I totally blame ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ninamazing for this...
Jan. 1st, 2010 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
intrikate88...because last night she mentioned to me her secret and arcane knowledge that in an alternate universe, I am Carmen Sandiego and she is a valued member of my team of thieves. This is totally true; it is obvious as I already have her hair and delight in snatching shiny ideas. This, of course, prompted an immediate search for what constitutes Carmen Sandiego canon and where the fandom is to be found.
There isn't much of the latter, and of the former I watched a bunch of YouTube clips (look, Rockapella is totally stuck in my head and I really am singing We're on the case and we're chasing her through history, where in time is Carmen Sandiego?) and realized that damn, I miss nineties' educational television. I mean, I promise you I learned about everything I needed to know to supplement college from Wishbone, Bill Nye, the Magic School Bus, and other shows like that.
Also the Chief and her magnificent shoulder pads, totally the voice of my childhood. She can narrate my life any time. (WHERE IS THE CHIEF CROSSOVER SHIPPING I ASK YOU. Chief/Giles. Chief/Malcolm Tucker. Chief/Adelle DeWitt. COME ON.)
But honestly, I don't understand the lack of fic. I mean, if I remember the fairly scanty details correctly, Carmen was a detective for a successful investigative agency, ACME, highly intelligent, and then for mysterious reasons, ran away from all that and began stealing very big, ambitious things. She started her own crime syndicate and ran it very successfully, managing to always keep from being caught, or at least not caught for very long. She got her hands on a time-traveling device and started mining history for revolutionary ideas that she could make a profit off of. She sounds like Veronica Mars, Sophie Devereaux, and a large helping of badass all mixed in to one. There is SO much to create fic out of, I can't be the only one who sees it.
In the meantime, though, I will rec the two good fics that I found and go hunt down the Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego game to install on my computer.
The Tale of the Hat by New S. Poster
For years the world has wondered why Carmen Sandiego, formerly of the Acme Detective Agency, abandoned a brilliant career in law enforcement for a life of crime. Scholars and criminologists have devoted countless hours of research to this mystery, only to find the results terribly inconclusive. Former friends and colleagues have spent identical countless hours in painful introspection, asking themselves where they went wrong with the agency’s golden girl. The origin of this riddle would baffle both groups, and would perhaps even surprise the great lady herself. For in those moments when Carmen chose to examine her decision to become a thief, she was forced to admit it all began with a hat.
We Froze But For a Moment by SombraAlma
Carmen Sandiego/Where's Waldo crossover. It's only the look in his eyes behind those wire-rimmed frames that makes her sit up and take notice.
There isn't much of the latter, and of the former I watched a bunch of YouTube clips (look, Rockapella is totally stuck in my head and I really am singing We're on the case and we're chasing her through history, where in time is Carmen Sandiego?) and realized that damn, I miss nineties' educational television. I mean, I promise you I learned about everything I needed to know to supplement college from Wishbone, Bill Nye, the Magic School Bus, and other shows like that.
Also the Chief and her magnificent shoulder pads, totally the voice of my childhood. She can narrate my life any time. (WHERE IS THE CHIEF CROSSOVER SHIPPING I ASK YOU. Chief/Giles. Chief/Malcolm Tucker. Chief/Adelle DeWitt. COME ON.)
But honestly, I don't understand the lack of fic. I mean, if I remember the fairly scanty details correctly, Carmen was a detective for a successful investigative agency, ACME, highly intelligent, and then for mysterious reasons, ran away from all that and began stealing very big, ambitious things. She started her own crime syndicate and ran it very successfully, managing to always keep from being caught, or at least not caught for very long. She got her hands on a time-traveling device and started mining history for revolutionary ideas that she could make a profit off of. She sounds like Veronica Mars, Sophie Devereaux, and a large helping of badass all mixed in to one. There is SO much to create fic out of, I can't be the only one who sees it.
In the meantime, though, I will rec the two good fics that I found and go hunt down the Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego game to install on my computer.
The Tale of the Hat by New S. Poster
For years the world has wondered why Carmen Sandiego, formerly of the Acme Detective Agency, abandoned a brilliant career in law enforcement for a life of crime. Scholars and criminologists have devoted countless hours of research to this mystery, only to find the results terribly inconclusive. Former friends and colleagues have spent identical countless hours in painful introspection, asking themselves where they went wrong with the agency’s golden girl. The origin of this riddle would baffle both groups, and would perhaps even surprise the great lady herself. For in those moments when Carmen chose to examine her decision to become a thief, she was forced to admit it all began with a hat.
We Froze But For a Moment by SombraAlma
Carmen Sandiego/Where's Waldo crossover. It's only the look in his eyes behind those wire-rimmed frames that makes her sit up and take notice.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-01 06:58 pm (UTC)As for Carmen fandom... all I know is a few people who RP her (and do so quite well, imho), but that's about it. Scattered fics and such too but, other than that...
no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 04:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 06:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 03:48 pm (UTC)Anyways... :)
no subject
Date: 2010-01-02 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-03 01:56 am (UTC)You're right, she's totally the precursor to Veronica Mars! That's just where my thoughts were headed the other day when I randomly thought of her. DAMN RIGHT '90S EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION IS WHERE IT'S AT. My mom, despite running half of NSF or something :P , hates Bill Nye and didn't allow that (?? my mom.), but the rest I ate up.
I think this must happen. Also I miss that game.
Why am I so bad at reading fic these days? IDEK.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-03 06:13 am (UTC)So I tried to install the Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego disc and it tried to have hysterics because I have newer than Windows 3 on my computer. I'm sure there must be a way to install it but I haven't figured it out yet.
HAHA WHAT YOUR MOM. (my mom just wouldn't let us watch Arthur -you know, the aardvark- because the kids were disrespectful to their parents, and the evolution eps of Bill Nye got the suspicious look if not actually turned off. Moms and their strange prejudices.) I know for a fact I would not have gotten an A in my astrophysics class last spring if not for Bill Nye. All of '90s educational tv is so entertaining and I still like it as an adult and I really think a strong baseline of scientific knowledge and literary classics should just be standard fare before you're twelve. ALSO REMEMBER MISS FRIZZLE AND THAT BUS HAD SO MUCH PERSONALITY ♥ ♥
You're right, she's totally the precursor to Veronica Mars!
The gameshow was really working the whole neo-noir thing, and with Carmen being an ACME detective up until the point she got bored with the lack of challenge and engaged in a life of crime... that kind of fits Veronica's story, too. Can't you just see a darker option in Veronica's future where she's isolated herself again and can't find enough challenge in anything she investigates and decides to try something that's a little more interesting?
Mom's got a red hat. I'm thinking of borrowing it so I can have a fancy new facebook profile picture. :P
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 03:09 pm (UTC)Jesus that was a strange and sappy sentence. It's early. Um, the link I'm getting to "The Tale of the Hat" just goes to that picture! Eep!
There's got to be somebody who translated it for the web. They did it with Oregon Trail! HMMM. Let me know if you get it working.
I really think a strong baseline of scientific knowledge and literary classics should just be standard fare before you're twelve.
YES. And if shows are flawed, so what? Then I can teach my children to analyze the media they're ingesting! XDDDDDD
I find it hilarious that you weren't allowed to watch Arthur because the kids were disrespectful to my parents, as my parents are extremely sensitive about that and Arthur was one of the few shows we COULD watch. Heh. I think the moral of this story is, blocking things from your kids is a misguided and ridiculous endeavour. (I'm going to be an interesting parent, if I get to actually be one. ;) )
Can't you just see a darker option in Veronica's future where she's isolated herself again and can't find enough challenge in anything she investigates and decides to try something that's a little more interesting?
Oooooh, yes. Now I gotta write this fic! It certainly isn't easy being unique and intelligent in a world of six billion other people who all want jobs. Something that's really been depressing me lately is that I'm afraid that in order to survive, I'll have to stop feeding my brain. :(
PROFILE PIC YES. I APPROVE. And then I can use one of my black fedora pictures (it's a fedora from the Spy Museum! It works!) and be a copycat.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 05:04 pm (UTC)Haha, I kind of actually had the Narnia revelation that everybody else had in reverse. I grew up hearing that it was OMG JESUS JESUS which was fine at the time (thank god the fundie days are over) but then I read CS Lewis' biography and how his atheism and study of mythology helped him realize that the Christian story, at its heart, had more in common with a wild pagan mythology with its focus on nature and cycles of death and rebirth than it had in common with the modern sanitized religion of Christianity, and so he became Catholic to know that Jesus that seemed to him the collection of all the things he had studied and wanted in mythology. Lewis influenced my own liking-Jesus-but-more-of-a-panentheist flavor of beliefs. And explores that even more, showing how the Pevensies, after learning how to accept all sorts of differences in others in Narnia, are now back in the Spare Oom world which is in the midst of WWII and the decline of the British Empire, and all the diversity of people moving around that came with that. And all of the things that each of them had to learn as kings and queens in Narnia set them apart as unique in their culture. "The Stone Gryphon Part 1: Oxfordshire 1942" (http://vileheadquarters.dreamhosters.com/fanfics.php?subaction=showfull&id=1148536307&archive=&start_from=&ucat=10&) is where you can find it, it is epic and I stayed up pretty much all night with it when
LOL IF I HAVE KIDS I WILL TOTALLY SHOW THEM EVERYTHING. If I read Arabian Nights at nine and it was a little confusing if enlightening then it won't hurt the kids any.
OOH OOH I WILL POST MY VERONICA/CARMEN FIC RIGHT NOW. LOL THAT LOOKS LIKE SLASH. IT'S A LITTLE SLASHY I'LL ADMIT. JUST A LITTLE.