Friday Discussion Question: Who Do You Love?

[browngirl]

And what, and why?

I'm snagging this from cereta, largely because LJ won't let me actually *reply* this to her post:

Pick a fandom you're currently into, and tell us what you love about it. This can be something about the source, something about the fandom itself, something about you, anything. Multiple reasons welcome ;).

My answer was Heroes, and it's full of NRE, and I'm not entirely certain how far I want to go in defence any of these statements; I mean them, but I'm not sure I'm up for mighty battles today. But be that as it may.

I recently fell in love with Heroes, for several reasons.

1) I care about the story it's telling. It still feels like it has a defined momentum and direction, and I'm willing to wait and see where it winds up.

2) I love the characters for not being archetypes, if that makes sense. They aren't "the Black guy" or "the blonde chick" but DL and Niki, to name two examples. They all strike me as fairly complex, especially for a TV show.

3) I love the comic-books-in-the-modern-day premise. I have friends who think it's not hardcore or problematic enough, but I find it as grim and as messy as I can believe, with enough light and warmth and victory to keep it from being an angstfest.

4) I love the female characters. Some people I know (including some whose opinions I *really* respect, so this is hard for me to say) think it's getting close to Women In Refrigerators territory, but I don't; of three female characters who died recently, one's death was about her character progression as a person, one's death is paralleled by the death of a male character in a previous episode and by a larger pattern that doesn't have to do with gender, and one's death, well, I'm willing to see what the fallout is before I decide about it.

5) I love that most of the romances are some form of ongoing relationship rather than incipient romances, with all the turbulence and history and time-deepened connections of such, whether they be marriages or love affairs.

6) I love the multicultural cast of characters, in both the suraface 'rainbow' aspect and the deeper realities of their actually *being* from different cultures. One of the characters is a biracial little boy whose power is *technomagery*! His power's about intelligence and technology, two capacities not often granted to Black characters even today, and he's just one example. That makes me unutterably happy. (They tried for diversity of sexuality, too, and got shot down by external forces, but they did try.)

I have other reasons, but I should stop.

It's funny, because I don't love Heroes so much as ground for fannish creativity; I'm very caught up in the canon story, I don't so much need side stories told in fanfic. I love it, I think, because I can give myself over to it and believe in its universe without constantly trying to figure out its contradictions. Frex, I think I even love it because I *don't* find its pair of sibling characters slashy, which means I actually entirely believe them as brothers. :)

And I really should stop. *goes to post this in my journal as well*



So, if you like, please tell me about something you love?

Comments

[gloss]

(What's NRE?)

I love hearing about what people I love are currently loving on - you & Heroes, Zee & bandom, Fox & reality tv, that kind of thing. Even, maybe especially, when I don't share the love, I just love seeing someone happy and enthusiastic and generous, you know?

I don't have a tv show that I *love* right now - there's Ugly Betty and the sitcoms (Girlfriends, Everybody Hates Chris, Scrubs, & Knights of Prosperity), but nothing's taken hold of me.

I love comics, though. :D

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

NRE- New Relationship Energy. I can be over the moon in love, but I want to at least disclaimer it. :)

I love hearing about what people I love are currently loving on - you & Heroes, Zee & bandom, Fox & reality tv, that kind of thing. Even, maybe especially, when I don't share the love, I just love seeing someone happy and enthusiastic and generous, you know?

*hugs you tightly* Thank you for saying this. I was worried I might be annoying, so I really appreciate the reassurance. I remember when Serenity came out, and a lot of people were snarking about how happy it made people, and I just wanted to go argue with them, you know? How can people be so down on others' squee?

Anyway. (I am full of agitas today.) *hugs you again*

[katarik.livejournal.com]

I love this lady I know called Ny. I really like being her friend. She makes me happy.

*snugs you*

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

But sweetie, I'm a girl, not a fandom. *blushes a lot and hugs you tightly back*

[cereta.livejournal.com]

LJ really is being whiny today, isn't it?

Okay, I'll go with SPN.

To get the obvious out of the way: pretty men. Fighting evil. To Styx.

Horror, which I love. Urban legends, ghosts, haunted hotels (I cannot love that enough), creepy dolls, Wendigo...

I love that it's just a good show. I love that it thinks about the logical conclusion of things and goes there. I love that fannish speculation doesn't outpace the the show. I love that it's unafraid to show real family angst in the middle of unreal situations. I love that Sam actually shot Dean. I love that Sam and Dean talk like brothers. I love that John tried to be a good father and frequently wasn't.

Did I mention pretty men? And Styx?

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Pretty men fighting evil! \o/

The SPN fandom is really nifty to obbserve, even from outside. And the bits of the show I've watched have been fun. :D

[miakun.livejournal.com]

(In regards to Heroes, I like to joke about the #4, because it's like a real comic book now, but I agree with your points about the character arc. I am wary, because I don't want a bunch of pointless deaths ala Lost's current status, but if they don't do that it'll be good. Because so far it's so good. And they didn't die because they were female, they died because I loved them and that's the way it goes!)

I love my new and current fandom, DC! For several reasons.

1) Dick Grayson.

2) There is so much good writing that I always have something to poke around and read, that actually warrants me never shutting up and having OPINIONS (which I love to do) and f/b better than "guh" which makes me happy. And there's so much versatile writing, because of the way the comics are set up. There are so many different levels to all the characters that people can really grasp them on each of those levels and it makes them true all the time.

2) Stephanie Brown

3) People are so nice with reviewing and actually reading stuff that hey, I wanted to write in the first place and it's not like other fandoms where you have to cater to writing something really happy or on roses, because people can take the grit - and they like it.

4) The actual canon (though with it's recent faults) tops over Marvel for me for the sheer vastness of their character's relationships. DC pwns the love beyond sex. Donna and Dick is like my guh relationship and that's just one of a million that is completely platonic, but shows depths and family in extreme situations. These are people that are living in these crazy times where their universe can implode on itself, an evil alternate reality version of a meta human who I miss greatly can punch time, and every day there's disaster after disaster. These are not stressors that normal humans are subject to in real life, but in DC they are and they're still people. A lot of their heroes aren't even metas. Hell, Batman's like the most famous of DC and he doesn't have any powers.

They go through these horrible things and still have a sense of love and family and hope and come out these sort of symbols of what to stand for and it makes me sound so cheezy, but I really love comic books and especially DC, because they know how to embrace both mediums of art and fiction (most of the time).

5) Tim Drake, Barbara Gordon, Jason Todd, Cassandra Cain, Kon-El, Roy Harper, Cissie King-Jones, Cassie Sandsmark, Donna Troy, Bart Allen, Rose Wilson, Lian Harper

6) The fact that a lot of people in the fandom read and write het, gen, slash, and sometimes all at once. That makes me happy and filled with glee. And the fact that canon pairings are not usually ignored and are embraced even when there's a slash pairing involved in the writing. The ability to embrace character's duality and the fact that they have it makes me thrilled.

Also, I'm not always a fan of "pair off everyone with everyone else" in a fandom, but I almost like every pairing in this fandom. I can probably count the ones I don't like on one hand and I'd probably still give them a shot with the right author.

7) Toonverse. It's like a completely seperate section of the universe, with very separate characters, who are all still the same and yet still different. It's a nice place to escape to when you don't want to stray too far. And Bruce Timm is god.

8) The activity. I don't have to worry about the fandom drying out by the time I'm halfway into a sixteen piece 60K story, because the comics keep coming and there's a new fic to read everyday!

9) The fact that nine times out of ten when I click on a porn piece I have stuff to pay attention to other than great sex, there's character development and the like, even when the author says it's just porn.

10) Dick Grayson

11) Having the community be so big on livejournal allows me to be OCD and anal retentive with my organization, since I get to code my own journal. Which calms me.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

And they didn't die because they were female, they died because I loved them and that's the way it goes!

Yeah, *exactly*.

Oh, man, I love your comics fandom love, and share it. The DC Comics fandom was my salvation in the online fandom world.

[danachan.livejournal.com]

I think I'm going to have to give Heroes another try, one day. (Perhaps when it's out on DVD.) I am just not all that good at keeping up with TV shows, you see.

I love hobbits, as you might have guessed. *grin* I might post more aboutt hat on Monday, since Monday will end up being my B2MEM month... day.

*has a cuddlefest*

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

*cuddles you back*

Heroes, with its story arcs, will lend itself well to that sort of viewing.

[myniamh.livejournal.com]

I think because it's set in a more Marvel-verse ... 'verse, Micha would be called a Technopath. =D

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Technopath... I like that. *makes note*

[myniamh.livejournal.com]

I think because one of Marvel's biggest books was set in a school they have given it several shots at making the names of powers sound like scientific terms.
Peter I think would be an empathic biopath, a shape shifter would be a metamorph.