meme

[rivendellrose]

Gacked from literally everyone, it seems: Ask me my fannish Top Five [Whatevers]. Any top fives. Doesn't matter what, really! And I will answer them all in a new post.

♥

Comments

Because I am obsessed

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

Five Doctors, with reasons!

Five Companions, ditto!

Re: Because I am obsessed

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

1. Nine. Because he's raw and hurt and angsty and then his face just splits open with that grin at the slightest provocation, because he's still my first, and because I fell in love with him the minute he waved his little remote control and said "I'm the Doctor - run for your life!"

2. Four. Because he's the quintessential, for me; the scarf, the hat, the jelly babies, the total random segues and off-the-wall remarks, because he's probably the most like Nine out of all of the rest, and, yeah, also because of the voice.

3. Eight. Partly because he's unloved and his movie sucked major ass, but also because despite how it sucked, he was the Doctor. It worked! Despite the bad writing and the weirdness, he was indubitably the Doctor, random and adorable and delighted by his shoes, and wearing that charmingly Victorian get-up. And of course I would love the most hapless and romantic of the Doctors - the one who runs around passing out and kissing people. What's not to love?

4. (Oh, no - only two left! Guess it'd better be...) Ten. Because after Nine left, I was ready to go into a total funk of "they took what I loved about this show and replaced him with a skinny pretty-boy," who then won me over inside of two minutes. "Oh! Merry Christmas! *KEELS*" He's so different from Nine, and the angst does get on my nerves with him, but I love him nonetheless. He's the one who convinced me that I could love other Doctors, and that the whole show was worth it, even if it wasn't all Nine. ;) Besides, there really is something hilariously cute about his hyperactivity, even though it'd make me want to smack him in real life.

5. Seven. Kind of utterly at random, because it's totally unfair to have to pick five out of now-eleven Doctors, but I really do love Seven. I love that he's very much not-young, and I love his conniving, plotting little ways, and the cute little 'harmless-old-eccentric' act that covers probably the scariest of all the Doctors in terms of sheer personality. ...Doesn't hurt that I adore his relationship with Ace, either, although I really should save that for the next question. ;)

And the next comment, too, probably. Splitting this, to avoid LJ yelling at me.

Re: Because I am obsessed

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Sorry about the delay - work intervened.

Companions!

1. Romana II. Because she's the most obviously equal of all the companions on the basis that the Doctor can't pull his asinine "I'm the Time Lord so I know best" shit on her, since, dude, she pwns him at being a Time Lord. Hell, she just plain pwns him. ♥ And all this while being both insanely perky and blisteringly dry and sardonic.

2. Ace McShane. Because she is the antithesis of everything that the companion stereotypically is (girly, prone to wearing heels and tripping, helpless, possibly interested in the Doctor in a sexual fashion...), because she is almost canonically gay (honestly, what other explanation could there be?), because you just don't get butch girls on TV anymore and I miss that desperately, and of course, because she beat up a Dalek with a freaking baseball bat. There is nothing I don't love about that girl.

3. Martha Jones. She doesn't take any of the Doctor's shit, she's badass without losing an immense empathy and humanity, and, oh yeah, she's unbelievably gorgeous. That doesn't hurt either. My favorite thing about Martha, though - after Rose, it was a huge comfort to me to have a character who was into being educated. I realize it makes me a bit classist and elitist, but I believe in education, and I have a hard time respecting people who don't take it seriously or have any interest in it.

4. Liz Shaw. Speaking of intellectuals... I haven't seen much of Liz, but I adore that Doctor's had a scientist as a companion, even if he didn't make much proper use of her skills.

5. Sarah Jane Smith. I was torn between Donna and Sarah for last spot, but I ended up going for Sarah because, y'know, I like having a writer in here, and I love how perky and clever and only-girly-when-she-wanted-to-be Sarah was. I'm not happy with what RTD's done with her since, but I am happy with the fact that she's still around and still (mostly) herself.

[windrose.livejournal.com]

Who are your top five kick-ass women, and what makes each of them kick ass in your book?

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Ooo, that's kind of a tough one. Only five!

1. Zoe Washburn. There is nothing not kickass about that woman, IMHO. She's tough, take-charge, is the real power on Serenity even if she occasionally lets Mal think he's running the show, and she's confident enough that pretty much nothing bothers her. She can take out Reavers, deal with the Alliance, and handle Jayne, all without losing her cool for an instant, and she still never loses her sense of humor. My big damn hero. ♥

2. Dana Scully. Always high on my list, even though the show sometimes fell prey to the temptation to make her a bit of a damsel. More than being a knock-out shot with a gun and being more than up to facing down whatever crazy shit Mulder got her into in the disaster of the week, I love how she absolutely never gives up on her skepticism and her devotion to looking for the real answers, not just the answers that are interesting or convenient. That's pretty seriously kick-ass, IMHO.

3. Susan Ivanova. Is god. Kind of goes without saying, right? But what I really like about her is that under the bravado, she's pretty damned screwed up - but that doesn't stop her. If anything, it makes her fight harder. Unfailingly brave, loyal, and absolutely the soul of wit in the face of impossible odds. All very good things.

4. Buffy Summers. You know, we've been going through BtVS, second time for me and first for The Boy, and it occurs to me just how little I appreciated Buffy as a hero the first time around. I was caught up in the story and the characters, and I kind of forgot to pay attention to the total awesomeness that is having a female hero who does the kind of stuff that Buffy does. It's pretty damned epic. Even if I don't always like Buffy as a person (and she's hardly ever the kind of person I'd actually get along with), I love her as a story and as a hero.

5. Last place has to go to Delenn, because I love to see a character who's definitely kick-ass without actually being the one who fires the gun or carries the sword. One way or another, she's a scary-ass woman, totally in control, and damned impressive in everything she does.

[bluerosefairy.livejournal.com]

Five Really Weird Gallifreyan Traditions and How the Doctor Keeps Them In His Own Way

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Okay, that's a tough one. I've been thinking it over trying to come up with something truly clever, and have come to the conclusion that I'm just going to have to wing it, and see what comes up. So, here we go!

1. Rassilon's Death-Day. Traditionally celebrated (as is the case with most Gallifreyan holidays) by a lot of very long and tedious speeches by various ancient senators, followed by a lot of random solemnity. The Doctor doesn't remember the day, exactly - it would be awfully hard to sync the Tardis' internal clock to Gallifrey time, and he doesn't get back there often enough to bother, but every so often, when he thinks of it, he pops out for a night of wild drinking. He figures the old boy would approve of that more, anyway, really.

2. The Feast of Future Death. This is the solemn and exceedingly archaic ritual by which most Time Lords mark their impending decision to regenerate. Having never actually had the opportunity to take regeneration as a conscious choice, the Doctor nonetheless marks it by treating himself to a very fine dinner sometime in the early days of a new body. He treats it as a good opportunity to find out what he does and doesn't like.

3. Courtship. Gallifreyan courtship is infamously long, drawn-out and complex, and completely unappealing to the Doctor. He did rather like the idea of sharing a bottle of Tolinginal as a tonic prior to the first consummation, but Romana hated the taste of it, and the Master, in the one incarnation where they tried, was allergic.

4. Child-rearing. There is an obscure tradition whereby an elder relative takes a young initiate out for a walk in the mountains before he or she is surrendered to view the Untempered Schism. It is, as the Doctor might say, 'more honored in the breach,' nowadays, but he always did like it. His daughter never forgave him for how he took advantage of it with Susan. Susan always swore she didn't mind, though.

5. First flight. The first time a Time Lord pilots his own Tardis, he's meant to go somewhere very remote and peaceful, and take a few hours for contemplation in union with his Tardis. It's meant to bond them. The Doctor, not being given to quiet contemplation in any of his regenerations, ended up in the middle of a revolution. He did commune with the Tardis, though... while the locals were tying him up to her (in the shape of a tree, at that time) to burn them both at the stake. It worked, though - they bonded, and she never seemed to mind.

[niwatorimegami.livejournal.com]

Top five really reeaaaally cheesy fandom tropes that you can't resist! (like, if it shows up in a fic, you can't help but read it)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Oohhhhh, boy. This is a tough one - a lot of it's so specific to fandom and/or pairing, you know? But I'll try.

1. H/C. Guilty as charged, I do like to see a bit of hurt/comfort, particularly if it's not totally overdone. Just, you know, enough for definite intimacy.

2. Seemingly-backward power dynamic. I don't know how to explain this exactly, but from what we see of them in the series, for instance, one might assume that when Giles and Ethan were together, Ethan was the one causing trouble and dragging Giles into bad things and so on, but I'm convinced it was the other way around, and I love it. The same with Master/Doctor - it's totally the Master who's the one crawling to the Doctor, begging for more, even though he wishes it wasn't. I love that kind of relationship. And another example would probably be Sheridan/Delenn. Delenn totally runs that relationship.

3. Tangential to that, I'm into a bit of a screwed up power dynamic. Just a little - not actual non-con (I'm so vanilla!), but yeeeeeeahhh, a little powerplay is fun.

4. Improbable femslash pairings. I admit it, I'm weak for those. Hermione/Ginny, River/Zoe, Romana/Ace... and those are just the three that I, myself, have written. ;)

5. Libraries. Set smut in a library, and I will almost certainly read it, unless the pairing actively squicks me. Bonus points for realistic detail in terms of the setting. ♥ There should be a whole genre for library-smut, IMHO. ♥

[lovelies.livejournal.com]

Something a bit harder: top 5 fictional mechanics!

[hoshinekoyasha.livejournal.com]

top 5 who-verse couples

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

1. Romana/Doctor 4evah. I'm convinced that it's canon and that they get together in almost every regeneration. If they haven't yet in a few regens, it's only because they haven't gotten around to it. ♥

2. Master/Doctor. Same. The Doctor is totally the center of the Master's universe, and the Doctor always loves his Master, even if he doesn't want to admit it. ♥

3. Ace/every random female guest character she ever met. ....What do you mean this doesn't count? If I had to pick one, I'd pick the girl from "Battlefield," but I can't remember her name at the moment, so I'm trying to string it out until I do... nope, it's not coming. Her, anyway. Or possibly Romana. Or Martha. Really, I think my ship here might be "Ace/any female EVER." ♥

4. Jack/Nine. Sure, Ten's a jerk to him, but I'm flat convinced that Jack and Nine would have been (or possibly were) the most awesome and adorable couple ever. It's not that I don't like Jack/Ianto, it's just that I love Nine more... and so does Jack. ♥

5. Harry Sullivan/Sarah Jane Smith. Because Harry will always love her, and she'll always love him back in a "that's nice, now I have to go save the universe, so don't even think about proposing again" kind of way. ♥

[diea.livejournal.com]

Top five animals! Top five aliens!

You can pick one, or do both.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Animals:

1. Cats. Any kind, but I'm especially partial to big fluffy tabbies and calicos in terms of domestics, and pumas and snow leopards in terms of wildcats. ♥

2. Octopi. Especially the Giant Pacific, but I love them all.

3. Snakes. If geneticists ever find a way to restrict the growth of pythons, I will own one - I can't handle a snake that gets as long as I am tall, but I adore pythons, and they're absurdly cute when they're babies.

4. Giant millipedes. Always my favorite critter to show off to the public when I volunteered at the Science Center.

5. Horses. I don't have much chance to ride, but I adore them.



As for aliens....

1. Time Lords. Because, really, who wouldn't want one? They fail my usual insistence that aliens should be alien, but other than that, I love them.

2. The Minbari. The biggest reason I ever had for loving JMS was that he wrote aliens with cultures that seemed genuinely alien to me, rather than just stereotyped versions of some Human characteristic. The Minbari were intriguing and interesting, and they definitely had their own way of looking at the universe that was unlike how Humans look at it. And I love the bone ridge.

3. Cardassians. Amoral bastards, from a Human perspective, but I adore them. The scales don't hurt.

4. Leftover from growing up with old series Star Trek - the Horta. ♥ Talk about alien.

5. Sentient Space Octopi. I know they're out there somewhere, and I want them to hurry up and get here while I can still run away with them. ♥

[diea.livejournal.com]

giant millipedes? Have you ever seen Peter Jackson's King Kong? Yeah, I had to cover my eyes when the giant bugs came on the screen, and even then the noise of them was disturbing. Ech, I know real giant millipedes aren't that big, but I hate them anyway. *shudder*

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Awwwww, yes. I have to admit, I hid during that whole bit, too, so I didn't see much of them, but the ones I worked with at the science center were super-cute in a buggy kind of way.

...Also, I have to admit, I loved being the tiny blonde teenager and having big tough-guy types come up and then flip the fuck out when they saw what was perched on my hand. ;)

[vonquixote.livejournal.com]

Top five Bad Writers.

*lights blue touch paper*
*stands well back*

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Shit, I only get five, even for this?

Okay. Top offenders.

1. Anne Rice. Just plain crazy. I'm told that the early books ("Interview With the Vampire" etc) are good, but I, alas, made my one attempt with "Pandora." And it was so painfully horrible that even in the middle of my oh-so-cliche vampire kick that I went through at the age of about sixteen couldn't get more than a few chapters in. I do think it's somewhat hilarious that after getting religion she suddenly decided she could be a mouthpiece for God. Woman's got chutzpah, I'll give her that. Now if only she could string words together coherently.

2. Terrance Dicks. Okay, here's the thing - he may very well have done some lovely things in the show, but his novels? Suck beyond the telling. I've read a few of them now, through a combination of bad luck, determination to give him a fair chance, the annoying difficulty of getting hold of Doctor Who novels in America, and the fact that he apparently likes Romana II, and so do I. But he's miserably bad. He made me hate a book that had Romana II and Ace, together. I love both of them with a fiery passion. That's how bad he is. I even hate him when he's shipping Four/Romana, and I normally love the two of them together.

I realize from double-checking wiki to be sure that I was not unfairly blaming him for anything he hadn't written (like "The Well-Mannered War," which is a rant for another day) that he's primarily a children's writer. That does not give him license, IMHO, to be nearly so hideously boring or annoying as I've found his novels.

3. Whoever wrote that piece of crap that Torchwood called "Fragments" in the 2nd season. I won't say anything specific in case you haven't seen it and are avoiding spoilers but... I'm sorry, what? I could probably put the whole Torchwood writing staff down here under "decent concept, good start, terrible execution and climax," but this one's a real classic in terms of shit. As was another 2nd season ep, "Meat."

4. While I'm on the subject of Doctor Who, how about Russell T. Davies? Now, I'll grant you, he has some good moments. When he's good, he's pretty good. But when he's bad, he's freaking abysmal. He doesn't understand how to end things without making them absurd, he doesn't think about the socio-political ramifications of his writing choices (race, gender, sexuality, any of it) and when he's called on it, his attitude in interviews is effectively "I can't possibly be (whatever)ist, you're interpreting the text from the wrong perspective, and anyway I can do whatever I want because they're my toys!" Way to be a responsible artist, asshat. If he wants the acclaim, he needs to also own the problems with his work. Oh, and his concept of continuity makes me cringe like a dead spider. Jack can kiss people better! Except only once, and then never again with no explanation! Ianto wants to destroy Jack for killing Lisa! Except he totally forgets and ends up in a woobie love-fest with him! I spent two fucking years convinced that Ianto was plotting a truly cunning revenge, but in the end, it turns out RTD just flipping forgot, the moron. ARGH.

5. I'm sure there's someone else I hate, but at the moment all I can think of is Anne McCaffrey, who is convinced that having anything inserted into a male's anus makes him gay. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. Oh, and homophobic. And crazy. And not a good writer to begin with.

I think I tired myself out on RTD, there - apologies for the lameness at the end.

[vonquixote.livejournal.com]

1. 'Interview' is okay, although her Issues are apparent even then. The film is basically all the good bits from the book with most of her Catholicism!fail and tendency to overdramatise small, ludicrously boring incidents for several chapters' worth of excruciating cod-philosophy stripped out, and it comes recommended. I started with 'Merrick' and these days I have no idea why I gave her another chance.

2. Uncle Tewwy seems to operate by taking a script, copy-pasting the descriptions of characters from his master list, and then carefully explaining how none of the women are actually brilliant. I'm dreading the second 'Timewyrm' book, frankly.

3. For reasons absolutely beyond my comprehension, I have watched all of Torchwood. Also, I live in Britain and am therefore largely spoiler-proof, since I get to watch everything first. AHAHAR, &c. I, err, didn't mind 'Meat' that much, though, because it had Rhys in it and he was useful. 'Fragments' was frankly dire (unsubtle lesbians are unsubtle! UNIT took notes from Guantanamo Bay! Ianto got his job through being a pest and not because he totally ran Torchwood One while Yvonne was off being supercilious!).

4. Whilst I'm usually hazy about the idea of continuity in the sense that fandom uses the word, I do actually agree with you on the matter of Lisa and it always bothered me that there wasn't more depth to the process of How Ianto And Jack Hooked Up. I can accept that it happened, but it should have been rather more interesting, psychologically speaking, than it was. As far as his understanding of implications and interpretations go... yes, frankly. Dude doesn't seem to understand how authorial authority actually works (or, in point of fact, doesn't), and whilst I'd usually stand by anyone who says "I don't believe in freedom of interpretation in this intellectual climate", the correct procedure from that start point is to do something about improving the climate, not cackle because it means you can get away with anything.

5. I laugh my balls off every time someone mentions Anne McCaffrey. Does that make me gay, I wonder?

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

1. Agreed, the movie was fairly decent. One of the few times I've ever liked Tom Cruise... possibly because I pretty much detest Brad Pitt, and hated him even more than usual as Louis. :P

2. Exactly. I found his novelization of "Destiny of the Daleks" once and stupidly opened it up, just to see (this was the first time I'd run across one of his novels) - if I weren't against getting kicked out of bookstores for destruction of property, I would have ripped it up purely for his description of Romana's regeneration. I think I blocked it, after the fact, but I remember it was extremely insulting.

3. Meat started off well, like so many Torchwood eps, but by the end it was just so much trite whining, with a lot of "oh, gross" thrown on top. Fragments, however, was indeed an amazing piece of horrible writing. Ugh. I will never forgive them for screwing up UNIT so badly, and a big YES to Ianto joining Torchwood 3 because he was running Torchwood 1. I'm quite sure he was Mr Indispensable there, even more than at TW3.

4. I'm totally okay with it happening - I think Jack and Ianto were horribly cute - and there's a lot of perfectly good, interesting ways for them to get there, too. I'm just annoyed the writers couldn't be bothered to actually include any of that.

"I don't believe in freedom of interpretation in this intellectual climate"

....Okay. I spent five years studying English lit at university, and I have never heard anything so asinine in my life. I'm all for fighting the post-modernist attitude that anything can mean anything we damned well please and that there are no "correct" interpretations (because there are certainly some that are less correct than others!), and I'm totally against the way postmodern philosophy sometimes insinuates itself into the hard sciences where it has absolutely no place, but... I can't even come up with any intelligent response in the face of that kind of sheer arrogance.

5. Only if sane reactions to insanity are a defining characteristic of homosexuality. ;)

[vonquixote.livejournal.com]

4. Funnily enough, I spent five years studying English literature at university too, and delight in throwing out statements like that.

Partly because it shocks people, and I honestly think that a lot of literature students need shocking, myself included, just to remind us that we can wring our hands and analyse and understand until the proverbial cows come home, but it's all in vain in the face of decisive, declamatory, unconsiderative arrogance, which doesn't suffer from the analysis paralysis that so often descends on the intellectual mind when it's confronted with implications, and so has this embarrassing tendency to fuck matters right up before we've even decided whether we're entitled to decide what constitutes 'fucked up'. I suffer from this vacillator's intellect as much as anyone, and frankly I think it's a weakness. If we can't beat insistent asininity, what good can we do?

With this one, though, I feel I can say it because because there are people out there who don't care about the modernist or post-modernist or any other attitude to interpretations and who honestly believe what they read, people to whom 'metaphor' is a nonce word and there really is nothing outside the text. You're not free to interpret if you're not interpreting at all.

Freedom of interpretation requires the inclination and critical skills to actually interpret. Those things are built, at the most basic level, by exercising pedagogic authority: telling people that things mean things, encouraging them to look for other things a thing means, and shutting down specious interpretations by demonstrating why they're specious and insisting that another attempt is in order**.

Raise the proverbial bar by doing that for as many people as you can, and you're creating a climate in which freedom is actually possible. We can do it, people like us - if we raise the standards, people like RTD have to raise theirs in order to play to the crowd.

I don't believe freedom of anything is possible until we're intellectually and psychologically equipped to deal with it. Freedom is scary. It takes a certain degree of something that you might call arrogance to operate in a world without textual authority, otherwise you end up sitting on your hands having endless spiralling arguments about whether or not authority is possible and generally not addressing the problem in hand - which is where the fight against vacuous postmodernism comes in, and where you and I hopefully meet up again.



* - if that one doesn't suit you, try "Alan Moore's V for Vendetta is brilliant because it explores a climate in which fascism and terrorism are necessary evils, and the film adaptation is a failure because it doesn't". I've never seen so many appalled faces in my life.

** - notice that it's not about saying "no, you're wrong, no grades for you", which is a bloody terrible way to educate people. That's the kind of intellectual arrogance I can't be doing with - the kind that doesn't see my little problematic statement as a demand to improve the climate. These people are the Enemy.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I'm totally in agreement with you about what's required for good analysis, but I think I disagree about the idea that now is a bad time for intellectual analysis. What's going on now is that it's being popularized, in a sense - more people, and a greater variety of people, than ever before have access to the tools and opportunity for analysis, thanks to the internet. Before, it took academic publication (or, at least, fanzines) to get your ideas about a literary or media piece out where people could read them - now all it takes is the decision to make a blog or LJ or whatever and the mild cleverness required to hunt out like-minded folk who might be interested in reading it. (Watch me compliment myself back-handedly, there....)

More than that, I think it's inherently wrong-headed to say that we need a better climate in order to deserve the opportunity for analysis. Bullshit. That's like saying you need a better political climate in which to have a revolution. The intellectual climate is crap because not enough people are taking advantage of the opportunity to analyze and criticize media. We're the ones who are raising the bar, by raising an outcry whenever writers are lazy, and it's lazy asshats like Davies who refuse to admit that they're being lazy who keep the bar... pressed down, so to speak.

I'm with you on people needing to learn critical facility and the tools of analysis - but I think the fan community here on LJ can be really good for that, as well. I know I've had a lot of opportunity to both practice analysis and pick up new threads of it here, and I like to think that I've taken some opportunities to show how to do it to others. Any situation where people genuinely care about a "text" is a good opportunity for that, I think, and if we can get younger people involved in the process through their interest, so much the better. G Goodness knows their schools probably aren't doing a good job of teaching it to them, particularly not of teaching them that it can be fun, and even socially rewarding.

[vonquixote.livejournal.com]

I think that, off the Internet, and on bits of the Internet outside fandom, there is a nasty anti-intellectual streak running through contemporary culture. I've had the 'English degrees are useless' argument right alongside the 'spelling doesn't matter' and 'university professors don't teach you bog-all about the real world' arguments quite regularly, online and off, and more and more often in the last couple of years. I've a friend who, whilst not ashamed to teach, doesn't tell people what he does for a living any more because everyone seems to have an angry rant about schools, the Humanities, and what their education didn't do for them.

Fandom, admittedly, is becoming cleverer and cleverer all the time, and long may it continue to do so. The Internet has made sharing ideas a lot easier (although you do seem to imply, in a roundabout way, that the Internet has given people critical faculties which they wouldn't have had without it, which I do have problems with). I just wonder whether the trend is as apparent outside fandom and the alleged blogosphere.

Please don't bring "deserve" into this. People always deserve better, it's a question of whether or not it's possible for them to have it, whether or not they even realise there's a thing there to want (seriously - I have been told that my first class will probably not know a metaphor, an implied meaning or a contextual reference when they see one - for them there is literally nothing outside the text, apparently).

[vonquixote.livejournal.com]

The intellectual climate is crap because not enough people realise there is an opportunity there to be taken, or because to them 'criticism' is entirely qualitative and effectively a means of deciding whether something's good or not. Between that extreme and us, there are probably millions more people who are thinking about what they watch, just not enough, for whatever reason.

Maybe because their parents discourage them from 'psychoanalysing' everything, like my mother does, maybe because thinking too hard about telly is for nerds, maybe because their preferred content doesn't require as much interpretation and has firm rules to govern ambiguities (like, say, sports programming...)

These people watch television. They're the lowest common denominator (which is a rottenly elitist term to apply outside mathematics, now that I think about it, but it's in usage so I'm going to) that something like Doctor Who has to be aimed for if it wants to operate outside the Skiffy Ghetto, and frankly it's far better off out here than it would be in there.

I think you and I are ultimately after the same thing - encouraging higher critical standards amongst viewers in order to raise the lowest common denominator so producers/writers/performers/&c. have to aim higher. If we build it, they will come.

[vonquixote.livejournal.com]

Also, we'll have to talk about that revolution comment at some stage, because, well... you do need the right kind of political climate for a revolution and what we have in Britain isn't it. I think your side of the World Pond is far more politically engaged, far more aware of its right/responsibility to revolt and far better equipped (intellectually and practically) to do so than mine, for reasons that have as much to do with geography as anything.

[diea.livejournal.com]

Oh no, you can't start with Pandora! Did it even make sense without reading the other ones? I know a lot of people don't like Rice, but I have that special I-loved-her-books-in-junior-high place in my heart for her characters.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Yeeeeeeah. I had a bad habit of reading series out of order when I was in high school, so I was generally pretty good at coping with the lack of context, but... that one... yeah. It's entirely possible it would have worked better if I'd started somewhere else, but that was the one that dropped into my lap.

And I totally sympathize. To my great shame, I read most of Laurell K. Hamilton's books before she went nuts. Or before I noticed. Not sure which, honestly.