Sunday night ramblings

[swatkat]

Oy! LFNers? Won't someone please go over to ship_manifesto and sign up for writing a Michael/Nikita essay? And a Paul/Madeline one? (Madeline/Nikita, George/Adrian, Michael/Jurgen, etc would be nice too, but I suppose that would be too much to ask for) Please? You'll enjoy it! Do this for your fandom! *tempts*

Speaking of ship_manifesto, this is one cool comm. I've been reading many of the essays, and I have to say that they've helped me get started with pairings I've always been interested in, but didn't know where to get started. Now I'm waiting for the Harry/Hermione essay on Oct 14th – here's hoping this will contain *some* good recs. *crosses fingers* I've already been disappointed by the Snape/Hermione essay, which, despite being an excellent essay by itself (she nails the reasons that could bring them together), recs only the most popular fics in the ship. And knowing this ship, well... (will try some of the recs, though)

Hmm. I wonder if they have a Remus/Hermione essay coming up as well? *g*

Some other interesting essays were:


Buffy/Angel: This is essay is very, very well-written – very passionate, and conveys the nature of their relationship just right. Buffy/Angel also reminds me of Michael/Nikita in a way. *sighs*

Snape/Lupin: Great pairing. There's also a good deal of links for starters.

Andromeda/Bellatrix: Oh, I really like this pairing! Of course, it's Blackcest, so you can stay away if it squicks you. It's got a couple of good fics recced – take note, jaybee65.

Harry/Ron/Hermione: I'd read this pairing, I really, truly would. But. So. Much. Smut! *headdesk*

Remus/Sirius: What, does this even need an explanation? Has a great list of recs.

Wes/Fred: Ah, Wes/Fred, how I love thee! I rooted for them even when Fred/Gunn was common, and as much as I love Wes/Lilah, this pairing rocks!

Wes/Lilah: I've always wanted to read Wes/Lilah, and am definitely going to follow the recs. I'm afraid that there'll be a lot of smut, but I'm sure I'll manage.

Buffy/Faith: Oh, I think this could be my BtVS OTP! *rubs hands together in glee*



Hmm. With so many interesting girls in BtVS/AtS, there should a lot of good femmeslash around, right? *ponders*

I also read the John/Aeryn essay, because some of you talk about it so much – not so much impressed by the essay itself, but the pairing sounds great. *g*

I have also decided that I really, really like Faith as a character, and am going to read a lot of Faith fics in the future.

Also, The Critically Constructive Feedback Project. Check it out.

Comments

Re: Just checked...

[jaybee65.livejournal.com]

Yes...why is it that most of the people "outside the fandom" always seem to refer to stories from that archive, rather than ranma's? Ranma's is *much* bigger.

Was ranma's smaller than the other one during the early seasons? That might explain it.

Re: Just checked...

[nell65.livejournal.com]

It was the first major archive....associated, originally I think, with one of the bigger fansites, then broke off when it changed owners.

I think they stopped updating/accepting new stories after the first couple of years and just maintained it after about 1998...

And Ranma started out just archieiving the stories posted to Susan Hargrove's MB, then when she broke off the first story boards....though now Ranma would happily take anything LFN related, I believe.

The thing is, for all my sensation of drowning in LFN fanfic, the story boards were so active, and Ranma's already so large, when I first started in (which was during S1, so it's hard to believe I missed the first few boats, but apparently I did....) - I never learned about how many other places people posted stories until much later, when most were already gone or defunct.

Though I did find the first archive, and did at one point read everything in it....

And yes - I dread this gwyn_r chick turning out to be like Tara O'Shea or Quinn and some of the others who swear that only S1 rocked.

Because - smashing my DON hat firmly on my head - I suspect what they didn't like in later seasons was Nikita coming into her own, and among other things, manipulating Michaeal as well as Michael manipulated her. I suspect what they really liked was the whole dynamic of a young rebellious girl/child and a dark mysterious teacher and weren't especially keen on seeing that turn into a partnership of peers. Which is why I kept right on groving, because that evolution was what held my fansciation. Still does...heheh.

Hmm

[swatkat24.livejournal.com]

I adore your DON hat (puts on her own), and I'm pretty darn sure that there *were* and *are* many fans who prefer S1 because of it (have some issues with the Nikita character, they will say). But there were also others who ran away because the writing fell apart. *sigh*

Swatkat

Re: Hmm

[nell65.livejournal.com]

But there were also others who ran away because the writing fell apart.

I keep reading that complaint - and I've never fully understood what they were talking about.

Yes - there were re-occurant problems with overall continuity between eps, and between seasons particularly, which is a writing problem of a sort.

Also - was it S3 or S4 where out of the first 11 eps - there wasn't a single cold-op mission? - again, a problem of the overall direction and focus for the overarching story.

But the actual ep to ep *writing* - as in scripts - and production? I don't think that was any more uneven in later seasons than the first. In some ways I think the production team actually got more consistent and more distinctive over the following seasons.

So - um - yeah - if the former, sure there were problems. The later? I've never agreed with that assessment in terms of teh words the writers put in the actors mouths, so I tend to wonder what larger issues are being subsumed into *writing.*

Nell (adjusting her DON hat to a sassy tilt)

As one who does criticize the writing

[jaybee65.livejournal.com]

I mean several things:

First, the lack of any effort to pay attention to continuity issues -- from season to season and episode to episode. Second, sloppiness in plotting the individual eps themselves -- often, plots and scenes didn't make sense if you thought about them, or required exposition that wasn't provided, or even contradicted each other (for example, end-of-episode twists often rendered earlier scenes nonsensical). Third, increasingly cheesy ideas for plots (S4, OMG!). Fourth, a drift away from the original premise of the show and into soap opera territory.

The show showed these symptoms throughout all of the seasons, to a degree, but it did, at least in my opinion, get worse over time.

Plotting is a pretty important part of writing, to me, so that's primarily what I refer to when I criticize the show's writing. But other people might mean something completely different -- hard to say.

Re: As one who does criticize the writing

[nell65.livejournal.com]

I guess as I had problems from the very first eps with some of these things, it didn't seem "worse" over the following seasons.

I had decided to suspend my desire for the stories, even within eps, to make any logical sense pretty much from the theft of the 'directory' onwards.

I did have many passing regrets for the loss of mission/SOTW centered eps - but not enough to dim my fascination with the whole.

So - if someone were to say they lost interest in LFN after S1 because the show drifted further and further away from it's action show roots - I would understand exactly what they meant and why the show lost it's appeal for them.

I just don't see this primarily as a 'writing' issue - so that's why the turn of phrase always has me raising my eyebrows.

Nell

Re: As one who does criticize the writing

[jaybee65.livejournal.com]

I'd peg my frustration as post-S2 rather than post-S1.

Plotting sloppiness within individual eps *did* occur in all of the seasons, but it was tolerable so long as the other factors were minimized. But when the plots became soap opera-like and less action-oriented, and when the accumulation of continuity gaps from season to season began to grow to larger proportions, it started to irk me. (That would be my reaction to S3.)

When they started coming up with utterly silly episode plots on top of that (S4), I kept watching *only* because I still enjoyed seeing several of the actors. And when they finally took too many of them out of the picture in S5 (or forced them to play roles they weren't very good at, a la Matthew Ferguson and his hideous accent), I indeed *did* stop watching. (Although I don't blame that last issue on writing so much, because that isn't a plotting issue.)

I do see the choice of plots for the episodes as a "writing" issue, so maybe it's a matter of semantics here.

Re: As one who does criticize the writing

[nell65.livejournal.com]

Yep - I'm probably just thinking of the "writing" too narrowly, as what the round robin script-writers were doing - and not feeling like the overall continuity problems and lack of interest in plot coherency should be laid primarily at their feet. That's what the production staff should be taking care of. But weren't. Sigh.

Things did get worse - S4 had a few bright moments, but some things were beyond recovery continutiy-wise by the time it was half over.

S5 was basically an unredeamable mess - though I'm reasonably content with the end point of it all. Much of the body of those 8 eps I try hard to block out.

But that all happened waaaayyyy later than the beginning of S2. Which is, I think, why the sentiment that the show and its writing tanked after S1 always makes me scowl.

Not to beat a dead horse...

[jaybee65.livejournal.com]

Or yes, maybe I *do* want to beat a dead horse. ;-)

I'm not just criticizing "overall continuity problems and lack of interest in plot coherency," although that's a *biiiig* part of it.

But I'm also criticizing the totally lame-brain ideas for individual episodes that became more and more frequent, which to me *can* be laid at the feet of the individual scriptwriters.

I'm referring to ideas like, "Hey, let's ship Michael and Nikita off to Podunk, Tennessee (or wherever it was supposed to be, I've suppressed as much as possible from that episode) and surround them with quaint rural stereotypes who...drumroll...turn out to be Red Cell agents!" Or Toys in the Basement, He Came From Four, or the infamous "neural scraping" episode ("Hey, what if George could download everyone's brain!!!!"), and many others.

These were all just *so* stupid, as individual eps, that I could barely stand it. *Sigh*

Re: Not to beat a dead horse...

[jaybee65.livejournal.com]

Forgot to add...

I agree with you to the extent people dismiss everything after S1, though. For those people, it may very well be more a matter of disliking the new Michael/Nikita dynamic.

Re: Not to beat a dead horse...

[nell65.livejournal.com]

Well - yes. The individual plots were also sillier more of the time. Or, seemed so anyway. Though I liked the *idea* of Michael and Nikita going to a small town thinking it's one thing but discovering another. The notion that no one else noticed a large satalite crash to earth and came to investigate? That was utterly bizzare. Though was it really any more bizzare than a mentally handicaped man being the only person who could prevent the nuclear warhead from exploding?

I blame the producers for the brain scrape thing.

Assuming that they gave the order - we'd like a flashback ep! Figure out someway to do an entre ep with only ten minutes of new film!!1!!

It isn't the claim that the writing or the plots were uneven and occasionally very silly indeed that I quibble with - rather it is the model of declension from a peak of clever coherence that irks me. Especially when I see it dated from S2. As a fan of the whole.