osprey_archer | Fandom Meme, 23 & 24

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television

Fandom Meme, 23 & 24

23. Your rarest fandoms.

God, so many book fandoms. After all, many books never have what you might call a “fandom” at all. I think the smallest one I’ve actually written fic for is Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Changeling, for which I wrote the only fic on AO3.

24. A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.

There are really two reasons why this happens: either the canon is closed and I run out of ideas to write so I just drift away (Sutcliff fandom, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Lost Prince), or the canon is open and the new developments strike me as disappointing/enraging (Torchwood, Downton Abbey, the MCU) so I quit, sometimes in a huff.

Is this because the later installments are in fact disappointing, or because I’ve gotten so attached to my own interpretations that the later canon can’t help but annoy me? Of course I tend to feel that it’s the former, but it’s happened with so many fandoms now that I’m beginning to wonder if maybe this is just the curse of getting super-involved with an open canon.

OTOH it’s very common for me to get annoyed at a TV show and stop watching, so maybe it’s more of a general TV show thing. (I realize the MCU is not mainly a TV show, but like a TV show it is an ongoing property, and ongoing properties are liable to go off the rails at any time.)

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I am currently in the process of being disappointed by The Expanse. I enjoyed the first three seasons, which were produced by the SyFy channel (I'm watching these all way after the fact via Netflix DVD) and came to a natural close--but then apparently the show was bought up by Amazon Prime. We're nearly done with Season 4 of that, and it's been draggy, disconnected, and disappointing--for us, anyway.

... ummm, okay, that is actually just an opinion of a TV show and not about a fandom, but I was invested in the show--as a fan--and now disapprove of the direction (or rather, in my opinion, aimless flailing) it's gone in. So that ties in, right? On the top of "liable to go off the rails at any time"?

It's still relevant! This is a process that happens with lots of TV shows: they rarely seem to stay good all the way through to the end. So perhaps it just is the natural process of growing disenchanted with a TV show that drives me away from fandoms, instead of getting too attached to my own storylines and sulking because the show goes off in a different direction.

LOL, in my husband's case, his total fave in the Expanse got treated really badly in season four, and WOW was he sulky about it (usually I'm the one who does that, not him!). It made me think of how differently people react when they get really invested in a character or plotline, and how often that happens in fandom....maybe even is a condition of being a Fan? More enjoyment, but also more disappointment....IDK, I have found myself wishing I could just enjoy something without being overinvested in it now.

Which character? Was it Amos?

Honestly that whole blindness plotline. Blind... and killer slugs--because why not?? And tidal wave! And limited supplies! And...

... and someone should have told the writers that having people sitting around glumly being blind is NOT DRAMATIC TELEVISION.

Also, point-of-medicine, depending on how the critters in everyone's vitreous fluid were causing blindness, simply killing them with radiation after they're already in there and have done damage is not going to miraculously restore vision but at that point I was COMPLETELY HAPPY to be able to stop with the moaning blindness plotline (although that meant restarting the psycho malignant guy plotline) even if it seemed medically unsound.

Oh no, it was Bobbie (altho he also loves Amos. Amos is my fave among the guys). He started out liking Chrisjen when he first watched the show, but Bobbie is HIS BAE. He doesn't usually get really invested in characters in a super-fannish way, so it was cute, but also OMFG, cluck cluck CLUCK cluck the whole season long. "Is it going to get any better for Bobbie? Is the whole season going to be just screwing over Bobbie?" Season ends. "That was IT for Bobbie?" I was like, ....this is what it's like for other people when they watch something with me, isn't it, lol. It just felt like the women got screwed over a lot in S4, and that was a bummer to watch.

simply killing them with radiation after they're already in there and have done damage is not going to miraculously restore vision

I KNOW RIGHT but yes EXACTLY we were just like, Thank god this fucking plotline is OVER. -- Then they went right back to the corrupt evil overseer plotline! But at least that didn't have KILLER SLUGS and everyone being saved by Holden's bodily fluids.

Bobbie got SUCH a raw deal. And again, as of ep 8 of 10, she's suddenly soured on Mars? I don't believe it! The guy who's being all cynical and talking about how there's going to be a brain drain and everyone will leave Mars? Ought to have been counterweighted for her by her own brother (nephew?? I can't remember) getting work doing terraforming.

And Chrisjen gets the shaft too, suddenly becoming much DUMBER about politics than she was. As Wakanomori said, it's as if they decided to substitute her saying "fuck" or "fucking" for character development. Yes yes, old person w/accent saying "fuck," very cute, but maybe not EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE.

It SERIOUSLY was just like they piled all the agony on her, and I really dislike that -- not just because OMG my fave is sad, but the effect seems outweighed by the writing plan. Like Whedon saying, "Buffy happy, show good. Buffy in pain, show better." I like characters having difficulty and struggling with hard choices, but it just bums me out if it feels like there's no way they can win, the writers have stacked the deck against them.

I did really like her message to Nancy Gao, that seemed like genuine Chrisjen. Honest and manipulative and so good. The actress really loves Chrisjen too! https://twitter.com/SAghdashloo/status/1299117553143484416

True! That felt like her.

I like that the actress likes her! **I** like her (mainly). Gorgeously dressed older women for the win ;-)

Oh man, we just about hated sason four, but liked season five a LOT better. Especially in how it treats the women. That whole on-planet plotline with Burn Gorman was nearly enough to make me drop the series, at least for a while.

We will struggle through the last two episodes of Season 4, but then we'll have to wait until Season 5 becomes available on Netflix (generally a year after it airs/is available elsewhere)

And yeah, Burn Gorman's character is just awful, and everything around it is simultaneously depressing and hard to credit. Not that there aren't extreme assholes, but to be quite so malignant in so many ways and yet still have devoted subordinates? Uhhhhh....

Oh bummer! Yeah we were ahem-ing it, and then that just got too frustrating, so we just said fuckit for Amazon Prime. Which is of course exactly what Amazon Prime wants you to do, sigh.

Yeah, I was saying elsewhere a bit ago that the planet plotline felt particularly flat to me -- just like an example of the writers going "we want to make it awful for the characters," without trying to make sure it happened organically, the events happening because of who the people are. As far as that went, the plot was driven by Burn Gorman being Evil, and that was about it. (It didn't help that I really, really don't like Burn Gorman, I mean I know it's just personal preference, but I find him very unappealing to look at even.)

Yeah! Not organic! Things just happening, without thought for cause and effect. Like the woman who gets involved w/Amos but then still appears (as of ep 8 out of 10) to be willing to go along w/operation Massacre the Locals. ?.... ??? Like, writers, do you understand how people work?

Not to harp on the slugs, but--and this is a common problem w/Horrifying Organism plotlines, but still, it's annoying--how are those things part of any ecosystem??? What do they live on? What lives on them? I hate to break it to the writers, but a whole bunch of slugs don't just hang out, doing nothing, eating nothing. Stories where caves are full of bats? That's okay! Bats can fly out every night and eat insects. WHAT ARE THESE SLUGS DOOOOING?

And i mean up until now, the show had been good about thinking realistically about, for example, a space station ecosystem, or a Mars ecosystem, or whatever.

Also the alien tech used to just cause random disasters that don't (again, as of ep 8...) seem to do anything coherent. Are you trying to make something? Break something? Everything else the alien tech ever did, it either was self-evident what the point was, or the characters figured it out.

Not to harp on the slugs, but--and this is a common problem w/Horrifying Organism plotlines, but still, it's annoying--how are those things part of any ecosystem??? What do they live on? What lives on them? I hate to break it to the writers, but a whole bunch of slugs don't just hang out, doing nothing, eating nothing. Stories where caves are full of bats? That's okay! Bats can fly out every night and eat insects. WHAT ARE THESE SLUGS DOOOOING?

//dies Yeah, T was also riffing on that ("how do they LIVE") and I was just like, AAAHH SLUGS GROSS. I don't know how it is in the books, but really that sequence of events seemed very different from the grounded gritty worldbuilding the show's usually really good at. Slugs! Blindness! Tidal waves! Cancer! What!

I believe Dilys Powell was the one who originally asked the question of what the aliens in Alien lived on when there were no colonists around, lol.

THANK YOU DILYS; IT'S A WORTHWHILE QUESTION.

I personally think most of the Marvel movies after Cap2 have been disappointing on a storytelling level. But it might also be less that the new ones are objectively worse, merely that they've moved away from what brought me into the fandom in the first place (history + political thriller + assassin with a heart of gold are basically 3 of my 4 favorite tropes, and ... is present in exactly 1 Marvel movie)

I think the big team-up movies (including Cap 3) have been objectively worse, because they're trying to juggle too many characters. The standalone movies I think are not objectively worse, but they're not specifically laser-targeted to my personal id like The Winter Soldier, so I don't like them as much.

But after watching Black Widow or Captain Marvel or Antman or whatever I didn't have the same "I'm never getting those hours of my life back" feeling that I got from, say, Age of Ultron. Were they classics for the ages? Probably not, but they were perfectly decent popcorn movies, and if TWS is more than that (I mean, I feel it's more than that, but again: laser-targeted to my id) it's almost an accident on Marvel's part.

haha, sounds about right! TWS is quite laser-targeted, and even with TWS, I had quite a few quibbles back in April 2014. But then I joined fandom and it moved from "pretty decent movie with some unresolved emotional beats" to "excellent source material with prime unresolved emotional beats." XD;;;

I feel like most of the standalones are decent popcorn movies, though my eternal frustration is that they always pull their punches re: thematic messaging, and of course, everything has to be resolved by 30 minutes of punching. Whereas the team-up movies basically have 20 minutes to develop the thinnest of plots, because they have to spend 1 hour checking in with everyone, 1 hour to get the team together, and 1 hour to punch.

No one in the MCU cares about themes. Their goal is to make decent popcorn movies that gesture at themes but never actually explore them, leaving the part of the audience that cares about that sort of thing screaming "But you got SO CLOSE to truly exploring this ethical question and having deep thematic resonance, why did you STOP?"

Possibly it's a nefarious plot to make us all keep coming back in the forlorn hope that THIS TIME the MCU will actually let a theme play out instead of killing it dead just in time for punching.

this makes me want to do a MCU movie rating system based purely on their theme followthrough --

[x]% follow-through on the theme of [blah] but: (check all that apply) [] decided to solve the problem through punching [] allowed the good guys to win without fully confronting the ramifications of their actions re: [theme] [] shifted the narrative to be about individual success and failure instead of systemic issues

Black Panther -- 75% follow-through on their theme of the harms of colonialism and the responsibility of bystanders, but: [x] decided to solve the problem through punching (boring Panther/Panther fight) [x] allowed the good guys to win without fully confronting the ramifications of their actions re: Wakanda's responsibility for Killmonger and the African Diaspora [] shifted the narrative to be about individual success and failure instead of systemic issues

Oh man the big team-up movies are so terrible and I'm so disappointed the shows are apparently going to follow the same kind of thing where they're perennially advertising The Next Thing (finales of FATWS and Loki, especially Loki, LOOKING AT YOU). They're basically commercials for the next installment, it's commercials all the way down.

And yeah, there were movies I really enjoyed -- Captain Marvel is a good example -- where I didn't feel that need to interact with the source, though, and read ALL the fic. But I think sometimes that's not even a marker of quality -- the idea that fans seek out flawed canons because there's something to fix. I don't know how much I buy that, but I've definitely seen it happen.

I'm going to be annoyed forever that the end credits scene in Black Widow was an ad for the next installment. God, just let us have the WHOLE MOVIE without reminding us how you killed her in Endgame, is that too much to ask, Marvel?

I don't know that fans are always drawn to something because it's flawed, but maybe it's more common to feel that it's somehow incomplete? Or not even incomplete but the fans just want MORE; either more of the same or more where the characters finally get to fully express their love that the canon never fully acknowledges.

I was so NOT HAPPY to see Val again, and to interrupt that great scene with Yelena at the grave? WTF?? And I don't give a SHIT about Clint Barton in the MCU at this point. The (male) screenwriter was like, "I love to do scenes like that, interrupt the big mourning scene with Val blowing her nose and dumping all over it." And I was just like, yeah, that sounds like a Hollywood male screenwriter, all right.

Incomplete, that's a better word for it! Like with TWS, the ending of that is such a beautiful setup for a bunch of stories -- Nat going off to find herself (INSERT SOLO MOVIE HERE), Steve and Sam going to find Bucky, whatever Bucky's up to now that he's woken up, the fall of SHIELD, &c &c. All those Up All Night To Get Bucky fics. ....and then it turns out canon wasn't really interested in any of that stuff. //cries

I bet no one blew their nose and dumped all over the big mourning extravaganza for Tony in Endgame. I'M JUST SAYING.

I'm gonna die mad about the fact that we didn't get a solo Natasha movie back in 2015 or so. That was the obvious and correct place in the sequence for it to go.

Is this because the later installments are in fact disappointing, or because I’ve gotten so attached to my own interpretations that the later canon can’t help but annoy me? Of course I tend to feel that it’s the former, but it’s happened with so many fandoms now that I’m beginning to wonder if maybe this is just the curse of getting super-involved with an open canon.

For me it is almost certainly the open canon part....I SUCK at waiting and being patient so by the time I finally get a new installment, I'm hyped already, and if I don't get what I want, the disappointment gets highlighted. T and I binged ALL of the BSG remake when it was on Netflix, I think (everyone was unemployed, and depressed) and oh my fucking God if I had had to WAIT for that final season and the finale I would have burned my TV. I watched all of the X-Files as it was airing, and that put me off open canon for quite a while. But I don't have the patience to wait until something's finished, either, lol....and in the case of American TV until recently, and MCU in particular, the point wasn't for a story to be actually finished. I do a lot better with a closed canon I can binge, like the Netflix MCU shows, but the fannish discussion for that was almost nonexistent and on AO3 it was like the characters got sucked into the greater MCU verse, and wound up being background. (Except Daredevil, altho that already had a big fannish presence from comics....)

I never watched BSG, but I remember that people were just as mad about the finale as they were more recently about the Game of Thrones finale. Did it have the same "burned the fandom to the ground and salted the earth" effect that the GoT finale had on a lot of the fandom?

The thing is, I watched it WAY LATER than everyone else, and all at once, and missed all the thinkpieces and everything. It's also a little hard to tell because a lot of the fic is gone. But my impression is actually that it was a bit worse than the GOT finale, because while that whole last season was terrible, it seemed terrible mainly because it was sped up and the writers didn't give a shit anymore and you could see where certain things were coming from, like Dark Phoenix Danys. But with BSG it just went batshit around the end of season three and they just leaned hard into the batshit in season four, to the extent that the back half "4.5" was like one big crescendo of batshit that wound up being one of those "actually the people you THOUGHT were from the far future were our ancestors!!" terrible cliche SF endings. People to this day will rant about how one character was like "No, if we're going to start over, we have to send all the trappings of civilization INTO THE SUN," you know, the stuff like antibiotics and computers and weapons. I hadn't seen people that angry since the end of the X-Files (the 2002 finale).

or because I’ve gotten so attached to my own interpretations that the later canon can’t help but annoy me? Of course I tend to feel that it’s the former, but it’s happened with so many fandoms now that I’m beginning to wonder if maybe this is just the curse of getting super-involved with an open canon.

I think there's a certain amount of truth in this. (I mean, by default, TV/Film companies don't make things when people stop watching them, so there must still be something left there for enough other people to enjoy!) And consuming fictional media is such a personal and complex thing anyway.

I seem to come at open canons differently to a lot of fandom - if they're still open, then I'm open to whatever's going to happen (it takes a LOT to make me quit, and it's usually I never really liked it that much anyway, or compounded with me missing episodes/not being able to get hold of it). Anyway, I'm there for the ride, the privilege of being told a story, and I'll judge it (and write most of my fic), once it's over and I can look back on it as a whole. (By which time, of course, fandom has gone off in huff three years ago, as fandom does. :-/) It's probably worsened by writing fic and people having their own whole fanon, that they get offended at when, inevitably, the creators somehow don't share it. But non-creative areas of fandom seem to do it, too.

But when it comes to things where I definitely do have my own fixed idea of What Canon Is, like reboots, adaptations & sequels, I'm the worst. I'm pernickety, grumpy, and easily annoyed and angered, same as everyone else seems to be with S2 of just about everything. (Don't talk to me about the 2015 Poldark, and if anyone ever does that B7 reboot they keep threatening, I will either just lie down and cry or spontaneously combust. It will be wrong, I tell you, Wrong! XD)

We're not really objective, I think - and with fictional things, nobody's asking us for our objectivity anyway.

I just wish more people would be reasonable enough to ask, Is it me? like this, instead of deciding they are just more moral/have better taste and start screaming at the entire internet for not sharing their personal opinions. (My personal opinions about reboots etc. are, however, obviously Correct!! XD)

I don't mind if people scream ON the internet about their personal woes with a canon that has disappointed them - what else is the internet for! - as long as they are not screaming specifically at people who still like the canon, as if by shouting down everyone who still likes it they might magically reform the canon itself. Have a sense of proportion, people!

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Fandom Meme, 23 & 24

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