Not so very long ago, your humble MS-QOTD did a guest stint as Visiting Professor on the excellent ‘Geek History Lesson‘ podcast, talking in-depth and out of school about the supreme commander of Autobot forces, the ‘bot known as Optimus Prime. In so doing, I viewed quite a few Transformers episodes from my past, as well as comparing my memories of Prime with the online authorities on Cybertronian life-forms, and I came to an important conclusion: Being a Transformers fan is utterly exhausting. As pop-culture obsessions go, it’s right up there with Doctor Who, Star Trek and the Legion Of Super-Heroes in terms of complexity and “Um, ACTUALLY…” moments, and in retrospect, it’s probably the reason I’ve been drawn into the recesses of those fandoms as well. I can talk Season 6A with the best of ’em, explain the subtle nuances in Rond Vidar’s character throughout four universal reboots, and remind you that Ben Sisko and Jadzia Dax were in the cargo bay on Station K-7 chucking tribbles on Jim Kirk’s head, but afterwards, I’m gonna need a Powerbar and a nap, which leads us to today’s enervating query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) won’t even try to address how Season 2 of ‘Good Morning, Miami’ differs in tone and characters from the first, asking: Which of your pop-culture obsessions is the most exhausting to be a part of?
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Almost any fandom can be exhausting. In general, I’ve stopped looking through fanction. It’s just too much work wading through the crap and the beyond the pale weirdness to find the hidden gems.
More specifically, I’ve backed off the Game of Thrones fandom. Almost every character has a huge back story as do all of the major Houses and regions. It gets overwhelming and can make an already complex world downright impossible to enjoy
Other people’s Game of Thrones fandom exhausted me. I read up to the 5th book and decided I needed a break. I was then assualted with “OMG HOW COULD YOU STOP? KEEP READING! BLLLLLLAAAAHHHHHHH” which, when coupled with over exposure (Tee Fury will milk every single dollar out of a franchise that they can) causes my interest level to fall to absolute zero.
It depends on the type of exhaustion!
For sheer head-to-desk grinding down frustration and exhaustion, it has to be Star Wars simply because the obsessive fans grind my gears like you would not believe. For obvious and legion reasons.
For information overload, Marvel is top of the tree- too many strands of too many characters that I want to read but don’t want to read the badly written/drawn stuff and it’s a trial to plough through so many trades on the bookstore shelves to find that special something. I struck very lucky with randomly picking the Mark Waid Daredevil off the shelf recently!
Often, I make judgments based on your reviews on the MSP- if something I’m vaguely interested in gets a generally positive review from the group that sways my choice.
“You know what really grinds my gears? When I can’t find the droids I’m looking for.”
Alisha, you’ve ruined my childhood!
Since college, I have enjoyed Robotech. Since it first premiered, there have been attempts to create sequels. It seems every few years, an attempt to create a new show starts to get off the ground, then suddenly crashes in flames. Now, there is a Kickstarter to create a new pilot show “Robotech Academy”
At this point, I have all but given up on seeing a Robotech. I’m too tired to care anymore.
Super Sentai can be pretty exhausting. Even when you break down the series individually rather than the franchise as a whole, it can sometimes be overwhelming.
Star Wars (or more specifically, the Star Wars EU consisting of novels, comics and the EU canon plots of select video games), Transformers, Doctor Who, Digimon and plenty of others can be as well. When you have something like Transformers, Digimon or others that have multiple settings/timelines/etc (you could argue Super Sentai counts since before Gokaiger, most series were considered a different timeline, with Gokaiger taking place in a separate timeline where the VS movies take place), it can be even worse.
Obviously Transformers. Between all the different iterations it can be hard to fit it all in the cranium. Luckily, it seems like Hasbro has started to try and form an “official” continuity that runs through comics, video games and certain shows.
Thank the gods that it isn’t the KISS Players continuity.
Gundam anything. It just seems… exhausting. Which is why I stay away from it.
Does bagging, boarding, and cataloging comics count? Mentally and physically exhausting.
Absolutely.
I obviously dont buy nearly enough comics, since its my favorite pastime in the evenings. Right now I got like 40-50 books on my coffee table and I cant wait to get bagging and boarding them. Or do I need help?
Nope. If you enjoy it, enjoy it, I say…
There are times at work where I get in a groove and I’ll bag and seal a four or five hundred books in one sitting, which is oddly zen.
It’s a toss up between Star Wars fandom and Star Trek fanatics. For exactly the same reasons – being inflicted with less than stellar sequels – having to wade through acres of supplemental materials (be it novels, fanfics or badly drawn comics) which ignore continuity or otherwise fail to live up to their potential and grossly ignorant fans. But, I think that in the end, Star Trek wins out.
I remember sitting in the theater watching the first Star Trek movie, thinking “at last – new Star Trek after nearly 20 years!” only to discover that I was seated behind a pair of nitwits who were too young to have seen the television series during its original run, who ran their mouths throughout the entire movie, wanking on about how this scene or that scene were significant because of this or that and the worst part of it was the more they yammered on to each other, the more apparent it was that neither of them knew what the hell they were talking about. It was all I could do to keep from turning around and telling them how wrong they were – with references….