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incarnateirony · 4 years

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Sometimes I feel like SPN’s greatest strength is its fandom’s weakness. And sometimes even the product itself.

When SPN started, it was very insular. The internet screamed at you in most parts of the world to connect. Cable was even pretty rare. It was on a small backwater channel and, even at its hottest fresh burst, was running 1/4-1/5 of the numbers of the leading competitors at the time. When SPN premiered just above a 2.x, Grey’s was running 9.x and was still well above 8.x by the time SPN fell to 1.x. It was a dedicated cult show, with fandoms communicating by postcard, huddled in moderated livejournal corners.

Kripke, Jensen and others have all mentioned SPN really getting its wings around S4 to have a sense of stability, and it even survived the digital conversion mandate, it survived the advertisement crash, it survived one of the biggest TV show culls in history while the landscape changed and, somehow, the ratings that year went /up/. But even still, just because it wasn’t riding the bubble anymore, didn’t mean it was huge.

It barely survived Ostroff’s mismanagement. It barely survived the season 7 crash under Gamble. And then CW struck a legendary deal, and binge watching became available on Netflix, while Carver shifted and serialized the show, now that both DVR and increasing-speed internet and streaming services became available. And within a year, SPN was an international phenomenon. Hell, by seasons 11+, it perpetually ran in the top 20 digitally called shows in the world, ranking higher each year.

I think this is really what caused, in every way shape and form, the constant fighting in fandom.

I mean sure, we can talk about people who get stuck in ruts in what they think the show is supposed to be about. Those happen in every old as dirt fandom. For every Old School Fan in SPN I point you to Star Trek, to Star Wars, to whatever. You know, Back In My Day The Show Meant XYZ isn’t really a fresh thing to SPN.

But the fighting isn’t just about that. It’s about how to render characters. It’s about what makes good story flow. It’s about what dialogue means. In some corners, it’s about representation.

By and large the fandom endorses, “all interpretations are equal” -- which is valid to a point. Personally, I always asterisk it with “all interpretations are equal as long as your interpretation continues to work for you.”

But there’s some catch-22s to that. In a still developing piece, things change. That’s obvious. And what “works for you” seems to be difficult for some people to identify. I regret to inform you, if you have an interpretation, and yet the piece continues to divide further and further from your interpretation, and you continue to get angrier while the show seems to be going against your interpretation, then technically, no. Your interpretation is no longer working for you.

That is, if you choose to continue to consume content. There’s lots of ways to manage this. One can figure out at what point their interpretation broke away from the product and try to adapt -- you can take pointers from fandom, but realistically, it’s something to do yourself. Taking pointers from fandom tends to be what gets people into this mess where people get angry. You can choose to stop consuming new content and enjoy the canon within the sandbox that made you happy with your interpretation. Or yeah, you can stay angry and keep watching while you’re angry and refuse to figure out how to get un-angry, but I mean, why torture yourself. It’s your right and your decision of course, so I’m not going to tell anyone not to. That’s not the point of this.

Because ultimately that’s a small aside to the “interpretations are equal”, a general disclaimer appended, vs “still developing piece”, but the point I intend to make is it’s more than that. It’s more than Old Fan vs New Fan, it’s more than whatever weird totemic argument fandom ritualistically engages with and faps to. It’s...

A while back I mentioned offering to do an AV studies course. Technically drafts of it are still floating in my draft folder, just between life emergencies, life, covid pandemic, getting grossly ill, I’m just sitting here kind of empty. Full honest. But thoughts still come, so I blog, even while staring emptily at my half finished project in my video editor I don’t have the spoons to finish much less anything else.

But one of the things it was going to discuss was different things like Representations, Audiences, Ideologies, Language, and so forth. And this circles back to my point on this show’s strength and weakness, and how it falls into interpretation.

Two major impacts (I would be far from saying they are the only, or are they themselves laws that make someone somehow oblivious, but are major influencers when speaking of large groups of people) I’ve noticed are generation, and location. Such as... country.

SPN is a very Americana show. It’s filmed in America for America (hey, technically Canada is North America, but it’s definitely American oriented business/studios regardless of filming locale), often making American references, but even getting references doesn’t mean you’re really catching a lot. American shows do not follow the same time/format/delivery pattern as, say, Chinese or Korean shows. Go watch them, put them side by side if you have to of something in related-ish genres. Different cultures deliver their stories differently be it pacing, structure, symbolism and color, or whatever. What Japanese culture perceives out of the idea of a dog in symbolism is like wildly different than what American culture perceives out of a dog.

Similarly each generation has its own language. I mean, watch boomers and zoomers talk right past each other and that isn’t hard to see in practice.

Don’t even get me started on representation. America’s in a goddamn trashfire of Hays Code aftermath, which say, British people didn’t have to grow up with and may be used to entire other systems so they see Rando American Show elsewhere and go, well see! but that’s a whole other mess. Just... adding it to the equation (and vaguely thanking the Brits and other Europeans for shipping off so many gay ass films for decades that the MPAA couldn’t stop that they just gave up enforcing the code as much as letting cultural aftermath doing the work.)

So this show absolutely exploded, and like, it’s nobody’s fault that the entire sum of the fandom aren’t all like, media minds/eyes that pay attention to the different methods in international films. But it adds to a lot of talking past each other in the dialogue. It leads to a lot of expectations or readings that may be/seem valid to people because it’s what they know in their area. It leads to a lot of obfuscating of points, infinite carousels of suggestions and alternatives that, after dozens of millions of fans engage for a decade, just becomes a big relativistic vat, but a lot of lanes are now angry in every way.

Like this isn’t a one-ship thing or one-lane thing, it’s a just about everybody thing. And it’s not about any one subject or angle or view of approach. These days, it feels like Everybody Is Mad About Everything. Their reads aren’t really working for them anymore, regardless of their lane (for every pissed off Wincester there’s a pissed off Destiel fan, for every pissed off Sam stan there’s a pissed off Dean or Cas or even Rowena stan these days). Everybody somehow seems permanently blindsided by Everything if you take the temperature of the sum of an entire lane as a general rule, rather than (impossibly) reading through every opinion in each lane and figuring out where people are still happy vs where they’re upset. Then of course groupthink kicks in and well, if Rando French Cas Stan is Outraged, I Should Be Too I Guess. Everybody’s mad, guess I should be mad, instead of trying to figure out why everybody everywhere is fucking mad.

So people each build interpretations, reasonable in their own way, from their own origins, in their own countries with their own styles, but somewhere along the line, there’s a fracture. The storytelling pacing they thought they knew vanished and turned out wrong. The character dialogue wasn’t what they interpreted out of it. The cinematic stuff they read was coded to a different language than they were used to reading (back to, say, dogs). People are flagged and pay attention to things that may mean nothing to a filmmaker in the area it’s made and other people completely miss things that may mean something to the filmmaker because it really doesn’t mean A Thing elsewhere.

Compound this by lanes, echo chambers, people collectively finding what they enjoy and is -- respectively -- convenient to their mindset. Add in ship warring, slap fights, wasted kilobits. Add in decentralization, globalization. There’s no leaders, no teachers, and frankly, there’s not even a real In The Know anymore. Most people are In The Know to some extent. Some more than others. Hell, the people who most loudly /publicly/ pose as In The Know are often hilarious bags of air that end up embarrassed a year later (here’s to looking at you, blogger that anti-ranted Friendship Fan now facing the return of the Subtweeting Turkey. You know who you are and what I’m talking about.) I mean sure, there are a few legit Secret Masters of Fandom. But that’s it. They’re Secret. You may kinda pick up the vibe between the lines, and maybe just maybe they’ll drop a few genuine hints here and there in public to try to tilt people ahead, but it’s not the clout chasing goblins around here that anyone really should listen to and I /think/ at large everybody’s kinda figured that out. Most SMOFs are just silent contacts that hide in DM boxes and casually ignore the raging thunderstorms in the wild.

So going back to how I started this post-- while SPN found its success mostly post-S8 from the globalization of the product making it a phenomenon -- more than any one ship (but that doesn’t help), more than any one demographic, it’s just... it feels like everybody’s talking past each other and nobody’s introspecting or considering that while, yes, people’s interpretations are valid to them as long as it works for them, that if it’s not REALLY working for them anymore, maybe they’re missing somewhere. Generationally. Culturally. Whatever it may be. And I don’t see any amount of me sitting here in a Thinking Man pose about it changing that, or changing a vast amount of minds, as much as I really just want to /speak/ the thought process.

Because like. I’ve always existed kind of in the grey space of fandom. I “ship” Destiel in so far as I simply can’t be budged from the value in the text be that by antis or honestly even shipping culture itself. I don’t escalate into rants just to prOVE the tRuTH. I write meta about mythology because it interests me. Who the fuck are you MikeDawg1783894jKFbetabitch82398123? why should I care, where is your self importance coming from. I am far too tired to bother explaining anything to anyone, and frankly, I don’t owe anybody jack shit. You know what, you do you. If you’re happy go be happy. If you’re not happy, stop spewing your misery at me. This isn’t hard. But people around here make it complicated for some reason.

The internationalism also harms the product to some extent. Parrot Analytics reveals that this Americana show with Americana origins and methods is also ... *primarily viewed in Russia.* Like, 3x the US audience size. SPN been running the top 15-20 digitally called shows in the world up there with big sling hitters like Grey’s Anatomy now? Grey’s, as I saId above, always dwarfed it. In live numbers we still do. But there’s that audience to account for online now, with SPN treading almost neck-and-neck with it.

Result? Well, with TV being a business, that means that they try to cater to Russia. And like, no hate on my Russian friends out there. ILU. There’s nothing wrong with you. But then it’s like trying to perform for an international audience that this studio is not designed nor predisposed to deliver content in the form of. Read as: whole new interpretive tire fire potential, new arguments. New mess. Just extra restrictions on a core business level about the do’s and don’t’s for authors. Cuz things that are cool in the US may not be cool in Russia and the other way around for that matter.

So somewhere between “what business chooses to do” and “infinite cascade of fandom white noise, anger and confusion,” I feel lies in the same thing that has kept SPN so successfully on the air so long. It’s strength is it’s weakness, and it’s the international nature of it, the longer I think on it.

And no, I’m in no way implying international friends aren’t welcome or whatever. Most of my followers are international. That’s fine, I ain’t shitting on you or telling you to hang it up and go home. I just feel like a lot of this eternal static is based on this many cultures trying to argue interpretations of a work from an outside perspective with very few anchors on the methodology that drives it from within. And frankly, fandom hotbox dialogue doesn’t exactly lend itself to sitting and truly wanting to discuss the methodology, because people are so high-strung at this point, nobody wants to hear a POV that clashes with what they’ve built for themselves. Because you know, “my interpretation is valid.” I just... wish... people would assist their own health and mental health by, once it no longer is-- kinda figuring out why and where? be that for international reasons of film delivery, be that language, be that generational gaps, be that *WHATEVER* it may be. I feel like that’s a message not often-enough put out there in this fandom.

Like, hell, it’s okay to like. Just. Not watch new episodes. Play in the sandbox that worked for you when it still, like, worked for you. Watch it a million times. Write a million fics to it. It’s okay to not watch the Declared Popular Thing. You don’t have to shackle yourself to a piece when it’s no longer working for you, just like I don’t advise watching a show with a premise you hate only to yell about it from go. And furthermore-- if you do wanna keep going, it’s totally fair and okay to go, hm, I was wrong somewhere. Let me unplug this giant fandom screaming megaphone from my skull, go review, figure out for myself where the fandom egregore led me one way or another, let me find a new way to appreciate this piece as it continues to grow. But that ain’t gonna happen unless people truly want to surrender their current framing. And... you don’t have to. Not anymore than you HAVE to keep viewing.

I’ve found, for example, a lot of internationals I talk to tend to be upset about something or another, or confused, or what have you. And the reasons vary. They aren’t dumb people. But somewhere they fell off the rails and struggle to get back on and whatever chamber of fandom they’re in isn’t helping. The internationals I find that don’t struggle with any part of it just outright tend to be people who like... specialize? be it film study or lit study or whatever the topic is that helps them bridge understanding; people who can discuss constructivist theory or have read enough books across their barriers that it all just kinda clicks. Doesn’t make them better or worse than anyone else. Not a better fan. Just... happier with the content, which is better for /them/. And that’s really what matters in the end, isn’t it?

So IDK what the solution to this musing really is, as much as trying to put my finger on the pulse, beyond the sticky underbelly that is shipping fandom and its many corners that people blame for a sum of it. And like. Yeah. Y’all know I’m not a fan of Shipping Culture. But I really don’t think My Ship Vs Ur Ship is all there really is to blame.

The same reason for SPN’s success is often the same reasons for SPN’s fandom’s downfall, IMO.

#supernatural #spn #fandom

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drferox · 7 years

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20 Questions with Dr Ferox #18

Finally sat down to work through 20 more questions. I know I’d been a bit behind for a while, but here comes a flurry of questions and comments. As usual I’ve tried to tag people that were brave enough to put their names on the questions, but if you were Anonymous you’ll have to look through manually.

@tenacious-brii said: Hi! I was wondering if you might have heard of the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals, and if you have, what you think of them. My understanding is they're working to implement a higher breeding standard to prevent inbreeding / continuation of genetic diseases and disorders (like hip dysplasia for example) It sounds like a worthy goal but maybe I am being hopelessly optimistic, lol. As for tax; Which pokemon would be your main companion? Thank you for all that you do!!

The OFA would love to implement higher standards for breeding dogs, but they can't actually enforce anything. All they can do is collect the data and make recommendations. They have some super interesting data on the frequency of hip and elbow dysplasia in dogs, but there are a few potential flaws.

Number one is that it's not compulsory for breeders to disclose their hip and elbow results. If they screen a dog with bad hips, for example, and simply choose not to send those results in, then the recorded 'breed average' will be 'better' than reality.

I do have a soft spot for Ivysaur.

savageborn said: I met a pure bred St Bernard at work for the first time today (i work part time as a vet assistant at a small local clinic) and. I was taken aback. They're so big. I've never seen one in person before and im still just amazed. I wanted to share. He was very sweet just. So Big.

Yes, they are indeed very big. Super fun as puppies though, when at even their early puppy vaccination they're dwarfing adult dogs in the waiting room.

Anonymous said: Up until relatively recently (the 1980s!), it was widely accepted that human newborns didn't feel pain. I'm not surprised if that idea hasn't persisted when it comes to mice.

Gosh humans can be stubborn, self-centred and lacking in empathy, can't they? That was probably believed to make themselves feel a whole lot better about circumcision.

agender-fordmustang said: As a vet assistant, I find egg + meat chicken production to be very interesting, despite my disgust for birds who are bred so large they cant get up out of their own excreta. What's your favorite thing which you thought you'd hate?

I don't think I really expected to hate anything, I find most of biology genuinely fascinating. I find turkey semen collection a bit weird, but there's not much on the animal side I really hate.

Humans and the things we do are complicated. I wasn't really all that fond of humans when I started out, but have come to like a larger percentage of them over time.

Anonymous said: In regards to getting accepted to vet school, would you say grades were very important? Like would an A vs a B in a class make it or break it? Also do they look at extracurriculars as much as everyone tells me haha. Everyone loves to tell me how competitive vet school is and I've just started my undergrad education so I'm trying to evaluate my priorities! Thank you so much and thank you for running such a wonderful blog! <3

When I went through, and please remember it was over a decade ago when I was applying, they looked at your academic achievements first, and extracurriculars second, but if you didn't have any extracurricular experience with the veterinary industry you weren't looked on as favourably as if you did. By the interview stage, the professors had already more or less decided who they wanted as students, the interviews just sealed the deal and maybe bumped you higher or lower on the list.

Anonymous said: I have a condition where I have random and uncontrollable nose bleeds, at least once a day and lasting anywhere from a minute to an hour. I would like to have a job with animals or in the medical field but I am afraid my nose bleeds will be in excusable in a medical environment. Can someone like me work as a vet or other medical personal or am I better off finding something else?

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how to answer this. There are definitely medical, infectious and sanitary concerns with having unpredictable nosebleeds. I'm not even sure how you're managing outside of a clinical setting, and I'm sorry I can't be more help.

Anonymous said: hello! i recently got a kitten to accompany the cat i already have (they get along wonderfully!) I was wondering though, we feed our cat purina kibble and have been feeding the kitten canned fancy feast- im planning on incorporating more wet food into the older cat's diet because i know cats get a majority of hydration from their food. anyway i know that the brands we feed them arent ideal, but we dont have a lot of money for otherwise. do you have any advice on better brands perhaps?

Cats are perfectly capable of drinking water, but I don't give people food recommendations. That's a slippery slope that I wont go down.

bettsplendens said: Am I right in thinking that "meat by-products" in the context of cat food probably means organ meat and miscellaneous scraps rather than anything actually ominous?

More or less. It can include any part of the animal that isn't profitable to market as a labelled something for human consumption. So while it might include lots of organs, it's less likely to include hearts, liver and tripe, which can be sold separately, and may also include things like neck and cheek meat is those cuts are not popular locally, or just edges of things that nobody wanted.

Anonymous said: Why do dogs have really short hiccup attacks? Are they hiding hiccup curing secrets from us?!

Dogs can have longer hiccup attacks, but their diets are usually more regular and they're less likely to be overfed than we are. They usually grow out of hiccups in puppyhood.

Anonymous said: How about when I worked at a pet store, I had to dissuade a man who wanted a remote shock collar for his wife's 3lb Yorkie. The smallest collar we carried was rated for 10lbs minimum. He said they'd go out to check on their cattle, and the dog would jump out of his arms and race towards the cows. He said he was concerned a cow would hurt her, and he just needed "something that would drop 'er." I suggested a leash. He said, "Nah, she don't like leashes."

Humans are capable of astounding levels of foolishness.

Anonymous said: Our dog recently had to have a large patch shaved on her side due to a wound. She is double-coated, and I've always heard you shouldn't shave a double-coated dog because the coat won't grow back the same. Is this true? Obviously it's better that it was shaved or the vet wouldn't have done it, but I want to make sure this won't affect her ability to be in the sun in the future and all that jazz. (btw we love our vet to bits, but she can be a bit hard to reach for simple questions)

It will grow back eventually (assuming no endocrinopathies affecting the fur), but the guard hairs will take longer to grow back and look like they did before shaving. It's only a part of the dog that's been shaved, so unlikely to be an issue.

Anonymous: What sorts of things do vet assistants do on the job? (I'm trying to figure out if being a vet assistant is something I actually want to do or if I just think that I want to do it because I like animals) Also question tax, what's your favorite kind of flower? Thanks!

Considering Vet Assistant is not a regulated term here, it might be anything from a layperson with no training just doing what a vet instructs them to do, to being basically a vet nurse. I do not work with vet assistants, I work with trained vet nurses, so you will get a better answer asking someone who actually works under that title.

Anonymous said: Not sure if this has been asked already but one of my cat's tails vibrates and shakes. She does it all the time. I'm not necessarily concerned, but is this normal in cats?

It can be if the cat is highly stimulated or agitated.

Anonymous said: A short story for you: ever since he was little my cat has done the claw kneading thing to my hair and dribbles while doing it. It's so weird but now it's just normal to me. I assume it's just his quirk it's cute

A lot of cats will salivate while purring and kneading. It's probably a reflex left over from kittenhood, when they would knead their mother while suckling.

Anonymous said: I'm worried about my dog's bite since he is a show dog. So far he has the normal scissor bite but it seems like it's turning to a level bite. He has reached his adult height and is a bit over 1 year old. Are the jaws supposed to grow anymore?

Probably not but it might depends on breed and I can neither see nor examine your dog, and you are anonymous.

Anonymous said: question tax: for some reason i imagine that cattle really love you!? like just licking your face and trying to lay in your lap. i just get that vibe!! question: so my dog is missing a few molars for some reason. our vet says it isn't a problem and he eats perfectly well. it's got me thinking about the dogs that have missing teeth and end up with their tongues hanging out of their mouths. what causes that? my pup doesn't do it but there's a pretty obvious gap.

Dogs that are missing canine teeth often have tongues that deviate and pop out. It's more common in brachycephalic dogs, which have long tongues relative to their face anyway.

I miss cows.

Anonymous said: I work at a pet store and frequently have to deal with people who own wheezing pugs thinking "oh he just makes that sound when he's happy", do you have any advice for convincing them that their dog isn't healthy and needs to see a vet? Question tax: came for the vet stories, stayed for the vet stories, your blog is fantastic!

I tend to say something along the lines of how something might be common and been present for a long time, but that doesn't mean it's healthy. Or that something might have been normalised but that doesn't make it normal.

prepackagedsoul said:I've had two German Shepherds (so I've spent some time at the vet, like you said a lot went wrong with them but i did do everything possible to fix it) and for now I've switched over to cats and, holy shit? Like they're so hardy and long lasting my grandmother has a cat that is 20 years old. She also owns one of her kittens, and he's nineteen. They're both still pretty active too, so I guess I'll bury this cat when I'm forty if all goes well.

Cats are great. They want to live, they heal well, they're tough little buggers.

aquila-audax said: Steering away from vet medicine but still within the wonderful realm of the life sciences, do you have a favourite species/group of plants?

I am partial to foxgloves. Partly for their appearance, but also because I like foxy things and they're poisonous in a cool way.

vantastrophe said: Any fantasy authors you really enjoy? Looking for more books to read, I really like Neil Gaiman but that's the only author so far ? hope you're having a great week!

Terry Pratchett is my #1, forever and always.

#20 questions

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