But you do know, in that when you're not having fun, you're not having fun.

If you've reached the point where you want the show cancelled for everyone, why not just take a breath, step back, and just cancel it for yourself by deleting the season pass? Everyone seems to know when they want the show to end, but not when to stop watching it. Why is that?

And the thing is, if you're wrong about your decision to stop watching, unlike when you cancelled the show for everyone, you can take it back. Five years from now, you can add it to your Instant Watch queue on Netflix and catch up on a long weekend. And it won't be as good as when you were young and silly and in love with the show, but it was nice to see them again, and it didn't hurt so badly that they were kinda stupid, but at least you got to see for yourself how it ended, and now that one fanfic makes more sense, yeah?

If it is being petty, that you want it stopped for everyone because you've stopped enjoying it, isn't that too embarrassing to say out loud?

I think people who say those things are saying them as a way to indicate how extremely disappointed they are in the show. . . and of course, to illicit lots of comments.

If it is being petty, that you want it stopped for everyone because you've stopped enjoying it, isn't that too embarrassing to say out loud?

t cackles

How long have you been talking about media on the internet? There is nothing that is too embarrassing for someone, somewhere, to say out loud.

I'm not disagreeing with you in this argument, for the most part--I'm just pointing out that rational decision-making appears to play little part in the risk-reward evaluation of the truly committed fan.

Five years from now, you can add it to your Instant Watch queue on Netflix and catch up on a long weekend

Right, but that means they can't participate in the fandom now, while the conversation is going. And while that's certainly sometimes preferable, it also means missing out on the community aspects of the whole thing. Which are, for many people, as significant as the actual show in bringing meaning to the fannish experience.

Okay, I bitch about a lot of shows--I am not going to be hypocritical about that for one hot second. I watch a lot of stuff I don't actually like, because I'm a miserable daughter of a bitch. But...I don't like to sound like an idiot. I'm not saying I win that little battle, but at least I like to think I'm in the game.

The premise that I'm helpless at the mercy of my cable box which is forcing me to watch season 8 of Supernatural, and if the CW doesn't save me by cancelling it, little baby ducklings will die--how have we not ganged up as adults and not heaped derision upon the people who keep spewing that viewpoint? Why is it even indulged for a second? And, yeah, I know you just had it a few posts up, but that's how much I don't get it.

I do hunt down discussions of shows I don't like, and participate in them. But I don't pretend I don't have any choice in watching them, or imply that I need to be protected from them...the fuck? I do do my best not to deride the people who do make the choice to watch them because they enjoy them, but that's the bit that I think's hard (god, Twilight, seriously, sitting on my hands again...or at least trying to ask questions and not lob stink bombs...).

Over and over again, people who have garnered respect, in level-headed arenas, and boom! Out pops the "helpless maiden entrapt by Fox" thing and..it gets momentum and supporters, and all I can see is people volunteering to wear a dunce hat.

I suspect you're under-rating the power of habit, and fannish self-identification. I watched XF almost to the bitter end, and loud was the wailing and gnashing of teeth in my household. Because I was an X-Files fan, and I wrote XF fic, and participated in dense XF conversations on several mailing lists. That self-identification and involvement in the community was really strong, and it took a lot for me to stop watching, and even more for me to stop kvetching about it.

I suspect that if I hadn't fallen into Farscape when I did, I would have hung around XF bitching and moaning even longer.

It's not rational. It's not. And I can point and laugh all I like now, but I know I'm not above it, because I've done it. And there's always someone else around in the same position, who will commiserate.

So John has said that thing, about Leverage ending? Cool.

Yes, he said it in front of a bunch of fans, too, at the last Portland gathering. He said he didn't think Leverage had more than 100 (or maybe it was 120) episodes in the concept. Basically, 5 seasons, though this season is only 15, so maybe he'll want to keep going for another. Me, I'm zen about it. I love the show; if he makes more, that's great, but if he says the story's over, then so be it.

I've flipped channels and found X Files episodes I've never seen. I loved that show with a passion, and I joined people who flew in from Canada to watch the series finale, aided by tequila and toy aliens. But I did skip the painful bit with the crap episodes, because complaining about it wasn't any fun.

I guess someone was having some fun, though, because their ratings were larger than zero. I hope those people were very happy, for what they got.

It would be really cool if I liked every season of Supernatural no less than I've liked the weakest season so far (3). That would make me feel like I had some sort of bragging rights. It would make me feel really sad if I ended up falling out of love with it while it was still on the air and thinking of episodes broadcasting and me not breathlessly watching appointment TV. I'm getting a sad right now. And no one tell Amy I even floated the idea, will you?

But...insist it be cancelled? So there doesn't have to be an active fandom without me in it anymore? So there's no new canon for fics? So the bits of my pairing can't do anything new?

Seriously?

I can't believe anyone thinks that's marginally defensible, but it's not just that, it's the way you're supposed to think unless the other option happens--cancelled-by-the-fucker-networks-too-soon.

Which--don't even get me started on the stupidity of that.

I'm so glad John has already said he's ending Leverage on his terms so I won't have to bite my tongue when that wraps up because somehow everyone thinks there's one and only one way a show ends "early" and that's because a hostile network pulls the plug.

For fuck's sake, will martyr's weeds ever go out of fashion? I guess grey is a sophisticated look, right?

I was very lucky as an X-Files fan to not have a television for seasons six or seven, and in those days there was no Hulu or Netflix for getting caught up. By the time it was possible for me to jump back in, they'd changed the whole cast and I was confused and just stopped. But that period of enforced absence helped to sever the emotional ties.

I have felt "Oh god someone please put this show out of its misery!" at times when something really good gets really bad, but I'm not sure "insist" or "demand" is the right word.

I will say that I rather wish I'd stopped watching XF earlier than I did. And the one reason I can understand someone wishing a show cancelled is that the new route the show is following is retroactively screwing up the earlier storyline.

As a for-instance: if XF had ended in season 5, we would never have known that Carter hadn't the foggiest idea what was going on with the mytharc, and he was just making shit up as he went along.

Or in SPN, I had been pretty fond of the idea that the Winchesters got into hunting through a fluke of circumstance: that Mary's death was nothing more than chance malice on the part of the YED, and the story, for me, was in how John and the boys responded to that. So when they were informed that the boys were in fact descended directly from [memfault] and that made them perfect, special, angelic hosts, and that was why the whole thing had happened--well, in my mind, that rather screwed with my previous understanding of the show and its themes.

I'm not saying that that ruined the show for me, forever and ever, amen, but like reading the end of a book where the characters' motivations are turned on their head, it does rather challenge much of what I thought I knew and liked about the show.

So, in that kind of instance, I can see someone wishing the show had ended before that reveal. It's not rational, it's kind of petty, but I can see why someone would think that way.

I guess you can't make a given piece of plot retroactively not exist, and it's not relevant to you that it improved the story for someone else, since you watch for you and they watch for them. But...if you can stop watching when it sours, yes, it's a bit late for you, but if the show had ended instead of kickstart Mary's place in the mythology and give her agency--well, I'd not be able to mourn what I didn't know--but this whole thing started from people asking about plot details after the cancellation points, didn't it? Oh, I'd want to cry. One simple revelation made me like the entire Winchester family (and some Campbells) better in one fell swoop.

Am I even gonna think that I should have not gotten than, and you should have had the show end first? No. And I'll say that the X Files should go on "too long" every time just to be consistent, and maybe someone else got something they valued out of the absolute dreck that made my eyes cross and my bile experience the Coriolis effect.