Memories of...
Aug. 26th, 2023 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annavereI can totally use my confused Libby icon for this.
Rather than write about my first fandom (not that interesting), I thought it would be fun to dredge up my earliest "grown up" fandom memories, the brief glimpses into a landscape I was a long way from living in as I mostly consumed age-appropriate media as a small child. This is going to make my age fairly guessable, although the memories range through my single digit years and I'm not absolutely sure when I saw most of this stuff unless I want to get zealous in pursuit of broadcast and rerun data.
Pride and Prejudice from 1995, which I think I tuned in for every episode, watching with my mother, who was impressed I never got bored and wandered off. My memories are of watching it for the countryside, the horses, manors and cottages, music, dancing and costumes. I also distinctly remember my mother saying she would have pitched a chair at Mr. Darcy during his first proposal, which I'm sure is a formative memory of some kind. My love for costume dramas was in full flight after this.
My Highlander experience was weirdly scattershot, and not exactly a greatest hits brigade. I saw parts of seasons 1, 3 and 6 with nothing in between. From 1: Felicia Martin jumping off the roof and Tessa receiving the black dress that burned her skin. I combined these visceral images into the same episode, and was genuinely surprised when I finally watched the whole show as a teen and discovered Felicia did not send the dress to Tessa.
From 3: The Michelle Webster episode, which I loved for the flashback. The woman singing on the staircase, the fancy dress, the swordfighting - I adored that part. I found the Michelle and Axel interactions reminiscent of Labyrinth, which helped it stick in my memory but I'm not sure how much of the serious predatory subtext I really understood. I also saw 'The Lamb,' which was basically a horror movie.
Speaking of, this brings me to season 6. Yep, I saw 'Avatar.' The Devil (as I thought) tormented Sophie, whom I really liked. The scene with him showing up in her car after she runs him over stuck with me. I somehow missed the import of the part where she's pulled from the river a corpse, so when I finally saw it again I was stunned that the scary twist I remembered was not actually a twist.
Moving on, I ran like hell anytime The X-Files theme came on, so I have no distinct recollections of it from that era. Oddly, although I remember avoiding Star Trek: The Next Generation over similar scary alien concerns, I have fairly clear memories of Data - not plot related, just him being quizzical about stuff, so I suspect I liked him and thus hung around if Data was on screen and left when he did - or when scary aliens showed up.
There was actually a Twilight Zone episode which bothered me, involving a little girl disappearing under her bed (possibly her dog disappeared too). I normally didn't care when my parents watched that show, since it was black and white, but I think I cleared out in a hurry when that happened. I was a wimp.
I don't think Hercules: The Legendary Journeys qualifies as being for grown ups. Xena fits this bill far better. My mother taped a bunch of Hercules episodes for us to watch but only a small handful of Xena ones, which therefore registered as special. There was the one where Xena had a lookalike barmaid (called Meg, I think) and a lookalike princess, and there was much confusion. Meg couldn't spell Xena's name, which made me feel all superior. No idea in the world what the plot was.
There was the Halloween episode with Bacchus (who was a whole world of yuck) and his vampire brides. Gabrielle went to a wild party and danced with some women who turned her into a vampire (I was never clear how), and then later on Xena realized what had happened and let Gabrielle bite her so they could be together and then it might have turned out to all be a dream, I don't know. Anyway, aside from the scenes introducing me to paper thin sapphic subtext and heavy goth makeup, the rest is vague to nonexistent in my brain.
Then there was Callisto. This was the stuff that really stuck with me. Callisto fully tied to a chair in a creepy prison and still escaping. Showing up and fridging Gabrielle's husband on their wedding day (in fact, this might have been my introduction to fridging). Gabrielle fired up on vengeance and ordering Xena to teach her how to kill - then choking when she had a clear shot at a sleeping Callisto and getting herself captured instead. If there was a "vengeance is wrong" moral, I completely missed it. I just thought she and her dead husband were super lame. There was also a desert chase on chariots and then Xena and Callisto fell into quicksand and Xena refused to pull Callisto out and just sat there watching her die - which was pretty dark for first grade or thereabouts!
I'm certain I played or battled bloodthirsty women escaping from insane asylums after watching this. Unlike most of the other items on this list, the Callisto story did not bother me even slightly, and was memorable for being crazy cool.
And that's it for my trip down memory lane.
Rather than write about my first fandom (not that interesting), I thought it would be fun to dredge up my earliest "grown up" fandom memories, the brief glimpses into a landscape I was a long way from living in as I mostly consumed age-appropriate media as a small child. This is going to make my age fairly guessable, although the memories range through my single digit years and I'm not absolutely sure when I saw most of this stuff unless I want to get zealous in pursuit of broadcast and rerun data.
Pride and Prejudice from 1995, which I think I tuned in for every episode, watching with my mother, who was impressed I never got bored and wandered off. My memories are of watching it for the countryside, the horses, manors and cottages, music, dancing and costumes. I also distinctly remember my mother saying she would have pitched a chair at Mr. Darcy during his first proposal, which I'm sure is a formative memory of some kind. My love for costume dramas was in full flight after this.
My Highlander experience was weirdly scattershot, and not exactly a greatest hits brigade. I saw parts of seasons 1, 3 and 6 with nothing in between. From 1: Felicia Martin jumping off the roof and Tessa receiving the black dress that burned her skin. I combined these visceral images into the same episode, and was genuinely surprised when I finally watched the whole show as a teen and discovered Felicia did not send the dress to Tessa.
From 3: The Michelle Webster episode, which I loved for the flashback. The woman singing on the staircase, the fancy dress, the swordfighting - I adored that part. I found the Michelle and Axel interactions reminiscent of Labyrinth, which helped it stick in my memory but I'm not sure how much of the serious predatory subtext I really understood. I also saw 'The Lamb,' which was basically a horror movie.
Speaking of, this brings me to season 6. Yep, I saw 'Avatar.' The Devil (as I thought) tormented Sophie, whom I really liked. The scene with him showing up in her car after she runs him over stuck with me. I somehow missed the import of the part where she's pulled from the river a corpse, so when I finally saw it again I was stunned that the scary twist I remembered was not actually a twist.
Moving on, I ran like hell anytime The X-Files theme came on, so I have no distinct recollections of it from that era. Oddly, although I remember avoiding Star Trek: The Next Generation over similar scary alien concerns, I have fairly clear memories of Data - not plot related, just him being quizzical about stuff, so I suspect I liked him and thus hung around if Data was on screen and left when he did - or when scary aliens showed up.
There was actually a Twilight Zone episode which bothered me, involving a little girl disappearing under her bed (possibly her dog disappeared too). I normally didn't care when my parents watched that show, since it was black and white, but I think I cleared out in a hurry when that happened. I was a wimp.
I don't think Hercules: The Legendary Journeys qualifies as being for grown ups. Xena fits this bill far better. My mother taped a bunch of Hercules episodes for us to watch but only a small handful of Xena ones, which therefore registered as special. There was the one where Xena had a lookalike barmaid (called Meg, I think) and a lookalike princess, and there was much confusion. Meg couldn't spell Xena's name, which made me feel all superior. No idea in the world what the plot was.
There was the Halloween episode with Bacchus (who was a whole world of yuck) and his vampire brides. Gabrielle went to a wild party and danced with some women who turned her into a vampire (I was never clear how), and then later on Xena realized what had happened and let Gabrielle bite her so they could be together and then it might have turned out to all be a dream, I don't know. Anyway, aside from the scenes introducing me to paper thin sapphic subtext and heavy goth makeup, the rest is vague to nonexistent in my brain.
Then there was Callisto. This was the stuff that really stuck with me. Callisto fully tied to a chair in a creepy prison and still escaping. Showing up and fridging Gabrielle's husband on their wedding day (in fact, this might have been my introduction to fridging). Gabrielle fired up on vengeance and ordering Xena to teach her how to kill - then choking when she had a clear shot at a sleeping Callisto and getting herself captured instead. If there was a "vengeance is wrong" moral, I completely missed it. I just thought she and her dead husband were super lame. There was also a desert chase on chariots and then Xena and Callisto fell into quicksand and Xena refused to pull Callisto out and just sat there watching her die - which was pretty dark for first grade or thereabouts!
I'm certain I played or battled bloodthirsty women escaping from insane asylums after watching this. Unlike most of the other items on this list, the Callisto story did not bother me even slightly, and was memorable for being crazy cool.
And that's it for my trip down memory lane.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-28 04:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-29 01:28 am (UTC)Since I was absent from media for a large number of years, it has the effect of making everything after somewhere in the early 2010s feel kind of off to me, visually and narratively, even when I can tell what I'm looking at is of objectively far higher quality. The whole language changed and I missed it.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-05 10:30 pm (UTC)...this may be directly analogous to the fact that the only XF fic I ever read was the extremely niche Scully/Krycek.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-08 04:53 pm (UTC)