2015 in fandom meme
Jan. 3rd, 2016 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizbeeFANDOM
Your main fandom of the year? Still Legend of Korra and the Avatarverse as a whole. I'm also dipping a toe into Star Wars, and expect to have a lot of feelings about Rogue One at this time next year.
Your favourite film you watched this year? I didn't get to many movies, but I've seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens twice in a month, so I guess that's the winner!
Your favourite book read this year? Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem was absolutely bonkers and I loved it. I also adored Laurinda by Alice Pung and Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. It was a good year for books!
Your favourite album or song to listen to this year? According to Spotify, my top artists from 2015 were Dessa, Nicki Minaj and Jessie J. (That last because I mostly had "Wild" on repeat from the day I first heard it.) But obviously I also have to mention the Hamilton cast recording, which absolutely blew me away even though I'm not into musicals or the American Revolution.
Your favourite tv show of the year? Ready for This, ABC3's delightful and almost perfect 13-episode series about five Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids who share a house in Sydney as part of a program for gifted ATSI teens. Every character was a perfect cinnamon roll, even the Token White Guy, and I was continually pausing episodes to tweet or text about how great it was.
Your best new fandom discovery of the year? Probably that obscure space movie series, Star Wars. A work colleague sold me on The Clone Wars, and then obviously I went on to Rebels, and they're just great. I mean, for a given value of great. I just adore Ahsoka and refuse to believe she's not kicking back, alive and happy, by TFA-era.
Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year? The MCU. I was incredibly disappointed by the mediocrity of Agent Carter, and then Age of Ultron just decided to ... pretend a bunch of movies just didn't happen? Because it's not like they contained important character development or anything?
Daredevil was interesting but dudecentric, Jessica Jones was great for (white) female characters but I didn't love the overall structure. And then it came out that the government is cutting Screen Australia's funding and giving it to ... Thor 3? (And the next Alien movie.) And I'm like, seriously, my tax dollars are going towards this? At the expense of local works?
So while I know it will have even less effect than the MRA boycott of Star Wars, I'm not consuming any MCU products until that changes. (And also doing more effective things, like Writing Angry Letters To My MP.)
Your fandom boyfriend of the year? I just sat here for five minutes, completely stumped by that question. Pass.
Your fandom girlfriend of the year? Lin Beifong, same as every year. I am a one-cartoon-girl sort of lady.
Your biggest squee moment of the year? The Mai/Zuko pining in the "Smoke and Shadow" arc of the comics. I mean, Zuko is pining, Mai refuses because THAT WOULD INVOLVE FEELINGS AND SHE'S NOT WASTING THOSE ON ZUKO ANYMORE, HONEST, FOR REALS.
The most missed of your old fandoms? I miss being excited about new Doctor Who -- my dislike for Clara and the gross subtexts that kept popping up in the second half of the season, including the finale, made it hard to enjoy this last season. (Here is my rant about the final few episodes -- I like to pretend the season ended with "Face the Raven".)
The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to? I have no interest in getting into a new fandom just for the sake of getting into a new fandom. But there are things I'm looking forward to consuming -- The Expanse, various books and TV shows, that sort of thing.
Your biggest fan anticipations for the coming year? Going to Contact 2016 in Brisbane and squeeing at Ben Aaronovitch about Rivers of London/making him sign my Remembrance of the Daleks DVD cover; the new companion announcement for Doctor Who (please not another twenty-something white girl!); maybe actually finishing a fic one day, who knows?
Your main fandom of the year? Still Legend of Korra and the Avatarverse as a whole. I'm also dipping a toe into Star Wars, and expect to have a lot of feelings about Rogue One at this time next year.
Your favourite film you watched this year? I didn't get to many movies, but I've seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens twice in a month, so I guess that's the winner!
Your favourite book read this year? Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem was absolutely bonkers and I loved it. I also adored Laurinda by Alice Pung and Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. It was a good year for books!
Your favourite album or song to listen to this year? According to Spotify, my top artists from 2015 were Dessa, Nicki Minaj and Jessie J. (That last because I mostly had "Wild" on repeat from the day I first heard it.) But obviously I also have to mention the Hamilton cast recording, which absolutely blew me away even though I'm not into musicals or the American Revolution.
Your favourite tv show of the year? Ready for This, ABC3's delightful and almost perfect 13-episode series about five Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids who share a house in Sydney as part of a program for gifted ATSI teens. Every character was a perfect cinnamon roll, even the Token White Guy, and I was continually pausing episodes to tweet or text about how great it was.
Your best new fandom discovery of the year? Probably that obscure space movie series, Star Wars. A work colleague sold me on The Clone Wars, and then obviously I went on to Rebels, and they're just great. I mean, for a given value of great. I just adore Ahsoka and refuse to believe she's not kicking back, alive and happy, by TFA-era.
Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year? The MCU. I was incredibly disappointed by the mediocrity of Agent Carter, and then Age of Ultron just decided to ... pretend a bunch of movies just didn't happen? Because it's not like they contained important character development or anything?
Daredevil was interesting but dudecentric, Jessica Jones was great for (white) female characters but I didn't love the overall structure. And then it came out that the government is cutting Screen Australia's funding and giving it to ... Thor 3? (And the next Alien movie.) And I'm like, seriously, my tax dollars are going towards this? At the expense of local works?
So while I know it will have even less effect than the MRA boycott of Star Wars, I'm not consuming any MCU products until that changes. (And also doing more effective things, like Writing Angry Letters To My MP.)
Your fandom boyfriend of the year? I just sat here for five minutes, completely stumped by that question. Pass.
Your fandom girlfriend of the year? Lin Beifong, same as every year. I am a one-cartoon-girl sort of lady.
Your biggest squee moment of the year? The Mai/Zuko pining in the "Smoke and Shadow" arc of the comics. I mean, Zuko is pining, Mai refuses because THAT WOULD INVOLVE FEELINGS AND SHE'S NOT WASTING THOSE ON ZUKO ANYMORE, HONEST, FOR REALS.
The most missed of your old fandoms? I miss being excited about new Doctor Who -- my dislike for Clara and the gross subtexts that kept popping up in the second half of the season, including the finale, made it hard to enjoy this last season. (Here is my rant about the final few episodes -- I like to pretend the season ended with "Face the Raven".)
The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to? I have no interest in getting into a new fandom just for the sake of getting into a new fandom. But there are things I'm looking forward to consuming -- The Expanse, various books and TV shows, that sort of thing.
Your biggest fan anticipations for the coming year? Going to Contact 2016 in Brisbane and squeeing at Ben Aaronovitch about Rivers of London/making him sign my Remembrance of the Daleks DVD cover; the new companion announcement for Doctor Who (please not another twenty-something white girl!); maybe actually finishing a fic one day, who knows?
no subject
Date: 2016-01-03 04:36 pm (UTC)That he made it his mission, during his time as Head Writer, to invert each of the relationship dynamics that Davies had brought in with the reboot -- especially the Doctor/Rose "Twu-Wuv" slop that R.T.D. served up, so that whoever comes into the show after the "Old Guard" leaves the stage will have more than just R.T.D.'s vision as precedent.
I'm pretty sure that Clara was born out of annoyance with how Rose's infatuation with/dependence on the Doctor was romanticized as "beautiful." So Moffat set out to put the shoe on the other foot, so to speak, and have the Doctor infatuated with his companion.
The problem is: building a character out of your annoyance only leads to an annoying character.
The best thing I can say about Doctor Who in 2015 is that it was better than in 2014.
Agreed -- despite all the times I was making frowny faces at the screen -- 2015 nonetheless felt more compelling. I think it mostly comes down to the writers and Capaldi actually settling into the character of the Doctor, instead of trying to stuff the character of Malcolm Tucker into the Doctor's skin, like sausage meat into a casing.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-03 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-03 06:45 pm (UTC)This. So Much This. I'd been so turned off by Russell T. Davies's vision of the universe that I stopped watching it directly during the middle of Series One (instead, I continued "Watching" the show through the reactions, reviews and fan-fic written by my friends). And even with the distance of that ten-foot pole, I felt utterly betrayed by the end of Donna's story.
So even though Clara was a thorough kludge of a character,* I am nonetheless grateful for the role she was finally given to play in the universe.
*Moffat came up with an overly clever notion, and than flailed about trying to build a foundation for it, and failed.