Jun 10
Housekeeping
Posted on Wednesday, June 10, 2026 by Paul in Uncategorized
Annotations will be up on Friday this week. In the meantime, why not listen to this week’s podcast?
Annotations will be up on Friday this week. In the meantime, why not listen to this week’s podcast?
Thread hijack.
Peter Capaldi recently remarked on Doctor Who: “When I was a kid and watched it, it was just a monster show in the corner of the room. I don’t know why people take it so seriously.”
I find myself agreeing with him. Maybe it’s just the internet being the internet but I find fans of these decades old franchises too antisocial and weird to talk to these days. Star Trek fans talk about Star Trek like its a documentary about a real military institustion and not and outlandish world with transporter accidents, green women and lizard men. Star Wars fans are obsessed with gatekeeping. MCU fans have impossible standards now.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t view this stuff with a critical eye (I’m at a review site after all) but It feels like nobody just accepts this is all scripted entertainment and meant to make you feel good and escape for an hour anymore.
I suppose I really miss the “it’s just tv show” fans who have been shut out.
When I was a teenager, I wished I knew more people who read comics. I wanted to be able to share opinions and recommendations, and just geek out with someone. Comics were something I took seriously, on some level. I knew there was good material being produced, and I wanted everyone to know. I wanted everyone to understand what I loved, not dismiss it or laugh at it. Having “normal people” like comics would validate my fandom, would validate *me* through agreeing with my tastes.
That urge to have the object of your fandom taken seriously can curdle, especially to those who make their fandom part of their identity. A bad story becomes “ruined my childhood,” another fan knowing more esoterica becomes a problem that effects me emotionally, an opinion different than mine becomes a challenge to my sense of self. I managed to not go down that road, but I get why people do and it’s unfortunate.
Have you accepted Claremont as your Lord Shingen and Xavier? Building a personal relationship with the Xavier brings you closer to god(s) and prevents you from falling to the Adversary.
*MST3K intro theme starts playing*
Sometime we who are toughed by the silver become accustomed to our own beliefs and lose patience with others, but in this case I am blaming bot-farms for intentionally disrupting fandoms as politically motivated attacks. They don’t have to sell a point of view, only to undermine public forums. I left X-Twitter when it became swamped with Nazis, vatniks, and bots. I saw similar themes in online attacks against George Takei. This continues to escalate in order to prevent consensus and movements such as the early days of the internet where people from opposing political spectrums started to complain to each other about corporate propaganda and were amazed to find that they agreed about how pernicious the lies each side were being told about the other.
Fandom as religion.
That being said… GET OFF MY LAWN!!!
*looks at feet*
Not my lawn… *continues to ossify*
*toughed should be touched
On the other side of things, I still find it bizarre when I see a peanut M&M dressed as Wolverine (I mean, other than the general weirdness of commercial culture turning food into people). I grew up in an isolated niche where nobody had heard of the Avengers, now everyone knows Captain America’s real name. This is a good thing, it proves I was right all along to be into this stuff, but I don’t think I’ll ever not be surprised by it.
@Si: the goalpost of “only ‘real fans’ know about…” has shifted further than I ever thought it would. When non-comics-readers can pick the Vision or Mr. Terrific out of a line-up, you know we’re living in different times. I can’t wait for the next breakout multi-media star to be Maggott.
One of my best friends is the biggest Iron Man (comics) fan I’ve ever known. Admittedly, that doesn’t take much, but still.
Imagine both of our astonishment(s) when Iron Man became the center of a multi-billion dollar movie franchise. Just mind boggling, but especially for him, a middle-aged man whose favorite character could barely make it onto a lunch box before 2008.
For me, the X-Men movies and the MCU created dissonant feelings of excitement, cynicism, ownership, anticipation, and fatigue. I can imagine if you’re the world’s biggest Iron Man fan (not my friend, but not far off) those feelings might even be magnified since IM is the center of the entire MCU movie engine *and* the comeback vehicle for RDJ. So intense. And now they’re turning him into Doctor Doom? That could cause a toxic fan turn all by itself, much less all the other ridiculous shenanigans Marvel Studios has been up to in the past couple of years.
So I guess what I’m saying is: Marvel needs to get its act together, but also fans need to stop feeling so entitled. The End.
I’d settle for all the niche nerd things I grew up that have exploded in popularity just being good/watchable (for me).
As I said online today, I divorced myself emotionally from DW after SW/Capaldi left. I’ve said the same things in recent years for Trek and many of the Big Twp comics projects, print and film.
For a number of reasons, modern pop culture just doesn’t appeal to me, which, on some level, is fine, both personally and for the giant corporations that doesn’t always care about quality over profit.
The difference is that fandoms went from the last resort for human contact, to the first.
That’s why they’re religions now! The more people you recruit, the more “friends” you have…
You should observe kids forcing their favorite shows on other kids. They are indistinguishable from Jehovah’s Witnesses now.
Instead of being bullied in the 1980s to smoke or drink, now it would be to watch some anime show.