Fannish meme!

[nineveh_uk]

Courtesy of lilliburlero and legionseagle.

Comment with one of my fandoms and I'll tell you:

the character I least understand
interactions I enjoyed the most
the character who scares me the most
the character who is mostly like me
hottest looks character
one thing I dislike about my fave character
one thing I like about my hated character
a quote or scene that haunts me
a death that left me indifferent
a character I wish died but didn’t
my ship that never sailed

Comments

[naraht]

Yuri on IIIIIce!!!

[nineveh_uk]

An excellent choice!

the character I least understand
Otabek. Well, we're not really given a lot to go on. Presumably that will be series 2.

interactions I enjoyed the most
Victor/Yuuri. It's the core of the series, and I do really like it. It's funny, it's embarrassing, it veers wildly between professional and unprofessional, and I've been re-watching and seeing again how many little bits are given an extra edge by the episode 10 revelations.

the character who scares me the most
I definitely wouldn't want to be taught PE, or indeed anything else, by Lilia. Professional, yes. Excellent teacher, yet. Terrifying, definitely. Imagine if you hadn't done your homework.

the character who is mostly like me
I was going to say that none of them really are, because as sportspeople at that level they are driven in a way that I'm not, and the other option is small business owner, which I find equally terrifying. And then I remembered Guang Hong's narration of his free skate as a fantasy narrative in which he is a dashing underworld assassin and dies outnumbered in a noble sacrifice. Which I might have occasionally done on the way to the toilets at work in some of the odder buildings I've been in. Also he is embarrassed by dinner companions stripping in public.

hottest looks character
Victor Nikiforov, no contest here!

one thing I dislike about my fave character
I can say very little for Victor's choice of pants.

one thing I like about my hated character
JJ manages to behave with considerably dignity after his worst-ever performance.

a quote or scene that haunts me
"Let's end this." I do really like the way that Yuuri's worry about his own issues makes him very unkind to other people sometimes.

a death that left me indifferent
There's only one death, and since we don't meet him I can't say that I wept for Vicchan. But I would certainly have sacrificed Makkachin to the gods of narrative if necessary.

a character I wish died but didn’t
I don't want any of them to die, it's not really that kind of story. Although Yuri Plisetsky would probably get along with DEATH on account of their shared love of cats.

my ship that never sailed
If I were being malicious, I would say Victor/Yuuri. But it has sailed, it's just the captain isn't very good at navigation.

Canonically, I suppose Lilia/Yakov is at the salvage yard, maybe it can yet have another chance!

[lilliburlero]

Wimseyverse, please?

[nineveh_uk]

the character I least understand
Tricky. One of the things I really like about the series is how she makes so many of the characters understandable, even an out-and-out psychopath like Mary Whittaker has an un-psychopathic motivation up to a point - she's given up her career to care for her elderly relative, and she's going to be left seriously vulnerable if she doesn't get the promised inheritance. Of the main characters, pretty much all of their motivations are well-drawn. I might not be like Parker, but it is very clear where he comes from and what sort of person he is.

Oh wait, Uncle Paul. Uncle Paul is incomprehensible on every front.

interactions I enjoyed the most
Peter/Bunter and Peter/Harriet. Peter and anyone he likes, really. I do enjoy him when he's in his affectionate teasing mode with people he's really fond of.

the character who scares me the most
I definitely wouldn't like to be on the wrong side of Mary Whittaker. But I wouldn't really like to be on the wrong side of Peter, either. A man who will cheat at cards to achieve justice is a man with no limits.

the character who is mostly like me
I probably want Harriet to be like me more than she actually is.

hottest looks character
Bunter. Had there been a series 15 years ago he should definitely have been played by Colin Firth. His photography is probably a cover for making money as a male studio model.

one thing I dislike about my fave character
Harriet Vane can be a bit of judgmental cow at times. But then so am I.

one thing I like about my hated character
It's really, really hard to come up with a redeeming feature for Helen! I suppose she does do her duty herself as well as expect it of other people, and is as unhappy because of convention as she expects others to be, and she loves her children even though she and her husband aren't the world's greatest parents.

a quote or scene that haunts me
Interwar murder and sad people offers a choice of these. I do love the last chapter of Busman's Honeymoon, of which I saved the last pages for two hours so I didn't read them on a train. And Peter's suggestion to Mr Tallboy, Go home now, and don't look behind you. But I shall go for Harriet towards the end of Gaudy Night, on the evening the Poltergeist plans to attack Miss de Vine, putting on the dog collar and looking at herself in the mirror. The whole sequence has a kind of heavy atmosphere of late spring when it is probably going to rain really hard, but hasn't yet, and that sideways kind of yellow light, and a general sense of waiting for things to break, and Harriet looks at herself and sees the head of someone who has been guillotined, "the dark band cut it off from the body like the stroke of the headsman's steel."

a death that left me indifferent
I'm not going to weep for Dr Penberthy as a person. But there are surprisingly few deaths in Sayers. By and large she doesn't do the cascade of murders. Her murderers bump off one person for a specific reason, and with the exception of the aforementioned MW are smart enough to realise that killing more people is unlikely to help their situation (the MMA drugs gang doesn't count, that's business).

a character I wish died but didn’t
I could argue that one death isn't enough for Philip Boyes.

my ship that never sailed
There is a tragic lack of Bunter/Saint-George in canon.

[caulkhead]

Because nobody else will ask

Tanz der Vampire

[nineveh_uk]

Thank you for asking :-)

the character I least understand
Koukol :-)

And Magda. For goodness sake, you can sew, you can cook, you’re good-looking, get a job somewhere your employer isn't sexually harassing you and the neighbours aren't blood-sucking monsters.

interactions I enjoyed the most
Graf von Krolock/everyone. Look, I just like the over-dramatic manipulative bastard in a big cloak, and Vor dem Schloss is not only one of my favourite scenes because the title reminds me how to use two-way prepositions. There was a review/blogpost I read somewhere that the Count offers himself to Sarah and Alfred as lover and mentor, respectively. And I thought, no he doesn’t, he offers both the lover and intellectual mentor option to each of them to see what they will take.

the character who scares me the most
The chorus. Von Krolock is an evil bastard, but his penchant for dramatic moments and deferred gratification might give you time to escape, and you don't have to accept the invitation to the ball. The graveyard vampires will just kill you.

the character who is mostly like me
Regrettably, probably the Professor. Especially his tendency to get lost looking at the bookshelves in the middle of doing something a lot more important.

hottest looks character
Herbert in the German production costume. It's the tights-clad long legs/frilly shirt/pony tail combo, it calls to my 80s/90s blood. Though I also appreciate the right sort of Count.

one thing I dislike about my fave character
Graf von Krolock doesn't pay his bills. Yes, it's a metaphor, but it is still an unnecessary evil and doesn't present a flattering picture of what he was like when still alive.

one thing I like about my hated character
To say I hate Chagal would be going too far, but he does lock up his daughter and sexually harass the maid. But though his character is basically summed up as Ye Comic Innkeeper, I like it that he gets his moment of genuine heroism, or at least heroic folly, when he runs off alone into the wolf- and vampire-haunted midnight wood to try and save his daughter.

a quote or scene that haunts me
Well, I’m currently writing a fic about the first verse of Die Unstillbare Gier, or as I like to call it Fields of Gold, the Sick Version. It’s a terrific song live, though I also like looking up various versions on YouTube to see how different people play it. The “haunting” version is, perhaps inevitably, that of the original Count, Steve Barton (who also created Raoul in Phantom of the Opera), who had suffered from serious depression, and does an all too convincing portrayal of miserable self-loathing.

a death that left me indifferent
Mine. I don't mind if the audience are slaughtered if I’m entertained.
I don’t exactly mourn for Koukol, either. He has insufficient character, though I do have a vague fic idea about how vampires employ hideously ugly hunchbacks, because if you have a servant everyone else fears and hates even if they don’t work for you, and who has few other job options, you have a much higher chance of personal loyalty.

a character I wish died but didn’t
Not applicable! Rocks fall, everybody dies. Not necessarily in that order.

my ship that never sailed
There is not nearly enough von Krolock/Alfred dub-con.

Also, Sarah and Magda should run away together to the nearest big city.

[azdak]

17 Moments of Spring!

[nineveh_uk]

I was thinking the other day that I must re-watch this. Having had to think up the various answers, I definitely need to.

the character I least understand
Possibly the answer to this one should be "all of them". But actually, all of the main characters are set up very comprehensibly. They might be bastards, but they are bastards with personality, and of course that's why it works because if Stirlitz were surrounded by cardboard villains there would be no satisfaction in his beating them.

Which is perhaps why one of the less memorable characters is Allan Dulles. He's well enough acted and written, but the narrative is less interested in him overall, presumably because he doesn't really come up against Stirlitz in a personal way.

interactions I enjoyed the most
Stirlitz and Schellenberg. It's partly the way that it is written, but it is acted beautifully by two people with real chemistry. And the Hitler's birthday party scene is a hoot.

the character who scares me the most
Müller. He has a torture chamber and he's not afraid to use it, but he's not only a thug, he's an intelligent thug.

the character who is mostly like me
Probably a random functionary, let's be honest.

hottest looks character
Stirlitz, of course! Preferably in uniform. Schellenberg's dainty ankles have nothing on Mr Flint-and-Steel.

one thing I dislike about my fave character
Though it is excellent for conveying inner thoughts and narrative themes, IRL I would find Stirlitz's smoking annoying.

one thing I like about my hated character
I bet that at least some Soviet girls looked at the meant-to-be-appalling baby-torturer Barbara and thought that her social life sounded cool.

a quote or scene that haunts me
Leaving aside the documentary footage... The scene when Kaltenbrunner tells Müller why he is suspicious of Stirlitz: because everyone with any sense knows what is going to happen to all of them if the Russians make it to Berlin, but Stirlitz just says that everything is fine, and he can't be stupid enough to really believe it. I just find it a great moment in itself, it's got that appalling dread underneath it, but also typical of what makes the series work so well, presenting a human side to Kaltenbrunner even as he is kicking off the investigation of our heroic Soviet super spy.

Runner up, Müller's dream of retiring on a nice little farm, with the moment to run being when the Russians have come and there is fighting in the streets,

a death that left me indifferent
I must admit I find Erwin more important as a plot point than a character.

a character I wish died but didn’t
None of them in the course of the show, as I can remember. Of course, the viewer knows what is coming to them.

my ship that never sailed
Ultimately, it's too close to RPF, and too close to Nazi RPF at that for me to have any interest in actually shipping the characters. That said, I can be considerably amused at the idea that Schellenberg is so egotistical that he thinks Stirlitz's interest in him is more than the admiration of a mere Standartenführer for a department head.

[azdak]

Thank you! I loved wallowing in this. It's been so long.... I was thinking of 17 Moments because I was toying with the idea of going to St Petersburg for a few days and whenever I think of learning Russian, even if it's only the Cyrillic alphabet, I always turn to 17 M.

I'm finding Müller even scarier than I used to of late. When I first watched the series I scoffed ar his little speech about Nazis hiding out, biding their time and gradually increasing their following until they could take over again. "This will never happen!" said I. "Precisely because of you, Müller, people hate Nazis and always will." Nowadays, though, his prophecy gives me a feeling of cold dread in my stomach, especially when an election is imminent somewhere in Europe...

[el_staplador]

Zenda!

[antisoppist]

Chalet School.

[nineveh_uk]

the character I least understand
Much as I like younger Joey, I can't say that I understand older Joey with her eleven children! (But still a Chalet School girl at heart, of course...)

interactions I enjoyed the most
I always enjoy Clem's interactions with people, a welcome straightforwardness without 'side'.

the character who scares me the most
I remain convinced that older Mary-Lou is exercising some kind of mind-control over her fellow pupils and probably the staff as well.

the character who is mostly like me
I like to think I might be Con Stewart, who decides to go her own way. I'm probably not.

hottest looks character
Con Maynard? Tall, cool, with very long hair that appears to be black with red lights.

one thing I dislike about my fave character
Everything that younger Mary-Lou becomes. I love Three Go and resent what happens to all of them.

one thing I like about my hated character
I am prepared to believe that Joey Maynard has a genuinely good voice.

a quote or scene that haunts me
"So I take it we're engaged. Like it, darling?" AAAAARGHGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

a death that left me indifferent
Minor characters of other series I hadn't actually heard of when I read the books.

a character I wish died but didn’t
It is interesting to think what the series might have been like had Jack Maynard actually died in the war. Joey with fewer children, maybe teaching at the school.

my ship that never sailed
Kathie Ferrars/Nancy Wilmot really ought to be canon.

[imhilien.livejournal.com]

How about Saga of the Exiles / Galactic Milieu ☺

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

The Duchess of Malfi. (Minus the "a character I wish died but didn't" one, for obvious reasons.)

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Since nobody's asked this - Harry Potter!