Thread:IEmbargo/@comment-22439-20130802232040/@comment-14284535-20130816235931

Hi, Devon.

Thank you very much for introducing yourself. I am doing well at the moment.

My interest in the series is more academic. Because I can't have children, it is one of the few ways I can relate to my friends' and relatives' children. I find the characters were unusually rich in their depth. It also has an unusually strong influence on its viewership that rivals the influence of "Star Trek" and "Doctor Who" on the elders of the tech generation. And often it dealt with real issues of kids that age with amazing deftness.

I am actually fascinated by iCarly's fandom. I have been in many old fandoms (check my bio on fanfiction.net); iCarly fandom is the most like the old SF media fandoms. The passion and thoughtfulness about the series are almost breathtaking. It is also the only non-F/SF fandom that has such good fanfic. Indeed, a large number of stories deal with issues that I wish the series did. (THE biggie: why does Freddie's interest in Carly vanish during the Seddie arc and then suddenly reappear later with no explanation on either end?)

I am also a representative of my friends and relatives as parents. As such, I am concerned about the vitriol on the shipping pages and the incredibly horrible things people say about the characters (and occasionally about the actors and actresses) from what political analysts call "the echo chamber" of the ships' pages. (The "my boy Freddie" ship-baiting and the "Sodom and Gomorrha" retort from last week were particularly egregious.)  These comments have been quoted directly and caused fights between kids in school (from kindergarten through, unbelievably, a mathematics PhD program). (They use them to ship war with the faux moral high ground that political partisan pundits give their supporters.)  The fact that this drove Livin4Skating off the wikia with fan warring that resembles the "Star Trek" and "Doctor Who" fan warring I was unfortunately sucked into in 1987.

Anyway, thank you very much for your acknowledgement. I hope what little I do will be helpful to everyone.

iEmbargo