Meiran's Midnight Madness

I’m an old and crotchety fan.  I will frequently say things that sound a lot like “get off my lawn.”

So I’ve been doing the online fandom thing since season one of Buffy.  I actually had to wait an entire day to download a tiny resolution clip of two second scenes and read transcripts made by fans because downloading and pirating was not at all a thing yet.  Technically I was on some X-Files newsgroups even before that but I wasn’t active like I was in Buffy.

So I just want to point out how eternally grateful I am that the B5 fandom is old enough that we don’t have ship names.  Please, please, please let us never develop stupid ship names.  I saw this whole trend start and I’ve hated it from day one because for one thing, I’ve seen fights about what to call ships, and for another I’ve seen a ton of snotty jerk fans use ship names like codes to keep out people who aren’t good enough fans. In fact, that’s the bulk of what I see them used for, as a thing to weed out people who aren’t “cool” enough to know everything and to be unfriendly to newbs.  Not to mention how ship names contribute to ship wars by overly emphasizing “identities” as shippers of certain couples.

And B5 is a fandom that should be known for how eternally friendly and wonderful it is to new fans.  And we don’t really have ship wars because I can only think of one popular ship that isn’t canon and really it may as well be, whether you ship it or not.  Even people who prefer Ivanova/Talia over Ivanova/Marcus don’t fight because for one thing, a lot of are really into both (and unlike some fandoms we don’t find bisexuality all that difficult to understand).  

I want us to continue to be the awesome fandom and the nicest group of people.  And drawing lines in the sand and factioning ourselves off just will be the beginning of the end, which is sad now that there’s been such a resurgence of fans here on tumblr. 

That’s just my old two cents.  I’ll go back to my rocking chair now, if you’ll just hand me my cane.  These kids today…

I keep writing these big long rants about why saying “they only had one season” and “they didn’t have enough time” are poor excuses for the bad points of Legend of Korra, but I know nobody that is trying to make that excuse will care.

I will just say that it’s not like they got cancelled last second like Eureka or Alien Nation or something. It’s not like they were promised they’d get five seasons and then told they only had four and them miraculously got another like Babylon 5.

They were greenlit for a season. They wrote a season, they animated a season, and from everything I’ve read it was while they were animating it that they were told they would get a second season.  They were given more time, they didn’t have any taken away.  And they clearly wanted to tell the story of Amon and the Equalists in only one season.  

And they failed at that from a storytelling perspective.  As a screenwriter, I feel strongly that they did not do the work they should have done during pre-production and outlining that would have solved the problems with the narrative.  Those problems of not having enough time aren’t valid excuses because first of all, they had the time they thought they had and they knew going in how much time there was for this story (and they were given MORE, they never had their time taken away).

Second of all, filmmaking (and animation) is problem solving.  And even if this WAS a wrench thrown in the works (and again, from every interview with the writers that I’ve read, it was NOT a shock that they only had one season for this story arc) then they failed at solving the problem.

I will never give somebody leeway for doing something poorly just because I’m a fan. I love B5 more than almost any other creative property in the history of ever and I will talk for hours about everything that is wrong with it.  Just ask Maggie, she ends up with the brunt of it in my comments to her doing the same thing.

Being a fan does not, should not, and will never mean accepting something flaws and all.  It will mean loving it but also calling people out for their shit and saying “do better next time.”  It means saying “this was good, but your sexism was showing here, here, and here.”  

I liked Korra, I will watch the second season. And I’m not going to get mad at people for loving it, and some of the defenses I’ve seen for problems I’ve had did make me sit back and think again.

But “they only had one season” is not really a valid argument.  I’ve seen complete and compelling stories in a sentence.  In the US, pretty much any weekend there’s a 48 hour film festival going on somewhere.  Those people get a few prompts and write a complete script, film, and edit their short films within two days.  And a good number of those films go on to win awards at festivals.

I’ll make excuses for people sometimes when they do a bad job, but this excuse is not one I’ll let fly without being answered.

Turns out I did write a big rant about it anyway.  I expect people to get mad about it. Oh well.

Protip

wonderarity:

You can ship two men together without hating on a lady. 

You can ship two ladies together without hating on a man.

You can ship a lady and a man together without hating on queer pairings.

You can ship two (or more) characters who aren’t canonically together without hating on a canon couple.

You can ship a canon couple and not hate on non-canon pairings.

Basically you can ship anyone and anything you like and not be a douche.

paramaline:

cerseithegolden:

i’m so awful when i’m introducing people to new shows

i’m always hovering about going “but do you like it? do you, do you, do you like it tho? oh what about this character? and this episode, have you gotten there yet? and do you ship so-and-so? oh, you have to otherwise we can’t be friends!”

pshhh, but that’s the only proper way to introduce people to new shows <3

You should have seen me when I started getting my best friend to watch B5. I probably drove her insane.

(Source: alynna-nechayev)