What is fandom?

What is fandom?

I started pondering this question, because I live with some gamers. They both are fans of a game called Warhammer 40K and are playing the new game Space Marine 2. I'm not interested in playing it, but I do know from interacting with other Warhammer fans (not just my roommate), that many fail to see the satire in a story about genetically bred superhumans enforcing a strict imperial rule...and then dying...for a literal corpse on a throne (the Emperor is essentially dead or it is strongly eluded to that he is a corpse that is falling apart). It seems obvious to me, but satire takes critical thinking ability to suss out and not everyone is capable of doing it. So you end up with large swaths of people who get excited over this grim dark world and believe that fascism is actually the "true way" to live. It's really weird.

The same thing happens in Star Wars and in Star Trek and in Lord of the Rings. The Tolkien fanbase doesn't like anyone even messing with Tolkien's notes, which he was using to create the story that he wanted to tell. But establishing all of those things with the Silmarils and the Palantirs and ancient Numenor and the Maiar and the Istari and etc. were all things that he wrote down in notebooks to help him (as an author) world build. It's completely arguable that the character of Tom Bombadil is just a silly stand-in for the author himself, much like the character of "Dungeon Master" in the old 80's cartoons of Dungeons & Dragons was just a stand-in (a wink and a nod) to the actual story teller that hosts a game. If this is the case, in the author was poking fun at himself, is it really so egregious to say that the character of Galadriel was a kick-ass warrior or that mithril contains within it the magical and undying light of a silmaril?

Here's my point: fandom at its most fundamental level is not about anything real. What it does do is it sucks people into it (the fandom) to such an extent that they end up spending a lot of time and energy pursuing a fantasy that comes at the very real cost of the time, energy, and attention they could be applying to their own lives. Some even neglect to make friends, further their careers, or take care of their own health. These people can also get caught up in fights where one person is a problematic fan because their fanart or fanfiction isn't popular, or their particular take shines a light upon unsavory traits (like racism and sexism). 

There is also (I think) a lot of mental illness in a fandom community, and the people who are part of a fandom could be trying to cope with said mental illness via some form of escapism. In a fandom, even mentally ill people can find a community, constant mental excitement, and the chance to explore something you don't have access to in a vicarious way. So what can happen is you get access to everything else that you can't get anywhere else. However, all of this comes at a cost: you end up with a bunch of maladjusted people collecting together, and in many ways, this isn't good because some illnesses like personality disorders can be somewhat contagious.

A lot of times too, a fandom can result in groupthink, sometimes quite negatively. People can literally be doxxed and have their lives ruined simply because they don't like the same thing as most of the rest of the fandom. Anyway, no matter what I think, fandoms are here to stay for good or for ill. I only recently started really thinking of them in this other light as I've been enjoying Rings of Power on Amazon. As a result, I've looked to understand more than what I already knew (which is considerable as I've read a lot of Tolkien), but the fandom is so utterly toxic. They say, "This is just fanfiction!" as if that were some kind of insult when really...anything not written by J.R.R. Tolkien himself (who has been dead for decades) is "fanart" or "fanfiction." What are they going to do when the entire thing eventually passes into the public domain? Have a complete and utter meltdown?

I guess the only thing I can do responsibly is to manage my own role in fandom, and that is to be as self-aware as possible and to not become some kind of gatekeeper touting the phrase: "This is the only correct way to do this." But as I've gotten older, I've realized that most people do not have open minds even if they say that they do. Those doors got closed a long time ago for whatever reasons, and it would benefit all of us to keep this in mind when becoming a fan of anything.

I finished Star Trek Discovery and I want to talk about it now.

I want to talk about Star Trek Discovery, and its final season which I just got around to watching. If you haven't seen the final season, you may want to tune out for this blog post as there will be spoilers ahead. 

First off, I really liked Star Trek Discovery. Yes, it was tonally different than other iterations of Trek that we've had before. But the themes of exploring and discovering things that I had never seen before was a part of this show from the very beginning. I mean, they gave us a space ship that could essentially teleport around to parts of the universe (all of this made possible through the power of mushrooms). So yeah...it was an adventure to where "no one has gone before."

I feel a little bad that Discovery did not get to end its run on its own terms. If you've seen the final season, it is a whirlwind of action and puzzle-solving that is very reminiscent of the best parts of Indiana Jones (only on a galactic scale). But after that is all said and done, the final episode continues in a way that reminded me of what happened at the ending of the Return of the King. Do you guys remember that? Going back to the Shire, Sam being married, old Bilbo and Frodo making their way to the Grey Havens, and on and on and on. It kept going for like an hour after Sauron met his doom.

This is the same tack that Discovery took with its series finale. It wanted to wrap things up so it showed us old Captain Burnham, her kid all grown up, and then sending the actual starship Discovery to deep space to just sit there waiting for something in the far future...all so that it could tie into the "short Trek" episode called Calypso. All of that seemed kind of forced, but it is difficult to make an ending land like it should. Very few series manage to pull it off. To date, I don't think there has been a series ending for any iteration of Trek that I've actually enjoyed (don't get me started on how awful I thought Deep Space Nine ended).

I also think (suspect) that certain characters didn't get their due. For example, the Breen Prince who died in season five (his name is L'ak) is one of these. I think he was going to get brought back. The reason why is that throughout all of Trek, we've had multiple revived dead people. One in particular happened in Discovery (the doctor) who was brought back to life thanks to the miracles of mushroom space. I think that it is likely that L'ak would have returned in season 6, but they just got canceled before that storyline could be fully resolved. This may be especially true since we see L'ak's body getting preserved indefinitely in the pattern buffer, otherwise, why would they have done that?

Since Moll was presumably recruited by Kovich to be a temporal agent, this could have been laying the groundwork for Moll attempting to use time travel to save/revive him or maybe get a brainscan since they were very specific that the Progenitor technology could make a clone but with no memories. If we had gotten a season 6, it's of course anyone's guess what we would have seen. But maybe Primarch Tahal of the Breen would have become the major antagonist since the succession was (as yet) unresolved.

This would have allowed the writers to construct a story around some Temporal Cold War McGuffin and maybe even a search for the original creators of the Progenitor tech. This major questline could revolve around the crew of the Discovery hopping between time periods with the events of Calypso being that Zora gets lost in the 23rd century and hence, it needed to wait 1000 years to return to the present day 32nd/33rd century. As well, Moll was probably going to have a redemption arc to give Michael a chance to come full circle and become a mentor to someone that was in her place. The season and the series would have ended with L'ak and Moll ascending the throne of the Breen Imperium and ushering in an era of peace between the Federation and the Breen.

But yeah...we got none of that because the show got canceled due to Paramount trying to sell itself to any buyer that will take it. The details of all of this is a long story and goes back decades to a man that bought Viacom using money he had lying around from owning several successful movie theaters in the New York area. His heiress wanted to unload the company, and I have no idea if they've been successful. I just know that a lot of shows got the axe because Paramount needed to slim down its production of new shows to make it more appealing for a huge multi-billion dollar deal.

But isn't there a proverb that goes: "When elephants fight it is that grass that suffers?" I think this saying is appropriate here. Multi-billion dollar deals are the elephants and the grass that suffers is the content that all of us love...the art and entertainment that gets done that actually makes up the business. If we had seen a season 6 of Discovery, I think its ending would have been great based on the things I've sussed out. But they didn't have that option, and it is what it is. Anyway, if you've stuck around this long, thanks for listening to my thoughts. If you have any you'd like to share, please post them in the comments below. 

This clip from Strange New Worlds season 3 is really funny.

About a month ago, one of the conventions (I don't know which) aired a clip from season 3 of Strange New Worlds that I really liked. It's funny if you know the characters. Otherwise the humor probably doesn't land right. But given that this is season 3, I'd think that the people who watch said scene are probably invested in this show and will get the humorous sub-context that underlies everything that you're seeing in it.

It's only a clip here, so there is little context to the details of the mission. Additionally, a lot of questions are apt to pop up in the minds of viewers like myself (or you). For example: Why is Pike carrying a weapon? Is there some threat that awaits them? Another hidden gem is the serum not working on Pelia. Played by Carol Kane, Pelia is a delight as the chief engineer. She has fantastic comedic timing, and it's just wonderful to see her again as I've very much enjoyed the other roles in which she takes.

Also, Pike's hair as a Vulcan is pretty epic. It's been a note of discussion on Reddit forums at how good Anson Mount's hair looks when he's playing the role of Christopher Pike. So to see his hair get this kind of "do" is a real crowd pleaser. I love it. And Ethan Peck (Gregory Peck's grandson and the actor who plays Spock) does an amazing job in the clip showing an "internal scream." His look seemed to me to say, "This is high school all over again. Shit."

Anyway, if you get a moment (or five) take a look at the embedded clip below. It's great.

Bear McCreary scored the Old Tom Bombadil song from Fellowship of the Ring and made it a masterpiece.

Some inventions emerge perfect into the world just the way they are, and they shouldn't be messed with. One such example is the button on a shirt. There is nothing wrong with the button, whether it snaps or gets pushed through an eyelet. One way in which this is getting messed with in modern times is people making clothing that has magnetic buttons. So you have these buttons on the placket of the shirt and they come together via magnetic force. Whoever thought of this is someone who doesn't wash clothes. A magnet will stick to the drum inside a washing machine and keep the shirt from getting clean. The same goes for drying them out. If you have a shirt that has magnetic buttons, it will have a more difficult time getting dry because it will stick to the inside of the dryer.

However, there are other inventions that absolutely get better when someone takes a stab at them and decides, "I can improve on this."  Take for example the old "Tom Bombadil" song that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote. Here's a few of the lyrics that appear in Lord of the Rings:

Light goes the weather-wind and the feathered starling.

Down along under Hill, shining in the sunlight,

Waiting on the doorstep for the cold starlight,

There my pretty lady is, River-woman's daughter,

Slender as the willow-wand, clearer than the water...

I hated coming across all of these songs in Tolkien's fantasy works when I was a kid. Sometimes, I would skip them completely and just go on to the next place where the story picked up. But, I'm glad that Bear McCreary did not think the same thing as me. He took this Old Tom Bombadil song and scored it, and the results are below (you should give it a listen). When I heard it for the first time, I was like...okay...this is amazing. It is a brilliant and beautiful use of Tolkien's words.

If there's a lesson to be learned here it is this: not everything can be improved upon, but sometimes it is desperately needed.

In the September IWSG post I reflect on my most frustrating educational tidbits that I struggle with when I write.

The band Greenday has a song with a line in the lyrics that says, "Wake me up when September ends..." I've also heard of the term "the September Scaries," which I don't quite understand. I think September is a wonderful month. The days aren't as long, which means that I'm not prematurely awakened by sunlight peeping in through my curtains (I'm pretty sensitive to light) in the morning. The intense 100 degree heat of the summer has cooled to something a lot more moderate, and the nights aren't so cold that you need to turn the heat on (at least around here they are not). I love September.

And with expressing that sentiment, I'm moving on to the Insecure Writer's Support Group post. This is a blogfest that I participate in and the rules below come from their website, which you can find HERE.

What is the purpose of the IWSG?: It is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds.

When do y'all post?: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. This is when you should post your thoughts on your own blog. Alternately, you could talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. You could discuss your struggles and triumphs, or offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. If you want to grow your own blog, this is a great time to network.

The X (Twitter) handle for the IWSG is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

The awesome co-hosts for the September 4 posting of the IWSG are Beth Camp, Jean Davis, Yvonne Ventresca, and PJ Colando!

Now, every month, the IWSG announces a question that members can answer in their IWSG post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say.

Remember, the question is optional!

September 4 question - Since it's back to school time, let's talk English class. What's a writing rule you learned in school that messed you up as a writer?

I'm pretty old, so I'm going to answer this not from an English class per se, but as one who learned to type on a conventional (electronic) typewriter. A thing that messed me up for a long time was two spaces after a "period" and using the "tab" key. You should never use "tab." However, there are some things from my English class that I've since tossed as well. One of these is "never start a sentence with the word 'And.'" Another is to avoid the use of 'very.' I agree that it is a weak adverb, but people use it all the time. I also think that avoiding weak writing doesn't matter as much as it used to (dangling preposition which is also okay now). Readers don't seem to care anymore unless you are writing for a certain standard of reader (a highly educated one). So, know your audience (I guess) is the best advice I have to give on this. 

Thank you for coming by my blog, and I look forward to networking with you.