Fannish Friday: we were so close! (feat. ironic icon use)

[lirazel]

I was thinking earlier this week about Bones from ST: TOS and how close he comes to being a favorite character of mine. I think DeForest Kelley is great in the role, and I like a curmudgeon!

But omg, I hate how he's constantly space!racist to Spock, who is, always, my number one priority! Why??? did the writers do this??? It keeps me from loving Bones completely and it also keeps me from OT3-ing him with Spock and Kirk. I can imagine a world in which Bones is still gruff and grumpy and skeptical but not a bigot against Vulcans, and in that world, I would adore him! In that world, that OT3 would be one of my all-time ships! But we, alas, do not live in that world!

I'm also thinking of Becky Chambers, whose worldbuilding I find so very, very fun and who is a very good writer who actually writes alien main character! I feel like, on paper, she is a writer who I should absolutely adore, and yet her books are lacking something to make me love her. I told Jessica it was because they're lacking the messiness of real life, and I do think that's part of it, though there's something else I can't quite put my finger on.

So tell me about your near-misses. Is there something out there--a character, a show, a book, a ship, whatever--that you could have loved wholeheartedly if just one small thing had been done differently?

Comments

[sawthefaeriequeen]

Honestly? Noah apparently getting erased from the gang's minds in The Raven Cycle is what's keeping me from trying out the Dreamer Trilogy. It won't be canon if I don't read further! Lalala!

But yeah, I love the series in its flawed glory except for that. Memory erasure is one of my most disliked tropes.

[lirazel]

Ooof. I get that. I ignored it in TRC, but I still have never, ever forgiven Doctor Who for what it did to Donna. And probably never will.

[sawthefaeriequeen]

Yeah, thankfully it's easy to handwave away in TRC because the writing is so vague and dreamy in Raven King.

There's also another fantasy series I adore that ends like that, and most of the fandom ignores it.

I've seen some of Moffat's run and Davies's run, but I've never managed to check out Donna's run, and it's because of exactly that.

[lirazel]

What's the other fantasy series?

It sucks the most because otherwise Donna is AMAZING.

[sawthefaeriequeen]

The Dark is Rising Sequence. It’s a mark of how good it is that it’s still one of my favorite series despite containing one of my least favorite tropes.. The thing happens at the end and it’s like, one, two sentences? So the fandom ignores it or writes around it.

[lirazel]

Oh, I see! I still haven't ever gotten around to reading that one, though I know it's a classic.

[sawthefaeriequeen]

I think you'll like it! It's like a proto-Raven Cycle.

[ruuger]

Interestingly, my issue with Becky Chambers is kinda the same as your issue with Bones. There are elements to her worldbuilding & characterization that felt to me super toxic/disturbing, but which she clearly had meant to be neutral or even positive.

And I have soo many near misses. In general, if something is recced to me as "just like [thing that I love]" it's usually a miss, because often the thing that is similar is not the thing that made that canon interesting to me.

The most recent near-miss is probably Andor, which I should have loved (and expected to love), but which I think I would have liked better if it had been a true ensemble show with Andor just one of the many people working for the rebellion instead of making him a nexus.

[lirazel]

If you feel inclined to share what you find toxic/disturbing, I would be incredibly interested in hearing it!

In general, if something is recced to me as "just like [thing that I love]" it's usually a miss, because often the thing that is similar is not the thing that made that canon interesting to me.

Yeah, this definitely happens to me a lot too.

Andor is definitely not the kind of found-family ensemble show that might be expected. It really works for me because it shows all the disparate parts that make up a resistance movement, but I don't feel fannish about it the way I would if it were the kind of show you describe. I can easily imagine writing a ton of fic if it were that kind of show! But as it is, I just enjoy watching it and thinking about it.

[ruuger]

It's been years since I read it, so my main memory is just a vague sense of unease about it, but I think my main issues was how the "bad guy" crewmember was treated, and also something about how the reptile alien's culture and the feeling I got that the author was trying to make a point about not being judgemental about other culture's traditions but it was something that you really should be judgemental about, I think? And also the general vibe of non-humans as expies for real-life minorities, which often did not work at all in the context of the world. Sorry, this is super vague but I literally don't remember much about the book besides being disappointed and finding it a bit skeevy :D

[lirazel]

Totally fair! I do think that she's a preachy kind of writer, and when you're that preachy, you always risk preaching about something that your audience disagrees with. I wish she'd chill out a little about Moral Correctness, and I'm saying that as someone who has been described as the Woke Police. So.

[evewithanapple]

That one thing in Crooked Kingdom. You know the one. Of course, I think it's a manifestation of these books/the author's larger issues around fantasy nationalism and militarism (war has good guys and bad guys! The good guys are cool and groovy and sex positive and the bad guys are boring prudes! If you're scared of magic users who can kill you with their brains, that's racism!) so it probably would've surfaced some other way, but ehhhhhh.

[sawthefaeriequeen]

That thing close to the ending? If it's that, I felt like that was so random.

[evewithanapple]

The character death, yeah. I have a whole rant locked and loaded about it that I deploy at anyone who makes the mistake of asking.

[sawthefaeriequeen]

I would love to read any rants you have stowed away!

I honestly think part of the reason she did that thing is because of pressure from a certain brand of too-online Twitter fans. I normally wouldn't have such bad faith, but in a more recent Grishaverse book, she also torpedoed another half of a ship that people had been complaining about, so…

[evewithanapple]

*deep breath* Well . . .

To begin, I don't necessarily think it was a choice in response to twitter fans, especially since this was back in 2015 before twitter became what it is now. I think she's just prone to killing off characters for cheap pathos. It's especially noticeable in this case because you can see how she picked which character to kill - can't kill off Wylan or Jesper because that's bury your gays, can't kill Kaz or Inej because they're (arguably) the leads, can't kill Nina because she's needed for future books, so . . . womp. And while I'm not opposed to character death in principle, I think the way she does it really weakens the whole narrative for the sake of shock value, because it doesn't have anything to do with the broader themes of the book. It just comes out of nowhere, swipes the reader's feet out from under them, and then doesn't get dealt with at all because there's thirty pages left in the book and there's other plots to be wrapped up. So in that regard, just as a choice in isolation, I think it's a bad one, and the reason I don't plan to read any of her future books. I'm not interested in an author who values gut punches over thematic coherency.

But on a more macro level, I feel like it reveals a lot about how she views the fictional world she's set up. Ravka and Fjerda are at war for Reasons (what reasons? God knows) but also Fjerda/the druskelle are the bad guys. Why? Well, because the Grisha are a persecuted minority . . . who are also an elite unit in the Ravkan army. So the whole concept of anti-Grisha racism makes no sense, and that's even before you get into the fact that they canonically commit war crimes against Fjerdan civilians, burninating their thatched roofed cottages and whatnot. ("Wars happen. People die," Nina thinks in response to this, like an absolute sociopath.) We, the reader, are supposed to view Ravka - and her army - as the good guys, even though there's no real reason for it beyond "a lot of our characters are Ravkan and they have cool magic powers and aren't boring prudes like the Fjerdans."

But even then that doesn't track with what Bardugo actually wrote, because both Nina and Matthias's arcs seem to be about them moving away from the nationalistic brainwashing they received at the hands of their respective armies and recognizing that they have value beyond being bodies on the battlefield. Except . . . not, because then Nina goes back to Ravka! This is what I mean when I say that Matthias's death yanked the rug out from every thematic beat that his storyline had hit before that: because if it had carried on to its natural conclusion of "both our countries are bad because nationalism is bad," then Nina wouldn't have gone back to Ravka, at least not in the way that she did. But Bardugo needed her there in order to support future book plots and so that she could avoid complicating the fantasy of Ravkan glory (side note: is Ravka going to have a revolution anytime soon, because it's based on turn-of-the-century Russia, and . . .) so Matthias had to die and Nina had to return to fight for a country that took her from her parents as a small child, raised her to die for leaders she had no part in electing, and then gave her up for dead when she was kidnapped by the druskelle. It's horrifying! But I don't think it's meant to be!

[lirazel]

You're not wrong!

[sawthefaeriequeen]

especially since this was back in 2015 before twitter became what it is now
That’s a good point. The other death, I find more suspicious though. It didn’t need to be that brutal.

and then doesn't get dealt with at all because there's thirty pages left in the book and there's other plots to be wrapped up
This! This drove me crazy. And then you have ‘no mourners’ as a convenient excuse to just not deal with the emotional fallout.

Well, because the Grisha are a persecuted minority . . . who are also an elite unit in the Ravkan army.
Yeah… I wonder if it’s because she viewed each series as different entities in her mind. Like, in THIS one they’re elites, but in THIS one they’re persecuted…the result is something like a cat chasing its own tail. I don’t remember, is the Grisha committing war crimes ever addressed other than “wars happen”?

But Bardugo needed her there in order to support future book plots and so that she could avoid complicating the fantasy of Ravkan glory
Yeah, true. This reminds me of that thing Disney does where a character’s themes and arc and wholeass trilogy can get snapped away any second so they can serve the overarching Avengers/MCU plot.

[evewithanapple]

I don’t remember, is the Grisha committing war crimes ever addressed other than “wars happen”?

None that I can recall, but there's a throwaway line where Inej thinks about how badly Ravka treats the Suli, but she won't bring it up to Nina because she gets defensive.

[gryfndor_godess]

THIS. I was having trouble thinking of an answer for this question, but this applies to me, too. It completely ruined the duology for me.

[lirazel]

Yeah....Yeah. I pretend it didn't happen, but I can totally and completely understand it ruining it for you.

[chestnut_pod]

Well, this "one small thing" is "the entire medium in which it was presented," but Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, which was delightful in every single respect except for the fact that I am congenitally incapable of keeping up with television shows.

[sophia_sol]

oh MOOD. There are so many truly excellent looking tv shows, and I simply cannot become a person who watches tv regularly!

[lirazel]

It's wild that I haven't even heard of that one! There is SO MUCH TV in the world!

I relate to that, except mine is "animated things." I can watch a children's movie and enjoy it, but I can never, ever get into anime or anything like that. I just can't emotionally connect with the character when it's animated. Which is a shame, because there are storylines out there I know I'd really love.

[sophia_sol]

you're so good at asking interesting questions for these posts!

I think it's pretty rare for me for there to be just one small thing that keeps me from loving something; if it's just that one thing then I'm pretty good at just pretending it doesn't exist :P like with the issue with Bones you discuss above! yes his anti-Vulcan bigotry is an issue, and I just kind of mentally erase it, most of the time. it's only when there are too many issues, or the one issue is major or central, that it becomes too much to simply not accept the things I don't like in my personal canon.

[lirazel]

Aww, thank you! I sometimes really struggle to come up with a question for the week, so that's good to hear. I'm always accepting suggestions if anyone ever has them (though no pressure).

if it's just that one thing then I'm pretty good at just pretending it doesn't exist

Understandable! There are some things I can erase, and some I can't, and I can't discern a pattern.

it's only when there are too many issues, or the one issue is major or central, that it becomes too much to simply not accept the things I don't like in my personal canon.

This makes a lot of sense.