually married. To say they have chemistry is a lovely understatement.)
At this remove of time I worry about Oliver - I think there's some queer erasure going on there, both for him and for Geoffrey, which bothers me a lot in a show I love so much - and I say this a lot, I'm all for queering the text, I think that's a thing you should do, I came to fandom through slash and slash is part of why I remain, but Geoffrey and Ellen were the first het couple I ever saw on television whose story made me want to sit up and listen.
Er. In answer to your question. No, I do not believe my feelings about them have changed! I think I still have a lot of feelings about them! Er. Yes.
yiskah asked: What do you think is the common factor that draws you to the things you are fannish about?
See, I've been trying to figure this one out for years and even wrote about it quite recently, elsewhere; according to the AO3, I've written nearly two hundred stories in forty-eight different fandoms, so presumably there's got to be something there other than a continual attraction towards the new and shiny. I think what it is, is this. I've described my fandoms before as "politics and spaceships" - and what that really means is that I like stories about found families, about communities and homes.
I mean, now I come to think about it, the original SG-1 (my first fandom!) was a totally serious business show about serious business galactic exploration! Remember? They sat on Jack's roof and ordered pizza and got drunk a lot and bought Teal'c a Stetson and sang "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and never, in the end, went fishing, and I loved that; I love how the 4077th M*A*S*H was foetid and rat-infested and frightening, but they had movie nights and practical joke wars and Christmas parties, because they were a community; I love how Deep Space Nine had bars and Klingon restaurants and cocktail specials, that Garak and Bashir had lunch together every day and Odo secretly looked forward to his morning meetings with Kira and Sisko kept a baseball in his office; I love that the primary school on the Enterprise-D celebrated Captain Picard Day every year, and I love that there's a Babylon 5 gift shop. I love that Simon Illyan, at the end of everything, when he's broken and his mind is gone, can remember nothing but this: that the family Vorkosigan will carry him home. I love that Leslie Knope is running, not for president, but for city councilwoman for a town of 50,000 people, on a platform of accessibility and public service provision (and that Ben figures it out because "you've been making campaign speeches in your sleep"); I love how, in the Doctor Who universe, you ward off vampires with anything in which you have faith - so the Doctor stands his ground and holds up his head and recites the names of all his companions, one by one. I love that it's Night Vale community radio, that Sports Night was pretty much through with soccer; and that Hogwarts will always be your home.
Okay, I'm done. If you want me to talk about other things, say so!
raven is also at Dreamwidth: there is or are
comment(s). Comment there or here.
In the meantime, here are two things I was asked to talk about!
highfantastical asked: I would LOVE you to talk about Geoffrey and Ellen! Have your thoughts/sympathies changed with time?
Geoffrey Tennant and Ellen Fanshaw are two of the main characters of the Canadian show Slings & Arrows, which is wonderful and is one of my favourite television shows of all time. It's about Shakespeare! And small town theatre! And true love! it's beautiful. Anyway, here they are, with Oliver, the third member of their triumvirate:
Click to viewTheir relationship is - oh, it's terrible. It's all crying and screaming and yelling. They are both actors, they both have an operatic tendency towards melodrama, their relationship is terrible for both of their mental health but particularly Geoffrey's - in the clip above, Geoffrey is literally one day away from the psychotic break that's going to destroy his career - and when everything finally falls apart it's probably for the best.
But, here's the thing, and this is a trope I love: they're miserable without each other. Calmer, but miserable. Seven years go by and Geoffrey makes a full recovery; Ellen keeps on acting, worries about being asked to play the nurse rather than Juliet, and they're miserable. When they come back together, it takes time - it takes time, and therapy, and lots more yelling, and ridiculous fights about skulls and impotence and After Eight mints! - but oh, goodness, when they make it, they're beautiful together, they set everything alight. I love them. (And, I mean, it helps that Slings & Arrows is wonderfully written, but it also helps that Paul Gross and Martha Burns are actually married. To say they have chemistry is a lovely understatement.)
At this remove of time I worry about Oliver - I think there's some queer erasure going on there, both for him and for Geoffrey, which bothers me a lot in a show I love so much - and I say this a lot, I'm all for queering the text, I think that's a thing you should do, I came to fandom through slash and slash is part of why I remain, but Geoffrey and Ellen were the first het couple I ever saw on television whose story made me want to sit up and listen.
Er. In answer to your question. No, I do not believe my feelings about them have changed! I think I still have a lot of feelings about them! Er. Yes.
yiskah asked: What do you think is the common factor that draws you to the things you are fannish about?
See, I've been trying to figure this one out for years and even wrote about it quite recently, elsewhere; according to the AO3, I've written nearly two hundred stories in forty-eight different fandoms, so presumably there's got to be something there other than a continual attraction towards the new and shiny. I think what it is, is this. I've described my fandoms before as "politics and spaceships" - and what that really means is that I like stories about found families, about communities and homes.
I mean, now I come to think about it, the original SG-1 (my first fandom!) was a totally serious business show about serious business galactic exploration! Remember? They sat on Jack's roof and ordered pizza and got drunk a lot and bought Teal'c a Stetson and sang "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and never, in the end, went fishing, and I loved that; I love how the 4077th M*A*S*H was foetid and rat-infested and frightening, but they had movie nights and practical joke wars and Christmas parties, because they were a community; I love how Deep Space Nine had bars and Klingon restaurants and cocktail specials, that Garak and Bashir had lunch together every day and Odo secretly looked forward to his morning meetings with Kira and Sisko kept a baseball in his office; I love that the primary school on the Enterprise-D celebrated Captain Picard Day every year, and I love that there's a Babylon 5 gift shop. I love that Simon Illyan, at the end of everything, when he's broken and his mind is gone, can remember nothing but this: that the family Vorkosigan will carry him home. I love that Leslie Knope is running, not for president, but for city councilwoman for a town of 50,000 people, on a platform of accessibility and public service provision (and that Ben figures it out because "you've been making campaign speeches in your sleep"); I love how, in the Doctor Who universe, you ward off vampires with anything in which you have faith - so the Doctor stands his ground and holds up his head and recites the names of all his companions, one by one. I love that it's Night Vale community radio, that Sports Night was pretty much through with soccer; and that Hogwarts will always be your home.
Okay, I'm done. If you want me to talk about other things, say so!
raven is also at Dreamwidth: there is or are
comment(s). Comment there or here.