End of the Year Fandom Memes

[rogueslayer452]

Which TV shows did you start watching in 2015?
Supergirl, Jessica Jones, Robin Hood (BBC), Arrow, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Agent Carter, Stitchers, Dark Matter.

Which TV shows did you let go of in 2015?
Even though it's now over, I didn't continue watching the remaining episodes of Lost Girl when it came back for its final season. I wasn't impressed where things were going before it went on mid-season hiatus, and judging from how things ended I didn't really miss much. And of course Game of Thrones, which was a given considering I just can't even anymore with what they're doing, writing-wise, direction-wise, content-wise, everything.

Which TV shows did you mean to get into but didn't in 2015? Why?
Flesh and Bone, I talked about it before on here and I've been meaning to check it out, but I don't have STARZ and unfortunately I already missed, like, the first few episodes or something. I also missed my chance on catching Sense8, which everyone has been talking and praising, with good reason. It'll be another one of those Netflix shows that I'll have to wait until it's available to buy on DVD.

Which TV shows do you intend on checking out in 2016?
Shannara, since I'm intrigued by what I've seen from the trailers and read about what the book series is about. It looks interesting since it combines high fantasy with science fiction and I am curious to see how it'll be adapted for television. Legends of Tomorrow, mostly in it for Sara Lance to be honest.

Which TV show impressed you least in 2015?
I hate to say it, but Pretty Little Liars. It's sad since I've been rather neutral with this show since the beginning, forgiving most of inconsistencies and ridiculous storylines and boring filler subplots and inability to have a coherent flow with the later seasons, but that mid-season finale was just a gigantic mess. The thing is, the show could have done something amazing with what they had going, with the Dollhouse and the reveal, but that whole explanation was just pulled from their asses and done is such a rushed way that it was incredibly disappointing. It should have been a lot better, and I know I give them too much credit but seriously. All the different fan theories made better sense then what they attempted to do.

Also, the second season of Sleepy Hollow was such a letdown. It held such promise but it became such a disappointment, and sadly the show suffered because of it. Things have gotten slightly better with them rebooting the show somewhat in its third season, but damn, I have never seen a show go downhill that fast since Heroes.

Which TV show do you think you might let go of in 2016 unless things significantly improve?
Definitely Pretty Little Liars. Which is depressing since it's the one show I mentioned before that I would stick with until the very end, no matter how shitty it got, but that mid-season finale ruined any enthusiasm I normally have for the show. And initially I was excited to hear about the five year jump and seeing them as young adults versus them as teenagers, but reading up on what has been planned for the rest of the sixth season I'm just not all that impressed so far. I just think the show needs to end at this point. As much as I love these characters, I think Marlene King and the writers have long since run out of interesting coherent ideas, hence them prolonging seasons and just extending mysteries and events so we get confused and begrudgingly accept any bullshit explanation they can conjure up.

Which TV shows do you think you’ll never let go of no matter how crappy they get?
At this point I'm not even sure anymore.


Your main fandom of the year?
At the beginning of the year it was The Hobbit, because of the Battle of the Five Armies and the fandom basically having a massive group hug and needing all the fix-its and happy AU headcanons which I appreciated a lot. By the end of the year definitely Jessica Jones.

Your favorite film you watched this year?
Mad Max: Fury Road, hands down. Of course Star Wars: The Force Awakens comes out very soon, so we'll see if it ties with that.

Your favorite book read this year?
Revenge by Yoko Ogawa.

Your favorite album or song to listen to this year?
Halsey's debut album, Badlands. I was introduced to her music through Tumblr, and I absolutely love her voice, along with her music video concepts. The entire album is great, with my favorite songs being "Castle", "New Americana", "Drive", "Control" and "Ghost". Hayley Kiyoko released a song, "Girls Like Girls" which instantly became a bop, including the emotional music video. Red Velvet, a K-Pop girl group, released their album, The Red, this year with "Dumb Dumb" being their first single from it. I hadn't listened to anything from them prior to this when they first debuted, but immediately after watching their music video for "Dumb Dumb" I was hooked. Namie Amuro (♥) collaborated with several different artists this year, including Jolin Tsai and Crystal Kay. Into the Wild Life album from Halestorm, with "Scream" being my favorite that is on repeat. After a seven year absence, Missy Elliott came back with a vengeance with her new song, "WTF (Where They From)", which is an absolute bop, with the music video being nothing short of amazing. And of course, I could never forget the brilliance that is the entire Hamilton Broadway musical soundtrack. If you haven't heard it yet, you totally should.

Your favorite TV show of the year?
I think Jessica Jones since it is my current obsession as of late, and probably my favorite to finish off this year. Following that would probably be Stitchers and Dark Matter.

Your best new fandom discovery of the year?
Definitely Jessica Jones, for sure. Along with certain video games as well, like Life Is Strange, Until Dawn and SOMA, which of course I was introduced to through the YouTuber gaming fandom community. I'm currently also following the Hamilton fandom through Tumblr, as well.

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?
Pretty Little Liars, Lost Girl, and Sleepy Hollow. The first two unsurprisingly lacked good writing and direction in their later seasons due to convoluted plotlines and too many fillers, with the latter having shockingly gone downhill so fast during its second season.

Your fandom boyfriend of the year?
Richard Armitage and Mark Fischbach (Markiplier). For fictional characters, Thorin Oakenshield, Guy of Gisborne and Caleb Rivers.

Your fandom girlfriend of the year?
Troian Bellisario, Shay Mitchell, Tatiana Maslany, Chloe Bennet, and Namie Amuro. For fictional characters: Spencer Hastings, Sarah Manning, Skye, Sara Lance and Carmilla Karnstein.

Your biggest squee moment of the year?
I honestly don't know, since all my fannish squees tend to blur together.

The most missed of your old fandoms?
Talking in general here, I do miss the widespread sense of community particularly here on LJ. I know it's been discussed before ad nauseum, but I miss where specific fandom communities would be updated several times a day, where fandom would be overrun with icons of current shows, where discussions and rants and essays/metas would be posted on the regular, where people would engage in actual discourse. Individual journals do this yes, and it does depend on who you follow so it won't be that quiet, but the LJ fandom community isn't as it used to be, and I kind of miss it. Even with Tumblr, a place I frequent as much as I do here, there isn't much room for discourse or communication.

The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to?
There is quite a few that have been on my list of things I want to get into. I still need to watch The 100, that's one fandom that I know has been talked about and I am intrigued by, particularly with the characters.

Your biggest fan anticipations for the coming year?
Aside from waiting for certain shows to return, I don't think there are any particular big anticipations at the moment. But that, of course, may change depending on the announcements of upcoming shows/movies/events/etc.

Comments

[rogueslayer452.livejournal.com]

I feel like if we took away all the boring fillers and erased all the ridiculous subplots with random characters that had nothing of relevance to the story or plot, the entire show would be reasonably sized down to where it could have ended decently around a fourth or fifth season, with possibly a cohesive storytelling. But of course they have prolonged everything so that it just feels so unnecessarily stretched out, which is hilarious considering that mid-season finale was so rushed with that "reveal".

I am also going to watch and see what the second half of the season is like with the five year jump, though most of the excitement has dwindling away, sadly. :/

Jessica Jones is absolutely amazing, I just cannot believe. ♥

Tumblr has its own way of communication, which is fine, but that was mostly created around an already impossible system since that site was never meant to be a platform for discourse in the first place. I enjoy reading tag essays on individual blogs and elaborate text posts and the like, but it isn't the same as someone writing a long detailed meta on their journal and having massive comment threads in one place, where there is a sense of controlling your content, of your journal being your own space, where fandom communities would have different uses and conversations, where it was more personal than an impersonal space when making friends and engaging in conversation. There is absolutely no way of replicating what fandom had here over there. They only way that would happen if people came back here, which while some have made posts about missing LJ, they haven't committed to it even though there are still so many fandom people here still.

insanely long comment, sorry :)

[mfirefly10.livejournal.com]

lol, I think if we took out ALL the filler and ALL the random subplots, the 'A' mystery could've been wrapped up by the season 3 finale. That's how much random nonsense they've done over the years. Like all that crap with Ezra's kid -- who turned out to not be his kid -- so that whole storyline was pointless. And, as much as I loved Maya, so was the mystery around her death, seeing as she was killed by a random stalker/fake cousin instead of anyone related to 'A.' They could've just had her break up with Emily and leave town and avoided that whole storyline. We could've lost all those random dudes who keep popping up in Spencer and Aria's lives whenever they were having problems with Toby and Ezra. We could've avoided all that nonsense with Ella's creepy fiance and Ashley's minister boyfriend. We could've left out Caleb and Hanna's brief brush with alcoholism, seeing as neither of them got treatment for it because they just...stopped drinking :)

I understand why the show introduced all that nonsense as a way to fill time so they could stretch out the mystery as long as possible (which is also why we had so many fake leads and random suspects) but it made for some really boring TV. There were maybe half a dozen random, non-'A' related subplots that I actually cared about.

And that's not even talking about 'A' related stuff that turned out to be unimportant. Like pretty much everything to do with Toby's mom. Which also ended up being incredibly sloppy because the writers forgot their own timeline and had Bethany kill Toby's mom years before we saw her walking around in Toby's house :) It's just crazy.




I know you CAN communicate on tumblr but it's really difficult. Like, the best way I've seen so far is through ask-box messages. Although maybe the new messaging system is better...IDK because I haven't tried it/received it. Adding your own commentary or tag essay onto someone's post is cool, but if the post gets hundreds/thousands of notes, very few people will end up seeing what you added to the discussion and the discussion itself becomes impossible to follow.

Are there a lot of fandom people still over here? Because my flist is pretty much dead. I used to check it every day but now I only check it once/twice a week and I don't feel like I've missed much. And I don't think any of my communities are still active. Like, the most active among them only get two or so entries a week. And that's only when new episodes are airing. Like this one Walking Dead community has weekly episode discussion posts but that's pretty much it and even those posts don't create much discussion. And Fandom Secrets -- which was one of the biggest communities, as far as I can tell -- still exists but is nowhere close to being as active as it was when I first discovered it.

Re: insanely long comment, sorry :)

[rogueslayer452.livejournal.com]

The show has always had a problem with kind of introducing something with a subplot or small arc/storyline, but then kind of dropping it or forgetting that it ever happened. It was minimal in the beginning which is probably why I didn't mind it as much, but within these last few seasons it's become more noticeable and it's distracting. Especially the "A" red-herrings, it happens so often with the accusations and misleads that it's become kind of a running joke now within the fandom, and not the good kind.

And that's not even talking about 'A' related stuff that turned out to be unimportant. Like pretty much everything to do with Toby's mom. Which also ended up being incredibly sloppy because the writers forgot their own timeline

Someone called out Marlene at a conference about that, which was kind of hilarious. I don't know her response to it though, probably some bullshit backtracking. But it goes to show that the fans aren't stupid as the show seems to think we are. We notice this shit. We spend time dissecting every little detail coming up with theories and connections, for goodness sake. Just because the writers can't recall the correct sequence of events of their own timeline doesn't mean the fans have.

but if the post gets hundreds/thousands of notes, very few people will end up seeing what you added to the discussion and the discussion itself becomes impossible to follow.

It's even worse when you go and correct something, people will still be reblogging the wrong thing because they didn't see the updated version. Even posts then end up being deleted will still be reblogged. This is dangerous when it comes to spreading around information. It's a major flaw in their communicative system, particularly in trying to be apart of a conversation because you don't always end up getting notified on who replies on what, particularly with asks (unless it's responded to privately). It's a very, very impersonal way of communicating and interacting with others, and it's probably why most don't take the effort to do it that often. I mean, it's an ongoing inside joke over there that Tumblr users don't really talk to each other, they just like/reblog and that's as much communication as you'll get from mutuals.

Are there a lot of fandom people still over here? Because my flist is pretty much dead.

It depends on who you follow, really. There are still fandom folks around, a lot more than people give credit for, but they are rather sparse (due to communities being dead and whatnot), and it's why friending memes are a great way of looking for them. My flist is somewhat active, just not as it used to be. I remember back when people updated several times a day, now it's more like a few times a week.