Spinning on that dizzy edge

I can't believe that Television Without Pity is going dark. TWOP recaps of "Buffy", "Angel", and "Veronica Mars" are what brought me into online fandom; the thought of all that fabulous snark and critique fading away makes me genuinely upset. I hope some enterprising person bargains for the remains so they can be hosted somewhere else.

With a hat tip to marthawells' earlier post:

A Reminder That Reality TV is Staged a post from one of the cosplayers who got depicted as a "villain" on Heroes of Cosplay.

That post, and one that it links to, Tonight, I make my TV debut, represent the viewpoints of some members of a group of amateur cosplayers who gathered as the 11 incarnations of Doctor Who at Planet Comicon in Kansas City, whose appearance was completely edited to serve SyFy's dramatic purposes, twisting what actually happened to make the main cast of HoC appear in a, well, heroic light.

I don't watch a lot of reality shows. My TV at home pretty much stays tuned to HGTV (when the Emperor isn't hijacking it for the Wii or On Demand replays), so I can indulge my interest in house porn and travel. Even that channel, though, is filling up fast with competitions and staged drama, and I hate it. I hate being sucked into thinking how shallow a woman is for harping after granite counter tops and stainless appliances, because that's all the dialogue of hers that's shown. I hate how long the camera lingers on a disappointed couple's faces just after they're told that due to unforeseen problems, their dreams of a new kitchen are going up in smoke in favor of fixing their rotting roof and antiquated plumbing, and how the audience is turned into creepy voyeurs as they stumble away to recover while the camera pans back with the sound fully intact so we can "overhear" their emotional response.

I'm there to see the before and after renovations, the potential unleashed in a remodel, or what houses and apartments look like in far-off places, not some edited piece of footage turning normal humans into caricatures of themselves in the race for ratings. It's gotten to the point that I'll record them on the DVR and then watch only the last ten minutes of the show.

So to bring this back around: it's not like I ever trusted SyFy to be pillars of humanity. I mean, I was there when they canceled "Farscape" (and I'm never forgiving them for that). But when I saw the promos for "Heroes of Cosplay", starring a cast of almost entirely women talking about, manufacturing, and performing cosplay, they got my attention. I've watched each episode and been lulled into a sense of actually knowing these people, feeling a connection to some and eye-rolling at the antics of others.

But after watching the final episode, which actually cast them as outright heroes prevailing against difficulties both internal and external, and then reading those accounts from the other side, I feel like a total rube. I should have known better than to believe that the competitions they entered were completely free of SyFy's influence, or that the big, happy family of cosplayers across the country, audiences and entrants alike, were as cohesive and positive as presented. I feel horrible for all the amateur cosplayers who had their entries effectively stomped on by bigger budgets and manipulated screen time.

At least there were some positive notes presented over the course of the series, like when one young cosplayer in the group was rather snotty about turning down another's offer and got called out for it, or when the fact of body size and appearance in cosplay was discussed with multiple viewpoints presented. But I can't even trust that those were honest moments, or someone simply throwing the audience a bone.

Thanks, SyFy. Way to mangle this opportunity, too.