Utilized Netflix to watch the first half of Stargate SG-1 S1E1 in the background tonight. It isn't new to me. Especially the first few seasons of SG-1, I spent a lot of time with during like my first year of college.
Recently, I have been trying to articulate why I don't really binge watch things or try new things very often. I think it has two distinct tracks that may be somewhat parallel.
The first is that I rarely get completely over a fandom. Once I invest at all, I care about it, even if it fades into a background sort of nostalgia. Also, often I feel like when I move on to a new main special interest, there is something I have left unfinished with a previous interest. I always am looking back down the aisle of my own past, and I want to revisit things that made me feel good at the time.
It sucks knowing that the more things enter my life, even in terms of media, the less likely I will be to go back and pick up those loose ends. Occasionally, an idea for a fic or something will not leave me alone, and I cannot really "move on" until something is done.
That's less and less true, though, and it scares me.
I guess it's rare for me to super-actively participate in "public" fandom as often in terms of it being an interactive thing. I think that's true for a lot of people. And having a fandom of two or three is perfectly valid and often a healthier thing to do. Nevertheless, I find myself seeking an audience, acknowledgment, validation, because it's extremely hard to get in any other way, especially now.
The other thread of things that makes it extremely difficult for me to "pick up" something new is that I have to feel like the "fandom" is at least not virulently ugly OR that I will be fairly content holding it to my chest. Being stuck in that middle ground is something that I find myself in all too often, and it sucks a lot. I said to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
popkin16 earlier that if I'm going to make a leap, I want to know there's a trampoline or a set of pillows at the bottom.
In revisiting Stargate, I always think of LiveJournal. I think that might be because it was the fandom I was last active in on LJ. It's really interesting to me that while Stargate has retained fans for years, its fandom really never made the jump to modern social media.
Thinking about it now, I almost wonder if it's because of its highly militarized setting. Even I have developed this flinch response with regard to military and law enforcement being accidentally or intentionally propagandized in media. Still, I think that sometimes it is that the backdrop of something is not necessarily its whole meaning, and I can't be concerned with the ethics of a 20 year old show.
It's very weird how the first episode was TV-MA because they made Sha're get buck ass naked but then the show extremely dialed back from any of that ever again to the point that years ago when I was watching it on the family TV my mom gave me The Look when the topic of spending the night with a date came up for Sam or something. I remember this very lifestyle Christian but not ultra-conservative just quite-conservative family I stayed with on one of those weird vacations I had as a child watching SG1 as a family.
Early Installment Extreme Weirdness.
To be gossipy you gotta wonder if Michael Shanks and Bandera (woman whose name I can't remember right now) would have a baby together if she'd kept her clothes on. Not shaming just being glib.
There is something about the aesthetic, especially in the scene I paused on where Jack takes Daniel home once they're back in Colorado, that feels like an anchor and that I could just step into the TV and know a world I once lived in but which is gone. Told another friend earlier that I almost wish I could for, like, a week, have a trial period of what it would have been like to be an adult during the time I was a child.
I feel a lot like my adulthood or ability to ever have one that isn't just stress and grief has been and is actively being stolen from me.
I can't even get a job at a grocery store right now, despite everyone shaming you for not "taking whatever job you can get" and the staffing crisis because, hey, maybe people can't afford to basically pay to go to work when they're already broke!
Maybe I should start personally journaling about episodes of stuff I watch here. That's what we all used to do.
I am profoundly lonely, and I miss my mom a lot which leads to a lot of other nostalgia. Sudden ruptures of those momentary sense memories of being a little kid in the mid-90s.
Scrolling online doesn't fix the lonely. But neither does anything IRL right now and it's driving me a bit crazy.
I looked up some advice on how to cope with the stir-craziness that comes from trying to be a halfway responsible human right now and most of the articles were dated from March and April of last year. Which I get why. It's a top result because it has the most clicks. But it just makes me wonder if people have stopped even trying to kid themselves, either by throwing caution to the wind and going back to 100% normality or by just lying on the floor groaning like I feel like doing most of the time.
One thing that I notice is that almost every suggestion that I haven't tried involves one of two things I don't have:
1) more money than I have to spend freely
2) kids
Not even one's own kids but just this concept that most people have kids in their lives, and I don't. Unlike a lot of my millennial peers I actually miss it, and I furthermore think about how again this season of time is basically eliminating the future possibility of my having the choice to have any.
Also, my sleep cycle is completely ruined. More than usual. Ew.
Recently, I have been trying to articulate why I don't really binge watch things or try new things very often. I think it has two distinct tracks that may be somewhat parallel.
The first is that I rarely get completely over a fandom. Once I invest at all, I care about it, even if it fades into a background sort of nostalgia. Also, often I feel like when I move on to a new main special interest, there is something I have left unfinished with a previous interest. I always am looking back down the aisle of my own past, and I want to revisit things that made me feel good at the time.
It sucks knowing that the more things enter my life, even in terms of media, the less likely I will be to go back and pick up those loose ends. Occasionally, an idea for a fic or something will not leave me alone, and I cannot really "move on" until something is done.
That's less and less true, though, and it scares me.
I guess it's rare for me to super-actively participate in "public" fandom as often in terms of it being an interactive thing. I think that's true for a lot of people. And having a fandom of two or three is perfectly valid and often a healthier thing to do. Nevertheless, I find myself seeking an audience, acknowledgment, validation, because it's extremely hard to get in any other way, especially now.
The other thread of things that makes it extremely difficult for me to "pick up" something new is that I have to feel like the "fandom" is at least not virulently ugly OR that I will be fairly content holding it to my chest. Being stuck in that middle ground is something that I find myself in all too often, and it sucks a lot. I said to
popkin16 earlier that if I'm going to make a leap, I want to know there's a trampoline or a set of pillows at the bottom. In revisiting Stargate, I always think of LiveJournal. I think that might be because it was the fandom I was last active in on LJ. It's really interesting to me that while Stargate has retained fans for years, its fandom really never made the jump to modern social media.
Thinking about it now, I almost wonder if it's because of its highly militarized setting. Even I have developed this flinch response with regard to military and law enforcement being accidentally or intentionally propagandized in media. Still, I think that sometimes it is that the backdrop of something is not necessarily its whole meaning, and I can't be concerned with the ethics of a 20 year old show.
It's very weird how the first episode was TV-MA because they made Sha're get buck ass naked but then the show extremely dialed back from any of that ever again to the point that years ago when I was watching it on the family TV my mom gave me The Look when the topic of spending the night with a date came up for Sam or something. I remember this very lifestyle Christian but not ultra-conservative just quite-conservative family I stayed with on one of those weird vacations I had as a child watching SG1 as a family.
Early Installment Extreme Weirdness.
To be gossipy you gotta wonder if Michael Shanks and Bandera (woman whose name I can't remember right now) would have a baby together if she'd kept her clothes on. Not shaming just being glib.
There is something about the aesthetic, especially in the scene I paused on where Jack takes Daniel home once they're back in Colorado, that feels like an anchor and that I could just step into the TV and know a world I once lived in but which is gone. Told another friend earlier that I almost wish I could for, like, a week, have a trial period of what it would have been like to be an adult during the time I was a child.
I feel a lot like my adulthood or ability to ever have one that isn't just stress and grief has been and is actively being stolen from me.
I can't even get a job at a grocery store right now, despite everyone shaming you for not "taking whatever job you can get" and the staffing crisis because, hey, maybe people can't afford to basically pay to go to work when they're already broke!
Maybe I should start personally journaling about episodes of stuff I watch here. That's what we all used to do.
I am profoundly lonely, and I miss my mom a lot which leads to a lot of other nostalgia. Sudden ruptures of those momentary sense memories of being a little kid in the mid-90s.
Scrolling online doesn't fix the lonely. But neither does anything IRL right now and it's driving me a bit crazy.
I looked up some advice on how to cope with the stir-craziness that comes from trying to be a halfway responsible human right now and most of the articles were dated from March and April of last year. Which I get why. It's a top result because it has the most clicks. But it just makes me wonder if people have stopped even trying to kid themselves, either by throwing caution to the wind and going back to 100% normality or by just lying on the floor groaning like I feel like doing most of the time.
One thing that I notice is that almost every suggestion that I haven't tried involves one of two things I don't have:
1) more money than I have to spend freely
2) kids
Not even one's own kids but just this concept that most people have kids in their lives, and I don't. Unlike a lot of my millennial peers I actually miss it, and I furthermore think about how again this season of time is basically eliminating the future possibility of my having the choice to have any.
Also, my sleep cycle is completely ruined. More than usual. Ew.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-07 09:42 am (UTC)From:It was interesting to hear about how you don't really move on from a fandom. I know I always will - the cycle tends to be about three years and then the fervour fades, though I always remain fond and will probably have upsurges of creative connection in the future. The reluctance about getting into something new feels to me more like having to get over the hump of initial commitment (especially with TV shows) plus the awareness that if I do get into it, it can be... consuming, for a while. Sometimes that's asking too much / liable to pull me away from other things that need my attention more.