An open letter to CBS
Dear CBS (and all attendant companies and producers):
You’ve finally done it. I’m quitting CSI.
I started watching back in the summer of 2003 because there was no good sci-fi on (I don’t care for StarGateTV) and rather surprised myself by falling for Brass. And then I got into the fandom, and found out about GSR, and I was lost.
For ten years.
I joined the myriad of fans who loved the stories, the science, the characters. I spent endless hours watching back episodes, reading fic, chatting online with fellow fen, making wonderful new friends. And writing fic. And writing, and writing, and writing.
One hundred and thirty-five posted stories, give or take a couple. Some of them co-authored with cincoflex; one of them over a hundred-seventy-thousand words. Plus the private gifts and the unfinished stuff. Most of them were fixing the GSR problem, over and over again, but not all of them.
Writing CSI fic matured me as a writer, but more importantly it showed me that I wrote well. That I had something to offer. The CSI fandom showed me that my gift is a true one, and worth using.
Ah, GSR. You, CBS, meant it to be there from the very beginning, but you took your own sweet time about bringing it to fruition. We didn’t mind, not really; it just gave us more to think about, discuss, speculate on, and write about.
You gave it to us eventually. Slowly and subtly, and--in the end--beautifully.
And then you broke it. And fixed it, and broke it again. And then you broke it one more time.
In the meantime, you took characters we’d loved for years and treated them like cheap toys. You rewrote their pasts, you distorted their personalities, you put words in their mouths they’d never say and made them do things that made no sense. You got rid of excellent characters and brought in interchangeable replacements.
You turned a thoughtful, often terrific show into dead-blonde-of-the-week with occasional forays into break the cutie.
I could fix the GSR again; I even tried it once. But honestly I don’t have the energy any longer. Grissom’s gone, Sara’s back where she began, Brass is practically unrecognizable and you’re getting rid of him anyway.
Congratulations; I don’t care enough any more.
Oh, you won’t miss me. I wouldn’t buy an SUV even if I could afford one, and I was never your target audience as it was. But I’m hardly the first to leave. The fen have been trickling away ever since Grissom left, and every time you hurt the show another one decides not to watch the next episode.
It’s your show. It’s your right. Go on, squeeze out every drop you can. But know this:
You broke our hearts. You didn’t have to, but you did. And that is a very shabby way to treat the people who watch your shows.
No love, VR Trakowski
You’ve finally done it. I’m quitting CSI.
I started watching back in the summer of 2003 because there was no good sci-fi on (I don’t care for StarGateTV) and rather surprised myself by falling for Brass. And then I got into the fandom, and found out about GSR, and I was lost.
For ten years.
I joined the myriad of fans who loved the stories, the science, the characters. I spent endless hours watching back episodes, reading fic, chatting online with fellow fen, making wonderful new friends. And writing fic. And writing, and writing, and writing.
One hundred and thirty-five posted stories, give or take a couple. Some of them co-authored with cincoflex; one of them over a hundred-seventy-thousand words. Plus the private gifts and the unfinished stuff. Most of them were fixing the GSR problem, over and over again, but not all of them.
Writing CSI fic matured me as a writer, but more importantly it showed me that I wrote well. That I had something to offer. The CSI fandom showed me that my gift is a true one, and worth using.
Ah, GSR. You, CBS, meant it to be there from the very beginning, but you took your own sweet time about bringing it to fruition. We didn’t mind, not really; it just gave us more to think about, discuss, speculate on, and write about.
You gave it to us eventually. Slowly and subtly, and--in the end--beautifully.
And then you broke it. And fixed it, and broke it again. And then you broke it one more time.
In the meantime, you took characters we’d loved for years and treated them like cheap toys. You rewrote their pasts, you distorted their personalities, you put words in their mouths they’d never say and made them do things that made no sense. You got rid of excellent characters and brought in interchangeable replacements.
You turned a thoughtful, often terrific show into dead-blonde-of-the-week with occasional forays into break the cutie.
I could fix the GSR again; I even tried it once. But honestly I don’t have the energy any longer. Grissom’s gone, Sara’s back where she began, Brass is practically unrecognizable and you’re getting rid of him anyway.
Congratulations; I don’t care enough any more.
Oh, you won’t miss me. I wouldn’t buy an SUV even if I could afford one, and I was never your target audience as it was. But I’m hardly the first to leave. The fen have been trickling away ever since Grissom left, and every time you hurt the show another one decides not to watch the next episode.
It’s your show. It’s your right. Go on, squeeze out every drop you can. But know this:
You broke our hearts. You didn’t have to, but you did. And that is a very shabby way to treat the people who watch your shows.
No love, VR Trakowski