If everything is working correctly, you should be receiving this from my new newsletter page, Postcard. If it's not going correctly, you probably won't see this. A thing in my possession: A New Notebook I bought a new notebook this week. For the past few years I've been doing a variant on bullet journaling in a series of blank notebooks. I say it is a variation of bullet journaling, but the very nature of a bullet journal is that it's meant to be adjustable to your needs. But I've slowly cast off the various tools in the bullet journal toolbox, and I don't know that what I do can really be called that anymore. The key features of a bullet journal, as I understand it are: the index, spreads, monthly/weekly/daily logs. When one is setting up a bullet journal you're supposed to start with the index, which you complete as you fill up the journal. You add page numbers that relevant things show up on. Then there are spreads, which are composed of two consecutive pages, and meant to serve as a project worskspace, these can be spread throughout the entire journal and you use the index to keep track of them. finally there are the logs, typically monthly, and daily, with the option for weekly. I used all of these at one point or another, but as time has gone on my journal has more and more just become a daily log. So I'm going to try something new. Bullet Journals are by their very nature very free form. That's fine, good even. But it means it's very easy for me to fall out of using it. So I dtopped using it as intended. But this week I bought a new notebook based on the Theme System. This is an idea coined by CPG Grey, has a whole video about it, so I'm not going to explain it here. But I have a problem. And that's timing. My current notebook is going to run out of space at my current rate by the end of the year, and I don't really want to start the Theme Journal until the start of the year. This isn't huge as far as problems go, but I now feel like I have to ration pages in my existing notebook. I keep asking myself, is this worth putting down? It feels like going on a journaling fast before jumping into a new system.
Poorly Organized Thoughts on: Showrunners I've been thinking about showrunners a lot lately. In particular, how the ideas of a showrunner on modern TV shows has started to shape the way we talk about those shows. Or at least the way I think about them. I first really became aware of the position of showrunner in the common usage during the 90s. This was the period of the early internet intersecting with pop culture. And two of the shows that dominated the discussions I saw were The X-Files and Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Both of these shows were revolutionary in their time, for a variety of reasons. The most well known, is probably the idea of interspersing serialized episodes telling a larger story with episodic standalone adventures. These episodes even became known as Monster-Of-The-Week stories in the broader conversation because of Buffy and the X-Files. The X-Files had a slightly larger differentiation between it's "arc" episodes and MotW episodes, while Buffy would often blend them a little more closely together, while telling a story that spanned the entire season.
I could go on a tangent about how the pendulum has often swung to far towards serialization in most TV making these days (sometimes the strongest praise I can give a show is "It knows what an episode is") but I'm not here to rant about 10-hour-movie-itis, I've done that before. What I want to think about instead today is how both of these shows had a mythological being at their center: the showrunner. Joss Whedon on Buffy and Chris Carter on X-Files were both elevated by the fandom to the sole creative force behind everything that happened on these shows. These shows were created by a large group of writers, directors, actors and other crew, but everything that happened good or bad was laid at the feet of the showrunner. TV Tropes, a website that started life as a Buffy Fan Page (really) even has a name for when the showrunner clarifies something ambiguous or unknown about a TV show: Word of God.
In the years since these shows became behemoths of media, reshaping the entire media landscape, it has also become clear that Carter and Whedon are both, well, assholes. Carter had actually been sued in the 90s for sexual harassment (among other things) and Whedon's reputation as someone unsafe for women to be around has only grown with time. Their behavior was inexcusable, even if it wasn't actually unusual. And I think, part of the reason they were able to get away with it is because they were seen as irreplaceable by the fandom. Even now those two shows are inexorably tied to those two men. But making a TV dhow is a lot of work, and it's never the work of a single person. Buffy had 20+ writers and a similar number of directors over the course of seven seasons. And while Joss Whedon was the most common among both categories, it's not by a wide margin. And I certainly don't know the names James Contner or Rebecca Kirshner who come in at number 2 for directing and writing respectively.
And the thing is, this trend has continued to this day. I can list off 30+ TV shows where I know the name of the showrunner, but nobody else on staff either directing or writing. This way of thinking about showrunners as the auteur, or final authority, has flattened the way we think about the way TV shows are made. This only serves the ones who are being centered in the conversations, and further protects them from consequences to their terrible behavior. There are some instances of this changing. Justin Roiland got fired from two shows he created after credible allegations of sexual assault came to light, and marvel fired Jonathan Majors, who was slated to be the next Thanos level villain in their film series, fater similar allegations. But how many others are still out there, being protected by their status as the most important part of making a tv show?
If I could wave a magic wand and change anything about about TV Criticism in the 90s, it would be to treat creative teams on TV shows like rock bands, instead of pop stars. Sure Taylor Swift writes her own music, but she also has a group of others that help her create the final product. But contrast that with the Beatles or They Might Be Giants, where there might be a driving creative at the center (John and Paul, or John and John respectively) the rest of the band is equally known to the fans, and it's understood that all the work is a collaborative endeavor. I don't think this would solve everything wrong with fandoms and toxic men abusing their powers, but I do think it would be an improvement.
