Sorry for starting this guys. I just had never seen the show before and was impressed by the miniseries. I do respect LOAF's opinion immensly. Do I think that LOAF was directing a personal attack at me for liking the miniseries......absolutely not! His perception of the scifi community as a whole is spot on. Most scifi audiences tend to be juvenile. I myself have a bit of a junenile streak. I think what LOAF is trying to get across is that because of the juvenile aspects of scifi, it will really never be taken seriously, and if we promote (as adults) the more immature aspects of our community to represent the whole as art, then that is how it will be perceived!
Certainly not a personal attack on you... we have Battlestar Galactica threads frequently and I generally try to comment (often sarcastically, I'll admit) in them. I felt especially interested here because I've been bouncing out this 'group psychology' fandom idea with LeHah and company these past few weeks on IRC and I felt like putting fingers to keyboard to message board archives.
It's not so much that science fiction fans need to be taken seriously as it is they need to continue to reproduce (obvious joke goes here). It's a given that science fiction will never have the legitimacy of other pursuits -- sci fi fans are an easy target, and sci fi media fans all the more (if you can't keep the legitimate science fiction writers from making fun of you, you have no hope with anyone else). My worry is that without a current equivalent of Star Wars or Star Trek, who is interesting our children and near future children in the community?
When we were growing up we were impressed with these shows not only because they were amazingly fun, but because they were fun that our parents had too. Now that we are the parents, we're telling the next generation of kids to find something else -- we want to watch the sex robots and we won't cotton to anything else. Is 'Revenge of the Clones' really all that worse than 'The Empire Strikes Back'? Who knows (the secret of criticism is that you can critique anything for any reason in any direction)... but the fact that we decided to act like nihilists about it means that the next generation, which will always want to become more like us, never latched onto it.
Heck, I think it goes deeper than just sustaining science fiction fandom... think of all the scientists and engineers you know who grew up to math/science jobs because they loved Star Trek? We're trading that in twenty years down the line... and it's not just because we *like* sex robots, it's because we insist on *only* liking sex robots.
On a side note, I have noticed a bit of hostility from some of the newer members of the forum directed at the more senior members as of late. While I still consider myself a junior member, I have been corrected and helped along the way for over two years now by LOAF, Chris, Le Hah, Death, Major Stryker, and many others. These guys know their stuff and are all very intelligent. They are here to help us along and provide for a solid community as a whole.
A valid point. The "I could hardly help from laughing at your comment" bit in that last fellow's post was entirely silly. At the same time, you do have to strike out to an extent. The people you mentioned - myself especially - are all very, very fallible... we get angry and ban people and regret it later when we realize we shouldn't have.
I guess the lesson here is this and simply this: if you want to make a name for yourself, make fun of LeHah, because it will entertain everyone else.
One thing I have been told before that really continues to help me is to "use the search button'' and look up prior discussions on certain topics. This really cuts down on frustration from the more senior members (who have had to deal with many of the same issues repeatedly brought up over the years).
Honestly, I've never liked this advice. It irks me when I see a poster respond to someones question with something like this... because frankly, I'm happy to talk about most anything a second time (or a second millionth time, which is generally the case in our community). We're still changing things in the Ships List because it still gets discussed... so people shouldn't be afraid of bringing up old topics again. Responding to a seemingly simple question can lead to an interesting discussion that might change how we think about various aspects of Wing Commander continuity. (Of course, do use the search feature in this case, because I still maintain that however mean spirited it may have been, Super Neon Battlestar Galactica was hilarious.)
In fact, maybe the better advice is -- do use the search feature, but start your topic anyway afterwards. A community that isn't talking sucks.
