Heroes (TV)
| Name: | Heroes | |
| Abbreviation(s): | ||
| Creator: | Tim Kring | |
| Date(s): | 2006-present | |
| Medium: | Television | |
| Country of Origin: | United States | |
| External Links: | Official NBC site, IMDb, Wikipedia, Heroes Wiki | |
| Click here for other articles related to this fandom on Fanlore. | ||
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Heroes is an American science fiction ensemble show on NBC (a major network), set (mostly) in current time, filmed in Los Angeles and Santa Clarita, California.
The Canon
For reasons only partially explained, ordinary people around the world discover they have extraordinary powers.
Each season, there is a huge threat to (at least a part of) the world, and the people with superpowers try to find out more about it, and then stop it. Because some of the character's powers include time travel, (and some of the things they've stopped have been in the future), there are now multiple time-lines -- ones where devastation or horrible diseases happened, and ones where they didn't. There are also web episodes, and official graphic novels, making deciding canon trickier in Heroes than in many other fandoms.
TPTB/fan interaction
Tim Kring has more than once written open letters to watchers of Heroes (for example, apologizing for many mistakes made in season 2[1] ), making him more accessible than many showrunners, though less so than the people writing SGA, Buffy, Supernatural and others. He also called some of the fans of the show "saps and dipshits"[2] recently, and had to apologize for that.
Fandom
There was enormous fan enthusiasm for the show first season. Since then, there's been a drop off in fannish interest, partially because of a perceived drop off in the quality of the writing (increasing retcons, plotholes and inconsistencies), partly because of the increased racial stereotyping (detailed below in Controversies) and partly because no sooner do fans become enthusiastic about a pairing then TPTB break the pairing up (detailed below in Slash Pairings).
Controversies
In first season, the multi-ethnic cast and story lines were fairly well thought through (though even then people noticed that The Haitian had no name, and the other black guy was, of course, an ex-con). In second and third season, ethnic stereotyping (Peter's Magical Irish Journey, Hiro stuck as a clown, rather than the hero the plot seems to require him to be, and many other examples) and magical negro plots (Matt's Magical African Journey) have overwhelmed the original SFF coolness of the show.
Slash Pairings
At the end of 1st season, the three biggest pairings were Matt/Mohinder, Mohinder/Sylar (Mylar) and Nathan/Peter (Petrellicest). By the end of the second season, changes in the plot had crushed the appeal of Matt/Mohinder, and the constant changes of Sylar's character (first he's evil, then he's good then he's evil, then he's...) lessened the charm of Mohinder/Sylar (and other smaller Sylar-based pairings). Nathan/Peter and other Petrellicest pairings (Peter/Claire, etc.) are still going strong 3rd season.
Archives
- Fanfiction.net Heroes stories
- The List, a Heroes fanfiction and meta archive
LJ Communities
- Main Heroes episode discussion comm
- Enormous list of Heroes LJ Communities
- Heroes Fic Finder comm
- Heroes fic comm
- Heroes recs community
Main Slash Comms
Message Boards
Fanart
The official NBC site also shows fanart submissions:
