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Creations!
May. 29th, 2013 05:19 pmI just can't wrap my head around the concept that someone doesn't understand something they created.
Read this on ONTD (I know!) in one of the Whedon posts. It concerns Angel (the series), and it's interesting to me.
While the original comment (Whedon not understanding AtS) was a bit left field in the ongoing conversation, in general it's not an uncommon sentiment, or maybe I just notice it each time the same person brings it up? I don't know. I don't spend a lot of time in Angel or Buffy fandom or whatever is left of them, nor did I spend a lot of time there when they were on the show. I was fairly happy in the periphery, talking about them to a much smaller group that I in no way thought encompassed any significant part of the fandom as a whole.
But even at the time, AtS was a bit of an odd duck. On the one hand, I think it still relied very heavily in general on the success of Buffy even though the universes didn't cross as much as they could have. Had Buffy tanked and died in S4, I really don't think Angel would have been elected to carry on as long as it did. Which isn't the same thing as saying it should or shouldn't have. Just the way it seemed then and seems now. At the same time, it had moved beyond the source material and since it was an entirely new show, it had a better time with its growing pains than Buffy did. Mostly. At the beginning, anyway.
So, back to the comment at hand. A creator not getting/understanding their creation.
I don't get how people can be baffled by this in general. In specific cases, sure. Sometimes it's just butthurt fans who can't accept that fanon is not always canon. But that really only works when your creator continues to either be an active participant in the creation OR at least keeps a close eye on the finished results.
Sure, the original idea/characters at the beginning of whatever are one way, but depending on your genre, they will change. They should change. If you're not around to either take part in those changes or at least acknowledge in any meaningful way that they've happened, then no. You are not going to understand the adult your child has grown up to be.
Maybe this is all a byproduct of the brainbreaking that comes from anyone reading the abysmal Sweet Valley Confidential and believing Franny when she says she knows her characters. Maybe I'm just a product of a broken fictional home where Mommy or Daddy comes up with an idea, hands it off (which is fine!) and then later tries to claim they totally knew what the kid was up to in the awkward years when, let's be honest, no one was paying close enough attention. :P
Sometimes it works. AtS worked really well for me, personally. It was taken care of in a good way for good stretch there.
But if you weren't really paying attention to what the characters/world had become and you go back in with your idea of what they should have been based on what they were when you last left them? Yeah, it's not necessarily going to work.
Which is a very convoluted way of saying creators are very capable of not understanding their creation. Sometimes even if they do stay in control the whole time. (See almost any procedural crime drama where the big draw is the cast interaction and not the stupid cases and yet the shows refuse to play to that strength even a little.) Or better still, those creators who loathe their creations.
Read this on ONTD (I know!) in one of the Whedon posts. It concerns Angel (the series), and it's interesting to me.
While the original comment (Whedon not understanding AtS) was a bit left field in the ongoing conversation, in general it's not an uncommon sentiment, or maybe I just notice it each time the same person brings it up? I don't know. I don't spend a lot of time in Angel or Buffy fandom or whatever is left of them, nor did I spend a lot of time there when they were on the show. I was fairly happy in the periphery, talking about them to a much smaller group that I in no way thought encompassed any significant part of the fandom as a whole.
But even at the time, AtS was a bit of an odd duck. On the one hand, I think it still relied very heavily in general on the success of Buffy even though the universes didn't cross as much as they could have. Had Buffy tanked and died in S4, I really don't think Angel would have been elected to carry on as long as it did. Which isn't the same thing as saying it should or shouldn't have. Just the way it seemed then and seems now. At the same time, it had moved beyond the source material and since it was an entirely new show, it had a better time with its growing pains than Buffy did. Mostly. At the beginning, anyway.
So, back to the comment at hand. A creator not getting/understanding their creation.
I don't get how people can be baffled by this in general. In specific cases, sure. Sometimes it's just butthurt fans who can't accept that fanon is not always canon. But that really only works when your creator continues to either be an active participant in the creation OR at least keeps a close eye on the finished results.
Sure, the original idea/characters at the beginning of whatever are one way, but depending on your genre, they will change. They should change. If you're not around to either take part in those changes or at least acknowledge in any meaningful way that they've happened, then no. You are not going to understand the adult your child has grown up to be.
Maybe this is all a byproduct of the brainbreaking that comes from anyone reading the abysmal Sweet Valley Confidential and believing Franny when she says she knows her characters. Maybe I'm just a product of a broken fictional home where Mommy or Daddy comes up with an idea, hands it off (which is fine!) and then later tries to claim they totally knew what the kid was up to in the awkward years when, let's be honest, no one was paying close enough attention. :P
Sometimes it works. AtS worked really well for me, personally. It was taken care of in a good way for good stretch there.
But if you weren't really paying attention to what the characters/world had become and you go back in with your idea of what they should have been based on what they were when you last left them? Yeah, it's not necessarily going to work.
Which is a very convoluted way of saying creators are very capable of not understanding their creation. Sometimes even if they do stay in control the whole time. (See almost any procedural crime drama where the big draw is the cast interaction and not the stupid cases and yet the shows refuse to play to that strength even a little.) Or better still, those creators who loathe their creations.
