Entry tags:
Things To Do While Not Watching The Debate
The last few nights before bed, I've been watching The Thick Of It (starting with S1 - I'm now caught up through the specials). This was a show I've been aware of in a vague sense since it started, but especially (obviously) when I was active in British Politics RPF fandom. I drifted out of that fandom about the time that the new government stopped being an exciting story and started clearly being about screwing over the young, old, poor and disabled.
But then![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thatyourefuse started watching it and posting about it, and that means it almost certainly has interesting female characters and powerplay, and apparently what I really needed now was a political fandom I could enjoy that had no real-world stakes, and being a BBC show this one has a much less intimidating amount of canon than West Wing, so I started watching.
For the record: watching this before bed every night is possibly not a great idea. :P
1. Malcolm Tucker's swearing wasn't as impressive as I expected. It's not that it's not impressive, it's just that like anything of surpassing awe and horror, the reality can never be quite as terrible as the legend. (It's still impressive enough to be a major barrier to writing in this fandom, though.) Also I think the actor's getting more fluent with the tirades as the show goes on.
2. The first episode was really, really confusing, unless of course the version I watched was missing bits or had scenes out of order, that's how confusing it was. It doesn't help that at that point I was basically still telling people apart only by hair color and accent (it took me far too long to realize there were two mad Scotsmen), but I think I may have tried to watch it once before and got bounced out by not understanding the first episode? The second episode was way less confusing. I may have to go back now that I'm starting to get names straight.
3. This show is, for obvious reasons, constantly getting compared to "Yes, Minister" - a 'darker, gritter, more cynical Yes Minister' or 'Yes, Minister crossed with x'. Now granted I was a lot younger last time I watched a substantial amount of Yes, Minister, but I'm not actually finding this more cynical? It's faster-paced and swearier and it's more obvious on the surface that these people are terrible, terrible people, but Yes, Minister was already pretty much as cynical as it's possible to get. I'm finding (so far) that the main difference is that the characters in The Thick Of It actually care. *What* they care about is generally either unclear or despicable, but they do care passionately. This is not so much the case on Yes, Minister, where everybody has pretty much given up.
To be honest I think what made me decide to keep watching was when I got far enough in to realize that the Thick of It characters are just as ineffectual and irrelevant as the Yes, Minister characters, they're just far more self-deluded about that fact. (Watching either of these shows while attempting to believe that these people are among the most powerful in the world is just a recipe for depression, what they're good for is cheering you up by convincing you that they don't matter nearly as much as they want you to think they do.)
Does not hit my embarrassment squick, though! (Well, once in awhile when some poor unprepared MP gets thrown on Newsnight, but Newsnight always hits my embarrassment squick.) I think the fact that pretty much everyone on this show entirely transcends shame helps. Also the fact that I'm not feeling pressured to laugh at them when they fuck up.
4. Speaking of laughing: this show is not a comedy. It gets billed as a comedy, some of the fanfiction is hilarious, I guess you could read it as satire? But I don't find the show itself particularly funny; possibly that requires thinking this is an exaggeration of what goes on in high levels of government? I don't know.
There is a really excellent crossover fic where our British government is a TV show in Malcolm Tucker's world, and Malcolm refuses to believe that any government with that much high melodrama and human ridiculousness actually exists. Which... yeah. That's one reason I can never give up RPF - in reality you can get away with far stranger characters and plot twists (and numbers of characters who are not white-straight-nondisabled-cismale yet have their own lives) than you can in fiction. So I'm not even reading it as particularly satirical, to be honest, it's just a toned-down fictionalization of real British politics.
(I mean, for example, they did what was essentially the housing expenses scandal three years before it happened in RL, except that the one on the satire show was far less over-the-top and filled with salacious tidbits than the real one.)
5. There needs to be a fic where Malcolm Tucker gets hired by Harold Saxon in order to help overthrow Rassilon's cabal on post-EoT Gallfrey. I'd read it! You know you'd read it! Why can't I find it?
Also a thing that should exist: Terri/Malcolm femdom. (Okay, there needs to be more a) Terri fic in general - she is, unsurprisingly, my favorite, and b) femdom in general, because reasons) but dammit I dreamed this last night, and the internet isn't providing. (I get the impression that Nicola/Malcolm is maybe a thing but I haven't got to Nicola yet, and even then I bet the power dynamics are not quite the same. Remember it was Malcolm who suggested Terri for the job in the first place! And there must be a reason he's constantly hanging around the department in times of high stress.)
Here, have an excerpt that's all I have left from my dream:
SEE? There needs to be more of that. :P
For the past month or more my fandom activity has been: watching QI and HIGNFY and listening to the Bugle and The News Quiz; attempting to work on my Avengers polybigbang fic and other fics in that universe; attempting to finish one of my Community fics; poking at last year's yuletide (which I am going to post more of this year! I swear!) and related canon; keeping up with a couple of webcomics; watching The Thick Of It; and, when I just want braincandy, reading Teen Wolf slash.
I have no desire to watch Teen Wolf canon, though. It's partly because it's clear this is one of those fandoms that exists to spite canon, but let's be honest, it's at least partly because Derek and Stiles both have epically terrible hair.
I think NaNo is going to be werewolves this year, though. Just because (and because I have nine different things in my wips file that involve wolves, coyotes or werewolves in some way, for some reason.)
...no, I am not going to write a Thick Of It werewolf AU, stoppit.
But then
thatyourefuse started watching it and posting about it, and that means it almost certainly has interesting female characters and powerplay, and apparently what I really needed now was a political fandom I could enjoy that had no real-world stakes, and being a BBC show this one has a much less intimidating amount of canon than West Wing, so I started watching.For the record: watching this before bed every night is possibly not a great idea. :P
1. Malcolm Tucker's swearing wasn't as impressive as I expected. It's not that it's not impressive, it's just that like anything of surpassing awe and horror, the reality can never be quite as terrible as the legend. (It's still impressive enough to be a major barrier to writing in this fandom, though.) Also I think the actor's getting more fluent with the tirades as the show goes on.
2. The first episode was really, really confusing, unless of course the version I watched was missing bits or had scenes out of order, that's how confusing it was. It doesn't help that at that point I was basically still telling people apart only by hair color and accent (it took me far too long to realize there were two mad Scotsmen), but I think I may have tried to watch it once before and got bounced out by not understanding the first episode? The second episode was way less confusing. I may have to go back now that I'm starting to get names straight.
3. This show is, for obvious reasons, constantly getting compared to "Yes, Minister" - a 'darker, gritter, more cynical Yes Minister' or 'Yes, Minister crossed with x'. Now granted I was a lot younger last time I watched a substantial amount of Yes, Minister, but I'm not actually finding this more cynical? It's faster-paced and swearier and it's more obvious on the surface that these people are terrible, terrible people, but Yes, Minister was already pretty much as cynical as it's possible to get. I'm finding (so far) that the main difference is that the characters in The Thick Of It actually care. *What* they care about is generally either unclear or despicable, but they do care passionately. This is not so much the case on Yes, Minister, where everybody has pretty much given up.
To be honest I think what made me decide to keep watching was when I got far enough in to realize that the Thick of It characters are just as ineffectual and irrelevant as the Yes, Minister characters, they're just far more self-deluded about that fact. (Watching either of these shows while attempting to believe that these people are among the most powerful in the world is just a recipe for depression, what they're good for is cheering you up by convincing you that they don't matter nearly as much as they want you to think they do.)
Does not hit my embarrassment squick, though! (Well, once in awhile when some poor unprepared MP gets thrown on Newsnight, but Newsnight always hits my embarrassment squick.) I think the fact that pretty much everyone on this show entirely transcends shame helps. Also the fact that I'm not feeling pressured to laugh at them when they fuck up.
4. Speaking of laughing: this show is not a comedy. It gets billed as a comedy, some of the fanfiction is hilarious, I guess you could read it as satire? But I don't find the show itself particularly funny; possibly that requires thinking this is an exaggeration of what goes on in high levels of government? I don't know.
There is a really excellent crossover fic where our British government is a TV show in Malcolm Tucker's world, and Malcolm refuses to believe that any government with that much high melodrama and human ridiculousness actually exists. Which... yeah. That's one reason I can never give up RPF - in reality you can get away with far stranger characters and plot twists (and numbers of characters who are not white-straight-nondisabled-cismale yet have their own lives) than you can in fiction. So I'm not even reading it as particularly satirical, to be honest, it's just a toned-down fictionalization of real British politics.
(I mean, for example, they did what was essentially the housing expenses scandal three years before it happened in RL, except that the one on the satire show was far less over-the-top and filled with salacious tidbits than the real one.)
5. There needs to be a fic where Malcolm Tucker gets hired by Harold Saxon in order to help overthrow Rassilon's cabal on post-EoT Gallfrey. I'd read it! You know you'd read it! Why can't I find it?
Also a thing that should exist: Terri/Malcolm femdom. (Okay, there needs to be more a) Terri fic in general - she is, unsurprisingly, my favorite, and b) femdom in general, because reasons) but dammit I dreamed this last night, and the internet isn't providing. (I get the impression that Nicola/Malcolm is maybe a thing but I haven't got to Nicola yet, and even then I bet the power dynamics are not quite the same. Remember it was Malcolm who suggested Terri for the job in the first place! And there must be a reason he's constantly hanging around the department in times of high stress.)
Here, have an excerpt that's all I have left from my dream:
"Oh, you know, sometimes he gets a bit wound up, you just have to know how to wind him back down," Terri said, with a vague spirally hand motion that Robyn really didn't want to be able to interpret. She risked a glance to where Malcolm was leaning nonchalantly next to the ladies' loo, poking at his blackberry as if he hadn't just ducked out of there two minutes after Terri. He did look more relaxed, though, less likely to start committing bloody mayhem on passers-by. He licked at his upper lip and Robyn hastily looked back to Terri. Terri smoothed down her skirt, and then crossed her legs in a gesture of ineffable satisfaction. Robyn hid her face in the briefing paper and tried desperately not to think.
SEE? There needs to be more of that. :P
For the past month or more my fandom activity has been: watching QI and HIGNFY and listening to the Bugle and The News Quiz; attempting to work on my Avengers polybigbang fic and other fics in that universe; attempting to finish one of my Community fics; poking at last year's yuletide (which I am going to post more of this year! I swear!) and related canon; keeping up with a couple of webcomics; watching The Thick Of It; and, when I just want braincandy, reading Teen Wolf slash.
I have no desire to watch Teen Wolf canon, though. It's partly because it's clear this is one of those fandoms that exists to spite canon, but let's be honest, it's at least partly because Derek and Stiles both have epically terrible hair.
I think NaNo is going to be werewolves this year, though. Just because (and because I have nine different things in my wips file that involve wolves, coyotes or werewolves in some way, for some reason.)
...no, I am not going to write a Thick Of It werewolf AU, stoppit.