There's a room where the light won't find you
It is the night before Readercon and I am running a fever. I had a nausea-making headache all day, but I thought it would break when we got the torrential rain that briefly turned our street into a water park and caused the women's toilets at ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch's rehearsal space to overflow. It ebbed a little and I finished my work and then I had to stop looking at my computer and lie down for several hours in a darkened room. I get that on some level my body just wants to exist in a state of perpetual Victorian ill health, but the second floor does not a garret make—especially when we have upstairs neighbors—and I am unconvinced that laudanum would work any better on me than most opiates. Also, I'd really just rather not.
1. I don't know whether to describe this essay on Brian Clemens' The Professionals (1978–83) as a celebration, a critique, or stomp-on-the-brakes rubbernecking, but it's wonderfully written and has convinced me that the show was definitely something, even if not necessarily something I want to see. Okay, maybe a couple of episodes. "Having watched the whole of Sapphire & Steel, every surviving episode of Ace Of Wands and his contribution to the children's supernatural series Shadows, I can say without hesitation that 'Heroes' is by far the least realistic thing that PJ Hammond has ever written."
2. Speaking of sympathy for the fascists: vidding Star Wars' Imperials to "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" might sound like low-hanging fruit, but it's Lorde's cover and the vid is both darkly funny and creepingly immersive.handful_ofdust calls it "a Mirror Universe existence" and I had somehow not quite noticed before that unless the vidder futzed with the light levels, Imperial interiors in the original films all look like something out of a horror movie, Kubrick-sterile and glowing dark as space. The music sometimes follows and sometimes illuminates the images and the whole project basically delights me in the same way as realizing a few years ago that Piett fandom had gone mainstream. (kore, are you the person who directed me to Michael Pennington's deleted scenes?) Rob observes that the line about Mother Nature is especially trenchant in context of the Battle of Endor "when they're fucking defeated by Ewoks and trees."
3. Speaking of getting fucking defeated by nature, Rob has chronicled on Twitter the night the baby spiders decided to join us in the shower.
4. Speaking of things I wish hadn't happened, this article courtesy ofrushthatspeaks is an interesting and valuable look at the filming of rape scenes and it is not that I feel bad now for having loved Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970) when I saw it, but I feel a lot stranger about future Jodorowsky and that really angers me.
5. I don't have a good segue here. They Can Talk reminds me a lot of The Far Side. I am especially fond of "Shark Rescue" and "forbidden."
At least I have no programming of my own tomorrow.
spatch's rehearsal space to overflow. It ebbed a little and I finished my work and then I had to stop looking at my computer and lie down for several hours in a darkened room. I get that on some level my body just wants to exist in a state of perpetual Victorian ill health, but the second floor does not a garret make—especially when we have upstairs neighbors—and I am unconvinced that laudanum would work any better on me than most opiates. Also, I'd really just rather not.1. I don't know whether to describe this essay on Brian Clemens' The Professionals (1978–83) as a celebration, a critique, or stomp-on-the-brakes rubbernecking, but it's wonderfully written and has convinced me that the show was definitely something, even if not necessarily something I want to see. Okay, maybe a couple of episodes. "Having watched the whole of Sapphire & Steel, every surviving episode of Ace Of Wands and his contribution to the children's supernatural series Shadows, I can say without hesitation that 'Heroes' is by far the least realistic thing that PJ Hammond has ever written."
2. Speaking of sympathy for the fascists: vidding Star Wars' Imperials to "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" might sound like low-hanging fruit, but it's Lorde's cover and the vid is both darkly funny and creepingly immersive.
handful_ofdust calls it "a Mirror Universe existence" and I had somehow not quite noticed before that unless the vidder futzed with the light levels, Imperial interiors in the original films all look like something out of a horror movie, Kubrick-sterile and glowing dark as space. The music sometimes follows and sometimes illuminates the images and the whole project basically delights me in the same way as realizing a few years ago that Piett fandom had gone mainstream. (kore, are you the person who directed me to Michael Pennington's deleted scenes?) Rob observes that the line about Mother Nature is especially trenchant in context of the Battle of Endor "when they're fucking defeated by Ewoks and trees."3. Speaking of getting fucking defeated by nature, Rob has chronicled on Twitter the night the baby spiders decided to join us in the shower.
4. Speaking of things I wish hadn't happened, this article courtesy of
rushthatspeaks is an interesting and valuable look at the filming of rape scenes and it is not that I feel bad now for having loved Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970) when I saw it, but I feel a lot stranger about future Jodorowsky and that really angers me.5. I don't have a good segue here. They Can Talk reminds me a lot of The Far Side. I am especially fond of "Shark Rescue" and "forbidden."
At least I have no programming of my own tomorrow.
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And as a rather bouncy contrast to your Star Wars vid - have you seen the hard life of an Imperial trooper as done by lego characters to Dolly Parton?
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. . . I just finished watching an episode and I'm still not sure which one was which.
(What is the fandom like, given the source material?)
And as a rather bouncy contrast to your Star Wars vid - have you seen the hard life of an Imperial trooper as done by lego characters to Dolly Parton?
No! That's delightful. Thank you!
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The heyday was pre Internet and zine-based, but a lot got digitized and it's still active - I know a couple of people still writing in it. Friendly fandom and never had (as far as I know) any of the massive schisms that hit other shows, such as Due South - I think it helps that there's only one major pairing, although there are some die-hard Crowley shippers out there. Lots of long fic, heavy on the angst and hurt-comfort, some plotty, some oddly domestic, a healthy population of varyingly believable AUs (they're circus performers! Bird watchers (not an innuendo)! Doyle (curly haired) is actually an elf!).
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Nice!
I watched a chunk of seaQuest DSV (1993–1996) in 2015 and when I went looking to see what the fic was like, of course most of it was pre-internet and only some of it survived online catastrophes like the death of GeoCities and some of it is on AO3, explicitly transferred from much older sites. I find that kind of archaeology fascinating.
Friendly fandom and never had (as far as I know) any of the massive schisms that hit other shows, such as Due South
And that I respect very much. Like by the time Sherlock finished, I had at least one friend who had stayed in the fandom just to keep an eye on the apparently apocalyptic levels of wank.
Lots of long fic, heavy on the angst and hurt-comfort, some plotty, some oddly domestic, a healthy population of varyingly believable AUs (they're circus performers! Bird watchers (not an innuendo)! Doyle (curly haired) is actually an elf!).
You know, that might actually help me remember which one is Doyle!
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2. That is a good vid! I found it a while back, I can't remember how (someone had been reblogging my old telly pics probably) and, lol, so many British TV actors are working for the Empire.
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Okay, so do you have any idea why he's randomly dubbed for five seconds on his way out of the bowling alley? There's another character in the same episode who I think may be dubbed all the way through (and if she wasn't, their sound engineering was terrible), but Collings has a very distinctive voice; it's not like people won't notice when it changes!
(I watched the episode; it was free online. It was a fascinating experience because everything up until the last six minutes was frequently disjointed and completely disposable beyond the fun of recognizing actors—Gerald James! I last saw you being bargained in a railway station to a darkness from outside Time!—and then the actual defusing of the bomb was just as compelling as that kind of finale is supposed to be. I credit it almost entirely to Collings' ability to look like he really believes they'll all go up in a cloud of plutonium if he puts a screwdriver wrong. With his hair dripping into his work because one of the heroes threw a bucket of water in his face to bring him around after he was cold-cocked by his former fellow terrorist. And then it goes back to being disposable for the last thirty seconds. That is sadly not the ratio of "entertaining" to "is this plot with one of the heroes chatting up a girl going anywhere? kind of? not really?" that I really look for in my media.)
THat description of PJ Hammond's ep is quite something though, although I don't remember it at all if it was S1! Presumably it wasn't?
It's listed in the first season. I am almost certainly going to watch it, just because "blowing two of the baddies out of a dinghy with a grenade launcher, while Bodie shoots the other two from behind a motorised lawnmower" made me crack up. Then I think I will probably be all right not watching any more of The Professionals.
and, lol, so many British TV actors are working for the Empire.
As a primer on character actors, those movies have served me well.
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LOL, that was one of the first things I said when I watched it! "That's not David Collings!!" Nobody else I know who's also watched it noticed or cared, because I suppose they were too busy admiring either Bodie or Doyle, or both. (How can they not? He really does have such a distinctive voice, yes! But there, I don't get excited by Martin Shaw in tight jeans, which is equally incomprehensible to them, I suppose. ;-D)
I assume something went wrong with the sound on location - maybe there was some noise or problems spotted afterwards or something - and David Collings wasn't available during the post-production period. (I wondered if it was Martin Shaw, as it sounded a little like him to me. Pros fandom is in depth enough that somebody might know if you can find some online episode guides of the sort that have trivia, but I should imagine it would be something like that.)
Oh, well, if it was in the first season, I certainly don't remember anything being even a fraction as weird as S&S so that article is thoroughly unreliable. I watched the entire first series and all I can say is that some episodes were certainly better than the David Collings one, aside from not having Mr Collings, and I came away liking Gordon Jackson, but it was Not For Me. Too much overt 70s sexism and all the women getting rapidly murdered.
(You asked about Professionals fandom: it seems to be a very likeable one with lots of good people in it, as far as I can tell. Lots of slash but also lots of long, plotty case fic. Or at least, going by the Pros fans on my flist.)
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I'm still having trouble remembering which one was Martin Shaw. David Collings in jeans at all (and a T-shirt!) was a novelty.
I assume something went wrong with the sound on location - maybe there was some noise or problems spotted afterwards or something - and David Collings wasn't available during the post-production period.
That makes sense and is a completely reasonable thing to have go wrong during production. It was just very jarring.
I watched the entire first series and all I can say is that some episodes were certainly better than the David Collings one, aside from not having Mr Collings, and I came away liking Gordon Jackson, but it was Not For Me. Too much overt 70s sexism and all the women getting rapidly murdered.
I can see that starting to pall. At least in "Stake Out" the one significant woman just turns out to be a junkie because they had to tie up the drug ring subplot somehow in and among all the badly organized white supremacy.
(And yet, this episode did have the quality identifed by the Quietus review where I don't actually want those fifty minutes of my life back, I just mostly wasn't watching anything good.)
(You asked about Professionals fandom: it seems to be a very likeable one with lots of good people in it, as far as I can tell. Lots of slash but also lots of long, plotty case fic. Or at least, going by the Pros fans on my flist.)
Okay, cool. Based on this one episode, I couldn't figure out what direction the fic was likely to go in, although banter seemed likely.
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I don't think it was a particularly typical episode, to be fair to the Pros. But I was also, as you were, much amused and entertained by David Collings's drenched bomb defusing, and I have not seen him in casual wear in just about anything else. (Hmm, except maybe his Holy City appearance last year, actually, but that was all modern.)
I noped out on the murdering of females when they murdered Pamela Salem. There are limits.
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I haven't even seen the fabled Victorian hyenas and it already feels weirdly apropos for David Collings to show up as a guest star—playing a South African terrorist? I couldn't tell if he was just a local bomb-maker they'd picked up for the occasion, although we're obviously not supposed to rate him as too sympathetic if he was willing to nuke London for the sake of white nationalism or at least a paycheck—and get punched out and a bucket of water thrown on him.
I noped out on the murdering of females when they murdered Pamela Salem. There are limits.
Well, feh.
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Nobody's seen the fabled hyenas; the budget didn't run to that.
Bite your head off, man
Presumably along the way (and I'm doin this without a ton of research because it's late and I'm feelin spunky) somebody else pointed out "Hey, we could totally sell a ton of cute, cuddly Ewok toys" so their savagery got toned down and the cuteness brought out to the fore. Suddenly these primitive, nasty little critters became bright-eyed, inquisitive little jabberers who could be befriended by a kind soul with extra ration treats and awed into worshipful complacency by a magical floating C-3PO, The Droid Who Would Be King. Sure, they're still teddy bears with fangs and that one Ewok at the end of Return of the Jedi is shown with his custom Stormtrooper helmet drumset, possibly with heads still in, but boy did they get tamed something rotten.
The Ewoks' cuteness and love for all creatures beautiful and kind was later brought out even more in the kid-friendly Ewok Adventure TV films. Moreover--and this is where it gets real insult-to-injurylike--Star Wars canon later has it that after the Battle of Endor Ewoks volunteered to go offworld as, so help me Wookieepedia, "therapy Ewoks", to help Rebel veterans deal with the horrors of war. THAT'S RIGHT, CHARLIE, GO HUG AN EWOK AND CURE YOUR PTSD. YUB NUB!
There was one Star Wars franchise what got Ewoks right and that was, fantastically enough, the Star Wars: Galaxies MMO. Planets in the game came in varying degrees of difficulty and skill/equipment requirements, and the forest moon of Endor was one of the toughest. These Ewoks would absolutely fuck your shit up without so much as a cute chirrup. A high-level group of players who knew what they were doing could handle one, maybe two at a time, but it took a concerted effort and a lot of downtime in between skirmishes healing back up. During the downtime, of course, your group was completely vulnerable to an Ewok ambush, and these little bastards came in packs. (They may have been able to summon help as well. Memory's a little hazy on that one.)
The memories I do have are fond ones of sitting at the Endor shuttleport waiting for a ride off-world and watching entire parties of highly-equipped and highly-skilled players come fleeing out of the forest with three or four tiny bouncing Ewoks in tow. The shuttleports were minimally staffed by Empire or Rebel-allied NPC guards who were more concerned about the player-vs-player faction warfare than they were protecting your sorry ass from a bunch of fanged teddy bears, so when an Ewok train came a-running, everybody at the shuttleport would freak out and scatter. Hiding wouldn't help; a slaughter was all but guaranteed. After the Ewoks finished laying waste to every last player in the vicinity they would go bouncing happily back into the forest, at which point the dead players would hit the "activate clone" button, tentatively venture out from the nearby cloning facility, and begin anew the wait for their ride off the hellgreen forest rock. Probably back to a safer planet like Tatooine. As far as I'm concerned SW:G was the high water mark of the MMORPG era, and that is one of the reasons why.
Re: Bite your head off, man
Pictured here the glorious fez-wearing Ackmena, SW:G Entrepreneur of the Year, with her trusty pet bantha Snuffleupagus
Re: Bite your head off, man
That's a thing of beauty.
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. . . oh, God. So you do.
I had a stuffed animal Ewok as a small child. Not having seen any Star Wars at the time, I think I just accepted it as a slightly scary-looking species of teddy bear. I remember a kid in elementary school drawing pictures of an adventure with Ewoks which in hindsight I am pretty sure was The Ewok Adventure (1984). For some reason I don't think it was The Battle of Endor (1985). I admit I have never had a burning curiosity to watch them both and find out.
Suddenly these primitive, nasty little critters became bright-eyed, inquisitive little jabberers who could be befriended by a kind soul with extra ration treats and awed into worshipful complacency by a magical floating C-3PO, The Droid Who Would Be King.
Seriously, if the villains of your story are the Empire, maybe don't go around uncritically reproducing Kipling tropes among your heroes with less nuance yet than Kipling himself?
Sure, they're still teddy bears with fangs and that one Ewok at the end of Return of the Jedi is shown with his custom Stormtrooper helmet drumset, possibly with heads still in, but boy did they get tamed something rotten.
It's a cute custom Stormtrooper drum kit, is the thing. The Ewoks could have been very effective played for horror or danger—furry little piranhas with flint-knapped spears, burn them down all day and you'll still end up swamped and stewed by the survivors when your blaster runs out of charge—and I like the original concept of their victory over the Empire being the Star Wars equivalent of the Battle of the Trees, but since the actual battle comes down to tripwires made of lianas and other Keystone Kops tricks, even the mythology's drained out of it. I guess it made Lucasfilm a lot of tie-in money, but it would have made better story the other way.
so help me Wookieepedia, "therapy Ewoks", to help Rebel veterans deal with the horrors of war.
GEORGE YOU CAN TYPE THIS SHIT.
These Ewoks would absolutely fuck your shit up without so much as a cute chirrup. A high-level group of players who knew what they were doing could handle one, maybe two at a time, but it took a concerted effort and a lot of downtime in between skirmishes healing back up.
That's great. Could you also play Ewok characters and fuck up the shit of other players?
and begin anew the wait for their ride off the hellgreen forest rock.
I just like "hellgreen forest rock" a lot here.
Re: Bite your head off, man
Also, I am always pleased to see evidence (YUB NUB!) of someone else who remembers the existence of the Ewok songs (removed by Lucas well before he became famous for his revisionism). Not that it was a GOOD song, but it has personal relevance for me. For reasons that I suspect made no sense even at the time, I once acquired a disco remix of that song...
Re: Bite your head off, man
Re: Bite your head off, man
YOU DIDN'T MENTION IT TURNS INTO A RAP.
Re: Bite your head off, man
IT WAS THE EIGHTIES MAN, I THINK THERE'S A RAP IN THE MIDDLE OF UB40'S COVER OF RED RED WINE
Meco also did the Star Wars Xmas Album: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meco
Re: Bite your head off, man
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Though having seen some of the series first, I had hard time finding fic where the characters still had any hard edges. (Despite the well-known fan war with Starsky & Hutch, the characterisation in fic is pretty similar, except S&H is even MOAR fluffy, so Pros fanon lands at about S&H canon for fluff levels.) It's the only fandom I've been in where terrible people are simultaneously made fluffy AND have popular fanon that one of them is a serial rapist.
In my head, Ewoks are terrifying murderfloofs.
ETA: My main Martin Shaw association is actually his excellent reading on the audiobook of The Silmarillion.
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Cool. That is good to hear.
It's the only fandom I've been in where terrible people are simultaneously made fluffy AND have popular fanon that one of them is a serial rapist.
Okay, that's amazing.
In my head, Ewoks are terrifying murderfloofs.
I think you have the right idea.
ETA: My main Martin Shaw association is actually his excellent reading on the audiobook of The Silmarillion.
Nice! I haven't seen him in anything other than the one episode of The Professionals I watched last night, but the name was familiar enough that I was not surprised when I realized my parents have been watching him for the last several years as Inspector George Gently.
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....omg, hearing Darth Vader speak as not-James Earl Jones is very weird.
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Well, enjoy!
(That's basically Jerjerrod's entire character arc, there on the cutting room floor.)
....omg, hearing Darth Vader speak as not-James Earl Jones is very weird.
I think that has to be David Prowse; it would only be Bob Anderson in a fight scene.
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....oh, Prowse trained Cary Elwes, that's where I remembered him from.
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It's a great miniature arc. I understand why it was cut—time, no payoff in terms of the the larger plot, and the climax was cutting between three different threads already—but it made the world more complex. At least it wasn't thrown out.
I wish I could seduce him then. Hell, I'd be up for seducing him now.
Aw.
I am genuinely not sure I've ever seen him outside of Return of the Jedi. I know he did—and does—tons of stage work, but outside of a time machine or recordings that doesn't help me. How did he get on your radar?
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From Sweet William https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP_nVSYa1Qs
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Gotcha! All right, I have heard of that. Mostly through Yuletide, but these things happen.
From Sweet William
"And though I knew even then that I was looking at an actor in a pair of property boots moving slowly across a painted stage floor a bit like this one, what I was really hearing was the soft sound of his leather soles on the flagstones of Glamis Castle, and I fancied that I could feel the cold and the darkness and the silence swirling around its battlements."
That's really nice.
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http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/58627628?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1
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I'll keep an eye out for him in used book stores.
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I have never seen A Clockwork Orange, though I have read the book (and so know that the endings differ). Your response sounds appropriate within parameters of irony, but not so much so that I think you needed to keep watching.
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I sort of grew up with The Professionals, that article provoked quite a few memories, and at least as many winces. The idea of a unit that mixed criminal investigation and counter-intelligence is quite a good one in terms of being able to tell different types of stories from week to week, it's roughly what the NCIS franchise does now. In fact NCIS:LA is arguably very close to The Professionals in terms of setup, though with bigger budgets and better writers.
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We've had four a.m. explosions of spiders before, but never in the shower. That was a wholly unnecessary refinement.
The idea of a unit that mixed criminal investigation and counter-intelligence is quite a good one in terms of being able to tell different types of stories from week to week, it's roughly what the NCIS franchise does now. In fact NCIS:LA is arguably very close to The Professionals in terms of setup, though with bigger budgets and better writers.
Oh, interesting. My mother really likes that spinoff. (She watches the original primarily for David McCallum, which I'm not going to disagree with.)
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Hope the fever broke overnight and today's Readercon events go well.
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Yes! It seems plausible to me.
Hope the fever broke overnight and today's Readercon events go well.
Thank you. My reading starts in half an hour, so I hope so, too!