DW/QAF crossover post: Is Fanfic Inherently a Bad Thing?
I'm indebted to larissa_j for kicking off this train of thought. She posted a rant about shipper wars in the Dr Who fandom which set me thinking about the role of fandom, and particularly fanfic, in relation to canon.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Oh, not true! There were always some dodgy bits (especially in the, ahem, comedy), but even RTD would probably tell you they did some lovely stuff in the first season and the first half of the second, and certainly they made his story of unrequited love an unforgettable romance (albeit not between the same characters). To the point where, as we know, he recently purloined their imagery. And the end of Season 3 was a perfect ending for what they'd started.
But, to do us justice, long before that happened (ie by the time Ian hove into view) we'd started to pick holes in the writing, and the real exodus from QAF wasn't because it didn't come up to fanfic, it was because the continuity was shot to hell and all the characters kept behaving internally inconsistently (e.g. Brian travels in one season from having a known talent for buying everyone the perfect gift to getting his starry-eyed lover a hooker. WTF?).
By the second or third episode of Season 4, I'd completely given up on it and most of my flist who were still engaged with it only were out of optimism that Cowlip would somehow "fix" it. I accept that a lot of fanfic from then on was trying to "fix" it for them - or rather, for fans who couldn't stand what canon had become, but we all know that doesn't work. In the end, you have to accept what's on the screen as the truth about the show, even if it makes no sense at all. Better shows than QAF-US jump the shark all the time, with or without fanfic.
It's possible that in the case of shark-jumping shows, fanfic actually holds the fandom together longer than might otherwise have been possible. But I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing either.
BTW, I'm not being critical of individual fanfic writers at all here. I'm just saying that it's struck me that there are probably no circs in which it is good for canon. I'm not saying fanfic writers are conscious of that, let alone that they injure canon on purpose (except in the case of fics like QAF's projected Season 5s, where people ripped it to shreds with irony before it even started: that was purposefully spiteful and I'm proud to say I was part of it :D).
The question of whether something can be good for a fandom but not good for the underlying canon is a whole new meta-question. What are the implications if a fandom swings off course and starts to revolve around a sun other than the original show/novel? I know communities often do, but a whole fandom?
Reply
That's definitely true. If it hadn't been for the fic, I'd maybe have watched S5, screamed a bit (okay a lot), and that would have been it. I'm definitely not one for Teh Love, which was gutted for me by the end of the show. It's not fun to see a character's innards spread in bloody bits across the floor, while the love of his life curls a lip and asks, "Um, do you want to do something with that? I would, but I have to go."
Or something a bit less crude. But you know what I mean.
Reply
evil!season 5 is the only thing that kept season 5 going.
Tell the truth!
Well evil!season 5 and the fact that we had to do the snarky recaps.
Reply
Leave a comment