Fannish options & enthusiasms: August 2024

[brightknightie]

Here are some recent fannish things I've happened to see and would like to share:

Highlights

• I very busily participated in both saturdaymorningex and everywoman, coming in hot off fkficfest.
• I've discovered "The Prydain Chronicles" by Lloyd Alexander, which I somehow missed growing up, and am now utterly reveling in. (No spoilers, please. I'm halfway through Taran Wanderer.)

Ficathons, fests & communities

• Create & engage
  • everywoman released 69 total stories in 56 fandoms. Check out the collection.
  • fandomgiftbasket gift posting continues through 9/14.
  • no_true_pair is a challenge in which a writer submits a list of characters who are then randomly paired (platonic or romantic) in prompts provided later. Prompts come 8/12; posting 9/01-9/28.
  • womansplace ("[...is in the Resistance]") has a prompt fest. Prompting closes 10/29; works due 11/04.
  • ships_crossing is an exchange for crossover and fusion ships (platonic is allowed). Nominations and sign-ups through 8/09; works due 9/20.
  • austenexchange is an exchange for all Jane Austen fandoms. Sign-ups through 8/11; works due 9/27.
  • multifandomtropefest is an exchange for tropes and their subversions. Nominations through 8/04; sign-ups through 8/20; works due 10/09.
  • pine4pine is a pining-themed exchange. Sign-ups through 8/12; works due 9/21.
  • resurrectfeeling is running a "Rarest of Rarepairs" event through 10/01.
  • trope_of_the_month's August theme is "sports & games."
  • allbingo's August theme is "Discworld."
  • pinchhits is a forum for pinch-hits in fannish exchanges. For example, justmarriedexchange is currently seeking pinch hitters.
• Enjoy & share
  • fancake (themed fanfic recs); August theme: "trope subversion & inversion"
  • het_reccers (m/f fanfic recs)
  • gensplosion (gen fanfic recs)
  • recthething (fanwork recs)
  • fanart_recs (fanart recs)

Some shows I missed the first time around (that I'm catching up on now)

• Daredevil (2015-2018). I've never had Netflix, so my first real crack at this show came when it moved to Disney+. I hesitated for a good while because of the famously vivid violence, but eventually came to an arrangement with myself and the story about when to look away and follow with my ears only (yes, irony). I'm glad I did choose to try, because the storytelling is superb, top-notch, fantastic! I've finished the first season and am hesitating between jumping to the second or following this Defenders timeline in order. (Will Jessica Jones be too disturbing for me? It may well be.)
• Babylon 5 (1994-1998). Where I lived at the time, B5 aired exactly opposite DS9, and I already had a lifelong commitment to Trek (second-generation Trek fan here) so I simply missed it. It's a friend's all-time favorite show, and after years of telling me I should watch it, he started loaning me the DVDs last year. He's right; I'm enjoying and appreciating it; the combination of '90s episodic structure with ahead-of-its-time continuity hits a sweet spot for me, as do some themes. I'm just about at the end of the second season, and I've been promised that it just gets better from here. We shall see.
• Earth: Final Conflict (1997-2002). At the time, I was vaguely aware of E:FC as the non-Trek Roddenberry show to which Lisa Howard went when she left HL (and Lisa Ryder, very briefly, after FK). For whatever reason, I just never saw it. Malinaldarose introduced me to it during pandemic lock-down, and I've been very slowly watching ever since, whenever it's available for "free" on one of the services I subscribe to (YouTube Premium or Amazon Prime). I really got into the first season, with its combination of law-enforcement procedural, spy-intrigue adventure, social/cultural implications, unrevealed overarching mystery, and, of course, a bereaved good-guy hero trying to do what he thinks is right. However, I kind of slammed into a wall when I hit the transition between season one and two; it very suddenly becomes a very different show at that point, and I find that I'm still emotionally looking at it as a kind of imposter supplanting the original show. I'm not saying that it became bad, but that it became significantly different in theme and structure, and you know me -- I can get really hung up on those. I'm still watching, though! Just... slowly. (If you happen to know the real-world reasons why this show got mangled -- I mean, disrupted ;-) -- the way it did, please share! Wikipedia doesn't know. Malinaldarose has sought to puzzle it out, but there are few traces out there on the internet.)

Note: "Recently:FK" is now "Recently:Enthusiasms."

Comments

[senmut]

Contractual obligations between creators and cast led to frequent turnovers, disrupting the story arcs (as loose as they were) that did not allow for cohesion. Likewise, it appears the writing room really didn't stay all that stable either.

[brightknightie]

Thank you. From this end of things, the degree of change -- in tone, theme, and backstory -- seems bananas, exceeding that of any other show I've ever watched.

[greerwatson]

I absolutely adored the Prydain series when I was a kid. :)

[brightknightie]

It's worth of adoration! I'm planning to go back and reread The Black Cauldron not too long after finishing the series for the first time; it's so well-crafted.

[malinaldarose]

I loved the Prydain books when I was a kid. Couldn't decide whether Taran or Eilonwy was my favorite character.

I did find an old interview with Kari Matchett (Siobhan Beckett) where she said they offered her a permanent place in the cast as a full-time character in the second season, but then she didn't appear in several episodes, so she took a job in another series that was full-time...and there went whatever story arc they were building with Liam and his parents.

[brightknightie]

In The Book of Three, Eilonwy definitely had the edge over Taran for me! As Taran subsequently grows up, he similarly grows on me. Right now, Eilonwy is out of the picture, and I'm interested to learn who she will be when she returns to the story... The male author's choice to put this female character off-screen during these pivotal growing-up years, while he focuses on the male protagonist, feels not only normative for its era and concise for its writing style, but... perhaps Mr. Alexander didn't know how to write a teenage girl through that? When I finish the series, I'll look up what else he wrote!

That information about Kari Matchett is very interesting! Perhaps it was most of all unrelenting bad luck that made the series so bumpy. I wish... I know you love Liam, and this would never have happened in '90s/'00s syndication, but just as brainstorming: I wonder what the series could have been if, on the Boone actor's departure, instead of scurrying to produce a white man strongman protagonist, they had worked with the characters they had, addressed the sudden change with character-relevant plots, and promoted an existing character to the protagonist slot, if necessary. Siobhan or Sandoval could have broken free of their implant status somehow (or had it fail, or be overridden) and had a personal crisis and taken and new approach. Or Lily could have been persuaded. Or Augur could have become a different kind of protagonist.

[malinaldarose]

I know Lloyd Alexander wrote a lot of other books, but I don't think I've read any other than the Prydain series. It wouldn't surprise me a bit that he didn't know what to do with a clever teenage girl.

That's an interesting thought about what other characters could have risen to the challenge of taking over Boone's spot as The Hero. Sandoval certainly, if he'd had a reason to. Lili would have been amazing. There was a virtual second season written back in the day (by a bunch of writers, I believe) in which Boone survived and Liam didn't take his place. Liam was there, but I don't quite remember how they worked it out. There are also some series I've come across where Boone and Liam are both Da'an's Protectors. In one of them Boone is aware of Liam's parentage, but Da'an is not.