Might as well get this out of the way now.
It was the best of shows; it was the worst of shows.
If you can say one thing about Smallville, you can say that it most definitely ran that gamut, and ran it exhaustively. From moments of near-brilliance ('Rosetta', then, now and always) to absolute nadirs ('Dichotic', forever and ever amen), this was a show that never intended to be high art, but almost always did well at what it was: a genre WB/CW series based on characters from comic books, cast entirely with pretty people.
And for what it was, it began its life--and, judging by the finale promos, looks like it might just end its life--as some of the most potent fangirl catnip I've ever had the privilege to be high on.
*
From day one, SV was good to fandom. It gave us gorgeous men with ~*shared destinies*~ saving each others' lives and keeping secrets from each other and--most importantly--giving each other long, appraising, highly suggestive looks. It gave us foreshadowing of a future we in the audience were already aware of, and could therefore exploit for our own creative purposes. It gave us episodes with enough gigantic plot and/or character holes to make ample way for explanatory/missing scene/spackle fic. It gave us characters sourced from a world in which absolutely anything was possible--superpowers, alternate universes, magic, aliens, evil doppelgangers, etc etc--giving us carte blanche on What Ifs. It gave us vibrant, candy-coloured, well-composed images that cried out to be vidded often, and by people who knew how. It was sometimes fully engaged with its own campiness, yet also, on occasion, took itself much too seriously; either way, those of us who tend to show our affection through lighthearted mockery were given vast, vast tracts of material to play with.
It also, unintentionally yet serendipitously, came into the world at just the right time to take full advantage of fandom's transition to LiveJournal, a move that centralised fannish community and output. (Instead of hunting through numerous archives or message boards or personal websites for like-minded fen and content, you could now find fic and art and vids and meta on LJ--on one page, even, depending on who was on your flist.) Because of that, the fannish experience became that much more immersive--and I know many of us who, with SV, plunged right into the deep end.
*
I don't remember exactly what it was that made me want to watch Smallville in the first place. I liked the idea of Superman, which I'd mostly formed for myself based on Lois & Clark, since I'd never read Superman comics or watched any of the DC cartoons, and I'd only seen pieces of the Christopher Reeve movies. I'd read that the show was made in Canada, and starred a couple Canadians, so that was a draw, even though I wasn't familiar with those particular Canadian actors. And since SV didn't start airing up here until the States were about six episodes in, I'd seen the recap announcements show up on the TWoP homepage, and those two to three-line precis were...let's just say eye-catchingly amusing. *g* Whatever the impetus, I tuned in; and after I tuned in, I went to the TWoP forum for the show, and laughed harder than I think I'd ever laughed in my life to that point. And I never looked back.
I'd been in various internet-based fandoms for about six years by the time SV came along, but it was, in a few significant ways, my first: my first fandom that operated primarily outside email groups/listservs; my first slash fandom, in that my primary fannish interest was in a slash pairing; the first show for which I wrote explicit fic, both slash and het. SV fandom didn't introduce me to slash or explicit fic--I'd read plenty of both in most of my earlier fandoms--but it did introduce me to the slash community as a subgroup within fandom as a whole, including a lot of the fannish conventions and cliches surrounding/involving slash and graphic sex in fic, as well as various forms of kink.
Without putting too fine a point on it: what I read in SV fandom taught me a lot, about a lot of things. And I wasn't just reading fic--I read discussions about the fic, and about the show, and about the broader comics and cartoon canons, and about the fandom, and about the personal lives and experiences of SV fans.
Because if you can say one thing about SV fandom, you can say that it was packed with people who were not shy about discussing things. *g*
I got to know so many people because of SV. So many clever, funny, artistic, intelligent, amazing people, all of whom shared at least one thing with me: the love of some aspect of a genre WB/CW series based on characters from comic books, cast entirely with pretty people.
If you're one of those people: thank you. For sharing this show with me, and for sharing yourself with me through this show, and through the other ways we've connected since. Thank you.
*
I remember GAYLEs and Small Park and Omar G Is The Boss Of Me. I remember Wellingski and Kryptonian ass hymens and "Cry WHEE! and let prance the bunnies of petulance!" I remember Alexander the FABulous, Flaming Cheese Anvils, and Countess Sparkle Pony.
I remember Small Wars, Lex's Attitude, 'Shimmer' Pop-Up Video, and Radio Free Smallville. I remember watching sisabet's Without You I'm Nothing for the first time--after holding my breath for almost three hours because I was never sure if my unreliable dialup was going to cut out in the middle of a download--and being speechless, because without Clark, Lex is nothing, and the barb in the end of that vid, my god.
I remember cherries (both blossoms and fruit), cats, ice cream suits, handfuls of dust, butterfly effects, five things, and past griefs. And the very, very, very many wonderful others that, together with the actual episodes, comprise my canon of the Smallville experience.
*
SV was not perfect. Over the years, I have written what probably amounts to a thesis and a half--at least--about exactly how not-perfect the show was, so I'm not going to repeat myself here. (Thank god, I hear you mutter, this is more than enough teal deer already.) But it was almost always entertaining on some level--sometimes, on none that were actually intended by TPTB. *g*
If you had a fondness for Superman, or the world of DC comics, or campy sci-fi, or cheesy fantasy, or intrepid young women, or bildungsroman, or relationships destined for tragedy, or relationships destined to last forever, or hot guys who seemed, at any moment, a change of network away from on-screen fellatio--SV was there for you. It wasn't always there for you in particularly satisfying ways--personally, I've erected mental walls of amnesia around large swathes of seasons six through eight, because those three seasons contained so many worlds of Not For Me--but it always gave you something. Even if that something was more often in potentia than in practise.
In one of her many (many) excellent contributions to SV fandom, latxcvi dubbed the show, "The Best Abusive Boyfriend on TV," in that, while it's done so many things that have hurt us, we've also seen its moments of greatness and, drawn to or believing in those moments, always go back for more. It's an incredibly apt metaphor, that Best Abusive Boyfriend description. That's the dynamic that kept me tuning in every week for ten whole years. Even though seasons 6-8.
Well, that and the opportunity to look at Welling (and for the first seven years, Rosenbaum, and for the last five, Hartley's chest) for an hour every week. :)
Fandom mileage varies, obviously, on the show's pros and cons. I know I think more positively about various episodes--and season four as a whole--than most of the people I started out with in the fandom do; conversely, I will never forgive TPTB for letting Oliver eat the show for as long as he did, whereas he's other people's hands-down favourite character. Lana, Lois, Lionel, Oliver, Jimmy, Davis--all characters of contention, with plotlines to match. The show's given us a friendship of legend, a girl on a pedestal, visions of the future, epic daddy issues, Native American stereotypes, secret and/or illegitimate siblings and/or parents, unleashed ids, desert islands, Whitman's Samplers, The Flash, liver zombies, nudity in cornfields (plural!), Aquaman, Renaissance witches with martial arts skills, body-switching, Cyborg, a kryptonite-powered dog, morality plays, prom queen possessions, faked deaths, Zod Mk1, alien possession, loss of powers, mutated rabid vampire bats, It's A Wonderful Life, a do-over day, vengeful spirits, Green Arrow, Jimmy Olsen (but not really), the Daily Planet, fight clubs, Lois's wardrobe, Black Canary, Supergirl, a fake pregnancy, clones, Julian Luthor, patricide, prophecies, Lane & Kent, Doomsday, a wedding, Metallo, soulmates, Hawkman, Zod Mk2, more clones, Cat Grant, Granny Goodness, more secret/illegitimate siblings, Darkseid, evil Amish, political allegory, a proposal, alternate universes, enchanted champagne, and more flavours of kryptonite and memory loss than you could shake a stick at.
My own feelings about these storylines--and the numerous other things, WTF-y or not, SV has seen fit to explore over the years--vary from love to hate to indifference. But I watched from the beginning, and I will watch through the very end, because under all the camp and cheese and silliness and melodrama and soap opera, there was a story I enjoyed: the story of Clark Kent Growing Up To Be Superman. In that story, there were moments of brilliance; there was emotional resonance; there were intriguing possibilities. There were thrills and heart and heartbreak, fate and folly (...sometimes a lot of folly) and epic. And there was good acting. (YES THERE WAS DON'T ARGUE WITH ME.)
It was the best of shows; it was the worst of shows. But most importantly, for ten years, it was my show.
I've said this sarcastically countless times over the years, but now, very genuinely: Thanks, Smallville.
Now, Clark? Get out there and fly, you big, dumb alien.
This content is also available at http://serrico.dreamwidth.org/716791.html. Comment here or there, whichever you prefer. (Over there, there are
comments.)
If you can say one thing about Smallville, you can say that it most definitely ran that gamut, and ran it exhaustively. From moments of near-brilliance ('Rosetta', then, now and always) to absolute nadirs ('Dichotic', forever and ever amen), this was a show that never intended to be high art, but almost always did well at what it was: a genre WB/CW series based on characters from comic books, cast entirely with pretty people.
And for what it was, it began its life--and, judging by the finale promos, looks like it might just end its life--as some of the most potent fangirl catnip I've ever had the privilege to be high on.
*
From day one, SV was good to fandom. It gave us gorgeous men with ~*shared destinies*~ saving each others' lives and keeping secrets from each other and--most importantly--giving each other long, appraising, highly suggestive looks. It gave us foreshadowing of a future we in the audience were already aware of, and could therefore exploit for our own creative purposes. It gave us episodes with enough gigantic plot and/or character holes to make ample way for explanatory/missing scene/spackle fic. It gave us characters sourced from a world in which absolutely anything was possible--superpowers, alternate universes, magic, aliens, evil doppelgangers, etc etc--giving us carte blanche on What Ifs. It gave us vibrant, candy-coloured, well-composed images that cried out to be vidded often, and by people who knew how. It was sometimes fully engaged with its own campiness, yet also, on occasion, took itself much too seriously; either way, those of us who tend to show our affection through lighthearted mockery were given vast, vast tracts of material to play with.
It also, unintentionally yet serendipitously, came into the world at just the right time to take full advantage of fandom's transition to LiveJournal, a move that centralised fannish community and output. (Instead of hunting through numerous archives or message boards or personal websites for like-minded fen and content, you could now find fic and art and vids and meta on LJ--on one page, even, depending on who was on your flist.) Because of that, the fannish experience became that much more immersive--and I know many of us who, with SV, plunged right into the deep end.
*
I don't remember exactly what it was that made me want to watch Smallville in the first place. I liked the idea of Superman, which I'd mostly formed for myself based on Lois & Clark, since I'd never read Superman comics or watched any of the DC cartoons, and I'd only seen pieces of the Christopher Reeve movies. I'd read that the show was made in Canada, and starred a couple Canadians, so that was a draw, even though I wasn't familiar with those particular Canadian actors. And since SV didn't start airing up here until the States were about six episodes in, I'd seen the recap announcements show up on the TWoP homepage, and those two to three-line precis were...let's just say eye-catchingly amusing. *g* Whatever the impetus, I tuned in; and after I tuned in, I went to the TWoP forum for the show, and laughed harder than I think I'd ever laughed in my life to that point. And I never looked back.
I'd been in various internet-based fandoms for about six years by the time SV came along, but it was, in a few significant ways, my first: my first fandom that operated primarily outside email groups/listservs; my first slash fandom, in that my primary fannish interest was in a slash pairing; the first show for which I wrote explicit fic, both slash and het. SV fandom didn't introduce me to slash or explicit fic--I'd read plenty of both in most of my earlier fandoms--but it did introduce me to the slash community as a subgroup within fandom as a whole, including a lot of the fannish conventions and cliches surrounding/involving slash and graphic sex in fic, as well as various forms of kink.
Without putting too fine a point on it: what I read in SV fandom taught me a lot, about a lot of things. And I wasn't just reading fic--I read discussions about the fic, and about the show, and about the broader comics and cartoon canons, and about the fandom, and about the personal lives and experiences of SV fans.
Because if you can say one thing about SV fandom, you can say that it was packed with people who were not shy about discussing things. *g*
I got to know so many people because of SV. So many clever, funny, artistic, intelligent, amazing people, all of whom shared at least one thing with me: the love of some aspect of a genre WB/CW series based on characters from comic books, cast entirely with pretty people.
If you're one of those people: thank you. For sharing this show with me, and for sharing yourself with me through this show, and through the other ways we've connected since. Thank you.
*
I remember GAYLEs and Small Park and Omar G Is The Boss Of Me. I remember Wellingski and Kryptonian ass hymens and "Cry WHEE! and let prance the bunnies of petulance!" I remember Alexander the FABulous, Flaming Cheese Anvils, and Countess Sparkle Pony.
I remember Small Wars, Lex's Attitude, 'Shimmer' Pop-Up Video, and Radio Free Smallville. I remember watching sisabet's Without You I'm Nothing for the first time--after holding my breath for almost three hours because I was never sure if my unreliable dialup was going to cut out in the middle of a download--and being speechless, because without Clark, Lex is nothing, and the barb in the end of that vid, my god.
I remember cherries (both blossoms and fruit), cats, ice cream suits, handfuls of dust, butterfly effects, five things, and past griefs. And the very, very, very many wonderful others that, together with the actual episodes, comprise my canon of the Smallville experience.
*
SV was not perfect. Over the years, I have written what probably amounts to a thesis and a half--at least--about exactly how not-perfect the show was, so I'm not going to repeat myself here. (Thank god, I hear you mutter, this is more than enough teal deer already.) But it was almost always entertaining on some level--sometimes, on none that were actually intended by TPTB. *g*
If you had a fondness for Superman, or the world of DC comics, or campy sci-fi, or cheesy fantasy, or intrepid young women, or bildungsroman, or relationships destined for tragedy, or relationships destined to last forever, or hot guys who seemed, at any moment, a change of network away from on-screen fellatio--SV was there for you. It wasn't always there for you in particularly satisfying ways--personally, I've erected mental walls of amnesia around large swathes of seasons six through eight, because those three seasons contained so many worlds of Not For Me--but it always gave you something. Even if that something was more often in potentia than in practise.
In one of her many (many) excellent contributions to SV fandom, latxcvi dubbed the show, "The Best Abusive Boyfriend on TV," in that, while it's done so many things that have hurt us, we've also seen its moments of greatness and, drawn to or believing in those moments, always go back for more. It's an incredibly apt metaphor, that Best Abusive Boyfriend description. That's the dynamic that kept me tuning in every week for ten whole years. Even though seasons 6-8.
Well, that and the opportunity to look at Welling (and for the first seven years, Rosenbaum, and for the last five, Hartley's chest) for an hour every week. :)
Fandom mileage varies, obviously, on the show's pros and cons. I know I think more positively about various episodes--and season four as a whole--than most of the people I started out with in the fandom do; conversely, I will never forgive TPTB for letting Oliver eat the show for as long as he did, whereas he's other people's hands-down favourite character. Lana, Lois, Lionel, Oliver, Jimmy, Davis--all characters of contention, with plotlines to match. The show's given us a friendship of legend, a girl on a pedestal, visions of the future, epic daddy issues, Native American stereotypes, secret and/or illegitimate siblings and/or parents, unleashed ids, desert islands, Whitman's Samplers, The Flash, liver zombies, nudity in cornfields (plural!), Aquaman, Renaissance witches with martial arts skills, body-switching, Cyborg, a kryptonite-powered dog, morality plays, prom queen possessions, faked deaths, Zod Mk1, alien possession, loss of powers, mutated rabid vampire bats, It's A Wonderful Life, a do-over day, vengeful spirits, Green Arrow, Jimmy Olsen (but not really), the Daily Planet, fight clubs, Lois's wardrobe, Black Canary, Supergirl, a fake pregnancy, clones, Julian Luthor, patricide, prophecies, Lane & Kent, Doomsday, a wedding, Metallo, soulmates, Hawkman, Zod Mk2, more clones, Cat Grant, Granny Goodness, more secret/illegitimate siblings, Darkseid, evil Amish, political allegory, a proposal, alternate universes, enchanted champagne, and more flavours of kryptonite and memory loss than you could shake a stick at.
My own feelings about these storylines--and the numerous other things, WTF-y or not, SV has seen fit to explore over the years--vary from love to hate to indifference. But I watched from the beginning, and I will watch through the very end, because under all the camp and cheese and silliness and melodrama and soap opera, there was a story I enjoyed: the story of Clark Kent Growing Up To Be Superman. In that story, there were moments of brilliance; there was emotional resonance; there were intriguing possibilities. There were thrills and heart and heartbreak, fate and folly (...sometimes a lot of folly) and epic. And there was good acting. (YES THERE WAS DON'T ARGUE WITH ME.)
It was the best of shows; it was the worst of shows. But most importantly, for ten years, it was my show.
I've said this sarcastically countless times over the years, but now, very genuinely: Thanks, Smallville.
Now, Clark? Get out there and fly, you big, dumb alien.
This content is also available at http://serrico.dreamwidth.org/716791.html. Comment here or there, whichever you prefer. (Over there, there are
comments.)