Category: Uncategorized

girlbookwrm:

mikkeneko:

bitchjerked:

do you ever get mad because there’s so much wasted potential in characters and relationships and plotlines in some shows

i basically divide up fandoms of continuing media into Fandoms Of Potentia and Fandoms Of Re.

i’m still developing this theory, but it sort of goes like this: there are some pieces of media that attract enormous followings not necessarily for what they are, but what the watchers think they could be,  and build castles basically on those dreams of potential.

whereas a fandom of re is a fandom of what the work is, oftentimes a finished work to which no more will be added, which has proven itself in entirety.

And the interesting thing to me is that Fandoms Of Potentia are oftentimes bigger  than Fandoms Of Re, bigger and more active, and there’s a couple of reasons for that – one is that a finished work leaves less room to add onto, and a finished work also leaves less need  to add onto. The primary driver of fandom works is incompleteness, whether because the work is not yet finished or because it is finished in a way that the audience feels is incomplete.

Fandoms of potentia also have the bigger drama, because the fact is, not every content creator is up to living up to the potential the fans see. Creators are only human after all. So when the story doesn’t live up to the big finish the fans dreamed of, there’s a lot of disappointment, anger and hurt. You see less of that with Fandoms Of Re.

I guess where I’m going with this, is that whenever I see a huge fandom gathering for a work that I think is absolutely not deserving of it, I stop to ask myself whether it might be a Fandom Of Potentia. In which case, they’re fans of something I don’t see at all – they’re fans of the dreams of what might be.

Can I propose some additional categories? Because in my experience there are Fandoms With Holes and Fandoms Without Borders and while those two overlap, they are distinct.

Like okay, you’ve got your Lord of the Rings. While there’s a lot of addendums and the Tolkien estate is still compiling and publishing his notes and whatnot, you’ve got your five core texts: The Silmarillion, the Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, the Return of the King. It’s a Fandom of Re, in a sense. It’s complete by itself. Anything that gets added now is arguably fanfiction.

But that is definitely a Fandom Without Borders. The story itself is tight and holds water. It doesn’t need more. It’s not missing anything. But, it’s like the map of Middle Earth itself: charmingly incomplete, fading off into the margins, inviting you to draw your own lines. What happened to the Blue Wizards? What does Harad look like? What are lady dwarves really like?

And then you’ve got Fandoms With Holes.  I think the best example of that is Sherlock Holmes. Arguably, another Fandom of Re, since it’s not like Arthur Conan Doyle is going to crawl out of the grave – and if he did, he wouldn’t write more Holmes stories. He hated the guy. And the stories don’t need more: they’ve got everything you could want from a detective series.

But. They are full of holes: Sometimes Watson took a bullet to the shoulder and sometimes he has a limp, sometimes his name is John and sometimes it’s James, and sometimes he’s married and sometimes he isn’t. ACD didn’t give a damn about continuity, and it shows. But that hasn’t made the fandom any less… passionate. In some ways, they’ve taken to patching holes with all the enthusiasm that Tolkien fans have taken to expanding the borders.

There’s a lot of overlap between the Re/Potentia and With Holes/Without Borders concepts. And obviously no fandom is 100% one thing or the other. They fall on a scale, probably. I’m envisioning some kind of graph scenario happening here, with an X and Y axis, you know?

Main bookshelf. Had to add and thus rearrange more, running out of space. You can’t see half the books (the majority of which I bought in middle school or high school). Highlights include dog-chewed Thud!, the prettier replacement Silmarillion because of other dog, that the only Star Wars visible is the Shakespeare spoofs, the growing Sanderson collection, and incomplete WoT in their original terrible artwork glory

How to save the DCEU

comingupforblair:

After spending time reading many articles and think pieces and watching videos and reading comments section, I’ve now formulated a few ways in which Warner Bros can ‘’save’’ the DCEU

1) First, they should definitely be more like Marvel. Unless they should be less like Marvel. The people who give them shit for one will immediately change gears and switch to the other view at the slightest provocation so…I don’t know. If nothing else, we can be assured that fans will be receptive to this change and not just respond with annoying and unhelpful snarky comments that they seem to have convinced themselves are evidence of caring about these films.

2) They should listen to the fans a lot more. Which fans exactly, I have no clue. Anyone who has spent time in fandom circles knows how many different types of fans there are. But they should definitely listen to them. After all, it’s well known that fans are never, ever, ever, ever wrong and should always be deferred to and are famously easy to please. People were adamantly against Gal Gadot’s casting as Wonder Woman and…oh wait, maybe that’s not the best example. Well, they were against Heath Ledger and Michael Keaton and…shit, that doesn’t work either. Um…okay, here’s one, Chris Evans as Captain America who was…okay, I’m just going to move on from this point.

3) They need to ALWAYS give characters solo films before an ensemble film because it’s well-known that audiences are incapable of relating to characters they haven’t spent a certain amount of time with before hand. Unless they shouldn’t as some people have said that making a Batgirl solo film without putting her in an ensemble film first is foolish. 

4) In relation to the above, characters should never have backstories that are only hinted at and not shown. A big problem with BvS was that we didn’t see events such as Bruce losing Jason so they definitely should show those events as well as always showing origins, making multiple films of their origin if necessary because there will definitely be a market for those and everyone loves films that are basically homework assignments. Just look at how Harry Potter gave us multiple films detailing everyone’s backstory and showing events such as Snape’s time at Hogwarts and Voldemort’s rise to power before Harry ever came along. Those films understood that audiences need to have absolutely everything shown to them.

5) They should only get people involved who love and care about the characters involved in the films. Unless they should do the exact opposite and get people who simply know how to run a major franchise involved with no thought as to their feelings on the characters. After all, the MCU was run by Ike Perlmutter until 2015 and he’s a man who couldn’t have cared less about the fans and the first Batman film was directed by Tim Burton who openly admitted his disdain for comic books.

6) Following on from the above, they should definitely look at people from the TV shows to take over because running a few TV shows and making films are the exact same thing and the films don’t have any major issues that tend to get swept aside in order to slam the films. Maybe Greg Berlanti should take over. He’s running that Titans series which…Oh wait, never mind.

7) In relation to handling Superman, they should definitely take influence from the Reeve films rather than doing anything stupid like trying to adapt or take influence from stories written in the last four decades. Bryan Singer made a love letter to the Reeve films in Superman Returns and fans loved it. They certainly didn’t complain about it being too similar and not acknowledging how Superman has changed since then.

8) They should definitely always take a long time to make films because people will take that as a sign of commitment to quality and won’t use it as an excuse to spread annoying negative rumors that seemingly no end of rebuttal will counteract. Can you imagine if Matt Reeves took a long time to make his Batman film and the time he took was filled with rumors about Ben Affleck leaving? That would be absurd.

9) They should also reboot but still keep the stuff people like, like Wonder Woman, which shouldn’t be an issue at all. Film makers will be absolutely fine with having all their hard work thrown out to appeal to annoying fanboys. Who wouldn’t want to sign up for a franchise where their films could be erased later to win over bloggers and people on twitter?

10) They should also pick one tone and formula and keep doing that. Unless the issue is that the films so far have been too formulaic and they need to do something different with each film.

11) They should also include more jokes to be more like the MCU unless they should embrace the serious elements of the works.

12) They should also be more producer driven and not give directors too much power as happened with Zack Snyder. Unless they should do the opposite and be more director driven and not interfere with the films as much which is also what happened with Zack Snyder.

13) Something about the MCU and how they’re wonderful and perfect.

14) Last but not least, the films need to have more hope and optimism and whatnot. No idea what these words mean to the people saying them but they should definitely include them.

15) In any event, the burden lays entirely with the film makers and none of it with the fans to be a bit more reasonable or accept deviations from what they’d like or to look past their preferred incarnations or to maybe just ease off the films and stop giving them so much shit when they’re clearly trying to make an effort to improve. No, it’s entirely on the creators and not the fans who, as I mentioned earlier, are never wrong. Ever.

So there you go. To fix the DCEU, they just need to do all of these things.

Should be no problem.