General Fandom Questions (and sigh, more on computer decision making)

[shadowkat]

The poll that I did at lunch regarding which computer I should buy - a Mac or a PC is in a dead-heat. Five to Five (not Five by Five...unfortunately, and only Buffy fans will get that joke.) And it reflects perfectly how I feel about getting a new computer - I honestly don't know which would be the better choice. I'm bloody tired of spam and spyware, that much I can tell you. But...am leery of a new gadget. OTOH - been told that you can transfer Windows items to a Mac. Guy at work told me that his friend who is a financial analyst won't buy anything but Macs now - and yes you can use spreadsheets. The new Mac Pro - will use both OS/X operating system and Windows. I don't know. I don't really want to spend 2K on a computer right now - I'm still saving for a condo-co-op, albeit it is looking grim. And my salary appears to be stuck in place like everyone elses - well everyone who isn't in the entertainment/marketing/ad profession (those guys either are multi-millionaires, billionaires or dead broke. Weird profession.)

So, frustrated, I posted the same question more or less to my Facebook - which has a lot of tech heads on it (most of whom are in my family or former co-workers). But Facebook is weird - you can post and no one will notice.

Fandom related Questions:

1. Question for the Whedon fandom - assuming there are still Whedon fans on my flist? Do you think that Whedon resented Angel and Spike? That he truly intended Buffy to be a black and white universe where vampires represented disease and sickness and evils of immortality and nothing else? That the network and David Greenwalt are the sole reasons we got Angel the series and Spike for more than four episodes? And if it weren't for their considerable popularity - they would have been staked as originally planned? Finally - how do you know what the writer was thinking? Are we merely speculating based on assorted comments from actors (because we all know how reliable they are) or interviews with the writer and/or writers themselves? And to what degree is this information even reliable? Can we ever know? [I don't think so personally, but am curious what others think.]

2. This is a more General Question - that relates to both fandoms and well just anything that makes you want to rant on your blog - but is decidedly of the cultural persuasion and not, about politics, your co-worker, or your commute (because we all know why people rant about that. To rant is human.) By cultural persuasion - I mean music, art, books, tv shows, theater,
film...fictional characters and/or stories and their associated fans.

What turns you off? Really makes you decide - okay I'm done - I don't like this writer any more or don't like that character or can't stand that fictional relationship or
that tv show? Is it something you can pin-point or just a gut reaction? Do you know? Can you really explain it? Or better yet - do you even want to explain it? And what will make you want to scream at an innocent fan shipping or loving or adoring that character, relationship or tv show? Is it how they are shipping it or loving it? The mere fact that they are loving it? Or the reasons they've expressed for loving it? (I'd say why they are loving it - but I don't believe we can know that - unless people tell us and even then, I've seen people online completely misread the explanations given.) Do you know why it pisses you off?

What I'm really curious about - I guess - is what motivates us to dogmatically launch into a full-scale attack or rant on a fictional (relation)ship, character, or fan response to it. Sort of the opposite of the squee post. What motivates the rant post? Because let's face it - rant posts are more likely to back-fire and cause us pain. (Who here has defriended someone, banned someone, or been defriended as the direct result of a rant post they did? Show of hands? Oh come on, I can't be the only one, at least I hope I'm not the only because, ahem, that would be embarrassing.) So we have to be pretty motivated to launch into one, right? What motivates us to do it?

[I know those are complicated questions. Hoping people will respond, because I don't really know the answers myself. You can either answer in the comments or in your own blog - if your own blog - please provide a link so I can read it. ]

Comments

[blackfrancine.livejournal.com]

1. I don't really get the impression that Whedon resented Spike or Angel--but I don't do a lot of digging through interviews. But, just looking at the large roles they played on the show itself--and at the fact that Joss put so much energy into a spinoff all for Angel--I'd say he didn't resent them too much. He gave them both interesting arcs and made them likable. And--let's face it--Joss isn't known for catering to his audience's desires and expectations. If he wanted to kill them off or make them pure evil, he probably would have.

I'm really not someone who puts a lot of stock into what the author intends. I really just don't care (this is probably my literary-criticism training shining through). And I think that since over the last 50 years or so there's been a de-emphasizing of authorial intent, more and more authors have come to embrace the idea of the audience interpreting the primary meaning of the text--so they offer less of their intentions. So, really, I don't think it's very likely that we'll be able to get at what an author was thinking. And that's probably a good thing. It leaves far more room for exploration.

2. What turns me off: Saccharine romances; giving in too much to expectations; out-of-character behavior (or giant motivators for OOC behavior inserted in obvious ways); misogyny.

What compels me to want to yell at another fan? It's one of 2 things: 1) If they're criticizing a character I deeply relate to in ways that I feel are completely invalid and just totally miss the mark. I'm all for criticism--I just need it to be backed up and sensical. 2) If they ship the same ship I do, but they do it WRONG. (Shipping other ships doesn't bother me much at all--live and let live. But when they are aboard my ship, and still don't see the beauty of it... we've got problems.) This is awful and dogmatic of me, I know. But good grief. I saw a comment recently about a ship I love, and it was so weird. The commenter's whole basis for liking that ship had nothing to do with anything that was in canon. They had their own little mythology worked in. It was wacky. And I wanted to yell: THERE IS PLENTY OF REAL REASONS TO LOVE THIS SHIP. YOU DON'T NEED TO FABRICATE REASONS. PAY ATTENTION. But I didn't. I walked away.