on Homestuck-induced blasts from the past and pilot error

[xparrot]

Catching up on Homestuck and omg Ed Emberley! Those were the only "learn to draw" books I liked or respected as a wee thing, they were so much fun! Aww...

In other news, it's weird to be watching shows from the pilots. I never do this - I hate shows getting canceled out from under me, so generally I wait at least until the 1st season is at least half done to start watching. But now I'm watching both Sleepy Hollow and Agents of SHIELD, and it's weird to be reading episode reactions from the get-go. I'm used to taking a while to warm up to a show (if a show manages to grab my fannish heart within a single season I'm impressed; some of my favorite shows didn't really catch me until s2-3) and being really critical initially, which is why I tend to reserve judgment until I've seen at least that much. So it's odd to me on the one hand to be reading about how much people love Sleepy Hollow (I've enjoyed it, there are things about it I really like, I could definitely see myself feeling fannish about it in the future; but there's just not enough there yet for me to love...plus I haven't seen enough to trust it not to do things like kill off chars I do like...), and on the other much of my flist is really disappointed in SHIELD, while as for me what we've had of SHIELD so far reminds me of the weaker starts of a lot of shows I've later come to really enjoy (SGA, Fringe, Warehouse 13 - not to mention things like ST:TNG and Babylon 5 which had actively awful pilots!), and I'm curious to see what it's going to develop into.

(I do wonder if the slow start is why no one on my flist seems to be into Arrow, because that was a show that started out dumb but got better with every episode, until the season finale was downright AWESOME, and it's doing one of the better semi-realistic takes on superheroes I've seen, and tragically it seems that no fans I know are watching it, or (even more tragically) writing me Oliver/Diggle/Felicity OT3...)(Speaking of which, remind me to pimp Arrow before s2 premieres next week! If for no other reason than the season finale had like three different points that we were yelling at the screen "TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM, DO THIS!" and then the very next scene was the characters doing this, which was awesome...)

Comments

[amalthia]

I'm completely and utterly in love with Arrow. You're right it did start off slow but sometime halfway through I was glued to the screen and marathon watching the rest of the season. :)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I didn't watch Arrow from the start but my sister did, and then about halfway into the season we were bored and looking for TV and so she showed it to us...mostly just for Oliver's body; but by the time we caught up we were hooked. Really looking forward to the premiere, I'm wondering where this season will be going!

[amalthia]

I'm kind of looking forward to the premiere but sort of worried that they'll mess it up. I'm glad I didn't give up on this show too soon.

[naye]

Never heard of Arrow, so please do go ahead and pimp it! :D

I usually ping with shows from very early on - I either like it enough that I will stick around for it to get better (it's very rare that I watch a pilot and think "WOW"), or I don't find anything at all in it for me. It's just a gut feeling, like you get sometimes from meeting people? You know, there's those people that are perfectly nice, but even just chatting with them, you know you'll never want to get to know them more than as a casual acquaintance. And then there are some people that even in your first conversation, even if the conversation itself isn't deep or interesting, you want to keep talking to them!

Something like that.

I don't think the SGA pilot is qualitatively better than, say, SHIELD, but I had a much more positive reaction to the possibilities inherent in the people and the premise. Dollhouse? The first episode wasn't bad, but I was immediately turned off by... I don't even know. But I didn't like like it.

A lot of shows I can't really say whether it was the pilot that did it or not, because I've started watching out of order, or with a marathon, or whatnot. But not clicking with a pilot happens to me, and then it very rarely goes anywhere. (I didn't click with Teen Wolf, watched two seasons, and... still not clicking. Same with Merlin and Lost Girl - didn't click with the pilot, kept watching, never got it, gave up.)

I think marathoning is definitely better for the fanning experience, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to do that without getting completely spoiled. [insert lamenting the decline of LJ and popularity of Tumblr here]

Anyway, I really hope Sleepy Hollow keeps the good work up, because I am very enthusiastic about it! And if SHIELD gets its act together, fine, but I just don't have the sort of time I used to when I could watch whatever just because I was bored and if I sifted through enough material there'd be a few gold nuggets. (I sound old - and I don't even have kids! I don't understand how people with kids can have lives, much less fandoms, but some people are just amazing that way.)

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Heh, yeah, it's things like this that make me realize how fundamentally broken my instincts are ^^; I just can't trust my snap judgments - not just in fandoms, in real life too; my "I'm going to become close to this person" instinct is maaaaaybe 40% accurate (in either direction, I've multiple times thought I've "clicked" with a person and then couldn't even get a casual friendship out of it later, and then with many of my closest friends I don't actually recall our first interactions? ^^; you're actually the exception to this, I remember how we got to talking originally <3) And in fanning - some of my favorite songs I was bored by the first time I heard them. Some of my favorite characters I downright detested when they were first introduced (I almost stopped reading YGO because Kaiba was in it; he is still, now, one of my favorite characters of all time). I saw the first ep of Juuni Kokki twice before I was sat down and made to watch more, and I pretty much had to be made because I was so bored by the beginning. SGA is one of the fandoms I was into the longest of any fandom, and I nearly quit watching it after the end of s2 because I still hadn't clicked with it.

So in the context of all that, it's just...weird to me that people have first impressions that they can actually trust! ^^; If anything I overcompensate in the other direction...things that I like right off the bat, I can be suspicious of, worried that they're going to disappoint me later. While as stuff I'm neutral on, I have the hope of really getting into later...(Admittedly, most shows that I initially loved and later fell out of love for - like BSG and SPN - took at least a couple seasons for that to happen. And there have been some shows I loved straight-off and never fell out of love for, like Firefly and Pushing Daisies. Though most of those are Type A fandoms, for Type B fandoms I'm more used to having them to win me over, which is how SHIELD is pinging on me. OTOH there are certainly plenty of shows that I didn't click with from the start and never clicked with later, like Teen Wolf. So...for me it's a crapshoot? ^^;)

Which isn't to say that you shouldn't trust your instincts! Not to mention, not having time to watch ALL THE TV, that is the unfortunate reality of adult life ^^ So choosing to watch what you actually enjoy makes sense! I'm mostly just disappointed because SHIELD's lost peoples' interest so quickly that it may never get the chance to develop, and I know from experience that once people decide a show's not worth their time it's nearly impossible to get them back into it (and that's the show's fault for not being good enough! but I wanted a cute team show to fill the void Warehouse 13 is going to leave, and it seems like the best option now; plus the idea of a TV show interlaced with a movie 'verse is so neat, and obviously I'm very invested in the MCU succeeding in every way...but oh well! There will be other shows!)

Meanwhile, yes, fingers crossed for Sleepy Hollow to keep it up! \o/ And Arrow I will talk about more (it's another superhero show - on the CW no less, and DCU, so yeah, filling the Smallville gap - though no superpowers; it's about Green Arrow, who is basically Batman with archery. The show's take is pretty dark and that makes it work in ways I didn't expect - the hero kills people, which is something I usually can't stand in my superheroes, but actually can the way it's handled in Arrow. I honestly don't know if you'd like it at all - superheroes are much more my thing than yours, I know! ^^ - but it's a way better show than what it initially appears to be...)

ETA: Also Arrow does feature John Barrowman having the time of his life playing a supervillain! So there is that! :D