#underrated meme

[educatedinyellow]

Musical cover artist recs, part 2!

Continuing on...

Sia’s “Cheap Thrills” covered by Haley Klinkhammer

Ani DiFranco’s “Shy” covered by Adam Just

Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” covered by Disturbed

Taylor Swift’s “I Think He Knows” covered by Steve Everett

Billie Eilish’s “Ocean Eyes” covered by Josh Rabenold

[educatedinyellow]

One last underrated thing: musical cover artists!

Back in the mists of time -- a month or two ago -- I started a meme where I was supposed to recommend five underrated things, but I ran out of steam after four. But today I was thinking about how much joy I’ve gotten from watching people sing their favorite songs with their own spin added to them, and I thought: hey, other people might enjoy sampling some of these covers, too! I freely admit I am stretching the definition of underrated here, because some of these people are professional singers/musicians and some of these covers have gone viral, but I promise I am including a variety of little known and little watched covers alongside more popular ones. My only criteria is that I liked them! :) I hope you find one or two that appeal to you, too.

Carly Rae Jepson’s “Call Me Maybe” instrumental cover by The Bottle Boys

Fall Out Boy’s “Alone Together” covered by Luna Blake

The Weeknd’s “Starboy” covered by Faouzia

The Cranberries’ “Dreams” covered by Macy Garrett

Taylor Swift’s “Delicate” + Drake’s “One Dance” covered by James Bay

(oops, it looks like that’s all the vid links I am allowed in one post. I’ll be back in a minute with part 2!)

[educatedinyellow]

Underrated things meme, part 4: rec lists

I’m making slow progress with my list of underrated things, and today I’d like to mention a couple of rec list resources that I bet most people in my fandoms don’t know about.

Firstly, for those of you in the BBC Sherlock fandom, let me point you toward this delightful REC LIST OF REC LISTS that shadowfireflame put together back in 2013. Though I’m sure some of the links are broken now, this is a wonderful resource if you would like to time warp back to the early days of the fandom and find useful commentary from multiple reccers which can guide you to a lot of gems that never made it onto AO3. Shadowfireflame has collected in one place links to as many rec lists as she could find, and she could find a lot :)

Next, let me put in a word for Nomad’s Multifandom Gen Recs, a wonderful LJ-era archive (active from 2006-2016). This is not a typical rec page -- no reasons for the recs are given, they’re just a collection of stories that Nomad liked enough to link to, and you search the site by navigating the tags and reading the summaries of the fics to see if they sound interesting to you. There are hundreds of stories to choose from in a variety of fandoms. Given how often gen fic can be overlooked in fandom, it’s awesome to have this rich collection of well-written stories to explore! Some of the fandoms represented include: Doctor Who, Harry Potter, House M.D., SPN, Star Trek, Star Wars, Buffy, Discworld, The West Wing, the MCU, various Stargates, a few for BBC Sherlock...(check the tags for a more complete picture).

Finally, if you are more hungry for book recs than fic recs, here are a couple book bloggers whose posts I always enjoy. Starfishstar summarizes her favorite reads four times a year in her quarterly book posts, and offers clear, concise, and thoughtful summaries.

And skygiants’ book blog regularly makes me laugh so hard I cry. She finds the most amazing variety of stuff, and her posts about the latest thing she’s watching, reading, or seeing on stage regularly fill me with joy. Her tags are voluminous, I bet anyone can find something to interest them. I will start by just linking her BOOKLOGGING tag, but you can also explore her full blog or her tag list.

[educatedinyellow]

Underrated Meme part 3: Flight of Dragons (1982)

My underrated meme saga continues today with a movie that I watched all the time when I was a kid, Flight of Dragons. My impression is that this strange little movie is a good deal less well-known than other Rankin-Bass productions of the 1970s and ‘80s (like The Hobbit and The Last Unicorn). Like much animated entertainment of that era, it contained a lot of material that was not really appropriate for children and was nightmare fuel for young me. But there were many reasons I loved it anyhow. The film had a wry sense of humor at times, and an incredibly geeky world-building sensibility in which our hero (a modern writer who has been accidentally transformed into a dragon) was determined to analyze magical things scientifically. There were moments of bittersweet tragedy played with all the heartfelt seriousness of Arthurian legends. And the horrifying evil wizard Ommadon was played by James Earl Jones in what I personally consider his greatest and most underrated voice performance!

Let’s see if I can find YouTube clips that will give you a sense of this deeply odd staple of my childhood. Here, let’s start with a little knight versus dragon adventure, complete with the knight’s gently funny narration:

Here’s the scene where our long-suffering older dragon tries to explain to Peter-the-man-who-has-just-merged-his-consciousness-into-a-dragon about how to fly. Peter’s eager scientific analysis of dragon flight (he draws a diagram!), and his delight at his success in figuring it out, still entertains me all these years later:

And now let’s get to James Earl Jones giving us a masterclass in megalomaniacal villainy. Ommadon is the dark wizard Voldemort WISHES he could have been, y’all.

And here is the explosive, nightmarish, profoundly bizarre and hilarious boss battle between Rational Science and Dark Magic. This thing must be seen to be believed, guys. James Earl Jones pulls out ALL the stops in his vocal performance here, and let me tell you this scene was a TRIP as an 8-year-old child and it’s just as much of a trip now:

Yeah. I know, right?

[educatedinyellow]

The Underrated Things Meme, part 2: gymnastics edition

The other day, beastlyanachronism kindly tagged me to share 5 things I think are underrated. I tend to be so verbose about it that I’m doing it in pieces :) Yesterday I mentioned Peter Allan Fields, a television screenwriter whose work I especially love. And today, I’d like to talk about...

Gymnasts who never won Olympic medals.

Women’s gymnastics is a popular sport to watch during the Olympics, but my impression is that most people (myself included) don’t usually keep up with it during non-Olympic years. Those gymnasts who have entered the popular consciousness tend to be the ones who win Olympic medals on TV. But there are many amazing gymnasts beyond that narrow range, and fortunately there are people on the internet who can point a newbie towards some of the lesser-known greats.

Two gymnasts I’ve recently learned about are Li Li (a Chinese gymnast competitive in the early 1990s) and Olesya Dudnik (a Soviet gymnast who competed in the late 1980s). Li Li never won an Olympic medal, and Dudnik never went to the Olympics at all. But they were both innovative, elegant, ahead-of-their-time gymnasts who incorporated stunning difficulty and originality into their routines. Among those who really know the history of the sport, they’re remembered as extraordinary.

Forgive the crummy video quality, but Dudnik’s beam routine here is amazing from the hugely difficult first move to the hugely difficult last move!:

Meanwhile, Li Li’s beam routine includes some incredible spinning. She honestly looks like she’s busting breakdance moves on the beam:

Both of these gymnasts have many other fantastic routines available on YouTube, too -- I especially recommend their uneven bars.

My heart goes out to Dudnik, whose gymnastics career was brief due to injury and who lost both of her parents to illnesses resulting from the Chernobyl disaster. Both she and Li have continued on as gymnastic coaches, and they’re working and living in the U.S. these days (Dudnik spent many years living and coaching in Egypt as well).

*cheers for them!*

[educatedinyellow]

Top 5 Things you think are Criminally Underrated!

Thank you for tagging me in this fun meme, @beastlyanachronism! I think I’ll answer it a bit at a time as things occur to me. So here’s something to start with...

I think that in the world of film and television, screenwriters are surprisingly underrated in comparison to the popular attention often given to actors and directors. I wish the contributions of particular authors were more recognized, and I will start by picking a very non-famous screenwriter who has nevertheless meant something to me: Peter Allan Fields.

I doubt most Star Trek fans know his name, as he only wrote a grand total of 13 episodes split between The Next Generation and DS9. But among that baker’s dozen of scripts, we have some of the very best episodes either series had to offer. Peter Allan Fields wrote “The Inner Light” (which is often voted the best single episode of TNG), “Duet” (which is often voted the best single episode of DS9), and “In the Pale Moonlight” (ALSO often voted the best single episode of DS9, for those who don’t go for “Duet.” EDIT: oops, I just looked more closely, and he has story credit for this episode but the actual teleplay was written by another writer. BUT STILL!). He also wrote one of my personal favorites, “Necessary Evil,” a wonderfully noir-ish flashback episode that does very interesting character work between my two favorites, Odo and Kira.

Another reason I love Peter Allan Fields is that he started his career in the mid-1960s writing for The Man From UNCLE, and he once again knocked it out of the park and wrote a number of my very favorite episodes. He had a gift for banter, evident from his very first script -- “The Fiddlesticks Affair” -- and heightened in the delightful “Foxes and Hounds Affair” (guest starring Vincent Price, who absolutely makes the most of the snarky dialogue!) and “The Minus-X Affair.” (ILLYA REPORTING TO THEIR BOSS: Napoleon can rest up a bit. He was hit by a truck. NAPOLEON, PERFECTLY FINE AND GESTURING ENCOURAGINGLY: A big truck! ILLYA, DEADPAN: A small truck.) Good times.

Peter Allan Fields passed away last summer (July 2019) at the age of 84, and I’m kicking myself now that I never wrote him a fan letter. I applaud you, Peter; thank you for some wonderful hours of storytelling with beloved characters!

[arandompersonontheinternet4-blog]

How’s my first meme?

[hazbin-hotel-screencaps]