Fannish Update From Tess
Jun. 9th, 2005 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
non_horationOkay, and that update was getting kind of long and RL-y, so I decided to make another one for fandom stuff.
On the fanfic front,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yubsie gave me a ton of plotbunnies that I am now stuck with, so bah on you, Yubs. And one of them is FLUFF! As if I could ever write fluff. Although my Bob Dylan – Tom McRae – songs of a depressing nature playlist does seem to be helping a little. So now my list is:
Hayate asks Kaoru for permission to marry Himeno
Rebellious Teenaged Shin Drives the Adult Knights Insane
The Himeno-Becomes-Saihi AU
The Yayoi-Is-Saihi (aka Yubs as the devil) AU
And then (if I ever get to “and then” with these things) I’ll try and finish that Lark fic I started, or the fic where Syd’s memory is destroyed. I also have a random plotbunny involving Lauren, and I want to write a Neiss fic really badly, though I’m not sure how that would go now. :P
Oh! And I should do that music meme that Hannah had.
So, you list your ten favourite songs and put them on YSI for people to download. I don’t really have favourite songs, so I just sort of picked songs at random. Oh, and I should add a content warning if anyone cares, because some of these songs are a little funny that way.
1. There Is Life Outside Your Apartment – Avenue Q
2. The Tower – Vienna Teng
3. Cannonball- Damien Rice
4. A Wizard’s Staff Has a Knob On The End – Discworld
5. Save Ginny Weasley – Harry and the Potters
6. Bad Moon Rising – Rasputina
7. Headroom - Annmarie Montade
8. Over The Hills And Far Away – Nightwish
9. No Protection – Pansy Division (because Hannah asked for it :P )
10. Hell – Squirrel Nut Zippers
And yes, I took Penny Lane off to make room for Hell. I am a horrible person. :P
Oh, and because I saw it onsunshine_queen’s LJ and it made me want to do it, too, that Alias seasons ranking thing.
I actually had a hard time choosing, though Season 1 was always on top of my list. I eventually decided to go with:
Season 1
Season 3
Season 4
Season 2
(and yeah, I’ll be leaving things out, too, because my memory is like that)
Season 1 had:
The Good
- Syd had friends who liked her and actually did stuff with her, so we saw a side of her that wasn’t the crazy spy one
- These friends were also not spies themselves, so it gave her some perspective
- I will totally pay for saying this where everyone can see it, but Vaughn was beyond adorable
- Watching Sydney and her dad build a relationship out of nothing
- Sydney as a character I could admire for her strength and selflessness (especially when she helped the guy who had killed Danny)
- Will. He gets his own special mention because he was cute and I adore him endlessly
- Lost of different places that were visited on a regular basis, like the CIA office, SD-6, Syd’s apartment, the campus, whatever club they went to and the newspaper place
- Syd didn’t really believe in the prophecy, but she wanted to prevent it anyway
- The Vaughn as desk agent vs. Syd as field agent dynamic was interesting. And it made the missions they did have together more … novel, sort of.
- The cliffhangers at the end of practically every episode! These also caused us to watch way too many episodes in a row, but they made you care enough to tune in the next week, and made the show flow more like one big movie instead of a bunch of little episodes.
- Also, people got hurt and stayed hurt until it was time for them to get better. It was nice to see bandages stay on.
- Syd and Dixon were so cute and happy as partners. This was really the best season dynamic-wise for them. And there was a lot of Dixon stuff. I love Dixon.
- Also, Sloane was cool and even though he was evil and slimy and all that stuff, you could still sort of relate to him because he seemed to really believe the things he said. Oh, and the Sloane/Emily was glorious and angsty.
The Bad
- Some of the storylines seemed a little juvenile (like the whole Charlie thing in Vegas) and Felicitylike
- I was never an Anna Espinosa fan, and she was there a lot (though she was better here than in season 4). And plus, she randomly disappeared and no one said anything about it
- Jenny seemed to have “HELLO, MY NAME IS PLOT DEVICE” painted on her forehead.
- I can kind of see how it would make a first-time viewer’s brain melt.
Season 3 Had:
The Good
- Early Lauren. Because she was great and realistic, and didn’t accept Syd right away, but came to sort of respect Syd in her own way later. And she always wanted to do the right thing, and wasn’t nearly as jaded as most of the others, so she was sort of fresh eyes through which to see the Alias world.
- Will. Because he was in an episode and it was fun. Even though Syd smushed his heart again.
- Syd and Jack’s new, closer relationship. He loves her and he’s actually doing quite well at showing it, and she feels safe clinging to him when she’s frightened, and trusts him to fix her problems.
- The whole missing-two-years plotline, though it ended up going to strange and unpleasant places, made for ten exciting, fast-paced episodes where I actually was interested to know how it was going to turn out.
- More use of Weiss as a character, and his new friendship with Syd, which gave her something to do besides hide in a corner and angst
- Early season’s depiction of Sydney and Vaughn trying to be adults and work together despite everything
- Sloane was evil and fun and kept you guessing
- Jack being all stung that Irina had had an affair with his best friend, even though he’d have to have known that she was sleeping with other bad guys when they were married
- Katya. I don’t know what it was about her, but she always made me smile.
- Even though the Lark plot made little sense, Lauren and Sark were the co-eds of evil, and they were so cute and looked like they were having so much fun that you sort of wanted them to win.
- Sydney still being vulnerable enough to accept her sister even when she swore to herself that she wouldn’t
- Nadia’s willingness to give her father a chance, when she had just had her fantasy about where she came from shattered before her eyes; and her decision to give him a second chance after he saved her life
- Sloane’s conflict between Rambaldi and Nadia had its roots in this season, and I loved that he chose her.
- A really cool potential storyline with Julia Thorne, though it never really got explored.
The Bad
- A lot of things were never explained, or seemed tacked on at the last minute (the Julia Thorne explanation, Lauren’s evil, the whole thing with The Trust)
- Some of the Rambaldi stuff got a little goofy. Flubber and brain waves come to mind.
- The fact that the whole friendship with Weiss was pretty much dropped about halfway through the season
- That the fact that Lauren had sex was supposed to be justification for her death
- Syd acted like a thirteen year old girl who didn’t get asked to the end of year dance much of the time
- Vaughn couldn’t just freaking MAKE A DECISION
- Psycho!Vaughn was more funny than compelling
- Oh, and Vaughn was a super healer, which was silly
Season 4 Had:
The Good
- Nadia was a great character, and rose above the angsty backstory she was given to become an adorable addition to the cast, and a character that I really cared about
- No matter what anyone says, Neiss was cute and I adore it. Even though I cursed it and called it a badfic ship not too long ago.
- The last few episodes were plot-heavy and Rambaldi-centric
- Sloane was good in the end! And plus, Ron Rifkin is an amazing actor. The end.
- While Jack and Sydney’s relationship kind of got smashed to bits, it got better throughout the season, and we were shown on several occasions just how much he really loved her
- Katya was back. Yay, Katya.
- Marshall. Marshall got a lot of development this season, and he was great. Still funny, but a little more serious at the same time.
- Jack’s guilt over Irina’s death, and little glimpses of how much he’d loved Laura, and the whole “I choose to believe” thing with the mystery baby. I found them more shippy than Irina’s actual appearance on the show was.
- Emily! Even if she was just a flashback.
- Dixon was back! And the team was all team-y. Other than Sloane, they were all equals, and mostly acted that way.
- The finale made me jump, even though I knew that car crash was coming, and it gives you something to speculate about over the summer (and possibly fall).
The Bad
- Syd often came across as kind of a bitch to everyone
- No real explanation of the project from season 3
- Shifting backstories and changing prophecies
- A lot of characters came off as emotionally flat (Irina didn’t want to check on Nadia before she left, Syd only loved Vaughn sometimes, no one worried when Nadia was missing, Nadia had no real reaction to Jack killing Irina)
- Zombies
- The resolution of the Rambaldi plot wasn’t really a resolution
- Possibility for crappy retcon in season 5 because of finale
- Silly episodes with vampires in them
- A lot of pointless filler stuff
- Syd and Nadia's claim that they didn't believe in the prpohecy, despite Nadia having touched that sphere of life thing, and Syd having seen her own face in a 500 year old book
- Anna’s appearance was pointless, and Sark has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease (he can’t remember his own plot between one episode and the next!)
- A totally random Lauren reference
- Vaughn’s switch on/switch off Lauren guilt
- Syd never really explains why she’s changed her mind about staying a spy
- If you’re going to take it slow, it might be nice to actually, I dunno, TAKE IT SLOW instead of being stupid and annoying
Season 2 Had:
The Good
- The entire family together, especially in The Passage episodes. Poor Syd is really just a little girl who wants her family, and her parents both love her. And each other, as much as they hate to admit it
- Irina, though predictable, was interesting and I enjoyed her presence on the show
- Vaughn and Irina being forced to interact
- Marshall speaking Ewok and flipping out on his first mission
- Some great emotional stuff with Syd and Dixon
- A Sloane plot that was so convoluted that my head breaks when I try and think about it, but it has Sloane/Emily so YAY.
- Will’s earnestness about the whole spy thing, and his ability to joke while his life completely sucks beyond all belief
- Project Christmas was an interesting idea, though it never really went anywhere
- Some pretty good cliffhangers (Cipher comes to mind)
- Kendall. Because he was willing to stand up to Syd when she was being a prima donna
The Bad
- The Project Helix plotline. While it was kind of fun with Ethan and not!Ethan, the whole thing with Francie just got annoying. It was so obvious that she wasn’t Francie, and no one seemed to notice
- Syd and Vaughn’s Romance Bubble of Doom. They were so caught up in each other that they didn’t really care about anything else
- Syd going on CIA missions. It seemed ridiculous that all of Syd’s absences were magically cleared with Sloane
- Syd becoming Vaughn’s partner in the field. I liked them better when he was the desk agent
- Irina and her Look At Me For I Am a Feral Woman From the Jungle! routine. It got old fast.
- Taking down SD-6 so early in the show’s run was a bad plan.
On the fanfic front,
yubsie gave me a ton of plotbunnies that I am now stuck with, so bah on you, Yubs. And one of them is FLUFF! As if I could ever write fluff. Although my Bob Dylan – Tom McRae – songs of a depressing nature playlist does seem to be helping a little. So now my list is:Hayate asks Kaoru for permission to marry Himeno
Rebellious Teenaged Shin Drives the Adult Knights Insane
The Himeno-Becomes-Saihi AU
The Yayoi-Is-Saihi (aka Yubs as the devil) AU
And then (if I ever get to “and then” with these things) I’ll try and finish that Lark fic I started, or the fic where Syd’s memory is destroyed. I also have a random plotbunny involving Lauren, and I want to write a Neiss fic really badly, though I’m not sure how that would go now. :P
Oh! And I should do that music meme that Hannah had.
So, you list your ten favourite songs and put them on YSI for people to download. I don’t really have favourite songs, so I just sort of picked songs at random. Oh, and I should add a content warning if anyone cares, because some of these songs are a little funny that way.
1. There Is Life Outside Your Apartment – Avenue Q
2. The Tower – Vienna Teng
3. Cannonball- Damien Rice
4. A Wizard’s Staff Has a Knob On The End – Discworld
5. Save Ginny Weasley – Harry and the Potters
6. Bad Moon Rising – Rasputina
7. Headroom - Annmarie Montade
8. Over The Hills And Far Away – Nightwish
9. No Protection – Pansy Division (because Hannah asked for it :P )
10. Hell – Squirrel Nut Zippers
And yes, I took Penny Lane off to make room for Hell. I am a horrible person. :P
Oh, and because I saw it on
sunshine_queen’s LJ and it made me want to do it, too, that Alias seasons ranking thing.I actually had a hard time choosing, though Season 1 was always on top of my list. I eventually decided to go with:
Season 1
Season 3
Season 4
Season 2
(and yeah, I’ll be leaving things out, too, because my memory is like that)
Season 1 had:
The Good
- Syd had friends who liked her and actually did stuff with her, so we saw a side of her that wasn’t the crazy spy one
- These friends were also not spies themselves, so it gave her some perspective
- I will totally pay for saying this where everyone can see it, but Vaughn was beyond adorable
- Watching Sydney and her dad build a relationship out of nothing
- Sydney as a character I could admire for her strength and selflessness (especially when she helped the guy who had killed Danny)
- Will. He gets his own special mention because he was cute and I adore him endlessly
- Lost of different places that were visited on a regular basis, like the CIA office, SD-6, Syd’s apartment, the campus, whatever club they went to and the newspaper place
- Syd didn’t really believe in the prophecy, but she wanted to prevent it anyway
- The Vaughn as desk agent vs. Syd as field agent dynamic was interesting. And it made the missions they did have together more … novel, sort of.
- The cliffhangers at the end of practically every episode! These also caused us to watch way too many episodes in a row, but they made you care enough to tune in the next week, and made the show flow more like one big movie instead of a bunch of little episodes.
- Also, people got hurt and stayed hurt until it was time for them to get better. It was nice to see bandages stay on.
- Syd and Dixon were so cute and happy as partners. This was really the best season dynamic-wise for them. And there was a lot of Dixon stuff. I love Dixon.
- Also, Sloane was cool and even though he was evil and slimy and all that stuff, you could still sort of relate to him because he seemed to really believe the things he said. Oh, and the Sloane/Emily was glorious and angsty.
The Bad
- Some of the storylines seemed a little juvenile (like the whole Charlie thing in Vegas) and Felicitylike
- I was never an Anna Espinosa fan, and she was there a lot (though she was better here than in season 4). And plus, she randomly disappeared and no one said anything about it
- Jenny seemed to have “HELLO, MY NAME IS PLOT DEVICE” painted on her forehead.
- I can kind of see how it would make a first-time viewer’s brain melt.
Season 3 Had:
The Good
- Early Lauren. Because she was great and realistic, and didn’t accept Syd right away, but came to sort of respect Syd in her own way later. And she always wanted to do the right thing, and wasn’t nearly as jaded as most of the others, so she was sort of fresh eyes through which to see the Alias world.
- Will. Because he was in an episode and it was fun. Even though Syd smushed his heart again.
- Syd and Jack’s new, closer relationship. He loves her and he’s actually doing quite well at showing it, and she feels safe clinging to him when she’s frightened, and trusts him to fix her problems.
- The whole missing-two-years plotline, though it ended up going to strange and unpleasant places, made for ten exciting, fast-paced episodes where I actually was interested to know how it was going to turn out.
- More use of Weiss as a character, and his new friendship with Syd, which gave her something to do besides hide in a corner and angst
- Early season’s depiction of Sydney and Vaughn trying to be adults and work together despite everything
- Sloane was evil and fun and kept you guessing
- Jack being all stung that Irina had had an affair with his best friend, even though he’d have to have known that she was sleeping with other bad guys when they were married
- Katya. I don’t know what it was about her, but she always made me smile.
- Even though the Lark plot made little sense, Lauren and Sark were the co-eds of evil, and they were so cute and looked like they were having so much fun that you sort of wanted them to win.
- Sydney still being vulnerable enough to accept her sister even when she swore to herself that she wouldn’t
- Nadia’s willingness to give her father a chance, when she had just had her fantasy about where she came from shattered before her eyes; and her decision to give him a second chance after he saved her life
- Sloane’s conflict between Rambaldi and Nadia had its roots in this season, and I loved that he chose her.
- A really cool potential storyline with Julia Thorne, though it never really got explored.
The Bad
- A lot of things were never explained, or seemed tacked on at the last minute (the Julia Thorne explanation, Lauren’s evil, the whole thing with The Trust)
- Some of the Rambaldi stuff got a little goofy. Flubber and brain waves come to mind.
- The fact that the whole friendship with Weiss was pretty much dropped about halfway through the season
- That the fact that Lauren had sex was supposed to be justification for her death
- Syd acted like a thirteen year old girl who didn’t get asked to the end of year dance much of the time
- Vaughn couldn’t just freaking MAKE A DECISION
- Psycho!Vaughn was more funny than compelling
- Oh, and Vaughn was a super healer, which was silly
Season 4 Had:
The Good
- Nadia was a great character, and rose above the angsty backstory she was given to become an adorable addition to the cast, and a character that I really cared about
- No matter what anyone says, Neiss was cute and I adore it. Even though I cursed it and called it a badfic ship not too long ago.
- The last few episodes were plot-heavy and Rambaldi-centric
- Sloane was good in the end! And plus, Ron Rifkin is an amazing actor. The end.
- While Jack and Sydney’s relationship kind of got smashed to bits, it got better throughout the season, and we were shown on several occasions just how much he really loved her
- Katya was back. Yay, Katya.
- Marshall. Marshall got a lot of development this season, and he was great. Still funny, but a little more serious at the same time.
- Jack’s guilt over Irina’s death, and little glimpses of how much he’d loved Laura, and the whole “I choose to believe” thing with the mystery baby. I found them more shippy than Irina’s actual appearance on the show was.
- Emily! Even if she was just a flashback.
- Dixon was back! And the team was all team-y. Other than Sloane, they were all equals, and mostly acted that way.
- The finale made me jump, even though I knew that car crash was coming, and it gives you something to speculate about over the summer (and possibly fall).
The Bad
- Syd often came across as kind of a bitch to everyone
- No real explanation of the project from season 3
- Shifting backstories and changing prophecies
- A lot of characters came off as emotionally flat (Irina didn’t want to check on Nadia before she left, Syd only loved Vaughn sometimes, no one worried when Nadia was missing, Nadia had no real reaction to Jack killing Irina)
- Zombies
- The resolution of the Rambaldi plot wasn’t really a resolution
- Possibility for crappy retcon in season 5 because of finale
- Silly episodes with vampires in them
- A lot of pointless filler stuff
- Syd and Nadia's claim that they didn't believe in the prpohecy, despite Nadia having touched that sphere of life thing, and Syd having seen her own face in a 500 year old book
- Anna’s appearance was pointless, and Sark has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease (he can’t remember his own plot between one episode and the next!)
- A totally random Lauren reference
- Vaughn’s switch on/switch off Lauren guilt
- Syd never really explains why she’s changed her mind about staying a spy
- If you’re going to take it slow, it might be nice to actually, I dunno, TAKE IT SLOW instead of being stupid and annoying
Season 2 Had:
The Good
- The entire family together, especially in The Passage episodes. Poor Syd is really just a little girl who wants her family, and her parents both love her. And each other, as much as they hate to admit it
- Irina, though predictable, was interesting and I enjoyed her presence on the show
- Vaughn and Irina being forced to interact
- Marshall speaking Ewok and flipping out on his first mission
- Some great emotional stuff with Syd and Dixon
- A Sloane plot that was so convoluted that my head breaks when I try and think about it, but it has Sloane/Emily so YAY.
- Will’s earnestness about the whole spy thing, and his ability to joke while his life completely sucks beyond all belief
- Project Christmas was an interesting idea, though it never really went anywhere
- Some pretty good cliffhangers (Cipher comes to mind)
- Kendall. Because he was willing to stand up to Syd when she was being a prima donna
The Bad
- The Project Helix plotline. While it was kind of fun with Ethan and not!Ethan, the whole thing with Francie just got annoying. It was so obvious that she wasn’t Francie, and no one seemed to notice
- Syd and Vaughn’s Romance Bubble of Doom. They were so caught up in each other that they didn’t really care about anything else
- Syd going on CIA missions. It seemed ridiculous that all of Syd’s absences were magically cleared with Sloane
- Syd becoming Vaughn’s partner in the field. I liked them better when he was the desk agent
- Irina and her Look At Me For I Am a Feral Woman From the Jungle! routine. It got old fast.
- Taking down SD-6 so early in the show’s run was a bad plan.
