boogiewoogiebuglegal: (Default)
Okay, I saw the film last Sunday. What I've been seeing since, online, is...some really bizarre shit.

I'm going out of my way to avoid spoilers. But regardless of what happened (or didn't happen) in the film? It's absolutely ridiculous to tag the actors in your complaints. It's ludicrous and embarrassing. Don't like the film? Either ignore it altogether or write a fanfic that fixes it. Blaming the actor(s) is just cheap and utterly lacking in class.

I am a Fandom Old. By which I mean, I'm on the high side of 40, and I've been in and out of various fandoms since I was in my early teens, before there was an internet even. (Yes. Really.) Here's the thing. All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again. I liked Endgame, even as I absolutely agree with the perspective that if you have to explain your McGuffin over and over, you've failed at some level as a writer. I would have loved to see more with [redacted ] and [redacted] because they're my faves and I love the actors and how they portray them. But if I didn't? If their portrayal was something I didn't like? I wouldn't tell them, because at the end of the day, they don't owe me jack. They're given a script, and they do their best with what they're given. How that all comes together at the end of the day is not really up to them.

(I can, and will, blame TPTB, because they richly deserve it.)

Thirty years ago, I was part of a fandom that split and went to war with itself over the direction of the series. Some of the people who were involved STILL won't talk to each other. On many levels, none of that had to happen then, and none of this has to happen now.

Accept that canon is what you make of it. Accept that fanfic and fanart have never existed in a vacuum. And also accept that showrunners and TPTB are infamous for losing control and/or perspective of their own characters (George Lucas, anyone?) But for goodness' sake-- leave the actors out of it.
boogiewoogiebuglegal: (Default)
So my daughter is 12. She knows I'm a fanfic writer and has gone with me to conventions and the like since she was old enough to walk. This is not a new thing to her.

What is a new thing, though, is the experience she had Friday night. She was (very anxiously, it was cute) awaiting the start of season 8 of Voltron. (I remember the shitty cartoon version from the 80s; the fact that they rebooted it was... perplexing to me but hey, whatever.) She loved it.

Note the past-tense.

She watched the first episode and was....disappointed. Hurt, in the way of fans who trust that writers and showrunners won't totally screw up the characters and relationships she'd come to love. (Note: I don't really know all that happened, but I got the gist. No spoilers here, for those who haven't seen it.)

So I sat her down and told her I'd seen this before. (To quote BSG, "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.") And I told her about being 13 in 1987 and watching my favorite series of the era kill off its lead female character because the actress who played her was pregnant and wanted to avoid another miscarriage. And how the decision of the showrunners then---how they handled the exit of the actress's character---doomed the third season of that series to an inevitable cancellation and set off a war in its fandom that split fandom into two and was so toxic that, to this day, there are folks who still won't talk to each other because of it. (We're talking 30 + years later, mind.)

And I told her how we coped then. I was 13 and mad, so I wrote a story fixing what went wrong. (And that was the start of my writing fanfic---off and on, in a few fandoms, ever since.) And I wasn't the only one. Far from it. A lot of us made the decision that our beloved show had actually ended in season two. And we made that work. Because canon, at the end of the day, is really only what you make of it.

So she said, "I could write a story?"

I told her why not. Fix what went wrong. Spackle a plot hole. Make what went wrong, go right.

She's hate-watching the remaining episodes of Season 8 (another fandom tradition LOL) But who knows, another fanfic writer might just have been born. ..

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September 2021

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