Selenay's Ramblings

I'm catching up on the TV that I stored up while my sister was visiting and last night it was the second episode of Stargate Universe.

I continue to be rather impressed. The characters and situation have all been introduced so this was an episode that could just tell a story and it succeeded pretty well. I still feel a bit like someone watched Battlestar Galactica and thought "Hmm, wonder whether we could do that on Stargate", but in a good way. It is still definitely part of the Stargate franchise, what with the Stargate and the shots of life back at Cheyenne Mountain. At the same time, it feels a bit grittier, a bit messier and has fewer guarantees that everything will turn out OK.

So far, I like all the characters a lot. There's a nice greyness to some of them, an uncertainty about which way they'll jump that makes them interesting. Rush more than anyone does this, which I'm sure is at least partially because Robert Carlyle is a genius and partly because he's the kind of scientist who views human life as a little less important that scientific discovery.

It will be interesting to see how he develops.

There isn't a character yet that I want to drop-kick and the final shot (won't ruin it for anyone) has me intrigued enough to finally put the show onto my DVR series link thing. Yes, I'm committing to this one for a while.

In other thoughts, House continues to be excellent and Flashforward continues to intrigue me.

Also, there was Merlin and it was awesome indeed. Of course, I'm shallow and Morgana did spend part of the episode in her underwear...

A few of you may have noticed that so far this year I have written exactly two short fics so far. Leaving aside the small matter of how many long fics I used to write in a year, the thing that I have been thinking about is that both of those fics are Doctor Who fics based around Donna.

Why have I been thinking about this? Because Donna seems to be my break-in character for Doctor Who.

I have got the beginnings of several Ace fics littered around my hard-drive. Try as I might, none of them seem to call me even though I really want to write fic for my favourite character and a much under-used Doctor. In classic Who, the only character that I've actually finished a fic for was Brigadier Bambera. Not anyone's first choice, I think, although she was great to write for. In new Who, I have vaguely considered writing fic for both Rose and Martha, but never got further than vaguely thinking about it. I love both characters to bits, yet they just don't speak to me.

This brings me to Donna, who should be the hardest of the new companions to write for because she's loud, brash, shouty, obnoxious and pushy. She's so easy to caricature that she should be incredibly hard to get right and intimidating for writers. And yet she's the character that I've written two fics for with another half finished and a couple more germinating in my brain.

I'm calling her my break-in character because she's the character that I finally found to write in DW.

It doesn't seem to be the character that I most identify with or that I share the background to and that holds true for every fandom. Buffy was my character in Buffy, it was Daniel in Stargate and Elizabeth in Atlantis. It's not necessarily the most popular because half of fandom seemed to hate Elizabeth and a lot of fandom still isn't sure about Donna. It's not a character that I feel needs redeeming or the prettiest or the most fun-loving or the funniest.

I guess the thing with all those characters is that they're the ones that I want to explore and that I have something to say about. Perhaps that's why I spend a couple of years writing for a fandom and then largely move on because I have nothing left to say. Fannish butterflies like me is an essay best left for another day. These are the characters that catch me up and that I can actually feel when I'm writing, who I don't have to struggle to create words for. I like exploring the sides to these characters that are hinted at on the screen but never explored hugely and I enjoy working out how they think.

Perhaps it's easiest to say that these are the characters that speak to me, except it's not a literal voices in my head thing! Just...they are the characters where the stories write themselves to a degree rather than the ones where I have beginnings littered around that never go anywhere without a monumental struggle.

I haven't found my Torchwood character yet. I assumed that it would be Tosh - computer whizz! - and it isn't. Except lately I've been getting the vague ideas for a Captain John Hart story and I'm not sure that I'm ready to write a sociopathic murder addict even if his story is starting to write itself in my head when I get quiet moments.

So, does anyone else experience this or am I just crazy?