May the 4th

[author_by_night]

I was inspired by a Facebook post I wrote a few years ago, expressing confusion over all the May the 4th jokes. I then realized that I'd been doing the same thing to people as a huge Harry Potter fan - they would mention they'd read the books, and I'd start going on about something that wasn't immediately clear to more casual fans, leaving them confused.

I still haven't seen past the first Star Wars sequel. I really need to amend that.

Questions for YOU guys:

1. Is there anything you like only casually, only to mislead people into excitement when you mention it?

2. Have you ever confused a casual fan with ALL the love and knowledge?

3. What is your stance on the Star Wars sequels? Do you consider them canon? (If your comment contains spoilers, please mark it. I originally asked that this be spoiler free, but that's not fair to anyone who really wants to get into it! It IS Star Wars Day, after all.)

4. What is a book, movie, or series you WOULD like to see a sequel or prequel to? Or, if it's already had one of those, do you think it could be done better?

Comments

[author_by_night]

I guess I'll start us off by answering.


1. Is there anything you like only casually, only to mislead people into excitement when you mention it?

I once got a friend very excited when I mentioned I liked Star Wars. She started talking about Mara Jade, and I had to break it to her that I only had a vague inkling of who Mara Jade was. (Luke's daughter in the Extended Universe, I believe?)

I've also had this a bit with The Hunger Games, but only in the sense that a fandom friend whose work I always read switched over to that fandom (a very long time ago). I felt bad but only being a very casual fan, I couldn't really get into the fics. :/

2. Have you ever confused a casual fan with ALL the love and knowledge?

Like I said above, I used to do this with Harry Potter all the time. I've learned that I really just have to stick to talking about the trio (calling them by their names rather than "the trio") and Dumbledore. Mentioning Remus, Sirius, Snape in any sort of detail doesn't go.

I've had it with other things as well. Especially TV shows, since a lot of people only really watch here and there, so trying to discuss in detail didn't really go anywhere. Although actually, I think that was truer before, when shows were less serialized, whereas now often even with sitcoms you really have to have watched at least a few episodes per season to follow.

[tielan]

I used to belong to a sci-fi watching group, back in the days before streaming services in Australia, when most sci-fi shows were only available on 'pay TV' (I guess it's 'cable' in the US) or via download from the USA. Or at weird times on mainstream TV and then screwed with every time something with better advertising potential came on.

The number of times I casually mentioned something I'd heard from my fannish friends in the US and promptly had to weather a torrent of enthusiasm was legion.

And, of course, I've done it from the other side, too, where a friend mentioned something they knew I liked and I burst forth on a crusade of words...

Over time, some of us learn to temper our enthusiasm according to the audience. :)

[beatrice_otter]

Mara Jade is Luke's WIFE in the old Extended Universe that got thrown out when Disney took over. While much of the old EU is no loss, Mara Jade was AWESOME. If you ever get the chance to read Timothy Zahn's Star Wars trilogy (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command) do so, they are EXCELLENT books and a master class on how to write so that both the heroes and the villains are pretty much always smart and never holding the idiot ball.

[primeideal]

Eeeep, the sequels. :( "not canon" is a strong phrase, but I don't really pay attention to them as part of my internal headcanon, if that makes sense? No specific spoilers, but everything I've seen basically tells me that the writers didn't have a plan and didn't care about consistency with each other, much less building on the prior movies, so I don't really want to reward them with my money or "allegiance" at this point. I'll borrow from it for characterization, I guess.

[novembermond]

I was so ready to love the new Star Wars movies but wth was that plot? how hard can it be to plot out three movies in advance, even if one actress dies and you have to reshuffle things it should be possible to make sense.

[stellar_dust]

The Star Wars sequels are fine. There are many things about them that I like and a few things that I really don't - the most prominent of which is Luke's arc.

I'm pretty much over the whole concept of "canon" in general these days. From media properties that can't keep their own canon straight, or keep changing canon on purpose, or creating new versions of canon, or tacking in caveats or new stories years later, to fic that is way better than canon... canon is whichever chunk of the story speaks to a fan, and/or that they feel like riffing on.

This goes especially for huge franchises where the IP holders keep coming up with new content to sell without bothering overmuch about long-term internal consistency, but really it applies to everything.

I was just talking about this the other day in someone's journal about whether the new Good Omens quarantine short (up on youtube) is canon, and I'm like, meh, it's a cute fic that happens to have been written and produced by the original creators, but I feel absolutely no obligation to factor it into any of my speculations.

[minoanmiss]

Well said. I was about tot rant about 'canon' but you've said everything I was thinking of, more clearly and concisely, and a few other things too.

[stefanyeah]

1) I'm not sure. It seems I'm usually the one getting excited about fandoms. However, I am always so surprised when I mention something I like and my conversation partner goes: "Oh yes! [reveals their tidbits of knowledge]" that my brain draws a blank.

2) I'm a known Godzilla fan at work and some colleague borrow my DVD's to see what it's all about. With KotM I had a moment of a colleague that was reminded of the Game of Thrones dragons by King Ghidorah. To me just going NONONONONONOO! He went on about interpreting Mothra with mothman and symbols of life and rebirth.

I tend to go off tangents to my slightly nerdy friends of other things via twitter of Whatsapp messages when they give me just the tiniest hint of encouragement. Recent fan dumps included bands that might not be widely known outside of Germany (Wir sind Helden, Die Ärzte, Herbert Grönemeyer, Einstürzende Neubauten (beware, they are about to release a new album in about a week)…), Horizon Zero Dawn, Godzilla, Hellsing Ultimate.


3) I was hyped for Episode 7 and enjoyed it immensely. I was a bit let-down for Episoe 8. Episode 9 has a few things that make me angry the more I think about it. The less is said about it, the better.


4) I have no clue, actually. Re-make the sequel trilogy? XD Or just… let Star Wars rest for this decade.
Carefully excited about the upcoming King Kong vs Godzilla; more excited about anything that Toho themselves decide to do with the Big G. I was a bit undecided about a sequel to Shin Godzilla, but at the moment I decided, I don't want one. It couldn't keep up with the outstandingness of Shin. I'm fine with the very ambiguous final shot and I'm fine with this monstrosity being a one off. I love this one so much.
Also, while the 2014 Hollywood Godzilla finally managed to thrust me into the whole world of Godzilla, I prefer it's sequel as a fun fun popcorn monster flick. And Mothra is so fucking badass. I love her so much.

I'm also very excited with the prospect of a Horizon Zero Dawn sequel. That world still has so much potential.

[polarissruler]

1. Is there anything you like only casually, only to mislead people into excitement when you mention it?
I don't think I have done it. (Or maybe my mind keeps blocking all the memories of me realizing I have jumped into too deep water.)

2. Have you ever confused a casual fan with ALL the love and knowledge? Oh, absolutely guilty of that. Especially with my boyfriend - we met while discussing the "Servamp" anime. He hasn't read the manga, so I often confuse him by explaining the expanded characterization and the different motives and the new plotlines... goes on a trail

3. What is your stance on the Star Wars sequels? Do you consider them canon? (If your comment contains spoilers, please mark it. I originally asked that this be spoiler free, but that's not fair to anyone who really wants to get into it! It IS Star Wars Day, after all.) Canon's a confusing thing for me. Especially since I write for Megaten which has the most confusing timeline ever and I can't tell what ending is canon and what else. So, I keep some things as my personal canon and don't care too much about the official one. And as for Star Wars - I don't think I like that franchise enough to care about it, so I can't give an answer.

4. What is a book, movie, or series you WOULD like to see a sequel or prequel to? Or, if it's already had one of those, do you think it could be done better?
Cute High Earth Defense Club Love! I loved the sequel (or is it just a second season?). But I'd love a prequel about a badass hunk with a caring side that uses an ax to fight alien monsters with the power of love even more!

[minoanmiss]

This is my Poe Dameron icon. :D

I have had both kinds of conversations, yes -- where I was a dilettante and they excitedly told me about obscure delights, and where I was the one producing obscure delights that confused casual fans. Heh. :)

I hesitate to recommend you bother with the last two sequels. They contained a few awesome new characters (mostly female) and some delightful cameos and a lot of badly thought out ridiculousness that really did not fulfill the promise of Episode 7. That said, I love the sequel trilogy even with all its issues, and I never really got into the book EU, so it's my canon. But I reserve the fanficcer's right to amend. :D

[stefanyeah]

I have had both kinds of conversations, yes -- where I was a dilettante and they excitedly told me about obscure delights, and where I was the one producing obscure delights that confused casual fans. Heh. :)

It's always good when both kinds of conversations happen with one and the same person and you just get each other on that emotional, fannish level.

[bookblather]

3. I consider them as canon as the rest of Star Wars, which is to say I pick the bits I like and ignore the bits I don't. Kind of adorable of Disney to expect us all to stick to one canon. Bless.

IMO you're not a real Star Wars fan unless you have one bit of the theoretical canon that you just outright ignore.

[beatrice_otter]

Yeah, it's kind of like being a comics fan. Nobody likes all of it, we all like different parts and can't stand different parts and you construct your canon out of the parts that resonate with you.

[melannen]

1. I don't think there is anything I like only casually? :D If I mention it, I probably want to hear them talk about it, even if I don't know a whole lot. I mean, even sportsball I'm not at all interested in what the sportsballs are doing, but I'm interested in the ways people are fannish about it. I do, I think, sometimes confuse people by knowing a *moderate* amount about things that most people either know *nothing* about or a *lot* about (I think this comes up with engineering and math more than fandom, though.) (Also I'm ADHD enough that whether I am paying attention to what you are saying has nothing to do with whether I am interested in it.)

2. I try to be low-key about this until I have felt people out, but, probably! (I think I am maybe more likely to confuse a slightly-more-than-casual fan by acting casual until they reveal they are truly into it, and then suddenly dropping all the facts and feels on them.)

3. Star Wars is big enough as a universe at this point that the only way is to treat it like a large comics fandom: canon is whatever you feel like being canon today.(Indeed the Star Wars comics *alone* probably qualify as a large comics fandom...)

If I had to, I'd say:
--The unadulterated movies 4-6 are canon.
--The radio dramas of 4-6 (which include most of the deleted scenes) are canon.
--The good bits of the prequels and sequels are canon, the rest isn't. :P
--The parts of the Solo movie that reference the Lando Calrissian novels are 100% canon, but only those bits.
--The Clone Wars and Rebels cartoons and Rogue One are kinda canon if I feel like it today?
--Everything else is up for grabs, and I'm more likely to grab worldbuilding and characters than I am actual plot.

4. If given the choice, I would pick 100% redone from scratch, less-terrible prequel trilogy over redone sequel trilogy. (The sequels are at least fun to watch.)

[beatrice_otter]

Huh.

See, I'm fine with the prequels. I don't think they're as good as the OT, but I do think they're fun to watch and while I hate how Ep III cut all of Padme's characterization and all the nascent Rebellion stuff, I like what they did with Anakin and the rest of the Jedi.

The sequels, on the other hand ... Ep VII is fun, has some good characters, and set up some things that if handled well could have been very interesting. VIII and IX are a godawful mess that took most of the things I liked about Star Wars (including the interesting bits from VII) and systematically either destroyed them or made them meaningless. And the racist fans soured what little enjoyment I got out of them. And the ST isn't even internally coherent, as regards either plot or theme or characterization or pretty much anything, which by ITSELF would have made me dislike them even if everything else was good.

But I am, as always, fascinated to see how different people can look at the same piece of media and react to it VERY differently.

[mythochromos]

1. I like Star Wars inasmuch as I'll watch it if it's presented to me without much effort, but when I say I like Star Wars people ask things like what's your favorite episode and...uh...I didn't have one until very recently. (It's 7, but even so, I'm kind of mad at the sequel trilogy because I'm a Babylon 5 fan more than any other SF series and predictably I expect things to be planned out in advance. They didn't when it comes to the SW sequels and you can tell.)

2. I confused some casual Babylon 5 fans with a green vs. purple reference while painting. Guess it's been a while since they watched that episode.

3. I guess? But I completely understand passionately disagreeing with the decision to make something canon; I have Strong Feelings like that when it comes to something that happened in Final Fantasy XIV toward the end of Stormblood and I can imagine what a serious Star Wars fan would feel over the huge differences between Eps 8 and 9.

4. I would sacrifice a baby to read an official Laundry Files prequel series about Angleton. Fanfic to that effect would be cool too, but I really want to see what Charles Stross would do with it.

[beatrice_otter]

I love that episode of Babylon 5! The older I get, the less cracky it seems.

[eleanorjane]

1. Is there anything you like only casually, only to mislead people into excitement when you mention it?

Not that I can think of? Thanks to imposter syndrome and desire to avoid gatekeeping I tend not to mention my enthusiasm about something unless I can back it up with enough knowledge. Sad, but I know how gatekeepers work.

2. Have you ever confused a casual fan with ALL the love and knowledge?

All the time. Mostly my housemates, when someone accidentally sets me off on a subject. Sorry guys.

3. What is your stance on the Star Wars sequels? Do you consider them canon?

Yes, they're canon, in the sense that they are a part of the official story designated as such by the people who have the authorial right to say what the official story is.

That said, I am less interested in the sequel trilogy than the other trilogies. I like (a lot of) the setup, and I adore some of the new characters (REY ♥♥♥) but I dislike the story and approach, the First Order is stupid and implausible, and Kylo Ren can go fuck himself. I had mixed feelings about TFA, I actively disliked almost everything about TLJ, and I haven't seen ROS.

Rogue One, I liked. Solo was a mistake IMO (Harrison Ford is Han Solo. No recasting is credible. Or at least not that recasting) and I got ten minutes into it before I got bored, and I haven't gone back to it.

4. What is a book, movie, or series you WOULD like to see a sequel or prequel to? Or, if it's already had one of those, do you think it could be done better?

* Star Wars - redo the prequel trilogy with a non-terrible director and a premise that makes more sense.

* Jupiter Ascending! This was very clearly all set up for some sequels, I'm guessing a trilogy - even the title is clearly setting up for a Jupiter [Y] and Jupiter [Z] pair of sequels. The worldbuilding was so fab and the story was no worse than any other movie of its ilk - but people don't know what to do with stuff like this that isn't just a dudely power fantasy. :/

* Fifth Element - it doesn't need a sequel and stands alone so well, but I love it heaps and just want more of the same, basically.

[libbi]

I would've loved a sequel to Jupiter Ascending! Such a fun movie.

[tielan]

3. What is your stance on the Star Wars sequels? Do you consider them canon? (If your comment contains spoilers, please mark it. I originally asked that this be spoiler free, but that's not fair to anyone who really wants to get into it! It IS Star Wars Day, after all.)

Well, technically, they are canon. But if I don't like parts of it, I'll ignore it.

That's what I've had to do in most of my fandoms, anyway. :D


4. What is a book, movie, or series you WOULD like to see a sequel or prequel to? Or, if it's already had one of those, do you think it could be done better?

...this is probably not the time to get into a rant about Avengers: Endgame. :D

[eleanorjane]

It is ALWAYS the time to get into a rant about Avengers: Endgame.

[graveexcitement]

the star wars sequels are canon, sure, i'm just [shrug] about them. i liked episode 7, liked parts of episode 8, and didn't bother watching episode 9. but even with 7/8, i never really felt fannish about them? really, most of my star wars fan energy is focused on prequel-era stuff.

[pict]

1. Is there anything you like only casually, only to mislead people into excitement when you mention it?

One time, I was telling a friend how The Umbrella Academy is filmed in my city. He hurriedly asked me who my favourite character was and I had to explain I've never seen it, I just like to keep the fun trivia of precisely how many creative projects are filmed where I live in my back pocket like a party trick.

That was a non-answer. I guess, not really? Either I'm into something enough to get excited about it or I'm not going to bother. Passive consumption isn't really for me.

2. Have you ever confused a casual fan with ALL the love and knowledge?

Quite a few times, but my absurdly good recall abilities are sometimes to blame. Or, how I learned that people don't like being corrected when they misquote a line of TV by one word, or, complicated lines of dialogue of the TV show Angel aren't fantastic for playing Hangman in the cafeteria at lunch.

3. What is your stance on the Star Wars sequels? Do you consider them canon?

The Last Jedi is my favourite. Bam, controversial opinion, ig--

Despite loving SW, I don't consider myself active in the fandom. I have no interest in debating the minutiae or writing fanfic or essays about whether or not Han was adept in the force without knowing it. But the themes and setting helped shape my preferences to this day (see my love of sci-fi, see my 14+ year loyalty to Ashe/Balthier).

Solo had a lot of interesting concepts but I went to see it in cinema when I was dead tired due to work, gave myself a legitimate migraine, and never really watched it again because I now associate it with my head trying to kill me.

4. What is a book, movie, or series you WOULD like to see a sequel or prequel to? Or, if it's already had one of those, do you think it could be done better?

Oh, where to begin?

Mass Effect deserved a better sequel than what Andromeda ended up being.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley and Starless by Jacqueline Carey are two books that set themselves up excellently for sequels; I don't know if I'll ever get them but I definitely pine to return to their expertly crafted worlds.

Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series started off reasonably strong but frustrated me more and more by the way it protected its heroine from all struggles. I still plan to continue it, but not without grumbles.

King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword is another one! I think I might be the only person alive who genuinely loved this film and while I understand why it wasn't greenlit into a franchise, I'm still sad about it.

And last, for now, but not least - I walked out of the cinema when Pacific Rim: Uprising [redacted for spoilers!!!] and I'm still so disappointed.



MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU ALL.

[libbi]

I'm curious-what in particular made you walk out on Uprising? I love love love Pacific Rim, but god, the sequel was some bullshit.

[sathari]

1. Is there anything you like only casually, only to mislead people into excitement when you mention it?

...I think that's happened to me; it rings a bell, but I can't think of a specific instance.

2. Have you ever confused a casual fan with ALL the love and knowledge?

OH GOD YES. Like, I do this to my mother any time we talk about media we both follow.

3. What is your stance on the Star Wars sequels? Do you consider them canon? (If your comment contains spoilers, please mark it. I originally asked that this be spoiler free, but that's not fair to anyone who really wants to get into it! It IS Star Wars Day, after all.)

I love them in the way that I love the other two trilogies, in that I love the ideas and themes but want to tweak/play/deconstruct/fix-it. TLJ is probably my favorite Star Wars movie, and it's just possible that TROS might be my second (I'm an outlier in Star Wars fandom because while I acknowledge the quality of ESB, I don't enjoy watching it and in fact will only rewatch if I need a plot point for a fic). Ben Solo|Kylo Ren is hands-down my favorite character in the entire series, followed closely by Rey and then Rose Tico (unless we're counting Legends canon and then Mara Jade and the Noghri have to be in there somewhere). (I actually get choky when I imagine what it would have been like if we'd had Adam Driver playing Anakin Skywalker in the PT. BECAUSE OH MY GOD. That would have been ANAKIN. I loved Anakin enough with Hayden Christensen's performance but ADAM DRIVER OMG. Especially if they let Rian Johnson write and direct it.)

I also want to nth the sentiment some others have expressed, which is that with the big sprawling canons whose creators can't be arsed to maintain continuity--- and especially with things like Star Wars that have a) more content than any one person can realistically consume and b) content in a lot of formats some of which may not be accessible for whatever reason to the entire fanbase--- we're all allowed a certain interpretational freedom as to what we call "canon" given that even if you've managed to access all of it, it at least sometimes contradicts itself. (I mean, Leia: Princess of Alderaan and Bloodline are more a part of my headcanon/understanding of Star Wars than what are probably some of the better-known tie-ins.)

4. What is a book, movie, or series you WOULD like to see a sequel or prequel to? Or, if it's already had one of those, do you think it could be done better?

What a timely question, because I'm being forced to cope with the fact that my other current fandom, Knives Out, is probably going to get a sequel... that focuses on one of my least favorite characters and abandons the ones I care about. If I were doing its sequel(s), I'd do a trilogy--- and I just realized that saying what the trilogy would be would be spoilery unless I'm really careful, so I'll say this: the second one would be "competing courtroom dramas" involving the disposition of the Thrombey estate, the cause of Harlan's death, and resolving Marta's mother's immigration status, and the third would be how the major players, especially Marta and her family, go on in the aftermath. Daniel Craig can only come back as Benoit Blanc if he's learned to do an ACTUAL Southern accent--- seriously, the only way I justify how bad his accent is in that film is that I know Rian Johnson has mentioned Gosford Park as one of his influences, and there's a character in that film whose execrable excuse for a particular accent is a plot point, so it was meant as a shout-out.

Vis a vis Star Wars, there is a particular plot point in TROS that in hindsight would have worked better on every level if they'd done it at the end of TLJ, and for your sake I'll stop right there.

[pedanther]

I'm really ambivalent about the prospect of a Knives Out sequel, because I definitely want Rian Johnson to do another movie like that, but I think what I really mean by that is "the same sort of thing but with an unrelated plot and completely new characters that it makes me love as much as Knives Out made me love its characters", because Knives Out is a carefully designed device and I don't think you can just take some of the pieces out and build a new device around them and have it work as well.

I'm particularly unenthused about the idea of another detective mystery story starring Benoit Blanc, because I think a lot of the things that make Knives Out work so well as a mystery story are specific to the story of Marta and the Thrombeys (like the fact that Harlan Thrombey is a mystery writer himself, and the way that influences how various characters react to things; or the way that Marta and Blanc spend most of the movie figuring out where they stand with each other). And if Johnson reuses those elements in a sequel, people will say he's repeating himself, and they'll be right.

I like the idea of switching up the genre and Doing Courtroom Drama the way the first movie Does Murder Mystery; that follows from the plot, as you say, and it opens up a way to bring in different elements. But obviously "the sequel is a completely different genre" is not something studios tend to go for.

[beatrice_otter]

2. Have you ever confused a casual fan with ALL the love and knowledge? Yes, but it's more likely to be me infodumping at someone who hasn't even heard of the canon before.

3. What is your stance on the Star Wars sequels? Do you consider them canon? What is canon? Seriously, that's a philosophical question that needs answering before we go any further. If you mean "do I recognize them as the official answer given by the official owners of the franchise," then sure. If you mean "will I ever write ST fic?" the answer is no. If you mean "will I ever write SW fic that includes any pieces of ST canon" the answer is that I currently have a WIP where Finn from the ST is sent back in time to the Clone Wars.

There are parts of the ST that are good, but most of it I dislike on multiple levels. It destroys or renders pointless most of the things I like about the OT and PT. It is internally incoherent--the director of the second movie didn't like or agree with the first one, and wrenched everything around to tell the story HE wanted to tell, and then they went back to the third director who didn't like what the second director had done and so he wrenched things around again.

The Solo movie ... they did not understand how to do a prequel. They kept trying to make the plot points suspenseful and action-packed, but the thing is, we KNOW how things end, because it's a PREQUEL. We know he's not gonna end up with Qi'ra! We know he's gonna make friends with Chewie! We know he's gonna be friends with Lando and then win the Falcon in a card game! We know he's gonna make the Kessel Run in a short distance! None of these things are ever going to be suspenseful. The question of a prequel is not WHAT is going to happen but WHY and HOW is it going to happen that way. Character and thematic development are key, because the plot is going to be utterly predictable. And the character development was terrible. Donald Glover did an excellent job as Lando, but Han was both written and portrayed as "generic action hero"

When I write Star Wars fics, my canon that I draw from tends to be: OT and PT, the Zahn trilogy of books (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command), bits and pieces from the Clone Wars series, and whatever details I find on Wikipedia when I need bits to fill in. I do read fic more widely than that, but that's what I tend to write.

4. What is a book, movie, or series you WOULD like to see a sequel or prequel to? Or, if it's already had one of those, do you think it could be done better?

The Star Wars sequel trilogy could have been done so much better. I mean, even if they'd taken the same basic plot elements (and I wish they wouldn't because I didn't like them) it would still have been 1000% better if it had been conceived of and written as a TRILOGY, instead of piecemeal.

I would also like to see a Star Trek series that was more tonally and thematically consistent with previous series of Trek than either Discovery and Picard. It's not that they're bad! They're not. They're quite good, overall. They're just ... not what I love about Star Trek. Come to that, if I could have the first two Reboot movies done by a different director I would. J.J. Abrams doesn't like Star Trek, and man, did it SHOW. It's not that the Reboot movies are bad, they're perfectly good SF/Action movies. They just don't feel like Star Trek, either in theme or characterization. (The less said about Fratboy Kirk the better.) The third one nailed it, though.

I'd love a sequel to Babylon 5.

If I could keep the Wonder Woman movie but redo all the other movies in that canon, I would.

If I could keep the MCU through Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and also Black Panther and Thor III and Captain Marvel, and get rid of the rest, I would.

[eleanorjane]

Your music is good and you should feel good.

(Which is to say, +1 to practically all of this!)

[pedanther]

What is a book, movie, or series you WOULD like to see a sequel or prequel to? Or, if it's already had one of those, do you think it could be done better?

I got the feeling that Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn was designed on a platform of "come for Harley, stay for the Birds of Prey", and in the hope that if it did well they'd be able to follow it up with a movie that was just about the Birds of Prey without Harley upstaging them. I would actually like to see that movie: I think the Birds were all well cast and did interesting things with their characters, and bounced off each other well, and I'd like to see them work together for an entire movie instead of just the climactic action sequence. I'd also like to see Oracle show up in the sequel. (And as long as I'm dreaming, I'd like a pony.)

Speaking of team-up movies where the team spends the entire movie coming together and only actually works as a team for the climactic action sequence: I've seen it pointed out that despite all the movies Marvel has made with the Avengers in, they've never yet actually made a movie that's about the Avengers working as a team. The first one is all about putting the team together and they're a team for one action sequence and then the movie ends, and then the second one they're a team for one action sequence and then the team starts falling apart, and from there it's all been "putting the band back together" or "whoops, falling apart again". We've never had a movie that's just: here are the Avengers, they're a team, watch them solve the problem as a team, the end.

[melannen]

I strongly agree on both of these!

[vivarocksteady]

Answering Question One, because it opened a box inside me:
1. Is there anything you like only casually, only to mislead people into excitement when you mention it?

Definitely Star Wars.

I have that Star Wars (A New Hope) Hong Kong poster shirt that H&M was selling last year. I say "THAT t-shirt" because, well, a lot of people have it.

My boss saw it and was like "What do you think of the Mandalorian?" and I was like, I haven't seen it and don't plan on it. I don't want to get Disney Plus. "But you're wearing that shirt!"

Like, dude. A New Hope is, at this point, a classic, mainstream film. I have Chinese ancestry. I like vintage Asian movie posters. (I had a shirt with a Japanese Barbarella poster years before I actually got to see Barbarella.)
I mean maybe it's on me, maybe I should know by now that nerd culture is so big that people expect you to be a HUGE NERD for something if you have ANY merch for that thing. But like... the first ever Star Wars film is not an unusual thing to like? No, I haven't watched the Mandalorian in the same way that I haven't read any of the tie-in novels. Leave me alone, lol.

This is coming off saltier than I mean it to, haha. My boss is nice and not dumb, but yes I definitely confused him with that shirt.

Marvel movies are sort of similar-- I lost interest in them years ago. I still have a spot in my heart for Thor, but if I go anywhere near a conversation about it, I'll end up in the weeds, and people will be genuinely shocked that I stopped watching those movies.

When I told someone I hadn't seen End Game they were like "Oh, you don't like superheroes?" Sure, I like superheroes. I don't need four superhero movies a year, though. I'm probably good for big blockbuster superhero movies for the rest of my life, in fact.

I don't know, it seems to me like Marvel movies and Star Wars are both so mainstream and popular that it should be okay for someone-- or even most people-- to just have a passing interest in them. /shrug??

[beatrice_otter]

I don't know, it seems to me like Marvel movies and Star Wars are both so mainstream and popular that it should be okay for someone-- or even most people-- to just have a passing interest in them. /shrug??

Of course. But I figure, it's like sports. There are plenty of people who are only casual fans of any particular sport. But fans of that sport are often shocked that there are people who AREN'T hardcore fans. It's so mainstream that they assume that everybody knows and loves it. People who hate sports they can maybe, sometimes, understand. But their default is "everyone knows and loves this and thinks it's important." So someone who's only a casual fan with a passing interest ... does not compute.

[nautilusdreams]

1. Is there anything you like only casually, only to mislead people into excitement when you mention it?

Lord of the Rings. I love the movies and own the extended editions, I've never read the books. A friend decided to just go full Tolkien nerd on me and I did not follow at all. I really liked their enthusiasm though.

2. Have you ever confused a casual fan with ALL the love and knowledge?

Yes, the same LotR friend mentioned Dragon Age and I just started infodumping and discussing lore. They had no clue what I was talking about.

3. What is your stance on the Star Wars sequels? Do you consider them canon? (If your comment contains spoilers, please mark it. I originally asked that this be spoiler free, but that's not fair to anyone who really wants to get into it! It IS Star Wars Day, after all.)

I don't like the sequels and I don't consider them canon. I really wanted to like Force Awakens, and I really loved Finn, but they clearly planned nothing and dropped Finn's story and relevance like a hot rock.

The main issue for me is how Rey has no conflict and no investment in the story, she's a very passive protagonist who never really struggles and I find that very boring.

Then again my opinion on Star Wars doesn't really matter, as I not only prefer the prequels to the original series (something that makes me a heathen in the eyes of the masses), but I prefer the videogames to the movies in general.

4. What is a book, movie, or series you WOULD like to see a sequel or prequel to? Or, if it's already had one of those, do you think it could be done better?

Mass Effect Andromeda needs to be redone, and its original memory wiped from the face of the earth.

Dragon Age 2 was good, but I'd love to see a properly finished version, rather than the rush job we got. Same with Knights of the Old Republic 2, although we do have mods for that.

The Star Wars sequels had the potential to be pretty good if they were actually written as one cohesive piece.

[beatrice_otter]

The main issue for me is how Rey has no conflict and no investment in the story, she's a very passive protagonist who never really struggles and I find that very boring.

Yes, that's it! I've never been able to really explain the depth of my problems with how Rey is handled in VIII and IX, and you put a finger on it. Thank you!

[ruuger]

1. Is there anything you like only casually, only to mislead people into excitement when you mention it?

Not really, because if I like something even a little, I tend to research it extensively. Which leads us to...

2. Have you ever confused a casual fan with ALL the love and knowledge?

No, but I have done the complete opposite :D

A few years ago, I hosted a movie night and one of the guys (who I didn't know beforehand) came over early. When he saw that I had couple of Doctor Who boxsets on my shelf, he started talking about his own collection of pretty much all DW media that existed, clearly trying to prove that he was "more of a fan" than someone who only liked the new series. Now, I have not watched any classic Who, but I have watched many, many, interviews of Peter Capaldi where he talks about it, so I was able to "outgeek" the guy by starting to ask him about his opinion on things like "Power of the Daleks" and "Ark in Space" and even correcting him when he got some obscure details wrong :D

3. What is your stance on the Star Wars sequels? Do you consider them canon?

Of course they're canon, because whether or not I like something doesn't affect its canonicity (she says, while thinking of "Time, Space and the Incurable Romantic") and I enjoyed them all when I saw them for the first time, just like I enjoyed all the prequels.

4. What is a book, movie, or series you WOULD like to see a sequel or prequel to? Or, if it's already had one of those, do you think it could be done better?

I wish we'd get some continuation to Babylon 5 that would finally bring closure to all the plotlines that were left open, like the telepath war and the drakh plague. Preferably in book format since that would solve the budget problems that plagued B5, and the fact that many of the actors are now dead :(

[silveradept]

Casual fandom misleading? Maybe. But the trick is that I've perfected the art of tropes and cross-genre understanding, asking questions, and generally trying to understand, so even when someone surprises me with an interest in vintage heavy metal on cassette, I can talk intelligently and learn things from them.

Overloading others? There's a good chance I have done that, but I actively try to avoid it when I'm talking about things in a fan of, because I want other people to understand what the fandom is and where in coming from with it, so I would much rather be accused of overexplaining than underexplaining. (This often reveals my hardcore is different than someone else's. I am very much a fan of baseball, but not of fans who are more interested in the statistics than in the gameplay. They're missing the beauty before them for the maths.)

The Star Wars sequels are canonical for as much as anything about Star Wars is canonical, which is so say "Some philosophies pick-and-choose / deciding what goes in it." That the sequels are Disney-things makes me more inclined to think of them as meant for money rather than story, but I do like some of the characters of the sequel series and think they will do much better in the minds of fic writers than the Disney people.

What would I like to see more of? I've spent a lot of time and words pointing out all the foibles of the execution of the Dragonriders of Pern. The most frustrating thing about it is that the concept is solid, but the execution has been consistently terrible in the hands of the two authors I've been exposed to so far.

I suspect there are a lot of stories I want to see more of, because they succeeded at building a world and populating it not just with protagonists and antagonists, but side characters and interesting nooks and crannies, L-Space, and other such things that suggest there are plenty of other series that could have been made in the same world (or universe).

I would like to see a series, one day, where the setting is something like a library, or other fixed space, where the people inside are absolutely influencing how the world-spanning adventure goes on our there, but the narrative of the work never follows the people outside on their quest. At best, what they do is get progress on what happens outside by news retorts or otherwise. The kind of story that is about all those NPCs who deliver key information to the PCs and then, presumably, go on with their lives, possibly without knowing until a much later date that what they did turned out to be essential to the whole operation.

[alexseanchai]

I would like to see a series, one day, where the setting is something like a library, or other fixed space, where the people inside are absolutely influencing how the world-spanning adventure goes on our there, but the narrative of the work never follows the people outside on their quest. At best, what they do is get progress on what happens outside by news retorts or otherwise. The kind of story that is about all those NPCs who deliver key information to the PCs and then, presumably, go on with their lives, possibly without knowing until a much later date that what they did turned out to be essential to the whole operation.

—ooooh

[mythicmistress]

First off, I haven't really done anything pertaining to questions one and two.
Second, I never got into Star Wars and have developed a grudge against Disney, so I haven't watched the sequel trilogy. I guess you could consider them canon in the sense that the creators want you to consider them canon.
Third, I want a fifth Sly Cooper game to fix the fourth game's downer ending. Barring that, there is a lot that I am not happy with the fourth game doing. The writing, treatment of some of the established characters, and a bit of the gameplay. It really could have been better.

[doranwen]

1. Is there anything you like only casually, only to mislead people into excitement when you mention it?
Not really? Everything I like casually I never mention, everything else I generally either love or dislike greatly. (And I rarely mention the latter either.) And the things I like casually are often rather obscure, anyway.

2. Have you ever confused a casual fan with ALL the love and knowledge?
With LOTR in the past, I think so. But I don't talk to all that many people, that's the sad thing. (Mostly either just the Yuletide tagmods and a few people from the Yahoo Group Fandom Rescue Project.) And those I do talk to usually don't know *anything* about the thing I'm in love with, because I tend to fall in love with super obscure things hardly anyone's heard of. (C-16: FBI, Alphas, Cybergeddon, Rookie Blue, Gold Diggers, Worldweavers…) Also, none of those things tend to be recent; I always discover stuff years after it's done and over with. It's a perennial problem.

3. What is your stance on the Star Wars sequels? Do you consider them canon? (If your comment contains spoilers, please mark it. I originally asked that this be spoiler free, but that's not fair to anyone who really wants to get into it! It IS Star Wars Day, after all.)
I don't like Star Wars. Period. I had a friend in college who made me sit and watch ALL SIX films and I thought it was the biggest waste of time ever. (I know this is heresy in some circles, but I really really did not like it.) So I couldn't care less about what's considered canon or not.

4. What is a book, movie, or series you WOULD like to see a sequel or prequel to? Or, if it's already had one of those, do you think it could be done better?
Mmmm… I'd say Earth Girl (I want to see Tellon Blaze's story) but the author's got some prequels to it (just way before the events I want to see) and they've talked about writing a book of that someday, maybe, but they're writing current Jarra stories which is just zan for me, to use the slang from that world. I'd wish I could see a sequel to The Pretender that would wrap things up correctly, except they'd probably ruin it, and there's two fanfic series I know of (one set after the show proper, one set after the TV movies) that do that very thing and get to a happy ending, so really no need there. Maybe I'll vote for Cybergeddon. Short little webseries no one's seen (it's amazing, there's a Vimeo link to the whole thing turned into a movie that I can give you if you want to watch), and it finished with the bad guy still at large (just foiled his current plan). But they'd probably ruin the ship that I go for, lol.
So I know what my vote would be: Alphas. Syfy ended the two seasons on the worst cliffhanger and that was it. I'd love to see a sequel to the show, a TV movie that would wrap it all up well. And that wouldn't try to get Nina and Cameron back together, because I think they're too messed up to work with each other. Cameron and Kat, maybe. Leave Nina single. Might be good for her. (I'd suggest Nina and Rachel but they were pushing Rachel/John so hard - though maybe they break up in the aftermath of the final ep. I really should write something to deal with it all… someday…)

[pedanther]

I'd wish I could see a sequel to The Pretender that would wrap things up correctly, except they'd probably ruin it

+1

and there's two fanfic series I know of (one set after the show proper, one set after the TV movies) that do that very thing and get to a happy ending

Ooh! Tell me more?