fictional_fans | FANDOM BRACKETS: SEMIFINAL

melannen posting in

Down to the last four fandoms in the SEMIFINALS! A very classic batch of fandoms that made it through.

This will run 24 hours, and then the actual final I will probably leave up at least 48 hours. There will also be a third place contest running at the same time.

Poll #27301 Fandom Brackets: Semifinals

This poll is closed.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 154

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Explore the galaxy in this groundbreaking science fiction fandom about adventure in the stars!

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Star Wars
51 (34.2%)

Star Trek
98 (65.8%)

Any story, any setting, and genre, any time period - you can find it here!

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Doctor Who
58 (38.7%)

Yuletide
92 (61.3%)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

sheliak

I've recently gotten into Star Wars too (and surprisingly invested in the Jedi Order), but I can't not vote for Star Trek. My heart belongs to Ael still, after all this time.

From:

melannen

Same.

From:

extrapenguin

Star Trek has always occupied an awkward place on the scale of sci-fi hardness for me. It's sort of in an uncanny valley – it wants us, in parts, to believe that it is Very Serious Science Fiction Based on Real-World Theorems, but the actual content is science fantasy stuff with Kirk punching gods.

Also, laser swords are just objectively cooler. Star Wars it is!

From:

melannen

Star Trek started out trying to be very hard science fiction, but was severely limited by budget and effects. Even the stuff like vast psychic powers were firmly in the range of scientific inquiry at the time. And even then though, it was always more social science fiction than technical science fiction (I will fight you over whether social science speculation counts as hard SF!) But the stories were generally set up as hard SF, and at least tried.

Lately though they seem to have completely given up. There's not much in Disco I would call even trying to be hard SF.

From:

extrapenguin

I will fight you over whether social science speculation counts as hard SF!
I actually think this is a trichotomy for me between hard, soft, and social SF? Hard SF looks at natural/non-anthropological sciences and looks how they could impact a story or what it would be like if they were different (e.g. "the speed of light is now 40 km/h and you get relativistic effects when you run"), social SF looks at social/anthropological sciences and asks equivalent what if-questions based on those instead, and soft SF is interested in personal stories on a SF backdrop, usually. From my POV Star Trek is mostly soft SF with occasional/past forays into social SF, and I keep running into people who insist it's actually super hard SF. (One of them is, unfortunately, a coworker.)

I will give you that it might've been less soft in the past, but they seem to have been very willing to abandon that basically as soon as possible. And the space battles are so bad I cry in physicist, but that's a problem it shares with literally every SF TV show/movie I've watched save for Babylon 5.

From:

melannen

Fair enough, although by the really strict definitions of hard SF I can only think of half a dozen or so books that might meet it. (Even the ones that are "what if this new technology" are often mostly about the social ramifications of it, whether they realize it or not.)

I feel like Star Trek was trying very hard to be hard (or at least Social Science) SF up until at least most of DS9, but the later series do seem to be falling very much on the side of "Space Opera, specifically as in a soap opera in space". I am just stuck in a time when Voyager was the "new Star Trek" and it's hard to remember there's now been more series since Voyager than before it.

From:

mekare

OMg Yuletide vs Doctor Who? This is unfair! I voted for Who but it was a close thing.

Star Wars vs Star Trek is no contest, my heart belongs to the latter.

From:

melannen

I wasn't expecting Star Trek to be so much more beloved, especially given the new Star Wars shows! But I didn't have a hard time voting either..

From:

mekare

I think the new Pike show has some good buzz? Haven’t watched it myself, but I do love Discovery's latest season.

Edited Date: 2022-07-21 08:48 pm (UTC)

From:

melannen

It does! I'm not sure I'd like what it's doing with TOS but I think it could do worse. (I am currently doing a synchronous TOS rewatch and don't want to dive into the Pike show until that's done.)

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

Much as watching North by Northwest informs subsequent viewing of TOS episodes, a firmer grasp of Westerns contextualizes So Much.

From:

melannen

Learning that it originally aired right after Daniel Boone (and then watching it that way) has been revelatory.

From:

gingicat

That first one has caused religious disagreements! I voted for the one where I have watched all the television shows and have chosen a streaming service based on how much I love it.

From:

melannen

The very first thing I ever did on the internet, c. 1994, was join an argument about Star Wars vs. Star Trek on an AOL message board! This thing feels like full circle somehow. At least it shook out that they aren't the actual final.

I like your description of how you voted, it's a good match for my descriptions of the fandoms. :D

From:

java

Star Trek vs. Star Wars /o\ They're both my forever fandoms and I love them. I don't want to choose!
I've recently, as in this summer, read (probably linked in one of the meta comms I follow here on DW) an opinion piece that boiled down to; Star Trek is an utopia, Star Wars is a dystopia. I kinda agree. So I'm voting Star Trek.

From:

melannen

There's an argument to be made about whether Star Trek ever gets close to *being* a utopia, but it's at least interested in asking the questions, and SW isn't. I wonder if that's why it's so popular - people get into Star Trek when they need to believe things will get better, they get into SW when they need to believe it will be ok even if they don't.

From:

java

That's why I said I kinda agree. Star Trek presents itself as an utopia, and Star Wars is.. star wars XD

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

ST:TOS was, like M.U.N.C.L.E, invested in the proposition that we try to get to the future.
Star Wars has George Lucas continuously reediting his movies.

Meanwhile, I may have to be Dwight Eisenhower just to bridge some Weird happening here in the Midwest.
I need a skullcap, to hide my hair.

From:

sophia_sol

star wars vs star trek was a cruel choice and I'm still not convinced I went for the right one. They're both so good in such DIFFERENT ways! I don't like pitting them against each other!

on the other hand with doctor who vs yuletide, doctor who might be my oldest tv fandom but yuletide never broke my heart like doctor who did so that's an easy one in the end

From:

melannen

I am glad Yuletide has never broken your heart!

From:

petrea_mitchell

I'm having '80s science fiction fandom flashbacks here. The Marvel vs. DC of the day was Star Trek vs. Star Wars, and Doctor Who had a significant presence as well.

From:

melannen

It has definitely ended up a very classic set. You could have named these the Big Four SF Fandoms any time in the last forty years with no argument. I suppose that means something.

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

For full "80s flashback, you need the Who Novelizations complete with Intro Screed that derides Star Wars' pajamas and whatever DaSilva's Trek fighting words was.

They cut that out once the novels were for stories less often seen, aka Hartnell and Troughton.

From:

mommy

I had to vote Star Trek because TNG was the show that was aired right after Sesame Street where tiny!me lived during the late eighties. It's too fundamental to how I perceive sci-fi for me to vote otherwise.

From:

melannen

When I was Sesame Street age I was terrified of Star Trek and went to hide in my sister's closet...

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

Star Trek played in syndication during my nap time.

Mom made sure her programs were nap time, by selective Tiring Out Wee Me.

From:

onlysmallwings

Gotta vote for Yuletide as that is the umbrella fandom that brought me into Ghost Soup Infidel Blue.

From:

melannen

It's hard to believe Ghost Soup never even made it onto the first poll, it almost has more series and subuniverses than Star Trek. But I guess its heyday was pre-AO3 with Purple fandom.

From:

onlysmallwings

Yeah, it's been a while since I was properly in the fandom, but it's always going to have a special place in my heart. Even if it remains small enough to be a Yuletide fandom.

From:

grammarwoman

As everyone has said, SW vs ST is a very hard choice. But Leia all the way for me - Star Wars!

From:

melannen

Leia *is* a pretty good argument, but then again: Uhura.

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

Remember, you can have both. Just pick a universe with a different dichotomy.

From:

lannamichaels

I have seen a Star Wars more recently than a Star Trek.

I voted for Star Trek this morning and have had no feelings of needing to change that vote.

I am not honestly sure why this is. I think I have forgotten recent Star Treks even exist? The recent Star Trek movies did not reach backwards and annoy me about the Star Trek I love, ie TNG? IDK. Maybe the Star Trek way of starting over all the time, like the Doctor Who approach, lets you put it into eras and separations more easily than Star Wars and its unending revision...

...I say, and remember they keep messing with Spock's backstory.

Hm.

From:

melannen

I had similar thoughts, and I think for me it's partly that Star Trek has been a lot messier with canon for a lot longer that Star Wars, so it's still easier for me to toss out whatever I don't like as if it's a comics fandom or something. With Star Wars it still feels like all the movies are supposed to Matter. With Star Trek I can happily pretend that nothing is canon except a dozen novels from the 80s.

...also, Trek fandom and marketing has been a lot less annoying lately. That's part of it. I don't feel like I'm being pressured to care as much.

From:

lannamichaels

Yeah. If there are three new Star Treks every year, I certainly don't know about it.

From:

satsuma

Amused by the combo of everyone going ‘so hard to choose!’ in the comments + a decisive win for Trek, in terms of actual votes

To be fair, I went the exact same way — I may spend more time in the SW fandom these days but my Trek groupchat has survived 7+ years and 3 different messaging softwares which wins handily!

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

icon love, sciences engage.

I've got a crocodilian child pin, but it's not like I'll see the show since it's a streaming service.

From:

kiezh

In a lot of ways I feel similarly about Star Trek and Star Wars - they're both Big Fandoms I've always sort of been part of just because they're EVERYWHERE, but neither ever really felt like My Fandom even when I was reading a lot of fic there. I've been playing a Star Wars MMO for years and still don't feel like I'm particularly fannish about Star Wars.

I voted Star Trek over Star Wars because Trek has at least *tried* for thematic coherence at times, while Star Wars has never made any efforts in that direction at all. ST has arguments to make about people, ethics, society*; SW only has Rule of Cool and no follow-through. (Probably why I've never trusted it enough to emotionally invest, even though people are writing great fic and wandering around on planets like Alderaan or Ossus in SWTOR is delightful.)

*Even though the execution of those arguments is wildly inconsistent. Points for effort!

That said, I'd have voted for MDZS over either of them! And I'm voting for Yuletide to win it all; I feel like that's a very appropriate champion.