how serial fiction broke clio's heart, part 2: the long bad summer

[jlh]

In my tags list, I have 14 tags that refer to specific "canons." Of those, 5 are reality shows, one is a book series, and the other 8 are scripted television shows. I'm going to talk now about a summer in which many of them ended, and others ended for me.

But let's start with the positive: I love Six Feet Under. It had its rough patches in the middle, and "That's My Dog" was a horrible hour of television, but the final season was an amazing 13 episodes of television, and the final episode was deeply, richly satisfying. For me, one thing that's right up there was Alan Ball's unwillingness to break up David and Keith for the sake of drama. This isn't about shipping here, but about what makes narrative sense for the show, and as Ball pointed out, they'd already done a season of David being single and dating around. Why do another one? Why not give David and Keith two huge problems (David's anxiety after the carjacking and Keith's departure from the LAPD) and a huge goal (adopting some children) that they have to face together? There would be tension in their relationship, sure, and bad moments, but the ultimate end is not their breakup. (Besides, Nate and Brenda were the obverse, the people who weren't actually good for each other at all but couldn't quite get rid of each other. And for singleton power, you had Claire and Ruth.)

On the other hand, despite many attempts, I just do not like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The whole show feels emotionally brittle to me, and Joss Whedon's need for constant instability is wearying. It's like a room with very busy prints on all the surfaces, which never gives your eye a place to rest. And there's this thing, this jazz, this oomph to the show that I know feeds many of you--the action? the mythology? the drama?--but none of that feeds me. I've seen one episode of Firefly and I intend to watch the rest, but the fact that Whedon would have broken up Wash and Zoe if he'd had a season two is all I need to know that I should never, ever watch a Joss Whedon show.

Right, on to 2007. I found Ugly Betty to be a charming show. I was initially interested because I knew about the novela, knew how it ended, and wanted to see what changes they'd make in bringing it to the US market. And I loved the entire Henry storyline; it was all kinds of adorable. And then the show reminded me, at the end, that it was still basically a nighttime soap opera, what with the (to my mind) silly plot twist of Henry's pregnant girlfriend. I did watch some of the second season, but I was unenthusiastic, what with Alexis always winning out over Daniel, etc. It's still a cute show, just not the show for me. 17 May 2007: strike one.

I got into CSI during the summer of 2005, when I was getting ready to go back to school. I'd heard about "Grave Danger," the infamous Tarantino-directed season 5 finale where Nick is buried alive in a Plexiglas box, and to be honest, I'd read some Gil/Nick slash. I liked Nick a lot as a character, and really the only reason I had tuned out after the first episode was that Billy Peterson bears a striking resemblance to my brother, and there was a tiresome subplot about a crooked judge taking advantage of Warrick's gambling addiction.

But season 6 coming out of "Grave Danger" didn't follow up on anything it suggested. We saw very little of Nick's recovery from his trauma (as it turns out, George Eads had requested that the writers not emphasize the PTSD because it might make Nick, a character we'd already seen cry on screen on more than one occasion, a "wimp") which made Nick's character strangely all over the place--and why is he still asking stupid questions when he's been a CSI for this long? They wasted the interesting sexual tension between Warrick and Catherine by marrying him off to an off-screen character, leaving Cath and her sexuality swinging out there attracting danger again. Then there was the badly done reveal of the Gil-Sara romance at the end of season 6. I figured the show was headed in that direction, because there had been a good bit of teasing in earlier seasons, and Sara asking Gil out only to be turned down. But why, then, was our reveal not of them finally getting together, but of them already mysteriously in a relationship? How does this pay off on all that teasing? Where is my "reward" as a viewer?

Season 7 did me no better. Nick continued to be uninteresting, Gil wandered off for a while in the middle, nothing more was done with the Gil and Sara relationship, Cath continued to be punished for daring to express her sexuality, Greg had a tiresome subplot that was supposed to be about race but wasn't actually about anything at all. The Miniature Killer case on the one hand was compelling, but on the other hand was yet another serial killer case. I decided to ditch the show after the season 8 premiere, when the case was solved, because clearly the show wasn't interested in ever really paying off on the character issues it laid down like "gum drops" in earlier episodes. And man, I'm glad I did, because what happened to Warrick in season 8 was just wrong, regardless of the actor's drug problem. 17 May 2007: strike two.

I saw the pilot for Veronica Mars and pretty much immediately fell in love. I know many saw it as a kind of new Buffy, and I agree--that was how I recommended it to Cassie, at least. But it had so much that I never saw in Buffy. These people had real emotions that they weren't completely afraid to express. Bad shit had happened, and they were changed by it. And yet, little glimpses of hope poked through Veronica's bitterness--you could see the pep squad girl she had been. And her love for her father showed in every frame. The mystery for season 1 was amazing, compelling. The mystery for season 2 wasn't as fantastic, but it was still very good, even if they all but created a character in order to sacrifice him. The pacing was a little off, because the network was dicking around with scheduling and also because Rob Thomas had to work around actor absences due to his limited budget. But I still felt it was a good, solid season.

And then there was season 3. High school shows rarely fare well in college, it's true, and VM had to introduce some new characters (which they did very well, I mean, Piz!). Unfortunately Logan had little to do (why couldn't he have been off looking for his mother?), Weevil was barely in evidence (why bother giving him the college job when you barely used him?), and Wallace also seemed superfluous to Veronica's ongoing love drama. Keith was finally on the upswing, except that he sort of wasn't. The mini-arcs didn't work, the final one that they had been saving Mac for had to be scrapped, and the final episode of the show threatened to return us to zero state, after all that had happened in the last three years. There was talk of a Veronica in the FBI time jump, but it never sounded fully formed, and as sad and disappointed as I was in season 3, I was relieved to hear of the cancellation. 22 May 2007: strike three, but since this isn't baseball, there's more coming.

And then there was Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Now, I'd never been that much of a West Wing fan; it was a little frenetic, a little pat, a little too facile in its handling of human behavior and world events, not unlike its sire, An American President. I like the movie, but everything in it is just a little too easy, the bad guys too buffoonish, the good guys too perfectly flawed, like A Few Good Men. But I really love Matthew Perry--Chandler!--and the premise was intriguing, so I thought I'd watch.

Yeah. A lot of you know by now what a complete and total clusterfuck that show turned out to be, one of the more frustrating viewing experiences of my life. Matt could have been an interesting character, except for the part where he knew better than everyone else how they should live their lives, especially Harriet. Thought the same could be said for Danny stalking Jordan until he can help her realize what she wants. ugh. I loved the characters, hated almost everything they did, and particularly hated the condescension that Matt had for everyone (including the woman he supposedly loved) and the show, eventually, had for its viewers. While we all knew by the time the show went into hiatus in February what we had on our hands, it was like a car wreck, and I actually watched the final five episodes just to see what Sorkin would do with them. 28 June 2007: strike four.

Oh Harry, when did it all start to go so wrong? Was it back in May 2003 when I read OotP and had my first misgivings of where canon was headed? But I still had hope--I attended Nimbus that summer and had a lot of fun. I was still active in nocturne alley and happily beta'ing several fics. Was it in 2004 when JKR let some interviewers lead her into calling fans like me delusional? Could be; that was certainly the beginning of an unhappy feeling of being very unwelcome in Potter fandom. But I really liked HBP, absurd and hormone-filled as it was, and it actually restored some of the faith I'd lost when I read OotP. When I headed to the Borders at midnight to pick up my copy of DH, I was cautiously optimistic. I read a chapter or so of the book, and then went to bed and picked it up the next morning, as was my method with HBP. And what I read? Well, my initial reaction was sort of okay, in a "well, if that's what you want to do, Jo, that's fine" kind of way.

But the more I thought about it, the more disappointed I was. And the more others talked about it, the more I realized that with OotP the canon had moved in a direction that didn't interest me. I had thought I was reading a combination of coming-of-age story and hero's tale, with plenty of mystery. Turns out, there was no coming-of-age here, because everyone's character was fixed at 11. That's why they could be sorted. That's why they could find their life partner before the age of 17. Dumbledore said that your choices reveal who you are--reveal, not make, because you already are who you are; the choices just make it manifest to the world.

But more than that, the ending of the HP series really shocked my confidence in my ability to read a narrative. That crowd that was well satisfied with canon--not so different, incidentally, from that crowd that thought that I was delusional--would say that indeed, I had either willfully or stupidly misread the entire series. I had put something into them (namely, character change and a kind of subtlety about good v evil) that was never there to begin with. I had tried to subvert the narrative, and now I was being punished. If I didn't like the story, it was my own damn fault. I had never been much for canon prediction; I figure the canon will reveal itself eventually, so why play those games? But I admit, I thought the books were going a place they didn't go, and I felt both cheated out of something that could have been great, and humiliated by a fandom that openly mocked me for my misinterpretation. 21 July 2007: strike five, but it was the cruelest blow.

So, what have we learned?

Lesson 4: Don't get involved in a serial narrative whose narrative priorities are different than yours--namely, character change/development and, if there are romances, a satisfying romance. The narrative will work to preserve its own priorities, and even if it threw a few crumbs to these other issues, it will jettison them all if it has to in order to preserve its priority, be it world building/philosophy or action/adventure or a kind of procedural "plot." In other words, be really, really careful about "genre", because most of it won't you what you crave.

Lesson 5: Best case scenario, don't get involved in an unfinished serial narrative, especially in American network television, with their sort-of-but-not-really narrative arcs that don't lead to satisfying endings and their need to "shake things up" to create drama by never letting the couple get together, or breaking up the team.

Lesson 6: Steer clear of canons with open shipping, because if there's really a love triangle it means they're not going to build either of the pairings up very well. Also, it makes for a vicious fandom.

Next: How Avatar almost, but not quite, soothed my PTSD, and why I went running off to reality television.

Comments

[flourish.livejournal.com]

Totally agreed with your POV on the final book. I think that the thing that bothered me most about the entire series was that there was even less character development than in Buffy (which I love, but dude, she just does. not. ever. learn.)

[jlh.livejournal.com]

It's funny how when the book came out such large parts of fandom really clamped down on any kind of dissent about the book, but the more I talk to people about it, the more I discover that a lot of people were dissatisfied with it! But that's fandom--it's so hard to get any sense of scale. (And why I adore fandomsecrets!)

[flourish.livejournal.com]

I was always pretty deeply unhappy with it, but I wasn't really a fandom presence at that point, so I didn't notice that other people were clamping down on it. Everyone around me seemed to feel pretty betrayed (though they weren't fandomers).

[tropes.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain -- these and many other shows are the reason I love SGA fandom. Because the show is for shit and makes no sense and I don't expect it to, and those lowered expectations make my viewing experience and my fandom experience a lot less fraught.

Sad, but true.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I wish that I could do that! But my experience trying to watch Heroes this year taught me that I can't just watch something that chaotic, especially sci fi, which I only kind of like. I know a lot of y'all are having fun watching Doctor Who/Supernatural/SGA mostly for the hot boys with guns or whatever, but I don't care about action so it's not enough for me.

[meezergal.livejournal.com]

Extremely interesting viewpoint, that everyone's character is formed at eleven and that's why they can be sorted. Thus, they can't ever go over to "the dark side" (or the good side?), make a quantum leap mentally, etc...

Very interesting! I'll have to chew on that a while--it never occurred to me to think of things that way.

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

The only times I've liked a show (or book series, I guess) all the way through was when it was what it was, and I recognized that and liked it for what it was.

When it turns out that I've become interested in something it implied but never intended to follow up on; or it turns out that what it was was something that could only be interesting for so long, then, those are the series I drifted away from. There are a lot more of these than there are of the ones I liked all the way through. I still tend to like the earlier seasons or books that I initially fell in love with, especially if I stay innocent of what happened after I started to get bored, but I can do without the later seasons/books.

On the other hand, I'm generally fine with that. There's so much to read and watch, and while I do enjoy a series that keeps me engaged for a long time, I also enjoy finding something new now and then.

Steer clear of canons with open shipping, because if there's really a love triangle it means they're not going to build either of the pairings up very well.

I deal least well with badly-done romance. I can occasionally be just fine when characters take a bit of a back seat to plot (c.f. Stargate), but when a show does romance and it becomes trite and/or ugly and/or makes no sense etc., I can't watch it.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

When it turns out that I've become interested in something it implied but never intended to follow up on; or it turns out that what it was was something that could only be interesting for so long, then, those are the series I drifted away from.

That's it exactly, and I think my problem is that I don't leave, but hang on and hope that things will turn around. But of course they won't, because priorities, etc. So I have learned not to do that, and that certain of my friends are not good barometers of these things because they also have different priorities than I do. What I'm trying to do now is understand mine, and then follow through on them without continually feeling like I suck for having different priorities. I need to speak up and say "I don't agree" a little more often instead of keeping my mouth shut and feeling bad about it!

[ali-wildgoose.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, I'm ready for the next entry to contain something along the lines of, "it all would have been fine if ALISON HAD JUST SHUT THE HELL UP ABOUT THE ZUTARIANS." ;3

*absorbs with great interest*

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I didn't go there! I thought about it, but I think you know, my massive insecurity about all things Avatar, especially fic and shipping and all of it, is just a thing that is true, and I'm not sure it will go away. The Zutarians might have behaved badly, but I think they were mostly just misguided. It's only tough because I'm sure exactly the same sentence would come out of a Quiller's mouth about me. I think it's more that I never realized how very deeply the "delusional" thing, and all the harmonian wank, really hurt me. But you know, I'm recovering!

[phoenixsong]

*nod* And this is why I love(d) Farscape. John and Aeryn getting together was almost never in doubt, it was just a matter of how. AND even the one-off episodes usually had consequences that filtered through later episodes. I think the creators were very clear on this from the beginning, and it shows throughout the series -- which I'm sure is why so many fans fell in love with the show. It was a rare case of the creators, writers, and actors all caring about the show, both from a plot and a character standpoint, and it showed, even in the not-so-great episodes.

And the miniseries? It had it's flaws, but when you consider that it was basically an entire season crammed into 3.5 hours, I can love it for what it is, and what it could have been. At least the story got finished, after the fans spent enough time beating Sci-Fi about the head and saying "no, REALLY, you HAVE to finish this!"

[heinous_bitca.livejournal.com]

Yep.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Folks have definitely talked to me about the romance in Farscape and I may check it out one day, but I think I need to take a huge breather on sci fi in general, because I actually don't like it that much, in and of itself, and while the romance is well done, I probably won't be all that excited watching Farscape only for that romance and not for anything else.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

HBP was totally not fair in HP. A lot of people hated that one the most, but I stand by my totally wrong impressions that I got from that book because dammit, that story never ended.

It's especially sad reading stuff like "because the actor didn't want him to be a wimp..." It reminded me of Eriq LaSalle breaking up his character's relationship because he wanted his character with a black person. It's not that those things can't be a good idea, but to have a story going and then have somebody say to change it because of something that is totally outside the narrative...that shows. It shows especially in a serial drama where something's been set up and then doesn't play out.

The worst, as I will always say, is Northern Exposure which turned on a central romance. In a universe that gave messages to the people in it, this couple was given constant messages about getting together. But then suddenly that didn't count because Rob Morrow was out and let's put Maggie with Chris now--the guy we established was not for her in many ways earlier!

It's not even like real life because in real life people do stay together and if they break up they sometimes then don't date for even weeks!

It just amazes me to think back to the shows that didn't do what 6FU did, which was to end the show that they actually started. Whatever the flaws, that ending was predictable in the best way because it was what the show was about all along. It's sad to think of how many shows just wind up spinning out into nothing--The X-Files goes from a show about oddballs in a world where we are the monsters into a show where the man and woman make a baby and that makes everything better by fighting the monster aliens--wtf?

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Seriously, if someone says to me again that something happens in a TV show because "that's how life is" I will drop kick them to the curb. I was thinking about the whole "breaking up the team" trope (which shockingly is NOT in TV Tropes!) and I've worked in an industry that primarily works in teams for 15 years and guess what? That isn't how teams break up! What actually happens is that people are leaving and coming on to teams all the time. And while there might be a time of stasis, it's generally relatively brief, like a year or so, before people get other jobs/get rotated within the company/leave the industry. The problem is that those sorts of things don't happen on TV shows (some of the things I saw at TV Tropes were 'everyone on the team is single' and 'limited ability for advancement'). Even in the kind of bullshit office like The Office there are people who come breezing through and then leave again and as you said, those people have lives that don't change in every aspect. Not to mention that the whole "I am the asshole new boss who will break up the team just to prove my power" pretty much never happens. I've had asshole new bosses and they pull a lot of ridiculous shit, but they don't break up the team because it causes problems, reduces efficiency, etc.

(vent vent vent!)

My little trip through TV Tropes made me even angrier, actually. They were talking about how they were giving some Doctor Who character her own spin off series, so they had to break up her marriage, a marriage they had set up as being true love forever, because as the lead of a show she'd be expected to have various romantic sideplots (which would of course go nowhere). And I think, jesus, why can't these people just randomly be married? How about that Dick Van Dyke model where it's half workplace and half home and sometimes they cross? Or like Cheers where people have private lives that they talk about in the bar--Woody stayed married, as did Norm. Or like Medium, which was a pretty good show and she was married, or the Commish.

to end the show that they actually started

Well, we know that a huge part of that is that the creator leaves the show to start a new one and the new show runner takes it in some random new direction to "freshen it up" or whatever and I'm like, why don't we try telling stories instead of just setting up situations? And I honestly think that TV is just not set up for people with long attention spans. The writers certainly don't have them. The networks almost expect viewers to fade off to the next new thing, so a show really only needs to be good for three or four years—with the DVD replacing syndication revenue for the studios, they don't even need to make it to that magic number of 100 episodes.

It's funny, the more I think about it, the more I am OUT.

spiolers for the Office premiere within

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about this last night because I watched the Office premiere and was reading the reaction at TWOP. So--spoilers here, but at the end of last season Jim was going to propose and got put off because of something that happened. So everybody was like ooh, Pam's going away for 3 months and he didn't propose--they will totally break up! And I was annoyed at that because this couple would just never break up.

Then in the premiere I was relieved because they didn't. They just talked about it and decided to wait until she got back etc. The premiere covered the whole summer, and at one point Jim just couldn't wait anymore so he proposed and she said yes. Which was great, but so many people decided that he only proposed to "keep her" because he thought he was losing her because she went away for 3 months.

And it annoyed me because I thought--they could be right. And that doesn't bother me because I am so invested in this couple getting married and having kids, but because it was totally just creating drama and shaking things up in unnatural ways. Jim is a flawed character but he's supposed to be basically a normal guy and so is she, so the idea that he's got to become so paranoid that his proposal is a sign of trouble in the future...it was just so irritating! And yet people had good reason to predict this sort of thing because that's how TV so often works--now that they're together we have to start looking for a way to get them apart again. And people have the nerve to say that's because that's "realistic." Meanwhile I'm watching and saying okay, those two people? It's realistic that they'd get married forever now. People do that too.

Re: spiolers for the Office premiere within

[jlh.livejournal.com]

It's just another way, as we were saying, that television is ruining people's understanding of how narrative works.

Also I was thinking (and I need to reply to your post!) about the way people talk about "torturing" their characters, like, they have to put them through things and then give them a reward or something and that seems so false to me. Like, isn't life mostly that you torture yourself? So little of the trouble we face really comes from outside. Events happen, but a lot of it is how we choose to deal with them. But again, that's the whole "tension" as "plot" thing that I am not on board with.

Given that half of marriages DON'T end in divorce, and that the average American woman has I believe 2-3 sexual partners in her lifetime, yes, people definitely get married forever.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

These are great essays! It's sad to conclude, though, that it's too dangerous to get emotionally involved -- that's a lot to lose . . . I wonder, maybe, if there's just an irresolvable tension, that you have to resign yourself to up front, between the "long-form" TV dramas you talk about, and the kind of satisfying ending you'd expect in a genre work.

I mean, in a shorter form, like a novel or story, you generally have all the parts of the story carefully proportioned and coordinated to lead up to the ending. If you have a conflict, or a tension, it gets exacerbated and then resolved, and you can see how one thing leads to another and what the stakes are and how it eventually works out. But by contrast, in a long-form TV series, the whole point is to take some of the most interesting conflicts or tensions -- Dave and Maddy's romantic tension, Ugly Betty's social and class anxieties, Mulder and Scully's pursuit of an ever-receding set of mysteries -- and draw and stretch them out to unnatural or mannered proportions. Rather than being tensions to resolve, they transform into sort of basic, permanent ground rules of the story's universe.

If you then try to tie them up or resolve them after multiple seasons, it almost feels like you're trivializing them, that they weren't as necessary in the first place (or didn't need to be so drawn out) as the story made them seem. You can have smaller plot arcs, with their conflict and resolution over the medium term. But the big issues, for whatever intrinsic or extrinsic reasons, aren't meant to change or go anywhere or be resolved. Uncomfortable, but maybe: new genre, new rules.

That isn't to say that you can't have satisfying endings of a sort, it's just that they don't work the same way as in a genre work, they don't resolve things as comprehensively -- they're more about moments where people have changed enough so it feels like they're starting a different adventure, and it's a good time for the viewer to move on, too. For example, I thought the end to The Sopranos worked really well. We had watched the old order fall apart, and Tony's kids grow up, and the other characters had changed or died, and it was time for Tony to exit (I belong to the "of course he got whacked in the ending" school). The ending for Six Feet Under worked for me largely because everybody escaped, as best they could, from the poisonous Fisher family dynamics, most definitively once Nate died. (I could have done without the future flashback; it was enough to know they were all starting something new.)

HP is a great example of a disastrously failed ending. I mean, I think what JKR actually did in DH was kind of interesting -- to some extent she exploded the idea of the hero, put Harry on a pointless quest and (largely) rejected a narcissistic resolution to his stuggles, taught him to get over himself and become a normal, flawed and limited person, one among many who helped win the war. It just, you know, had nothing to do with where the series seemed to have been going up until then. :) But maybe that failure was overdetermined. I wonder, in retrospect, if it really made sense to combine the school story and the quest story in the first place -- the school story is supposed to feel timeless -- doesn't life feel that way at that age? How exactly can you "wrap up" a school story, except with an abrupt opening out to the adult world?

But to go back to your original issue -- is the failure of an ending a reason to feel betrayed by a story, and to grow wary about other long-form series? All I know is that I would have hated to miss all the things I felt and the fun I had while HP (and HP fandom) were works-in-progress. And while a genre novel is expected to know how to end properly (and we judge it if it doesn't), it may be simply that no one is quite sure yet how to properly end a long-form series. If the goal of a series is to create a world to play in for an extended period, then there's just an inevitable tradeoff between the openness of that world and the abruptness and arbitrariness of any possible ending. So you take what you can, enjoy it while you can, and accept the imperfection of the genre.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Thank you! And thank you for this comment, because it helped me to clarify some things that I said later.

I'll just say quickly at the start that when you say kind of satisfying ending you'd expect in a genre work if you mean all the book "genres", that is, romance and mystery as well as SF/F, then I see what you mean, because I do find romances and mysteries to be deeply satisfying. But one thing I did discover about myself when I started consuming more SF/F was that their satisfying ending was not mine. I didn't care about the quest, or killing the evil guy; if it was good, I cared about the people. So when I say, other narrative priorities, I definitely mean that I think I won't be spending as much time trying to like SF/F.

I think my own problem is that I just don't like tension that much, and I certainly don't like unresolved tension. I'm realizing how much my formative years were spent watching not TV, but old movies on TV. Or reading books that were not in a series, or if they were, they were those sort of "in the life" series like Little House. And of course, the TV of the 70s wasn't like the TV now. It certainly wasn't as likely to have crappy unsatisfying romance subplots, which is my biggest bugaboo here.

I agree re Sopranos and Six Feet Under. It really is enough to turn the page, and I think Sex and the City did the same thing. But interesting to note that these are all HBO series, which work more on the British model of having a beginning and an end, instead of trying to last forever with no sense of a destination whatsoever (like, say, House).

I love that you say HP is an example of a disastroustly failed ending, because so much of my experience in HP fandom after that book was feeling like a bad fan for being disappointed. On top of that, it really shook to its foundations my faith in my ability to comprehend a narrative, because those people who weren't disappointed just read a different book series than I did. I think because I'm closer to the het side, and therefore closer to the canon freaks, I got more of that blowback, more of that Sugar Quill "if you don't like the books why are you in fandom" message. It got really, really bad, and Alison tells me that their sort of behavior wouldn't be tolerated in other fandoms, but between that and the delusional thing I really felt run out of fandom.

I think where I've ended up is that the series has to have at its core the same narrative priorities I do, or I will keep getting fucked over. And in television, no romances, because TV isn't interested in doing them particularly well except in sitcoms. But no more of this "I don't care about the main plot but I like the characters" thing. It just isn't worth it, for me.

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

Thank you for reminding me of the many reasons I simply can't let myself get emotionally invested in a TV or book series again *stares in direction of Bloomsbury/Scholastic*.

Actually I let myself get invested in Idol this year, and it happened to work out well for me (and now I have a new fandom, yay) but damn, I think I have to just leave Idol alone next season because I can't do that again. I mean, I have enough insanity IRL, I don't need to be adding more voluntarily :))

[jlh.livejournal.com]

Idolfandom is super fun, truly. Well, except for annoying people on some of the forums but I avoid them.

We've talked about this before--part of my reality thing is that I'm invested in the process, and the judges, more than any few of the actual contestants. I have my faves, but I'm neutral about the process of their winning, especially since good things happen to soem of the non-winners too, and they got to show off their talent on national television which is all to the good.

But all that said, yeah, I'm really into books and movies right now, to be sure.