Various things of a fannish nature

[louiselux]

I had a dream about lydia_petze last night in which she owned a string of high class clothes boutiques for the discerning lady. I've no idea what this could mean or why I dreamt it. Unless... Lydia, do you secretly own a string of high class boutiques for the discerning lady?

daegaer is continuing her one-woman ficathon. Hurray! Just Names for Sides made me giggle very much indeed.

I spent a few minutes (literally) this morning being rubbish at impulsedriven. I've discovered I can write something in two minutes, but none of it makes any sense and I can't read my own handwriting afterwards. Will persevere.

Season 4 of the Professionals is mine, all mine! It was only £20 in Fopp, compared to £39.99 in HMV. Season 4 has the famous episode 'Discovered in a Graveyard', where Doyle gets shot. It put me in mind of that X Files episode were Scully sits in a boat deciding whether to kick the bucket or not. Except it's Doyle through a fish-eye lens and he's wandering round with Cowley and Bodie, talking without moving their mouths. Bodie has a wonderful expression on his face in the ambulance taking Doyle to hospital - like his world has just ended. Doyle's would-be assassin has the most amazing Vidal Sassoon geometric bob.

I actually thought that the Professionals would turn out to be really terrible, after watching the first few episodes of the first series, but I kept watching and now it's somehow grown on me.

Good things: Bodie, Doyle, the hotness of them, the hilarious tight trousers, the cars, the funny banter, Cowley, incidental music, theme tune, Bodie being very camp.

Bad things: plots (help, I've fallen down a plothole!), bloody terrible bit part actors, the hilarious tight trousers (which depend entirely on a good bottom to carry them off), Bodie's brown double breasted blazer teamed with cream slacks and a polo neck look, absence of any tough women to give Bodie and Doyle the kicking they deserve, Lewis Collins's acting (which admittedly seems to have improved by s4).

Not all the bit part actors were bad though. It's fun playing spot-the-extra-who went-on-to-glory-and-fame. So far there's been: David Suchet, playing a dodgy geezer from some indeterminate foreign place, Pamela Stephenson, playing a different dolly bird on three seperate occasions, Keith Barron, playing a man who wanted to spike London with LSD, Geoffrey Palmer as as a politician, the man who played Don Brennan on Corrie, as a crim. Erm.

I don't seem to be able to find the good fic though, or at least, the fic I want to read. There have been a few good things, which I'll get round to reccing at some point. There seem to be quite a lot of AU's in this fandom, interestingly, but not a great deal of action plots, which is what I think I'm hankering after.

Comments

[tboy.livejournal.com]

Lydia, do you secretly own a string of high class boutiques for the discerning lady?

Nope. She owns a string of high class ladies for discerning boutiques. ;-)

[lydia-petze.livejournal.com]

Um, no, not last time I checked. And I can't find fashion with both hands and a map. But how nice - I don't think I ever had an LJ friend dream about me before! ;-))

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Hee! Well, not to worry. The dream wasn't specifically centered around you, in case you were getting worried! But you were in it as a shadowy figure who owned boutiques.

[lydia-petze.livejournal.com]

LOL, I think I like that better anyway. "A shadowy figure who owns boutiques". Muahahaha.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

*snort*

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

"Bwahaha! Nyahaha!

First I will open boutiques, then I shall take over the world!!"

[mandragora1.livejournal.com]

Much Pros stuff isn't online. It's still a largely zine-based fandom, which means getting into it can be expensive.

However, there's the Circuit CD, which contains hundreds of stories, including many of the classics and which can be obtained from various lovely people - I haven't got the details to hand but LMK if you want more info and I'll email it to you. Try the Oblique website, for some great stories by people like Sebastian and M Fae Glasgow.

The Circuit Archive has some good stuff in it and is expanding.

The Pros-lib group on Yahoo is for stories only and is worth subscribing to. I think you can get the URLs for many of these from crack_van, BTW.

But yes, the fact that so much Pros stuff isn't easily accessible is a problem when enticing the newbie in these days of the internet. Some of us 'new' fans have tried to do something about it but often meet obdurate refusal from the oldstyle fans. It is very frustrating.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info! I'd love details about the Circuit CD if that's okay. The fics on the Oblique site are some of the best I've yet encountered in this fandom, and I've haven't even made a dent yet in any of the other archives. I feel quite swamped by the amount of fic! And apparently this is just a fraction of it.

I've heard similar complaints to yours recently about Pros fandom, in particular about a kind of snobbery that some oldstyle fans have about publishing in the net: that somehow it's inferior to web publishing. Which sounds quite strange to my ears, but if all you know if zine fandom, then I guess the idea of web publishing can be pretty daunting too. But it's a terrible shame that some of the best writing in this fandom isn't easily available.

The Crack Van overview was incredibly useful, otherwise I think I'd be a bit lost for a point of entry into this fandom. I'm sure it's reawakened a bit of interest in Pros - it's certainly how I got into it. And I was very happy to see the_safehouse appear on lj too.

[enigel]

type then ;-)
I finally tried doing something for it, and I could barely recognise the words for what they wanted to be, which is quite an accomplishment when using a keyboard... needless to say, it won't be posted :>

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Hee hee! The typing is even worse, and loks like this - qhejp jihsio spak.

I don't think I'll be posting mine either!

[zoerayne]

It's fun playing spot-the-extra-who went-on-to-glory-and-fame.

Pierce Brosnan as a CI-5 employee, surveiling (is that a word?) someone from a van.
Michael Praed as a minor baddie.

There's more, I'm sure, but those sprang to mind immediately. I think I need to break out my DVDs again.... *g*