Just the start of it all

I'm disappointed; none of you asked anything really wanky, though I'd have been happy to tell the truth. I did consider cheating and adding the questions that would prompt the rants I really want to write, but that wouldn't really be in the spirit of it. (Free opinion, though: if Torchwood hadn't had a Who connection, I'd have given up on it in disgust after the first Day One.)

( Some discussion of third hand specials/S5 spoilers/spec, be warned )

( spoiler cut )

Also, I don't think Who's going to win a Hugo this year. The general consensus seems to be that Turn Left is a mediocre dystopic AU with far too much racefail (which I wouldn't disagree with objectively, but I have NO quality standards when it comes to dystopic AUs, so I love those elements of it anyway -- q.v. the way every future the X-Men ever visit is a variant on Days of Future Past and I love it every time; the racefail is hideous, though). The S4 Moffat eps aren't as good as his previous winners, and meanwhile BSG and Lost are both in their final seasons which might gee up their fanbases and everybody seems to have loved Dr Horrible, apart from the people who didn't. It is an open field, it seems to me.

I think this might possibly be my favourite meme ever:

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

(You can comment and not get things, if you want. It's not compulsory or anything.)

silly_cleo gave me:

( Being into Old Who fandom before the new show )
( Nyssa/Tegan and femslash generally )
( the Doctor Who books )
( Buffy )
( being sane about fandom )

Comment to this post and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

kseda gave me:

( Anji Kapoor )

( sizeofthatthing )

( my favourite comic book artist )

( how awesome my username is )

( pie )

(If you want to comment without being tagged for the meme, just say. If you do want to be tagged, be aware I may be offline for a while because I am probably about to switch off my router until I have finished this thrice-damned fic that doing this meme was blatant procrastination from.)

Here are my answers to the questions I got asked in that meme:

Do you sometimes feel that there's an awful lot of shippy fic (in general) that could be "Any Two, Three or However Many Characters of Either Gender" - that the cliche takes over from the characterization?

( Apparently it takes me 200 words to say 'hell yes!'. )

Do you have any guilty pleasures when it comes to fanfic?

( Excellent question! )

What was wrong with Forgotten? Is it the one that has Handy as a villain? And there was a panel showing all the Doctors that the writer thought was the best Who illustration ever? (from peeeeeeet, following on from my whining about Tony Lee in the questions post)

( Short answer: what's right with it? )

And this last one has an answer short enough that I don't feel the need to cut it, though it will make precious little sense to anyone except me and the questioner:

Do you still want that copy of Years of Rice & Salt?

Oh good god, I'd completely forgotten about that! Nah, don't worry. Looking at what have become my to-read bookcases, I don't think I'd ever get round to reading it properly. I skimmed enough of it to get the gist and the more I play Civ IV (where they have a "religion" system that is as open to vehement argument about how well it models the way history really works as everything else in the game) the more I realise I can do my own alt-hists along the same lines rather more enjoyably than trudging through KSR's infodumps.

OK, so this is the version where you can ask me the really wanky stuff (and I get to take forever on the answers):

Ask me anything: all types of fannish opinions, good, bad, and ugly. I'm screening all comments so ask me anything fannish-related and I'll answer (in a separate post) with complete honesty. Any TV show/book/movie that you're pretty sure I've mentioned in the past is fair game, as are thoughts on general themes and trends in fandom/fiction, lists of loved/hated characters, thoughts on ships, whatever. Comments are screened so you can ask whatever you want without being "revealed". If you don't care about being revealed you can let me know.

Fandoms: Who, comics, Whedon stuff, West Wing, Trek (in as much as I spent my teenage years on it so have lots of opinions), proper written SF!, most C4 Friday night comedies, Demons, Terminator: SCC, other stuff you know I like but I've forgotten to mention here

Have a free one: I am not in the slightest bit interested in IDW's new ongoing Who comic, entirely because it's written by _tonylee_, who was responsible for the sub-fanfic Forgotten.

In the interests of proving that there's nothing I'd say on who_anon that I wouldn't say with my username attached, a one-time offer:

Ask me anything about DW or its fandom and I will give you my honest opinion on the matter.

If you want to get all pretentious and mythological about it, this post is like Janus, looking both forwards and backwards. If you're looking for some sort of inducement to actually read it, my Yuletide reveal is buried in here somewhere.

( Cut for length, oh my god so much length )

Er, anyway, Happy New Year, everyone! One of the lovely things about 2008 has been how great all my flisty people are, so *hugs* to you and I hope your 2009s are as good as you made my 2008. If that makes any sense.

I might do that icon meme in a minute, if I can be bothered to pinch someone's HTML.

( You can totally skip this; it's self-pitying meta about Martha fandom )

TL;DR: we'll always have The Drabbles of Awesome.

ETA: Courtesy of who_anon, that Buddy Holly Ten/Martha vid by nostalgia_lj that never fails to make me jump up and down with squee.

For some reason, the "how to write Freema" link on freemaagyeman.com always makes me think it's going to lead to advice on RPF characterisation ...

The "write 20 random things about yourself" meme, only I can't be bothered with timing myself or tagging.

( This ended up being oddly confessional in places )

Definitely bedtime now.

... because I have been bitten by the fan fiction bug again.

It is all the fault of Doctor Who, which is only natural since I was writing Doctor Who fanfic long before I knew what fanfic was -- in my head, they were the spec scripts that I would eventually work up the courage to send in and I would become the youngest Who writer ever, oh yes. Even younger than that guy who wrote Full Circle. (I even had a terrible Adric-like Marty Stu of a new companion. See how much I wanted to be like the Full Circle man!) Only then they cancelled it, dashing my eleven-year-old dreams into shiny fragments. (I moved onto Star Trek for a bit but only ever finished one DS9 script which promptly got Jossed to the Gamma Quadrant and back by all that silly having of an arc plot.)

My previous exposure to the fanficcy side of fandom was through Buffy; by the magic of Google Groups, you can read some of the fic I posted to atbvsc back then, if you're particularly bored. (See the shameless pimping of four-years-ago me! Actually, I must admit to remaining quite proud of "My Way" which is all about why Spike went back to Sunnydale.)

Anyway, I have quite an ... interesting assignment for mireille719's Minor Characters Ficathon. But it gives me an excuse (as if I needed one) to watch one of my fave episodes repeatedly, so yay!