Thoughts on childhood fandoms
Jun. 12th, 2007 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teddogI've been rumbling about this for a while (mostly to poor Kate), but I figured that I should get my thoughts down. Could be an interesting discussion topic.
OKAY. So, there's a lot of Transformers fans being bitchy about the upcoming film and how it's not faithful to the source material. This brings up an interesting topic:
There are still Transformer fans that uphold the original cartoon as the main canon?
I have some all-over-the-place fandoms. Many of them are quite old; I've loved Red Green since back when it was airing on CHCH, so that would be back in 1991. However, aside from some remote clinging to Sonic (and it is remote and far inbetween), I don't have any strong ties to dated kids cartoons. I did go to college with some people who swore that their childhood cartoons were great pieces of media and deserved a place in history.
Now, I'm not saying that it's wrong to enjoy old kid's cartoons. I personally own sets of Animaniacs, the Saturday morning version of Sonic the Hedgehog and Wacky Races, along with one-off discs of Teddy Ruxpin and the Raccoons. These were all childhood fandoms. As for their spot in media...
For that, I'll give a direct example that's going to really embarrass me. When I was a preteen, for some reason I could NEVER fully understand, I really liked Bots Master. There. I said it. The humans in that series really annoyed me, but I'm a sucker for goofy robots and the plot took a page from Saturday morning Sonic, so I was all over that at the time. Anyway, I've been rewatching the show on YouTube and pondering how I sat through this crap as a kid. The music is bad (the opening theme... there is nothing that can describe that horror...), the animation is often painful and many of the characters annoyed me.
I believe I finally got my answer in what I think was episode 20. Maybe it was 19. There's this really goofy scene with interaction between a minor character who was the main protagonist in this episode, the main villain of the series and one of the villain's sidekicks. It's a short little scene, but manages to give the main villain some very out of left field but complex character development and tosses a major boost to the protagonist in taking what's been a stupid running joke up to that point in the series and turning it into into a form of self defense.
It's a surprisingly solid piece of writing for a stupid series. It makes me wonder if there's some more scenes like that through the show. That would explain why I watched the darn thing - I have a weakness for plot-tasty storytelling like that.
Yet, I can't imagine myself fangirlling a show like that in a way more than a happy childhood memory. So, the mindset of Transformers fans and their kind, the ones that burst into tears when something from their childhood is "updated", is forever lost on me.
So, does anyone else have any goofy fandoms as a kid that they'll admit to? And why did you like them?
OKAY. So, there's a lot of Transformers fans being bitchy about the upcoming film and how it's not faithful to the source material. This brings up an interesting topic:
There are still Transformer fans that uphold the original cartoon as the main canon?
I have some all-over-the-place fandoms. Many of them are quite old; I've loved Red Green since back when it was airing on CHCH, so that would be back in 1991. However, aside from some remote clinging to Sonic (and it is remote and far inbetween), I don't have any strong ties to dated kids cartoons. I did go to college with some people who swore that their childhood cartoons were great pieces of media and deserved a place in history.
Now, I'm not saying that it's wrong to enjoy old kid's cartoons. I personally own sets of Animaniacs, the Saturday morning version of Sonic the Hedgehog and Wacky Races, along with one-off discs of Teddy Ruxpin and the Raccoons. These were all childhood fandoms. As for their spot in media...
For that, I'll give a direct example that's going to really embarrass me. When I was a preteen, for some reason I could NEVER fully understand, I really liked Bots Master. There. I said it. The humans in that series really annoyed me, but I'm a sucker for goofy robots and the plot took a page from Saturday morning Sonic, so I was all over that at the time. Anyway, I've been rewatching the show on YouTube and pondering how I sat through this crap as a kid. The music is bad (the opening theme... there is nothing that can describe that horror...), the animation is often painful and many of the characters annoyed me.
I believe I finally got my answer in what I think was episode 20. Maybe it was 19. There's this really goofy scene with interaction between a minor character who was the main protagonist in this episode, the main villain of the series and one of the villain's sidekicks. It's a short little scene, but manages to give the main villain some very out of left field but complex character development and tosses a major boost to the protagonist in taking what's been a stupid running joke up to that point in the series and turning it into into a form of self defense.
It's a surprisingly solid piece of writing for a stupid series. It makes me wonder if there's some more scenes like that through the show. That would explain why I watched the darn thing - I have a weakness for plot-tasty storytelling like that.
Yet, I can't imagine myself fangirlling a show like that in a way more than a happy childhood memory. So, the mindset of Transformers fans and their kind, the ones that burst into tears when something from their childhood is "updated", is forever lost on me.
So, does anyone else have any goofy fandoms as a kid that they'll admit to? And why did you like them?
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Date: 2007-06-12 05:20 pm (UTC)"But, I'm still crazy about some of them, and I do get a bit offended when they try to re-invent the wheel. I mean, look at Knight Rider 2000... Ugh."
We're not talking mildly offended, but more like... oh... on the edge of a mental breakdown. Think "fanbrat". And Knight Rider 2000 was very gross and the rumoured movie looks like it's going to be trainwreck. I'm not at a convention panel, in tears as I explain my thoughts to the creators, though.