Post by burrunjor on Feb 8, 2022 17:04:56 GMT
I was just thinking there comes a time when a show begins to resemble bad fan fic. It's gone on too long, maybe some fans are actually writing for it, or the writers start to focus on the fans or a subset of fans more than others and it ends up basically becoming televised fan fic.
Now granted opinions can vary as to what that means, but I'd say in order to resemble fan fic it has to go like this.
1/ The leading character, or one character is overhyped to insane degrees. Everyone will fall in love with them, villains, supporting characters, because they are so amazing, they will be made so powerful that no villain can possibly hope to defeat them, everyone will gush about how awesome they are, they will go into the most cringey badass boasts all the time, be made the pivot of the universe etc. This is like fan fic as obviously the lead isn't being written as a character anymore, just as someone for the writer to gush over.
2/ Characters will be brought together for no reason other than because they are popular. Even if bringing them together is inappropriate, rewrites lore, history, and takes over the series and pushes other characters into the background, it doesn't matter. It takes over everything. Again this is fan fic as a proper story brings characters together if it suits the story, not because so and so are the leads and people like them.
3/ The rules and established canon of the show are bent and broken because the writer doesn't care as they think it's theirs to do whatever they want with. Ironically this is fine in Fan Fic as that is kind of the point of fan fic, but when you do it in the actual show itself, it's a disaster.
4/ Characters will start to blend into one when they previously had distinct personalities, villains, monsters, sidekicks etc. Again this is fan ficish because fan writers don't care and may even have a grudge against other characters in the show and not bother to write for them, where as a professional writer will look at all characters in a fair and equal way and try and find something interesting in them.
5/ If it revolves around an issue that is important to the writer, a political one or a personal issue then it will be crowbarred into the series in the most painfully obvious way and take it over. Again something fan fic writers do.
6/ The story is obviously done. All the story arcs have been wrapped up, the biggest villain has been taken down, that's it. However money and fandom won't let the IP die and so they'll carry it on regardless. This will result in characters being brought back from the dead who really shouldn't have been, countless return appearances from old faces, new threats being introduced whose only defining characteristic is that they are stronger than what came before, and then when it finally does end it often has to be such a big event to overshadow the previous actual ending that it ends up being a hollow spectacle. Again all trademarks of "what happened next" fan fics.
Now obviously with this in mind New Who from start to finish falls into the fan fic territory. It meets every single requirement even in the Eccelston and Smith years.
Still I have to say that a lot of other great shows have fallen into this category too.
Buffy for instance I think became 100 percent became fan fic with seasons 5-7. Xena meanwhile, after the first episode of season 5 became fan fic for its last two seasons, Supernatural, well it certainly became fan fic after season 11, but one could argue that after season 5 it became fan fic.
Anyone got any other series they could name that descended into fan fic after a certain point? I don't think Classic Who ever did though. It lost its way certainly in seasons 23 and 24, but even then I wouldn't say they were fan fic seasons.
What do you guys think
Now granted opinions can vary as to what that means, but I'd say in order to resemble fan fic it has to go like this.
1/ The leading character, or one character is overhyped to insane degrees. Everyone will fall in love with them, villains, supporting characters, because they are so amazing, they will be made so powerful that no villain can possibly hope to defeat them, everyone will gush about how awesome they are, they will go into the most cringey badass boasts all the time, be made the pivot of the universe etc. This is like fan fic as obviously the lead isn't being written as a character anymore, just as someone for the writer to gush over.
2/ Characters will be brought together for no reason other than because they are popular. Even if bringing them together is inappropriate, rewrites lore, history, and takes over the series and pushes other characters into the background, it doesn't matter. It takes over everything. Again this is fan fic as a proper story brings characters together if it suits the story, not because so and so are the leads and people like them.
3/ The rules and established canon of the show are bent and broken because the writer doesn't care as they think it's theirs to do whatever they want with. Ironically this is fine in Fan Fic as that is kind of the point of fan fic, but when you do it in the actual show itself, it's a disaster.
4/ Characters will start to blend into one when they previously had distinct personalities, villains, monsters, sidekicks etc. Again this is fan ficish because fan writers don't care and may even have a grudge against other characters in the show and not bother to write for them, where as a professional writer will look at all characters in a fair and equal way and try and find something interesting in them.
5/ If it revolves around an issue that is important to the writer, a political one or a personal issue then it will be crowbarred into the series in the most painfully obvious way and take it over. Again something fan fic writers do.
6/ The story is obviously done. All the story arcs have been wrapped up, the biggest villain has been taken down, that's it. However money and fandom won't let the IP die and so they'll carry it on regardless. This will result in characters being brought back from the dead who really shouldn't have been, countless return appearances from old faces, new threats being introduced whose only defining characteristic is that they are stronger than what came before, and then when it finally does end it often has to be such a big event to overshadow the previous actual ending that it ends up being a hollow spectacle. Again all trademarks of "what happened next" fan fics.
Now obviously with this in mind New Who from start to finish falls into the fan fic territory. It meets every single requirement even in the Eccelston and Smith years.
Still I have to say that a lot of other great shows have fallen into this category too.
Buffy for instance I think became 100 percent became fan fic with seasons 5-7. Xena meanwhile, after the first episode of season 5 became fan fic for its last two seasons, Supernatural, well it certainly became fan fic after season 11, but one could argue that after season 5 it became fan fic.
Anyone got any other series they could name that descended into fan fic after a certain point? I don't think Classic Who ever did though. It lost its way certainly in seasons 23 and 24, but even then I wouldn't say they were fan fic seasons.
What do you guys think
