Links and Updates

 Not much to report: everyone and everything is stressed.

We’re in the middle of elections, which is good because it means they’ll be over soon, and whichever way it swings at least I can stop worrying about them (I don’t think I’ve been consciously worrying, but I feel like I’ve had a headache for the last four weeks, not helped by the perpetual smirking of Judith Collins. Ma’am, you haven’t done anything worth smirking about yet).

Fandom is… about the same. Dramas erupt and dissipate, people argue about the latest announcements and then wonder how long they’re going to have to wait before seeing new material, and no one seems to be enjoying anything. If Hollywood wants to start recuperating losses on their blockbusters, I’ve no idea why they don’t start releasing things in New Zealand (okay, I know why – they want to avoid pirating and spoilers). But I noticed that Disney+ plans to release Pixar’s Soul on its streaming service: I hope at least we get the chance to see it on the big screen down here.

When J.K. Rowling started sharing some of her loaded opinions regarding transgender people, one of the more general queries floating around was: “why now?” The middle of Pride Week and the most recent resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement seemed like a questionable time (to say the least) to start a Twitter argument about trans-rights.

But it was the seeming randomness of the timing of her comments that gave me the sinking feeling that the next Strike novel would be tackling the issues she was raising on her Twitter feed, and sure enough… (you’ll just have to take my word for this, but I was planning to make a Tumblr post about my theory on the very day the news broke).

So along with the live-action Mulan, I won’t be reading Troubled Blood. I’m kinda disappointed, because the Strike novels were reasonably fun reads (and I was curious about where Robin’s plot was going) – but there’s so much more rewarding material out there, why waste time on the bad stuff?

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Along with Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson, it would seem The Kane Chronicles are also being adapted for the screen (I have the first two burning a hole in my shelf). The franchise could end up like Trollhunters, forming the type of fictional universe that everyone is obsessed with lately (the protagonists of each book series have interacted, though with the former going to Disney+ and the latter being released on Netflix, it might be a bit of a challenge). In any case, it’ll be nice to let the Egyptian pantheon have its chance at the spotlight – it’s usually the Norse and Greek gods that soak up most of the attention.

We’re getting a third season of Harley Quinn, which is great news. I would have been totally content with the two seasons we got, which manage to wrap up most of the plot points and give the central relationship a strong send-off, but I’m happy to get more.

In sadder news, they’ve cancelled The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, which seems incredible after it just won a Grammy for Outstanding Children’s Programming. In all honesty, I thought it was a limited series from the start, and I certainly have reservations about watching the entire Gelfling species get wiped out in order to make it canon-compliant with the movie, but there was clearly room for a continuation, and the script-writers are on record for saying they had long-term story plans. Dammit.

But on the subject of puppets, check out Moschino’s Spring/Summer fashion show which uses marionettes to avoid the dangers of spreading Covid-19:

I know next to nothing about the fashion industry, but there’s also an incredibly creative and beautiful reel of Dior’s Autumn/Winter collection, as a sort of Victorian/Romantics fairy tale:

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Tatiana Maslany is the She-Hulk. I have no idea what this means, but I’m glad as this is sure to be high profile, and she disappeared for a while after Orphan Black. And a young Ms Marvel has also been cast, a character who I also know next to nothing about, but which is cause for great excitement given she’s a Pakistani-American Muslim who will eventually make the leap to the big screen. I hope the studio looks after her.

The Craft and the The Witches are both getting remakes (or perhaps more accurately, a pseudo-sequel and a fresh adaptation of the original novel). One looks considerably better than the other:

I’m thinking of hate-watching Emily in Paris. I probably shouldn’t though.

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Jezebel just released an article on the Snapewives, which immediately catapulted me back over ten years ago to the height of the Harry Potter fandom…

Now look, if marrying a fictional character on the astral plane is what sparks joy in your life, then go for it. It’s not hurting anyone (as far as I can tell). But if you’re one of the five people who regularly reads this blog, you’ll know that at least 50% of my enjoyment of fandom is watching how other people react to various forms of media, and this sort of thing renders me:

I realize this is probably not a good response to have, but guys – this stuff is fascinating. What psychological drive is behind this level of engagement with a fictional character? What motivates people to get into epic on-line fights over the correct interpretation of a person who doesn’t actually exist? What brain chemistry is at work when it comes to the profound emotional investment people pour into shipping and stanning? These are honest questions I have that I’d love to see an expert tackle in formal research.

Heck, why do I get such a thrill out of watching other people engage in this sort of thing? Because it really does fill me with what can only be described as “fiendish glee”. That’s probably bad, right?

But it’s nothing new. Fandom has ALWAYS been like this. Back in 1891, the Duchess of Abercorn’s dinner guests got into a massive fight about Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and according to the author: “those who thought the little harlot deserved hanging were put in one group, those who pitied her as a poor wronged innocent sat in another.”

Yet all these years later, there has been a seismic shift in how fandom operates, and as of very recently (relatively speaking) it’s become caught between the two extremes of: “if you like this morally ambiguous thing then I accuse you of congress with the devil” and “I’ve projected all my personal baggage onto this work of fiction and if I’m not validated then I’m the victim of a hate crime”.

And make no mistake: it’s getting worse – not only because these two stances are feeding each other, creating a tail-eating uroboros that’s getting ever-more frantic in its inability to keep up with itself, but because the fourth wall has been all but obliterated. Creators are peering into fandom spaces and writing either for or against what they see, which is clearly hugely detrimental to the quality of any given story.

And there’s really nothing we can do about it. In the face of creators and fandom working together so diligently (via pandering, baiting, harassment and campaigning) to sabotage the viewing experience, I’m choosing to eke a degree of enjoyment out of the chaos that ensues. Trust me, I know it’s bitter fruit.

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There’s no better example of this very phenomena than the recently-concluded The 100, which has been largely defined throughout its seven season run by its interminable shipping war. Should protagonist Clarke Griffin have ended up with Lexa or Bellamy? That’s the question that drove the narrative fandom crafted for itself, even four years after Lexa’s (extremely controversial) death, superseding anything else Jason Rothenberg and his team of writers might have otherwise wanted to share about the nature of humanity, the cost of survival, the price of leadership or the terrible mental strain put on those forced to make impossible ethical decisions.

Bellarke or Clexa? That’s where the real interest lay.

As it turned out, the debate was completely pointless. Like Rey and Elsa and Buffy before her, Clarke ends the show single, finding purpose and joy amidst her platonic relationships with her friends, with both Lexa and Bellamy having died across the course of the series.

As it happens, I checked out way back in season three. It’s a truth not widely acknowledged that an individual will never regret abandoning a show if it becomes a chore to watch, and I can promise you that once you think it’s reached the point of no return, it’s definitely not going to get better. And though one can never fully anticipate what any given writers’ room will choose to do with its material, I was fairly certain that the intense backlash against Lexa’s death jettisoned any possibility that Bellarke would ever become an official thing.

Of course, this show could have ended without that particular hook-up being made official in a way that still allowed for Clarke and Bellamy to inhabit the same space together in the show’s final scene, allowing fans to infer that they might get together later down the track… but Jason Rothenburg decided to make absolutely certain that this scenario was off the table – by having Clarke shoot Bellamy dead earlier in the season for the sake of a book that she doesn’t take with her, to save her daughter who ends up dying anyway. Bellamy is essentially killed for no reason at all – unless you count the Doylist reason of ensuring that fandom shippers are completely thwarted in their desire to see the canonization of Bellarke as a couple.

I haven’t watched the episode in question, but I understand that he also died while under the control of some sort of religious leader, is shunned and dismissed by the rest of the characters he’s spent the last seven years with, and is barely grieved after Clarke confesses that she’s just killed him.

It’s impossible not to see any of this as a direct “fuck you” to the shippers, and possibly to actor Bob Morley as well (I didn’t dig too deep, but apparently there was some bad blood there). Was it petty and spiteful? Yes. Was it a highly foreseeable creative decision after seven years of relentless fandom harassment being directed at the cast and crew of the “make my ship canon or a hostage dies every hour” variety? Also yes.

As someone who wasn’t remotely invested in the characters or plots by the time all this went down, it’s difficult to know how to react. It manages to be both sad and funny – sad (in a funny way) because it’s objectively bad writing, which ill-serves the character of Bellamy and adds nothing to the plot or characterization of the show itself, and funny (in a sad way) because it never would have happened if fandom and showrunner alike hadn’t thrown themselves into a toxic para-social relationship that brought nobody any joy and destroyed the opportunity to write/view the show as a story instead of a competition.

Perhaps The 100 could have ended on a high note if everyone had just left well enough alone. 

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(But while we’re on the topic of Harry Potter and fandom insanity, when was the last time you read through the Msscribe Story? It’s incredible, and what I wouldn’t give for an Aaron Sorkin project à la The Social Network that adapts this material for the screen).