Soledad's Journal

So, new page, new topic: list your top favourite fandoms - let's say, we should limit to 10 tv and 10 book fandoms. You can list less in each category but no more.

It will be interesting to see how many we share. :)

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Here are mine

Top 10 TV fandoms:
1) Battlestar Galactica (the original)
2) Star Trek (classic, the original)
3) Babylon 5
4) Kindred: The Embraced
5) Tour of Duty
6) Merlin
7) Sherlock BBC ( the first 2 seasons - I despise S3)
8) Stargate: Atlantis
9) Star Trek: DS9
10) Torchwood

Top 6 book fandoms:
1) Tolkien's universe
2) The Cadfael Chronicles by Ellis Peters
3) Taran books by Larry Alexander
4) Miss Marple novels by Agatha Christie
5) Poirot novels by Agatha Christie
6) Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin

There are lots of other books I love, but they can't be considered fandoms, so this is what I could think of off the top of my head.

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Hmm, this was surprisingly difficult, both to find anywhere near 10 television fandoms and to limit myself to anything like 10 book fandoms! I ended up cheating with the books and listing some authors.

Television
1. Twin Peaks
2. ST:DS9
3. Angel
4. Yes, Minister
5. Blackadder
6. Blake's 7 -- this was my entry fandom at least in terms of online interactions but I'm pretty much out of it now
and way below...
7. Forbrydelsen S1
8. The Hour

Books
1. Jane Austen
2. Earthsea
3. JRR Tolkien
4. Diana Wynne Jones
5. Jane Eyre
6. Eagle of the Ninth series & other Sutcliff
7. Norse mythology
8. Sherlock Holmes
9. Good Omens & other Gaiman
10. LM Bujold Vorkosigan/Chalion series
and many, many more...

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Yeah, I know, I condensed Tolkien, Larry Alexander and Agatha Christie, too.
Is there a meaning behind which ones are in italics on your list?

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Supposedly titles should be italicised, while universes/characters are usually not; so Earthsea series vs Earthsea the universe. But mostly I was being lazy/inconsistent with everything except the obvious titles!

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lhun-dweller.livejournal.com

I don't really have fandoms in TV, but 10 favorite shows in my past (haven't had a TV for years now)
1) Anything Jacques Cousteau
2) Sealab 2020, a cartoon about an underwater colony of scientists -- that's what I wanted to be as a little geek girl
3) Star Trek -- most of the iterations, except Janeway never did it for me
4) Tour of Duty -- Thanks for the reminder, wiseheart. That was a special show, and for America, I think it was culturally an important marker: we could actually have a show on commercial TV about Vietnam that showed a lot of the ambiguities
5) Stargate - original -- don't think I've seen more than an episode or two of the later ones
6) Cadfael series (seen on public television in the US)
7) Arthur of the Britons -- saw it as a kid in NZ. As I've described it elsewhere, a young, grubby Arthur and his grubby companions -- Saxon Kai and his adoptive Welsh father, Llud -- all riding around a grubby, not-at-all-great Britain
8) Early St. Elsewhere which, I discovered when I moved here, was modeled on the medical facility that houses my current academic employer

Haven't read for fun enough to have favorites in books, but I have enjoyed the odd Cadfael novel and remember being enchanted by the ecology of the magic system in the Earthsea trilogy. I also must have bought and read just about every paperback spinoff from the Space: 1999 series in my teens. No accounting for my "tastes"!

Edited Date: 2014-10-08 01:50 am (UTC)

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A fellow Earthsea fan! The magical system is so much more intuitive than many more popular series. Have you read the later books? If so, what do you think?

I love Cadfael too, though I felt the television adaptations did a relatively poor job, despite Jacobi. It didn't help that they kept recasting Beringar; I preferred the first one, despite his acanonical blond hair.

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The episode I found most horrible was "The Pilgrim of Hate". That is my all-time favourite among the novels, and the character rape they did in that one was outrageous.

In general, it was very cheaply made (filmed in Hungary, no less), practically everything took place in the same cottage with slightly different decoration. And I didn't find Jacobi a good choice. I used to know an old Benedictine brother who was just like Cadfael, but Jacobi was too aristocratic-looking for the part.

I preferred the first Beringar (Sean Pertwee), too. That was another character turned inside out; and I missed the Cadfael-Beringar friendship. It is such an important element of the books, and it was completely omitted from the series.

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At least Jacobi can act, which is more than could be said for most of the others.

Beringar I was occasionally ok, though they did play down the central friendship. Beringar II might as well have been an OC.

I don't remember the television version of The Pilgrim of Hate; possibly I've mercifully blanked it; possibly I've just never watched it.

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sammydragoncat

I have never read the books, and only saw the series after I read your Torchwood/Cadfael cross-over. I have been meaning to get a one of the books - just haven't gotten around to it.

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Trying to list fandoms is hard, especially if I think about fandom interaction vs caring about the canon.

TV
Babylon 5/Crusade
Doctor Who
Stargate
Firefly
West Wing

Books:
Tolkien
Swallows and Amazons series - Arthur Ransome
Bujold
Sucliff - various of the historical ones
Paksenarion series - Elizabeth Moon
Sherwood Smith
Far Distant Oxus - Katherine Hull and Pamela Whitlock
Noel Streatfield

And I should stop trying to make the lists now, I know I'm forgetting this and it is hard to pick.

Edited Date: 2014-10-07 08:35 pm (UTC)

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Yeah, it isn't easy, is it? You think findin ten would be hard, but once you start thinking about your favourites, fandom or not, you realize how little ten choices are.

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I tend to find picking favourites hard - so many different things to try and rank on.

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Which Bujold series do you like?

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All of them! I think the world building (so much detail and interesting hints) is wonderful in both Sharing Knife and Chalion - and so want to know more about either world. Vorkosigan series is great too, but the books are so varied in strength, but the characters are great and it is very interesting to see the bio-tech and the way it feeds into all the world building.

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I first got into Vorkosigan, though I really like only some of the books -- Memory is my favourite, but I like most of the ones with a detective flavour, and Shards for Aral & Cordelia, still one of my favourite fictional couples. I've found the later books a bit weak; I read Captain Vorpatril's Alliance a couple of nights ago, and thought it read like fanfiction.

I started Chalion only last year, and only read the last two books immediately before the Bujold conference this August. I need to read them again, but I think it's a much stronger series than Vorkosigan. The invented religion in particular is really interesting, and not something I've seen done so successfully elsewhere.

Sharing Knife I'm still reading. Plotwise it's a bit slow not to say corny, but I find the worldbuilding hints simply fascinating and I'm loving the parallels with LotR.

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Captain Vorpatril's Alliance felt to me like she was trying to answer all the questions and tie up the series. It certainly didn't read as good as soon of the others.Memory is definitely the best, although also so hard to read at the start.

The religion in Chalion is great - I love the fact that the gods do want to intervene, but have rules (and that the rules aren't really understood by anyone).

The plot picks up more in the 3rd and 4th books ofSharing Knife. I love the totally different basic setup and the whole Lakewalker culture and life. It is really interesting to speculate on what might have happened before or how things will change.

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One needs to be invested in Miles & Simon (& Alys, & Gregor) for Memory to have its impact, I think. I agree wrt CVA; also, I didn't like the heterosexualising of Byerley, who I'd read as queer.

I must try to finish Sharing Knife -- before YT sign ups if possible, though I'm going to be frantically busy &/or away from home for much of that time.

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One needs to be invested in Miles & Simon (& Alys, & Gregor) for Memory to have its impact, I think.
Yes. It really builds on everything.

also, I didn't like the heterosexualising of Byerley, who I'd read as queer.
I'll probably have to reread at some point, because I still saw him as queer through it - just in a relationship of some sort with Rish. I may have been reading what I want into it, I know reading something for the first time I often miss things (one of the things that make rereading so much fun).

I must try to finish Sharing Knife -- before YT sign ups if possible, though I'm going to be frantically busy &/or away from home for much of that time.
*nods* Where are you at?
I should not say much about it, because spoilers, but the fourth book is very much my favourite.

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I wish Rish had been male; I don't think it would have affected the story too much. It's certainly possible to continue to read By as bi, which I can tolerate.

There was a lot of talk at the conference in August abut how all of Bujold's homosexual/bisexual characters do one of die horribly; be Eeeevil; or Turn Heterosexual for Love.

With SK, I'm somewhere in the middle of book 2; I keep picking it up & putting it down again. Altariel, my Bujold-peddler, likes the last two books, as I recall.

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espresso-addict.livejournal.com - Date: 2014-10-08 11:35 pm (UTC) - Expand

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I don't know Bujold at all - never seen any books over here. Apparently, I've missed something really interesting.

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They are very good books, but not often in bookshops even here.

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