2015 Fandom Year in Review

[pocochina]

Happy new year, everyone!

I'm slowly catching up on fandom reading and comments. My old laptop recently sad-tromboned its way into obsolescence (tbh it was obsolete LONG before that but I put things off) and now I'm more or less adjusted to the new one. Before that, though, the annual retrospective:

Comments

[sunclouds33]

Yay for Rome! Yup, I've been so burned by people not taking my recommendation that I'm stuck saying "GOOD BREAD THIS!" or "It's hotter than Vulcan's dick!" or "I could have had half the whores for Nabo for that price...AND THEIR MOTHERS" or "It's only hubris if I fail" or "I didn't know he existed...until he didn't" or "A large penis always welcome" and no one knowing WTF I'm talking about. Really for a show about ancient Rome, it's very applicable to how I see the modern world.

But seriously, based on Game of Thrones nonsense, I'm almost glad that Rome never caught onto fandom and I didn't have to suffer through fandoms' "Sunday school abolitions against salty language and grisly historical reality = feminism and moral virtue." Do you have a favorite character? I really can't choose. Atea, Ceasar, Octavian, Marc Antony, Pullo, Lucius Vorenus, and Servillia are basically tied for first! Everyone else is basically an honorable mention.

Speaking on the Sunday schoolness of fandom, I feel like that's why Supergirl took off, based on how I hear it described. "Girl" is a G-rated word while "You want a bad girl but you need a bad pussy" is totally R-rated, but based on that exchange you quoted, I'd rather experience R-rated phrases as a fact of life than being preached how I must want specific G-rated words to describe myself.

[pocochina]

I don't think I do have a standout favorite, exactly. Caesar and Servilia are pretty great, I always enjoy a good megalomaniac. I also tend to feel for Octavia, even though she's basically the polar opposite of those two. Like, not everyone in a particular orbit can be a ~hard-bitten player. Some people just are tragically susceptible.

Come to think of it, I might have paused in my watch of the show because I was reading The Assassination of Julius Caesar and it was a little weird to have the two takes on him in my head.

I'd rather experience R-rated phrases as a fact of life than being preached how I must want specific G-rated words to describe myself.

LOL, exactly. I feel like over the last couple of years fandom's gotten very loud about insisting that ~realism doesn't have to be grim~ and ~complexity doesn't have to be dark~ and blah blah blah.....but it will gleefully laud cotton candy simplicity which somehow manages to be both banal and offensive as morally superior to messy, difficult humanism every time.

[sunclouds33]

I love Octavia too.

Atea: Castor, be sure to cut Octavia's throat before you cut mine.
Octavia: Please, Castor, let Mother do it. I won't deny her one last pleasure. It would be undaughterly.

Or her FACE when Octavian declares, "And now the price. Maybe you'll renew your strange interest in Caesar's health" after he's gotten his fantasy of sex with her but he's already chess-mapped what her pillow talk is going to be. Octavian knows that it's dangerous pillow talk- but it's nothing that he can't handle AND get the incest sex.

But yeah, Octavia isn't even THAT vulnerable as a human being. She has lots of strengths and she's not especially squishy. She just wants healthy loving honest relationships more than political backbiting or fun with murder. That healthiness (along with her qualities as a marital chesspiece as a young highborn woman) renders her a "weakling" among their set.

LOL, exactly. I feel like over the last couple of years fandom's gotten very loud about insisting that ~realism doesn't have to be grim~ and ~complexity doesn't have to be dark~ and blah blah blah.....but it will gleefully laud cotton candy simplicity which somehow manages to be both banal and offensive as morally superior to messy, difficult humanism every time.

Ick. I feel like this ~realism doesn't have to be grim~ and ~complexity doesn't have to be dark~ is the much-rebelogged starting position but the long-con among distressingly too many is to de-legitimize any fan who loves the controversial characters, the characters who aren't always pre-determined as the Hero. Because if someone can write a list of their Problematic Actions and they're not even notably interesting or realistic because of it, than any fan of theirs must not have their head screwed on right. These Pollyanna generalizations so fucking phony.