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Of fans and writers I sing...
Nov. 28th, 2011 11:29 amIt's a long train journey from Munich to Cologne, plus I won't be able to watch the latest Good Wife until next Sunday. For some reason, this means you'll be subjected to the result of my highly scientific investigation into the fans/showrunners relationship cycle. Consider it in the same spirit as my long ago Educated Fangirl's Guide To The Spike Wars.
Creator Blues: A Ballad in Six Phases
Phase I: Falling in Love
Our subject discovers a new fannish source. It appeals to a lot of her or his fannish sensibilities, and allows her or him to share this enthusiasm with a wider community. Much praise is given to the showrunner/creator of the source, to the point of genius declaration. This phase usually lasts one or two seasons, in extreme cases only half a season.
Phase II: Hunting the Traitor
Flaws in the source material are becoming apparent to our subject. Our subject, unwilling to believe these could be the fault of the showrunner/creator who brought the fannish joy to life, decides these must be the fault of a third party: network interference, co-producer interference, actor interference, fellow scriptwriters interference. The party suspected as guilty is much reviled. If she is female, there is some additional misogyny and/or declaration said woman is a bad feminist coming with the demonization.
Phase III: Getting Divorced
The ire now transfers to the showrunner/creator himself. (Or herself, but with the exception of J. K. Rowling, I can't think of a woman this happened to, and book series are somewhat different anyway.) The subject concludes they were mistaken to ever believe this person had even a smidgeon of talent. The showrunner/creator is on the contrary a worthless hack, scum of the earth, and whatever was good about the fannish souce can't have been due to his/her skills, but due to someone else/fannish projection. The rest of the universe must be told about the utter worthlessness of X, and in the absence of a divorce lawyer, this results in endless rounds of negative meta, leading on to two possible next phases.
Phase IV a: On the Rebound
Our subject decides they're getting divorced from the vile deceiving scum of the earth creator/showrunner but not the source itself. They now venerate scriptwriter Y and/or fanficwriters as BEING SO MUCH BETTER FOR WRITING THIS UNIVERSE ANYWAY. There is much praise for Y and/or fanficwriters in our subject's every utterance on the fannish source, but it almost always is combined with a negative sentence at minimum, at maximum an entire tirade making up two third of what is supposedly a review of the work of Y or a fanfiction, about WHAT A COMPLETE HACK AND BASTARD X IS. This does not exactly demonstrate how our subject has moved on, but never mind.
Phase IV. b: Greener Pastures
Our subject gets divorced from the fannish source as well. This may or may not coincide with discovering a new fannish source, but what it definitely coincides with is the urge to expose not just the showrunner/creator, but the entire fictional universe for the time-wasting mess and opiate to the masses it is. After all, there are still some benighted souls enjoying it out there, some of whom may even like X, the scum, and they must be enlightened and converted. Not least because fellowship in dissing does feel almost as satisfying as fellowship in squee to our subject, and they miss their fannish community.
Phase V. Falling in love again
What's this? Our subject has discovered a new source of joy. A fictional universe full of elements that appeal to their fannish sensibilities, but of course far better, far more sophisticated than the old waste of time ever did. Even better: the person at the helm of this new 'verse is so incredibly talented, skilled, and pretty much a GENIUS...
Creator Blues: A Ballad in Six Phases
Phase I: Falling in Love
Our subject discovers a new fannish source. It appeals to a lot of her or his fannish sensibilities, and allows her or him to share this enthusiasm with a wider community. Much praise is given to the showrunner/creator of the source, to the point of genius declaration. This phase usually lasts one or two seasons, in extreme cases only half a season.
Phase II: Hunting the Traitor
Flaws in the source material are becoming apparent to our subject. Our subject, unwilling to believe these could be the fault of the showrunner/creator who brought the fannish joy to life, decides these must be the fault of a third party: network interference, co-producer interference, actor interference, fellow scriptwriters interference. The party suspected as guilty is much reviled. If she is female, there is some additional misogyny and/or declaration said woman is a bad feminist coming with the demonization.
Phase III: Getting Divorced
The ire now transfers to the showrunner/creator himself. (Or herself, but with the exception of J. K. Rowling, I can't think of a woman this happened to, and book series are somewhat different anyway.) The subject concludes they were mistaken to ever believe this person had even a smidgeon of talent. The showrunner/creator is on the contrary a worthless hack, scum of the earth, and whatever was good about the fannish souce can't have been due to his/her skills, but due to someone else/fannish projection. The rest of the universe must be told about the utter worthlessness of X, and in the absence of a divorce lawyer, this results in endless rounds of negative meta, leading on to two possible next phases.
Phase IV a: On the Rebound
Our subject decides they're getting divorced from the vile deceiving scum of the earth creator/showrunner but not the source itself. They now venerate scriptwriter Y and/or fanficwriters as BEING SO MUCH BETTER FOR WRITING THIS UNIVERSE ANYWAY. There is much praise for Y and/or fanficwriters in our subject's every utterance on the fannish source, but it almost always is combined with a negative sentence at minimum, at maximum an entire tirade making up two third of what is supposedly a review of the work of Y or a fanfiction, about WHAT A COMPLETE HACK AND BASTARD X IS. This does not exactly demonstrate how our subject has moved on, but never mind.
Phase IV. b: Greener Pastures
Our subject gets divorced from the fannish source as well. This may or may not coincide with discovering a new fannish source, but what it definitely coincides with is the urge to expose not just the showrunner/creator, but the entire fictional universe for the time-wasting mess and opiate to the masses it is. After all, there are still some benighted souls enjoying it out there, some of whom may even like X, the scum, and they must be enlightened and converted. Not least because fellowship in dissing does feel almost as satisfying as fellowship in squee to our subject, and they miss their fannish community.
Phase V. Falling in love again
What's this? Our subject has discovered a new source of joy. A fictional universe full of elements that appeal to their fannish sensibilities, but of course far better, far more sophisticated than the old waste of time ever did. Even better: the person at the helm of this new 'verse is so incredibly talented, skilled, and pretty much a GENIUS...
