There is always one who ruins the hobby

Sometimes collecting autographs can be a depressing hobby. You work so hard for so long writing the perfect letter to your favourite celebrity only for something to ruin it for you. Many times over the years I’ve written to celebs only for them to switch to “fan mail services” which is just a nice way of saying “I can’t be bothered reading your letters anymore, here have a copy of my autograph”.
These services have always got my back up mainly because the celebrity clients that use them try to make out we are idiots. I have mentioned this before a few months ago and I won’t go into specifics but what I will say is this, if you get a letter from Studio Fan Mail there is a 99% chance your letter never made it to the celeb.
Then of course there are the other factors that can ruin it for you like spamming. Writing to celebs via a movie set or concert venue is a popular way to get the more difficult people. It’s a risk/reward type of situation and when you are rewarded sometimes it pays off big time. These via venue addresses are not out there for public display, oh sure if you look hard enough on the internet they are there but they have to be for other reasons. But that initial joy you get from first finding the right address and then sending off the letter can be destroyed when you discover someone has posted that same address for everyone to find. I’ve always been of the belief if you do the hard work to find the address then you should be rewarded for your effort. But when it’s out there for everyone, it gets hammered until it gets to a point where they no longer reply, ruining it for everyone. Of course it doesn’t always happen, but most of the time it does.
Then there are those other times, rarer than the ones previous stated but they are the ones that hurt the most; when someone who enjoys fan mail or always replies to fan mail stops because something has caused them too.  Today one of my favourite actresses Stana Katic had the respect to come online and say due to a security issue she could no longer accept fan mail. And to add to that she would not use a “fan mail service” because fans deserve the real thing.
In this case I’m lucky, I got Stana’s autograph in 2010 and its framed sitting on my desk but i know plenty who were still waiting to hear from her. I don’t know what the issue was but there are those fans that walk a very fine line and I just hope they haven’t crossed it.  Full credit to Stana though for respecting the fans enough to come out and say directly that she will no longer be replying. So many would simply stop and move on but she is so much classier than that. I just wish other celebrities would just take the same time and effort to save their fans the pain so future collectors don’t feel the same pain I have. 

Fandom Wars are Pointless

Sometimes you overhear the most random things when you are travelling on public transport. Two high school girls, no more than 16 got on the bus and sat in front of me. I wasn’t intending to listen but their conversation; well actually they were having a debate. But the fact was it was so loud I couldn’t help myself. Their debate was and probably is one of the biggest problems for anyone who loves their TV and that is fandom wars.
For anyone who doesn’t frequent the internet a great deal or simply avoids social media, a fandom war is where people on two sides fight for the TV show/book/movie etc, they love. In some cases it’s simply to prove their show is better than another or in another case where one group of people will be little another because they believe the rival show is a copy. Sadly for people like myself when you love more than one show it can be hard to take one side or another.  So instead you stand on the sidelines watching as friends become enemies and internet and social media forums destroy each other. Both these girls though were making valid points, one could see a value in debating differences and similarities in shows while the other could not see a point at all, and I tend to agree. Too many times over the last 5 years have I seen a show fans attack another when they see one minor plot similarity and claim it as their own. Too many times have I lost friends when they try to drag me onto one side of the fight or another and too many times have I just sat back and shook my head simply asking why?
What I have noticed is that the attacks have become a lot more personal in recent times, and no clearer example of this is during the Bones vs. Castle fandom war.
Now before I go any further I am not saying all Bones fans are bad, far from it. But there is a small minority who are giving the rest a bad name. This war has bothered me from the start, I’ve always liked Bones, I used to religiously follow the show for 5yrs until the show fell off the wagon a bit with the infamous dream sequence sex scene (could have been earlier but my memory is hazy). I still watch the occasional ep now & I still love many of the cast members but the show is not the same for me. So by default I have found myself on the Castle side of this war and have copped a lot of flak from people because of it.  But this is my thoughts on it, I cannot see how these two shows are similar, even my mother who watches both shows can’t see the similarity. The only thing that is similar is the chemistry between the two leads, nothing more. My mother last night gave me a different view point, she said Castle was more similar to The Mentalist and I can see that more than Bones.
The bus debate ended when one of the girls got frustrated & ended up getting off at her stop clearly disappointed that the other girl had not relented in her opinion at all. And that’s the thing about these wars, they frustrate, they annoy and in the end will make it impossible for people to remain friends. But like anything they are a by-product of the internet & TV and probably will never stop but sadly increase.