How do you do it? I’m being sincere.
I want to be positive. I adore Rumbelle. I love Bobby. I love Emilie.
But I can’t stand the writers. Or the writing. 99% of what I see on my screen infuriates me. Spoilers just make me angrier.
But I love Rumbelle. How do I enjoy that when I only get 1% of what I want? If that.
Booze
Fanfic
Bobbys eyes
All three plus a side of denial.
Headcanon
I appear to have written a bit of an essay, on how headcanon works for me – oops. Basically it’s just headcanon though. If I can explain it, I can accept it.
Nothing has happened on the show thus far, that I haven’t managed to explain to myself, so that it makes sense. I created an image of who the characters were in my head, back in season one/two and that’s fixed. I make everything I watch consistent with the characters personalities. I give them motives, reasons. I link back to other stuff in canon. Every time they come up with a new flashback, I fit it in the timeline I’ve built in my mind, of when stuff happened.
I basically create my own coherent narrative. When it out and out doesn’t make sense, I have to do some mental athletics but there’s a way round most things. If it makes sense in my head, then I’m ok with it. The writers own the show on the screen, they don’t own the show in my head.
I read spoilers but I don’t worry about them. Without context it’s hard to know anything for sure. I find it interesting to be honest because obviously I generate theories based on what information I have. I then get to see how far off base I was. I write long rambling blog posts dissecting motives, and speculating on the impact decisions will make on other characters/events.
The show gives me raw material. It is pure potential. Sure, sometimes, it feels a bit like I’ve slipped into an alternate reality because what happens, just doesn’t match up with the characters. That’s when the mental athletics start. We only see a fraction of events on screen. I fill in the other 99%.
I love the show because of it’s potential, because of the rich deep characters and the fascinating world. It’s only 40 minutes an episode, and that is split between a massive cast. Even if the writing was perfect, I’d be adding a ton. It’s what I do. I watch and I imagine.
So I’m positive about the show. Sometimes it’s the canon they gave me, not the canon I would have liked e.g. when they killed off Neal. I watch a show and I suspend disbelief, I go for immersion in as much as I ‘believe it’s real’. Obviously it’s not, but I can hardly complain about the writing, because that’s what happened, those are the characters.
I make it work. If I get angry, I get angry at the characters for the choices they make, and then the anger usually stops because once I understand someone and why they did it, then I can’t be angry anymore. With understanding comes acceptance, for me anyway.
I’m used to liking secondary characters. Hell I made it through five seasons of Alias and I couldn’t stand Sydney or Vaughn but I absolutely loved Jack, Irina, Sark, Marshall, Weiss etc. I accept whatever tiny little morsels I get from the show. Do I wish it was more? Hell yeah! But, I work with whatever I get.
I’m with this show until the end.
Beautifully said! (Canon divergent) Headcanons are definitely life-savers. If you make them strong enough and air-tight to a degree, they can easily become more believable to you than the actual show. This is how I have survived two and a half seasons of OUaT and the last season of The Flash. Excellent point, @still-searching47 !!
Oh thanks!
I’m not sure what you mean by canon divergent. I would describe my headcanons as canon-compliant because they don’t contradict canon. I suppose they are canon-divergent in a way because the show has never said one way or another, about those things. It’s like canon-extra. Wow, terms are hard heh. Can we get a dictionary? 🙂
Basically in my mind so long as the show doesn’t contradict the explanation I come up with (and if it does, I create a new one), then my headcanon might be true. That’s what I meant by making canon work for me, I work with it, to make the canon make sense. It bolts on, doesn’t replace. I believe in the actual show, not an alternate version.
Although I do create alternate versions as well – I love canon divergence! 🙂 This show is filled with moments where you can go “what if?” and then speculate about how stuff played out differently. I love doing that, playing cause and effect. I watch a lot of TV but there’s only a handful of shows that I think about after the episode ends, only a few that have enough depth and potential to stay with me. This show is nowhere near perfect but it has that depth, which makes it my favorite currently airing show.
@still-searching47, I absolutely love your approach to it. The showrunners may have created this show, but they don’t exclusively own it. Not anymore. As soon as they put it out there for us (the audience) to consume, it became ours. There’s a quote about writing that I heard somewhere, that says something like: ‘The writer only writes half the story. The other half is written by the reader.’ (Don’t remember who said that or I’d give credit.) I think it’s a very similar situation with TV shows, especially the ones with uneven characterization or problematic plots, like OUaT.
I’d also like to add that when you not only watch a show, but you’re also involved in the fandom–like I expect that everyone reading this is–then the show canon is only a fraction of the experience. Not only b/c you can fill in the rest of the story in your own head, but also b/c the show experience extends to discussions with other fans, the wait each week for script teases and sneak peeks, reading fanfic and appreciating fanart, and the friends we all make b/c we have this show in common. All of that combines to make the total fandom experience, and keeps me enjoying OUaT and Rumbelle no matter how much damage the writers do.
This ^^ just this ^^ 🙂
You just said what I tried to say, in a far more eloquent and succinct fashion. I just liked the post but I’m reblogging as well because yes this ^^.