(no subject)

[shadowkat]

I was discussing this with folks on FB. They were claiming that the finale of Buffy, Chosen, wasn't that controversial. Oh yes, it was. I can probably hunt down the posts and fights in my journal regarding that episode, if I really wanted to.
But, the big difference between Chosen, BSG, and Lost finales and Game of Thrones is well...the advances in technology and improvements not to mention creation of various internet platforms since 2003 (Chosen), 2009 (Battlestar Galatica) and 2010 (Lost)...since then, Twitter was created in 2006, Facebook in 2004, made accessible to all roughly in 2008, Tumblr more recent, Youtube started roughly in 2005, and took off with reviews and everything much later.

While the first smartphone was in 1992, the iphone didn't launch until 2007 and wasn't accessible to most people until then.

When I was discussing and playing about in the Buffy, BSG, Firefly, and Lost fandoms, we didn't have the internet that we have now. Facebook was not that accessible and there weren't many fan pages on it, Twitter had just started and was like FB limited in characters and usage, Youtube -- people didn't visit it that much and didn't have the capability to post videos to it -- since they didn't have smart phones that could do live video feeds or web cameras on their computers back then -- unless they spent a lot of money or went out of their way to get them. It wasn't quite as prevalent as it is now or accessible.

If you look at and compare the fan reactions to say Buffy, Angel, Lost, Battlestar Galatica and Game of Thrones -- you'll note how much the internet and the accessibility to certain platforms and technology affects things.

Now, in this day and age, a fan can do a lot of things they couldn't years prior. Farscape fans had to work a lot harder to get a movie for Farscape than Lucifer or Sense8 fans did, because they didn't have the same internet that we do now. There was no twitter or petition sites, they had to do it the old fashioned way, with a write in campaign.

Things we can do now in fandom that we couldn't do before:

1. Post video reviews on Youtube
2. Create a site with audio and video reviews of comic books or other works, get advertising, and make lots of money off of the hits
3. Set up petitions to save shows
4. Do a crowd-sourcing site to collect money to get a movie made
5. Coordinate role playing games with graphics among over a million fans worldwide instantly
6. Share fanfic with people globally and do it instantly.
7. Post rants about television series endings to sites reaching billions of people instantly, and have them go viral
8. Share fan art with millions in an instant
9. Stalk television actors and show-runners online and drive them insane
10. Share footage of convention Q&As, musical concerts, etc from various television, movie actors, writers, etc -- without their knowledge or permission.
11. Share television shows, re-edit television shows and news footage, photo-shop images, etc... on the internet.
12. Share music videos, songs, etc instantly
13. Share raw footage, dailies, cast readings, etc from television shows and movies on the internet
14. Self-publish books, music, movies, television series on the internet with no go-between

If you think about the things people can do on the internet now that they couldn't do just five years ago..it will blow your mind.

Also, if you think about it -- how television, film, music, etc is being distributed now is mind-blowing. If I miss a television show or broadcast -- I can see it again. It's not lost. Time was that if you missed a television broadcast, you'd have to wait for reruns, pray someone taped it and could send it to you, or live without it.
When I was watching Buffy in the 1990s and early 00s, I was taping on VHS, and didn't see any shows opposite it. Also if I forgot to tape, if I missed it, or if the show just got preempted, I was out of luck. I'd have to wait for a rerun.

DVDs didn't pop up until roughly 2000. I didn't get a DVD player until 2003 or 2004.
And I certainly didn't access to streaming until much much later. We did file sharing on the net, but it often crashed the computer -- the files were too big for the band-width, or it had viruses.

I watched a you-tube video of Natalie Cole and Whitney Houston singing "Say a Little Prayer for Me" after watching Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick and Rupert Evert do the same. Then I flipped to a video of the reading of the Game of Thrones script and seeing the cast's initial reactions to that reading. You couldn't do that ten years ago. I also watched footage, raw footage of actors filming a scene from a television series -- the dailies, the bits not seen on screen. People can post whatever they want on the internet and no one will know it.

If you consider that it wasn't that long ago that none of this was possible, that a lot this was and still is considered a serious infringement of intellectual property rights...it will blow your mind.

Comments

[mefisto]

You're right. There was plenty of controversy over Chosen. Personally, I loved it at the time and love it now. But S7 never lacked for critics and many of them at the time disliked Chosen. I do get the impression (purely subjective) that the episode itself is now generally liked even if the season still gets downrated by many. My other impression is that both 6 and 7 do better among more recent viewers than they did with original viewers.

[shadowkat]

Your impression is correct -- the Chosen episode, and S7 and 6 of Buffy improved over time, and newer viewers who binged all of it at once had no to little issues with it. Few people remember it as controversial. (And it wasn't as controversial as Lost and Game, in that it really depended on which forum you were on at the time and it didn't hit a mainstream audience.) BSG also got better rated over time, viewers had less issues with it. But BSG like Buffy wasn't mainstream, it was under the wire, on a odd-ball network, and never got the media or critical or awards attention that shows like Lost and Game did. (Cult shows can get away with more and are often tighter, due to smaller budgets and constricted schedules.)

Lost, a mainstream darling, in marked contrast, got down-rated over time. My guess is GoT will most likely fall under same category as Lost, just because if you binge -- you'll be jarred even more than those who waited. (Most of the viewers who saw the finale had been late to the game, and binged.) And it was mainstream and won emmy's, hugos, and was a critical darling -- so had greater expectations and scrutiny. (ie. It couldn't hide as well and couldn't get away with stuff like BSG and Buffy could.)

[yourlibrarian]

If you look at and compare the fan reactions to say Buffy, Angel, Lost, Battlestar Galatica and Game of Thrones -- you'll note how much the internet and the accessibility to certain platforms and technology affects things

Definitely -- and perhaps most importantly, few members of the media used Internet sites for either personal or professional reasons. Nowadays they are camped out on Twitter in particular, looking for stories. I always feel their activity gets overlooked when we're talking about reactions that get signal boosted.

There were negative reactions to Chosen (though far more to S6 and S7 generally) but it was Angel's finale that was really controversial. Thing is though, no one talks about Angel these days.

[shadowkat]

They barely talk about Buffy. Both were cult shows, so didn't hit mainstream or the broader audience and media's attention. Nothing like Lost or Game of Thrones. Has a lot to do with distribution platforms. Angel was on a little known network -- WB (that no longer exists) and Buffy was on WB then UPN, neither exist. Few of the millennials saw it, and those that did saw it as kids on DVD and see it as something they well saw as "teens". They've moved on to things like Vamp Diaries and well, other series. There's a lot of stuff to choose from.

And the media didn't really notice FB, Twitter, or YouTube until sometime around 2015. You're right -- now they are literally camped out on Twitter -- hunting stuff. (Which is one of the many reasons I don't do much of anything on Twitter -- it's dangerous. My workplace really cautions against doing anything on it.) FB is safer, because you can lock people out of it. There's friends only and private groups, similar to the DW and LJ structure, actually. But the media watches it too, just less so.

It's the professional critics and media pundits who have in a way changed everything -- they made Game of Thrones and Lost mainstream. They boost the signal. And they are the ones who made the Avengers franchise big as well -- by boosting that as well. They also are the ones that control the reception -- Avengers got amazing reviews and buzz before it aired, Captain Marvel got horrible ones -- people still went, but it did affect the performance. And Game's finale -- got really bad buzz from the critics -- who lead the charge.

Another example? Rotten Tomatoes did not exist ten years ago, to my knowledge. That has also changed things.

[dlgood]

They barely talk about Buffy. Both were cult shows, so didn't hit mainstream or the broader audience and media's attention. Nothing like Lost or Game of Thrones.

Though Buffy was a cult show, it punched far above it's weight online. Online fandoms for shows like the X-Files, Xena, and Buffy presaged where things started to go with commentary & fandoms for "Prestige" shows of more recent vintage.

[shadowkat]

This is very true. Buffy grabbed the attention of "academics" and "Scholars" -- 90% of the people on the board that we frequented were scholars or academics, writing papers and presenting them at academic conferences on the subject.

They are still teaching courses on Buffy in college. I don't think X-Files and Xenia got that...although Angel definitely did, as did Firefly and Dollhouse.

Which was interesting, because prior to that it was just the Sopranos.

[dlgood]

My general sense is that the progenitor for this sort of thing was the Original Star Trek. It's very human. Homer was probably trailed by generation of ficcers...

[shadowkat]

I would agree. I know Louisa May Alcott (Little Women) and Charles Dickens (David Copperfield) had fanficcers and fans. Both authors produced content in serial format -- or segments. Chapter installments in magazines. As did the writer of Les Liasons Dangereux, and Victor Hugo for Les Miserables. I think Alexander Dumas may have done the same thing with Three Musketeers and Comte de Monte Cristo.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Homer didn't do it.

Star Trek -- was in some respects the first big television fandom. A lot of people wrote slash fic for it. And fanzines. I know people also did for the Monkeeys (believe or not), and Doctor Who. Actually Doctor Who -- 1963, may be one of the progenitors of it as well. Then of course Star Wars in the 1970s.
(There was a murder case in Kansas about two boys writing fanfic on Star Wars back in 1983, and one killed the other over whether it was getting turned into a film by Lucas...).

Not to mention the comic book and soap opera fandom, which I think pre-dated Star Trek.

The internet just took it more mainstream, with Harry Potter and Twilight, and now Game of Thrones.

[kutsuwamushi]

It's kind of bonkers to consider how mainstream fandom has become and how much of that is due to changing social media platforms.

I had my first social media account - on LiveJournal - back in 2002. I was hanging out with fans on the internet before then, but it was on mailing lists and chatrooms and IM. No one knew what "going viral" meant because it just didn't happen often enough to need a name. A lot of us hid our fandom activity because it was so stigmatized.

Now the popular platforms are designed to maximize engagement - it's all about making it so content can be shared widely and easily so there is always more content. And media companies have figured out that fandom is a moneymaker, so they're engaging with fandom on these platforms more.

And now you can actually find people writing stories about things that happen on Twitter, so ... when people don't like a finale, it's suddenly a story like it wasn't before.

[shadowkat]

Exactly.

I mean, I used the pseudonym that I'm using now. We all did.
And fanfic wasn't something you announced. The publishing industry condemned it in the early 00s. If you published anything online or did fanfic -- they wouldn't touch you. It was considered taboo.

Then Twilight and Harry Potter happened, and EL James published 50 Shades of Grey, and everything changed. I remember someone telling me around 2010 or thereabouts that if you wrote fanfic and had a huge following, the publishers would automatically publish your book -- they were actually hunting writers at cons.

It's really changed. And as a result more genre related content is being adapted and getting distribution. It was really hard to get good sci-fi and fantasy fifteen years ago, now -- there's a lot of it. Also, I remember a time when no superhero films or fantasy films were made or if they were they were cheesy and really horrible.

Technological advancements have changed all of that.

[dlgood]

I do think it's a function of the emotion "cult" type shows can draw out - and that modern technology enables to spread more wildly. The Americans was an excellent show, which completed its run with a well structured conclusion.... but few writers talking about how GoT didn't conclude well bring up The Americans as a comparison. While it was a really good show, it did not inflame cult-like fandom as Buffy once did (among Buffy's small pool of viewers) or that Lost and GoT have.

Even if the Americans existed in a modern ecosystem. Even in the National Security writing space, reactions were of a "Yeah, that's a good show" form and not the deep dives and theorizing GoT brought out. And that's even with the parallels to our current leader and his own relationship to Moscow...

[shadowkat]

The Americans is too realistic -- or what I like to call "hyper-realism" - similar to The Wire, Friday Night Lights, The Sopranoes and Six Feet Under, which are all excellent shows -- but they aren't "genre" series, and tend to not get the same "fannish" response.

Fantasy and sci-fi gets this type of response.

Look at movies? Avengers Endgame took over the pop culture discourse as did Star Wars, but smaller and possibly better films that had been released don't. True with books as well -- genre will get the huge fan response and obsessive reactions that more literary or non-fiction books never quite acquire.

That's always been the case. I'm not entirely sure why.

(As an aside, I'm going to have to binge The Americans at some point.)

[cjlasky7]

My personal recollection of the end of BUFFY was the reaction of the ATP board. There were a number of very positive reviews, but the general reaction was... strangely muted. And then, maybe a few weeks later, there were a number of posters (myself included) hesitantly poking their heads out of their bunkers, saying "Um....does anybody else think 'Chosen' sucked?"

Now, I'm not as bitter about "Chosen" as I was back then. It didn't destroy the series retroactively (the way How I Met Your Mother's finale did), and it didn't seem to infuriate the collective fandom on the level of Lost or GoT.

Nonetheless....

I still feel Chosen didn't work. One description I read on the internet said it better than I could: it was the conclusion to a Season 7 that never existed. The execution of S7 was so generally slipshod that nothing Joss did could really tie it all together. But we can't dump the blame on Marti, Fury or Petrie--in the end that's Joss' responsibility, too.

On the other hand...

Anyone who can be a slayer, will be a slayer. Buffy rewrote the rule book. Again.

Loved it. Let's leave it at that.

[shadowkat]

Yep, that was pretty much my take on it as well -- I get upset when the writer jumps from point A to point Z, without bothering with Q, R, and S.

But, there was a sizable contingent on Live Journal and elsewhere that hated the sharing the power metaphor. They saw it as Buffy forcing her power on the slayers against their will -- along with all the consequences. (This was dealt with in the comics. So you probably didn't see that reaction.)

The Buffy fandom got split between the television series fandom, and the comic/television series fandom. The comic fandom -- was a tad more critical of Chosen than the television series fandom was. Although both were -- Buffy Cross and Stake did not like Chosen, nor did a lot of the people on Bronze Beta.

But it was NOTHING like the reactions to X-Files (basically pick your own ending), Lost, How I Met Your Mother, or Game of Thrones. Of those-- I agree with USA Today, How I Met Your Mother had by far the worst ending. It outdid Seinfield's ending -- which isn't easy to do.

I'd say Lost and Game of Thrones are sort of tied on bad endings for different reasons.

Weirdly Angel's ending was determined to be more controversial than Buffy's -- except I loved Angel's ending. It worked for me, but then I also saw Angel as an anti-hero noir story similar to the Wild Bunch, not a classical hero tale. And I think how people reacted to the ending -- had a lot to do with how they viewed the series. The logic of it along with the metaphors worked for me, while the logic and metaphors of Chosen didn't quite work.

[cjlasky7]

Totally agree about Angel. While there were some plot glitches (and the season got off to a VERY slow start), the season gathered power as it went along, and by the time "Not Fade Away" aired, everything--writing, directing, acting--were going at full power. All the characters accepted their part in the never ending fight against evil, with Angel draining Hamilton--using his vampire nature for noble ends--as the perfect metaphorical capstone.

On the opposite end of the spectrum... the X-Files. Oh hell yes, I'm still mad. Two endings, both crap on a stick. For a guy whose whole deal was conspiracies and the mysteries of faith, Chris Carter never learned that you CAN'T tie things up, you CAN'T give us answers, you can only affirm that the battle is worth waging, and leave the heroes to their task. Ironically, Darin Morgan--the series' resident smartass--gave us two great possible endings in his s10 and s11 scripts--summarizing Mulder and Scully's internal conflicts and the essential unresolvability of the premise with humor and (dare I say it?) love.

[shadowkat]

I think X-Files even had a movie that tried to wrap things up?

[cjlasky7]

There were two X-Files movies, but neither one was a series wrap-up. The first one, subtitled "Fight the Future" (sigh) was kind of a bridge between Seasons 5 and 6, involving Carter's usual obsessions with alien colonization, spooky black oil, bees and such. The second (2008), subtitled "I Still Want to Believe" (double sigh) was more of a standalone horror story that addressed the "mysteries of faith" aspect of the series that I was talking about above. It did absolutely zero box office, and talks about a third movie essentially died there. Carter would keep plugging until he finally got the gang back together in 2017 for Season 10.

[shadowkat]

See? This is why I was never a fan of this series. It had a couple of really good stand-a-lone episodes, but horrible serial plotting. I'm admittedly masochistic, but I'm NOT that masochistic. ;-)

[sculpturelle]

Just chiming in to say how much I enjoyed your post and the responses. I haven't been online a great deal, but I appreciate great content!

We live in fascinating times!

[shadowkat]

Thank you for chiming in. ;-)