#guess this wasn't posted without comment after all. whoops

[haljathefangirlcat]

i know nothing about 1899 except that aneurin barnard was there, but i've heard of the cancellation and i'm sorry for you <3 this extremely capitalistic culture of any tv show getting cancelled after just one season if they don't get the same ratings of a MCU production is insane

Aw, thank you for your message. <3

And yeah, I totally agree. Especially in this case. See, the thing that makes me so *froths at the mouth* about this is how arbitrary and dumb it all sounds.

Like. 1899 was being written by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, the same people behind Dark. Remember how I used to (and still do) wax poetics about that? XD Anyway, like Dark, it was also shaping up to be a complex mystery show with a gloomy atmosphere, well-placed mythological references galore, and morally ambiguous characters who made questionable life choices and whose stories were probably going to be revealed little by little. So, Netflix basically already had proof that a show like this made by these people could succeed before they even began releasing the episodes, right? And when they actually did release the episodes? 1899 stayed in their top ten shows for weeks. People immediately started posting comments, analyses, theories, fanworks. They were engaging with it and clearly wanted more. And official reviews were generally great, too! Like, "this is one of the best shows of 2022, can we have more German stuff plz" great!

And yeah, this show was a lot more slowburn than Dark had been. And some people didn't like that, I guess. Personally, by the end of the first (and now, only) season I wasn't even entirely sure I could trust anything the characters and the narration had said about themselves anymore... or that I'd even had exactly the firmest grasp on either of them through the whole thing, lol. But that very obviously wasn't the result of screenwriters trying to outsmart the audience and keep us in the dark as much as possible for randomness!!!1 shock value!!!1, it was clearly setting up something much bigger that needed a slow, careful build-up and trusting the audience to have the patience to see it done properly -- the amount of detail and care put into it was honestly insane, and I and many others were more than willing to see all the puzzles pieces be put in their respective places one by one. Because, hey, surprisingly enough sometimes audiences like being trusted instead of being hit over the head with a big sign saying Viewers Are Morons and/or wowed with shiny but empty spectacles and "witty" quotable one-liners!

And yeah, okay, it was probably a lot more expensive than Dark had been, too. But... had the execs at Netflix really not taken that into consideration BEFORE okay-ing the entire project?! There were characters of... what, six different nationalities? All played by actors of those nationalities to make sure their portrayal was accurate? All followed by people whose entire job was making sure the dialogue they were going to be handed in their different native languages was accurate and not stilted, awkward garbage?! And that's without even counting The Volume, the technology they were using to film scenes set on the ship's deck and at sea to make everything feel more realistic, which was the same thing used on HOTD to film flights on dragonback and apparently worked well enough to make some of the actors actually sea-sick during their first scenes with it. I mean... did nobody at all look at all that before shooting started, check the numbers, and go, "wait, no, actually we are not willing to spend that much money on an international series/scifi series/original project that's not an adaptation or a sequel to anything/something that most likely won't start any trends on TikTok or get any outraged kids screaming on Twitter, so how about you tone it down a little"?

Seriously... why give your audience a taste of something so creative and well-crafted only to yank it away because, whoops, you didn't really take enough time to think about it and understand that what you had on your hands wasn't actually the kind of thing you wanted? Why take two people who had already proven their skill and their passion (and likely also their willingness to actually treat their cast and crew well, given that one of the actors from Dark agreed to work with them again in 1899 and others publicly showed their support for the new series) and then pull the rug from underneath their feet? And that's not even counting what a great time the rest of the cast and crew all seemed to be having from the interviews and the behind the scenes stuff...

I guess what stings the most -- besides, you know, being left hanging on a cliffhanger that was obviously going to lead to a much bigger mystery that for once I could actually be pretty confident would get a satisfying resolution while interrogating human nature itself in fascinating ways while getting there XD -- is that people like that, ready to come up with big, fun, interesting ideas like that and to assemble great casts and crews like that, giving plenty of talented and hard-working people their time to shine on such amazing and heartfelt works, don't exactly get Big American Platform Able To Pick Up Or Drop International Projects On A Whim budgets every day. And when they do, and they're even lucky enough to get it a second time... they get discarded, apparently. Tossed away regardless of their talent, passion, great ideas, good relationships with their colleagues and respect for their public. Right in the middle of creating something else that could have turned out to be wonderful.

... and then people like me, who'd love nothing more than to stick with them to the end and fawn over them after seeing them stick the landing again, are left with truncated stories that will never give them the satisfaction of a good ending (how rare have those become, anyway?) and the grim knowledge that they probably won't see anything else like that in a long, long time. Because "anything else like that" won't likely get picked up by the people with the money needed to give it the shape it deserves, or even if it does, it will be picked up and then someone will go, "whoops, didn't think this through, sorry, let's pretend that just didn't happen!"

Sorry for the rant, I really did appreciate this message. I guess this whole vent *gestures upwards* had been building up, too. XD