Did I tell you that I watched Merlin?
I did. I watched it. I was not completely sober through the whole thing, but I think I got the gist. And as is usual with me, I have something to say about it, and about fandom migration, and about fandom patterns.
I suppose one of the reasons I'm writing this post is because I desperately do not want this to be the next big fandom. But I honestly understand why people are fanning it, I do: this post is my attempt to reconcile those feelings.
So I guess what I'm saying is, don't read this if Merlin is your happy place and you don't want it compromised. But also, I'm not going to be a dick about it - I really do get why it's a potentially big fandom. Anyway, enough preamble.
This is a post about why I don't like Merlin, and why I don't want it to be a big fandom. But first, let me talk about:
Why It Has So Much Potential, And the Things I Like About It
1) Of course it's supergay. It's like season one Smallville. More on that later, because I think that's actually a really telling comparison, but, yes. There's a slash dragon, it's completely WTF homosocial-tastic, the boys are MFEO, I seriously thought that they were going to spontaneously invent mouth to mouth resuscitation there in that one episode, just out of their sheer burning desire to kiss and also save one another's lives.
2) Not only is there an obvious boyslash pairing, there is (or are) one (or more) obvious girlslash pairing(s). And I am so behind that, you have no idea how much I am behind that, having women on a show who have chemistry together is a very big selling point for me. And I think that fandom is at the point where femslash is just a natural part of a what gets written - unlike some of the old fandoms, where it literally did not exist. Though, to be fair, some of those fandoms didn't have more than one woman in them. ANYWAY.
3) Of course magic can be read easily as a gay metaphor. This is Smallville again, by the way, the secret that you have that makes you special and amazing that you can't tell anyone, but that you especially can't tell your male BFF, who might beat you up for it, etc. And listen, I LOVE magic = gay, I loved it on Buffy until Joss fucked it up, I am completely prepared to love it here. If you know me, you know that I love metaphorical homosexuality probably even more than regular homosexuality, when it comes to tv.
4) I love bad tv just as much as the next fan, and I love camp just as much as the next overeducated queer, and this show is both of those things in spades.
But.
Why We Shouldn't Do It, And Why I Don't Want To Do It
1) But it IS bad tv, and the particular way in which it is bad tv is not just historical inaccuracies and badly written dialogue and cheesy animated Clash of the Titans-reject monsters. It is bad tv in that it is misogynist tv, in that it is completely unthoughtful tv, in that I can pretty much guarantee you, after seeing thirteen episodes, that it is going to be painful to watch and it is going to CONTINUE to be painful to watch, especially on grounds of gender and race. It is never. going. to get. better. at those things. The show makers DO NOT CARE about those things. If you want some examples of this badness, let me rattle off a few in the misogyny category: women's magic is evil; women with power are evil temptress sorceresses who want to kill you; women who have actually pretty legitimate grudges are apparently insane and must be stopped (I kind of don't get why Nimueh isn't supposed to be sympathetic); if a good woman has magic, it's the uncontrolled, unconscious, dangerous kind that comes on her in her sleep and that doesn't actually help (because no one believes her); women exist in order for men to compete for them; need I go on. It's all the classics, guys. Marion Zimmer Bradley is probably spinning in her grave, god help her. Wasn't she supposed to have fixed all this stuff about women's cauldrony magic being evil? I AM JUST SO FUCKING SICK OF ALL THIS CASUALLY WRITTEN BAD TV THAT REINFORCES ALL THIS BULLSHIT. And, by the way, I have a whole nother rant about how aesthetically poor texts are often the same as misogynist/racist/heterosexist texts - about how those things often go together. I'll tell you about that someday.
2) One of the reasons that the show is so gay is because it's a show about men: about men's concerns, about men using women as tokens to get at each other, about the homosocial. It's gay on the same grounds that Boston Legal is gay, which is to say, only by killing evil sorceresses can men truly BOND. And I am sick of this, too, I am sick of fandoms where people say, "oh my god, it was so awesome when John and Rodney were calling dibs on the hot alien princesses!" Because yes, that IS totally gay, but it's gay in a way that I would just as soon not have on my tv. Do you hear me, tv gods? If this is the only kind of gay available, I will instead choose NO GAY. I will instead choose to MAKE MY OWN.
3) When I say that it's like season one Smallville, I really really mean it - and I suffered through season one Smallville, guys, we all did. And I am just tired of it. I'm tired of the shows about teenagers, I'm tired of all the adolescent virginity stuff, I'm tired of watching terrible tv that no one cares enough about to make it half-decent. And I apply this to SGA as well: one of the reasons I am so tired is because I've spent all this time in SGA trying to ignore the terrible writing and the racism and the sexism and the way that the writers just don't care about the world they've created. And part of what I love about SGA fandom is part of what I love about many bad-show fandoms, which is, we roll up our sleeves and fix all that character backstory, we write real stories for Teyla and Ronon (sometimes), we do the worldbuilding they've neglected. But:
4) That's not the only way to have fandom. Remember The X-Files, you guys? Remember Buffy? Remember due South? Babylon 5? Have you seen some of the stuff for Sarah Connor Chronicles and BSG? None of these shows are perfect by a long shot, but at least they're all shows where you can say that the audience isn't being treated like a five year old child with an attention deficit disorder; at least they're shows where the authors care about the characters and the worlds the characters live in; at least they're shows written with respect for the audience. Merlin, like SGA, like Smallville, treats me like I'm stupid. Why should I have to put up with that?
5) Fandom migratory patterns are strange things. People don't go where the good shows are, or the bad shows are, or even where the hoyay is; people go where their friends are. People go where their favourite writers are. I'm no different: I go where my friends are, and where my favourite writers are - how the heck do you think I ended up writing lotrips? And, I mean, I started watching SGA because everyone on my flist was talking about people called John and Rodney. And look, that is fine, that is all good, I love the fannish hive mind and I love the way that the show matters less than the people. But in this case, maybe we could let the show matter just a little? Maybe we could not start building in Merlin-land too fast? Maybe we could just wait for another place for fandom to go, a place that maybe won't be quite so toxic? Maybe even a place that's for grownups, a place worthy of the incredibly intelligent people who are fans?
A Sort Of Concludingish Section
Listen, I realise that a lot of this is coming out of my anxiety about SGA fandom, which seems to be slipping away already (or perhaps it just feels that way to me and my paranoia). I honestly feel like the best work gets done in a fandom with a big following and a closed canon - I was a Duesie, I know whereof I speak on this one. But, aside from that, my anxiety on this subject is really located in the fact that I love fandom more than most other things that I do, and I will go with fandom wherever fandom wants to go, and I really really don't want to have to watch another show about teenaged white boys who have adolescent angst and who compete over women. I just don't think I can do it, guys, slash dragon or no slash dragon. The concept honestly horrifies me.
And let me say once again: I understand why fandom likes this show. Really I do. I am right there with you on the destiny thing, on the magic powers thing, on the Harry Potter Meets Smallville vibe of the whole show. But fannish taste is bigger than this, broader than this, better than this. Scifi and fantasy have become a big deal, recently, in mainstream tv, and the more my cult viewing practices get taken from me and processed and sold back to me at a markup, the more truculent I get about it, the less I want to play, the less I want to be the guaranteed audience for anything that even vaguely looks like speculative fiction. This was, if you're interested, my objection to Lost and to Heroes, as well - shows that pretend to be genre shows in order to tap into a genre market, but that don't actually care about the genre in which they're participating. I am not a guaranteed audience, I am not going to immediately swoon when I see a phaser or a fucking magic wand, I've seen good genre tv, I know what good genre tv looks like, and this isn't it.
Maybe, if you're considering jumping into it, it wouldn't hurt to just step back for a minute? Maybe just take a deep breath, maybe write some small fandom fic, maybe finish that old WIP you've had around forever?
I honestly don't know what my intention is in posting this. Obviously I can't halt the going-forward of the fandom machine once it's set its sights on something. But I guess I just wanted to cry out, a little, because, like I said above, I'm really tired of the badly written misogynist racist tv that doesn't care about me, or about itself. I'm really tired of having to brace myself to watch episodes of something, just so that I can read the fic or make a vid.
Can't we just wait for something better to come along?
NOTE: Please do not link this post on metafandom.
eta: I want to thank everyone for their thoughtful responses to this post. I'm no longer responding to comments here, because I no longer have the time or energy, and because there are cans of worms in the comments that are far off the original topic and much bigger issues than I'm interested in getting into (Is Buffy even feminist, really? Is it okay to look at tits in comic books? Did you know that Ron Moore is a dickhead? All of these are valid topics, but I think better discussed elsewhere.) Anyway, I'm sorry if you posted a comment directed at me and I didn't answer: trust me when I say that it's not you, it's me. :)
eta2: okay, this has been great, thanks to everyone for their thoughts. I'm shutting the comments down now - which is to say, I'm turning off email notification, and I'm setting all comments to be screened. The effect of this is that any comment you post here will not be visible to anyone or emailed to anyone, and will not come through to me. To repeat: no new comments are visible to anyone, including me.
If you need to talk to me directly about something in the post, feel free to email.
I suppose one of the reasons I'm writing this post is because I desperately do not want this to be the next big fandom. But I honestly understand why people are fanning it, I do: this post is my attempt to reconcile those feelings.
So I guess what I'm saying is, don't read this if Merlin is your happy place and you don't want it compromised. But also, I'm not going to be a dick about it - I really do get why it's a potentially big fandom. Anyway, enough preamble.
This is a post about why I don't like Merlin, and why I don't want it to be a big fandom. But first, let me talk about:
Why It Has So Much Potential, And the Things I Like About It
1) Of course it's supergay. It's like season one Smallville. More on that later, because I think that's actually a really telling comparison, but, yes. There's a slash dragon, it's completely WTF homosocial-tastic, the boys are MFEO, I seriously thought that they were going to spontaneously invent mouth to mouth resuscitation there in that one episode, just out of their sheer burning desire to kiss and also save one another's lives.
2) Not only is there an obvious boyslash pairing, there is (or are) one (or more) obvious girlslash pairing(s). And I am so behind that, you have no idea how much I am behind that, having women on a show who have chemistry together is a very big selling point for me. And I think that fandom is at the point where femslash is just a natural part of a what gets written - unlike some of the old fandoms, where it literally did not exist. Though, to be fair, some of those fandoms didn't have more than one woman in them. ANYWAY.
3) Of course magic can be read easily as a gay metaphor. This is Smallville again, by the way, the secret that you have that makes you special and amazing that you can't tell anyone, but that you especially can't tell your male BFF, who might beat you up for it, etc. And listen, I LOVE magic = gay, I loved it on Buffy until Joss fucked it up, I am completely prepared to love it here. If you know me, you know that I love metaphorical homosexuality probably even more than regular homosexuality, when it comes to tv.
4) I love bad tv just as much as the next fan, and I love camp just as much as the next overeducated queer, and this show is both of those things in spades.
But.
Why We Shouldn't Do It, And Why I Don't Want To Do It
1) But it IS bad tv, and the particular way in which it is bad tv is not just historical inaccuracies and badly written dialogue and cheesy animated Clash of the Titans-reject monsters. It is bad tv in that it is misogynist tv, in that it is completely unthoughtful tv, in that I can pretty much guarantee you, after seeing thirteen episodes, that it is going to be painful to watch and it is going to CONTINUE to be painful to watch, especially on grounds of gender and race. It is never. going. to get. better. at those things. The show makers DO NOT CARE about those things. If you want some examples of this badness, let me rattle off a few in the misogyny category: women's magic is evil; women with power are evil temptress sorceresses who want to kill you; women who have actually pretty legitimate grudges are apparently insane and must be stopped (I kind of don't get why Nimueh isn't supposed to be sympathetic); if a good woman has magic, it's the uncontrolled, unconscious, dangerous kind that comes on her in her sleep and that doesn't actually help (because no one believes her); women exist in order for men to compete for them; need I go on. It's all the classics, guys. Marion Zimmer Bradley is probably spinning in her grave, god help her. Wasn't she supposed to have fixed all this stuff about women's cauldrony magic being evil? I AM JUST SO FUCKING SICK OF ALL THIS CASUALLY WRITTEN BAD TV THAT REINFORCES ALL THIS BULLSHIT. And, by the way, I have a whole nother rant about how aesthetically poor texts are often the same as misogynist/racist/heterosexist texts - about how those things often go together. I'll tell you about that someday.
2) One of the reasons that the show is so gay is because it's a show about men: about men's concerns, about men using women as tokens to get at each other, about the homosocial. It's gay on the same grounds that Boston Legal is gay, which is to say, only by killing evil sorceresses can men truly BOND. And I am sick of this, too, I am sick of fandoms where people say, "oh my god, it was so awesome when John and Rodney were calling dibs on the hot alien princesses!" Because yes, that IS totally gay, but it's gay in a way that I would just as soon not have on my tv. Do you hear me, tv gods? If this is the only kind of gay available, I will instead choose NO GAY. I will instead choose to MAKE MY OWN.
3) When I say that it's like season one Smallville, I really really mean it - and I suffered through season one Smallville, guys, we all did. And I am just tired of it. I'm tired of the shows about teenagers, I'm tired of all the adolescent virginity stuff, I'm tired of watching terrible tv that no one cares enough about to make it half-decent. And I apply this to SGA as well: one of the reasons I am so tired is because I've spent all this time in SGA trying to ignore the terrible writing and the racism and the sexism and the way that the writers just don't care about the world they've created. And part of what I love about SGA fandom is part of what I love about many bad-show fandoms, which is, we roll up our sleeves and fix all that character backstory, we write real stories for Teyla and Ronon (sometimes), we do the worldbuilding they've neglected. But:
4) That's not the only way to have fandom. Remember The X-Files, you guys? Remember Buffy? Remember due South? Babylon 5? Have you seen some of the stuff for Sarah Connor Chronicles and BSG? None of these shows are perfect by a long shot, but at least they're all shows where you can say that the audience isn't being treated like a five year old child with an attention deficit disorder; at least they're shows where the authors care about the characters and the worlds the characters live in; at least they're shows written with respect for the audience. Merlin, like SGA, like Smallville, treats me like I'm stupid. Why should I have to put up with that?
5) Fandom migratory patterns are strange things. People don't go where the good shows are, or the bad shows are, or even where the hoyay is; people go where their friends are. People go where their favourite writers are. I'm no different: I go where my friends are, and where my favourite writers are - how the heck do you think I ended up writing lotrips? And, I mean, I started watching SGA because everyone on my flist was talking about people called John and Rodney. And look, that is fine, that is all good, I love the fannish hive mind and I love the way that the show matters less than the people. But in this case, maybe we could let the show matter just a little? Maybe we could not start building in Merlin-land too fast? Maybe we could just wait for another place for fandom to go, a place that maybe won't be quite so toxic? Maybe even a place that's for grownups, a place worthy of the incredibly intelligent people who are fans?
A Sort Of Concludingish Section
Listen, I realise that a lot of this is coming out of my anxiety about SGA fandom, which seems to be slipping away already (or perhaps it just feels that way to me and my paranoia). I honestly feel like the best work gets done in a fandom with a big following and a closed canon - I was a Duesie, I know whereof I speak on this one. But, aside from that, my anxiety on this subject is really located in the fact that I love fandom more than most other things that I do, and I will go with fandom wherever fandom wants to go, and I really really don't want to have to watch another show about teenaged white boys who have adolescent angst and who compete over women. I just don't think I can do it, guys, slash dragon or no slash dragon. The concept honestly horrifies me.
And let me say once again: I understand why fandom likes this show. Really I do. I am right there with you on the destiny thing, on the magic powers thing, on the Harry Potter Meets Smallville vibe of the whole show. But fannish taste is bigger than this, broader than this, better than this. Scifi and fantasy have become a big deal, recently, in mainstream tv, and the more my cult viewing practices get taken from me and processed and sold back to me at a markup, the more truculent I get about it, the less I want to play, the less I want to be the guaranteed audience for anything that even vaguely looks like speculative fiction. This was, if you're interested, my objection to Lost and to Heroes, as well - shows that pretend to be genre shows in order to tap into a genre market, but that don't actually care about the genre in which they're participating. I am not a guaranteed audience, I am not going to immediately swoon when I see a phaser or a fucking magic wand, I've seen good genre tv, I know what good genre tv looks like, and this isn't it.
Maybe, if you're considering jumping into it, it wouldn't hurt to just step back for a minute? Maybe just take a deep breath, maybe write some small fandom fic, maybe finish that old WIP you've had around forever?
I honestly don't know what my intention is in posting this. Obviously I can't halt the going-forward of the fandom machine once it's set its sights on something. But I guess I just wanted to cry out, a little, because, like I said above, I'm really tired of the badly written misogynist racist tv that doesn't care about me, or about itself. I'm really tired of having to brace myself to watch episodes of something, just so that I can read the fic or make a vid.
Can't we just wait for something better to come along?
NOTE: Please do not link this post on metafandom.
eta: I want to thank everyone for their thoughtful responses to this post. I'm no longer responding to comments here, because I no longer have the time or energy, and because there are cans of worms in the comments that are far off the original topic and much bigger issues than I'm interested in getting into (Is Buffy even feminist, really? Is it okay to look at tits in comic books? Did you know that Ron Moore is a dickhead? All of these are valid topics, but I think better discussed elsewhere.) Anyway, I'm sorry if you posted a comment directed at me and I didn't answer: trust me when I say that it's not you, it's me. :)
eta2: okay, this has been great, thanks to everyone for their thoughts. I'm shutting the comments down now - which is to say, I'm turning off email notification, and I'm setting all comments to be screened. The effect of this is that any comment you post here will not be visible to anyone or emailed to anyone, and will not come through to me. To repeat: no new comments are visible to anyone, including me.
If you need to talk to me directly about something in the post, feel free to email.