Weekly chat reminder

[snycock]

Please join us for the weekly TS chat on Saturday, January 13th, at 7 pm Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)/19:00 UTC. That could be as early as 11 am if you’re on the west coast of North America, or 2 pm if you’re on the east coast, or 7 pm in the UK, or early Sunday morning in Australia or New Zealand.

 

We’re in the usual place: http://us25.chatzy.com/81935648447483. There’s nothing to download or install, just choose a name and a color and click on “join chat.”

 

This week we’re going meta, and discussing the following question:

Do you think fandom is inevitably toxic? As fen create and consume fanworks, headcanons grow and feed expectations, and then people are inevitably disappointed when the show fails to go in the same directions. Acrimony ensues, including against showrunners and writers.

 

Some might be tempted to say this is only a problem for fandoms in the age of the Internet, but the idea was sparked by a quote about smarm in The Sentinel: “It [smarm] changed as Sentinel fandom changed, hardening and becoming bitter and more polemic as the show didn't deliver what fanfic had led us to expect.” (From “Cry the Beloved Smarm” by Renae)

 

There’s no doubt that everything is faster than it used to be, including the Internet, and that open canons run a much higher risk of disappointing fans than closed ones. There’s no doubt that the collapse of the wall that used to exist between show creators and fans has led to some ugly encounters. But when I read that quote, it really made me wonder – is that breach, that disappointment in the source material, inevitable? And is it because of the very nature of fandom as transformative?

 

See you there!