Even more WTF: The other salt post
Dec. 14th, 2018 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kari_izumiMy first fandom experience was with Star Trek Enterprise: a show I got into in part because every other premiere that season was pushed back because of 9/11 and mostly for the crush on the nerdy guy in school.
For the sake of brevity I won't wax nostaligic about how it was my gateway into fanfic, the friends I've made or how i ended up giving the rest of Trek that my aunt foist upon me after school a fair shake because of it.I will say that the show was not without it's flaws but still it had a dedicated, if wanky and ship-frenzied fanbase that enjoyed it for what it was. Borg episodes, Freudian slips, decon chamber and all.
And then the finale happened. Oh, boy.
It was, to be short, a clusterfuck. Theres a link to read up on that, but I'll cut to what irked most fans: Trip Tucker's stupid, needless death for manufactured angst. He was the fan favorite by a long shot, had finally gotten with his own alien girlfriend in the previous episode after an entire season of will they/won't they after they'd done the do the season before. It was so out of character with his jumpiness and all for some speech the captain needed to make. Like I said, this is the clif notes version (and Zarabitha will be by to confirm all of this is truth).
To say it was poor received is to call a cat 5 hurricane a light sprinkle. Fans who'd only ever watched this version of Trek felt betrayed...like their viewership didn't matter to two producers living out their glory days from The Next Generation, whose characters were the actual star of this episode. And this was after we'd seen Trip dig himself out of his anger after his sister died, watched him suffer as his love interest entered a marriage obligation, and then lose their cloned baby.
Trip wasn't even my fave, but even I was pissed with his fans. Most refused to ever invest in another Trek series again, but there were a number who only like he was dead to get their own ship, to my embarrassment. For YEARS, both sides of the ship war accused the other of trolling or whining until us original run rans eventually fucked off to other fandoms.
So that is one helluva achievement to get both sides of an equally ship passionate fanbase--one of which has been notorious throughout an entire blogging platform for inappropriate behavior and trolling the other rival ship--to say "What kind of shit is this?!" in a decision that will leave VLD as the HIMYM of modern children's TV.
I mean, seriously.
Forget the rep argument or the shipping issue. A person....a youngish person...lost her homeworld, her family save for one royal advisor, and nearly every other artifact from her culture when the castle was destroyed, finds out the man she came to trust around her friends had exploited what few descendants of the surviving Alteans still existed and come to find that not even those trust her.
And this is the person that you decided should have to sacrifice herself after every fucking thing else she's given up?
Pardon my French but:
WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?
It's amazing, but they did it. They got the entire fandom to put aside it's hate over shipping and unite on this issue. I haven't even seen the KICK crowd crowing yet over this stupid ass decision to off Allura or whine about Klance not being endgame. That's how badly you fucked up, JDS and LM.
She was more than a sacrificial lamb. She deserved to actually live her life--whether that life was farming with Lance or ruling New Altea or furthering the lost art of alchemy, she deserved that opportunity to live and find a place in this world. Everyone else in the show got that but her (and Lotor too, but I've pissed on about that already at the end of season 6). At a minimum, she deserved to meet the colonists, see her homeworld like all the others got to go home to Earth.
To the producers' credit, she and Lance had some little bit of happiness before she went off her way. That's more than Trip Tucker and The Mother from HIMYM got, but that's a low ass bar.
Well done, staff.I didn't even write this much when Kubo Tite blew up a couple I actually shipped for ten fucking years. But then, I knew what he was about. I expeted slightly better from you two. No, you don't deserve death threats for this or anything else. You deserve not to be trusted by any fandom again, but not that.
This fandom wasn't an easy one, but I can't even blame antis for being mad . This isn't a one off character you killed for a shorthand plotpoint, but a character fans had followed for 2 and a half YEARS.
You have done wrong, and unlike Paramount that peddled hard to push canon fix it books for Enterprise, I doubt with all the drama attached to this show that you'll ever get the opportunity to fix it. Too bad. There was so much untapped potential.
You know, like Allura.
(Bonus rant: and yeah, I think Lance deserved a little better, too. Not to be the fucking star of the show because no, but maybe show how he got these insecurities in the first place and he worked past that beyond a few atta boys from Allura. The moments they did have warmed my Plance-watering heart more than expected but...again, all of the no.)
For the sake of brevity I won't wax nostaligic about how it was my gateway into fanfic, the friends I've made or how i ended up giving the rest of Trek that my aunt foist upon me after school a fair shake because of it.I will say that the show was not without it's flaws but still it had a dedicated, if wanky and ship-frenzied fanbase that enjoyed it for what it was. Borg episodes, Freudian slips, decon chamber and all.
And then the finale happened. Oh, boy.
It was, to be short, a clusterfuck. Theres a link to read up on that, but I'll cut to what irked most fans: Trip Tucker's stupid, needless death for manufactured angst. He was the fan favorite by a long shot, had finally gotten with his own alien girlfriend in the previous episode after an entire season of will they/won't they after they'd done the do the season before. It was so out of character with his jumpiness and all for some speech the captain needed to make. Like I said, this is the clif notes version (and Zarabitha will be by to confirm all of this is truth).
To say it was poor received is to call a cat 5 hurricane a light sprinkle. Fans who'd only ever watched this version of Trek felt betrayed...like their viewership didn't matter to two producers living out their glory days from The Next Generation, whose characters were the actual star of this episode. And this was after we'd seen Trip dig himself out of his anger after his sister died, watched him suffer as his love interest entered a marriage obligation, and then lose their cloned baby.
Trip wasn't even my fave, but even I was pissed with his fans. Most refused to ever invest in another Trek series again, but there were a number who only like he was dead to get their own ship, to my embarrassment. For YEARS, both sides of the ship war accused the other of trolling or whining until us original run rans eventually fucked off to other fandoms.
So that is one helluva achievement to get both sides of an equally ship passionate fanbase--one of which has been notorious throughout an entire blogging platform for inappropriate behavior and trolling the other rival ship--to say "What kind of shit is this?!" in a decision that will leave VLD as the HIMYM of modern children's TV.
I mean, seriously.
Forget the rep argument or the shipping issue. A person....a youngish person...lost her homeworld, her family save for one royal advisor, and nearly every other artifact from her culture when the castle was destroyed, finds out the man she came to trust around her friends had exploited what few descendants of the surviving Alteans still existed and come to find that not even those trust her.
And this is the person that you decided should have to sacrifice herself after every fucking thing else she's given up?
Pardon my French but:
WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?
It's amazing, but they did it. They got the entire fandom to put aside it's hate over shipping and unite on this issue. I haven't even seen the KICK crowd crowing yet over this stupid ass decision to off Allura or whine about Klance not being endgame. That's how badly you fucked up, JDS and LM.
She was more than a sacrificial lamb. She deserved to actually live her life--whether that life was farming with Lance or ruling New Altea or furthering the lost art of alchemy, she deserved that opportunity to live and find a place in this world. Everyone else in the show got that but her (and Lotor too, but I've pissed on about that already at the end of season 6). At a minimum, she deserved to meet the colonists, see her homeworld like all the others got to go home to Earth.
To the producers' credit, she and Lance had some little bit of happiness before she went off her way. That's more than Trip Tucker and The Mother from HIMYM got, but that's a low ass bar.
Well done, staff.I didn't even write this much when Kubo Tite blew up a couple I actually shipped for ten fucking years. But then, I knew what he was about. I expeted slightly better from you two. No, you don't deserve death threats for this or anything else. You deserve not to be trusted by any fandom again, but not that.
This fandom wasn't an easy one, but I can't even blame antis for being mad . This isn't a one off character you killed for a shorthand plotpoint, but a character fans had followed for 2 and a half YEARS.
You have done wrong, and unlike Paramount that peddled hard to push canon fix it books for Enterprise, I doubt with all the drama attached to this show that you'll ever get the opportunity to fix it. Too bad. There was so much untapped potential.
You know, like Allura.
(Bonus rant: and yeah, I think Lance deserved a little better, too. Not to be the fucking star of the show because no, but maybe show how he got these insecurities in the first place and he worked past that beyond a few atta boys from Allura. The moments they did have warmed my Plance-watering heart more than expected but...again, all of the no.)
