Things To Do While Not Watching The Debate

[melannen]

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 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.

Comments

[thatyourefuse]

... I would read that.

I would read the HELL OUT OF THAT.

(and yes, Nicola/Malcolm is a thing, and I find it a very beautiful if occasionally heart-stomping thing, but it's not the same, no.)

[melannen]

It's one of those ships where there's nothing that obviously points to it on the show, but once my subconscious pointed it out to me, I was like, YES. YES, THIS. If either of them are in an illicit sexual relationship with anyone (at least in the c. 2006 canon) it is that one.

[thatyourefuse]

I had literally never contemplated it in any way shape or form until just now, and now that I am, it's kind of glorious. And Robyn! There needs to be more Robyn!

(I would direct you to the [very very new] kinkmeme just to see if you could guess which piece of fiction was mine -- spoiler: you probably could -- but a lot of it is spoily for very recent canon, and I don't know if you want that?)

[melannen]

One of the things I am enjoying about this show is the steady introduction of interesting women. First it's just Terri and Angela, okay, I can make do, but then Robyn appears halfway through Season One, and then there's Emma in the specials, and I understand we get a Nicola and a Sam later. That's, like, one new regular female character per season! And they all have their own lives that don't center entirely around the men! (And I kind of love Robyn and Terri's relationship with each other, and the way they sort of wander through the politicians' world, not quite staying out of it, not quite letting it ruin them.)

(...god my standards are depressingly low.)

(I am not actively avoiding spoilers, but on the other hand at this rate I will be caught up on canon by, like, the end of the week, so I am sort of saving up the particularly spoilery stuff? I would love a link to a kinkmeme though.)

[thatyourefuse]

I personally unreservedly adore all the women on this show -- particularly Terri, who has grown on me no end, although as of S3 and beyond her Peter Mannion Issues are kind of hilarifying -- despite and probably because of the fact that they are all kind of awful people. They are awful people in a way that isn't gendered, which is so wonderful (what made me fall in love with Nicola is that she is definitely a woman, and definitely not good at her job, but the narrative does not connect those two dots AT ALL. And she's not in that horrible position of having to be The Voice of Sanity that you get sometimes with women in sitcoms).

Unsurprisingly, it is ttoi_kinkmeme -- very new, still in the taking-off process, but there it is.

[melannen]

Everybody in this show is awful people! Usually I don't enjoy things like that. But they're all awful in their own ways, and maybe more importantly, we're not supposed to like them for the ways they're awful, the show knows they're awful, we're supposed to like them for the small moments where they're too tired and stressed-out and used-up to remember to be awful, which, yes. And despite how OTT everything is, they are awful people in very human ways.

And yes, I love that all of the women in this show are definitively women, but that does not mean the stories they get are about how they are Women, they are about how they, too, are awful people. This should not be that rare.

(I kind of ship Ollie/Emma a lot after the specials? It is a terrible relationship and they are terrible people but they understand each other and deserve each other and really make a good team, and I love that Emma can pull exactly the same sort of crap Ollie does, and not get blamed for it more just because she's female.)

[thatyourefuse]

THIIIIIIIIIIIIIS. In chat after last week's episode I summarized my general feelings about the show as "poor, poor miserable unforgivable everyone," and I stand by it.

And YES. (I think, too, as a very general generalization, British comedy actresses are just willing to go for it a lot more than American ones -- Rebecca Front and Joanna Scanlan especially on this show just blow my mind regularly, because in different ways they just are so willing to throw themselves into looking ridiculous -- and unglamorous -- on camera. You really don't get that a lot in American comedy, and I don't know if it's because writers won't write it or actresses won't play it, but I swear it's easier to find an American tv show where a female character has sex with a close relative than it is to find one where a female character is that sort of funny/awful/REAL and not a caricature.)

(And I would read a werewolf!AU. Seriously.)

[melannen]

Really it's something British media in general is more willing to go for - part of the reason I like British television so much is that you can tell the lead characters apart, they are allowed to be both not-Hollywood-slick and people, which American media in general is terrible at - but it stands out more with the women, because the range of types of women that are allowed to be in American media is even smaller than for men.

(Also I generally find the set of physical appearances that are allowed to be leads on American television to be desperately unattractive, whereas everyone on shows like The Thick of It gets to live in their skin, and it's glorious.)

(Werewolves, sure, but fuck it, I would even read an omegaverse AU where Malcolm is secretly omega and hiding it with pheromones, and he goes into heat, and alpha-character-of-your-choice knocks him up and there is weeping of crystal tears and pregnancy drama and no worldbuilding effort at all, and if you have ever heard me talk about what is wrong with omegaverse, that should tell you how much I want anything in this universe that makes the dominance play even more explicit.)

[thatyourefuse]

THIS THIS THIS. I don't think I've ever in the last several years had the kind of batshit crush on an American telly character that I have had on a number of British ones who tend to be variously short, fat, over fifty, visibly wrinkled, wearing absolutely the wrong lipstick... and of course everyone ever played by Hermione Norris who is actually physically perfect but also plays some characters you'd have to seriously sacrifice a goat to the HBO gods to get on your television over here, and really she's the outlier in terms of appearance.

(... I absolutely guarantee you that I am not writing that omegaverse AU.

Um, if you can guess which word in that sentence is stressed... I really am in it almost exclusively for the worldbuilding?

*hides*)

[melannen]

Yeah, even the women who can do Hollywood Slick get to go on British shows and wear sloppy make-up and realistic clothes and act like people (and then I suddenly start finding them attractive.)

(Does that mean you're writing one where Malcolm is secretly omega and hiding it with pheromones, and he goes into heat, and alpha-character-of-your-choice knocks him up and there is weeping of crystal tears and pregnancy drama and there is amazing worldbuilding? Because I would read that one and not even pretend to be ashamed. :P )

[thatyourefuse]

THIIIIIIIS.

(No, I'm writing alpha!Malcolm/omega!Nicola set during S4 where, while no one gets knocked up, they manage to accidentally bond at the worst possible point in the timeline and there is an absolute media SHITSTORM. And worldbuilding.

... I cannot believe the sentence I just typed. But, seriously, it might even end up being, like, practically gen.)

[melannen]

(I WOULD READ THAT EVEN HARDER. OMG. GEN-ISH OMEGAVERSE WITH SOULBONDS AND WORLDBUILDING, nnnngh.)

[thatyourefuse]

(I do not know how the gen-ish thing happened! It's, like, I have really ridiculous porn in my head, the pair of them are exhibits a and b in the category of people I find ridiculously unconventionally attractive, but can I write it down outside a chat window? Nooooo, I'm over here writing fake Guardian articles. WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY BRAIN.)

[melannen]

Any brain that starts out with ridiculous porn and ends up writing fake Guardian articles is ... clearly somewhat similar to my brain, actually. MY CONDOLENCES. I still want to read it!

[thatyourefuse]

We'll see how it comes together. I could do porn outtakes or something. I don't know. I am ridiculous.

[derryderrydown]

There's a thing happening with the current season of TTOI where, whatever happens in an episode, will happen in reality the following week. Armando Ianucci seems to be getting increasingly nervous about it.

(Also, Rebecca Front who plays Nicola Murray? She always plays Brad Colbert's mother in my head.)

[melannen]

Oh, man, I really need to catch up. (Although now I'm starting to get worried for me. What kind of terrible tragedy does he have cued up for later in the season that he's getting nervous about becoming real?)