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#3. THE UR FANDOM RATINGS: VOLUME 1
Today (June 7, 2004 for those who hate kayfabe) I'm getting rid of the "Black Metal Warrior" article. It's one of the most reviled/liked pieces here, but I feel I haven't gone far enough with Unbelievably Retarded for it to live. See, I'm one of those creepy people who likes to surf the Internet for any flotsam and jetsam of interest (note: I am not a Flotsam & Jetsam fan, nor do I run a Little Mermaid fansite. Schmucks) and because of my wide-ranging interests I feel it is necessary for me to rate certain fandoms. I plan to make this an ongoing series and you people can e-mail me if this floats your number two. At the very least, there are a lot of links in the article and it's wide-ranging enough to come close enough to the enigma that is me. Well, that and go to the blog. As long as I'm shilling... At any rate, part #2 will come later in the summer so you're kinda stuck with this series of articles anyway. I promise I'll put up more reviews and interviews like a real webzine one of these days, seriously! I guarantee it! Or not. Oh, who am I kidding, you people don't know how to read...morons... DOCTOR WHO FANDOM DESCRIPTION OF FANDOM: Decades-old phenomenon loved by science-fiction enthusiasts and cult television show lovers. They don't make up a huge percentage of the fandom, though, which is sad. DEGREE OF INBREEDING: 90%. Doctor Who fans aren't expected to just enjoy the show for what it is, a low-budget children's show that grew into a low-budget science-fiction show made for children. No, the dedicated Doctor Who fan has to pick apart the show with a meticulousness normally reserved for more important things like the JFK assassination or Who Truly Runs the Government Right Now (FYI, it's the Procter & Gamble executive board. Seriously.) In my experience, Doctor Who fans are the most canon-obsessed fans on the planet bar none. Some may say Star Trek fans are more anal about what comprises their favourite show's official timeline, but in all honesty Star Trek has like five or six timelines and no one takes Star Trek: Voyager or Enterprise very seriously anyway. The problem unique to Doctor Who is its forty-year unbroken timeline, and everything - the comics, the books, the Tom Baker underwear, that audio CD that has the talking penguin in it, everything - with the official Doctor Who insignia on it has to fit in a nice, neat package with a bow around it and a tag that says "Michael Grade is an asshole -- xxxooo, Outpost Gallifrey" stuck to one side of the package. No one considers Peter Cushing a real Doctor, for example, and god forbid anyone should like Sylvester McCoy's run as the Doctor lest the fans throw out their witty rejoinders at the heretic (usually "YOU LIKE SYLVESTER MCCRAP" or similar bad puns about that era of the show.) Star Trek fans are "nerdy," yes, but for sheer zealousness nothing can compare to the Doctor Who fan. Nothing. RATING: D | The Doctor Who fandom is almost unique in that some fans eventually get to contribute to "official" canon (that's how a show goes rotten, when its internal timeline starts being called a canon.) Unfortunately, the chosen fans usually seem to do a piss-poor job of it. Hell, the two crappy versions of the Doctor Who theme came from fans (I'm not going to throw around a "DEFF MCCULLOCH" here but keyboard noodling can't compare with what Peter Howell did with the theme.) Fans released a godawful record called Doctor In Distress (EIGHTEEN MONTHS IS TOO LONG TO WAIT! BRING BACK THE DOCTOR, DON'T HESITATE!), and the entire twenty-third season of Doctor Who was about the actual bloody show being on trial. Man, all that and the show still used that one rock quarry for twenty-six years. It makes one wonder sometimes. SITES OF NOTE TV Cream guide to Doctor Who, Tachyon TV. I'm aware I'm linking to general-interest TV sites instead of Doctor Who fan sites. There's a reason for that. FURRY FANDOM DESCRIPTION OF FANDOM: People who like humanoid animal hybrids. That's pretty much it, but the hatred for the fandom gets blown to such huge proportions that furry fandom really doesn't deserve its notoriety. DEGREE OF INBREEDING: 95%. No one who enjoys anthropomorphic art can exist anymore. Hell, you can't even call it anthropomorphics these days; it's either "anthro," "furry," "morphic" or some other dumbed-down term. Granted, this sort of thing has been around for centuries but it's only been since the dawn of the commercial Internet (around 1990, I guess) that "furry" has been so dramatically defined. Usually the more voracious fans will draw horrible anthropomorphic porn and/or create "fursuits" so as to get themselves off in some way. Furry fandom is an example of something that feeds upon itself and has become a commercial, artistic wasteland. There are maybe six different styles 95% of the fans use when drawing their offal and most of the pictures/artworks drawn have no bloody soul to them. Essentially why should I be impressed with a picture of a Disney-modeled Simba archetype anyway, and why should I pay the artist money for mimickry? The fandom seems to be a front for some deeper sexual inhibition that I can't put my finger on, and it seems most of the people involved in the furry fandom have no lives whatsoever aside from the fantasy life where no outside influences can enter. Essentially, most people in the furry fandom make their hobby a lifestyle, and it's not even much of a lifestyle. Usually it involves playacting being an animal with a human brain, or something. It's hard to explain. Usually the serious anthropomorphic artists just call themselves "artists" and that's pretty much the end of it. RATING: C- | Honestly, furry fandom is one of the most overexposed things out there these days. Personally, I'm amazed some people overreact to it. It's been around for years and the fur-cons have been making money for a decade or so now, so why does "the Internet" keep making jokes about something most people are oblivious to and really couldn't care less about? Of course some people have too much of a sexual fixation on animals. They're an Other. The pet ferret symbolises something alien, something the human can't sexually conquest. Even if the ferret is skewered on a genital organ, it's not like the force of thought can change the animal into something more familiar (like, say, Vanna White - the ferret's more beautiful, mind.) Sure, some "furries" can be utterly creepy but not too many of them really throw the curveballs that lower the fandom another notch. Inflation, big organs, TaleSpin porn...it's all expected of that fandom. There really isn't much the stereotypical furry can conquest anymore short of genetic manipulation. The fandom pretty much lives in a hermetic bubble. SITES OF NOTE Please. SONIC FANDOM DESCRIPTION OF FANDOM: People base a universe around a children's TV show and blow it all out of proportion. It's the 1990's version of Doctor Who. DEGREE OF INBREEDING: 100%. As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the most obsessive fandoms out there. The show the Sonic fandom is based on is a standard 1990's-type cartoon set in a dystopian future with a militant female leader and a loose cannon. This formula seems to have won people over, and in normal circumstances that would be quite loverly. I mean, what I've described is essentially assorted seasons of Red Dwarf. Unfortunately, the major flaw in the Sonic fandom is what has killed it to the point of self-parody: the fact that everybody in the fandom imagines themselves to be the principal hero of the show's world. The fandom is one big childish wish fulfillment fantasy and most people grow out of it before they're 15. The people who don't, though...oh boy. The fact that comic artist/hack Ken Penders considered optioning his vision of the Sonic mythos to Dreamworks shows how ridiculous the Sonic fandom has become. If Babylon 5 fans want their show to be made into a film, fine. The show has its fans and is a proven success in syndication. A cartoon that lasted two seasons on ABC before the Saturday morning cartoon world imploded and whose fans sometimes border on pathology? Yeah, that'll sell millions of tickets there, bub. Hell, who wouldn't make a film based on a Japanese-owned video game character thrown into the most overused futureworld of the 1980's? I know this guy Globus who'd make the film in six days if he could. RATING: F | I loathe this fandom and everything it stands for. The Sonic fandom is essentially the Doctor Who fandom with a furry fandom bunged onto its side. I honestly wish it would die. SITES OF NOTE You're kidding, right?  TELEVISION NOSTALGIA FANDOMDESCRIPTION OF FANDOM: They like television-related nostalgia. What's to say? DEGREE OF INBREEDING: 10%. Surprisingly, I don't think this fandom is bad. It's obsessive, yes, and there is a bit of overlap with the UK contingent of the fandom. I mean, how many Tyne Tees logo stills does there really need to be? Still, these people at least have some knowledge of television and I've honestly learned a lot of facts from a few sites dealing with this sort of thing. Test patterns and nostalgia might be a boring thing to be into, but there are an awful lot of archivists in the fandom and they sometimes come up with things from television's past that are really bloody interesting. Mostly they're bloopers, but at least said bloopers are way more interesting than anything TV Carnage could come up with. After all, once one really thinks about it the 1950's were way more fucked up than the 1980's. They'd put anything on television back in those days (with reason, of course. Like The Playboy Channel could exist in that era.) RATING: A | This is really one of the safest fandoms to be into, I find. Perhaps Billy Ingram gets more press than he really needs but nostalgia about the seamy underbelly of television is, in my opinion, quite all right. After all, there are a million stories about television that most people don't know and if these people can come up with stories about why The Second Hundred Years actually got a time slot on a major television network back in the 1960's, more power to them. I love that sort of shit. SITES OF NOTE Television Obscurities, Afternoon Programmes Follow Shortly, TV Cream (I can't recommend TV Cream enough), ToonTracker, and this page if the redesign ever gets finished. VIDEO GAME FANDOM DESCRIPTION OF FANDOM: Gamers get together and talk about gaming, play games...you know what I'm talking about. It's a $30 billion a year business, come on. DEGREE OF INBREEDING: 30%. There is an annoying split in the video game fandom that bothers me. I'm pretty much of the set that eschews everything made after 1995, while others love to talk about how much a game rocks/sucks and how good the graphics are. Video games are intensely popular subjects to talk about and the people involved in the journalistic aspect of the industry sometimes get lauded like nobody's business. Still, there's something that makes the video game fandom very bloody unsavory to me. There are the sites that will talk about how "this game sucks" and that's the oeuvre of the entire site (personally, I don't care about anything beyond 16 bits as I hate wasting my money like that.) There's GameFAQs, which would be good if it didn't have the stupidest messageboard in the history of bulletin board services. Finally, there are the video game news sites that will inevitably devolve into polemics about how Duke Nukem Forever will suck when it comes out and how hot Derek Smart looks in a bikini. (Exactly why should I care about how a video game creator looks anyway? Wow, video game authors invariably look homely, there's a news flash right out of fucking New York for ya.) Honestly, the video game fandom is hit-and-miss at the best of times. There are a few things I can stand about it but the mainstream aspect makes me want to vomit five colours of blood. RATING: C | The nostalgia contingent comes off better than the mainstream contingent. Sure, the nostalgia freaks aren't without their problems and the world of emulation is spotty at best (considering game downloads are, to be blunt, illegal.) Still, the nostalgia-ists come off better than scuttlebutt about gaming news and Something Awful-esque whinage about terribly overrated "bad games." Superman is not the worst game on the NES, okay? SITES OF NOTE theredeye, Hacked ROM Reviews (I love Baby Dodge Ball. No, I have no taste.) METAL FANDOM DESCRIPTION OF FANDOM: People who like loud music and over-the-top antics. That's essentially the fandom in the nutshell, over-the-top shit. DEGREE OF INBREEDING: 50%. I won't lie, I've sorta been in the fandom for years. I've never really found a place in it, mind you. It's difficult since I have to compete with hundreds of other webzines and print 'zines for yer eyes and asses. Honestly, the metal fandom is not without its glaring flaws and massive amounts of idiocy done in the name of Satan. You have the Nazis and Aryans and "Christ-haters" in the black metal scene who stand by Judeo-Christianity even though they hate it and sometimes do extreme acts to debase it. You have the brutal death/grind kids who love everything faster, louder and more sexually explicit than everything else. There are the glam fans who stand by Poison even though Poison hasn't been good since, well, ever. As a last resort, there are dipshits like me who like to love to point out the glaring discrepancies in the metal scene. It's not an easy fandom to be into and sometimes it's so maddeningly stupid I sometimes think I should shave my head and pretend to have been punk all my life. Sure, the punk fandom has its problems as well (see: hardcore, Skrewdriver) but it's more socially acceptable and easier to sell. Maybe I'm a poseur. Half of you are. RATING: C | Strangely enough, for a music genre that has made millions of dollars and is one of the strongest underground music genres out there there's an INTENSE hatred for over-capitalist motives in said genre. I don't know why that is, and those who say Iron Maiden never got mainstream press while selling out arenas in the 1980's are just deluding themselves. Fuck, Creem ejaculated all over metal bands before it collapsed onto itself (let's not talk about Circus or any Sterling-McFadden publication, it makes my ass hurt.) The metal scene has its good points and its bad points, but if you wanted to hear me bitch and moan about it you could read the rest of my work. I seem to dedicate almost 25% of my life to this shit. SITES OF NOTE Infernal Combustion, Metal Realm, Bludgawd, Metal Rules!...uh...and this site? Oy. 80'S NOSTALGIA FANDOM DESCRIPTION OF FANDOM: BOY THAT TRANSFORMERS MOVIE SURE IS WEIRD, HUH? LOOK AT MY MAN-E-FACES ACTION FIGURE, IT SUCKS! DEGREE OF INBREEDING: 100%. The 1980's were a cesspool of culture, one only matched by the 1990's (which, I argue, was a worse decade than the 1980's.) Sadly, this sort of fandom waxes nostalgic about lost youth, He-Man action figures and the Saturday morning cartoons of the era. It's something I don't understand. I guess the 1980's are fondly remembered these days because it was the first decade where VHS, cable and new CD technologies allowed for a change in the cultural landscape. Sadly, it's also the era where soulless pandering to demographics became the norm for media and entertainment. Deregulation brought in lots of money for businesses, but it also created somewhat of a disposable culture that started in the 1950's and came to a head in the 1980's. It's false nostalgia. I don't have fond memories of the 1980's because I pretty much grew up a 1990's child and even then I knew most of the stuff that I owned was grade-A horseshit: RATING: F | The saddest thing about 1980's nostalgia fandom...well, take the biggest things to come out of that decade: Care Bears, He-Man, Hulk Hogan, Transformers, Strawberry Shortcake. It's 2004 and what have we seen revivals of? Care Bears, He-Man, Hulk Hogan, Transformers and Strawberry Shortcake. If you didn't like the 1980's the first time, why the hell did you drive up the demand so much that you set yourself up for the second wave of the 1980's? I don't get it. SITES OF NOTE Oh yeah, I'm really going to link to X-Entertainment and its thousand knockoffs. If you were stupid enough to buy Power Pachyderms the first time...  SNL FANDOMDESCRIPTION OF FANDOM: Self-explanatory, really: people who like Saturday Night Live talk about it, rumours, scuttlebutt, why they hate Jimmy Fallon etc. DEGREE OF INBREEDING: 40%. Mostly the problems with the SNL fandom stem from the fan reviews of the show. I don't know about other people, but somehow I don't want to read about somebody else's life and thoughts about things while reading a review of a recent Saturday Night Live episode. Sometimes the intros and unimportant shit (e-mails, what X thinks about HBO shows etc.) take up more space than the actual reviews, which is maddening as all I want to know is what the reviewer thought about the sketches. Sometimes the shows are graded on a bloody grade curve, and I've seen too many reviews that end on a mediocre rating and somehow that show is one of the best of the season. As a fan of the show since the early 1990's and one that actually grew up with the 1995-2000 cast I can tell that's bullshit. A mediocre rating like ***1/4 is not a good rating, people. Hell, the show's been inconsistent to terrible since 2000 and yet some of the fans can't seem to grasp that. SNL has been inconsistent in quality since the beginning - hell, that's a trademark of the show - but it seems some fans prefer to live in a dream world and pretend the show was never bad aside from the 1980-81 and 1994-95 seasons. Ironically, Saturday Night You proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the fans can't write better sketches to save their lives, so maybe they shouldn't talk. RATING: C | I don't think the SNL fandom is all that bad, especially since the oft-repeated opinion about the show sucking since 1994-95 (i.e., "when Sandler and Farley left") has been exhausted to the point of self-parody. Hell, I remember when people hated Will Ferrell (or "the man who shouts all the time," as people called him back in the day) and now the general concensus has shifted to Ferrell being one of the best castmembers ever. At least the SNL fandom shows some consistency. Still, a lot of the net-based fans have that inflated opinion about themselves that they somehow have a better feel for the show than the people involved in it. Luckily, the SNL writers etc. don't seem to listen all that much. As bad as the show sometimes is, it's still a TV show. There's no need to make SNL seem like more than what it is. SITES OF NOTE SNL Transcripts PUNK FANDOM DESCRIPTION OF FANDOM: People who like punk, live the "punk" lifestyle etc. DEGREE OF INBREEDING: 50%. Punk isn't without its warring fandoms, hardcore's battle against death metal (or appropriation of it, whichever is acceptable right now), WorldWidePunk's increasing uselessness, that overhyping of Billy Talent etc. I keep somewhat of a foot in the punk scene and these days there's that intense hatred of emo and the arty hardcore contingent becoming more and more popular with people, which is a shame. There are about eighteen hundred varieties of punk, the leftist-verging-on-stupid attitude that it's supposed to take, the idea of "conservative punk"...essentially the one music that preaches a hell of a lot about unity doesn't show it more than half the time. Like any type of youth-oriented music, punk is a lifestyle to some and it really shouldn't be. Some elements of the fandom are good, like DIY ethics and putting out an affordable product. Still, there's things like the conformity element and that sometimes naïve adherence to a certain type of dress. The fandom's a long-established one and most of the problems with it will never change, but I guess a liberal-minded music scene will always be that way. RATING: C | There are a lot of sub-scenes within the punk scene as a whole, each with its own dress code and ethics. Sometimes, as with straight-edge or oi!, said sub-scenes will gain some sort of militant undercurrent. I guess one can't help that, but it's still dumb in my mind to define punk as some sort of lifestyle or bigger cultural undertaking. I honestly think the punk scene has a similarity to the metal scene overall. It's just that in punk problems within the scene are talked about more. Then again, as a man who has really never hated punk I would say that, wouldn't I? I'm a poseur, remember? SITES OF NOTE Old Punks Web Zine is back up, though I find myself disagreeing more these days with the man who writes this. I also like No Brains and PunkOttawa.com.  POP CULTURE FANDOMDESCRIPTION OF FANDOM: Basically people interested in the oeuvre covered by mainstream outlets like The Onion AV Club, Pitchfork Media, Definitely Not The Opera etc. Yeah, these are the people who like "hip" shit. DEGREE OF INBREEDING: N/A. One of the things I've had to accept is the fact trends aren't actively pushed by journalists. Having had some experience with an accredited campus newspaper as well as following the major 'alternative' entertainment papers of note, I've come to the conclusion that the majority of journalists who cover "pop culture" are lazy, lazy people. They aren't people who actively check out scenes or trends. They follow them, and swallow every bit of marketing tripe making the rounds at that particular moment. Usually the journalists either jump on a trend that's already become well established by the time they jump on the bandwagon (see: whining about "reality television" like it wasn't shit in the first place, "metrosexuals") or else invent it/have circumstances and marketing invent it for them. Seriously, did anyone but arts journalists ever talk about electroclash when it was a going concern? The garage rock genre only became popular after Spin et al. began to cover it cf. The Strokes/The White Stripes, and almost none of the independent labels/bands in that genre (including Crypt Records, one of the only genuine "garage rock" labels out there) received press because the genre was suddenly "in" at that point. In a way, pop culture fandom has a pond scum mentality to it as the people who follow "pop culture" never really have an attachment to anything that could make them look bad. They're exploiters, essentially, and they're about as genuine as a gold-plated cubic zirconium necklace. RATING: F | I give this fandom an F on general principle alone. I've seen these people at work and they scare me. These are the sort of people who will look at foreign films only when a title has crossover appeal (see: Battle Royale, Shaolin Soccer, The Triplets of Belleville) or when a popular filmmaker bases his films on a certain type of cinema (see: the countless kung-fu films Quentin Tarentino based Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2 on.) The pop culture fandom has an idiotic pack mentality to it that makes me question whether these people are actually interested in what they're interested in. I used to think indie rockers controlled the mainstream arts press but these days I realise most indie rockers couldn't care less. It's the people who try way too hard to be "alternative" who do, and although some of these people hate Rolling Stone or Blender they'd bloody well sell their souls to write for said magazines. A paying job is a paying job, after all. SITES OF NOTE Mark Prindle. Love him or hate him, the man isn't afraid to run contrary to popular taste and/or a coherent writing style. LOW MAINTENANCE PERIODICALS? WHAT KIND OF FAG NAMES HIS BAND AFTER A PERIODICAL?! I NAMED MY BAND SPORTS ILLUSTRATED SWIMSUIT ISSUE B-MOVIE/CULT FILM FANDOM (INCLUDES MST3K FANDOM) DESCRIPTION OF FANDOM: People who are into B-movies. Sort of the antithesis of the art-movie contingent, as it were. DEGREE OF INBREEDING: 10%. I actually think the cult film fans have a good sense and working knowledge of what they're reviewing. B-Movie Cabals notwithstanding, these people have a good sense of the sort of things they like watching and they're not embarrassed to admit their love for certain films. With the art-film contingent, I've learned most art-film lovers think a low-budget film costs around $50,000 to something like $500,000. Cult film people know better. Sure, there's somewhat of an elitist taste with some cult film fans and much questioning about what makes a cult movie in the first place. Some people call them B-movies, some go for the less demeaning term "cult film" and still others go for the bluntness of the term "bad movies." Still, there's a common thread to the fandom that endears me to it. These people are bluntly honest in their tastes and are the type of people who don't mind paying for movies most people wouldn't bother to burn, much less actually pay for. As a man who has a passing interest in the cult film fandom I may be biased towards it, but I'm one of those guys who has titles like Microwave Massacre and The Ninja Squad in his collection. Hey, someone has to save this shit from the garbage bin. RATING: B+ | I think Stomp Tokyo is overrated as hell as a website (hundreds of films reviewed and they think Nukie is the worst film ever? That film's becoming the new Manos: The Hands of Fate), but there are other sites and 'zines I can go to that are just as good. I almost hesitate to lump the MST3K fandom in with the cult film fandom, but if there's one thing I've learned from the Internet it's the fact most MST3K fans have an interest in cult films as well. After all, they're only doing what Best Brains did for ten years. It's not like finding rare and neglected films is an easy thing to be interested in. Hell, you try owning a copy of The Puma Man and see how seriously people take you then. SITES OF NOTE Jabootu's Bad Movie Reviews (more mainstream than I like but great reviews), Badmovies.org (I love this site), The Unknown Movies (also great), Bad Movie Report, Horrorview, Bad Movie Planet, The Stinkers (again, more mainstream but if you want a copy of that "great" Cannon Film The Apple this is the place) and Canuxploitation for that Canadian cult film love. Enjoy the links, kids! FANDOM WANK DESCRIPTION OF FANDOM: Basically this site and its spinoffs. DEGREE OF INBREEDING: 30-50% DEPENDING ON MONTH. Making fun of the overwrought drama within a fandom is quite all right but it has tended to devolve into a) people who join Fandom Wank because they feel they're being made fun of by other fans, b) repetitiveness of certain subjects (eg. anime, Harry Potter) and/or c) self-reference. I guess one should expect LiveJournal drama from a LiveJournal-based weblog. I honestly think Fandom Wank grew too fast before it could defend itself against...well, itself. It is called Fandom Wank, after all. RATING: C | The constant overuse of fandom topics like, say, Revolutionary Girl Utena or InuYasha does get tired, and I wish the community would not have chosen catchterms like "kerfuffle" or "mockity mock mock" since they sound kind of gay. Still, this fandom still comes up with winners every so often (the academic-journal-based post was a classic in my opinion) and I have hopes that the concept will tighten itself up before things really get stupid. SITES OF NOTE Seebelow. Same concept (stupid comics news), better execution.  
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