year in fandom meme

It's meme time again. Snagged from selenak:

Your main fandom of the year?
The Avengers. That came as a total surprise to me. The movie looked like a grade A sausage fest of the kind I try to avoid, plus Superheroes were always something I couldn't connect with. But TA turned my expectations upside down, and it gave me Black Widow. (Natasha's awesomeness aside, I still hope the sequels will feature more leading women.)

Your favorite film you watched this year?
That would be the same answer. But I equally enjoyed Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol which was just as much a surprise. I've watched it as often as TA. I never knew MI actually contains convoluted con plots of the kind I really like. (Though I have since watched MI1 and didn't like it nearly as much as 4.)

Your favorite book read this year?
I don't read a lot of books because of my fanfic habit. But just yesterday I read A Monster Calls which was intense. Not an easy read, hit close to home, but I knew what I was getting into when I started reading. And I'm glad I read it even if, or maybe because, it brought back emotions I normally keep buried.

Your favorite album or song to listen to this year?
Can't think of any. I was mostly listening to 日本語能力試験:N3 while working, in the hope it'll eventually improve my understanding of spoken Japanese. "A man and a woman are talking. What is it the woman is finding in her handbag?" Exciting stuff.

Your favorite tv show of the year?
The Unusuals. As many other fans I came for Jeremy Renner and stayed for the entire ensemble and the quirky plots. Prematurely cancelled after only 10 episodes, but those are all good. And there's a novel-length fic now that spins the plot further.
(Going by the DVD cover you wouldn't assume it's an ensemble show. But I can't blame them for marketing it this way. Heh.)
When I was browsing through the Yuletide prompts I was surprised to see how many people had listed TU as one of their three fandoms.

Your favorite DW/LJ community of the year?
fail_fandomanon for the mix of discussion, recs and meta.

Your best new fandom discovery of the year?
Avengers! I still enjoy Leverage a lot and I'll be sad when it's over... (I loved the Christmas episode) but it's so nice to be in a large fandom again, where I can pick something new to read every single day without running out anytime soon. I missed that.

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?
Hm. Probably casestory, but that was more of a minor disappointment. The fest went largely unnoticed and I won't participate again, even though it was low commitment and I really liked the story I made art for. Panfandom and gen combined makes too small a niche, perhaps.

Your fandom boyfriend of the year?
Jeremy Renner. That body. That smoldering look that he sometimes does. And the best thing is that a lot of his previous movies are really good.
(Though I have a hard time believing he played that vampire creep Penn in Angel: Somnambulist. I mean, I'd just watched that episode the week before I saw Avengers. I never would've guessed that's the same guy.)
(The upcoming Witchhunter thing looks. Um. Cracky. OTOH two of my favorite movies are Sleepy Hollow and The Nightmare Before Christmas. I kinda hope H&G is gonna be in that vein.)

Your fandom girlfriend of the year?
It's a tie between Scarlett Johannsson and Gina Bellman.
Gina Bellman is utterly gorgeous. She just has such a presence. I appreciated that Sophie got more to do in the recent episodes, for several eps I thought they were underutilizing her.
And here is where SJ calls an interviewer on his sexist question.

Your biggest squee moment of the year?
That's hard to pin down... Hehehe. Okay, maybe the part where Hulk smashes Loki around. Or wait, the part in the beginning where Natasha is tied to the chair and does her thing while Coulson is listening in on the phone looking almost bored. (I was getting Buffy flashbacks. That is a very good thing in my book.)

The most missed of your old fandoms?
I believe this time last year I said I missed SGA for the abundance of fanwork if nothing else. But I don't any longer because I got enough to read. \o/
Sometimes I miss Buffy and Angel during the heyday... the intensity, the quality of the meta, which analysed and celebrated the show instead of merely tearing it down. These days I barely read meta any more because it interferes with my enjoyment of a canon instead of enhancing it like Angel meta did.

I had butterflies in my stomach before each new Angel episode... I haven't felt like that since then, not even for my most favorite shows. But the nice thing is that Buffy and Angel fandom still exist so whenever I feel like it, I can revisit. And the shows hold up very well on rewatch!

The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to?
Yeah, there were some. I should really start writing this stuff down. Anyway, I'm only into one canon at a time, so I'm not shopping for a new fandom at the moment.
When I'll try a new show it'll probably be Elementary.

Your biggest fan anticipations for the coming year?
The SHIELD tv show. Even though I'm grumpy about Coulson getting a show while Natasha isn't getting anything but side character status in Cap2. But I hope the show will appeal to me nonetheless. And I do hope it'll be an ensemble show!