Nico's Journal

And once again, by commenting on a post, I have five more topics. Sorry it took a few days to get round to it. :-P

Comment on this post asking for topics and I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.

lizamanynames gave me art, Stark, kitties, Tiggers, and Romans.

( My answers )

Posting a list of fiction written in the last year seems the thing to do. I didn't use to do it because I wrote so much for b7friday, but I've been very slack in the last year. (I really must try to write more often this year.)

( List of stories )

Thanks to veritykindle I've found a site that has me staring longingly, my nose pressed up against the window. The Doll Doctor, a major Farscape fan, makes character dolls and plushes and they're just amazing.

The dolls are 12" articulated bought ones which she customises. She has a Stark! She has them all, including a Scorpy with removable cooling rod and optional Hawaiian shirt to turn him into Harvey--and even a Grayza. She has a lot of fun with the figures too, posing them. Ever seen a photogasm triggered by a torch (flashlight)?

astrogirl1 especially, you have to check out the Stark and Zhaan pose. Just awwwwwww.

Of the plushes, my favourites are Scorpy (it's the expression), Darth Maul and Yoda. OK, I still want a plush Vila, but now I want a fully-articulated doll Vila. I think I'll work towards ordering one sometime because they are truly works of art.

This all started with the icon pairing meme. astrogirl2 and I both had Hello characters who appeared in it, and redstarrobot wrote us a story each to match. Then, when I had a bad day at work yesterday, I requested a Hello Vila and Starky story from astrogirl2, and when she wrote me a lovely one, redstarrobot wanted one too.

It was only fair that I write them one each in return, and I also wrote an extra one for snowgrouse whose lovely icons started it all.

All illustrations by snowgrouse except for the Hello Troopers who are by entropy_house.


( 'Hello Starky and the Decimas' by RedStarRobot for AstroGirl2 )

Some time after the big Blake'7 vs Farscape waterfight on Nation States, astrogirl2 and I took them to Space City where they had a lot of fun in the free-fall amusement park, casino, and eat-all-you-can buffet, and finished their day off with a Rebo and Zooty magic show. Vila (and I) took a series of photos, and so did the president of Ragania (astrogirl2). Don't ask.

As before, only the captions seem to have survived.

( Rebo and Zooty Magic Show photo list )

kernezelda's post about water balloons and the impressive 'The Beast' launcher system reminded me of this, plus it's crossover week at b7friday.

A while back, before I was on LJ, astrogirl2 and I used to play on Nation States where we gave the Blake's 7 and Farscape crews planets of their own and ran them. Vila and I had the Rogue Nation of Vila Restal and Stark and Astro ran New Banik along with Zhaan (miraculously resurrected / found by Stark). We had a lot of fun using the comment feature to run an RPG. Sadly, we let it all die when we failed to make any government decisions for 30 days.

Anyway, Vila and the B7 lot (The Villains) challenged the Farscape crowd (I've forgotten their team-name) to a massive water-fight hosted by Zhaan, and Vila took photos. Sorry, I don't have his pictures, just his captions. :-)

( Water-fight photo list )

This is the funniest thing I've seen--and heard--in a while. It's a BBC cult site with examples of Farscape swearwords, all read out in deadpan, very British voices, sounding extremely HHGTTG (the old radio version). Scroll down and pick a swearword. They also provide a very understated and, yes, British, translation of each example. The sound clip is very short and plays after a few seconds.

The BBC employ people to do this? I want a job.

Some further thoughts and a rant about the script of the Farscape episode Coup by Clam.

I was surprised to find this was written by a woman, Emily Skopov. There were some very good bits--the shellfish containing neurologically-linked bacteria which gave the people who ate them the same symptoms, and Crichton in drag which had me laughing out loud--but we had [rolls eyes] yet another society which oppresses women. Just what goes on here? Do writers think to themselves, "I know! I'll write about a culture in which woman don't count. That'll be original--it's only been done 5000 times, and it's not like it happens on this planet."

Bloody hell, why not write something really different, like a race with several sexes, all of which are needed for procreation, or one with a hive-mind? Or confound our expectations: I loved the garbage-collecting alien, Staanz, in The Flax who appeared male but was actually female, though he was cancelled out by the bloodhound couple Rorf and Rorg in Till the Blood Runs Clear who regarded females as inferior and owned by males. I think I've read only one or two stories in which females were dominant and usually this 'unnatural state' has been corrected by the end. Not that I approve of that sort of society either, but it would have been much more original, and also fun to see Aeryn and Sikozu in drag.

Sexist societies appear in every SF show I can think of. Hey, script-writers, how about a little more thought and invention and a lot less tired and offensive cliché?

Last night we watched more of Farscape season 4. It was A Prefect Murder ... and bwahahaha, Father Jack was in it!

For those of you who don't know, Father Jack is the mad old priest in the wonderful Father Ted who sits in his chair muttering, "Feck! Arse! Drink! Girls!" every now and then. The alien priest Paroos looked just like him, but with horns, and this can't be coincidence. The muppet-makers must have modelled him in homage to Father Jack, and possibly as a subtle reference to Crichton's father being called Jack too.

( Unnerving proof here )

My Farscape season 4 DVDs just arrived! DeepDiscount are refunding me for the set ordered more than two months ago that got lost in the post, so I ordered it locally as it was released here in the meantime. With that and the LOTR extended trilogy and various other DVDs like 'Edge of Darkness' (oh, and Buffy season 1 on its way here--I've never seen Buffy) we won't be short of good viewing over the holiday break.

And I'll be able to read all the Farscape fic I've been avoiding!

Now all I want is The Peacekeeper Wars when it comes out. Oh, and Blake's 7 season 2 of course, which I've pre-ordered.

[bounce]

snowgrouse had an idea for a game: Names Crichton Would Give To Characters From Other Fandoms. So here are some Blake's 7 ones.

Blake: Che, rebel with a cause (snowgrouse suggests Starsky, and rebel without a clue--hee!)
Vila: cracker-jack, artful dodger, unsafe at any speed, Bilko, puppy-dog eyes
Jenna: barbie doll, blondie, stilettos
Avon: rebel tech-boy, leather-geek, snarky-features, Concorde, fancy-pants, Puss-in-Boots
Gan: the Hulk, Bigfoot
Cally: satellite dish, teep, little miss mystic
Servalan: Grayza with taste, Cruella de Vil
Travis: Servie's tame rottweiler, Hymie
Dayna: bomb-shell, WMD
Tarrant: long drink of water, Q-tip
Soolin: ice-maiden, hairdo-of-the-day
Jarriere: Brillo-pad

And from snowgrouse, Bercol and Rontane: Stan and Ollie

Og: yeti, horny, hairball (kalypso_v suggests walking carpet - eeeeexcellent!)

We haven't seen season 4 of Farscape yet, but Sky is showing season 1 again, so I'm watching it for the third time. Last night was 'DNA Mad Scientist'. I suppose this is common knowledge in the FS community, but I just realised during the ep that Namtar spelled backwards is Ratman. Shades of poor Timov in B5. Namtar, by the way, is a seriously cool alien; I wonder how the actor walked with those goat legs. And I do hope poor Kornata managed to reverse her own changes. A hand as big as your head would be a right pain not to mention hard to type with. Was she named Kornata because of the first of the squicky eye scenes which later become such a feature? [shudder]

I do love that last scene with D'Argo and Pilot.

While on names, at work the convention is to write to customers using just their initials and surname. Yesterday I came across someone called I M Bent. You'd think parents would consider this sort of thing before naming a kid, wouldn't you? But no--today I found as S Weller.

From the www.BBC.co.uk/cult website:

The Farscape mini-series is going to be big, says Henson.

Talking to SFX magazine, the director and executive producer of the Farscape mini-series, Brian Henson, says: "It's great, it's big, it's epic. I think it's going to be the biggest thing there has ever been."

"It was tough to figure out how to make a big event mini-series of Farscape when on every episode we were trying to make a movie a week," he adds, before revealing a little bit about the plot:

"It's basically the continuing love story of Crichton and Aeryn... set against a backdrop of a full, all-out, intergalactic war between the Scarrans and the Peacekeepers."

Henson also reveals that far from closing the Farscape book, the end of the mini-series creates a whole new set of possibilities for the franchise.

astrogirl2