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silveradeptChallenge #6 wants us to show what we love about the canon we consume.
It's rare that a single unit of the canon is something that sells me on any given work. Trying to pull something out individually and seeing how well it stands by itself often means having to explain everything that goes before it and after it so that someone can have at least an inkling of an appreciation for what's happening. Very few things are as self-explanatory as "Man Gets Hit In Groin By Football."
Some things that are favorites also require explaining a bit about yourself. If you relate to one of the miraculous magical Madrigals more, it could be because you're used to the pressures of being a perfect oldest child, or being the one who tels the truth in your family and gets blamed for it, or being the normal one in a family full of overachievers and feeling correspondingly looked down upon. If you're all in for Nimona, you might have to explain it's because you've been trying to be your authentic self for all this time and it's rare to find a character that really embodies that struggle and the secondary struggle for being accepted as the person you are, flame breath and all. Several of the She-Ra and the Princesses of Power characters hold appeal for people who have been the weird one with the very specific interests, or for always being in someone else's shadow, or having extremely self-destructive methods of coping installed in you by a toxic workplace and abusive supervisors.
Some things are marvels of cinematography, such as when there's an extended one-take, one-camera sequence, and then seeing what went into making that shot work. Or finding out that there are some animator tricks at work to make the Spider-Verse characters out of sync with each other as a subtle reinforcement of their different dimensions. It's sometimes having interface glitches for the opening credits when the perspective of the Machine is being interfered with by a computer virus. Sometimes it's just waching to see what kind of epic action scenes Monty Oum created (or potentially would have created.) Sound design and music choice can make for both specific emotional beats and really fun easter eggs in the soundscape, more than just the Wilhelm or the Broken Arrow scream. And sometimes it's a turn of poetry or prose that shows hat inside this very punny world, there can be the space for meditation of all of the lies that we tell ourselves so as to make sure that society continues to run smoothly and that we at least have the possibility of accessing the better parts of our nature. Or a prayer that asks for something small to cause a disaster out of season, but that ultimately results in something better being built from what was collapsed.
It's little bits, all together, that produce a stellar and memorable moment at the desired point in the narrative. Or looking at a fictional character and having that moment of recognition between you, the reader, and them, and realizing that what you've been consuming is less something distant from yourself, but something incredibly close to yourself instead. (Science fiction, fantasy, and horror all pull this trick on us, giving us apparent distance so that we don't recognize the mirror until we're already staring at ourselves.)
Being profoundly multifannish doesn't make it easy to share "a favorite," much less "your favorite," because there are bits that are great from basically all of the canons consumed so far. I like the atmosphere and the storytelling aspects of Epistory (yes, it's a typing game.) I really like not just the origami conceit of the world and the way the story itself unfolds, but the way the narrative burns its lines into the landscape itself, so that you can see the story written onto the terrain (and they also serve as a progression indicator during some of the more intense wave battle sequences.) Hitomi Kanzaki in the anime of the Vision of Escaflowne and the way she navigates a world entirely strange to herself and eventually comes to recognize the amount of power she has over it (and, to some degree, over the world she came from). Jaune Arc and Ruby Rose as foils of each other, but both of them driven by belief, either that they are the person who can fix things, or that they are the person everyone else expects to fix things, and the way that those beliefs put pressure on them and cause them to have major breakdowns over the course of the series so far. Korra and Asami sharing a kiss. Catra and Adora sharing a kiss that saves the world. A raggedy man in a blue box, the redhead who loves him, and the centurion devoted to her that she also loves. A grumpy Scot in a blue box, and the brilliant impossible girl who tries to save him, and the brilliant unapologetically sapphic and unapologetically Black girl who keeps up with him. And presumably has also been getting Firsts in his classes, since she keeps getting to travel with him. A dragon and his adopted fox son, where the fox is never seen as lesser by any of the dragons, and whose best friend has a single mother with the job of trying to contain the inevitable consequences of the daughter having learned well the lessons her mother taught.
But if you think we share a fandom, or there's one that I haven't gotten into, I'm always open to suggestions or discussions about what's good.
Share your favourite piece of original canon.
We all have a favourite piece of original canon. Maybe that's a particular episode of a show, maybe a specific scene, maybe a whole storyline. Maybe it's one of those but from a movie. Maybe a comic, and you have a favourite piece of art. Maybe it's a chapter or a character in a book, or a song from a musical. Anything goes.
[…]
Who knows, maybe you'll find someone with similar favourites, or encourage someone to check out yours, and you may find canons you want to check out too.
It's rare that a single unit of the canon is something that sells me on any given work. Trying to pull something out individually and seeing how well it stands by itself often means having to explain everything that goes before it and after it so that someone can have at least an inkling of an appreciation for what's happening. Very few things are as self-explanatory as "Man Gets Hit In Groin By Football."
Some things that are favorites also require explaining a bit about yourself. If you relate to one of the miraculous magical Madrigals more, it could be because you're used to the pressures of being a perfect oldest child, or being the one who tels the truth in your family and gets blamed for it, or being the normal one in a family full of overachievers and feeling correspondingly looked down upon. If you're all in for Nimona, you might have to explain it's because you've been trying to be your authentic self for all this time and it's rare to find a character that really embodies that struggle and the secondary struggle for being accepted as the person you are, flame breath and all. Several of the She-Ra and the Princesses of Power characters hold appeal for people who have been the weird one with the very specific interests, or for always being in someone else's shadow, or having extremely self-destructive methods of coping installed in you by a toxic workplace and abusive supervisors.
Some things are marvels of cinematography, such as when there's an extended one-take, one-camera sequence, and then seeing what went into making that shot work. Or finding out that there are some animator tricks at work to make the Spider-Verse characters out of sync with each other as a subtle reinforcement of their different dimensions. It's sometimes having interface glitches for the opening credits when the perspective of the Machine is being interfered with by a computer virus. Sometimes it's just waching to see what kind of epic action scenes Monty Oum created (or potentially would have created.) Sound design and music choice can make for both specific emotional beats and really fun easter eggs in the soundscape, more than just the Wilhelm or the Broken Arrow scream. And sometimes it's a turn of poetry or prose that shows hat inside this very punny world, there can be the space for meditation of all of the lies that we tell ourselves so as to make sure that society continues to run smoothly and that we at least have the possibility of accessing the better parts of our nature. Or a prayer that asks for something small to cause a disaster out of season, but that ultimately results in something better being built from what was collapsed.
It's little bits, all together, that produce a stellar and memorable moment at the desired point in the narrative. Or looking at a fictional character and having that moment of recognition between you, the reader, and them, and realizing that what you've been consuming is less something distant from yourself, but something incredibly close to yourself instead. (Science fiction, fantasy, and horror all pull this trick on us, giving us apparent distance so that we don't recognize the mirror until we're already staring at ourselves.)
Being profoundly multifannish doesn't make it easy to share "a favorite," much less "your favorite," because there are bits that are great from basically all of the canons consumed so far. I like the atmosphere and the storytelling aspects of Epistory (yes, it's a typing game.) I really like not just the origami conceit of the world and the way the story itself unfolds, but the way the narrative burns its lines into the landscape itself, so that you can see the story written onto the terrain (and they also serve as a progression indicator during some of the more intense wave battle sequences.) Hitomi Kanzaki in the anime of the Vision of Escaflowne and the way she navigates a world entirely strange to herself and eventually comes to recognize the amount of power she has over it (and, to some degree, over the world she came from). Jaune Arc and Ruby Rose as foils of each other, but both of them driven by belief, either that they are the person who can fix things, or that they are the person everyone else expects to fix things, and the way that those beliefs put pressure on them and cause them to have major breakdowns over the course of the series so far. Korra and Asami sharing a kiss. Catra and Adora sharing a kiss that saves the world. A raggedy man in a blue box, the redhead who loves him, and the centurion devoted to her that she also loves. A grumpy Scot in a blue box, and the brilliant impossible girl who tries to save him, and the brilliant unapologetically sapphic and unapologetically Black girl who keeps up with him. And presumably has also been getting Firsts in his classes, since she keeps getting to travel with him. A dragon and his adopted fox son, where the fox is never seen as lesser by any of the dragons, and whose best friend has a single mother with the job of trying to contain the inevitable consequences of the daughter having learned well the lessons her mother taught.
But if you think we share a fandom, or there's one that I haven't gotten into, I'm always open to suggestions or discussions about what's good.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-11 07:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-11 07:56 pm (UTC)That, and "memorable" doesn't necessarily mean "favorite."