Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 10

[aadler]

Continuing the meme/challenge begun and tracked here.

Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 10

In your own space, talk about a creator/someone who inspired you. Leave a comment here saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

As with most of my other answers so far, I’m going to break it down into categories.

Books

Robert Heinlein. No question. I always loved science fiction, but he made it come alive for me in a way nobody else ever had or ever has since (though William Goldman came close, outside SF and by entirely different mechanisms). He’s come in for a lot of criticism over the last decade or so, mostly for not having been a 21st-century man with 21st-century approved woke attitudes/credentials; me, I’m more likely to raise a jaundiced eyebrow over his bohemian attitudes toward sexual morals (though, in fairness, at the time of his writings he’d had less opportunity to fully see the eventual wreckage wrought by the Sexual Revolution), but that man could absolutely tell a hell of a story.

Comics

Stan Lee. He was a hustler and a huckster who exploited the artists who worked under him and blithely took credit for a lot of other people’s labors, and there are stories about a particularly shocking betrayal he pulled on co-workers at the very beginning of what became his career … but through it all he was a joyous creator of worlds, even of an entire style of creation, and he put an indelible stamp on pretty much everything he ever touched. His near-obligatory guest appearances in the various MCU movies spoke (at least to me) of a man who loved what he had done and leaped to embrace every possible opportunity to enjoy it. He brought me massive pleasure over a huge period of my life, and has my enduring gratitude for that.

Movies

James Cameron. The last several years we’ve been bombarded with mandatory examples of Strong Female Characters™, mostly in the form of preachy drek that systematically alienates its purported audience (and that last has increasingly come to seem all but deliberate). Long before that movement gained momentum, however, Cameron had delivered the real thing, and done it twice: Sarah Connor, and Ellen Ripley.

Yes, he didn’t ‘create’ Ripley, but his treatment of her in Aliens expanded the character beyond what she had been in the first movie. Reputedly, the role in Alien had been written for a male, and a lot of the effectiveness of the result came from casting Sigourney Weaver without changing the character’s behavior or mannerisms. Cameron expanded on that in the sequel, though, fleshing her out without altering her basic structure; this could be seen even more clearly in versions of the movie that contained a few scenes that had been cut out of the theatrical release.

And Sarah Connor …

He did the same thing with the Terminator sequel, did it even more than he’d done with Ripley, and did it to his own creation. Sarah Connor at the end of the first movie looked to the future with haunted eyes, and left a haunting impression of what she would have to become to face that dark future; by the beginning of the sequel, she had become what the future demanded of her, and powered through without faltering. Driven, ferocious, indomitable, deeply messed-up, and utterly unforgettable.

That doesn’t bring about anything approaching blanket approval from me; I thought Titanic was stylish class-hatred crap, and didn’t even bother to watch Avatar. With Terminator II and Aliens, however, Cameron didn’t just hit the mark, he left a mark everybody else had to try (and pretty much universally fail) to measure up to.

Television

Tie: Rob Thomas, and whoever was behind Wonderfalls.

Nope, not Joss Whedon. He definitely qualifies, but wound up overshadowed by the folks above.

From what I’ve heard, the worst thing that ever happened to Veronica Mars was what made it so successful at the beginning: Rob Thomas thought he only had one season, so he set out to make it as good as he could, using material he’d been working over in his mind for a long time. When he was unexpectedly approved for more, he had to scramble to come up with follow-up he’d never thought he would need, with the result that VM’s second season was a valiant but inadequate attempt to live up to its foundational material; and the third (and weakest) season lost even more ground, and still wound up better than most other stuff on television at the time. (The fourth season, a dozen years later, still held quite a bit of the same magic, and some solid, effective dialogue.) Given the ability he showed with that first season, it seems altogether likely Thomas could have crafted a better long-term product if he had known that was what he would be doing, and even the flawed eventual result remains eminently worth watching.

Wonderfalls had almost exactly the opposite problem: the creators were looking far ahead, planning where they would take a sixth season if they got the chance. Instead — as was done to Firefly, at pretty much exactly the same time — the network mistreated, starved, and ultimately destroyed a promising product with their blinkered mishandling. As a result, Wonderfalls turned into what Rob Thomas had thought he was doing with VM’s first season, a beautifully crafted gem that cried out for follow-up but never got it. During that single abbreviated (twelve episodes!) season, the show managed to be comic, surreal, hilarious, unexpected, thought-provoking, touching, and — in at least some moments — heartbreaking. (I can remember my daughter wailing at me, “Why did you make me watch this stupid show?!” because she was so grief-stricken at what was happening to the lead character.) A shame and a waste … but what remains continues to be endlessly entertaining.

Fanfic

yahtzee63. Come on, did anyone ever believe it would be anybody else? The first story of hers I read was “Acid Test” — and a great introduction that was — but what really hit me was “In Harm’s Way”. The latter was the first fanfic to impress on me so forcefully just what could be accomplished with proper use of authentic character voice, a standard that has challenged me ever since. She’s written in multiple fandoms, and pretty much anything she’s ever done is worth following and enjoying; her main site, which everyone is urged to thoroughly investigate, is here.

(Also jedibuttercup, for the sheer range of her imagination, the number of fandoms in which she can find some small thing to highlight. A large step down from yahtzee63 — which she would readily acknowledge* — but lots and lots and lots of fun stuff if you’re willing to take the time to follow it out. Because, as I said, there’s lots.)

So, okay. That should hold for a while.



*And, let’s face it, anybody is a large step down from yahtzee63.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Snowflake mod sperrywink here:

What a touching list of creators who have touched you in multiple ways. James Cameron did do an excellent job of including kickass women.

[aadler]

Thank you.

The secret, I think, is that he focused on producing solid characters who were, as it happened, women.

[spikedluv]

What a great post! I enjoyed reading this, especially the bits about Stan and Cameron. Thanks for sharing this.

[aadler]

They both managed to get through their careers without ever needing my praise. All the same, it’s richly merited.

[jedibuttercup]

I definitely remember my first encounter with yahtzee63's fic; it made an impression on me too. (Man, it's been a long time since I've reread any of it; I might have to make time for that soon.)

And, yeah. I don't know that I'd actively call myself lesser, but I definitely operate as a fic writer on an entirely different scale. :) [Thanks for the rec, btw!]

[aadler]

You’re good. yahtzee63 is a giant.