1. At the risk of being labeled an elitist, my own fandom has, a serious problem with fans who think they understand the series perfectly courtesy of secondhand knowledge like that. It's a running joke in fandom circles that it sometimes seems like at least a third of people who claim to be 'fans' have no acquaintance with it beyond screenshots, webpages, and other people's fanfiction. Generally speaking, those of us who have firsthand knowledge of the canon can spot fans like this a mile off by the things they produce.
The sad fact of the matter is that a lot of the time the things they produce are riddled with inaccuracies and don't betray any real understanding of what the show was trying to do. I've seen fans in this position try and write fic. It seldom, if ever, works.
I was a fan like that myself for some time, though I never called myself one, and all the secondhand knowledge really did was make me keener on seeing the show (and isn't that really the point of summaries and screencaps? They're not intended to replace seeing the series, just to help people know what they're getting themselves into). I mention this only because my current favorite character is someone who, in all my days going on secondhand knowledge, I did not even notice. I knew everything about him: what he did, how he had got there, what happened to him. I knew all his story arcs. I did not notice him as a character until I watched the show and saw him in action.
It wasn't until I watched the show and really understood the canon, either, that I was able to call out some of the fannish consensus I had been working with as total nonsense. Every fandom I've been in there's been a fair amount of bad fanon flying about the place. The only way for a new fan to tell what's canon fact and what's the product of conjecture, misreading or fangirl favoritism is to go to source. My own favorite character is often portrayed as clumsy, and an orphan. One of those traits is canon. The other is fanon. There's no way to know which is which unless you know the source.
Knowing a series secondhand doesn't make you a lesser fan. What it makes you is considerably less informed than someone who's actually sat down and watched the show. (And, all too often, considerably less fun to talk to.) It's not for me to say how you enjoy a show, but if you've never actually seen it, how do you know that your views on the storyline or characters stand up to even cursory scrutiny from someone who has? I've seen my favorite character slammed as a 'Wolverine reject' by someone who called herself a fan yet freely admitted she hadn't watched the show, simply because of his choice of weapon. That's not an informed reason for disliking a character who has precisely one thing in common with Wolverine - well, two if you count gender.
If that's elitism. I guess that makes me elitist. But if you really like a show, why should it be such a hardship to sit down and watch it?
no subject
The sad fact of the matter is that a lot of the time the things they produce are riddled with inaccuracies and don't betray any real understanding of what the show was trying to do. I've seen fans in this position try and write fic. It seldom, if ever, works.
I was a fan like that myself for some time, though I never called myself one, and all the secondhand knowledge really did was make me keener on seeing the show (and isn't that really the point of summaries and screencaps? They're not intended to replace seeing the series, just to help people know what they're getting themselves into). I mention this only because my current favorite character is someone who, in all my days going on secondhand knowledge, I did not even notice. I knew everything about him: what he did, how he had got there, what happened to him. I knew all his story arcs. I did not notice him as a character until I watched the show and saw him in action.
It wasn't until I watched the show and really understood the canon, either, that I was able to call out some of the fannish consensus I had been working with as total nonsense. Every fandom I've been in there's been a fair amount of bad fanon flying about the place. The only way for a new fan to tell what's canon fact and what's the product of conjecture, misreading or fangirl favoritism is to go to source. My own favorite character is often portrayed as clumsy, and an orphan. One of those traits is canon. The other is fanon. There's no way to know which is which unless you know the source.
Knowing a series secondhand doesn't make you a lesser fan. What it makes you is considerably less informed than someone who's actually sat down and watched the show. (And, all too often, considerably less fun to talk to.) It's not for me to say how you enjoy a show, but if you've never actually seen it, how do you know that your views on the storyline or characters stand up to even cursory scrutiny from someone who has? I've seen my favorite character slammed as a 'Wolverine reject' by someone who called herself a fan yet freely admitted she hadn't watched the show, simply because of his choice of weapon. That's not an informed reason for disliking a character who has precisely one thing in common with Wolverine - well, two if you count gender.
If that's elitism. I guess that makes me elitist. But if you really like a show, why should it be such a hardship to sit down and watch it?