That 'ask me something about one of my fandoms' meme

[doyle]

I got very turned off by Big Bang Theory because it seemed to have an excess of Nice-Guy-ism. Am I oversensitive?


I’m so glad someone asked this, because it’s exactly what almost put me off the show after the first two episodes – I’m glad I stuck with it (or rather, that I skipped to season 2 and came back to season 1 afterwards) because I love it, but Leonard is such a textbook Nice Guy ™ in the first few episodes that I could barely watch. Insisting on doing ‘favours’ for Penny not because it’s a nice thing to do but because she might have sex with him (and, naturally, being petulant when she doesn’t); getting her on a date under false pretences rather than asking her outright, then denying it and making her feel stupid when she asks if that’s what he’s doing; declaring his intention to stop seeing her altogether when he decides he’s got no chance of having sex with her; eventually openly hitting on her only when she’s good and vulnerable and crying on his shoulder having only just broken up with someone. Which would all be fine if he wasn’t, y’know, meant to be the sympathetic lead. It took a good dozen episodes for me to upgrade him from “repellent” to “bearable” to an eventual “likeable” (it helps that he has a couple of normal relationships and eventually interacts with Penny in a way that seems to be ‘genuinely likes her and enjoys her company’ rather than ‘has no interest in her as a person, will drop her like a rock if he ever gives up hope of a shag’). The good news is that even though he’s ostensibly the lead it’s possible to ignore him completely and watch the show where Sheldon and Penny have a hilariously snarky antagonism (and weird UST despite his asexuality and her antipathy), and Sheldon’s friends make nerdy jokes.


Have you seen the latest S8 comic (Kennedy and Satsu)? If so what do you think.

No, not yet! It sounds like a setup dreamed up just for me, though, so I hope it's good.


Housemates don't get anon rights, especially when they're being smug, so marymac asked (to paraphrase, as she asked in person) So, you were firmly on the Ray V side of the Ray wars; how do you feel about Ray K now?


I will grudgingly admit that Ray K is hot, funny and awesomely slashtastic with Fraser (and in the episode we're watching right now, a woobirific little angst-puppy). I want a screencap of that bit with them holding hands. And Lilah was in an episode!

...so, yeah, I'll take Fraser/RayK recs if you got em. Had to happen some time.


Have you read/seen Twilight?

I've read the first one, which was just awful on every level, almost physically painful to get through; no desire to read the rest. I liked the film, though.

Any general fannish pet peeves? Or pet peeves for DW fandom in particular?


Fandom Pet Peeves (general)

(i) A fandom fixating on one character (or ship, or aspect of the canon) to the near-exclusion of everything else. I don’t mean on character or ship specific comms; you expect a House/Wilson comm to respond to every spoiler with “but what does this mean for House/Wilson?” and every interview with “let’s minutely dissect what this says about House/Wilson”, but if it’s a general comm, and that’s all people are talking about regardless of topic, with every discussion devolving into a “H/W roolz!”/”no, H/W sucks!”/”NO U!” flamewar… it gets old. Particularly annoying when it’s a mostly negative obsession with a character who has far more haters than fans, so that a trailer featuring a single line from Thirteen will get a million tl;dr whines about how Everything Is About Thirteen when nobody had even mentioned her. None of this is passive-aggressively referencing Who fandom's Rose and Rose-vs-Martha obsession, by the way, annoying as that ongoing war is - they're both far more liked than disliked, despite the neverending wank, and since Donna's tenure there's been an increase in the diversity of stuff. Which is nice.

Torchwood fandom is all about the Jack/Ianto, but I don’t mind so much because I’m not that deeply invested in Torchwood and I am largely in it for the Jack/Ianto (and Gwen/Rhys). If Tosh/Owen had been the fixation-point I would have bailed on the fandom long ago, falling as it does under the category of ‘tedious series-spanning will-they-won’t-they ship teases’, which I almost always hate (see also: Mal/Inara and Simon/Kaylee on Firefly, JD/Elliot on Scrubs, almost every canon ship on Star Trek; in the rare cases that I enjoy, the show goes severely downhill for me right after they get together, like Lois/Clark on L&C or Niles/Daphne on Frasier). Buffy fandom was easily the worst for this – I remember threads on Giles or Xander/Anya that would descend into being all about Spike (even if it’s bashing, it’s still obsessing over Spike to the exclusion of the actual topic), and even when he was my favourite character, love of god, people, variety is nice.

(i-a) A corollary to the above, the barbed-wire-around-the-sandbox approach to fandom: making spaces for bits of fandom outside the overwhelming character, ship or genre? Awesome. I love when people do that because like I say, variety… oh, your userinfo or signup post phrases it like a crusade, whines about how that popular thing is stupid and lame, congratulates the people involved for being smarter and better than those fans and in general makes it look more anti-popular thing than pro-everything else? Do you not get fannish overlap?

(ii) The whole concept of “A is B’s one and eternal love” when in canon they seemed to very much love C, D, and E, especially when it gets to the extent of “in fact, even though they’ve had canon relationships they had never had sex/had an orgasm before this person”.

(ii) The usual petty grievances: fic writers making technical errors you’d think were poor from a primary school child, let alone an adult. Character-bashing or soapboxing in fic. People who don’t learn how to LJ-cut before they post fic. “Fake cut!” when it isn’t, it’s a standard link.


Fandom Pet Peeves (Doctor Who universe)

(i) The ongoing inability to distinguish between "I don't really ship Rose with Ten" and "I hate Rose and everything she stands for". So far I've been unable to ship Ten with any of his companions (Ten/minor characters, on the other hand? Oh yes); doesn't mean I dislike them, just that the romantic relationship doesn't work for me. Also pairing Ten up with Rose, Martha or Jack in anything that doesn't start in the middle of canon and go AU is a problem for me, since as of Journey's End they're all in relationships that I like a lot (...okay, it's not actually canon that Rose and Handy hooked up to have hilarious sexy Earthbound misadventures in the zeppelinverse, but assuming that's so.)

(ii) Fans projecting their own likes, dislikes or master plan for running the show onto the actors or writers as if it’s actual truth; extrapolating gossip from something one of them’s said is one thing (“Barrowman didn’t get on with Eccleston” may or may not be true but at least has a traceable origin in something JB said) but making stuff up that’s the exact opposite of what they’ve said publically (David Tennant hated Freema! Moffat and his manly straightness will save us from the evil Gay Agenda!) is straight into fashioning a stylish hat from tinfoil territory.

(iii) “Donna would have rather died than go back to who she was before she met the Doctor, and he should have let her.” Argh, argh, argh. Apart from the dismissal of ordinary life – the thing the series is meant to be championing, the oft-quoted ‘one adventure the Doctor can never have’ – as not only worthless but a fate worse than death, the best analogy I’ve seen to this is someone trapped beneath a burning car: yeah, I’d be yelling at the paramedic not to amputate my legs, but that doesn’t mean the moral course would be for him to go “well, it’s your call” and stand back to watch as I burn to death. “She’d be better off dead!” made me angry when it was Rose and still does with Donna, mostly because ubergenius superpowered half-Time Lord DoctorDonna isn’t Donna, to me (seen the Voyager episode where Tuvok and Neelix combine, and the resultant person is neither Tuvok or Neelix but a new, distinct entity called Tuvix with the memories of both? That.) and even with no metacrisis I wouldn’t have wanted her to stay that way. That being said, it’s a contrived plot that only exists to heap more angst on the Doctor and I’d happily do away with the whole thing (like a lot of Journey’s End, apart from the multi-companion TARDIS, because that made me crazy-happy.)

(iv) The word ‘cariad’ in Jack/Ianto fics. Actually, people speaking Welsh at all in fic by non-Welsh speakers based on a canon where no-one, to my recollection, has ever uttered a word of the language, not because it’d be in character for that person to speak in Welsh at that moment but because it’s exotic and romantic and mysterious (I do have a deep love for the fic where Ianto, asked to say something in Welsh, says “my hovercraft is full of eels”). Also, in fics where it does come up, Jack not understanding a word of Welsh despite having lived in Wales for fives times as long as Ianto or Gwen have been alive.

(v) People trying to American-pick Jack’s dialogue even after it’s been pointed out to them that he’s not, in fact, American, and has some un-American-sounding dialogue in canon.


(who_daily, don't link, please. There's posting unlocked under the terms of the meme and then there's whinging at fandom about how they're DOIN IT WRONG)

Comments

[marymac.livejournal.com]

I have a theory that the accuracy of the accent may be directly related at a) how many takes they've done and b) how much he's trying to keep a straight face.