Trabia Garden

More adventuring through my fandom history! All three of my real-person fandoms are in this instalment, so it's easy to skip if RPF makes you uncomfortable.


Scrubs

First saw this when I was seventeen. I don't remember exactly how I got into it, but I think maybe my brothers were watching it? I was surprised by how little fanfiction there was at the time.

I haven't revisited Scrubs in a very long time. I'm curious to know how it would hold up.

Previously I'd mainly written angst and introspection, but in this fandom I took tentative steps towards writing more dialogue and humour. I enjoyed it a lot. (I've sort of fallen back into angst and introspection nowadays! And I didn't entirely escape angst with Scrubs; I wrote the inevitable Silent Hill crossover, after all.)

Favourite character: Dr Cox! Very angry, very sarcastic, very unprepared to engage with his feelings. I had a lot of fun writing him.
Favourite pairing: JD/Cox. I'm pleased to look back and realise my taste in pairings has always run towards the slightly unhealthy. I also enjoyed Cox/Ben and was strangely taken with Elliot/Janitor, although I never wrote fanfiction for the latter.
Number of words written: 35,548.

Snippet: I once wrote a JD/Cox fic where JD was handcuffed to a radiator, then a sequel, then a retelling of the first fic from Dr Cox's point of view. This was going to be the Cox-perspective sequel to that.

( Scrubs unfinished snippet. JD/Cox, 2006. )


Top Gear

thegreatesthits/gayjunglefever was the first online friend I ever met in person (we went to see the Silent Hill film on our first meeting; she was not familiar with Silent Hill and was incredibly confused). One day, when I was just about to turn eighteen, I went to her house, and she enthused about Top Gear, and I went '...that's a show about cars, isn't it? I'm not really interested in cars.'

She showed me the episode where they make their own amphibious vehicles.

I spent the next year and a half writing fanfiction.

Top Gear fandom was an absolute blast. I found a lot of lasting friendships (hi, guys ♥). I found a housemate! I met up with a whole bunch of you in real life to have adventures in London, which probably did a fair bit to help me overcome my extreme shyness. I owe a great deal to Jeremy Clarkson, which isn't good, perhaps, but it's true.

This was the first real-person fandom I wrote for, and Richard Hammond had his jet-car crash right after I started writing fanfiction. A lot of people in the fandom felt really guilty for writing stories about car crashes beforehand. It shaped my personal approach to RPF; if I'm writing about real people, I cannot write about anything terrible happening. (Well, anything plausible and terrible, at least. Going to Silent Hill is still fair game.) After an even worse 'something horrible happened right when you were getting really into these guys' experience with Linkin Park, I doubt I'll ever pick up a real-person fandom again. But the ones I've been in have been a lot of fun.

Favourite character: Jeremy Clarkson. Extremely obnoxious, extremely fun to write.
Favourite pairing: Jeremy/Richard. I think James/Richard was the most popular pairing in the fandom, but I just wanted Jeremy Clarkson being obnoxious all over the place, and it was particularly fun if he was being obnoxious at Richard, because Richard was worse than James at enduring it.
Number of words written: 90,357.

Snippet: Jeremy and James discuss how to deal with the fact that Richard Hammond is a werewolf.

( Top Gear unfinished snippet. Werewolf Richard, circa 2007. )


Supernatural

One of two shows I got into because I had a dream about them and went 'I'm going to take this as a sign I should watch this show' (the other was Atlantis, although I never wrote for that). I started watching this when I was nineteen. (I can't believe it's still running.) The first episode I saw was Faith, which definitely caught my interest. The second or third was Malleus Maleficarum, which was so revolting I almost stopped watching then and there. Fortunately, I persevered!

I got extremely invested in Supernatural. Fictional siblings! Unhealthy coping mechanisms! What a great combination. The only fandom I've ever attended a convention for.

Favourite character: Dean Winchester. What a mess.
Favourite pairing: I don't think I 'ship anything in Supernatural much, actually. I dabbled a bit in Sam/Dean when I first got into Supernatural, back in season three, when Sam/Dean was pretty much all that existed, but I ended up concluding I preferred them as brothers. I do have a certain strange fondness for Castiel/Bobby. (There's barely any fanfiction, which perhaps isn't a surprise. I read a couple of Castiel/Bobby fics recently and went '...actually, this feels not entirely unlike Hank/Connor.')
Number of words written: 52,383, although this is counting the finished-but-never-posted Derren Brown/Doctor Who/Supernatural fic chapter (see below).

Snippet: I wish I'd finished this Supernatural/Pushing Daisies fic.

( Supernatural unfinished snippet. Supernatural/Pushing Daisies, 2008. )


Derren Brown

How did I get into Derren Brown? I was twenty years old. I think I caught his stage show Something Wicked This Way Comes on the television. He temporarily deprived himself of oxygen, then lay down on a bed of broken glass and made a man stand on him. I'll be honest: it was hot. I promptly created derrenbrownfic. It never got hugely far off the ground, but people did write a few things, which is impressive given that there was only one 'character' involved.

Derren Brown is the only celebrity to whom I have sent a ukulele in the post. He sent back a very nice letter.

Favourite character: There is literally one character.
Favourite pairing: Derren Brown/the Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who, which obviously makes vast amounts of sense.
Number of words written: 27,206.

Snippet: From the Supernatural chapter of my and moogle62's overambitious Derren-as-the-Doctor's-companion project. The chapter was going to be called 'In Which Derren Is Shot, and Things Get Worse from There'. I actually finished writing the entire Supernatural chapter, but we had a couple of other chapters planned to come before it, so I never posted it!

( Derren Brown unfinished snippet. Derren Brown/Doctor Who/Supernatural. )


British Comedy

British comedy is obviously a fairly expansive fandom, but I was in the Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell corner of it. I'd liked Mitchell for a while (I first became aware of him when Joseph introduced me to Peep Show), but I only got into British comedy as a fandom after discovering Brooker at the age of twenty-one.

This fandom was great, great fun. As with Top Gear, many of the members lived in London, so we met up and hung out a lot. Even better: a lot of comedy shows are recorded in London, and you can apply for free tickets! I went to twenty-something comedy recordings with other members of the fandom and wrote them up on my 'recording recaps' tag. It was great.

This entire fandom manifested at the start of 2010, thrived for six months and vanished pretty much overnight when Brooker got married, but it was a lot of fun while it lasted.

Favourite character: Charlie Brooker. Crude, hilarious, self-deprecating, surprisingly soft-hearted, worryingly attractive.
Favourite pairing: Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell. I also loved David Mitchell/Victoria Coren and was ecstatic when they got married. First time an RPF 'ship of mine turned out to be canon!
Number of words written: 20,435.

Snippet: This was a work of Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell romantic angst that I never finished because it seemed like more fun to write about them training Pokémon.

( British comedy unfinished snippet. Charlie Brooker/David Mitchell, 2010. )

Derren Brown's most recent touring show, Svengali, was on Channel 4 on Tuesday evening! As always, it was a strange mixture of Derren Brown being terrifying (in particular when he had a creepy doll 'possess' a man from the audience; the poor guy looked as if he wanted to bolt off the stage) and Derren Brown being all giggly and adorable and climbing the set.

My favourite 'Derren being adorable' moment from the show: he opened it with a game called 'Derren, Please Tell Me Where I Might Find Your Other Shoe', in which he hid his shoe in one of three boxes and audience members had to guess which box it was in. Because he is Derren Brown, he had recorded two ridiculous jingles for this game, to be played during the shoe-hiding process. Here are those jingles.

Speaking of Derren Brown, I was reminded recently of something that struck me when I read his memoir Confessions of a Conjuror. I'm not a huge fan of Confessions of a Conjuror - I far prefer Tricks of the Mind - but I did like the description of his thought process the first time a partner said 'I love you' to him:

1. X loves me. Do I love X in return?
2. What does it mean to love X?
3. I sometimes think I might love X. Is that enough?
4. X has declared a binary position: love or not love. I am to take a clear position on one side.
5. If I do not state that I do love X, some time soon, then my position will be taken as not loving X.
6. Now I am going to have to say I love X in order not to cause this relationship to become very tricky by X feeling unloved.
7. Instead we will progress with X loving me and me uncertain about loving X but certainly pretending to do so.
8. What a terrible thing for X to say.


On a completely different note: after everyone in the world recommended the Phoenix Wright series to me, I purchased Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, the first game in the series! I am currently somewhere in the middle of the third case.

Phoenix Wright, are you really an 'ace attorney'? You're endearing, certainly, but are you actually good at this being-a-lawyer thing? Are you supposed to make statements like 'Therefore, this witness is a big fat liar'?

Of course, Wright's supposed aceness is not terribly well supported by the fact that I am controlling him. At the beginning of the second Turnabout Samurai trial segment, I promptly got four penalties on a single testimony (two of which were for presenting the same piece of irrelevant evidence) and had to struggle through the rest of the trial knowing that one more mistake would net me a game over. It certainly upped the tension, I suppose!

I do prefer Ghost Trick, I have to say (er, the two games share a creator, so this isn't a completely arbitrary comparison); Phoenix Wright is a bit wordy for my videogame tastes (and I'm a Final Fantasy fan!), and so far I like Ghost Trick's characters and storyline more. I'm still having fun with Phoenix Wright, though! I particularly like the voice control, and the way Edgeworth acts as if he's been physically hit if you break through his witnesses' testimonies. And I do seem to be quite fond of Wright himself.

(Seriously, though, you're supposed to point out that April May should have noticed Maya's odd clothes? Have you seen what April May is wearing?)

Well, Derren Brown's The Gameshow was the most uncomfortable thing I've watched in a very long time. Probably the one thing of Derren Brown's I'd actively advise against watching. I felt quite ill. I shook all over. I almost cried at one point. It was meant to be horrible, of course, but - although it's obviously better than a programme that isn't aware it's horrible - that didn't make it much less horrible.

I sincerely hope that Dave stayed in that poor man's house and baked him a cake or something.

In looking at reactions on Twitter, I've seen a few people going 'WELL, THAT DOESN'T PROVE ANYTHING; OBVIOUSLY PEOPLE ARE GOING TO GO FOR THE MORE ENTERTAINING OPTION'. I don't think 'people will value their own entertainment over the comfort of another human being' is an insignificant thing to prove. No, that's not the problem with The Gameshow.

Here's the problem with The Gameshow: Kris should have been an actor. The Gameshow wasn't about the victim; it was about the audience deciding what happened to him. Remote Control was not a real show. So why did a real person have to suffer? Because it made better television, of course, which raises the question: what right do the creators of the programme have to judge the audience? (Ultimately, I suppose nothing really awful happened to him and my thoughts on his experience have been coloured by my constant fear throughout the programme of how far it might go, rather than by how far it actually went, but he still had a pretty rubbish night.)

The other problem with The Gameshow is that they were clearly nudging the audience towards the negative decisions - by referring to Kris as 'the target', by showing that clip where he admitted to cheating on his girlfriend, by emphasising that Kris was a practical joker. To Derren's credit, he did show us these little manipulations; he's said in the past that, despite being a massive professional liar, he doesn't want anyone to watch one of his shows and see something that gives the wrong impression through heavy editing. But I think the experiment would have been more interesting and meaningful if it had shown whether an audience without these little pushes would still have devolved to the point where they were baying for a man's property to be destroyed.

Not that the manipulation made the audience's actions excusable, but, if this programme was genuinely made in the spirit of investigation, it did probably muddy the result. Although I suppose it depends on what exactly the aim of the investigation was. If it's about crowds being easily led from without, I suppose the manipulation isn't a problem; crowds often follow a leader, after all. If it's about how the crowd mentality works from within, though, it could have been better executed. The Gameshow did make a point (the television, the kidnap - by that point I was genuinely astonished by the audience's conduct), but perhaps it could have made a better one. (EDIT: Oh, hang on, there's currently a clip on the Channel 4 website ('Derren Discusses The Gameshow') in which Derren mentions that the gameshow format is often geared towards manipulation and bringing out the nastier side of people, and that the same group of people obviously wouldn't behave like that on the streets, so the easily-led crowd hypothesis seems to be the one he's working with.)

The ending and this low-level manipulation were very much tied together. On the one hand, the ending certainly made an impact; on the other, that ending relied on the audience making consistently negative decisions. It was in Derren's interests to push the audience in a behaving-badly direction so he could break out the impressive ending and hit them with the consequences of their actions, but of course that means that he himself became in part responsible for those actions. The moral message would have been stronger had the audience followed their own path into iniquity. As it was, it felt a little like the bearer of that moral message led them into a trap.

I still think Derren Brown is brilliant, and I'm looking forward to the other shows in the Experiments series, but, no, I wouldn't recommend The Gameshow. It undermines its own message too much to make the intense discomfort of watching up to that message worth it.

Incidentally, why does anyone ever apply to take part in one of Derren Brown's programmes? HE'S JUST GOING TO DO HORRIBLE THINGS TO YOU. EVEN WHEN HE'S TRYING TO BE NICE HE DOES HORRIBLE THINGS.

(Speaking of intensely uncomfortable things: I watched the film adaptation of We Need to Talk About Kevin earlier this week, not having read the book beforehand (if I recall correctly, it took me about three pages to realise I couldn't get on with the writing style). I kept waking up in the night afterwards and having to imagine that Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle were gathered around my bed, ready to protect me from any Kevins that might come near.

I'm - I'm a grown-up.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is also flawed, incidentally, because, whilst perfect characters are dull, so are characters with literally no redeeming features. Why do we have to talk about Kevin? Can't we talk about someone more interesting?)

Once again, Derren Brown both fascinates me and makes me want to bury myself under ten feet of solid rock so he can't get anywhere near me. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, DERREN BROWN?

EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING IS WRONG WITH YOU.

(That bit with the ice bath! I could barely watch.)

(Derren Brown could commit so many murders and nobody would ever catch him.)

(SERIOUSLY THAT MAN IS TERRIFYING.)

If you haven't seen Derren Brown's The Assassin and feel like compelling yourself to hide under your bed for the next month, it's available here on 4oD at the moment. It has more of a focus on hypnotism than most of his other work, and it is really interesting. And really scary.

And I've just watched a clip of Derren explaining some of the thinking behind the programme (his chatting persona and his stage persona are so different! They actually speak and move differently. Incidentally, if you've wondered where his little nodding tic came from, it's because he got so into the habit of nodding to manipulate people into being compliant that now he can't stop), and when trying to explain why he chose Chris as a subject he ends up describing him as 'in a nice way, kind of an empty vessel'. Derren. We're all just pawns in your eyes, aren't we? (But I can sort of see what he means; when Chris and Other Guy were asked what the icewater experience was like, Chris kept following Other Guy's lead in describing it (Other Guy: It felt X. Chris: Yeah, it felt X), which I'd assume is a sign of suggestibility.)

He also says that Hero at 30,000 Feet was born of thinking 'oh, can't we do something nice for someone for a change?' Because in Derren's world there's nothing nicer than tying someone to some train tracks and making them think they're on a crashing plane. See also: the time he tied a young woman up in a sack and then pushed her into a lake as a 'treat'.

And then I fell asleep and dreamt that Derren Brown had brainwashed some poor girl into chasing me around with a rifle. Get out of my head!

Channel 4 broadcast a really interesting Derren Brown special on faith healing last night: Derren Brown: Miracles for Sale, in which Derren attempted to illustrate and expose faith healing scams by sending a member of the public undercover into Texas as a 'faith healer'.

I have a lot of respect for Derren Brown, to whom I once sent a ukulele in a fit of madness and who, rather than ignoring me or taking out a restraining order (both of which would have been entirely understandable reactions), sent me an extremely kind letter in return, and that respect was bolstered last night when he chose to protect the reputation of a PR company by deciding not to use it to promote his fake faith healer. (Of course, Derren is a deceiver and a showman, and it's perfectly possible that some of the situations in the film were deliberately engineered for drama, but I can believe that he did think 'on second thoughts, let's not endanger this innocent man's livelihood for our programme.' Whilst Derren Brown generally has quite a sinister image, most evidence seem to point towards his actually being a really nice guy.)

Whilst I'm on the topic, I will say that I was a bit disappointed by Derren's autobiography, Confessions of a Conjuror. I adore his earlier book, Tricks of the Mind, but I suppose his style doesn't really lend itself to narrative. The police aren't going to come after you if you let the occasional noun slip past without an adjective, Derren, I promise.

Derren Brown's Miracles for Sale is currently available on 4oD here. (I don't think it's available outside the UK, I'm afraid.) In case the religious amongst you are wary about watching it: it's not an attack on faith itself, but on people who exploit that faith for profit, sometimes with terrible consequences for the exploited (for example, if they are misled into believing they're healed and so abandon treatments that they in fact need).


In other news (although not the sort of news that most newspapers would bother reporting), I have rewatched Glee episode 2.16, 'Original Song', and I now have a couple of thoughts that aren't just 'omg Kurt and Blaine are the adorablest ♥' (although they are, of course, still the adorablest).

Regarding 'Get It Right': it's a lovely tune, but I think it's a shame that the 'original song' that New Directions use to open Regionals is in fact a great big mass of clichés. I mean, take the first few lines:

What have I done? I wish I could run
Away from this ship going under.
Just trying to help, hurt everyone else;
Now I feel the weight of the world is
On my shoulders.
What can you do when your good isn't good enough
And all that you touch tumbles down?
These are all incredibly hackneyed images, Rachel! If you're trying to express your own pain, you really should use your own words. Your voice still gives me chills, though, so well done there. (Yes, 'gives me chills' is also a cliché, but I'm not relying on my lyric-writing ability to win a competition, am I?)

It's a particular shame after an episode of songs with lyrics as creative as 'So sick with love I think I'm coming down with rickets.' Oh, Puck.

The Warblers' cover of 'Raise Your Glass' makes me dance ridiculously in my seat. I can't help it. I punch the air and everything. It is a very good thing that I've never listened to it in company.

I find it weirdly hilarious that Darren Criss's voice is frequently layered over itself during the Warblers' performances, giving the impression that there's another Warbler somewhere in there who sounds exactly like Blaine, or possibly that they have an invisible Blaine clone contributing vocals. OH MY GOD, WAIT: or that my fic in which all the Dalton students' thoughts are audible is true. It answers so many questions! ...by which I mean that it answers one question and raises many, many more.

Despite the lyrical issue and the fact that it didn't do as much with the Rachel-Quinn relationship as I was hoping, 'Original Song' is still my favourite Glee episode to date. It is packed with so many delightful things and I love it endlessly. (Did I mention how charmed I am whenever the Warblers and New Directions cheer each other on? Awww.)

Here is a highly disjointed entry of bullet points!


- @DerrenBrown: Wow. A really important message in our day and age. PLEASE take a second to watch. link

Derren Brown, my respect for you has just increased tenfold.


- (Talking to my housemate about a chap I'd met once. What I was trying to say was 'I thought he was quite good-looking, but I wasn't attracted to him'.)
Riona: I thought he was quite looking, but -
Riona's Housemate: You thought he was looking?
Riona: I thought he was looking. I thought 'that's a man who definitely has a face'.


- I found it difficult to concentrate on the Supernatural episode 'The Third Man', because I was distracted by how much Balthazar looked like Gordon Ramsay.


- Turning on CAPTCHA, it seems, hasn't dissuaded the spambots; I've just started getting some really weird spam (of which my favourite is possibly 'I found your blog via Google while searching for first aid for a heart attack and your post looks very interesting for me'; it rather sounds as if you might have better things to do than read my entries on Peep Show). I hope it remains manageable, because I really don't want to turn off anonymous commenting (anonymenting?) altogether.


- WATERLOO ROAD IS BACK AND I STILL LOVE IT EVEN THOUGH EVERYONE IN IT IS AN IDIOT. I particularly enjoy the fact that they introduced Timmy and then didn't really use him in the plot at all; they obviously just wanted to include a long montage in which Josh and Finn fail to make the world's friendliest dog attack a teddy bear. I'm all in favour of that. Also, there was a bit in the 'next episode' trailer that made me bounce up and down in excitement. SEXUAL TENSION. JOSH STEVENSON. IT'S ALWAYS GOING TO BE A WINNING COMBINATION.

(Apparently, Troublesome New Pupil is played by George Sampson, that adorable kid who won Britain's Got Talent a couple of years ago with his 'Singing in the Rain' dance. I find this hilarious.)

Okay, I officially have far too many half-finished fics lying around. I'm going to go through my 'Unfinished Fanfiction' folder and list what I have in there, so I can see at a glance what's on the to-write pile. If anything catches your fancy, feel free to ask about it or just verbally kick me until it's finished. Listed in descending order of present wordcount.


( The present contents of my 'Unfinished Fanfiction' folder. )


It seems I have fiction on the go for about twenty different fandoms. I think this is a sign that I officially have too many fandoms.

(Regarding the Peep Show/Harry Potter AU: I know I once said it was impossible to write Peep Show fanfiction with a pre-adulthood Mark Corrigan, but I have since changed my stance. Writing Peep Show fanfiction in which the principal characters are eleven really makes no difference to their personalities whatsoever, in the case of one because he was essentially born thirty and in the case of the other because he retains the mentality of an eleven-year-old for the next twenty-five years.)

What I've realised about my writing habits recently - and this is the reason behind a couple of the 'unlikely to be finished' notes - is that I find it easiest to motivate myself to write if I feel I'm writing something nobody will have done before. It's why I'm able to write canon-compliant stories for Peep Show, whilst my Kurt/Blaine fics for Glee are always bizarre AUs: there's barely any fanfiction for the former, so anything I write will be new, whereas with Kurt/Blaine, a popular pairing in a popular fandom, it's difficult to find a concept that hasn't already been written.

...also, er, this isn't in my Unfinished Fanfiction folder, but I just came across it in my notebook:

"Gotter Rattata," William said, proudly. "An' Henry's got a Weedle an' Douglas's got a Spearow an' Ginger's not got anythin' yet, so we're catchin' somethin' for him now."

Why - why did I start writing a Just William/Pokémon crossover?

Eight months late, I've caught up on the fifth series of Supernatural.

Crowley, you are my favourite. He's a deceitful bastard, but he's paradoxically, delightfully straightforward about it. (He and Derren Brown should hang out.) And he's sardonic and flirtatious and a little bit charming, and I think he may end up being one of those characters I 'ship with basically everyone (ESPECIALLY BOBBY, WHERE IS MY BOBBY/CROWLEY FANFICTION). I love him.

(Although the way Crowley is written confuses me sometimes, because he has an English accent and the writers seem to consciously have him using British language - 'this bloody ring business' - and then he'll use the occasional American turn of phrase. It's a bit jarring, that's all. It doesn't mean I don't want to marry you, Crowley, demon of my heart.)

It's odd; I used to love the Winchester brothers so much, but over the past couple of series I've become much more interested in the recurring supernatural beings of Supernatural. Ruby, Castiel, Crowley: these are the figures that hold my interest. It's not that I dislike Sam and Dean, but I certainly don't adore them any more. It's a little sad, really. I miss loving the Winchesters.

On the plus side, I love how Castiel's character has settled. He was a little inconsistent at first, but now the writers seem to have decided to go with Perpetually Slightly Bewildered Castiel, who is my favourite type of Castiel. He is adorable. Never stop being confused by the world, Castiel!

ALSO ON THE PLUS SIDE, WE HAVE CROWLEY.

I want a series in which Crowley and Ruby drive around and... I don't know. Work towards some goal? Their goals in canon oppose each other, which causes a slight problem. Maybe a series in which Crowley and Ruby are enemies in theory, working towards separate and opposing goals, but they also get along famously. Sometimes they try to kill each other; sometimes they just have sex. Oh, my goodness, this would be the best thing ever. There should be fanfiction.

All right, having subjected you all to thousands of entries about something you don't watch for the past month and a half (er, thanks for sticking around, guys; I will almost certainly shut up eventually), I feel it's about time you got to choose what I write about. Therefore!

Give me a prompt (or several), and I'll try to write you a ficsnippet.

I'm planning to do the same thing I did last year: in lieu of participating in National Novel Writing Month, which is great fun but leaves me burnt out and unable to write for months afterwards, I'm going to attempt to write at least a little every day during the month of November. By requesting things, you will be helping me achieve that aim! (And you might get something to read out of it, of course.) Feel free to make requests even if we don't know each other terribly well.

Just so you know, I'd prefer not to write real-person deathfic or RPF featuring figures who aren't in the public eye (I wouldn't feel comfortable writing about a public figure's family members, for example), and I'm rubbish at smut. Also, if you request from a fandom I'm not familiar with, you may end up with something along the lines of 'Once upon a time there was a vampire slayer named Buffy. She slew vampires. The vampires were slain.' (If you don't know whether I'm familiar with a fandom, request away, but you may want to include a backup request from a fandom I definitely know.)

Everyone on your flist has posted about this already, but it's my turn now and I'm going to take it: earlier this week, I watched A Study in Pink (iPlayer link, valid until the fifteenth of August), the first of the BBC's three-part Sherlock series, a modern adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

I absolutely loved it.


( Notes on 'A Study in Pink'. )


If you're a Sherlock Holmes fan and haven't yet watched this, I would highly recommend that you give it a try.