And now for something a little fannish.

[rogueslayer452]

Taken from the Crunchy Questions Meme:

What is a series finale most fans disliked, but that you liked - or the other way around?

Battlestar Galactica is a show where the series finale was quite heavily divided by most of the fans, which unfortunately kinda led to the disappearance of the fandom shortly thereafter, much to my dismay. However, I'm someone who actually really liked the series finale when I first watched it. In fact, the more I rewatched it, the more I loved it. I can acknowledge it wasn't perfect, and that there were things that could've been managed a bit better, but overall it was a wonderful and beautiful finale to a fantastic show. I felt satisfied with it.

Funnily enough, since there has been a mini-resurgence of it with newer fans due to the current events happening in our world, I've seen many people binge-watch the entire show and some have said that they absolutely loved the ending and didn't understand why it wasn't well-received initially. Not gonna lie, it makes me feel kind of vindicated in a way.

If you're in fandom, do you prefer focusing on fanworks, meta, or do you like helpings of both?

I enjoy both equally.

Fanworks are great to see and support creative people in fandom, whether it be fanfiction, fanart, graphic and gifmaking, and other forms of artistic expression. You see a lot of variety and styles, from both big and smaller fandoms. And reading meta has always been something I've enjoyed, because I love seeing different opinions and thoughts that critiques or analyzes something, whether it's a specific piece of media, a character, a pairing, fandom as a whole, whatever it is. Sadly, the latter isn't seen as much these days, particularly in written form. It still does exist in certain areas of fandom of course, but not as prominent as it used to be. You'll most likely end up getting short "hot takes" without going further in-depth, and it's often just shared around on social media platforms without anyone adding anything to the conversation, and it just gets lost in the void. Video essays have become more common in recent years, which is great and I've liked a lot of those, although sometimes some of those don't really focus much on the fandom/fannish side of things and just go straight into media analysis, and I've personally liked seeing the interconnection of the two, like an introspection of fandom's relationship with a piece of media and the like.

But yeah, as a whole I love and enjoy both of my fandom experience.

Comments

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

I also don't like the impersonal side of video essays, and even have the same problem with podcasts. I love the essays and podcasts themselves, but often if there IS discourse between viewers/listeners, it's Patreon only, so you don't really get to be involved in the conversation if you're not a Patron. You just watch or listen. YouTube has comments, but while I don't think YouTube comments are as nonsensical as they used to be (I remember when 90% of the comments would be either flat-out nasty or more innocently strange, but still rather pointless), it's still not a platform I feel entirely comfortable engaging in. Even though I did find a way to disassociate my YouTube account with my email address so I feel comfortable commenting on that level. (Which is the other problem, you're supposed to use your real name for so much anymore. I'm not using my real name.)

I do love fanworks, although I don't have the time to seek them out as much anymore, and you really have to scour to find the good stuff, OR things you're interested in reading. :/ But I love the idea, and I will hopefully always stand by my belief that fanworks are a legitimate use of creative energy and worth indulging in. Fanart is real artwork and fanfiction is real writing. (I'd further argue that a lot of "classic" art and literature is highly derivative.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

I liked the BSG ending too. However, the last 10 minutes of Lost don't exist for me. XD

Mostly fanworks for me. I just want to have some fun with the characters.

[elizalavelle.livejournal.com]

I loved the BSG finale. I'm not sure what people wanted instead. Still a fantastic show that deserves a lot of fandom love!

I miss fandom groups on LJ or in places that require more than a "like" or a quick Facebook comment. I really liked having fandom discussions and I think there's less of that now. It's also a bit harder as with streaming people watch everything on their own schedule so it's not like when we all watched an episode on the same day and then talked about it for a week.

[awakenyourfaith.livejournal.com]

I remember the uproar re: the Battlestar Galactica finale. I wasn't even a part of the fandom, and I was like "oh boyyy".

I like both fanworks and meta myself. Storied essays of a character's interactions (with evidence from the actual work) and the like are fascinating to me, and sometimes (if the author is really good) read like a book chapter or an academic paper (sans the footnotes).

[noybusiness.livejournal.com]

I so agree about the BSG finale. I think the amount of theorizing in the fandom hurt it. I'm glad to hear there's been a resurgence lately.

[malicat.livejournal.com]

I watched BSG some time after it was over so I had no idea about any kind of opinions in fandom,including the finale, which was probably a good thing because I for one loved the finale. Or at least it was satisfying to me on an emotional level,I don't quite remember how I thought about the plot at the time ^^