Though I am training myself now not to deliver random lectures of canon to anyone who hasn't asked, because I remember how well that went over in X-men fandom.
I totally understand that impulse-- it's like hearing someone get basic details about the American Civil War wrong, or all the people during that wank over orphan works legislation a few weeks ago who didn't actually know what orphan works were. I am compelled to correct people, because the idea of them continuing in ignorance is actively painful (I probably did it to you early on, I'm sure, because I know you're an Ultimates fan, and people bringing up Ultimates spurs the same "must provide correct information" urge in me).
I think my ultimate low point was when a Magnificent Seven fic actually got me to the point of yelling something along the lines of "Confederate blockade runners used steamships, not sailing ships! Any they didn't pay in gold because they didn't have any! They paid in cotton! Cotton! How stupid are you?" at my computer screen. Thank God the fic was on a personal webpage and I can never summon up the courage to actually email people reviews. If I'd been able to leave an LJ comment, I might actually have posted something along those lines, and taken out months of accumulated frustration over people writing the Civil War badly on the poor author.
(Oh, I was a little terrified of the entire fandom after that conversation. I won't lie. :) But that's the risk you take when you post in a new fandom or an old one, so I got over it. And I still like the Ultimates. I'm used to having odd tastes in all my fandoms, so.)
I just did the auto-correct thing to someone over the weekend who isn't in fandom, just an acquaintance I was chatting to, so he wasn't even aware I read comics. And so probably wasn't prepared for the vehemence of my response. I felt oddly guilty afterwards. I don't want to scare off any newbie who might potentially write me really good Tony angst, but yeah, that urge sneaks up sometimes.
Though in my Stargate fandoms it's fairly acceptable to comment politely and be like, yeah, hi, the military doesn't work like that. I guess it does depend on the established interaction rules of the fandom. So maybe I'm concerned over something no one will even mind.
You mean Jack and Daniel/Jack and Sam (with Sam and Jack still maintaining their respective positions on the SG1 team) wouldn't actually be allowed get married in a tasteful ceremony in the gateroom? *is shocked and astonished*
Though of course, there are also the comparatively minor background things, like giving an F-15 the wrong number of engines, or not grasping that the Marines and the Air Force have different rank systems (i.e. that there is no such thing as an air force private), or a host of other background details that are relatively easy to correct but will really throw people out of the story if they're wrong.
Heh. Yes, I'm definitely thinking more of the latter example. See? Established rules. Like the difference between someone correcting Rhodey's rank in a story, and being all, Tony and Pepper never worked out in the comics, therefore it can never ever happen! Which is not untrue, just kind of a pointless way of spoiling other people's fun.
Apologies in advance, because I'm probably about to rant bitchily at you.
What the heck is fandom's deal with Ultimates?
Mark Millar.
Well, it's more complex than that, but basically it comes down to Millar's lack of characterization skills/consistant penchant for making every character he writes act like a dick. A depressing number of the characters in Ultimates are not just a reboot, but completely different people masquerading as the Wasp, Cap, Iron Man, etc.
That alone is enough to make a lot of Avengers fans angry, because fans were essentially cheated. They were promised a reboot of Avengers canon with a modern setting and less crack and with pretty art, and what they got was a story about a bunch of random people they'd never seen before, rather than the characters people knew and loved.
I think people might have been able to deal with that and move on, if it weren't for the fact that most of the pod people masquerading as the Avengers are really unlikable people, who lack just about every redeeming quality that the 616 characters they're supposed to be versions of possess. Ult!Iron Man and Ult!Thor are exceptions, since they're actually decent human beings, but Ult!Iron Man is still a completely diferent person from real Tony Stark.
And people who encounter Ultimates prior to reading any actual Captain America, Iron Man, or Avengers canon invariably end up thinking that these are the correct characterizations, and Avengers fans end up having to have the same "No, Hank Pym is not an abusive bastard, damnit!" argument over and over (and over and over and over...). And this fills us with a deep and abiding bitterness that even Jeph Loeb's current desperate attempts to bring the characterization and storylines on the title in line with something vaguely resembling canon cannot assuage.
There are some issues with the backstory revisions Millar did, too: for some Iron Man specific examples, having Tony's intelligence be a mutation invalidates part of the point of the character, which is that he is a non-superpowered guy who made himself a superhero with work and technological know-how, and making his health issues a brain tumor completely does away with the comentary inherent in the original canon's shrapnel-based heart problem -- the fact that Tony Stark the arms manufacturer was injured by his own weapons (Plus, you know, it ignores the whole "the tinsmith forgot to give me a heart" symbolic aspect). Those are minor quibbles next to the characterization issues, though. If the Ultimates were a set of original characters, with completely different names, I think they'd be more popular despite all being, well, dicks -- it's the fact that the title is essentially an excercise in extended character assassination performed on people fans love that makes us angry.
Plus, the Ultimate Iron Man armor is really friggin' ugly. Which has nothing to do with anyone else's dislike of the verse, but I, personally, am shallow.
There are lots of people who initially read Ultimates having no familiarity with real Iron man/Cap/Avengers canon and who like it quite a lot. Interestingly, these people are also the only Iron Man fans I know (including fanboys on messageboards) who don't think that Matt Fraction's Invincible Iron Man sucks (Fraction's comic is a sort of tie-in title to the main Iron Man title, of dubious canonicity, that reads spookily like the period in the early 90s when comics were so bad that Marvel almost went bankrupt).
Everyone hates Ultimate Iron Man, too, but that's because it's a completely different and unconnected AU that confusingly has nothing whatsoever to do with Ultimates, because Orson Scott Card, in a moment of extreme unprofessionalism, never bothered to actually read Ultimates before writing it. Seriously, it's set in an entirely different universe where Tony has blue skin, and Ultimates fans and Iron Man fans alike stare at it and say "WTF is this?"
Oh my god I'd completely forgotten about Ultimate Iron Man. That was hilarious in a "CAN I GET SOME OF HIS DRUGS PLZ" fashion.
*nods* I mean, how hard would it have been to read the single graphic novel that was the establishing canon for the universe he was supposed to be writing in?
I mean, it would be one thing if the title didn't mesh with Ultimates canon because OSC was going with various characters' 616 backstories instead, or if he was writing it right now and incorporating elements of movie-canon that didn't match Ultimates (it would still be inconsistant and not what he was supposed to be doing, but at least it would have matched some piece of official Marvel storyline from somewhere). But no. Tony apparently just had to be blue.
I totally understand that impulse-- it's like hearing someone get basic details about the American Civil War wrong, or all the people during that wank over orphan works legislation a few weeks ago who didn't actually know what orphan works were. I am compelled to correct people, because the idea of them continuing in ignorance is actively painful (I probably did it to you early on, I'm sure, because I know you're an Ultimates fan, and people bringing up Ultimates spurs the same "must provide correct information" urge in me).
I think my ultimate low point was when a Magnificent Seven fic actually got me to the point of yelling something along the lines of "Confederate blockade runners used steamships, not sailing ships! Any they didn't pay in gold because they didn't have any! They paid in cotton! Cotton! How stupid are you?" at my computer screen. Thank God the fic was on a personal webpage and I can never summon up the courage to actually email people reviews. If I'd been able to leave an LJ comment, I might actually have posted something along those lines, and taken out months of accumulated frustration over people writing the Civil War badly on the poor author.
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I just did the auto-correct thing to someone over the weekend who isn't in fandom, just an acquaintance I was chatting to, so he wasn't even aware I read comics. And so probably wasn't prepared for the vehemence of my response. I felt oddly guilty afterwards. I don't want to scare off any newbie who might potentially write me really good Tony angst, but yeah, that urge sneaks up sometimes.
Though in my Stargate fandoms it's fairly acceptable to comment politely and be like, yeah, hi, the military doesn't work like that. I guess it does depend on the established interaction rules of the fandom. So maybe I'm concerned over something no one will even mind.
Reply
You mean Jack and Daniel/Jack and Sam (with Sam and Jack still maintaining their respective positions on the SG1 team) wouldn't actually be allowed get married in a tasteful ceremony in the gateroom? *is shocked and astonished*
Though of course, there are also the comparatively minor background things, like giving an F-15 the wrong number of engines, or not grasping that the Marines and the Air Force have different rank systems (i.e. that there is no such thing as an air force private), or a host of other background details that are relatively easy to correct but will really throw people out of the story if they're wrong.
Reply
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
What the heck is fandom's deal with Ultimates?
Mark Millar.
Well, it's more complex than that, but basically it comes down to Millar's lack of characterization skills/consistant penchant for making every character he writes act like a dick. A depressing number of the characters in Ultimates are not just a reboot, but completely different people masquerading as the Wasp, Cap, Iron Man, etc.
That alone is enough to make a lot of Avengers fans angry, because fans were essentially cheated. They were promised a reboot of Avengers canon with a modern setting and less crack and with pretty art, and what they got was a story about a bunch of random people they'd never seen before, rather than the characters people knew and loved.
I think people might have been able to deal with that and move on, if it weren't for the fact that most of the pod people masquerading as the Avengers are really unlikable people, who lack just about every redeeming quality that the 616 characters they're supposed to be versions of possess. Ult!Iron Man and Ult!Thor are exceptions, since they're actually decent human beings, but Ult!Iron Man is still a completely diferent person from real Tony Stark.
And people who encounter Ultimates prior to reading any actual Captain America, Iron Man, or Avengers canon invariably end up thinking that these are the correct characterizations, and Avengers fans end up having to have the same "No, Hank Pym is not an abusive bastard, damnit!" argument over and over (and over and over and over...). And this fills us with a deep and abiding bitterness that even Jeph Loeb's current desperate attempts to bring the characterization and storylines on the title in line with something vaguely resembling canon cannot assuage.
There are some issues with the backstory revisions Millar did, too: for some Iron Man specific examples, having Tony's intelligence be a mutation invalidates part of the point of the character, which is that he is a non-superpowered guy who made himself a superhero with work and technological know-how, and making his health issues a brain tumor completely does away with the comentary inherent in the original canon's shrapnel-based heart problem -- the fact that Tony Stark the arms manufacturer was injured by his own weapons (Plus, you know, it ignores the whole "the tinsmith forgot to give me a heart" symbolic aspect). Those are minor quibbles next to the characterization issues, though. If the Ultimates were a set of original characters, with completely different names, I think they'd be more popular despite all being, well, dicks -- it's the fact that the title is essentially an excercise in extended character assassination performed on people fans love that makes us angry.
Plus, the Ultimate Iron Man armor is really friggin' ugly. Which has nothing to do with anyone else's dislike of the verse, but I, personally, am shallow.
There are lots of people who initially read Ultimates having no familiarity with real Iron man/Cap/Avengers canon and who like it quite a lot. Interestingly, these people are also the only Iron Man fans I know (including fanboys on messageboards) who don't think that Matt Fraction's Invincible Iron Man sucks (Fraction's comic is a sort of tie-in title to the main Iron Man title, of dubious canonicity, that reads spookily like the period in the early 90s when comics were so bad that Marvel almost went bankrupt).
Everyone hates Ultimate Iron Man, too, but that's because it's a completely different and unconnected AU that confusingly has nothing whatsoever to do with Ultimates, because Orson Scott Card, in a moment of extreme unprofessionalism, never bothered to actually read Ultimates before writing it. Seriously, it's set in an entirely different universe where Tony has blue skin, and Ultimates fans and Iron Man fans alike stare at it and say "WTF is this?"
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(The comment has been removed)
*nods* I mean, how hard would it have been to read the single graphic novel that was the establishing canon for the universe he was supposed to be writing in?
I mean, it would be one thing if the title didn't mesh with Ultimates canon because OSC was going with various characters' 616 backstories instead, or if he was writing it right now and incorporating elements of movie-canon that didn't match Ultimates (it would still be inconsistant and not what he was supposed to be doing, but at least it would have matched some piece of official Marvel storyline from somewhere). But no. Tony apparently just had to be blue.
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