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The annual Year in Fandom meme
Dec. 31st, 2020 08:15 amApparently I last did this meme in 2017, a more innocent time when my TV boyfriend was Gabriel Lorca, and it was mainly weird because he wasn't a cartoon.
1. Your main fandom of the year?
Star Trek. I was recently reminded that Star Trek: Picard ran early this year, not 20 years ago, which feels like fake news but apparently is not. Then there was Lower Decks, which I enjoyed a whole bunch, and now season 3 of Discovery is almost at an end, and I'm really loving what they've done this season, and how they've addressed every single problem that I had with season 2. Bar one, and it's a big one, but hey, what can you do?
I also finished blogging season 3 of Voyager over at squiddishly.net, and I'm really keen to get onto season 4! I feel bad that I couldn't keep up with Discovery posts, but hey, 2020. And also, responding to new media that I'm seeing for the first time is a completely different skillset to rewatching a series I know very well, and I just haven't had the energy.
2. Your favorite film watched this year?
I always get to this question and go, "Did I see ... films?"
The last film I saw at the cinema was Birds of Prey, and it was a lot of fun. I was going to see Wonder Woman 1984, but it's been so thoroughly spoiled by Americans livetweeting that I can no longer be bothered.
We did watch a lot of movies at home, and two standouts were The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. I realise that "these two iconic films are actually very good" is a lukewarm take, but I was genuinely surprised -- I watched them on VHS around 2002 (they were assigned viewing for a film writing class I did at uni; the rest of the assignments were Woody Allen films, so you can imagine how much I got out of it) and the sound mixing was so muddy that I couldn't make out any of the dialogue.
I am genuinely sad that I've missed my chance to see the new edit of Part III at the cinema, but I'm sure we'll get around to it one evening at home.
3. Favorite book
I read some pretty great books this year! A lot of series, particularly crime and mystery. Which I don't think we can link to the pandemic or anything, I just enjoy a bit of murder now and then.
I deliberately sought out crime fiction by Black writers, and seized upon the Detective Elouise Norton series by Rachel Howzell Hall -- mainly because her new thriller, which is getting a lot of buzz, had 36 holds ahead of me at the library, but these four books were available. And they were a very good read -- I loved the heroine, and I love fiction which treats Los Angeles as ... you know, a regular city where people live.
Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid was widely recced a couple of years ago as an f/f novel, which is weird to me because it does not contain a single f/f pairing or, in fact, any queer women that I can recall. But it was nevertheless very, very good, capturing the feel and music of a band that never existed. I also read The Unravelling of Cassidy Holmes, another novel about a fictional pop star, this time set in the early '00s and without the conceit of being structured as an oral history -- it, too, was very good, and I strongly suspect (based on the trigger warnings in the foreward and the tone of the author's notes at the end) that the author was in fandom at some point.
Return of the Thief wrapped up Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series; it had fewer twists and turns than previous books, but also didn't need them. I loved it a lot, but may need to reread it at some point to get all my thoughts in order.
(I also reread all the preceding books. They're quite good! Did you know?)
Unexpectedly enjoyable: The Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds by Suzanne Collins, the prequel to The Hunger Games. This setting really benefits from a third person POV, and I thought young Snow's un-redemption arc was really well-executed. Like, he's completely reprehensible, but he feels like a person in a way he didn't when we only saw him from Katniss's perspective.
4. Your favorite album or song to listen to this year?
*small voice*
folklore
I'm generally not a Taylor Swift fan, but I've realised it depends on her collaborators. Swift writing on her own? Terrible. Swift collaborating with artists whose work I generally enjoy? Fantastic.
So folklore was about half a good album for me, and I call that a win. "exile" was a particular standout, and my Spotify wrap-up was appropriately shameful.
5. Your favorite TV show of the year?
Taking Star Trek as read, I'll give you my secondary fandom for the year: A Country Practice. Yes, the Australian soap opera/procedural which ran from 1981 to 199something. I started at the beginning, and I'm now not quite halfway through season 2, which has 92 45-minute episodes and I am absolutely not going to get through it before it leaves its streaming service in a few weeks.
It's just ... like, this is a show I watched with my mum in the mid-to-late '80s (Dr Alex Fraser was my very first hyperfixation, and Alex/Dr Terrence was my first OTP!), but I've never seen the earliest seasons. And it's ... good! Witty without being insincere or unkind, and dated yet progressive. And unexpectedly upfront about sex, for a series that ran at 7:30pm on Mondays and Tuesdays. There's an arc where a character is attracted to a paraplegic, and she comes to her colleague, a doctor, and says, "I would like to take this man to bed. How do we deal with the practical issues?"
On the other hand, there's also an arc where the town learns that the two middle-aged men who live together are not, in fact, brothers, and it ends with Gay Tragedy. Though at the same time, it really incisively depicts the links between what was then very mainstream humour -- the inherent comedy of men in dresses -- and homophobia and exclusion.
We have also streamed many shows, some good, some ... less so. Like, we're almost at the end of season 2 of Narcos, and I keep thinking how much more interesting it would be if it knew women were people. The Mandalorian's second season was let down by maybe too many backdoor pilots for other shows, and also any situation where Katee Sackhoff is required to act is going to end badly, but I mostly enjoyed it.
6. Your favorite online fandom community of the year?
The Admiral's Legion Discord, which has been a really chill place to hang out and lament (for example) that sometimes characters blow up for now good reason. And also to swap cat pictures.
7. Your best new fandom discovery of the year?
I don't know that I made any? Save that aggressively curating your feeds makes for a better experience, and, like, I knew that, I just sometimes need to remember it.
8. Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?
Star Trek: Picard. I enjoyed it, but not because it was in any way well-written. And I say that as a person who loves Discovery, yet wants to go over most of its scripts with a red pen! Picard had great characters and interesting concepts, and mostly wasted them. The writing was downright amateurish at times, which is frankly embarrassing when you consider how much money was behind it.
But, as much as I hang shit on Chabon, I don't think it's entirely his fault. (Although he definitely shouldn't have been showrunner.) "Great concepts, flawed writing" seems to be a problem with a lot of shows on CBSAA, and I strongly suspect the service wants prestige television written on a procedural timeline.
My hope is that the delays brought by the pandemic have given all the Trek writing rooms a chance to stop, consider and polish their work.
Runner up: the collapse of the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen Cinematic Universe. I never had any illusions that Conde Nast was paying its staff well, but I never imagined they were actively underpaying the PoC who appeared in their videos. And then they'd rather just lose all that talent than pay them properly? Amazing.
I've followed the people who left, and thoroughly enjoy their work, but it's not the same. (And a lot of what remains of the fandom is ... just super racist. Like, it's literally just the people who actively don't care about racism left. I had to stop reading r/bon_appetit because yes, it's hilarious that they think Sohla is evil and racist, but is it good for my mental health? No.)
9. Your TV fandom boyfriend of the year?
Save for the version of prime Gabriel Lorca that only exists in my head, I haven't really had one. Though I am very fond of Pedro Pascal's face and think it should not be contained by a bucket.
10. Your TV girlfriend of the year?
I cheated on Kat Cornwell with Laris for a few months -- and if season 2 of Picard wants to be the Laris And Zhaban Fight Crime Show, I'm up for that -- but it's Kat. This meme is probably more interesting for people whose hyperfixations don't last years.
11. Your biggest squee moment of the year?
The whole first episode of Discovery season 3 -- it felt like it was deliberately shaking off the dead weight of season 2, and the fannish expectations that undermined it, and set out to create something NEW and UNFAMILIAR and FULLY BONKERS. The whole sequence where Michael is drugged, and accidentally and hilariously comes to an important realisation about herself: AMAZING.
12. The most missed of your old fandoms?
I am a shark, forever moving forward.
But it has been nice to see Avatar fandom revive, with both series up on Netflix. I've received some really nice feedback on my fic, which was lovely.
13. The fandom you haven’t tried yet, but want to?
I mean, there are things I'm keen to watch, but nothing I want to get fannish about. I wound up blocking The Expanse posts on Tumblr, because I'm just not that intense about it, and seeing the fandom activity made me feel like I wasn't trying hard enough.
14. Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year?
Uhhhhhhhh. I'd be surprised if we get any new Star Trek before late 2021. And I'd like to finish ENT finally, but I'm not sure I'm anticipating that, or merely dreading the nonsense to come.
There are some video games I'm looking forward to playing? My friend Amie did some writing on Immortals: Fenyx Rising, which looks like a lot of fun. But first, I have to finish The Outer Worlds. Who knows, maybe 2021 is the year I'll play Mass Effect: Andromeda?
1. Your main fandom of the year?
Star Trek. I was recently reminded that Star Trek: Picard ran early this year, not 20 years ago, which feels like fake news but apparently is not. Then there was Lower Decks, which I enjoyed a whole bunch, and now season 3 of Discovery is almost at an end, and I'm really loving what they've done this season, and how they've addressed every single problem that I had with season 2. Bar one, and it's a big one, but hey, what can you do?
I also finished blogging season 3 of Voyager over at squiddishly.net, and I'm really keen to get onto season 4! I feel bad that I couldn't keep up with Discovery posts, but hey, 2020. And also, responding to new media that I'm seeing for the first time is a completely different skillset to rewatching a series I know very well, and I just haven't had the energy.
2. Your favorite film watched this year?
I always get to this question and go, "Did I see ... films?"
The last film I saw at the cinema was Birds of Prey, and it was a lot of fun. I was going to see Wonder Woman 1984, but it's been so thoroughly spoiled by Americans livetweeting that I can no longer be bothered.
We did watch a lot of movies at home, and two standouts were The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. I realise that "these two iconic films are actually very good" is a lukewarm take, but I was genuinely surprised -- I watched them on VHS around 2002 (they were assigned viewing for a film writing class I did at uni; the rest of the assignments were Woody Allen films, so you can imagine how much I got out of it) and the sound mixing was so muddy that I couldn't make out any of the dialogue.
I am genuinely sad that I've missed my chance to see the new edit of Part III at the cinema, but I'm sure we'll get around to it one evening at home.
3. Favorite book
I read some pretty great books this year! A lot of series, particularly crime and mystery. Which I don't think we can link to the pandemic or anything, I just enjoy a bit of murder now and then.
I deliberately sought out crime fiction by Black writers, and seized upon the Detective Elouise Norton series by Rachel Howzell Hall -- mainly because her new thriller, which is getting a lot of buzz, had 36 holds ahead of me at the library, but these four books were available. And they were a very good read -- I loved the heroine, and I love fiction which treats Los Angeles as ... you know, a regular city where people live.
Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid was widely recced a couple of years ago as an f/f novel, which is weird to me because it does not contain a single f/f pairing or, in fact, any queer women that I can recall. But it was nevertheless very, very good, capturing the feel and music of a band that never existed. I also read The Unravelling of Cassidy Holmes, another novel about a fictional pop star, this time set in the early '00s and without the conceit of being structured as an oral history -- it, too, was very good, and I strongly suspect (based on the trigger warnings in the foreward and the tone of the author's notes at the end) that the author was in fandom at some point.
Return of the Thief wrapped up Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series; it had fewer twists and turns than previous books, but also didn't need them. I loved it a lot, but may need to reread it at some point to get all my thoughts in order.
(I also reread all the preceding books. They're quite good! Did you know?)
Unexpectedly enjoyable: The Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds by Suzanne Collins, the prequel to The Hunger Games. This setting really benefits from a third person POV, and I thought young Snow's un-redemption arc was really well-executed. Like, he's completely reprehensible, but he feels like a person in a way he didn't when we only saw him from Katniss's perspective.
4. Your favorite album or song to listen to this year?
*small voice*
folklore
I'm generally not a Taylor Swift fan, but I've realised it depends on her collaborators. Swift writing on her own? Terrible. Swift collaborating with artists whose work I generally enjoy? Fantastic.
So folklore was about half a good album for me, and I call that a win. "exile" was a particular standout, and my Spotify wrap-up was appropriately shameful.
5. Your favorite TV show of the year?
Taking Star Trek as read, I'll give you my secondary fandom for the year: A Country Practice. Yes, the Australian soap opera/procedural which ran from 1981 to 199something. I started at the beginning, and I'm now not quite halfway through season 2, which has 92 45-minute episodes and I am absolutely not going to get through it before it leaves its streaming service in a few weeks.
It's just ... like, this is a show I watched with my mum in the mid-to-late '80s (Dr Alex Fraser was my very first hyperfixation, and Alex/Dr Terrence was my first OTP!), but I've never seen the earliest seasons. And it's ... good! Witty without being insincere or unkind, and dated yet progressive. And unexpectedly upfront about sex, for a series that ran at 7:30pm on Mondays and Tuesdays. There's an arc where a character is attracted to a paraplegic, and she comes to her colleague, a doctor, and says, "I would like to take this man to bed. How do we deal with the practical issues?"
On the other hand, there's also an arc where the town learns that the two middle-aged men who live together are not, in fact, brothers, and it ends with Gay Tragedy. Though at the same time, it really incisively depicts the links between what was then very mainstream humour -- the inherent comedy of men in dresses -- and homophobia and exclusion.
We have also streamed many shows, some good, some ... less so. Like, we're almost at the end of season 2 of Narcos, and I keep thinking how much more interesting it would be if it knew women were people. The Mandalorian's second season was let down by maybe too many backdoor pilots for other shows, and also any situation where Katee Sackhoff is required to act is going to end badly, but I mostly enjoyed it.
6. Your favorite online fandom community of the year?
The Admiral's Legion Discord, which has been a really chill place to hang out and lament (for example) that sometimes characters blow up for now good reason. And also to swap cat pictures.
7. Your best new fandom discovery of the year?
I don't know that I made any? Save that aggressively curating your feeds makes for a better experience, and, like, I knew that, I just sometimes need to remember it.
8. Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?
Star Trek: Picard. I enjoyed it, but not because it was in any way well-written. And I say that as a person who loves Discovery, yet wants to go over most of its scripts with a red pen! Picard had great characters and interesting concepts, and mostly wasted them. The writing was downright amateurish at times, which is frankly embarrassing when you consider how much money was behind it.
But, as much as I hang shit on Chabon, I don't think it's entirely his fault. (Although he definitely shouldn't have been showrunner.) "Great concepts, flawed writing" seems to be a problem with a lot of shows on CBSAA, and I strongly suspect the service wants prestige television written on a procedural timeline.
My hope is that the delays brought by the pandemic have given all the Trek writing rooms a chance to stop, consider and polish their work.
Runner up: the collapse of the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen Cinematic Universe. I never had any illusions that Conde Nast was paying its staff well, but I never imagined they were actively underpaying the PoC who appeared in their videos. And then they'd rather just lose all that talent than pay them properly? Amazing.
I've followed the people who left, and thoroughly enjoy their work, but it's not the same. (And a lot of what remains of the fandom is ... just super racist. Like, it's literally just the people who actively don't care about racism left. I had to stop reading r/bon_appetit because yes, it's hilarious that they think Sohla is evil and racist, but is it good for my mental health? No.)
9. Your TV fandom boyfriend of the year?
Save for the version of prime Gabriel Lorca that only exists in my head, I haven't really had one. Though I am very fond of Pedro Pascal's face and think it should not be contained by a bucket.
10. Your TV girlfriend of the year?
I cheated on Kat Cornwell with Laris for a few months -- and if season 2 of Picard wants to be the Laris And Zhaban Fight Crime Show, I'm up for that -- but it's Kat. This meme is probably more interesting for people whose hyperfixations don't last years.
11. Your biggest squee moment of the year?
The whole first episode of Discovery season 3 -- it felt like it was deliberately shaking off the dead weight of season 2, and the fannish expectations that undermined it, and set out to create something NEW and UNFAMILIAR and FULLY BONKERS. The whole sequence where Michael is drugged, and accidentally and hilariously comes to an important realisation about herself: AMAZING.
12. The most missed of your old fandoms?
I am a shark, forever moving forward.
But it has been nice to see Avatar fandom revive, with both series up on Netflix. I've received some really nice feedback on my fic, which was lovely.
13. The fandom you haven’t tried yet, but want to?
I mean, there are things I'm keen to watch, but nothing I want to get fannish about. I wound up blocking The Expanse posts on Tumblr, because I'm just not that intense about it, and seeing the fandom activity made me feel like I wasn't trying hard enough.
14. Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year?
Uhhhhhhhh. I'd be surprised if we get any new Star Trek before late 2021. And I'd like to finish ENT finally, but I'm not sure I'm anticipating that, or merely dreading the nonsense to come.
There are some video games I'm looking forward to playing? My friend Amie did some writing on Immortals: Fenyx Rising, which looks like a lot of fun. But first, I have to finish The Outer Worlds. Who knows, maybe 2021 is the year I'll play Mass Effect: Andromeda?
