fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2667 ]

[ SECRET POST #2667 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2667 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 041 secrets from Secret Submission Post #381.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
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inb4 lost

but seriously, i don't really understand this point of view. so because one chapter/episode out of 100+ was kinda shitty, it ruined the entire series for (general) you, and you stopped liking it? so all the moments you enjoyed, the characters you cared about, you suddenly look back on them with anger and disdain?
i mean, i can understand being disappointed and even angry, but the episodes you thought were good still are, no matter how tinted your glasses are.

Obviously not OP, but

>so because one chapter/episode out of 100+ was kinda shitty, it ruined the entire series for (general) you, and you stopped liking it?

yes. If it is so bad that it cannot be reconciled with my view of the characters and the in-universe dynamics, the answer is hell, yes. I won't touch it with a barge pole.

Because I cannot disregard it and pretend that it didn't happen in the canon (because it did), and hence I am forced to accept that a part of this universe - be it a character or a cool plot device - is royally screwed. Which, predictably, ruins it for me.

I don't know, it's a weird question. It's like asking "so because person X stabbed you with a knife once, it ruined your entire relationship with them??" Of course it bloody did.

heh, that's not really a valid comparison though, because i don't care as much about a show stabbing me in the feels as i do about real people stabbing me with a real knife .

idk, i guess i don't really have trouble putting the shitty parts of things i like in the back of my mind when i'm busy enjoying the parts i like? it's like when i'm reading au canon divergence fic when character a is still alive. i know that a is dead, but i don't really care, because 'im too busy enjoying the fic. i feel the same when i watch a good episode of a show that's had some bad ones. i forget about the bad and focus on the good.
i guess it's harder to do that with an ending because it's the book end, the last thing you see when you finish the story, but i'm still able to "forget" about it.

Well, you obviously don't have to feel the same way.

To me, "forgetting" things is not how consuming media works. Either I can enjoy a thing as a whole or I cannot. I can't pick and choose.

I don't know, maybe it's just a weird integrity hangup. To me, integrity of a fictional universe is one of the most important things ever. If it is disrupted, I'm noping out of it altogether. Perhaps it's because I'm a completionist?

i don't know, i'm quite the completionist as well, but we obviously don't have the same approach to media.
integrity is not that important to me. i mean, continuity and consistency are good things, but if they're a bit shaky, it's not a very big deal.
i guess i just have a very mellow approach to it. there's very little that could make me nope out of something.

I thought that maybe it's because it makes the rational part of my brain feel very weird. It's like when someone's telling me a story and then they randomly make a break in order to read aloud a couple of pages of binary code. And I'm just left there going all wtf.

I can't really enjoy media that gets interrupted with random pieces of narrative white noise.

Plus, I'm not sure I entirely understand how people "disregard" things unless they are so extremely stressful that disregarding them is vital (that I can do). Whenever I try to, eh, disregard something, my brain goes "but how can you think that it didn't happen when it DID?" And again, it's sort of a logical error, a conflict between my perception and the reality. I can't have that.

well, you sound like a very logical person. i'm not, though, or not as much. my brain doesn't freak out when i tell it to stop thinking about stuff for a while. it just shrugs and plays along.

(no subject)

dreemyweird - 2014-04-23 00:58 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

dancing_serpent - 2014-04-23 15:40 (UTC) - Expand

This is very interesting to me.

I'm able to disregard entire swathes of canon. I am able to pretend that things didn't end the way that they did. If a series, be it book or television, ends in a way that's disappointing to me, it's less like being stabbed and more like...a friendship slowly fading away.

From thinking about this, it's occurred to me that I might be exceptionally good at denial.

aw man, i feel the same, but you explained it a lot better than i did. 'disregard' was the word i was looking for.

i wouldn't quite call it denial, though. denial has a negative connotation, like you're ignoring something but (or because) you know it's wrong. i don't think there's anything wrong with disregarding (what a nice word) parts of canon, especially if these parts are terrible.

I can see what you mean about "denial." I use it in kind of a tongue-in-cheek way myself, though.

I have this weird thing where my attitude towards fictional 'verses functions exactly the same way my attitude towards the real world does. Not as in "I'm delusional and think that fiction is real", but as in "I understand it is not real, but if it were, my feelings, though stronger, would be essentially of the same nature".

And, like, the very idea of "disregarding" a piece of canon is so weird to me? Because it won't make it not exist? It will still be a part of the universe. It's like disregarding a real-life event because you don't like it.

i'm not gonna speak for a_potato, but personally, i know it won't make it not exist. that's not the point. the point is to focus on the good and not the bad in order to enjoy yourself, to not think about sucky things for a while.
it's not like disregarding a real life event because you don't like it, it's more like, idk, focusing on the good times you had with someone instead of the times you fought.

I... dunno, I suppose I can see that. It depends on how bad the fights were, really. There's a point where you can't focus on the good times anymore, no matter how good they were. Because the person does something really awful and they cease to be good in your eyes. Same with fiction.

i agree that sometimes a person can become irredeemable in your eyes, but for me that's never happened with fiction.

It's like if you have a seven course dinner, and all the courses are great except the dessert is burnt, you can go away disgruntled that what should have been a delicious chocolate cake was instead a block of cinders, or you could go away thinking about how great the rest of the meal was.

I couldn't agree more. For example, I was very much into the HP books and pretty involved in the fandom. I read HP7 in less than 8 hours. Period. I just stopped. Like some people quit smoking. Literally like flicking the off switch. I look back at those times of enjoying HP very fondly, but for me the fascination is just over.

But that's not really a good comparison, because the dessert wasn't dependent on the rest of the meal. A bad dessert doesn't change the taste or content of earlier courses.

To pull a comic booky example, if they suddenly reveal that a character's friendship was so he could get close to another character in order to kill him, it's not "five issues of two characters being really good friends and then one where he suddenly wants the other guy dead." That guy always wanted his "friend" dead. It changes the story that came before. And if you found that reveal to be bad enough, then it's going to retroactively make the rest of it bad too.

Or that bane of literary storytelling, "it was all a dream." If you get someone really invested in your world and characters and then reveal that even within their fictional world nothing that happened had any weight, impact or meaning, it feels like you were lied to, and it can totally ruin things retroactively.

Not saying it has to ruin things for everyone. But it's certainly undestandable how it will for some people in serial media.

Oh, I definitely accept that the actual canon still exists. I just make believe that it doesn't, ha!

But rubbertea made a good point in their reply, too: there's something in this approach of choosing to focus on the good in defiance of the bad. Like, my break-up with my first serious boyfriend was awful, but I fondly cherish the good memories I made with him prior to that.

Never happens to me. An awful quarrell=all good memories spoiled.

I guess my way of thinking is kind of... um...

(no subject)

a_potato - 2014-04-23 01:10 (UTC) - Expand

That was how I was ok with the last few episodes of House's season 8. If i ignored the ENTIRETY of season 5-7, I was fine. And I was even able to enjoy some House/Wilson fic after the fact.

But otherwise...I did have to stop watching by early season 5...

I do think being disappointed at the ending is a much bigger deal than being disappointed at one episode somewhere in the middle.

That said I feel much the same way as you - for example I hated the ending to ME3 (me and practically everyone else) and it's still basically my favorite thing - but yeah. I can understand that for others it might mess it up more.

so all the moments you enjoyed, the characters you cared about, you suddenly look back on them with anger and disdain?

Yes. That's how bad XXXholic's ending was. Five years or enjoying it, two years of hoping it would get back to what it had been, then everything was ruined by an ending that undid years of character development and betrayed all of the themes that were supposedly so important.

because one chapter/episode out of 100+ was kinda shitty, it ruined the entire series for (general) you, and you stopped liking it?

It doesn't happen a lot for me, but yes. Although it generally isn't one episode/chapter, but rather one storyline that may or may not be contained in an episode. (Like Lorelai cheating in her relationship on Gilmore Girls. Or the head in a box in Prison Break. Or House and the car in House. Among other things.) If they totally change a character/tone, I have issues going back and enjoying what happened before. (Although in the case of Gilmore Girls, I at least watched until the end. Unlike the other two.)

Even when something is fictional, it can be hard to just pick and choose the parts of it you'll "keep" (read: accept as real). Although I can also disregard some bad things in a story that I otherwise like, I think there comes a point (for me, anyway) where disregarding anything more just feels... delusional.

Not OP, but about Buffy, I became a big fan around Season 3, caught up on everything and was a huge fan until season 6 started. I went to conventions, spent a lot of time on a fan board, etc.

It all went downhill from then because I found season 6 was meh.

By the time the mess that was Season 7 ended, not only did I stop caring so much that I never even considered getting into the comics or keeping up with whatever else was happeing in that fandom. I was even glad that it ended there. And I never watched my DVDs ever again.
While before, whenever there were reruns on TV, I'd watch them half of times.

So, I totally get what OP means.
I haven't been able to invest that much attention into a TV show again because it all looks pointless.

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