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mandolinI would like to start off by saying two things:
1) I am not an optimist by nature. Trust me. Ask my parents if you don't believe me.
2) The following rant is not directed at any individual person or fandom. The trend is EVERYWHERE.
In the past week or so, I've been browsing message boards and mailing lists for multiple fandoms and have been getting increasingly annoyed at a trend I keep running into. So I absolutely must take a moment to explain why extreme fandom pessimists in general are REALLY pissing me off.
Now it's a given that no matter what the show/movie/book/game is, fans will inevitably find something to bitch and moan about or nitpick at. That's fine. In many ways, it's healthy. It shows that no matter how obsessed one seems to be with something, one can still find flaws and constructively criticize it. Hell, I watched Now and Again religiously, absolutely loved that show, but did that stop me from nitpicking at all its implausibilities? Hell no! Sometimes fans watch shows just for the pleasure of heckling them. You do not have to love everything about the show, or the books, or the film; everyone is entitled to their opinion.
But sometimes, things get out of hand. You run into fans who find one relatively small flaw with something and then completely blow it out of proportion. For example, I lurk on the Yahoo! Groups mailing list for Fruits Basket - I've been subscribed for a month now, but have yet to actually post. Browsing through the message archives, I came across a post that insisted that Funimation ruined FB by re-recording all of the music with English lyrics. According to the post, they completely ruined the atmosphere of the show by doing this.
Now wait a second.
I admit, I had a few issues with the FB dub - while I've got a lot of respect for all the voice work Chris Sabat has done, his rendition of Ayame drove me bonkers the first time I heard it. But you know what? If it really bothered me, I'd just SWITCH THE AUDIO TO JAPANESE. Didn't ruin the experience for me. But to claim that recording English lyrics totally ruins the atmosphere... oh, come ON! The majority of the music played during the actual episodes HAD NO LYRICS!! It's one thing to harp on a detail that annoys you, but to write off the final product completely because of one damn thing... grrr.
Anyway, you can see why I didn't post to that list. I'd just go OFF on the purists who decide that any small flaw in dubbing, translations, et al completely destroys the final product. Dude, if you don't like a detail, you have a couple of options besides writing the product off completely - ignore it or DEAL WITH IT. And if you must decide that there's no hope, don't go pounding that opinion on others. If you want to vent about something, make it something that has room for discussion. Insisting that things are completely ruined and you don't want any arguments is a dead-end.
Sometimes, the flaw is a BIG one - and depending on your preferences, you're probably justified in writing the show/book/movie off after that point. But several people - no, Yahtzee, this is not directed at you - have gone a step further, dismissing everything BEFORE the shark-jump as a pointless waste of time. I've seen no less than SEVEN posts like this in the past two days, on LJ, on mailing lists, on message boards, in an e-mail that was accidentally sent to me. People crying that they wish they never got into the fandom and that the last few years were a waste of time because they just ruined the show... well, come on, that hurts! That's how I met a good deal of my online friends, and when someone says that the fandom - how they met me - was a waste of their time... well, excuse me for living!
And yes, I know that almost no one who says that means it that way. I'm not an idiot. Still, a lot of people who have expressed those sentiments are people whose opinions I really value (okay, Yahtzee, THAT was directed at you), so when I hear that from them, it does sort of hurt. But it makes me wonder: if you're going to react that way, why do you invest yourself in fandom in the first place? 90% of the time, your current obsession is either going to hit a point where it "jumps the shark" for you or will get cut off/cancelled before it has the chance to. Every time you get into a new fandom, you're taking a gamble. What, would you PREFER the show got axed after one or two seasons when it hit its peak? That's even MORE painful.
In a way, for me certain shows ended at certain points before the season finale. Buffy peaked at season 3 and ended at season 5. Stargate ended around season 4 pre-Anise, with handfuls of episodes after that shoved in. (I cannot, will not, disregard "Window of Opportunity" for something as petty as Tok'ra Barbie. I mean, really.) Gargoyles ended with "Hunter's Moon, Part 3." Farscape... well, okay, I'd say it ended when Zhaan kicked the bucket, but I didn't see enough of the series regularly to judge. Angel may have just ended (I'll hold out and see what they do next season before I make any judgments). Having said that, I don't dismiss episodes after the proverbial cut-off point; I just regard them in some way as a different version of the show.
Do I get pissed off when the creators of the show screw around with the formula, change things around, fix what ISN'T broke and screw things up? Most definitely. Will I vent about that anger? Yep. I'm not going to dismiss screw-ups or small flaws entirely. But I'm not going to dismiss the time I invested in the fandom and forget why I got into it to begin with as a result. It defeats the purpose of getting hooked in the first place. And to dismiss the fandom itself and spread around the misery - what's the point of that unless you're trying to disband the entire fandom and get everyone to condemn the show entirely and wallow with you? Who wants that?
If it was one or two instances, I'd shrug it off. But I've been seeing so much lately that it's just damned depressing. It makes me wonder if fandom is worth it because of the PEOPLE involved, not the shows. I'm pissed, yes... but more than that, it makes me really sad. It makes me wonder; if friends I met through the fandoms are ready to dismiss the fandom at the drop of a hat, what does that say about our friendships?
*sigh* I wish that people would throw out alternatives along with the venting, at least. I'd like to see how some fic writers out there would have handled things to avoid the shark jump, to discuss what could have been done, and what was good about what came before that could have been built upon. "Could have, should have, would have" in this case is actually better than hopelessness.
Anyway, end rant. Feel free to yell at me for this. I really had to get it off my chest before the pessimism infected me.
In other news, Death has a cellphone. Be afraid. Be very afraid. ;)
1) I am not an optimist by nature. Trust me. Ask my parents if you don't believe me.
2) The following rant is not directed at any individual person or fandom. The trend is EVERYWHERE.
In the past week or so, I've been browsing message boards and mailing lists for multiple fandoms and have been getting increasingly annoyed at a trend I keep running into. So I absolutely must take a moment to explain why extreme fandom pessimists in general are REALLY pissing me off.
Now it's a given that no matter what the show/movie/book/game is, fans will inevitably find something to bitch and moan about or nitpick at. That's fine. In many ways, it's healthy. It shows that no matter how obsessed one seems to be with something, one can still find flaws and constructively criticize it. Hell, I watched Now and Again religiously, absolutely loved that show, but did that stop me from nitpicking at all its implausibilities? Hell no! Sometimes fans watch shows just for the pleasure of heckling them. You do not have to love everything about the show, or the books, or the film; everyone is entitled to their opinion.
But sometimes, things get out of hand. You run into fans who find one relatively small flaw with something and then completely blow it out of proportion. For example, I lurk on the Yahoo! Groups mailing list for Fruits Basket - I've been subscribed for a month now, but have yet to actually post. Browsing through the message archives, I came across a post that insisted that Funimation ruined FB by re-recording all of the music with English lyrics. According to the post, they completely ruined the atmosphere of the show by doing this.
Now wait a second.
I admit, I had a few issues with the FB dub - while I've got a lot of respect for all the voice work Chris Sabat has done, his rendition of Ayame drove me bonkers the first time I heard it. But you know what? If it really bothered me, I'd just SWITCH THE AUDIO TO JAPANESE. Didn't ruin the experience for me. But to claim that recording English lyrics totally ruins the atmosphere... oh, come ON! The majority of the music played during the actual episodes HAD NO LYRICS!! It's one thing to harp on a detail that annoys you, but to write off the final product completely because of one damn thing... grrr.
Anyway, you can see why I didn't post to that list. I'd just go OFF on the purists who decide that any small flaw in dubbing, translations, et al completely destroys the final product. Dude, if you don't like a detail, you have a couple of options besides writing the product off completely - ignore it or DEAL WITH IT. And if you must decide that there's no hope, don't go pounding that opinion on others. If you want to vent about something, make it something that has room for discussion. Insisting that things are completely ruined and you don't want any arguments is a dead-end.
Sometimes, the flaw is a BIG one - and depending on your preferences, you're probably justified in writing the show/book/movie off after that point. But several people - no, Yahtzee, this is not directed at you - have gone a step further, dismissing everything BEFORE the shark-jump as a pointless waste of time. I've seen no less than SEVEN posts like this in the past two days, on LJ, on mailing lists, on message boards, in an e-mail that was accidentally sent to me. People crying that they wish they never got into the fandom and that the last few years were a waste of time because they just ruined the show... well, come on, that hurts! That's how I met a good deal of my online friends, and when someone says that the fandom - how they met me - was a waste of their time... well, excuse me for living!
And yes, I know that almost no one who says that means it that way. I'm not an idiot. Still, a lot of people who have expressed those sentiments are people whose opinions I really value (okay, Yahtzee, THAT was directed at you), so when I hear that from them, it does sort of hurt. But it makes me wonder: if you're going to react that way, why do you invest yourself in fandom in the first place? 90% of the time, your current obsession is either going to hit a point where it "jumps the shark" for you or will get cut off/cancelled before it has the chance to. Every time you get into a new fandom, you're taking a gamble. What, would you PREFER the show got axed after one or two seasons when it hit its peak? That's even MORE painful.
In a way, for me certain shows ended at certain points before the season finale. Buffy peaked at season 3 and ended at season 5. Stargate ended around season 4 pre-Anise, with handfuls of episodes after that shoved in. (I cannot, will not, disregard "Window of Opportunity" for something as petty as Tok'ra Barbie. I mean, really.) Gargoyles ended with "Hunter's Moon, Part 3." Farscape... well, okay, I'd say it ended when Zhaan kicked the bucket, but I didn't see enough of the series regularly to judge. Angel may have just ended (I'll hold out and see what they do next season before I make any judgments). Having said that, I don't dismiss episodes after the proverbial cut-off point; I just regard them in some way as a different version of the show.
Do I get pissed off when the creators of the show screw around with the formula, change things around, fix what ISN'T broke and screw things up? Most definitely. Will I vent about that anger? Yep. I'm not going to dismiss screw-ups or small flaws entirely. But I'm not going to dismiss the time I invested in the fandom and forget why I got into it to begin with as a result. It defeats the purpose of getting hooked in the first place. And to dismiss the fandom itself and spread around the misery - what's the point of that unless you're trying to disband the entire fandom and get everyone to condemn the show entirely and wallow with you? Who wants that?
If it was one or two instances, I'd shrug it off. But I've been seeing so much lately that it's just damned depressing. It makes me wonder if fandom is worth it because of the PEOPLE involved, not the shows. I'm pissed, yes... but more than that, it makes me really sad. It makes me wonder; if friends I met through the fandoms are ready to dismiss the fandom at the drop of a hat, what does that say about our friendships?
*sigh* I wish that people would throw out alternatives along with the venting, at least. I'd like to see how some fic writers out there would have handled things to avoid the shark jump, to discuss what could have been done, and what was good about what came before that could have been built upon. "Could have, should have, would have" in this case is actually better than hopelessness.
Anyway, end rant. Feel free to yell at me for this. I really had to get it off my chest before the pessimism infected me.
In other news, Death has a cellphone. Be afraid. Be very afraid. ;)
