liz_marcs | Does this make me a Bad Fan?

Confession #1:

I'm approximately 1 gazillion times more excited about Mama Mia! opening today than I am about The Dark Knight, despite the fact that I can see The Dark Knight at no less than 2 IMAX theaters within easy driving distance.

Confession #2:

It appears that I will buy anything David Simon does because, as it turns out, he's my favorite author (for television) ever. I own the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, all 7 seasons plus television movie of Homicide: Life on the Street, the book The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, the HBO series The Corner, and the first 4 seasons of The Wire (with Season 5 on order for immediate shipping when it's available next month).

I am counting down to when Generation Kill will be available on DVD (I don't get HBO) so I can get my hands on it.

In short, you know how people will buy anything Joss Whedon does (even when it's total crap) and call him a genius for it (even though it's a case of the emperor walking around completely starkers)?

This is apparently how I treat productions involving David Simon, Ed Burns, and partners.

How can I put this...long before I let any of David Simon's stuff out of my hands, I will sell both my Angel and Buffy box sets.

The hell with that. I will burn my Angel and Buffy box sets before I give up any of David Simon's stuff.

(Seriously, those of you who kept looking for meaning in the "numbered shirts" of Buffy Season 6 that actually didn't have any meaning beyond, "We found a bunch of these for cheap in thrift shops?" Try The Wire, which actually has twice the meaning and twice the mythic elements of any Angel and Buffy episode without requiring you to fanwank. Best of all? The Wire actually has continuity that puts most book series to shame. No. I'm not kidding.)

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Fandom was batshit insane during S6 and S7.

Do you want to know the worst part about it?

At some point all that batshit would get to you. Then you'd find yourself doing the online equivalent of a "primal scream" in a forum.

I wasn't exactly wanking away, but eeeevery once in awhile someone would start wank and I'd find myself getting sucked into it.

[Dear, God, I remembered this one time I made a joke on TwOP — some throw-away line about James Marsters chewing the scenery "like that ham always does" but beyond that I can't even remember what I said or why it pissed people off. Right after that several dozen Spike fans invaded a general Buffy message board where I was "known" to hang out. They created almost 100 sock puppet accounts and and started flooding the board with messages about how they were going to track me down in RL and kick my ass or turn my ass in to the police for making felony threats against Marsters, as well as endless thread after endless thread of how much I sucked, and fake descriptions of my drug-addled and sexually fueled exploits with animals...no shit! That was the fall out from a throw-away line because I made a joke about how I wasn't all that impressed with Marster's acting. *boggles* In the end, the board owner had to shut down all new account creation, set the board to private, and then force all new people who wanted to join to go through a moderation process to prevent another invasion. It was nuts.]

The thing that kind of gets me is that online Buffy (well, Whedon) fandom is still just as crazy, but it's crazy in a completely different way. Rather than the crazy being about 'ships or characters, it's more centered on the Cult-of-Joss itself and cuts across several fandoms.

That's why when I see some good ol' fashioned "Xander-hate wank" (like on the Darkhorse Boards right this very second) it almost gives me a warm fuzzy because it's so...quaint.

That sounds... totally plausible, given my experience with Buffy fandom. There's a reason why I try to avoid the fandom as much as possible, and why I don't consider myself a part of it, even though I write Buffy fic.

I'm sorry you had to go through all that, though. I'm sure it couldn't have been fun.

That's why when I see some good ol' fashioned "Xander-hate wank" (like on the Darkhorse Boards right this very second) it almost gives me a warm fuzzy because it's so...quaint.

I really shouldn't have gotten swept up into that, I know...*blushes*

Still, this past May was the tenth anniversary of the airing of Becoming Part II, the conclusion of Season Two, and oh yes, Xander's Lie (TM somebody over at TWOP). One of the muddled messages of the UPN years was supposedly about how Good People May Do Bad Things But They're Still Good People, Nothing is Unforgivable, and Redemption! Is! For! Everybody! (Just ask Spike, Willow, Andrew, Anya, etc.). And yet Ten. Years. Later. people are still seething with rage about "Kick his ass." Still waiting for Joss to have Xander "punished" for it. Still insisting that The Lie, or any of the countless things Xander said or did that people hate him for, is the sum total of Xander as a character and everything else counts for nothing.

Maybe Joss *should* have Xander turn evil, try to destroy the world, or try to kill/attack Buffy, because apparently those things can be forgiven by the audience.

Actually, the Xander-hate wank is Heeeeee-Laaaarius. (Hey, I'm amused.) If you read back at the beginning of the thread, whoever WarEmblem is hung out in the corner of the 'Net where Xander is universally hated. They pretty much walked into another part of the net where Xander is either well-liked or people feel neutral about him.

Then again, WarEmblem seems convinced that Spike and Dawn had a "special relationship" that spanned the last 3 seasons (Ummmmm, no. Everyone commented at the time how Spike dropped Dawn like a hot potato as soon as he got Buffy), so I suspect his/her point of view is slightly Spike-centric.

Although I really love the part where WarEmblem would've had more respect if he was a Shaggy-style stoner. That made me go, "Whut?" Heeee!

No, really, it's pretty funny. WarEmblem seems hell-bent and determined to convince people that Xander is a Very Bad Person Who Deserves Badness Because Clearly He Wouldn't Be Fighting Evil If He Wasn't Crushing On Buffy and everyone else point out in-text reasons why WarEmblem is kinda wrong.

Oh, yes. The Special Relationship of Spike and Dawn in which Dawn, when seeing Spike for the first time after learning of the Attempted Rape of Buffy, coldly threatens to set him on fire if he ever hurts Buffy again, and that was pretty much the last interaction between them we ever saw. (And that was the season's second episode.)

And since WarEmblem declared that he/she is convinced that Buffy was actually in love with Spike in Season Six, and that was the real reason why she was so conflicted about having sex with him, in spite of all the canon evidence to the contrary, I'm pretty sure we know which corner of the internet WarEmblem hung out in.

As for the comments about Xander only being there because he still crushes on Buffy, I find it to be an example of the many double standards applied to Xander as a character. Angel and Spike are both shown to be pettily and pathetically still unable to get over Buffy, and it's hailed as Twu Wuv and swoonworthy. Yet despite five seasons of solid evidence that Xander did get over his crush on Buffy, the Xander bashers just looooove to drag out the chestnut that he has always been crushing/in lust with her (note that it's never that he was "in love" with her, 'cause that would somehow make it "all right") and turn it into "proof" that he's just an unprincipled, unthinking scumbag who only wants to get inside Buffy's pants. *eyeroll*

Does this make me a Bad Fan?

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