Just in case you hadn’t figured it out by now, I am a GINORMOUS GEEK! I love Science Fiction and Fantasy. I listen Nerdcore Hip-Hop and Jonathon Coulton. I light candles at the altars of Joss Whedon, JJ Abrams, and Gene Roddenberry. I even give homage to the minor deities like John Scalzi and Sam Raimi. I am dedicated to my love of the nerdy underbelly of pop culture. I revel in it. I RUN A LARP!
I run Linux on the computer I built myself.
I tweet at Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day.
I honestly consider meeting George Takei to be one of my biggest life achievements to date.
I’ve even played in a LiveJournal-Based Harry Potter RPG. (For the Record, I played Ron, Neville, Percy and Rookwood, My roommate played Draco and my girlfriend at the time played Ginny)
I’m not telling you all of this to up my geek-cred. I don’t really care about that. I just want people who don’t know how geeky I am to understand that I really am, above everything else in life, a geek.
That is the word I use to identify myself and the people around me.
I don’t normally write about it because the Geek Controversies are many and I’d rather avoid them. If you want to argue about whether Robert Jordan actually had a planned scheme to follow the Old Tongue or if there is a hidden message about religion in Alien 3, I’m all for it. I dig that stuff.
I’m not here to argue over whether someone is a geek or if a subject is geeky. I really, really don’t care.
I think I want to prove my geekdom for one reason and one reason only.
I am, without a doubt, a DISGRUNTLED FANBOY.
I have to admit, my own personal annoyances come from a fairly common source, Fox.
Now, besides being the company responsible for the right-wing side of the annoyingly misinformed talking heads, Fox is also responsible for making some of the worst decisions in movie franchise history. They have easily destroyed the hopes of millions of geeks with their ownership of movie rights on some of the big names: X-Men, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and of course, Firefly.
It’s that last one that has my panties in a wad now. I think in a way, I’ve held a smoldering grudge against Fox since they canceled Firefly (and John Doe) in favor of a Fast and the Furious ripoff show starring Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and some guys no one will ever care about. That show didn’t even last more than a couple of seasons because it was actually really bad, even by Fox standards.
These days, Fox is just the station that happens to have a couple of good shows squished between their endless procession of American Idol and Gordon Ramsey. It is the home of some pretty geektastic shows like Glee and Bones, but usually, Fox and I ignore one another. I’d almost forgotten about my slow simmering nerdrage for the company.
Then, out of no where, they started putting the smack-down on the Browncoats.
If you’re too lazy to read the Buzzfeed article, I’ll break it down for you:
Firefly fans started making hats based on one that appears in one (never aired) episode. They make them entirely from scratch. They make them by hand. This created a giant fad with the fans to own and wear the hats. That led to these same people making more by hand and selling them on websites like Etsy. Think Geek figured out there was a pretty huge market for them and got some officially licensed hats made. Now, Fox is shutting down websites that sell the hand-made hats by the hundreds because they’re dicks.
Now, I’m not going to say they don’t have a right to license and protect their Intellectual Property. Sure, they abuse the hell of out of their IP and someone should look into making some serious Brain Abuse Crimes, but this strike is completely and utterly moronic.
It strikes me as the type of thing a company does for one reason and one reason only, to prove once and for all that they absolutely hate their fanbase.
Video game companies do shit like this all the time. They go out of their way to make fan’s lives hell. They like beating us with our own geekdoms. They want to milk us for every penny they can get out of us.
I don’t have enough pennies to throw any away, though.
So, here’s my proposal about the entire thing.
Take a lesson from other collector communities.
Instead of selling an officially licensed, massively overpriced and cheaply produced product, sell an “inspired” product. You’re selling the “Immortal Scotsman Blade” of knitted hats.
Or don’t worry about it. I’m sure if we move on to something else, Fox will lose interest in one of the largest sci-fi fanbases ever to exist.
I mean, if they actually cared, they’d probably do something like…. I don’t know… fund a sequel to Serenity.
I’m just saying.
Of course, if you wanted to make one and send it to me, I’d be much obliged.
One More Rant:
While I’m on my Browncoat-geek-out, and in a soapbox kind of mood, I wanted to point something out.
Mal wore suspenders before they were Cool.
Your move, Doctor.