fannish meme, part 2 (and other fannish musings)
Continuing with the fandom meme (Tell me you want to play and I'll pick up to three of your fandoms. Then update your journal and answer the following questions.), gabolange gave me The X-Files, Stargate: SG-1, and Battlestar Galactica.
The X-Files
What got you into this fandom in the first place?
I'd been watching the show for years--before I even had access to the internet, much less knew what fandom was--and then sometime in about 1999 or 2000, I was trying to remember something that had happened in some old episode, and it occurred to me that there might be episode summaries on this grand thing called the world-wide web, which had by that time become a part of my life in an increasingly big way. I searched, and not only were there episode summaries, there was fanfic! I was not one of those people who wrote fanfic by myself before I knew what it was. The idea that people wrote stories about what happened to Mulder and Scully after the end of the episode? Or fully-plotted X-File stories? Or stories about Mulder and Scully having a whole lot of sex? Total revelation, and basically the coolest thing ever.
I pretty much just lurked for the first couple of years, and then wrote a few stories 'round about season 9 (because writing about Doggett and Reyes wasn't nearly as intimidating as writing about Mulder and Scully). But I was never active in a way that involved making friends or being involved in a community. mylittleredgirl is the only person I really connected with from that fandom (and it probably helped that she also was a part of my next fandom).
Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
I've long since moved on, though I've been rewatching the show lately, and I have gone back to re-read a bit of fic here and there as that's been happening.
Favorite episodes/books/movies, etc?
When I was more active in the fandom, or now? It's changed a bit, since I find my 'ship goggles, which were a very strong filter back when the show was airing, are rather broken now. Also, apparently I never really noticed the rapeyness of "Small Potatoes" and "Post-Modern Prometheus" back in the day, which sort of ruins both of those for me now. But have a few that I've really enjoyed in the rewatch and also remember liking back in the initial watch: "Beyond the Sea," "Clyde Bruckmann's Final Repose," "Detour," "All Souls," "Dreamland 1 & 2," "Tithonus," and "The Unnatural."
Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
Once upon a time, a few very rookie stories that I believe (and hope) have gone the way of the dinosaur and geocities. It's perhaps noteworthy, though, that I wrote my one and only long fic for this fandom: a post-colonization story with so many cliches it was truly impressive.
Do you think more people should get into this fandom?
Well, it's a classic, so there's always that. But the show itself went pretty far off the rails, and everything that could be done in this fandom has been done, most of it several times, so I don't know that it needs any more blood, frankly.
Stargate: SG-1
What got you into this fandom in the first place?
Heh. When I was into X-Files, I didn't realize this was the beginning of a whole, big hobby of "fandom." I just thought I was a big X-Files fan. And then after the show died, and then went on limpingly for a while after that, and then actually went off the air, I still persisted in caring. And that was annoying. Why couldn't I just move on? My solution, I thought (and I'm not sure what the logic was here, really, but it seemed to make sense at the time), was to start watching a show that pushed some of my XF buttons but wasn't as good. That way, I wouldn't care and could stop spending all this time reading and writing fic and being all inordinately obsessed. SG-1 seemed perfect! It was bad, but not so bad to be unwatchable. In fact, it was kind of fun. But just in a "tune in, enjoy it, then move on with life" kind of way.
Yeah, that mindset lasted about a day. Because, see, I'd already discovered that the world of fandom existed, and I was starting to get interested in this whole concept of fill-in-the-blank stories (still my favorite genre of fic, preferably with a big dose of character study), so by the time I'd seen my second episode of SG-1, I was online looking for fic. (The fact that my second episode was "Threshold" meant that I went looking for fic about Janet, actually, which is how I found the tiny little corner of fandom that was the Daniel/Janet fans, and the rest was history.)
Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
I've moved on, but SG-1 will always have a big place in my heart because this was the first fandom where I really got involved. And also because this show is pretty bad, yet all of a sudden it's like this switch is flipped, and suddenly, MY TEAM!!!!!!!!!!!. I also still feel like there are a couple of stories that I'd sort of like to write, but I don't know whether I'll ever get around to it.
Favorite episodes/books/movies, etc?
"Serpent's Song" is my all-time favorite. It's just such a great character episode for basically everyone, and the ethical dilemma pushes my buttons hard. I also really love "The Light," and really, all of season 4, which I think is the strongest of the series. "There But By the Grace of God" is excellent, as is "The Fifth Race." "1969," "Window of Opportunity," and "Wormhole X-Treme!" are tremendous good fun. I love "Rite of Passage" and "2010" for sentimental Daniel/Janet reasons, even though RoP, at least, is not a particularly great episode. I hated season 8 but rather loved "Reckoning" and still kind of wish it had been the series ender, even though I love Cam Mitchell liek whoa. I think "Heroes 1 and 2" are perhaps objectively the best episodes of the series, which is a problem, since I also HATE them and don't acknowledge them as existing in my personal canon.
Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
Did I ever! Lots of really terrible fic, some pretty decent fic, lots of conversation and friendship. Good times!!!
Do you think more people should get into this fandom?
Sure! I understand why people look skeptically at this show. Many of us who love it have a hard time explaining why, except that there's something about these characters that just makes you fall in love.
Battlestar Galactica
What got you into this fandom in the first place?
My friend R. broke up with her boyfriend.
Backing up: I'd seen a bit of BSG when it first started airing, and it didn't appeal. I saw all of the episode I now know was "Bastille Day," and I didn't like it at all. Katee Sackhoff's looks reminded me too much of an ex-friend of mine, which gave me kind of an unfair knee-jerk reaction against Starbuck (especially with her short hair). Fannish osmosis was all Kara/Lee, and they just didn't have anything about them that made me care (this, it turns out, continued to be the case). Mostly, I think I just didn't like the look of it: so grey and flat, especially since I was really into Farscape at the time, which is so colorful and vibrant.
But then R. broke up with her boyfriend and decided that getting into a new show would help her get her mind off things, and she wanted me to watch with her, so I agreed. I never did love the miniseries, but by partway through season 1, I was convinced that I'd been far too judgmental: I still didn't love Kara, but lord almighty, did I love Laura Roslin. And I had gained an appreciation for the look of the show (and for why so much of it was grey and flat), and it was just so brilliantly done. We watched the first two seasons quickly, and then caught up to it airing in real time at the beginning of season 3. R. enjoys sci-fi but isn't into online fandom, so I went foraging on my own, and ended up becoming part of perhaps my favorite fannish community.
Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
Oh, god. This fandom possibly broke me for fandom. This is why it's dangerous to love something this much when it's still in the hands of people who might ruin everything you ever loved about it. I will always, always love Laura Roslin--probably more than any other character. I think and hope that I may someday be able to go back to rewatch the first two seasons without bitterness. And I will always be grateful to this fandom for connecting me with very dear friends, gabolange, of course, chief among them.
Favorite episodes/books/movies, etc?
All of season 1 and the first half of season 2. The second half of season 2 is more uneven but still well worth watching.
Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
Past tense, but yes, definitely. Lots of meta, and a fair bit of fic. It's ironic that I'm in many ways prouder of my writing for this fandom than of anything else I've done, fannishly speaking, but I can't really bring myself to go back to read any of it now.
Do you think more people should get into this fandom?
Only if you want to end up mean and embittered? Actually, I highly recommend the first two seasons, and perhaps the first four episodes of season 3. But then STOP. I know it seems tempting, but it's so hard to find the right cut-off point after that, and if you keep going, then there are pigeons and cliches and character assassinations, and you will wish you'd just stopped when they got off New Caprica.
**
In other fannish news, I watched a few recent episodes of Bones, and while it was terrible, it was actually less terrible than last season (and probably a good bit before that). The characters are all caricatures of themselves at this point, and the plots are as epically ridiculous as they have been for several seasons, now, but Booth and Brennan got together and had a baby, and nothing was ruined. That, I think, is the material point. This show was so obsessed with the "Moonlighting curse" that it had reached all levels of absurdity. But they finally put the characters together (also absurdly--do not think that I'm condoning baby plot of ridiculousness and skipping all the hard part, because I'm not), and the world didn't end. The show goes on, much as it did, and if it's terrible now, it's not because Booth and Brennan had a baby and moved in together.
So just imagine what a show that was willing to put its main UST couple together in a reasonable and thoughtful way might accomplish in terms of subverting annoying TV tropes! *eyes Castle warily* Castle is walking a line right now, and I think the season finale--and specifically whether they're finally willing to make a concrete step forward with Castle and Beckett--will very much be the difference between this show continuing to be a fun and refreshing take on familiar tropes or it jumping the shark and going the way of Bones (and others). I wish I were more optimistic.
(Also, I'm into season 6 in my XF rewatch, and this is no doubt exacerbating my impatience with never-ending UST. I've already stopped paying any attention to the mytharc, for my own sanity, but I also need to stop paying attention to Mulder and Scully's relationship, I think. At least not with any expectation that it will make any sense. Of course it doesn't. I know this. So at what point do I give up on the rewatch, do we think? I'd planned to go to the end of season 7--possibly stopping just before Scully says, "I'm pregnant"--but will the insanity get to me before then? We'll see...)
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.
The X-Files
What got you into this fandom in the first place?
I'd been watching the show for years--before I even had access to the internet, much less knew what fandom was--and then sometime in about 1999 or 2000, I was trying to remember something that had happened in some old episode, and it occurred to me that there might be episode summaries on this grand thing called the world-wide web, which had by that time become a part of my life in an increasingly big way. I searched, and not only were there episode summaries, there was fanfic! I was not one of those people who wrote fanfic by myself before I knew what it was. The idea that people wrote stories about what happened to Mulder and Scully after the end of the episode? Or fully-plotted X-File stories? Or stories about Mulder and Scully having a whole lot of sex? Total revelation, and basically the coolest thing ever.
I pretty much just lurked for the first couple of years, and then wrote a few stories 'round about season 9 (because writing about Doggett and Reyes wasn't nearly as intimidating as writing about Mulder and Scully). But I was never active in a way that involved making friends or being involved in a community. mylittleredgirl is the only person I really connected with from that fandom (and it probably helped that she also was a part of my next fandom).
Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
I've long since moved on, though I've been rewatching the show lately, and I have gone back to re-read a bit of fic here and there as that's been happening.
Favorite episodes/books/movies, etc?
When I was more active in the fandom, or now? It's changed a bit, since I find my 'ship goggles, which were a very strong filter back when the show was airing, are rather broken now. Also, apparently I never really noticed the rapeyness of "Small Potatoes" and "Post-Modern Prometheus" back in the day, which sort of ruins both of those for me now. But have a few that I've really enjoyed in the rewatch and also remember liking back in the initial watch: "Beyond the Sea," "Clyde Bruckmann's Final Repose," "Detour," "All Souls," "Dreamland 1 & 2," "Tithonus," and "The Unnatural."
Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
Once upon a time, a few very rookie stories that I believe (and hope) have gone the way of the dinosaur and geocities. It's perhaps noteworthy, though, that I wrote my one and only long fic for this fandom: a post-colonization story with so many cliches it was truly impressive.
Do you think more people should get into this fandom?
Well, it's a classic, so there's always that. But the show itself went pretty far off the rails, and everything that could be done in this fandom has been done, most of it several times, so I don't know that it needs any more blood, frankly.
Stargate: SG-1
What got you into this fandom in the first place?
Heh. When I was into X-Files, I didn't realize this was the beginning of a whole, big hobby of "fandom." I just thought I was a big X-Files fan. And then after the show died, and then went on limpingly for a while after that, and then actually went off the air, I still persisted in caring. And that was annoying. Why couldn't I just move on? My solution, I thought (and I'm not sure what the logic was here, really, but it seemed to make sense at the time), was to start watching a show that pushed some of my XF buttons but wasn't as good. That way, I wouldn't care and could stop spending all this time reading and writing fic and being all inordinately obsessed. SG-1 seemed perfect! It was bad, but not so bad to be unwatchable. In fact, it was kind of fun. But just in a "tune in, enjoy it, then move on with life" kind of way.
Yeah, that mindset lasted about a day. Because, see, I'd already discovered that the world of fandom existed, and I was starting to get interested in this whole concept of fill-in-the-blank stories (still my favorite genre of fic, preferably with a big dose of character study), so by the time I'd seen my second episode of SG-1, I was online looking for fic. (The fact that my second episode was "Threshold" meant that I went looking for fic about Janet, actually, which is how I found the tiny little corner of fandom that was the Daniel/Janet fans, and the rest was history.)
Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
I've moved on, but SG-1 will always have a big place in my heart because this was the first fandom where I really got involved. And also because this show is pretty bad, yet all of a sudden it's like this switch is flipped, and suddenly, MY TEAM!!!!!!!!!!!. I also still feel like there are a couple of stories that I'd sort of like to write, but I don't know whether I'll ever get around to it.
Favorite episodes/books/movies, etc?
"Serpent's Song" is my all-time favorite. It's just such a great character episode for basically everyone, and the ethical dilemma pushes my buttons hard. I also really love "The Light," and really, all of season 4, which I think is the strongest of the series. "There But By the Grace of God" is excellent, as is "The Fifth Race." "1969," "Window of Opportunity," and "Wormhole X-Treme!" are tremendous good fun. I love "Rite of Passage" and "2010" for sentimental Daniel/Janet reasons, even though RoP, at least, is not a particularly great episode. I hated season 8 but rather loved "Reckoning" and still kind of wish it had been the series ender, even though I love Cam Mitchell liek whoa. I think "Heroes 1 and 2" are perhaps objectively the best episodes of the series, which is a problem, since I also HATE them and don't acknowledge them as existing in my personal canon.
Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
Did I ever! Lots of really terrible fic, some pretty decent fic, lots of conversation and friendship. Good times!!!
Do you think more people should get into this fandom?
Sure! I understand why people look skeptically at this show. Many of us who love it have a hard time explaining why, except that there's something about these characters that just makes you fall in love.
Battlestar Galactica
What got you into this fandom in the first place?
My friend R. broke up with her boyfriend.
Backing up: I'd seen a bit of BSG when it first started airing, and it didn't appeal. I saw all of the episode I now know was "Bastille Day," and I didn't like it at all. Katee Sackhoff's looks reminded me too much of an ex-friend of mine, which gave me kind of an unfair knee-jerk reaction against Starbuck (especially with her short hair). Fannish osmosis was all Kara/Lee, and they just didn't have anything about them that made me care (this, it turns out, continued to be the case). Mostly, I think I just didn't like the look of it: so grey and flat, especially since I was really into Farscape at the time, which is so colorful and vibrant.
But then R. broke up with her boyfriend and decided that getting into a new show would help her get her mind off things, and she wanted me to watch with her, so I agreed. I never did love the miniseries, but by partway through season 1, I was convinced that I'd been far too judgmental: I still didn't love Kara, but lord almighty, did I love Laura Roslin. And I had gained an appreciation for the look of the show (and for why so much of it was grey and flat), and it was just so brilliantly done. We watched the first two seasons quickly, and then caught up to it airing in real time at the beginning of season 3. R. enjoys sci-fi but isn't into online fandom, so I went foraging on my own, and ended up becoming part of perhaps my favorite fannish community.
Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
Oh, god. This fandom possibly broke me for fandom. This is why it's dangerous to love something this much when it's still in the hands of people who might ruin everything you ever loved about it. I will always, always love Laura Roslin--probably more than any other character. I think and hope that I may someday be able to go back to rewatch the first two seasons without bitterness. And I will always be grateful to this fandom for connecting me with very dear friends, gabolange, of course, chief among them.
Favorite episodes/books/movies, etc?
All of season 1 and the first half of season 2. The second half of season 2 is more uneven but still well worth watching.
Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
Past tense, but yes, definitely. Lots of meta, and a fair bit of fic. It's ironic that I'm in many ways prouder of my writing for this fandom than of anything else I've done, fannishly speaking, but I can't really bring myself to go back to read any of it now.
Do you think more people should get into this fandom?
Only if you want to end up mean and embittered? Actually, I highly recommend the first two seasons, and perhaps the first four episodes of season 3. But then STOP. I know it seems tempting, but it's so hard to find the right cut-off point after that, and if you keep going, then there are pigeons and cliches and character assassinations, and you will wish you'd just stopped when they got off New Caprica.
**
In other fannish news, I watched a few recent episodes of Bones, and while it was terrible, it was actually less terrible than last season (and probably a good bit before that). The characters are all caricatures of themselves at this point, and the plots are as epically ridiculous as they have been for several seasons, now, but Booth and Brennan got together and had a baby, and nothing was ruined. That, I think, is the material point. This show was so obsessed with the "Moonlighting curse" that it had reached all levels of absurdity. But they finally put the characters together (also absurdly--do not think that I'm condoning baby plot of ridiculousness and skipping all the hard part, because I'm not), and the world didn't end. The show goes on, much as it did, and if it's terrible now, it's not because Booth and Brennan had a baby and moved in together.
So just imagine what a show that was willing to put its main UST couple together in a reasonable and thoughtful way might accomplish in terms of subverting annoying TV tropes! *eyes Castle warily* Castle is walking a line right now, and I think the season finale--and specifically whether they're finally willing to make a concrete step forward with Castle and Beckett--will very much be the difference between this show continuing to be a fun and refreshing take on familiar tropes or it jumping the shark and going the way of Bones (and others). I wish I were more optimistic.
(Also, I'm into season 6 in my XF rewatch, and this is no doubt exacerbating my impatience with never-ending UST. I've already stopped paying any attention to the mytharc, for my own sanity, but I also need to stop paying attention to Mulder and Scully's relationship, I think. At least not with any expectation that it will make any sense. Of course it doesn't. I know this. So at what point do I give up on the rewatch, do we think? I'd planned to go to the end of season 7--possibly stopping just before Scully says, "I'm pregnant"--but will the insanity get to me before then? We'll see...)
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.