What’s something that you feel like you should like, but for some reason can’t get into, no matter how many chances you give it?
For me, it’s The Three Body Problem. It should be right up my alley from everything I’ve heard about it (especially the second book, which looks at the Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter!), but for the life of me, I can’t get past the first chapter at all. I even tried reading it in another language to see if it was the translation that kept me from getting into it, and nope.
(Ignore this comment; sometimes you have to add one when posting from kbin to make the post properly federate.)
Star Wars.
It’s got everything I enjoy: big ass spaceships brawling it out and a long history of lore. But for some reason, I’ve never been able get into it. I should be a huge fan, but I’m just not, I cannot bring myself to care less about it.
maybe it’s too much goodness… like having chocolate-dipped bacon covered in cheese. chocolate makes everything better, bacon makes everything better, and cheese, makes everything better… but they don’t make each other better. funny, huh?
Just skip chocolate (the latest trilogy) and you’re left with delicious bacon & cheese!
Same. It did nothing for me until I watched The Force Awakens. I actually really got into that and started to think this was what people who liked SW felt.
Then I watched the Last Jedi and the feeling was gone.
…it is so wild to me that I’m getting downvoted for saying I liked something. This is another reason I ran screaming from Star Wars fandom. Y’all are wild.
Star wars fans hate TFA for reasons that elude me.
I’m with you, TFA was cool. I wanted to know more about the knights of Ren. Kylo was interesting, here is a villain who is struggling with using the dark side, but is trying to commit to it. That’s something we don’t see ever. Finn was a neat character, and another new perspective.
I think the Rey hatred is actually misogyny. People don’t lose their minds that Luke is best fighter pilot in the rebellion, but Rey uses the force in the “wrong” way and she’s an unredeemable Mary Sue. I’m not one to cry discrimination, but the amount of venom targeted at the character implies something deeper.
I too gave up after TLJ, it seemed designed to make me stop caring about star wars.
I grew up w/out a tv at home for most of my life–but Star Wars was also released a bit before I was born, and the prequels were released right as I hit adulthood, so I just missed being “the right age” for it completely.
It has been interesting encountering younger folk where the prequels were their childhood–because it’s their beloved childhood, they have a completely different view of it than what was going on amongst grown SFF fans when the prequels originally aired. (And I’m not bashing beloved childhoods; it makes me thoughtful about my own childhood favorites.)
I agree that it has a lot of elements that SHOULD make me love it. But I actually encountered FIRST (due to no TV at home and friends not exposing it to me outside the home) the influences in literature that Star Wars arose out of. I read the book Dune before I saw Star Wars, and I read plenty of SFF action/adventure before I saw Star Wars. So even when I finally did see Star Wars–I had already been exposed to the substratum that it arose out of, so it didn’t hit me as “unique”.
Dune. And outside the realm of SF… wheel of time and game of thrones.
Mostly it’s just the pacing and the epic nature. Bugs the crap out of me.
Levianthan Wakes was a slog. mostly because of all the preachiness about how starships were supposed to work.
Star Trek - I’m 40 and never gave it a proper chance and now I don’t even know where to start now
I’m a very casual Star Trek enjoyer, and reckon the 2009 film wouldn’t be the worst place to start.
The opening scene of that movie is some of the best Trek ever made. I say that as someone who’s been watching since 1987
I’m biased, so I say start with Next Gen. That’s what got me into it. I later went back and watched TOS. The other good starting point is Deep Space Nine.
Sisko is the best captain. He wasn’t even a captain to start. But he’s the best.
Q: [provokes sisko]
S: [knocks Q out]
Q: “you hit me! Picard would never have hit me!”
S: “I’m. not. Picard.”
Omg. Star Trek and binging it when I was like six or seven when I visited my uncle as a kid. He had the then-entire collection on VHS and I found them and started watching.
Then, he found me watching trouble with tribbles and was like “ooh this is my favorite episode! Rewind it, I’ll go make popcorn.”
Yes. We binged the rest of everything else. Everyone else was either doing adult stuff (BORING.) or at my brothers soccer tournament (even more boring) all weekend.
Yes, this started my sci fi addiction. He also kicked off the fantasy addiction with the admittedly pulpy Belgariad.
You may be interested to know that a Belgariad series is currently in pre-production.
I started watching star trek in my late thirties. Tried TOS, couldn’t tolerate more than one episode. Then started TNG and fell in love half way through first season. Now I am on Voyager. According to me, it’s a good replacement for me for TNG. Not sure what I will watch once I finish this.
My vote is DS9! It connects a lot with TNG, even having some characters move over to it after TNG ended.
I started somewhere in the middle of Voyage, it was running on the classical channel. Absolutely loved it and was not at all bothered by starting in the middle. The channel also ran Deep Space Nine, but I never got into it. I could watch it to wait for the next program, but nothing more really.
Strange New Worlds is probably the best start. I like Discovery a lot, esp. since it kicked off this new age of Star Trek, but it is a different format than you’d usually expect from Trek, thus the outcry. Strange New Worlds takes the classic Trek formula (which is not a bad formula–there’s a reason it has legs) and updates it with modern values/stories/special effects/etc.
Older Trek is massively nostalgic for many, but it’s also massively uneven in quality as they were churning out seasons on a shoestring budget and it often shows. Also, they didn’t always correctly predict how tech would go (esp. computer tech) so you can have things that are plot holes given what we know of technology today. If you want to start with older Trek, I think the Star Trek Next Generation movie First Contact might stand well enough on its own, esp. if you cherry-pick the Borg-related episodes (there’s only a few) from the TV series and watch them first.
