How is it almost December

[sholio]

I signed up for rec_cember, a new reccing challenge comm for posting recs in December. I am going to at least TRY posting bite-sized daily recs, but my track record at daily anything is pretty dismal, so it might turn into weekly posts. I'll make an effort to do roundup posts over at recthething as well.

This will probably be mostly Murderbot and Babylon 5 (also Biggles? is there any point to posting Biggles recs, in a fandom that small where everyone has probably read anything they're interested in already?). I've actually got a B5 question. I still hope to drag some of you into watching it with me if possible, but I don't want to spoil any potential watchers for major developments in the series, which is really best unspoiled (if you are inclined to enjoy things that way) and doing recs in this particular way is probably going to be spoilergeddon.

So I am curious if people care about this or not.

Poll #33891

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 29

Would you like me to put Babylon 5 spoilers under a cut?

Yes please, that would be appreciated.
6 (20.7%)

I would prefer that you don't, so I can read everything without clicking a cut.
2 (6.9%)

No preference/answer too complex for your binary boxes.
21 (72.4%)

(Results are viewable only to me, so you're not committing yourself publicly to watching the show or anything. I would just like to know if there's any particular reason to be careful about spoiler-cuts or if it doesn't matter all that much at this point.)

Comments

[philomytha]

You have dragged me in, and I am slowly rewatching B5 (just starting S3, G'kar and Londo have been trapped in an exploding lift, it was great) and in theory I have seen it all before, but I am finding I don't actually remember half the plot though I do remember most of the character dynamics. Anyway, I am ambivalent about spoilers; I have been reading your fic regardless of any spoilers, but at the same time I don't go looking to find out what happens next. I think I appreciate things being labelled with where they are in the story, but I'm going to read fics set well ahead of where I've got to on my slow rewatch anyway.

[passingbuzzards]

Fwiw I'd enjoy Biggles recs from the past 1-2 years since I haven't caught up on the tag in a while! (Though as you say, the fandom is so small and the average writing quality is so high that it's not exactly difficult to just dive into the tag and find the goods, lol.)

[sovay]

I've actually got a B5 question.

I can't be spoiled, I'll probably just have opinions.

[muccamukk]

I don't mind spoilers and don't mind clicking through to look at recs. I guess I have a slight preference for cut tags in general?

[sheron]

I would LOVE Biggles recs if you have them! I might have read them (likely, because I might have read everything in the fandom 10 times but anyway) the point would be to see what other people are reading and to talk about the glorious glorious fic! So rec away (if you feel like it!).

I've wanted to do a rec list by themes in Biggles fandom for a while and just never got around to it -- this might motivate me to make one.

[sholio]

EXCELLENT, my nefarious plot is working. >:) (That show really is just so amazingly tropey. I love it.) Anyway, I can totally do that, and I'm really delighted you're rewatching!

[philomytha]

When I watched it first time around I was all about the Delenn - Sheridan - Lennier thing and didn't pay that much attention to G'kar and Londo, so this is a fun new angle on it all!

[sholio]

Oh, that sounds fun! I've been rewatching some episodes recently and catching a number of new things in storylines that I wasn't as invested in at the time because I was eager to get the next part of the Narn-Centauri plot, heh.

[sholio]

Oh, that's a good point about it being a good way to collate the recent fic! Also, it occurs to me that recs of older stuff are also fun because they remind you of things you haven't read in a while.

[sholio]

B5 opinions are always very welcome!

[sholio]

Yeah, I think it looks like things are heavily leaning towards most people don't care and a couple people do want cut tags, so I'll probably go with those! At least for anything significantly spoilery and/or long.

[sholio]

Oooh, themed rec lists! I would LOVE that! Some of my previous fandoms have had them and they're always excellent.

And like I was thinking writing one of the comments above, even recs for fic we've already read are nice to draw attention to something you haven't thought about in a while.

[brightknightie]

FWIW, I have a vague osmosis understanding of the shape of the whole show of B5, and while I will not seek out spoilers on purpose, I will not go to great lengths to dodge them, either.

I am still very slowly watching my way through Babylon 5 for the first time. Indeed, I just treated myself to the blue-ray set on a Black Friday discount so that I can return the DVDs to the friend who owns and loves them. (The blu-ray up-res is nice. The packaging and presentation is terrible, compared to the "vintage." The discs are barely labeled; the plastic is difficult and sad; and there are zero episode descriptions.)

I'm, hmmm... having checked Wikipedia for episode descriptions to find my way on the new barely-labeled discs, I think that Sheridan comes back in the two-parter in late season three that is next for me.

[sholio]

Oh, that's right, I forgot you were watching it! I think there's enough interest in having spoilers cut that I will plan to do that.

And yeah, we watched on the blu-rays (at least after the first season, which I was watching streaming), and I agree about the lousy packaging. The printing on the discs are very hard to read, and they're difficult to get in and out of the box. I don't know when these were produced, but I definitely noticed a nosedive in quality on late 2000s/early 2010s DVDs; they went from being really nicely packaged productions, to stamped out cheaply and slapped into cases that were practically falling apart when you got them! (Unless it was something like a Marvel movie, but old TV shows definitely weren't treated nicely.) The picture quality is very good, though!

I hope you continue to enjoy it!

[sheron]

Fascinating. When I watched it way back, I was all about Londo and his Centauri storylines, I didn't even notice Garibaldi (I don't remember him much at all) and this time around he was my absolute fave.
It's always interesting when the same canon watched a long time later produces such wildly different fannish feels!

[foxmoth]

Apropos of nothing, I have no idea if you even care about older-school (think SSI or Avalon Hill) strategy/space battle miniature games, but did you ever play Babylon-5 Wars? I can't remember much as I only played a couple times and then our set was mostly destroyed in the flood, and it is a high-crunch tactical space battle game and I remember with experienced players, sessions would run 4-8 hours (sometimes split up over a couple weekend days at the MIT Games Club since one didn't have to fend off toddlers or cattens). I also don't remember how much "additional" fluff/lore there was in the rulebooks, but a lot of that material is online if any of it is of interest:

http://b5warsvault.wikidot.com/

I liked the game, to be clear, but 4-8 hours is a Commitment normally let alone when there's a small child etc. :)

[sholio]

I have never even heard of this, although clicking through, it looks weirdly similar (in general concept, anyway) to WAY WAY WAY less crunchy forms of on-the-fly made-up space combat games that my sister and I used to play with improvised rules on graph paper when we were teenagers! I am curious to poke at the rules a little. (There is also a B5 RPG from back in the day, and I bought the sourcebook on Ebay to look at ...)

Thank you for the link; I am delighted to know this exists!

[sholio]

I've also been thinking, off and on, that it's interesting that my college friend group wasn't into B5 - because they were the kind of people who theoretically would be, but in actual reality weren't at all, that I can recall! I was introduced to other geeky things of the era through them (anime, Final Fantasy, martial arts films) and I was the obligatory comics geek in the group, but no one was really into B5/Star Trek/sci-fi TV at all, that I can recall.