The Re-Trekkening

[olivermoss]

Because of buzz mainly about Strange New Worlds, I am trying some Trek shows again. I doubt I'll watch more Discovery. I like the characters, but the plot has just gone too wonky.

They should've forked the time-stream. One good thing the movies did was just be an alternate timeline.

Anyway, I am starting Picard S2 today even though I had serious problems with S1. I've heard good things, but also some big spoilers that I wish I didn't know.

I watched the first ep of Strange New Worlds.



I wish I got the warm fuzzies from SNW that some people seem to have gotten. I wish I felt as validated by the rep in Discovery and some people do. I just... don't.

Comments

[verdande_mi]

I have enjoyed Discovery, but I have not seen any of the new season as I don't have Paramount. I would like to check out Strange New Worlds, but I am not paying for yet another streaming site (why do there need to be so bloody many!)

[olivermoss]

Yeah, there are a lot. That's why I dropped Paramount for a while. I wasn't originally interested in the Captain Pike show, but am checking it out for now. I just... if they are going to do all this early/prequel stuff I wish it was it's own timeline because they are constantly making weird implications for the context of TOS and don't seem to care that they are.

The problem with starting Picard after it finale just aired is that I ran into spoilers literally in the few hours between when I decided to get Paramount again due to SNW buzz and when I had a chance to actually watch.

[verdande_mi]

How do you like the new show now, with Caotain Pike?

I never saw anything of Star Trek before the new films, so I don't really know the old stories beyond some bits here and there. I did try Picard when it first came on, but it didn't grab me. I probably could have given it more of a chance.

[olivermoss]

I like it so far!

I didn't like the first season of Picard. It was a very weird show, tone-wise, for Trek. It's also hard to start with any of the current shows. A lot rely on knowledge of the franchise. SNW is probably a better starting point than most, though.

[mistressofmuses]

I haven't watched any new Trek series, but... that's always a bummer when there's something a lot of people are excited about (warm fuzzies, nostalgia, representation, etc.) that you just don't... get. :/

[olivermoss]

I very much grew up a Trekkie. I want to enjoy the new stuff. On paper I am the target demo.

[mistressofmuses]

I grew up a tangential Trekkie. Both my parents were pretty into it, and I watched a lot of TNG and Voyager with my mom. I guess I should give the new stuff a shot at some point, but it's not at the top of my list of "all that shit I should watch at some point" heh. I'm sorry that much of it has fallen flat for you.

[olivermoss]

I grew up obsessed with TOS. Most of the newer stuff has meant to appeal to the TNG generation, which is why a lot doesn't work for me. TOS and TNG are very different shows.

I'm one of those heathens who liked Enterprise, even thought they made Some Choices with the Vulcan character.

It can be a mess to get started because now there is so much, the quality is so uneven, and the shows are all very different.

[mistressofmuses]

I wish I'd seen more of TOS early on. My mom liked TNG more, so that was the one I saw more of (with sporadic single episodes here and there of TOS.) I've enjoyed what I've seen of both, which is far from all of either, but they are extremely different shows.

That's the feeling I get with so very many ongoing franchises, whether that's Star Trek, Star Wars, the MCU, etc. Even if I did really want to get into something, there's so MUCH material spanning different qualities and tones and mediums... it's a lot.

[olivermoss]

I wouldn't even know where to tell someone to start right now. Most of the current series rely on series knowledge. Picard is getting the TNG gang back together. Strange New Worlds is the direct events before Kirk took over command of the Enterprise and deals with the backstory of TOS characters like Pike and T'Pring.

I think TOS is worth a look for anyone deep into fandom because soul bonding, sex pollen, fuck or die, etc... It's all TOS baybee The majority of early known slash fandom is all K/S zines

I feel like there should be a podcast called Star Trek, Sentinel, Supernatural about the roots of fandom trends

[mistressofmuses]

I imagine the way things build on each other is satisfying for people who know all the things it's building on. But it does make for a high barrier of entry for someone pretty new to it, especially if they are worried about not recognizing the references/characters/etc. (I'm sure each series has enough explanation that they CAN be watched without prior knowledge, but it seems like it'd still feel like coming in on the middle of something.

The sheer amount of fandom built on Star Trek zines is staggering! I will forever be indebted to the early slash fans, and am in awe of how much they built and how many tropes they created that are going strong today.

That would be a fantastic podcast! It was within the last year that I discovered how much stuff traced back to Sentinel. I'd been aware of Trek and X-Files having major impacts on fandom as a whole, but had somehow wound up with a gap around Sentinel. (Maybe because I was interested in so few western live-action fandoms, which seems to be where a lot of the influence was strongest.) And of course Supernatural, lmao.

[olivermoss]

There was no DVD release of The Sentinel until relatively recently. It's not available steaming. Reruns have been few and far between. It fell into a fandom memory hole because people couldn't watch it.

The torrent someone found for me once was so low quality it was like watching an animated LJ-icon.

Back in The Day™ we had a massive searchable archive and no one else did. We had every kink and trope. But the fandom was mailing-list based. It jumped to LJ as a fic host, but there was little centralized fandom there because the mailing lists were the social spaces.

So, it's like it all happened in another timeline. Imagine no one remembering Buffyverse, but still everyone is verbing-nouns in fic and saying 'Jossed'. It's all very weird.

[mistressofmuses]

I didn't even realize there *was* a DVD release. I'm glad there was, even if it was only recently, but yeah... lack of accessibility will definitely pretty well kill a fandom. If even the people who WERE into it after first seeing it have no chance to rewatch it, much less show it to new people.

Oh jeez. Yeah, I've seen some *bad* quality recordings of things.

I missed out on most of mailing-list fandom. It still existed when I got into fandomy stuff, but was past its heyday. (Or I failed to find the mailing lists that would have been relevant to my early fandoms.) Though most of the earliest fic and stuff I remember was hosted on personal sites at the time, rather than centralized on ffdotnet or the like (since they were even then restrictive on what they hosted.) It's a shame how rarely those types of spaces truly migrated anywhere else. Fandom moved to LJ, and so did individual fans, but the specific mailing lists and webrings didn't.
Though the same seems true of every era of fandom - LJ groups also mostly failed to migrate and thrive elsewhere. Individual people moved to tumblr or DW or twitter, but the cohesive fandom groups mostly didn't. Now lots of things seem to be moving to discord, but that seems more fractured than cohesive, too.

I'm impressed by how early on you had a searchable archive, though! That was *definitely* one of the things that I remember struggling the most with - just how limited search functions were. You were lucky if you could search a pairing, much less any particular kink or trope you were looking for. Maybe there'd be a summary you could read to try and glean that info, but you couldn't count on it. Or you were just at the mercy of however the person who owned the site organized their fics.

That's a good way to describe the kind of... absence of something so influential in the collective fandom memory. The impacts are still there, yet the originating media is mostly missing.
It makes me think of various scientific fields, studying a mystery event based on the impact it left. "The fossil record shows there must have been SOME enormous environmental pressure on all of these species, but we're unable to identify what exactly it was..."

[olivermoss]

The Post-LJ splintering was unfortunate. Some people to this day wont touch DW because Denise wrote the wrong pairing in her Stargate fics. I am still baffled by the post-LJ splintering across Insane Journal, Journal Fen, Deadjournal, etc. If that hadn't happened then LJ style journaling would have had momentum along-side Tumblr. But there was all this petty 'well X went to Journal Fen so I will go to Deadjournal' stuff.

I don't even know how to fandom anymore. My main fannish thing is just screencapping Leverage social media posts.

[mistressofmuses]

God, fandom drama and shipwars remain the WORST kind of petty nonsense. I know they've always been the worst petty nonsense, and so they will remain until the heat death of the universe, but holy hell. The idea of "I won't go to that site, xyz is there" or "ugh, but that person has bad ships" is just... so weird. Curate your internet experience, by all means, but petty nonsense remains petty.

I do wish that something (other than tumblr) had wound up with the critical mass necessary to be the post-LJ home of fandom. I think that the journaling platform could have kept up its momentum if it hadn't been split between so many different sites that all petered out. I *miss* the broader presence of LJ-style journaling, but it wound up so scattered post the collapse of LJ that it all but disappeared.

How does anyone fandom? I don't understand either. I toss some fic up occasionally, and reblog a few fandom things... but it doesn't feel like *doing* fandom the way things used to. Fandom old yells at cloud.

I do appreciate your Leverage-related screencaps, though!

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I just want to hang with fans and chat but that seems so complicated these days.

I do enjoy posting Leverage! There were no new posts this Friday, I am so sad!

[mistressofmuses]

Why does that have to be so complicated? Because it really does feel like it's difficult to find that sort of space. I don't know if it's truly a different environment now, or if it's just having gotten older... but I swear it didn't used to be this difficult! It's probably both, but it seems like even younger folks struggle to find community. And current "fandom culture" as a whole seems on average even more fickle and toxic than it used to be, even though I know that could very well be a problem in "the good old days" too.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it seemed easy to find spaces in the LJ era. Maybe I am missing something obvious because old, but I don't think so. I know more fandom is on FB that I'd like and I gave in and did join some groups there during the pandemic. It's not where I want to be, but at least it's not twitter.

A lot of what the kidz do as fandom is just clout building and... I get it, you need at least a little or you are invisible. Until I ground engagement on FB I was invisible. I just want the damn algorithms out of fandom. I don't want some program deciding what comments I do and don't see.

[mistressofmuses]

I mean, I guess there's an extent to which I just don't "get" the social media of today - tiktok, especially, seems to be what The Kids These Days do. Maybe for people who are better at navigating it, it offers better social connection than I realize. At the same time... I kinda don't think it does?

Friendships can be built anywhere, I'm sure, but so much IS all about clout-chasing, and creating a brand or a following, and just by its nature that makes connecting with people harder. Plus with twitter and tiktok there's very little way to target your posts - you can tag and such, but if they miss their target they're doomed to flounder. And almost worse, if they escape the target audience things are prone to misinterpretation (wilful or accidental) and weird dogpiling from people the content wasn't intended for.

The way almost all social media is dominated by algorithms means the playing field is definitely *different* than it was in Ye Olde Fandome Days, and I think those differences are literally all worse. I'm with you - I hate some program deciding which posts will interest me, which comments should appear at the top. Nor do I want to be punished because I *don't* want to grind engagement like it's a part-time job just in the hopes that someone might see something I post.

There are some fandom groups on FB that are at the very least active, but they're hard to keep up with in my experience, because the algorithm does NOT in fact know what I'm interested in seeing, and having to physically visit the group and re-sort the way it shows me posts every single time isn't something I have the inclination to do all that often. At least communities on FB do offer some of the privacy options (depending on what admins set it as) that other social media sites lack. I really don't like FB for much, but the ability to kick spammers/assholes/trolls/etc. out of a group is nice, if the mods/admins will do so.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I really blame the algorithm. It gets in the way of people trying to form communities and it's not there for our benefit. I've tried to run DW comms as alternatives, but I can only do so much to flog momentum.

I am in, uh, three Christian Kane groups on FB. It's not really social, but it's nice to have a spam and his face and others who like me spamming his face. Some of the people are a bit odd, but I can ignore them. I'm also in an official Orville Peck group. Again, I enjoy it but it's not really social. It's just a 'hey nice other people also like looking at these pics' thing.

[mistressofmuses]

Engagement grinding is honestly super antithetical to any true community building, and it's in the interests of the sites themselves to try and get higher quantities of interactions, rather than any type of "quality". So polarizing opinions that generate angry reactions and arguments thrive. Or alternatively, tepid stuff aimed at appealing to the widest possible audience.

DW communities ARE good alternatives that address basically all the drawbacks of other sites... if people use them. But it's like pulling teeth! I'm trying to train myself to think abut the comms I'm in so that if I think of a topic/see a movie/read something interesting that would be relevant I can share it. I almost never think of it at the right times.

FB groups aren't social, at least to me, though I guess they are for some people. But there are groups I enjoy seeing posts from, and it *is* nice to have those posts interspersed in my feed.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, needing to grind engagement also puts people in competition. Can't be cooperative if we are in an inherently competitive system.

Fb groups are about a social as going to the movies solo. You are in a space with people who like what you like, and that is about it.

[mistressofmuses]

Very much. A lot of social media has a zero-sum aspect (even if it isn't really - people like more than one post, watch more than one video, etc.) But there is an inherently competitive nature to follower counts and notes and retweets that mean it's never going to be about community-building. It can be an *aspect* of community, with sharing information and resources or the like, but by its nature it can't really serve as a community of equals.

That's a good analogy. It's sharing space and an interest, but not community itself. Maybe there's an occasional conversation, but it's pretty difficult to foster any strong connections.