fannish opinions meme: answers
Feb. 7th, 2009 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreThe meme was this:
Ask me anything: all types of fannish opinions, good, bad, and ugly. I'm screening all comments so ask me anything fannish-related and I'll answer (in a separate post) with complete honesty.
Some of these are changed up a bit, primarily because the questions referred to icons the commenter used, or referred to past conversations where other people wouldn’t know what we were talking about.
What trend makes you the most annoyed with fandom? And on the opposite note, what are aspects that don't make you annoyed with it?
Strangely, they’re tied together. On the one hand, the whole point of fandom, IMO, is to bring people with common interests together, and I think that, without online fandom, a lot of people wouldn’t have many people they could share their interests with, so the simple fact that it exists may be what I like best about it. On the other hand, it creates cliques and hive minds. So much of it seems to operate on assumptions and proving you’re right and someone else is wrong, including the author.
What fandom did you always want to get into, but never could?
BSG. I wanted to, I really did. I just…didn’t like it.
Are you reading the current Wonder Woman run? If you, thoughts?
Yes. Though, like most U.S. comics, I’m a few months behind. The period between Rucka and Simone was painful in the extreme, especially Amazons Attack, which I’m still trying to purge from my brain. I think the voice Simone gives Diana it a bit too modern and casual, and I don’t care for her dating Nemesis, though I do like his character, and I like them as partners. On the whole, though, I really like Simone’s run, and think she’s doing a good job on getting past The Horror.
(Prefaced by references to other conversation involving how I usually don’t like fanon, and don’t seem to interact with fandom the way others do. I assume it was largely a reference to my not getting into the shipping thing most of the time.) Do you ever wish you interacted with shows in a different way?
Not particularly. So much of it seems to be based around fanon and shipping. While I sometimes get into pairings (sometimes a lot) I simply can’t imagine finding ways that two people might work as a pairing more interesting than examining how the characters interact in canon, the plot, and the creator’s themes and messages than whether or not two people have the potential to sleep together. I sometimes wish I could join in the fun, but I’m generally happier the way I am.
What you think of Seishiro in X/Tokyo Babylon?
I thought he was very interesting in TB, and early in X, but was a bit tired of him and the Seishiro/Subaru thing by the “end” of X. I think it was a case of a good thing stretched too far for me. I also found it more interesting before it was revealed that he apparently did love Subaru.
So: What would it take to get Lana off Smallville and end our misery at yet another round of will they/won't they/who gives a damn Clark n'Lana?
Cancellation. I still can’t believe that the end of season 3 gave her an ending that perfectly fit her place in Superman canon and gave her and her relationship with Clark respect and opened the path to move on to the next stage, and then they brought her back and it got to the really bad part. Also, Kristen Kreuk deserves way better than what she’s given.
What are three movies, and three anime, that you will never watch, and why? Preferably not things that are obvious, such as, say, Norbit or Ikki Tousen.
The thing here is that I always end up forced to watch these things, or unwillingly drawn to them.
For movies, I will never willingly watch a movie based on an Ernest Hemingway novel(still recovering from the two books of his I read in high school), and Austen Powers movie, or almost any Jack Black, Adam Sandler, of Jim Carrey *comedy) vehicle.
For Anime: Special A. The anime may be better, but the manga offended me mightily. More Saiyuki if it’s by the people who made Gunlock. While I appreciated the crack, I need those brain cells. The second Ai Yori Aoshi anime. The first offended me mightily.
What show are you most afraid of watching?
The Skip-Beat anime and twdrama. Primarily because I have high standards for the series based on the manga, and am afraid of being disappointed.
What show(s) or film(s) has been recommended to you that you don't believe you will like?
I don’t think there is one. There are plenty of things I’ve been recced and didn’t like once I checked them out, but when people rec me things, I assume they’re taking my tastes into account when doing so, and that there’s a chance that I’ll like them.
What is a show you wish existed?
Hmmm…perhaps a TV series based on Elizabeth Peters’s Amelia Peabody or Vicky Bliss or Jacqueline Kirby books. I’d love any of them on my TV screen. (Uhm…I answered this one when about 3 chapters into Laughter of Dead Kings, so my response was very influenced there.)
What are your least favorite three pieces of media? What are some things you like about them? What are your top three pieces of media? What do you dislike about them?
I don’t know that I have three hard and fast of either, so I’ll go with some of the first ones that pop to my head.
Favorites:
Amelia Peabody books: I didn’t like how things played out with Ramses and Nefret. I thought they were cute as kids and teens, but I lost patience with them once the Big Misunderstanding came.
Remington Steele: I much preferred Bernice and Murphy to Mildred, though Mildred did eventually grow on me. I kind age their reasoning for trading out characters, but I would have rather they kept Bernice. I also really didn’t like how they used that to always have Mildred questioning Laura. Even if she didn’t know that Laura was the real boss, she was still Laura’s subordinate.
Basara: While I like the art myself and don’t care for a lot of the more popular shoujo art, I sometimes wish Basara had more popular art, simply because so many people list the art as the major reason they couldn’t get into it.
Least Favorites:
Goong(kdrama, not manhwa): I really like the core idea of Goong-that Korea is still a monarchy and the prince has to marry a commoner-I just hated said prince (IMO, the epitome of the Alpha Shoujo Bastard played as the angsty woobie) and how things played out.
Special A: Again, a thing where I like the core idea-childhood friends and rivals where he’s in love with her but she’s too busy being a rival to notice-but again, a case of my hating the hero and how things played out. And in this case, how the text constantly insulted her.
Stargate: Atlantis: Insect based alien vampires!
Do you think that once one starts to see gender (and in the same manner, race) in fiction, you can't "unsee" it whenever it surfaces in something in a problematic manner?
I unintentionally answered this in its own post, but basically, yes. There are obvious things regarding how race and gender are handled, and then there are the things that are there, but that aren’t immediately evident. I think that once you start looking past the surface and seeing what kind of defaults fiction has and how race and gender are often handled once the excuses are removed, you start seeing it in other things. It doesn’t mean that you’re looking for these things or that anything that has these problems are racist or sexist (though, of course, they can be) just that it’s hard to become unaware of something once you’ve become aware of it. I also think that’s why people are so often to object to problems being pointed out in fiction that they like, because there’s this perception that admitting to a flaw, or that someone else might have a legitimate reason to have a problem with it, might mean that it isn’t OK for you to still like it. (And yes, I’m well aware that I’m not innocent of that myself.)
Also, what do you think about people who are so into some culture's products fannishly that they'd actually like to be from that culture? Like people who wish they were Japanese, Korean, what else have you...
I think it’s…odd? Not freakish like some seem to think, just not something I can really understand. I wonder, though, how many of them really want that, and how many are just fascinated by all aspects of the culture.
Your top titles/authors/tropes/kinks of Deep $FILL_IN_THE_BLANK Shame? (Feminist, intellectual, whatever you like -- the stuff that's so cheesy or stupid or stereotyped or squicky that you don't want to like it, but it somehow worms past your defenses?)
Oh sure, pick the hard one. The problem here is that I tend to kind of admit to my shame as I read/watch…
I saw Terminator at an impressionable enough age that, even though I now recognize the creeptastic part, I still can’t escape OMG BEST THING EVER! when I rewatch.
It violates almost all my standards, but sometimes (Damo, FMA) I cannot resist commander/subordinate. It often seems to require a stoic female subordinate, though, or some sort of queen/princess/*insert rank equivalent here* x knight/assassin/*insert rank equivalent here* type of setup.
The very nature of the setting means that all my delicate feminist sensibilities will be offended, I love medieval romance novels. I think because The Wolf and the Dove was my first romance novel ever.
On a similar vein, if I see a Bertrice Small book at a booksale, I CANNOT RESIST IT. I actually let out a sigh of relief if it’s one I’ve already skimmed.
I also cannot resist the wallflower/badboy trope when I see it, even though I end up hating it 90% of the time. I have the same problem with crossdressing stories, though the betrayal rate is lower. Ditto princess/assassin/bodyguard in various forms. These are things that romance novels ruling part of my formative years have made me gravitate towards, even though I know that those same books have resulted in my being critical of the tropes.
Not exactly a secret, but Clamp, Higuri You and Kaori Yuki can apparently make me go with almost anything, no matter how much it violates my delicate sensibilities and standards. (Though Cardcaptor Sakura did find the line I won’t cross with a secondary pairing.)
My question is about FMA, though. I just finished Vol. 15 (the flashbacks about the war), and it just strikes me that a lot of it is, obliquely, about WWII and its aftermath. Was wondering if you'd had any thoughts along the same lines.
Oh yes. The entire world is a loose WWII era Europe, right down to Jews and Nazis. It’s always been in the manga, and part of what makes it great. It was in the anime, too, but, like almost everything, it got lost in the focus on Roy and Ed’s angst. One of the many reasons that, while I like the anime, I’ll really never understand how anyone could prefer the anime to the manga, unless they just prefer anime in general. (I know I’m in the minority in this, and I admit that part of it is that I generally like manga more in general, but I much prefer the characterization, themes, and relationships in the manga.) For that part, I believe Arakawa actually interviewed a lot of veterans. Hence part of what makes that (IMO) one of the best parts of either version.
Actually, this I'm kind of curious about because I know you've read Saiyuki: canon incest. In the interest of full disclosure, in that particular series, it really turned me off of the book but I don't know the general view of it via fandom or even how you view it. So, like it? Hate it? Find it compelling? A cheap shock? What's your take?
It’s strange. Few things irritate me more in fandom than fanon incest. (Though part of that is being mistaken for my brother’s girlfriend multiple times in high school and college.) And., technically, it remains one of my major canon squicks. I especially hate the whole pseudo-incest thing a lot of shoujo and kdramas have going. And yet, I am almost wholly unphased by it in things like Cantarella and Angel Sanctuary. For Saiyuki, when I was first reading it, the incest actually didn’t quite register at first, even though I was aware of it. I think because it wasn’t treated as being the important part. Dokugaku sleeping with his mother wasn’t the focus, but the source of a large part of the shared trauma and abuse that both he and Gojyo suffered. It wasn’t “ooo…kinky” but a very wrong thing that scarred both for life. With Hakkai and Kanon, the focus wasn’t “hey, he slept with his sister” but “he lost the person he loved most, resulting in lifelong trauma.” So while Cantarella and Angel Sanctuary hit my Gothic Shoujo Crack kinks and shame-that-I-freely-admit-to being hit, Saiyuki more underplays it. In both cases, it’s an element, and an important one, but I don’t think it’s handled for shock value or cheaply. That said, the anime, though not as good and more of an adventure series and less of a psychological one, glasses over the subject a bit. (Actually, it may gloss over it completely, it’s been a while, but I don’t remember it being as obvious.) So if you were interested in other aspects of the series, you might try the anime.
I would like to hear you talk about the Peabody series, if it's not too late. Any aspect of it is fine.
I LOVE IT TO BITS!!!! I am fairly convinced that Amelia is one of the best and most entertaining characters ever. The rest aren’t that bad, either. I even love the more recent books, though most seem to not like them as much. Admittedly, they aren’t as good as the earlier books, but they’re still multiple steps above a lot of what’s out there, IMO.
Ask me anything: all types of fannish opinions, good, bad, and ugly. I'm screening all comments so ask me anything fannish-related and I'll answer (in a separate post) with complete honesty.
Some of these are changed up a bit, primarily because the questions referred to icons the commenter used, or referred to past conversations where other people wouldn’t know what we were talking about.
What trend makes you the most annoyed with fandom? And on the opposite note, what are aspects that don't make you annoyed with it?
Strangely, they’re tied together. On the one hand, the whole point of fandom, IMO, is to bring people with common interests together, and I think that, without online fandom, a lot of people wouldn’t have many people they could share their interests with, so the simple fact that it exists may be what I like best about it. On the other hand, it creates cliques and hive minds. So much of it seems to operate on assumptions and proving you’re right and someone else is wrong, including the author.
What fandom did you always want to get into, but never could?
BSG. I wanted to, I really did. I just…didn’t like it.
Are you reading the current Wonder Woman run? If you, thoughts?
Yes. Though, like most U.S. comics, I’m a few months behind. The period between Rucka and Simone was painful in the extreme, especially Amazons Attack, which I’m still trying to purge from my brain. I think the voice Simone gives Diana it a bit too modern and casual, and I don’t care for her dating Nemesis, though I do like his character, and I like them as partners. On the whole, though, I really like Simone’s run, and think she’s doing a good job on getting past The Horror.
(Prefaced by references to other conversation involving how I usually don’t like fanon, and don’t seem to interact with fandom the way others do. I assume it was largely a reference to my not getting into the shipping thing most of the time.) Do you ever wish you interacted with shows in a different way?
Not particularly. So much of it seems to be based around fanon and shipping. While I sometimes get into pairings (sometimes a lot) I simply can’t imagine finding ways that two people might work as a pairing more interesting than examining how the characters interact in canon, the plot, and the creator’s themes and messages than whether or not two people have the potential to sleep together. I sometimes wish I could join in the fun, but I’m generally happier the way I am.
What you think of Seishiro in X/Tokyo Babylon?
I thought he was very interesting in TB, and early in X, but was a bit tired of him and the Seishiro/Subaru thing by the “end” of X. I think it was a case of a good thing stretched too far for me. I also found it more interesting before it was revealed that he apparently did love Subaru.
So: What would it take to get Lana off Smallville and end our misery at yet another round of will they/won't they/who gives a damn Clark n'Lana?
Cancellation. I still can’t believe that the end of season 3 gave her an ending that perfectly fit her place in Superman canon and gave her and her relationship with Clark respect and opened the path to move on to the next stage, and then they brought her back and it got to the really bad part. Also, Kristen Kreuk deserves way better than what she’s given.
What are three movies, and three anime, that you will never watch, and why? Preferably not things that are obvious, such as, say, Norbit or Ikki Tousen.
The thing here is that I always end up forced to watch these things, or unwillingly drawn to them.
For movies, I will never willingly watch a movie based on an Ernest Hemingway novel(still recovering from the two books of his I read in high school), and Austen Powers movie, or almost any Jack Black, Adam Sandler, of Jim Carrey *comedy) vehicle.
For Anime: Special A. The anime may be better, but the manga offended me mightily. More Saiyuki if it’s by the people who made Gunlock. While I appreciated the crack, I need those brain cells. The second Ai Yori Aoshi anime. The first offended me mightily.
What show are you most afraid of watching?
The Skip-Beat anime and twdrama. Primarily because I have high standards for the series based on the manga, and am afraid of being disappointed.
What show(s) or film(s) has been recommended to you that you don't believe you will like?
I don’t think there is one. There are plenty of things I’ve been recced and didn’t like once I checked them out, but when people rec me things, I assume they’re taking my tastes into account when doing so, and that there’s a chance that I’ll like them.
What is a show you wish existed?
Hmmm…perhaps a TV series based on Elizabeth Peters’s Amelia Peabody or Vicky Bliss or Jacqueline Kirby books. I’d love any of them on my TV screen. (Uhm…I answered this one when about 3 chapters into Laughter of Dead Kings, so my response was very influenced there.)
What are your least favorite three pieces of media? What are some things you like about them? What are your top three pieces of media? What do you dislike about them?
I don’t know that I have three hard and fast of either, so I’ll go with some of the first ones that pop to my head.
Favorites:
Amelia Peabody books: I didn’t like how things played out with Ramses and Nefret. I thought they were cute as kids and teens, but I lost patience with them once the Big Misunderstanding came.
Remington Steele: I much preferred Bernice and Murphy to Mildred, though Mildred did eventually grow on me. I kind age their reasoning for trading out characters, but I would have rather they kept Bernice. I also really didn’t like how they used that to always have Mildred questioning Laura. Even if she didn’t know that Laura was the real boss, she was still Laura’s subordinate.
Basara: While I like the art myself and don’t care for a lot of the more popular shoujo art, I sometimes wish Basara had more popular art, simply because so many people list the art as the major reason they couldn’t get into it.
Least Favorites:
Goong(kdrama, not manhwa): I really like the core idea of Goong-that Korea is still a monarchy and the prince has to marry a commoner-I just hated said prince (IMO, the epitome of the Alpha Shoujo Bastard played as the angsty woobie) and how things played out.
Special A: Again, a thing where I like the core idea-childhood friends and rivals where he’s in love with her but she’s too busy being a rival to notice-but again, a case of my hating the hero and how things played out. And in this case, how the text constantly insulted her.
Stargate: Atlantis: Insect based alien vampires!
Do you think that once one starts to see gender (and in the same manner, race) in fiction, you can't "unsee" it whenever it surfaces in something in a problematic manner?
I unintentionally answered this in its own post, but basically, yes. There are obvious things regarding how race and gender are handled, and then there are the things that are there, but that aren’t immediately evident. I think that once you start looking past the surface and seeing what kind of defaults fiction has and how race and gender are often handled once the excuses are removed, you start seeing it in other things. It doesn’t mean that you’re looking for these things or that anything that has these problems are racist or sexist (though, of course, they can be) just that it’s hard to become unaware of something once you’ve become aware of it. I also think that’s why people are so often to object to problems being pointed out in fiction that they like, because there’s this perception that admitting to a flaw, or that someone else might have a legitimate reason to have a problem with it, might mean that it isn’t OK for you to still like it. (And yes, I’m well aware that I’m not innocent of that myself.)
Also, what do you think about people who are so into some culture's products fannishly that they'd actually like to be from that culture? Like people who wish they were Japanese, Korean, what else have you...
I think it’s…odd? Not freakish like some seem to think, just not something I can really understand. I wonder, though, how many of them really want that, and how many are just fascinated by all aspects of the culture.
Your top titles/authors/tropes/kinks of Deep $FILL_IN_THE_BLANK Shame? (Feminist, intellectual, whatever you like -- the stuff that's so cheesy or stupid or stereotyped or squicky that you don't want to like it, but it somehow worms past your defenses?)
Oh sure, pick the hard one. The problem here is that I tend to kind of admit to my shame as I read/watch…
I saw Terminator at an impressionable enough age that, even though I now recognize the creeptastic part, I still can’t escape OMG BEST THING EVER! when I rewatch.
It violates almost all my standards, but sometimes (Damo, FMA) I cannot resist commander/subordinate. It often seems to require a stoic female subordinate, though, or some sort of queen/princess/*insert rank equivalent here* x knight/assassin/*insert rank equivalent here* type of setup.
The very nature of the setting means that all my delicate feminist sensibilities will be offended, I love medieval romance novels. I think because The Wolf and the Dove was my first romance novel ever.
On a similar vein, if I see a Bertrice Small book at a booksale, I CANNOT RESIST IT. I actually let out a sigh of relief if it’s one I’ve already skimmed.
I also cannot resist the wallflower/badboy trope when I see it, even though I end up hating it 90% of the time. I have the same problem with crossdressing stories, though the betrayal rate is lower. Ditto princess/assassin/bodyguard in various forms. These are things that romance novels ruling part of my formative years have made me gravitate towards, even though I know that those same books have resulted in my being critical of the tropes.
Not exactly a secret, but Clamp, Higuri You and Kaori Yuki can apparently make me go with almost anything, no matter how much it violates my delicate sensibilities and standards. (Though Cardcaptor Sakura did find the line I won’t cross with a secondary pairing.)
My question is about FMA, though. I just finished Vol. 15 (the flashbacks about the war), and it just strikes me that a lot of it is, obliquely, about WWII and its aftermath. Was wondering if you'd had any thoughts along the same lines.
Oh yes. The entire world is a loose WWII era Europe, right down to Jews and Nazis. It’s always been in the manga, and part of what makes it great. It was in the anime, too, but, like almost everything, it got lost in the focus on Roy and Ed’s angst. One of the many reasons that, while I like the anime, I’ll really never understand how anyone could prefer the anime to the manga, unless they just prefer anime in general. (I know I’m in the minority in this, and I admit that part of it is that I generally like manga more in general, but I much prefer the characterization, themes, and relationships in the manga.) For that part, I believe Arakawa actually interviewed a lot of veterans. Hence part of what makes that (IMO) one of the best parts of either version.
Actually, this I'm kind of curious about because I know you've read Saiyuki: canon incest. In the interest of full disclosure, in that particular series, it really turned me off of the book but I don't know the general view of it via fandom or even how you view it. So, like it? Hate it? Find it compelling? A cheap shock? What's your take?
It’s strange. Few things irritate me more in fandom than fanon incest. (Though part of that is being mistaken for my brother’s girlfriend multiple times in high school and college.) And., technically, it remains one of my major canon squicks. I especially hate the whole pseudo-incest thing a lot of shoujo and kdramas have going. And yet, I am almost wholly unphased by it in things like Cantarella and Angel Sanctuary. For Saiyuki, when I was first reading it, the incest actually didn’t quite register at first, even though I was aware of it. I think because it wasn’t treated as being the important part. Dokugaku sleeping with his mother wasn’t the focus, but the source of a large part of the shared trauma and abuse that both he and Gojyo suffered. It wasn’t “ooo…kinky” but a very wrong thing that scarred both for life. With Hakkai and Kanon, the focus wasn’t “hey, he slept with his sister” but “he lost the person he loved most, resulting in lifelong trauma.” So while Cantarella and Angel Sanctuary hit my Gothic Shoujo Crack kinks and shame-that-I-freely-admit-to being hit, Saiyuki more underplays it. In both cases, it’s an element, and an important one, but I don’t think it’s handled for shock value or cheaply. That said, the anime, though not as good and more of an adventure series and less of a psychological one, glasses over the subject a bit. (Actually, it may gloss over it completely, it’s been a while, but I don’t remember it being as obvious.) So if you were interested in other aspects of the series, you might try the anime.
I would like to hear you talk about the Peabody series, if it's not too late. Any aspect of it is fine.
I LOVE IT TO BITS!!!! I am fairly convinced that Amelia is one of the best and most entertaining characters ever. The rest aren’t that bad, either. I even love the more recent books, though most seem to not like them as much. Admittedly, they aren’t as good as the earlier books, but they’re still multiple steps above a lot of what’s out there, IMO.