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It's funny 'cause it's true:

selenak's version of the fannish life cycle, condensed. Also along those lines: helpful tips on how not to be batshit in fandom (for shippers) by

misscam.

WHY am I still AWAKE. *wanders off towards general direction of bed*

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I have to admit, I am a little O___O at the batshit post and comments.

Heh...I haven't really been burned by a creator since X-files, I don't think. Most shows I fan on, I get into them knowing that they're seriously flawed; and the few creators who I hold as crazy mad geniuses I still honestly believe are crazy mad geniuses - not perfect, of course, because who is, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses; but JMS and Odacchi and Minekura-sensei and Andrew Hussie are all amazing and unique talents in their own ways...

(good grief what am *I* still doing up? Why is sleep so haaaaard? >.>)

I'm still up too ...

I think I've been more burned/annoyed/alienated by fandom doing this than by my own reactions, honestly. It's not that I've never done this at all (I think I'm especially guilty of Phase IVb for awhile where SGA was concerned) but usually I can manage to step fairly gracefully from "yay, squee, THIS THING!" to "ehh, this isn't doing it for me anymore, I think I'll watch something else now". (Welllll, I guess there is also a phase of lurking on other people's anti-squee and vicariously enjoying it; I still do that with SPN. COMPLAIN MOAR, FANDOM! IT ENTERTAINS ME! But that's only fun for me if I've already lost interest in the source material.)

I think I understand it a little better after my tenure in SGA fandom, though, because the big problem wasn't that the show changed; it was me, and the fact that I kept hanging on longer than I really should have, rather that doing that healthy moving-on thing. Dunno if this is true of everybody, but I do think that trying to force myself to stay fannish about something beyond my own natural fannish life-cycle made me a lot more discontented with the source material and the creators, rather than just saying "pfeh, there are other fish in the sea" and going off to find something else to entertain me. And it's still the only thing I've fanned on where I haven't yet been able to go back and re-indulge for nostalgia's sake. (Though I'm sure I'll hit that point eventually.) I've lost interest in plenty of other things, moved on, can even no longer see what I saw in them, but I'm not bitter the way I am about SGA. I think it's totally me, though, not the show and not the fandom, just me trying to force myself to be fannish about something I should've let myself move on from. Lesson learned ...

I'm glad they touched on the thing that bugs me most and that's "fandom does it so much better!" Which, yes, once upon a time I used to agree with. But, these days... not quite as much. For one, what makes us thing we actually know any better when we accuse the professionals of not knowing squat? For another, though, yes, there have been some awesome fic that I wish had been episodes and fic that really did do some things better than the actual show, over all the attitude of fandom-is-better comes off as too self-righteous and pompous, especially considering all the drek that's out there, and especially considering that people are saying "your story is so much better than canon" about some of that drek.

And for those of us wanting to be published, we may very well end up being on the wrong side of fandom-is-better, and when that happens it's going to hurt.

I think I ascribe to "love it, love it, love it! Okay, bored now." Though I've been unhappy with the direction shows have taken I've never left a show bitter and upset. There's only two reasons I leave a show and its fandom - cancellation or I just got bored with it.

The exact cycle she's describing is particular to a certain type of fanning/fandom, I think? Like, in SGA fandom, I don't know of pretty much anyone into SGA who was a creator-worshipper; no one that I know of actually considered Mallozzi et al a genius. While as what she's talking about is the Whedon cycle, where fans get invested in not only the canon but in the creator, and then lose faith when the creator takes the canon somewhere they don't want. It's similar to how fans will get disillusioned with a show, but, hmm, more focused?

But yeah, I think one of the main reasons I've been able to avoid either kind of bitterness is that X-files learned me early on! X-files is really the only show that I genuinely fanned on that I have trouble going to back to and rewatching because of how annoyed it got me (excepting Smallville :P) - and in X-files I actually did have a lot of respect for Chris Carter until it became clear that he'd not only lost the map, but in fact had just been pretending he ever had it, and then drove his little applecart off a cliff.

But yeah, in general I've found that just quitting shows when I get bored/disappointed with their direction is the best way to go. Did that with the original SG-1, and then it actually got better, so I was eventually able to go back to it and enjoy it without resentment! And there are a few manga series that I simply am pretending never ended and am happier that way *pointed looks at CLAMP*

I'm glad they touched on the thing that bugs me most and that's "fandom does it so much better!"

Yes, that bothers me, too. It's even true in certain specific cases -- there is definitely fic out there that follows up on something in canon better than the show did, or provides that one special scene that we always really wanted to see that canon never gave us, or whatever. But it's so much easier to work with something that already exists than to make it up whole-cloth (basically, what we do as fan writers is more like doing a revised draft when the rough draft is already written -- sure, it's easy for us to see where the show slacked off or dropped the ball, but we already have a huge advantage because we have that framework to work off of). And it's infinitely easier to produce a quality work of fiction when you don't have to deal with things like network meddling and working around actors' filming schedules and fitting the whole story into 42 minutes. Not to mention that what makes fic "good" to us is usually that it's providing what we specifically want to see on the show, which might not be the same vision the writers have for it!

I don't think the show writers (of whatever show) are geniuses, but I do want to see them recognized for their hard work and creativity.

Though, heh, yeah ... I think part of why I feel this way is my (optimistic) expectation of being on the other side, too ...

I think I ascribe to "love it, love it, love it! Okay, bored now." Though I've been unhappy with the direction shows have taken I've never left a show bitter and upset. There's only two reasons I leave a show and its fandom - cancellation or I just got bored with it.

Yeahhhhh ... like I said in my comment to

xparrot above, the only time I've ever ended up bitter and disillusioned was with SGA, but it wasn't the show, per se. I really do believe that it had to do with forcing myself to stay in the fandom longer than I should have ... well, with a side of being in a rather bad mental place myself. Work was degenerating into hell at that point, and combined with the amount of stress I was getting from SGA fandom, I don't think I realized until later how much it was affecting my mental health. I can tell by looking at my writing totals, because that was the year I started keeping track of how much I wrote, and there's this big dip before it goes on a major upswing once I got out of that job and started getting my stress under control. Unfortunately, SGA, the show itself, is all tied up with my memories of stress and unhappiness, and I think I need a bit more time before I'll be able to go back and rewatch it happily. (But I think I'm getting there.)

Honestly, getting into White Collar did wonders for me, I think. It's the first really strong fan-crush that I've had since I got out of SGA; there have been other dalliances along the way, but this is the first time that something has hit me as hard as SGA did. Hopefully this time, I'll be able to learn from what went wrong before ...

True! Though I think SGA fans went through a modified version of it; they just skipped the "creator is a genius/looking for a scapegoat" part and jumped straight to the hating. XDDD

in X-files I actually did have a lot of respect for Chris Carter until it became clear that he'd not only lost the map, but in fact had just been pretending he ever had it, and then drove his little applecart off a cliff.

LOLOL ... oh dear. XD (Awesome metaphor, though.)

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that I just don't go to the "worship the creator" place in general -- which means generally my expectations are low (one might say rock bottom) that the whole thing will bear up to its promise, unless the whole series has been pre-vetted by someone who's watched it. Like B5 ... all indications are good on that one, now I just have to watch it! ^^ Or A:tLA, which was awesome ... but yeah, generally I am not going to get upset about the direction that a show takes unless it goes completely off the rails (*cough*SPN*cough*) and even then, I don't really get mad, I just make little annoyed sounds and stop watching. And sometimes I go back -- I quit Lost in mild disgust after three seasons, then went back and watched the rest of it, and I did enjoy it.

But really, I roll with the punches quite well ... at least I think so. (For all I know it looks different to people watching my journal, but I certainly don't *feel* resentful or heartbroken or anything.) I don't know, I think part of it probably does go along with being multifannish, because if something breaks my heart a little bit, or if it just starts to suck in season four or five or six, there's always the next shiny to look forward to! I honestly get quite baffled at the level of anger that people seem to feel towards, say, the introduction of an unwanted love interest, or the failure of a show to wrap up an ongoing plot in a satisfactory way -- okay, death of a favorite character I get, that one gets to me too, but even so, I guess that I either latch onto some other character or stop watching. I might flail angrily for ... a day or two. Maybe a week. And then I pick up the pieces of my little broken fan-heart and get on with the next thing. *g*

Hopefully I'm not making myself out to be more well-adjusted than I actually appear from the outside, but that's how it feels from the inside, anyway! Which makes SGA an outlier in many ways, actually ... I think I attempted to overrule my own natural fan-cycle because I wanted to hang onto the fandom and the friends I'd made there, which was pretty stupid (friends will stay friends, if they're real friends) and I'm glad I'm getting over it. ... er, the fandom, that is, not the friends. XD

ita. Yes, on occasion I've seen fic that I thought exceeded its canon in scope and quality, but you still wouldn't have even the coolest building without its foundation. Someone else did the groundwork, and it comes across to me as arrogant when fans completey dismiss that.

"love it, love it, love it! Okay, bored now."

Yeah, me too. I usually lose interest before I can even reach phase IV.

Edited 2011-11-29 00:10 (UTC)

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