Tired of the meta and the rant

[itsallovernow]

I'm tired of listening to myself rant and bitch, so in the interest of being happier and more productive, give me something good.

Tell me:

a) What you love about science fiction or genre

or

b) Give me a scene from any show (preferably a genre show, but it doesn't have to be) that fills you with awe, or glee, or squee


Let's do a little proactive adoration.

Comments

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

a) It's about characters, but there's guaranteed plot. When I was in my pretentious high school stage, I quit reading the sf/f I loved as a child. Then in college I got thoroughly bored with reading about People, and I never liked shows that were just about people doing their thing. Genre means I'll always be entertained, even if the characterization is off.

b) That scene in "Deep Throat," the second episode of X-Files, where Mulder is standing, sillohuetted on the runway in the dark while the UFO lights play above him. That image is so striking and so stunning, I forgive 1013 a lot of their sins for having achieved it so early in their run.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

There are many, many things I've forgiven 1013 for in the face of some of the astonishing television they gave us even in season 1.

[umbo.livejournal.com]

Oh, there are so many!

1. Rodney McKay, hopped up on Wraith enzyme, coming through the gate to Atlantis, *knowing* what he needs to do and focused on it until Elizabeth distracts him, all full of "You should have SEEN me--I was AMAZING" about how he overcame the guards.

2. Aeryn Sun, just about every moment she appeared on screen

3. Tim Bayliss admitting he found a man attractive while interrogating a suspect in Closet Cases. Because cop shows are genre shows too. :-)

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Hee - I watched #1 because I was reading reviews of it on my flist and it seemed to fun to miss:)

and for #2, ABSOLUTELY. Just. Yeah.

And cop shows are absolutely genre, especially when done right. They have their own rules and laws and closed universes where the people who exist are the cops and criminals and those harmed and helped.

[cretkid.livejournal.com]

it's a two edged sword for me: I like having my fiction have a basis in reality (hence the science) but at the same time, I like having the ability to dissociate from reality (hence the fiction). Why must science fiction always incur the wrath of space monsters on the poor hapless inhabitants of Planet Hack-in-sack?

Hell, even science fact has some roots in science fantasy: dinosaur bones were once thought to be the remanants of giants or dragons until it could be shown that they were large reptiles unlike anything that exists today.

Where I think some of the issues lie is that some outside the genre do not see it as true literature/media - let's just stick to literature for now. HG Wells wrote splendid tales of Invisible Men and Jules Verne wrote about journeys to the center of the earth, but it's not seen as great literature outside the genre because it at the time it was fantastical and fanatical. It certainly was not a Dickens tale of the poor and impoverished reaching and succeeding beyond their means or a Bronte (??) fare of hearths and moors and mysterious marshes.

And the same can be said of science fiction genre. It's not seen as the competition for the great dramas and I say, WELL WHY THE HELL NOT?!?!? You place Battlestar Galactica on a Navy ship in the middle of the Pacific set during World War II and you have a John Wayne movie. You set Deep Space Nine (the later years) on the Western Front and you have a historical allegory. Just because it has non-humans or is set in space or have SOME element of the fantastical about it, it gets a bum rap.

Well, screw them all!

I love the genre for the drama. I love the genre for the characters that are simply a reflection of what we are as humans, as living beings. I love the genre because it allows me in some sense, as I said, to dissociate from what's going around me today, but at the same time, offer me a new perspective on a problem or a conflict.

And you want a scene? I only get to name one?!?! Hee.

I love from a recent BSG the naming ceremony for the new ship Chief built. I love how he spent all his time and energy on a project that have him HOPE that there was a future, that they might win. I love how that entire set of scenes was orchestrated, from the blocking to the background music. Hell, all of the music behind BSG sounds very tribal, very earthy and drum-beating-vocal-calling-rattle-the-cages real to me.

And that's why I love science fiction - because a scene like that on JAG or Law and Order, with the oh-so-not-urban details to it, would seem boring and out of place.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I love the genre for the drama. I love the genre for the characters that are simply a reflection of what we are as humans, as living beings. I love the genre because it allows me in some sense, as I said, to dissociate from what's going around me today, but at the same time, offer me a new perspective on a problem or a conflict.

That's pretty much it, isn't it:)

And you can name as many scenes or moments as you'd like:)

[kazbaby]

Not quite sure if this is what you were asking about, or even what you mean by just 'genre' because I'd thought genre was just a classification of various interests.

Until recently, I would have said I wasn't necessarily a science fiction fan, but more into horror. Then I started looking back at the shows/movies I've enjoyed over the year...and whattya know...I guess I am a scifi fan. ;-)

At least with movies or tv. When it comes to Written material, aside from fanfic, I've only read I think three, maybe four science fiction novels since I started choosing material on my own as a kid.

One thing that always stands out in my likes/dislikes is that I always seem to root for the underdog. That trend goes throughout what I'm interested in. One thing that I love is that it doesn't limit itself to a straight line way of thinking, everything within the lines of scifi, is actually out of bounds.

A good example is something I said to kernezelda last night while watching Flash Gordon. "If John Crichton had been like Flash, I never would have watched Farscape."

Not that I hate Flash, I love him for the cheese factor, but I don't want a perfect hero saving the damsel in distress. And Farscape showed that while John was handsome, smart, and a jock, he was far from perfect. They went against the stereotype by making him flawed, the same as us. Going so far as to want to kill in retaliation to the wrongs done to him. Also allowing us to see things from the 'bad guy's' side and see John in a different light. They also granted the viewer a chance to explore their own imaginations to what may come next. Even with PKwars, some see it as an end, while others see all the doorways left open to explore.

I love seeing things outside the norm, and to step outside myself. Either creating or living outside of RL. eh...

Okay, this didn't come out nearly the way I wanted it to, and I'm sure others can say why they love it with far more eloquence, but here it is. *g*

**

The one scene that I love the most? I'd say it's a toss up between John Crichton standing at the end of UR and the iceberg is gone and he's all alone there a moment, he's says the word 'Time', before the wormhole opens beneath him and he drops into it, and the scene in Dune just after Paul Atredies drinks the water of life for testing, and he wakes up with all of the worms around him and his group, as if bowing and paying homage to him.

Both of these scenes... *shiver* ...make me a very happy fangirl. *bg*

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

All of that is excellent! Thanks for sharing!!!

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

The closing scene of "Lie To Me", when an exhausted Giles asks an exhausted Buffy what she wants him to say.

Buffy: "Lie to me."
Giles: "Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after."
Buffy: "Liar".

That's the show in a nutshell.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Yeah. That's at the heart of what I loved about Buffy.

West Wing

[haphazardmethod.livejournal.com]

Not genre but one of my favorite hours of TV ever.



TOBY: "A homeless man died last night, a Korean War Veteran, who was wearing a coat I had gave to the Goodwill. It had my card in it."

BARTLET: "Toby, you’re not responsible..."

TOBY: "An hour and twenty minutes for the ambulance to get there. A Lance Corporal, United States Marine Corps, Second of the Seventh. The guy got better treatment at Panmunjong."

BARTLET: "Toby, if we start pulling strings like this, you don’t think every homeless veteran would come out of the woodwork?"

TOBY: "I can only hope, sir."

Re: West Wing

[raithen.livejournal.com]

actually, it seems to me the THea and I have agreed, in years gone by, the TWW is an AMAZING example of genre tv, fantasy genre. And that is a classic example of why.

*happy memories*

Re: West Wing

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I love that scene. Really, it's hard for me to think of a Toby scene I don't love.

Re: West Wing

[haphazardmethod.livejournal.com]

It's beautiful. And Martin Sheen does a lovely bit of acting by fidgeting throughout until Toby says that, and he freezes. It's perfect.

Second runner-up in that episode would be when Toby tells the homeless guy's homeless brother that he's a very powerful man, and his voice breaks in the middle of it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

I love about science fiction that there is always so much to engage the imagination. That the universe is so vast that as a fan, you can spin your own tales, imagine anything you like, and it's within the realm of possibility, even possible that the show's canon will never challenge your homemade story.

I also love about it that it allows for a dialog about things that we are frightened of in our own cultures; that by providing a new vocabulary (Jaffa, Goa'uld, Tok'ra, Peacekeeper, Scaaran, Vulcan, Romulan, Federation, Borg, Replicator) they open doors we are afraid to open.

To that end, one of my favorite scenes is from the SG-1 episode Death Knell, where the Tok'ra, Jaffa and Daniel and Hammond are sitting at a table discussing their mutual enemy and their inability to work together. They discuss the former slavery of the Jaffa and how they need to learn the difference between government and slavery, and they need to learn it on their own. They discuss their inability to overcome old bitternesses, to ignore the face of their enemy and see an individual they might befriend. They discuss the arrogance of superiority, and that it is more dangerous than their new enemy. They bring it all back to a personal level by discussing one soldier, one, who is fighting the enemy and expecting to come home with their support. They discuss why they won't be there.

It's painful, and it's awesome.

[fbf.livejournal.com]

What I love about genre fics is that they are not here, in the real world we all live in. They take place in a different world, even if that world is this one. It's a shifting of perspective that allows us to venture into territories of Real Life that we normally couldn't or wouldn't. It's about taking real life eexperiences and dressing them up in different ways. Ways that allow us to re-examine them without the apathy. By apathy I mean that real life is hard and rough and it is so easy to get bogged down by it all that it's hard to care, yet take the same things and put it into genre fiction and I can deal with those things because they in no way are like real life. I especially love the scifi/fantasy/horror stuff because of the fantstical nature of the settings. It can be the same kind of politics and war and hard living as in RL, but it's easier to swallow in a fantasical setting. There is also a certain heroic nature to genre fiction that one is hard pressed to find in RL fiction. It's like, I get enough real life in my real life, I don't want to spend my down time wallowing in it too.

As for moments that make me happy:

Farscape:

Family Ties Rygle trying to apologize to John and John telling him that 'Doing the right thing starts at the beginning of the day, not once you've been caught.' or something like that. It's the moment when Rygel became real to me. A 2.5 foot puppet became a real person because of his reactions to what John said and did.

Lies, Guns and Money I, II, and III Three of the best action packed hours on TV. The score was amazing. Shit got blown up. The heroes won. It was epic and fun and I am sure there were some WOO-HOO!s coming out of my mouth as I watched it.

Dog with Two Bones John and Aeryn by the Prowler. Broke my heart. Still breaks my heart. Some damn fine writing that is.

Crackers Don't Matter Harvey in a Hawaiian shirt. 'nuff said.

We're So Screwed The first part with John's speech on the table and the last part where John says the nuclear bomb in a field of flowers line. Dichotomy at it's finest and perfect book ends to those eps.

Rygle pissing explosives.

D'Argo in the converatible.

Crais in red pumps.

Scorpius grinning.

Everyone in leather.

Stargate Sg-1:

Season One ending where Jack hugs Daniel in the gate room and calls him a Space Monkey.

Hammond flying to the rescue with Teal'c and literally giving a big old YEHAW!

Jack and Daniel in the empty gate room right before Daniel ascends.

Thor

putting the team in leather.
Vala hitting on Daniel. Actually, Vala hitting on anyone.

Jack and Daniel snark.

Teal'c's arms.

and I could just keep going on, but I won't. *bg*

[raithen.livejournal.com]

I especially love the scifi/fantasy/horror stuff because of the fantstical nature of the settings. It can be the same kind of politics and war and hard living as in RL, but it's easier to swallow in a fantasical setting. There is also a certain heroic nature to genre fiction that one is hard pressed to find in RL fiction. It's like, I get enough real life in my real life, I don't want to spend my down time wallowing in it too.

Oh. THANK YOU! People (my family, in particular) have often wondered how I can love shows and films like BtVS and LOTR and yet ostensibly eschew violence on TV and movies (I don't like actiony thrillers, for example). And you just summed it up BEAUTIFULLY!

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Hee - loves you utterly.

[raithen.livejournal.com]

I need to pick one, eh?

well, we all know the show it'll be. Now, the scene. Huh. This is hard.... I think I have to go with the end of Helpless, which is replete with cool scenes (the holy water STILL makes me smile a billion viewings later, and if I'm hokey, so be it.)

But my favorite is Buffy and Giles in that quiet moment at the end after Giles is fired, and Quentin leaves, and Buffy starts to swab her wound on her forehead and Giles gently takes the cloth from her. There is So. Much. in that simple gesture. After the deceit, the hurt, there is love.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Yeah. That's a great scene, so much unsaid, and so much that simply doesn't need to be verbalized.

[thedorkygirl.livejournal.com]

I love that scifi can give me strong female characters that are not only sexy but are able to kick ass too. I love that scifi helped me come out to myself BECAUSE of my obsession with said sexy, ass-kicking characters.

I love that scifi can be religiuos and still rock. In fact, I love that other than historical novels, scifi is the only (or one of the only) genre where I will ROCK the religious clock.

I love that scifi has given me the wonderful Hair of Roslin to adore every Friday.

I love that scifi can be read and cried over and then produce Thoughts which are Big Thoughts.

I love that scifi was always on the back of my mind, even when I was tiny and my grandmother told me that "science fiction is crap."

I love that I can dream of it and maybe someday a little bit will be true.

I love time travel. I love a good paradox.

I love Heinlein and Card and Bradbury and old, dry, boring scifi books. And new, dry, boring scifi books. And crazy exciting scifi books. And fun Star Trek novels!

I love scifi because it'll stay youthful forever -- science fiction is always science fiction; whenever we learn more, there's more to dream about.

[pellucid.livejournal.com]

I love the way that sci-fi enables the sort of questions and explorations and pondering that just doesn't work in ordinary drama: what do we know and how do we know it? What are the reprecussions of our choices? And do we even have choices, or is it a matter of fate? And of course all the ethical grey area stuff, which you do get in good realistic drama, but is also a staple of sci-fi.

***

And how to narrow down a few moments. There are a few of the "big" Farscape moments that totally sucked me in, despite my efforts not to be sucked into the intentionally big moments! Aeryn's funeral in DMD and Scorpius and John taking off the I-Yensch bracelets in ITLD come immediately to mind. They're moments specifically designed to elicit an emotional reaction in me, and dammit, they do!

[ixchup.livejournal.com]

Your definition of science fiction/genre love is exactly mine. Thea, when you asked your question I thought immediately of Ursula Leguin's "Left Hand Of Darkness" about hermaphrodites who become one sex or the other depending on their mate and the ramifications of that for a society. Or, all the discussions I've had over the years with hubby and friends about Harry Seldon's new science of demographic psychology as well as The Last Question as asked by Isaac Asimov. Or talking dogs and telepathic tigers and Telzy Amberon of James Schmitz' books and on and on. I love my genre to be psychological or anthropological (big d'uh) and there are so many society situations that can be explored while keeping the heart of the stories.

I have no real scenes but Sam standing with Al on the stairs after singing Impossible Dream and then leaping in Quantum Leap after wanting to stay to be with a piano teacher he had when he was 15; I think of other Quantum Leap episodes that had me crying for Sam and Al and his situation as well as the stories they told.

I definitely think of the musical episode of Buffy and the people dancing and singing so hard they went up in smoke--that is imagination.

I think of Han Solo in the cantina with his gun under the table or when Leia is sitting in the cell and Luke in his white Imperial uniform comes to the door and she says "You are mighty short for a Storm Trooper." or so many other wonderful lines and situations in the Star Wars IV, V, and VI.

And Farscape scenes you guys have already mentioned. I believe the most heart wrenching is Dog With Two Bones scene in the hanger between John and Aeryn and the Nuclear Bomb In A Field of Flowers.

See, all stories about people and situations dreampt up in the minds of their authors to explore the human condition.

[sugargroupie.livejournal.com]

a) Honestly, I love any genre that allows me to admire strong characters who look like me. It doesn't happen often, and probably occurs more in novels than television, but when I see characters of color who symbolize more than a stereotype, but are fully realized individuals who aren't defined just by their race... that makes me happy. And I don't mean the aliens or the magical negroes, because I have issues with that, and it's something I've ranted about in my own journal. Flipping off convention, turning the cliche into something meaningful and inventive and fresh, it leaves a lasting impression that surpasses even the race issue. Hence the same intense love I have for both Zoe and Aeryn Sun.

b) ditto to what someone already said about John's tabletop speech in HtK. There's a scene in an episode of Jeremiah called Thieves' Honor, and I think you have to know the canon to get this scene, but I love this part:

Theo: "Didn't the Big Death teach you anything?"
Jeremiah: "It taught me that life is precious."
Theo: "That's funny - it taught me life is cheap."

I fell in love with Theo in that moment.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Flipping off convention, turning the cliche into something meaningful and inventive and fresh, it leaves a lasting impression that surpasses even the race issue.

Oh exactly. Beyond race and gender, and yet encompassing the myriad issues of those things.

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

I love that genre not only embraces the idea that the world is bigger and stranger than we can imagine, it goes ahead and tries to imagine it anyway.

It puts us--humanity with it's complexities and failings and strivings--on a bigger stage and shows us the beauty and terror of wjat it means to be alive in the world. It flows both ways, because by changing the particulars and the setting around a character's actions, by slowing them down and enlarging them and casting them in strange-colored light, it lets us see ourselves anew, afresh, and we bring that perspective back to our lives and more easily recognize the heroic and tragic and wonderful and terrible in the real world we inhabit, in ourselves and our fellows.

A portrait doesn't have to slavishly hew to reality in order to conveyr meaning or be recognizable. We take that for granted in visual media, yet there's still a denigration of genre as the worthwhile lens it is. You don't have a CAT scan on your driver's license, but it's still a meaningful, wonderful and rich source of information about you. Genre is another way of humanity trying to recognize and learn about itself and the world, to make sense, to dream better dreams and nightmares.

I love:

In "The Mummy Returns", when Evie's brought back to life not because her brother reads a spell from the correct book, but because her son recognizes a hieroglyph she taught him and supplies it to his uncle.

In "Babylon 5" when Londo Mollari consents to be given a Keeper on the day he becomes Emperor, a parasite that will control him and make him do horrible things to his people and the rest of the galaxy. There's such pride and dignity in the submission, he's doing this because if he doesn't they will only find another puppet for the throne, and he may, *may* be able to mitigate some of the damage that will be done in his name. But he's outmaneuvered and all alone and he makes a sacrifice of what's left of his heart and soul that no one will ever appreciate and he does it just as much because he's convinced he's damned and deserves it as he does for the love of his people--there is no one else, no one better suited, so he steps up to duty.

In Doctor Who 9.01, when the Doctor describes what it's like to be him and takes Rose by the hand; wonder, connection, the world tilting away from you and suddenly you can feel yourself, for a moment, hurtling through the universe.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I love that genre not only embraces the idea that the world is bigger and stranger than we can imagine, it goes ahead and tries to imagine it anyway.

Throws my arms around you. Oh absolutely! And holds on because you are a precious commodity around here these days!

It flows both ways, because by changing the particulars and the setting around a character's actions, by slowing them down and enlarging them and casting them in strange-colored light, it lets us see ourselves anew, afresh, and we bring that perspective back to our lives and more easily recognize the heroic and tragic and wonderful and terrible in the real world we inhabit, in ourselves and our fellows.

And I feel pretty damned honored to have shared this experience with the lot of you. By taking this in and writing it out.

[skippydoo.livejournal.com]

a) I would have to say that I love genre stories because they can take that essence of humanity, dissect it into different parts, dramatize the good and/or the bad, change every label and concept that we know of and make us see things more clearly, more crisply than we ever have before.

b1) Liars, Guns and Money: The look on Aeryn's face as Jothee and D'Argo are reunited. Her look of despair. That this joyous reunion has cost her everything.

b2)Babylon 5: G'Kar cuts his hand and as each drop of blood falls he only says "Dead". Any G'Kar moment really. Even through the latex his passion, horror, anger, love, and joy always comes through.

[fourteenlines.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a movie, but:

In ROTK, the lighting of the signal fires. I don't know why it gets me, but it gets me every time. (That, and Gandalf and the Rohirrim charging the orcs at Helm's Deep in TTT.)

I will cry just thinking about it. Seriously. Like right now!


From AtS, Wesley cutting himself and feeding a starving Angel.

From Farscape, Scorpius standing on the stairs as the water rushes around him while the Command Carrier is being destroyed.

From X-Files, that moment in "Pusher" when Mulder points the gun at Scully, against his will, and has to communicate all of his despair and fear with nothing but his eyes. And she just stares back.

Toby at the end of "The Women of Qumar," putting his hand over his heart in the pressroom so that only CJ can see.

[somedaybitch.livejournal.com]

a) What you love about science fiction or genre


the hope and the possibilities.