What can I say? I like it when my existence is acknowledged.

[serrico]

I've been thinking about this whole "interactive storytelling" thing TV's trying these days, and the difference, for some shows, between what it says on the label and what's actually in the can.

Comments

[rivkat]

This is well-observed and very helpful in articulating why Heroes is so cold, relatively, even as it's doing everything Henry Jenkins is selling as the future of entertainment.

[serrico]

Thank you! I've been watching those Sprint-plastered minisodes with a furrow in my brow, trying to reconcile them with, you know, *entertainment*. And this is the result. *g*

(Thanks for the rec, too!)

[laurashapiro]

Thank you for this outstanding post.

[serrico]

Thank *you* for the rec! I was not expecting this to get much of a response, but I'm really glad it's provided some food for thought. :)

[laurashapiro]

My pleasure!

[madripoor_rose]

Great essay.

And one thing I liked about the Castle episode....I wasn't *that* surprised at an in-joke for Nathan Fillion, he is the series lead. The fact that they also had Esposito dress up as a marine, when the actor's last role was in Generation Kill really impressed me. I do wish, given the plot, that they'd made a ref to Stana Katic playing a vampire in the last Noah Wylie Librarian movie, but that might have been just a little too obscurely geeky.

[telepresence]

And Seamus Deaver has played a doctor in a couple of his roles. Meanwhile Beckett knew a lot about Frank Miller, and Stana Katic appeared in a Frank Miller movie recently. And in addition to the Firefly ref, Castle mentioned Buffy, which of course Fillion appeared on. Lots of fun stuff.

[dementedsiren]

You beat me to the Seamus Deaver ref! Ah well - it was still made of awesome.

[dementedsiren]

And Ryan's dressing up as a doctor, when one of the actor's last roles was as a (murderous) doctor on General Hospital. The fact that they didn't just play off Fillion, and that it was a wider nod to the fan community and the greater continuity of actors across shows, really blew me away.

[mecurtin]

Verra interesting. I don't know much about Castle, so I hope to see people here explicate

[cereta]

I think given the very heavy emphasis on characters and relationships in Castle (not to mention that while it's a bit of a police procedural, it falls more squarely in the "amateur crime solver" genre), they seem pretty content with the female demographic. Even the odd sexing up of the female lead seems to be done more tongue-in-cheek - that is, it's almost a jab at Castle himself when it happens, as much as it is pandering to a male audience.

[serrico]

Well, if I can go ahead and make an assumption based on damned dirty sexist stereotypes: Heroes' fanboys may get a kick out of the *technological* aspects of its interactive elements more than its fangirls might. And just as TV marketing tends to be focused on the male 18-39 demographic, so are technological doodads. So to put more of an emphasis on the gadgets and applications and games than on the content of the show itself *might* make sense to TPTB in charge of getting those all-important demographic numbers--but that sort of thing will detract from the show itself, as a commodity in its own right.

FBL interest is more likely to be on teasing out the world-building, wanting to know more about how the show/world is put together; FGL interest is more about teasing out the people-building, wanting to know more about the characters.Way back in the first season, the show's creator (who supposedly wasn't into comics or genre fiction before he did the show) said that his original intention for the series was to start each season

[baka_kit]

(observe: "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World" is the *opposite* of Buffy's premise; "Heroes" assumes you do not identify with the cheerleader, she is not the agent of interest.)

I'd been wondering for a long time why Heroes felt so different, why it sort of slid out of my brain rather than engaging the fannish mechanisms. I think this is it, exactly.

[zillah975]

Here from rivkat and just wanted to say this is a terrific essay. The sort of terrific that I always wish I found in those "Unauthorized Essays on Such-and-such" pop culture essay collections but rarely do. And also makes me feel somewhat better about what the SPN writers are doing to/with/about fandom.

[serrico]

Oh lord, I always have such high hopes for those books! And they rarely, if ever, deliver. (But then that's okay, 'cause I can always find better essays in Fandom Proper. *g*) Thank you!