fannish navel-gazing

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Title:	fannish navel-gazing
Creator:	aria
Date(s):	July 22, 2010
Medium:	LiveJournal discussion
Fandom:	Highlander
Topic:
External Links:	fannish navel-gazing; archive link
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fannish navel-gazing is a 2010 Highlander essay by aria.

Some Topics Discussed in the Essay and Comments

• guilty pleasures, embrace shows that may not be great but feed your id, "OWN IT, SELF, OWN IT LIKE ALL THE OTHER AWESOME RUBBISH YOU LOVE."
• mostly Highlander, mentions of Babylon 5, due South
• getting into a fandom after most fans have moved onto other fandoms
• how one's experience and perceptions in fandoms are affected by those around you for context
• retcon, fitting different versions of canon together
• the changes in fandom, Highlander as old-school
• misogyny and fandom changes
• picking and choosing canon: "I figure one of the understood rules of being fannish about the Highlander series is "The movies are optional. SO OPTIONAL. OH GOD MAKE THEM STOP." Although I still have a stupid fuzzy fondness for the original because it is so unrelentingly ridiculous."
• how terrible the movies are
• fans and their id (though it does not use the term Id Vortex)

From the Essay

...sitting down to work on my Highlander fic, I was quietly plot-outlining in my head when I was brought up short by sudden guilt. And it wasn't obligation guilt: I know enough about my writing process that I can prioritize a due South AU and a Babylon 5 rewatch and an Avatar season and &c &c as much as I want, but if I sit down and a Doctor Who fic comes out instead, that's what I'm damn well writing. So trying to write Highlander fic wasn't making me think, "Why am I doing this when I should be doing x instead?" but rather "Why am I writing Highlander fic at all?" and this brought me up short: I was feeling self-indulgent, and that apparently made me feel guilty. Uh, what? Fic-writing is for funsies and not profit, after all; it is by definition wonderfully self-indulgent. Apparently, the problem is that it's Highlander.

... okay, with Highlander, the premise is ridiculous, the acting is uneven, and I wouldn't bother actively recommending it to anyone because there are probably better things you can spend your time watching. But the degree I've been apologetic about liking it, even in my own head, borders on the absurd. I am not apologetic about my other 90s shows, and there is nothing inherently more ridiculous about "Four-hundred-year-old man runs around saving the day with a sword and occasionally beheading people" than there is in "Mountie goes to Chicago, befriends a cop, and has deep, meaningful discussions with his deaf half-wolf and dead father" nor indeed in "Lord of the Rings ... IN SPACE!" (Also, I am fairly sure that Adrian Paul could run acting circles around Michael O'Hare, which is a slightly alarming thought.) I mean, for god's sake, I am unapologetic about liking Seven's run on Doctor Who, Fifi and cheetah!Master and everything. I am happily shameless! So what the hell am I doing going mumblety highlander yeah whatever?

But I think I have an answer, in two parts. Part the first is about the fandom itself, and that is: I have no idea what the fandom is! I have been spoiled rotten by the due South fandom; because it is still alive and active, I know what the discourse is. It also remembers its history. I know who was running what when, I know where the fic archives are, I know what discussions we're having, and I know I like it. Babylon 5 fandom isn't quite so giving, if only because it seems to be a meta-based fandom for the most part, but there's still an active rewatch, it's very easy to track down all the old meta, and the ficcers are apparently the sort of people who happily embrace the AO3 -- so, again, I know the discourse (or at least can pick and choose it, because I'm fannishly more interested in Centauri-Narn relations than Human-Minbari ones, if you know what I mean). But with Highlander ... man, I don't even know. I've found the fic! That was easy. I've found the vids! That was surprisingly easy too. But maybe the fossilized record of the active discourse is hiding away on lists, or defunct message boards, or in the far depths of people's LJs from the early 2000s, back in the Land Of No Tags, or somewhere I cannot even imagine.

The point is that, since I can't find it, I don't know what the show is even about, in a fannish context, except those bits I can glean from fic. With due South, I know it is absurd, I am allowed to think it is absurd, I'm allowed to feel a bit squodgy about the way the show treats Francesca and the women at large, and I am allowed to love the whole thing unconditionally anyway. With Babylon 5, I am allowed to hide from the first season acting and the fifth season plot, I am allowed to roll my eyes as much as necessary at JMS' occasional complete overwroughtness, and I am allowed to fall to my knees in worship of the storytelling and sob my eyes out whenever I feel like it, although especially at the end. With Highlander, I gather that I am allowed to shake my tiny fists of rage at sixth season and ignore as many movies as I like, but ... am I supposed to like Duncan at all? Am I allowed to yell along with the theme song and roll around on the floor laughing like a hyena whenever there's a Quickening? How irreverent am I supposed to be, and is it a party faux pas to get tipsy and start rambling about how a modern AU where the Four Horsemen are the dorkiest most dysfunctional gang ever would be great?

And I ask all this not because I need a given fandom's permission to read a show a certain way, but because I like not working in a vacuum. And because I am, my brain can't decide whether it's supposed to apologize for this show or if we've got it covered, it's taken as written that it's rubbish, and we're ready to move on now and just throw a good party. So that's the first thing.

The second thing is probably related to the first, but is way less complicated. And it is: id show. Oh my god Highlander is my stupid id show. I have a crazy immortals kink about a galaxy wide, and to my surprise, the show actually considers a lot of the stuff I want considered when it's stories about crazy immortals. How does someone keep functioning when everyone around them dies? How does a person manage to change with the times when the times insist on becoming so different? What about what happens when a person reaches immortality when they're too young, and end up stuck that way? How do they keep the ordinary people around them from noticing that they never age, and what do they do if the ordinary people do notice? But of course none of this is addressed in a subtly-written, well-acted, beautifully-shot way. It's done in a way where you blink and end up missing it because of all the ridiculous pyrotechnics.

Fan Comments

[beccaelizabeth]: It's been ages since I rewatched Highlander. it's in my head as The Good Bits Version and I'm happy that way.

[gaealynn]: Highlander was my first fandom love, which was frustrating because I really disliked (and continue to dislike) Duncan, both on the show and often in fandom. On the other hand, I loved Methos and Joe, and loved what Amanda could have been and sometimes was.

Also, I might be one of the only people in the world who got into Highlander the show because of the movies? I mean, they were painfully bad, but so hilarious.

[aria]: dsjklfskjfds CAN WE BOND OVER THIS? Like, I am slowly coming around to liking him a bit, by virtue of shipping Duncan/Methos quite a bit and needing some reasons for Methos to like Duncan besides "Well, it was the plot," plus I have watched enough that I'm getting that Stockholm-y fondness for everyone -- but I am with you on loving Methos and Joe and Amanda.

[yasaman]: Oh I have some of the same feelings about Highlander! I mean, yes, it's sort of terrible? But I just honestly don't really care. Highlander has ruined me for all other immortal characters, because it does at least gesture towards some of the most interesting questions immortality raises. And once you get past the cheesy effects, the terrible clothes, the hilarious flashbacks...well, there's some really fascinating stuff at the core about what it means to be immortal, how a person navigates changing times and changing morals without compromising themselves, and relationships.

I've had fun seeing how fic writers have dealt with and answered those questions, but I do feel like I missed out on the interesting conversations and debates. Like, how did fandom first react to the whole Methos is Death thing? (Besides lots of ugly misogyny when it comes to Cassandra of course. :/ ) Were there lots of arguments between the Duncan and Methos fans? Were there a lot of debates about the nature of the Game? It's like I'm 12 years too late for the fandom, which sucks because now Highlander is just this charming throwback of slash fandom while I'm like, but I want more fic and meta and to share my thoughts :( .

[aria]: Re: missing out on interesting conversations and debates, I ... secretly want a resurgence that does those conversations now, because, at least where I'm standing, it looks like fandom sensibilities have changed a lot in the last decade, and I want to have the conversations that would happen now. (For instance, as you say, the ugly misogyny re: Cassandra. Her inability to heal and move on from what was done to her is a tragedy, not a character flaw or a cheap attempt to blind Duncan to how awesome Methos is now. dfl;dsfkjfd I have made good friends with the back button a few times that way.)

But yes, I just want lots of interesting exploration of how people cope or don't with Immortality, and more on Watcher-Immortal relations, and speculation on whether there is ever going to be only one or if it's just a wonderfully tidy excuse for violence and power-mongering, &c &c. There are so many interesting things to do!

[yasaman]: YYY, I want a resurgence of those conversations, because fandom has changed so much. I feel like a lot of old school HL fic seemed unable to be fair to Methos and compassionate to Cassandra at the same time. There are a couple of fics that do it, but the vast majority just turn her into this caricature of an enraged, scorned woman. And, history nerd here, I think it goes into deeper questions of how you can or can't judge the morals of times and cultures that are far removed from our own. I feel like the show too often backed away from really engaging with the question of whether Duncan had a right to judge people for past actions that may have been moral/acceptable then but not now.

And the Game! I have thoughts about the Game, mostly that it is total bullshit and that it is just an easy-to-fixate-on purpose for immortals who go a little crazy with wondering what the point of their immortality is to latch on to. Also it doesn't make sense because there's not necessarily a mechanism to stop new pre-immortals from being born.

So many interesting questions! So many interesting characters! Why is this fandom mostly dormant? ;_____;

[sophia sol]: ...you should TOTALLY not feel apologetic for writing Highlander fic, because fandom is all about id-y goodness, and if Highlander hits that for you? Then that is a GOOD thing. And you should write Highlander fic forever.

[genarti]: Unhelpfully, I vote that you should do all the self-indulgent fic and meta you feel moved to, in an effort to jump-start a resurgence! I have seen that work somewhat, at least with a small pocket of flist-fannishness, with other fandoms in the past. Other than that, I have :-/ faces but no helpful advice. Even eight years ago when I was reading Highlander fic on website archives, I was very much on the periphery of the fandom, and it was somewhat oldschool then too. And if there were pockets of awesome meta, I missed them back then, too. (There probably were.) That said, though I don't know that many really hardcore fans, everybody I know acknowledges the silliness of it even when it's with love. I mean, come on; they store their swords in plot holes between uses, here.

[juliekarasic]: Oh, new HL fic would be wonderful! I love the old and dusty stuff but it's... old and dusty. New and shiny is always good.

franzeska: I caught Highlander the first time it ever aired and watched a lot of it in its original run. I read fic a long time ago now too (though probably mostly after its original run). And I still have no clue about HL fandom.

A lot of it was indeed on lists back in the day. I think a couple of them are still on yahoo groups. It also had a decent-sized (maybe even large?) zine presence at one time. I remember reading the products of, for example, that harlequin romance novel challenge thing, but I was never really hooked in with the parts of the fandom that discussed things.

If you want debates on the nature of the game though, look no further than every nerdy guy who was in his 20s in the 1980s. Just saying. (If I never hear another "philosophical" discussion about the original movie again, it will be too soon! :D)

Oh, shit, Fanlore reminds me that, of course, HL was also heavily discussed on usenet. It looks like the mailing lists I vaguely remember being told about are HLFIC-L and HIGHLA-L.

[juliekarasic]: Not to mention ROG-L. Am now having flashbacks to the Methos estrogen brigade.

[...]

(The old listservs were great, but either there wasn't much meta going on, or I have completely forgotten about it.)

[rusty halo]: What about starting a Highlander rewatch community? If promoted widely enough, I suspect a fair number of people would join. I would, although to be honest, I'd only watch along with the Methos episodes.

I am curious how fandom now would react to Highlander. At its best, the show raises some fascinating issues, especially once Methos shows up and gets his shades of grey all over everything. (I'm very fond of "Chivalry" and "The Valkyrie" in addition to the obvious CaH/R6:8.) And some of the comedy episodes are great--the actors had fantastic chemistry and seem to have gotten away with quite of a bit of improvisation.

But yeah, the show is hilariously bad a lot of the time--I've had some embarrassing experiences where I've tried to get friends into it and they've looked me like I'm crazy. There's a lot of silliness that regular viewers learn to overlook after a while, but that tend to throw newbies even in the better episodes. (Wacky premise, terrible acting, disappearing and reappearing swords, headless bodies everywhere...)

[aria]: I do sort of wish for a fandom revival with now-fandom's sensibilities, though -- as you say, there are lots of good issues. Plus I suspect that there would be a hell of a lot of people on Team Amanda. (I am definitely on Team Amanda, as well as Team Joe and Team Methos. Poor Duncan, I don't really care about his team. XD)

[franzeska]: One of the most interesting things for me about starting to read HL fanfic was that most of what I read was either about Methos or set after he was a fixture. I got the impression that a lot of the writers had only started to regularly watch in S3 or 4. (Or maybe they just didn't feel inspired until then and no one actually had tapes/dvds/copious internet downloads to re-watch from?) But when I originally watched, just as a fan, and not a fan in fandom, I watched pretty regularly through S1-2 and then a bunch of parts of 3 and then I got distracted or they changed the time slot on my local station or something (this being the channel that later became our local WB one since HL wasn't a major network show--it tended to move programming around wackily). After not watching S4 and 5, I caught a little bit of S6 and was really surprised it was still on the air. (Somehow, I'd thought it had gotten cancelled around the end of 3 or something. I'm not sure.) I think that's when I found the fandom, which was then in full Methos crush mode. I made my parents get me S3-5 of those shitty $200 VHS sets that came with all of the hideous posters and extra junk to justify being insanely expensive for the time. I watched all of that in basically one go. I still haven't seen S6, though now that it's on hulu/netflix...

Anyway, for me, HL is two shows:

One is about Duncan the open-minded romantic goofball clown and his one true love Tessa. Richie is totally adorable even if he isn't my favorite. Charlie is an important part of Duncan's life, as is Darius, who is one of Duncan's few stable connections to anything to do with immortality and other immortals. Amanda is a major surprise because women don't usually last long as immortals. Immortals are essentially incapable of being friends with each other, they all know what the rules of the Game are and play by them, and mortals almost never find out about any of this.

The other is about Methos, who is amazing and Duncan, who's kind of an ass. I loathe Richie. The Watchers are endlessly either getting in trouble or causing it. Duncan has a gazillion old immortal friends who he's more or less in touch with, and plenty of immortals do form long relationships of various kinds with each other and even get married. The Game is probably a lot of bull, and there are tons of female immortals running around, including a whole bunch who've survived by being good at killing things, not just by being hot and sneaky like Amanda. Not only are there plenty of immortals, but there are other wacky magical things in the universe: magic stones, psychic powers, sacred springs. Dark quickenings aren't just Darius' long-past midlife crisis: they're something with actual mechanics we might be interested in.

It makes me wonder what I'd think if I actually rewatched the whole thing in order now.

[rusty halo]: Amanda was so awesome. I get really frustrated by the fact that she usually needs to be saved by Duncan (and on the general tendency of the narrative to always require Duncan to save the day, preventing other characters from having a chance to shine), but I blame that on the writers. Amanda herself is one of my earliest favorite female characters, and I suspect fandom would be a lot more into her these days.

[skywaterblue]: I secretly consider Highlander to be one of the best shows ever, because if it did nothing else it really THOUGHT about how to gender balance a TV show so that all the audiences had something to like about it. Do you like costume drama? We got that! Character arc? We got that! Silly ridiculous sword fights and motorcycle drama? We got it! Gay subtext? Secret organizations? ... etc.

[aria]: ...Actually I have this fond dream, now, of a Highlander-the-show reboot with good special effects and consistently good acting and a skew towards philosophy over cheesy action, because I would watch that so hard. On the other hand, it would be very important that it have as much Methos in it as possible, and ... seriously, the idea of anyone but Peter Wingfield playing Methos bends my mind, and in uncomfortable ways.

[beccaelizabeth]: What Highlander Is About and hence how we watch it was another split. There's fans who think it's about the sword fight and who wins. There's fans who think it's about love through the centuries. And there's fans who agree with David Abramowitz that it is Talmudic Discussion With Swords. This page has it as "A romantic Talmudic discussion with ass-kicking", which covers all the bases. "They're Talmudic questions. How long do you have to keep a promise? What is the difference between honor and vanity? Is morality and justice fixed by time, or only in time and place, or does it exist, the same morality - true morality; and true justice. Justice, does it exist in the seventeenth century and that it's the same in the twentieth century. Those kinds of questions. They were great fun to write about." Fighting over the big ideas was where the stories lived. They made some good discussion and some good (heavily researched with footnotes sometimes) fic. Where it all is now... not so easy.