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Those prompts I asked for this morning? I'm not really in the mood to write them right now. *hugs* to the people who offered them and encouragement to me this morning. I needed it.
Fandom is a group experience and this post is the LJ therapy couch for the not-too-posty elements of my f-list. Tell Dr. T all about your Stargate Atlantis experience: what got you in, when you realised it was your crack, and what you're going to take from it.
Technically, SG1 was my first fandom. I played, wrote, made friends, bitched, got bitched out, had a ball, and ultimately walked away because I didn't like how the show was going. Then SG1 led into SGA.
I got into the show partly because of the SG1 lead-in, but mostly because of Teyla. Nothing more, nothing less. She was the magnet that drew me into activities beyond merely watching he show. This is probably why it took to the end of Season One for me to go, "Oh, now I get this show!" I was ambivalent about the whole shipping thing, although I liked the John/Teyla dynamic. I liked it, but it didn't bother me that it wasn't going anywhere. John/Teyla fandom wasn't very active at the time, so I mostly wrote gen with a John/Teyla UST thing and hoped to find someone else who liked John/Teyla whose work I could appreciate.
I'm not sure I realised when it was my crack, to be honest. It just...snuck up on me. Possibly around 2005, when I wrote 'To Serve A Queen' and realised that I'd just put 50,000+ words into a fanfic about two characters who'd never actually get together on the show in an AU where they did get together and had super speshul powerz.
That was probably a watermark moment for me. "Yeah, I'm in deep. WAY deep."
Oddly enough, though, SGA has been both an up and down ride for me - partly because I can't count on the show to be constant in the things I watch it for - not the way I can with something like Bones. I want Teyla, I want team, I'm not into the John/Rodney relationship, and I wanted the show to focus on Pegasus, not on Earth and the "white peoplez".
For me, it's sort of a relief to know the end of the rollercoaster is in sight.
I will miss my show and the characters I love and the people I've met through them but with whom I haven't had the opportunity to form bonds that go beyond SGA. But I won't grieve for what won't be. I might grieve for what could have been, but wasn't; but I don't think I can feel unadulterated loss for something that wasn't measuring up to my expectations (enjoyable though it might have been).
What I will celebrate is that I've come out of the fandom with new friends, new perspectives, and another layer of fandom skin. I think. I don't know that I'll ever get into another fandom the way I did with SG1 and SGA - they were my first real fannish experiences.
What was your fannish experience with SGA?
Fandom is a group experience and this post is the LJ therapy couch for the not-too-posty elements of my f-list. Tell Dr. T all about your Stargate Atlantis experience: what got you in, when you realised it was your crack, and what you're going to take from it.
Technically, SG1 was my first fandom. I played, wrote, made friends, bitched, got bitched out, had a ball, and ultimately walked away because I didn't like how the show was going. Then SG1 led into SGA.
I got into the show partly because of the SG1 lead-in, but mostly because of Teyla. Nothing more, nothing less. She was the magnet that drew me into activities beyond merely watching he show. This is probably why it took to the end of Season One for me to go, "Oh, now I get this show!" I was ambivalent about the whole shipping thing, although I liked the John/Teyla dynamic. I liked it, but it didn't bother me that it wasn't going anywhere. John/Teyla fandom wasn't very active at the time, so I mostly wrote gen with a John/Teyla UST thing and hoped to find someone else who liked John/Teyla whose work I could appreciate.
I'm not sure I realised when it was my crack, to be honest. It just...snuck up on me. Possibly around 2005, when I wrote 'To Serve A Queen' and realised that I'd just put 50,000+ words into a fanfic about two characters who'd never actually get together on the show in an AU where they did get together and had super speshul powerz.
That was probably a watermark moment for me. "Yeah, I'm in deep. WAY deep."
Oddly enough, though, SGA has been both an up and down ride for me - partly because I can't count on the show to be constant in the things I watch it for - not the way I can with something like Bones. I want Teyla, I want team, I'm not into the John/Rodney relationship, and I wanted the show to focus on Pegasus, not on Earth and the "white peoplez".
For me, it's sort of a relief to know the end of the rollercoaster is in sight.
I will miss my show and the characters I love and the people I've met through them but with whom I haven't had the opportunity to form bonds that go beyond SGA. But I won't grieve for what won't be. I might grieve for what could have been, but wasn't; but I don't think I can feel unadulterated loss for something that wasn't measuring up to my expectations (enjoyable though it might have been).
What I will celebrate is that I've come out of the fandom with new friends, new perspectives, and another layer of fandom skin. I think. I don't know that I'll ever get into another fandom the way I did with SG1 and SGA - they were my first real fannish experiences.
What was your fannish experience with SGA?
2 of ?X
I didn't like it, frankly. The episodic plots were awkward, without the advantages that worse shows like Mutant X had -- SG-1 has a distinct lack of pretty for an early/mid teens girl who isn't into guys her father's age. What science I saw was "eek!" and the character development I managed to catch was strange (I guess I was never destined to be a Sam/Jack shipper). More over, I'd seen the original movie, in the movie theatre, with my dad and adored it. Since I was mostly catching season four and season five at the time, this reinvention of Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill felt lacking to me.
Ultimately, years later, I was at the video store at one point, renting yet more stuff. As a side note, I was in there often enough they all knew me and, by the time I was seventeen or so, one of the guys would, without me ever having asked, save copies of new releases he thought I'd like so that when I showed up on Tuesday night, after the crowds, they'd be there waiting for me. I came across the SG-1 S1 first disc, which had through Emancipation, and I decided "Oh, what the hell?" and rented it. I was entranced by Children Of The Gods. It was... exactly what they needed after the Stargate movie to make it into a series. I immediately went to rent the next disc and couldn't find it anywhere, so I bought the first season. Then I bought two, three, and four, only to put them to the side because I just didn't have the time or interest to really watch them.
Then brush fires happened and killed the power in my house for a week. My father, being an electrician, had a back-up generator at his shop and he brought it home, but it could only run so much out of the day. I used it to watch DVDs on my laptop, charging my laptop when the generator was on and wearing it down when it was off. I watched all three seasons in that week and went out to buy season five. The rest, as they say, is history.
Obviously, I got into the show pretty late. I had the advantage of knowing Daniel's ascension was only temporary before I went into season six. That was nice. I had the advantage of walking into a well-established, very broad and friendly fandom. Sure, there were ship wars but SG-1 had the same air BtVS and AtS did. Your kink may vary but we're all freaks here so party on. I really value that in a fandom. I was never very active; I wrote some fic, mostly for ficathons, but my big fandom for most of this time period was Harry Potter. SG-1 was the fannish equivalent of what I did on weekends.
[tbc]
3 of 3
I got into J/R first because I was coming from J/D (primarily) in SG-1 and it seemed like the logical jump. Plus, there was an audience for it. The main problem was that other people shipping J/R seemed to be watching a radically different show than I was and there was only so long I could smile and nod along before I finally went "Fuck that shit." Coincidently, this is about the time The Gift aired and, again, the rest was history.
I adore Teyla, even if I don't write a lot of fic in this fandom. Fannish interaction, the back-and-forth, vital, active vibe of getting together with other fans is really, really key to me in being fannish. It doesn't have to be a lot of other fans but there has to be some. And with Teyla, the pickings were few and most of them were as frustrating as the J/R shippers. Radically different show. A lot of Teyla "fans" are fans of her in the sense of John'sgirlfriend or Ronon'ssparringpartner or Rodney'stherapist. You know what I mean. They aren't into Teyla, they're into using her as a stand-in for themselves. The ones that are left often suffer, none too gently, from the same orientalism the show possesses. They ignore that Teyla is smart, practical, and effective. They ignore she's competent. At which point we're talking about totally different characters.
Then, around S3, I'd say, the tide towards Teyla in the larger fandom changed. You know what I mean. Where she went from That Islander Bitch [Who Fights In Skirts!] Who Gets In The Way of One True Love to Hey, She's Kinda Cool [When I'm Not Loving McShep!]. In fannish terms it was a huge shift. But, by that point, I'd written the fandom off and was enjoying the show in pretty much a vacuum. I don't have problems doing that. I do it for a lot of shows that just don't have consistent fandoms or that I don't want to be all fannishly involved in, due to the show itself and/or time constraints. I think that's also about the point I met you, which was unfortunate for you. If we'd met a year earlier, you probably could have convinced me into being the big time producer of J/T stuff you wish someone (besides you) was.
And, now, I feel the show's better off being moved into a movie franchise and removed from various complications that being in a sixth, seventh, eighth season has. I don't feel the gut-wrenching "NO!" about this move, to be honest, the way I did when The 4400 was cancelled. SGA has had a good run and the fandom will go on in the way that Highlander and The Sentinel does, I suspect. Most of the fandom doesn't even seem to really like the show all that much so this might be freeing rather than an impediment for them. And I'll find the next Stargate and then be fannish about that.
Re: 3 of 3
If we'd met a year earlier, you probably could have convinced me into being the big time producer of J/T stuff you wish someone (besides you) was.
D:
They aren't into Teyla, they're into using her as a stand-in for themselves.
Exactly my problem with a lot of people writing Teyla or John/Teyla stories. The focus tends to be less on Teyla and more of the other characters in the story, all of whom are considered more important than she.
Which, I suppose, is what one would expect considering the way TPTB have treated her.
The irony comes when fans complain that Teyla is mistreated by TPTB and then go on to treat her in exactly the same way in their own stories.
I've read a few of those - some that pretty much involved Teyla being there all through the story, but didn't have her doing anything.