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matt_zimmerMy Echo reviews got a wee bit of pushback. A couple of people (we'll call 'em Jazz Doe and Jason Doe to protect their anonymity) were saying the MCU sucks and they don't wanna waste their time.
I am not gonna argue against them wasting their time. Their time is something THEY own and they can use it how they see fit. I'm gonna argue that me watching so much television is not me wasting MY time.
Jazz mentioned that the fight between Echo and Daredevil was badly choreographed. I literally did not notice. Fight scenes are NOT why I watch television. That's not the drama I ever chase or care about. The fabled Big Hurt I chase involves emotional truths, not slugfests. And that's true of my work too.
I mentioned I'm not picky, and I'm not. I also joked that I have no standards, which is NOT true. I have standards. High ones. But I watch everything myself before rendering a judgement. I don't tend to watch trailers. I NEVER watch or read reviews ahead of time. I want to come to a project fresh and if I have any hang-ups about it, I want them to be my own and not tainted by popular opinion.
I watch everything. I fucking HATED Game Of Thrones and saw every episode. If something has made a splash in popular culture Gilda And Meek will invariably have an opinion.
I have seen every episode of The Simpsons. Every episode of all Arrowverse shows. Every episode of every Star Trek series. Not only every episode of the Marvel Studios TV shows, but every episode of the shitty Jeph Loeb Marvel Television stuff that is MCU adjacent at best. Every canon Star Wars TV show, live-action and animated. What does me having seen all of the output of these huge franchises have in common?
Can you guess? I'll give you a second. Okay pencils down.
The commonality in me having seen the entire canons of these ridiculously long-running and huge franchises is that I am the type of person who believes in making a commitment to what I watch (and this also goes for what I read). I don't dip in and out or merely sample. If I watch a Pilot of something, I'm committing to watch the entire season at the very least, and it usually winds up the entire series.
I have quit on shows before. Riverdale and House Of The Dragon are two recent notable shitshows I refused to plague myself with further. But generally speaking, I usually stick with it.
Gilda And Meek And The Un-Iverse is completely user unfriendly. It will never be a popular success because it asks the reader to do two things almost none of them will be willing to do. It asks the reader to not only make a commitment. But actually put in a lot of the work in reading and interpreting what you are reading for yourself. You can say I have shitty tastes. I don't think that's it myself. I instead think I have an unwavering and outright WEIRD loyalty to actually seeing through a story from beginning to end. I don't ever wanna judge a story without knowing the ending. And I won't. In some cases (like Riverdale) it became too torturous to continue watching, but I have seen every episode of shows I loathe like Avengers: Black Panther's Quest, TMNT 2012, Titans, Gotham, and Rescue Bots Academy. And ick, Game Of Thrones.
Gilda And Meek is designed for people with PATIENCE. Yeah, there is NO part of me chasing after "The Patient Demographic" that makes remote sense in this pop-culture climate. Personally, speaking as someone who lived through the crappy television in the 1980's, and the interesting but still rare good television of the 1990's, I think y'all are too damn spoiled. Echo ain't great. But if I had seen it in 1989 it would have been the greatest TV show I had ever seen. People being bored with it rankles me a bit. I would have killed for a genre show of this quality when I was kid. The best we had back then was the first two shitty seasons of Star Trek TNG and Quantum Fucking Leap. You are permitted to now shed tears on my behalf. I had it fucking ROUGH. Just a little context to my patience. I'm old enough to know how rare good TV is, to seek it out, and allow it to grow at its own pace. If you aren't EVER willing to do that, Gilda And Meek isn't just a tough sell. It's an impossible one.
And I mentioned the selling point to me watching things that are bad is they give me a good idea in demonstration of what does NOT work and what I need to avoid. Bad TV helps and inspires me every bit as much as good TV does. I'd argue even more-so since most of Gilda And Meek And The Un-Iverse is a response to the fact that if no-one was gonna tell a fictional story the way I wanted, it was up to me to do it myself. If I was happy with the current state of popular culture, I never would have gotten back to The Un-Iverse at all. It was done as a response to how pissed TV and movies were making me. Most of the "homages" in the story could be considered backhanded slams instead of tributes.
If you look around my journal you will not find reviews for either The Wire or Breaking Bad. I swear, I'm going to get to those eventually (again, I plan to see everything relevant in pop culture I can) but I've put off binging those two franchises because I hear they are damn near perfect. I don't trust perfect television. If something isn't up for debate, or something I can pour through and nitpick, that TV show has lost TV's biggest selling point. I'll get to them eventually though. I swear. That and Avatar: The Last Airbender are the TV biggies I've never seen that I plan to get to at some point.
I am not gonna argue against them wasting their time. Their time is something THEY own and they can use it how they see fit. I'm gonna argue that me watching so much television is not me wasting MY time.
Jazz mentioned that the fight between Echo and Daredevil was badly choreographed. I literally did not notice. Fight scenes are NOT why I watch television. That's not the drama I ever chase or care about. The fabled Big Hurt I chase involves emotional truths, not slugfests. And that's true of my work too.
I mentioned I'm not picky, and I'm not. I also joked that I have no standards, which is NOT true. I have standards. High ones. But I watch everything myself before rendering a judgement. I don't tend to watch trailers. I NEVER watch or read reviews ahead of time. I want to come to a project fresh and if I have any hang-ups about it, I want them to be my own and not tainted by popular opinion.
I watch everything. I fucking HATED Game Of Thrones and saw every episode. If something has made a splash in popular culture Gilda And Meek will invariably have an opinion.
I have seen every episode of The Simpsons. Every episode of all Arrowverse shows. Every episode of every Star Trek series. Not only every episode of the Marvel Studios TV shows, but every episode of the shitty Jeph Loeb Marvel Television stuff that is MCU adjacent at best. Every canon Star Wars TV show, live-action and animated. What does me having seen all of the output of these huge franchises have in common?
Can you guess? I'll give you a second. Okay pencils down.
The commonality in me having seen the entire canons of these ridiculously long-running and huge franchises is that I am the type of person who believes in making a commitment to what I watch (and this also goes for what I read). I don't dip in and out or merely sample. If I watch a Pilot of something, I'm committing to watch the entire season at the very least, and it usually winds up the entire series.
I have quit on shows before. Riverdale and House Of The Dragon are two recent notable shitshows I refused to plague myself with further. But generally speaking, I usually stick with it.
Gilda And Meek And The Un-Iverse is completely user unfriendly. It will never be a popular success because it asks the reader to do two things almost none of them will be willing to do. It asks the reader to not only make a commitment. But actually put in a lot of the work in reading and interpreting what you are reading for yourself. You can say I have shitty tastes. I don't think that's it myself. I instead think I have an unwavering and outright WEIRD loyalty to actually seeing through a story from beginning to end. I don't ever wanna judge a story without knowing the ending. And I won't. In some cases (like Riverdale) it became too torturous to continue watching, but I have seen every episode of shows I loathe like Avengers: Black Panther's Quest, TMNT 2012, Titans, Gotham, and Rescue Bots Academy. And ick, Game Of Thrones.
Gilda And Meek is designed for people with PATIENCE. Yeah, there is NO part of me chasing after "The Patient Demographic" that makes remote sense in this pop-culture climate. Personally, speaking as someone who lived through the crappy television in the 1980's, and the interesting but still rare good television of the 1990's, I think y'all are too damn spoiled. Echo ain't great. But if I had seen it in 1989 it would have been the greatest TV show I had ever seen. People being bored with it rankles me a bit. I would have killed for a genre show of this quality when I was kid. The best we had back then was the first two shitty seasons of Star Trek TNG and Quantum Fucking Leap. You are permitted to now shed tears on my behalf. I had it fucking ROUGH. Just a little context to my patience. I'm old enough to know how rare good TV is, to seek it out, and allow it to grow at its own pace. If you aren't EVER willing to do that, Gilda And Meek isn't just a tough sell. It's an impossible one.
And I mentioned the selling point to me watching things that are bad is they give me a good idea in demonstration of what does NOT work and what I need to avoid. Bad TV helps and inspires me every bit as much as good TV does. I'd argue even more-so since most of Gilda And Meek And The Un-Iverse is a response to the fact that if no-one was gonna tell a fictional story the way I wanted, it was up to me to do it myself. If I was happy with the current state of popular culture, I never would have gotten back to The Un-Iverse at all. It was done as a response to how pissed TV and movies were making me. Most of the "homages" in the story could be considered backhanded slams instead of tributes.
If you look around my journal you will not find reviews for either The Wire or Breaking Bad. I swear, I'm going to get to those eventually (again, I plan to see everything relevant in pop culture I can) but I've put off binging those two franchises because I hear they are damn near perfect. I don't trust perfect television. If something isn't up for debate, or something I can pour through and nitpick, that TV show has lost TV's biggest selling point. I'll get to them eventually though. I swear. That and Avatar: The Last Airbender are the TV biggies I've never seen that I plan to get to at some point.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-10 10:29 pm (UTC)I'm glad I grew up in the 90's and got to enjoy T.V. for what it was back then. I feel like things are greatly different now and I don't know if I like them much.
One of the joys I find with Gild & Meek is that I can always come to it and never worry about being all caught up and waiting. I sort of like just coming back to it when I have the time, it's like that patient friend who is always there for me.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-10 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-11 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-11 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-11 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-11 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-18 12:17 am (UTC)Warts and all!!
no subject
Date: 2024-01-18 07:57 am (UTC)https://gildaandmeekandtheuniverse.blogspot.com/2020/02/2-uncomix-tales-howler-borns-un-iverse.html
no subject
Date: 2024-01-19 02:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-11 11:43 am (UTC)But UNLIKE you, I will not fully commit to a series that I don't like if it shows no signs of self-redemption. There are many cases of shows that got better with time, but if a show exhibits no signs of upward teajectory, my interests falls off quicker than Joe Biden climbing a flight of stairs. My time is too precious to waste on stuff that I don't like.
But yeah, I admire your level of commitment though. Not many are willing to go there, especially with shit that they hate.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-11 02:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-11 02:48 pm (UTC)"Mission from God himself"... I really like that. In a way, the same can be said for ALL of us trying to save this industry from spiralling into oblivion. It's broke, and it NEEDS to be fixed.