#piz duan

[thoughtfultigercat]

The lakes and mountains of the Upper Engadin, Switzerland da Eric Chumachenco - Thanks for over 18 million views!! Tramite Flickr: Seen from above Surlej on September 26th, 2023.

[soulmaking]

Giovanni Giacometti, Paesaggio di montagna 'Piz Duan' (1923)

[yama-bato]

An Ascent of Piz Duan Augusto Giacometti

[theavidindoorswoman]

On fandom and Veronica Mars

In the aftermath of the nonsense that is Veronica Mars Season 4, I’ve been thinking a lot about Fandom, my role in it, & how it became a part of my life. Veronica Mars is how I first discovered fandom. so it’s something that is really important to me and how I understand it. This will probably be unnecessarily long but bear with me, I have a lot of feelings.

I’ve always loved television, and watch much more television than a normal person should. I could wax poetic all day about why it’s the best medium for visual storytelling. Anyway, this is about Veronica Mars. Somewhere around 2009/2010, I was going through a really rough period post-college, in the midst of what professionals apparently call a major depressive episode.  My most used and least destructive coping mechanism? Making Netflix my BFF. I found myself doing A LOT of bingewatching. Veronica Mars was one of those shows that I always saw people recommending but never really thought would be a good fit for me; I was really over crime shows at that point and had no interest in watching a show about a private investigator, much less a teenaged one. Eventually, I gave in and found it on Netflix. I don’t even remember why really. But 64 episodes and 3 weeks later, I was ruined. 

I loved Veronica, I loved Wallace, I loved Keith, and eventually, I even loved Logan. To this day, Veronica & Wallace are still my favorite TV friendship, and Veronica & Keith are my favorite parent/child relationship. I also loved LoVe. This is the part where I shamefully admit that I initially shipped Veronica w/Duncan, yeah I know (I have a tendency to ship characters with the person that they think they are meant to be with). But from the moment that Veronica & Logan kissed in Weapons of Class Destruction, I was done for. As soon as I got over the shock, I was all in. Even though I’ve always rooted for various couples over the years, Whitley & Duane on A Different World, Will & Lisa on Fresh Prince, Buffy & Angel, Josh & Donna, etc. I never understood myself to be a shipper. I never even knew that shipping was a thing, which as someone who grew up spending the summer holidays watching soaps with my mom, is kind of absurd. Shout out to Days of Our Lives, Passions, and Y&R (Stefano DiMera is still the best soap villain of all time). 

But it wasn’t just about shipping. I knew that the show had been canceled, but when I got to that last episode, I was distraught. There had to be more, I thought. There’s no way that it just ended like that? Did Logan & Veronica ever get back together? What was the deal with Jake Kane? Would Piz’s death please become the next mystery? How was I just supposed to move on without the answers to these questions? How was I supposed to accept a world in which Veronica & Piz were still out there somewhere dating?

I’ve had many a beloved show canceled, in fact, I’m pretty sure that I’m a television jinx, but somehow this was different. I was genuinely distraught. I had been a longtime lurker and infrequent commenter on Television Without Pity (RIP), but hadn’t visited the site in ages. One of the first things I did was go on there and dig up the Veronica Mars sub-forum. I read old threads, saw people’s reactions to THAT KISS, read discussions and theories about potential future seasons.  I was DEEP into the rabbit hole. From TWOP it was on to youtube fan vids, and then on to the magical world of tumblr GIF compilations, and finally, it led to Fan Fiction and this entire world of incredibly talented writers who created wonderful stories just because they love this thing so much (thanks for fixing that season 3 ending a dozen times over).

I had never read a single piece of fan fiction in my life and I had no idea what this tumblr thing was, but suddenly I’d discovered this whole new part of the internet, a treasure trove of content that allowed me to keep visiting this universe that I loved, and keep hanging out with these characters that I loved. I realized that I wasn’t the only one who still mourned the loss of this show, that once I got past the freshness of my disappointment there were all these people out there who cared about the same things that I did. If Veronica & Co. could live on in this world, so could other beloved things.

Not too long after I “joined” this fandom news came about the movie Kickstarter. I didn’t think twice about donating, I drove almost 2 hours to the nearest theatre because I really wanted to see the movie on the big screen, I proudly wear kickstarter my t-shirt, I read the books, and like everyone else I wished and waited for more. And then finally, out of nowhere season 4 became a reality. I planned my study schedule around the release date, & freaked out when it got released early, shuffling things around, because finally, we were returning to Neptune. Anyway, we all know how that story ends.

Like many people, I was enraged. New waves of rage wash over me each time Rob or Kristen says something dismissive in an interview. The charaters feel like they’ve been replaced by bizzaro versions of themselves that look familiar but are at the same time unrecognizable, the relationships that made the show special have been cast by the wayside in favor of what exactly I’m not sure. It feels like a betrayal on so many levels. But I think that the hardest part for me is that I find myself ready to give up something that meant so much to me. Beyond the stories, beyond the characters, beyond LoVe, this show in many ways meant a lot more to me than so many of the others that I have loved. It introduced me to so many things that have since become a part of my life; it introduced me to fandom, and because of that, it changed the way that I watch television. It also came to me at a time when life felt really shit and gave me something that made me happy when not much else did. 

So even though it has become a thing which now holds a lot of pain, I’m hopeful that eventually, I’ll be able to find someplace for it in my life, where I can look back on it fondly and appreciate it for what it was, and what it gave me. Who knows when I’ll find that place, and if I’ll still be able to enjoy the other things that have now become crucial to my experience of the show, but I really hope so.

Also, Fuck Rob Thomas. Forever. Literally.

[just-art5]

An Ascent of Piz Duan by Augusto Giacometti - 1912

[ortovoxpr]

Piz Duan featured in Vail Daily