Some grumbling and more paintedspires recs

[ileliberte]

I don't really see the point in producing fanwork for a show if you have no regard for it whatsoever. I make a lot of fun of SGA at times, but it's based in some fondness and having starting from a position of love, I believe, gives a lot of slack to any follow up disillusionment and/or criticism, whoever it comes from and whatever shape it takes. Believing that everyone in the show is stupid except one or two and that the whole execution is crap just makes me think that all that outpouring of distaste about it is really not worth the energy, and any fanwork from that source is sort of...pointless. Also, slagging off Teyla like that... I really needed a warning before venturing there.

Anyway, happier things. More paintedspires recs:

Must see One of the coolest, most gorgeous pieces to come out of paintedspires- Seasons in Atlantis by _phoon_. Prompt: Art Nouveau
Really truly art nouveau, Mucha would have been proud. Not only do they look like themselves, the borders, the coloring, the items with the portraits, my god, they're absolutely fantastic. It doesn't matter whether you don't know what stargate atlantis is, go see this.

Sheppard flying a Steampunk!Puddlejumper by ratcreature Prompt:Victorian steampunk AU
Very cool picture, the machine construction is excellent, the coloring works really nicely and Sheppard's so gleeful :D

'T Was Brillig by crysothemis Prompt:John fights the Jabberwock with his vorpal sword
Wonderful work, the composition is excellent, and the muted coloring works really well for the setting. The Jabberwocky is imaginatively designed and John looks immensely hot.

Comments

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

I can't even imagine how it would be possible to create fanwork for something you dislike or disparage in general. I mean...does the person just desperately love a couple of characters and create the work about them and...but again, how would you do that? Because those characters don't exist in a vacuum - all of the stuff that's wrapped up in the execution of the show affects them and (you would think, anyway) would have to be used to make the fanwork specifically about that show...

Hum. Conundrum.

But as far as why bother creating the fanwork. Could it be one of those "I can do it better" mentalities? Coming not from a place of fondness or love, but from a place of ego?

(Also, am v. glad that whatever you stumbled across didn't show up on my flist. Have had it with people who slag off Teyla, and John for that matter. *stranglehands*)

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

I guess it could be a feeling of "I can do better"? He seems to like Zelenka, but there's just so much disparagement about everything else, I feel like if I'd found some show to be that bad right off the bat, I would not have spent that much energy on it.

It wasn't on my flist actually, found a link to it, and recs for his fic on friendsfriends. I wish I hadn't clicked on the link :/

[smittywing.livejournal.com]

Ha. If it is the source that I am thinking of, I give you a double WORD and an, "OMG, if I had that much free time, I'd do something I LIKE. And bring about world peace during the commercials."

Also, if there is slagging off of Teyla, I am quite glad I did not read.

[pentapus.livejournal.com]

The real kicker, okay, the secondary kicker, for me was that it seemed to take a lot of text to say, "The writing for your canon kind of sucks." Which, hahaha, yeah, we know. Anything else to add? It was a bit like... ok, imagine Rodney, Sam, and Zelenka in the bottom of Cheyenne Mt working on a glitch in the gate and a world-famous physicist new to the SGC strides in, beaming. With a flick of his wrist, he tosses a sheaf of paper that spreads out to cover all of their work and announces, smugly, "It's a wormhole!" then cocks his head and smirks.

Radek, Sam, Rodney: ...

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

Yes exactly. And the Teyla thing was just...ugh. There's enough badmouthing of her elsewhere already, I did not need such a concentrated dose of disparagement.

[embroiderama]

I don't know the specific situation you're talking about, but I've seen things like that and I never get it. The thing that drives me nuts is when somebody writes a pairing but clearly hates one half of the pairing and loves the other. How could they have so much love for a character who keeps getting/staying together with somebody they think is an awful human being?

[22by7.livejournal.com]

How could they have so much love for a character who keeps getting/staying together with somebody they think is an awful human being?
hey, i do that in real life as well, haha.

[sheafrotherdon.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I know what / who you're talking about, and I offer up, like smittywing a monstrous fat WORD.

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I wish I hadn't come across it :/

[22by7.livejournal.com]

i've been gawking at paintedspires for the past hour or so! your fandom has AMAZING artists. have been bookmarking to comment.

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

It does! I'm glad you're enjoying it, some of the artwork is just unbelievably awesome :)

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

I harsh on the show a lot, because I find it incredibly frustating. They have a really cool concept--and the nicest thing I can say about my favorite writer is that he mostly doesn't suck. The reason I'm involved in the fandom is because the best fan work takes the show in directions that the writers can't/won't. The main reason I watch the show? So that I have context for the fanwork. Without the fandom, it just wouldn't be worth it for me to put up with the writers' skeevy race and gender issues.

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I have many problems with the canon too, and it's the fanwork that makes me love it much more than I would have if I were just following canon, but I think why this struck me as so irritating is because there is no basis of him having ever liked it at any point. Among other things the massive disparagement of Teyla obviously is a personal peeve of mine (that's probably obvious given most of my art :D), but mainly it seems like some person who just comes into the fandom, telling us stuff we already know and belittling everything about the show without having ever enjoyed it and saying "I think this show is crap, the premise is crap, all the characters are super crappy, but hey, here's some fic anyway". It's like...you can carp and carp about someone you get exasperated at frequently, but she's still a friend, of a kind, and there was some basis for liking her even if that might not have held up as well over time, but I feel like it'd be annoying to have some stranger come by and start badmouthing her right off the bat. I don't know if I'm expressing myself well, but it was the confluence of him disliking pretty much everything about the show, and my personal dislike of people trying to do fanwork without having ever had any regard/liking/fondness for any of the characters. I don't think fanwork built on a basis of complete contempt can be particularly enjoyable. However, I can imagine enjoying fanwork created by someone else, even if you personally dislike the canon. Am I making sense?

[ratcreature]

I don't really see the point in producing fanwork for a show if you have no regard for it whatsoever.

Yeah, I find that baffling as well. I don't know the specific example you have in mind, but I have seen similar too. Actually it was even more common in some other fandoms I've been in than in SGA, hence in my "ten things you should know about my LJ" intro post I have a point that, unlike nitpicking and the occasional complaints, I don't get that kind of complete contempt (e.g. the fans whose only thing to say about the show seems to be how crappy the show was and how much better the fanfic, repeated ad nauseam in variations) and that people should leave it out of my LJ when commenting and such.

Though what surprises me even more is that sometimes, though you can tell from the author's notes that the author thinks the source sucks, that still the fanfic is good. I mean, frequently it's not, and either the characters are distorted, or there's character bashing when they only like one, or the universe is mocked, or just done away with and so on, but there are good stories that come out of this attitude as well, which is odd, IMO.

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I can understand complaining about a direction a show's taking, or having problems with certain story arcs/writing problems etc., but such complete contempt for canon seems...such a waste of energy. I can understand hating something if you liked it to start with and then things went south fast, but hating it and watching four seasons of it just to disparage everything and then write fic about it anyway, I'm just basically annoyed at the wholesale bashing and puzzled at the energy put into something he seems to find completely contemptible. Also, personally, Teyla bashing always gets my hackles up :/

I haven't read his SGA fic, although I did read some of his HP stuff and he wasn't bad at all even though I gave up on the series after some character biases became too pervasive and I drifted away from HP fic. If the SGA fic is good, I wouldn't necessarily be surprised, but knowing his opinion of it all, it makes it much harder for me to separate his outlook and the fic itself. I have a sneaking suspicion I might even enjoy the stories if they're good, if I hadn't read that massive post first. I don't quite feel like I would ever be able to get invested in characters or a canon I disliked from the start even if I wanted to take them in a different direction in my fanwork, so along with my being annoyed at the whole thing, there's also an element of puzzlement at the energy put into it.

[ratcreature]

I don't tend to read posts mocking a show in a general way like that (rather than specific criticisms about a plot development), because it makes me feel-- I guess, looked down on for liking it in the first place? It's kind of like the feeling when you talk to people who are all snobbish about pop-culture in general and lecture you about it.

I think I know now what post you mean, and I skipped the meta, but read one of the stories so far and quite enjoyed it. Now that you mention the presence of Teyla bashing in the meta, that might explain why she was largely absent in the focus of the story and only made token appearances mostly, but it wasn't any outright bashing, and the plot wasn't anything where it was grating that she didn't play a big role.