Come Close and Talk Fannish To Me

[redbrunja]

The way my schedule worked out this week (part chance, part because I worked on Saturday and had a family outing at too-fucking-early-o'clock on Sunday), I have today off, sans a few appointments.
 
So anybody in the mood to gab about fandom?

Things I have been into recently:

•Community (besides the ubiquitous Jeff/Annie, my interest is piqued in Abed/Annie, Abed/Britta, and Britta/Annie).

•The Vampire Diaries. I just rewatched the pilot last night and was filled with happiness and joy. And I remembered why I had the foolish belief back then when this show started that I could ship Good Girl/Good Vampire. Oh, to be so young and foolish.

•Harry Potter. I'm currently on the downhill slope of Goblet of Fire and Hermione is maintaining a high standard of awesome. (Also, I like Krum/Hermione more and more as time goes on. He was a famous Quiddich star! Who went for the brainy girl! Who tragically paid more attention to the Boy Who Lived and had a crush on her oblivious best friend! SPEND THE SUMMER IN BULGARIA, HERMIONE!)

•Anastasia! I rewatched that movie with my mom a couple of nights ago and it was a really good childhood flashback. (Mom: "Did they just blame the Russian revolution on magic? Did Dimitri and Anya just elope with no money?" Me: "I'm so glad you waited until I was older to nitpick like this. (But you're right, of course.)"

•*points to tag list* While some things I later end up disliking end up in my tag-system, that and my icons are a good way to see what things I at one point liked enough to believe I'd be talking about them more than once. 

Comments

[sharkflip.livejournal.com]

Anastasiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I love that movie. I love that movie even more after Russian History 311. I love it because it shows that you can make a fairy tale out of ANYTHING.

I love that they made Nicholas out to be a wise, benevolent ruler, overthrown by the evil communists. I love that apparently the Russian royal family (save Anastasia) were apparently murdered in the palace the night of the first revolution (or were there even two revolutions in this timeline?).

I love that apparently the season changes from DARKEST WINTER to THE GLORY OF SPRING in the week it takes them to go from Moscow to Germany. I love that apparently Anastasia's hair grows from cute short pony-tail length to flowing tresses in that same week.

I love the dancing, singing bugs. And the bat. I love the bat.

[spunspider.livejournal.com]

hello! recent lurker, making an appearance because otherwise i would just feel creepy.

:( the vampire diaries pilot! but.. but.. it was so awful! i'm so glad i decided to continue the show on a whim but i cringed my way through that horrifically cheesy pilot. it. was. so. bad! i became rabid about the show later of course, heh. ^_^

I LOVED KRUM/HERMIONE SO MUCH. &hearts i wanted her to seriously be with him for a while before she hooked up with ron. wonwon got lavender, she deserved a relatiobship too!

i'm ashamed to say i never watched anastasia! not properly, anyway. i remember getting cereal box toys of the two gremlin gargoyle thingers and keeping them for ages and ages, i think that makes up for it at least a smidge.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, want to talk to me about Baccano! for a bit? I have been meaning to check it out as I keep hearing good things about it, and you generally have a very good eye for reccing the bits that'll grab me in a series...

[natural-blue-26.livejournal.com]

Oooooooooh, just rewatched the last three Vampire Diaries episodes from season one the other night. (My friend and I had been spacing out a rewatch all summer.)

What are your thoughts on Isabelle? I was all prepared to put her firmly in my 'Dislike!' category until right up when she was actually honest with her husband... 'Bitch With A Backstory/Regrets Who Does It To Protect Someone' I can live with- her story up until then was fairly unredeemable IMO. I'm definitely hoping they work her back in a lot in the second season.

...And I still dislike Bonnie as much as I did the first time around, check. She's just become very cold, almost 2D in being all anti-vampire and *nothing* else. Caroline has more going for her as a character in my book, even though she's so completely in the dark about everything.

Shame about Anna, though. :(

[terenewen.livejournal.com]

Yeahhhh, I definitely need to start watching TVD. Maybe after I get a little more settled in The L Word and finish season 1 of Community.

Ahh, I'm finally getting back into Goblet of Fire because I just finished A Game of Thrones last night at 4 am, and let me tell you, that book gave me really, really weird dreams. But ugh, that was always one of my disappointments, that Hermione and Krum didn't really reappear. I couldn't even define why I liked it so much at the time, but it was just such a, "YES!" moment when they came down to the ball together.
I guess distance would've made anything more between them kind of difficult, but... aww, okay, I guess I'll just be sad about it forever.

That all being said, it's really striking me, as I reread the HP series, how amazing the worldbuilding is. I knew, when I read them as a kid, that I absolutely loved these books. My friends and I would play games where we would pretend we were going to Hogwarts.
It's only in rereads that I'm realizing just what a perfect fantasy world it is. It's so tangible that it feels like it could be real, even all these years later. The details that she puts in about the wizarding objects, traditions, etc. just give the books so much. I mean, there's a reason a whole bunch of kids from my generation were really disappointed on their 11th birthdays, and it's not because J.K. Rowling is a spectacular, brilliant writer, it's because she knows how to build a world that makes the fantastic seem totally plausible.
Every fantasy book needs that base to stand on, or else the audience just can't believe in it. Judging by how much time I, as a 19 year old, spend going, "UGH I WANT A BROOMSTICK CAPSLOCK RAGE" when I read these books, I'd say she did a pretty good job.

[bellonablack.livejournal.com]

Ahhh. You're just now reading Harry Potter. Goblet of Fire is one of my favorite books of the series. <3

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

Your Mom's nitpicks...SO TRUE. lol. I love Anastasia sooo much. (Well, Meg Ryan. So. Yeah.) But there's just so much to love there because both the characters grow so much.

Um, the weather change is obviously because of the thematic moving from the gloom of the past to the spring of a new day (and I love Paris in the Spring time- moments), but, well, St. Peteresburg and Paris are also in a different climate and lattitude. I've always blamed the weather change on that. :)

What do you think they did after they eloped?


As for HP... knowing you are in a re-reading gives some of our discussions about HP more context. I LOVE book four. Its such abridge in tone, I think, which structurally I've always loved. I mean, there's foreshadowing and stuff in everything but I like the symmetery provided in her series and how later books corrolate to earlier ones so well. Like Book One and Seven are very closely connected both in that so much was foreshadowed in the first book, and thematically. Harry confronts Voldemort on his own again, his parents and their deaths are revisited (well, if you count the flashback, literally revisited!), and the forest. Books two and six connect closely both in terms of Ginny (and even the theme of crushes in general though that was also in others), and more importantly in terms of Voldemort/Riddle's past becoming important again, and, of course, we find out the truth that was foreshadowed in book two when Dumbledore says a piece of Riddle's soul was stuck into Harry by accident (when he explains the parsel tongue). Books three and five also corrolate closely, what with both having major arcs about James Potter's friends, Remus and Sirius. Interestingly too, both have strong arcs involving Fudge and the government. In book three Harry is well-beloved of the ministry and sees Fudge in person whereas in book five he turns on him, and the important lesson that not everyone will believe you or work with you (a major theme and point of frustration in book five) is first learned in book three when Dumbledore basically explains that the government won't just listen to Sirius or free Buckbeak. Up till that point, Harry et al had not seen that. In Book one they are rewarded for breaking the rules, and book two they right an old wrong in proving Hagrid's innocence. I'm rambling...sorry. I just love the symmetry in all this. :)

Hermione/Krum is awesome. Though, I'm wondering, since in the book we know they keep in touch as pen-pals, if Hermione has to deal with Krum still kinda liking her. I've had those where a dude who by all objective accounts should be a great guy but just didn't do for me wanted to "stay friends," but really was just trying to keep in the game. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.....Anyway. Hermione is a catch and people should be all happy she goes to the one random dance the school puts on with them. :D

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

Also... are you into Soul Eater anymore? If so, why or why not?

[fairest1.livejournal.com]

I love Anastasia. Sure, they eloped with no money, and it's about as historically accurate as Animal Farm, but it is love. And yes, as you mentioned elsewhere, the tally is of the win.

And Krum/Hermione . . . no. At least, not then. Dating a guy two years older than you is a bigger deal at 15 than it is once you're past the age of majority. Not to mention, then and there she's busy working toward defeating Voldemort; best not to have her distracted too much.

If, say, Krum invited her for a visit at the end of book 7 -- when the dust is still settling and she's now permitted some time to breathe and recover from a year on the run -- she'd jump at the chance to just get away from everything. And from there, who knows?

The thing with Ron won't last. Wartime romances don't always survive peace, and school romances don't always survive graduation. Ron's got a double whammy against him.

[nimblnymph.livejournal.com]

I'm tired and it's preventing me from thinking of things to fan out over...

I haven't watched enough of Community yet to really comment on it, but the episodes I've seen have been fucking brilliant. My god... the one where they were being harassed by high schoolers was so irritating but hysterical.

We could always discuss how freakin' AWESOME Pam from True Blood is. Or how I'm kinda falling out of love with the whole Eric/Sookie angle.

Or maybe we can talk about how I recently rewatched my fave Disney movie ever, Beauty and the Beast, and once again discovered that Belle whoops all Disney princess asses combined -- excluding Mulan.

Is it strange that the only two Disney princesses I really fell in love with aren't technically princesses at all? Huh.

(Anastasia was awesome, btw. I love the theme song for it. And I had a serious crush on Demetri. Even at such a tender age, I liked my men animated and with unnaturally pretty hair.)

Let's see... Leverage! Did you see the new episode for that yet? It was amusing and it's really started making me ship Elliot/Sophie, which is causing havoc with my Nate/Sophie fangirl. It's a pickle.

I think ... that's it. There might be more fannish stuff, I just can't think of any right now.