The fandom paradox: sometimes fans don't sound like fans

I’ve been involved in online fandoms for about ten years now, which in fandom years means that I’m in the first layer of older fans grumbling about kids and lawns, although behind me there are fans muttering about Yahoo groups and Usenet and ‘zines. Still, with a decade of experience in fandom under my belt, I feel qualified to make some observations about the subculture that I have made my second home.

Don’t get excited, I don’t watch Game of Thrones so I’m not going to talk about it. This meme, however, is totally relevant to the discussion at hand.

If you’ve read my review of the Doctor Who mid-season finale (which you can read here if you haven’t), you might not be surprised to learn that a not-insignificant portion of Doctor Who fandom is somewhat less than pleased with the final episode featuring Amy Pond and Rory Williams. And if you’ve read any of my other series seven episode reviews, you would likewise probably not be surprised that there are undercurrents of displeasure with the direction the show has taken in general in fandom circles.

Inevitably, when a vocal contingent of fans within a given fandom begins to regularly air their grievances, an equally vocal contingent of fans will begin asking if the displeased fans are really fans, or if they’re looking for things to be upset about, and why they have to look so closely at everything, and why can’t they just stop thinking so hard and enjoy the show. Those of you who are reading this who are not and never have been a part of anything like fandom, who will watch a show when it catches their interest but not get too attached, might wonder the same things.

In the midst of Doctor Who fandom entering into another one of these identity crises, I had a conversation with my mother specifically about my fannish habits. My mother isn’t really a fangirl, but she watches a number of the shows that I watch and likes to talk to me about them (and read my blogs about them, hi Mom!). As such, she’s pretty well-versed in the problems that I have with the show right now. She’s also fairly well-versed in the problems I’ve had for the last few seasons with the show Bones, and aware of the fact that whilst I used to watch Supernatural I do not anymore. She asked me if perhaps I thought that the level of engagement I tend to have with shows combined with the high standards I tend to have (she also mentioned my intelligence but I can’t figure out a way to properly work that in without sounding egotistical, so to the parenthetical phrase it goes) makes it more likely that as a show ages, I will begin to find more problems with it.

Off the top of my head, I can only think of three shows that I got properly involved in the fandom for and everything but ended up dropping (or, as I like to call it, breaking up with) before the show actually ended: Prison Break (it got way too complicated for its own good and I felt like I had said “oh, now that’s ridiculous” a few too many times), Veronica Mars (I don’t want to talk about I am still processing my anger!!!!), and Supernatural (no but really, it’s been a completely different show for the last few seasons and I liked the first show it was better). In all of those cases, I felt like the show in question had evolved into something that was no longer what I had signed up for in the beginning. Oh, I also may be officially dropping Glee because I really was only watching that show so I’d know what to complain about when people asked me, wide-eyed, why I didn’t like it, and there are too many shows in its time slot right now for me to be able to DVR it and I don’t think I can be bothered to download it. So I should probably up my “Shows I Quit” tally to four.

But there are also several shows that I’ve stuck with through multiple seasons during which it probably sounded like I didn’t actually like them very much – indeed, if you heard me talk about Bones you’d probably be shocked to learn that I still watch it every week. Admittedly it sometimes feels sort of chore-like, but it’s still programmed to series record on my DVR. Most of the stuff that was really making me want to bang my head against a wall with that show isn’t really an issue any more (suffice to say that I am planning a post entitled “The Moonlighting Curse Curse”), so now I guess I’m just sticking around because I used to really love it, and there are still flashes of what the show used to be. More importantly, though, the reason I spent multiple seasons of Bones wanting to bang my head against a wall after every episode was because I loved that show, and I loved those characters, and I hated to see what I felt were really stupid decisions from a writing perspective. So I would shake my fist toward the heavens and ask where everyone’s brains had gone because I wanted them back.

It’s funny because it’s true.

As for the current situation on Doctor Who, I suppose someone who didn’t know me might think, after reading my review of “The Angels Take Manhattan,” that I don’t actually like Doctor Who. (If you do know me, you know that this is blasphemy.) On the contrary, if I didn’t love Doctor Who as much as I do, I am certain that I would be far less disgruntled with the direction it has taken in the last season and a half. I hope very much – even though reason tells me I shouldn’t – that things will improve come Christmas with the addition of a new companion. Maybe, I tell myself, maybe things will get better.

That said, I have watched a number of shows which lasted more than two or three seasons and which I never reached a point where it was difficult to tell whether or not I actually liked them anymore. I worked my way through nine seasons of The X-Files (on DVD, several years after the show actually ended). Not only did I never go to a frowny place with the show, the last two seasons are actually semi-secretly my favorite, with the character of John Doggett swiftly becoming my favorite character in the whole series (I say semi-secretly because from what I know of the actual fandom and the climate in said fandom when seasons eight and nine were airing, this would have been a wildly unpopular opinion, to the point where sometimes I suspect I watched The X-Files wrong. *shrug*) I am an avid fan of the CBS drama NCIS, which is currently in its tenth season, and I have yet to aim so much as a stern word in that show’s direction. (A pleading word, sure. Tony and Ziva are CLEARLY in love with each other! Can’t they just admit it?! But not so much with the stern words.) Lost was six seasons long, and even during the third season when there was a clear lack of direction (due to the uncertainty of how long they would have to make the story last) I was still far more positive than negative about the show.

So I don’t think that I am doomed to get noticeably frustrated with any show I watch that lasts longer than a handful of seasons. I think I just watch television at a level of engagement that creates a lower tolerance for certain types of failures or inadequacies in writing. Additionally, I am a very character-driven viewer, so the minute characters begin to act in ways that do not fit with their prior characterization, usually because the writers have certain plot-related goals that no longer make sense (this where the Moonlighting Curse Curse usually rears its ugly head), I start to get annoyed. I also get annoyed when I see what I consider to be lazy writing – usually exemplified in a lack of internal consistency, such as the one currently surrounding the Doctor’s relative morality on Doctor Who.

The People vs George Lucas: a documentary produced by Lionsgate exploring Star Wars fans’ complicated love-hate (hate-hate?) relationship with the franchise’s creator, George Lucas.

All of this reminded me of a blog post I once read entitled “Why Star Wars Fans Hate Star Wars” (reproduced here and well worth the read) and a documentary I recently watched on Netflix, The People vs. George Lucas. The gist of the article and the documentary together is that George Lucas created something that Star Wars fans love – the idea of Star Wars, the general mythology of Star Wars, the initial film and perhaps the whole of the original trilogy. But then he started fiddling with it. And the more he fiddled with it, the more annoyed Star Wars fans got, because they liked it the way it was, damn it, and suddenly you get Star Wars fans who you are pretty sure actually hate Star Wars.

But at the end of the day, they’re still fans. They’re still the ones who will don Chewbacca costumes or Princess Leia costumes. Who’ll passionately defend the fact that Han shot first, and that it matters that he shot first because that’s who he was. Who’ll line up for seats in those stupid prequel movies even though they suck. When I hate-watch Glee and then get angry because of something Glee did, it’s because it actually offended me. When I watch-watch Doctor Who and then get angry because of something Doctor Who did, it’s because I believe in my heart that Doctor Who can be better. That I’ve seen Doctor Who be better and that I love Doctor Who too much for it to not be better.

And that’s the ultimate paradox of fandom. Those of you who aren’t in fandom, who don’t engage with film/television/books on that level, probably think I’m crazy, and so are all of my fannish friends. You watch stuff you like, and if you stop liking it, you stop watching it. You read stuff you like, and if you stop liking it, you stop reading it. Which I will grant you sounds very logical, but that’s just not how fandom rolls. We get emotionally invested in the characters, emotionally invested in the world, and we don’t want to stop liking it. We don’t want to stop watching or stop reading.

Even when it sounds like we do.