Here's one thing that is a fact: James Scott is not returning, meaning this discussion is completely pointless.

2 hours ago, Skin said:

 

I honestly don't know how else to word it. When I look at the definition of interesting here is what is defined within the term: 

arousing curiosity or interest; holding or catching the attention.

 

The word fits. They aroused more interest in the show then Lumi did at that point in the story (or really ever). This was referenced multiple times in MSN, TV Guide and in Soap Opera Weekly publications back when soap magazines were still a thing, and were still of interest to the viewing community.

 

Soap interviewers would even interview Bryan Datillo and ask him what he thought about the EJ/Sami pairing generating more fan mail/interest than Lucas/Sami did at that time. Datillo even had to respond to the fact that a lot of fans liked them as a pairing even though he was part of a rival ship. All of this was way back in 2007, 5-6 years before EJ and Sami even got together.

 

Listen, I don't really care if people like EJ and Sami, that's not the point I am trying to make. I am simply saying if you loved them or hated them, they generated a level of interest not seen by any of her pairings since the turn of the century. I don't care if you prefer Lumi or Ejami - that's not the conversation I am even remotely interested in having. You preferring one ship over the other - is an opinion. But there are things that are measurable and you can determine based on quantifiable facts. If your barometer is fan sites, tweets, fan mail, music videos, YouTube screen clip views, publication space on magazines, or even mainstream media attention like having 5 minutes dedicated to them on the Colbert show, or whatever else floats your boat the answer is pretty definitive and clear. At the end of the day EJ/Sami generated all of that on their own, and it made the pairing notable and standout amongst all her other pairings. That's not something her other pairings replicated. That's objectively a fact. It doesn't bother me if other posters like Lumi more, because that's not what's being talked about. You can hate a pairing and still acknowledge that they had a huge impact on the show and beyond. I just did a few posts back with Phick.  

 

 

You are mixing quality and personal preference with interest, which is not my point. You are looking for a value statement, which is antithetical to what I am talking about. I am not trying to define if someone is "better" or not. I am trying to gauge interest, engagement and fascination and measure that within context. 

 

The bolded definitely does speak to their impact. It's a direct and quantifiable number of what people are willing to engage with and find interesting. You can bet any intellectual property and television series will want to capture what is causing a reaction for their viewers and that they will want to understand fans relationship to the material that they are writing and producing. Television series want to trend, they want the news publication publicity and they want awareness of their shows. Writers would rather you hate or love something, then feel ambivalent about it. 

 

You're making my point for me, though. I'm not disagreeing that Sami and EJ, as a pairing, generated great interest. I was responding to statement such as "Sami and EJ were a thousand times more interesting than Sami and Lucas." That is not a quantifiable thing. You CAN definitively state something such as, "The ratings for Sami and EJ's wedding were ten times higher than for Sami and Lucas's wedding," or "Sami and EJ's fan event drew ten times more people than a Sami and Lucas event," but you can't measure something like 'interesting' or 'compelling' in a concrete way. It's your (perfectly valid!) opinion that Sami and EJ are/were a more interesting pairing than Sami and Lucas, and that's fine. 

 

For the record, I don't really have a dog in this fight. I enjoyed Sami and Lucas a ton, but I didn't like how Hogan's quick turn into making Sami more of a traditional heroine wound up transforming Lucas into an Austin-lite character. I agree that Sami and EJ had great chemistry and made a big splash, but I found the storytelling for them wildly inconsistent and unfocused, likely because there were almost yearly writer changes and because... Corday. But I have no way of definitively declaring that one pairing was objectively superior to the other. And there were probably a ton of less vocal fans (like me) who didn't really care which one emerged as the victor, because I don't necessarily watch the show for couples and just want the storytelling to be interesting.

 

Did Sami and EJ garner more outside press for the show? Very possibly, and that's a statement you could make, given the "data points" (as you put it) to back it up. Of course the show wants people to be talking about the show and its content. But you took my example about reactions to Daniel on Twitter and totally twisted it -- mentions and conversations do not necessarily equate to something being "better," which is exactly what you say in your response before completely contradicting yourself. You're right that, in a broad application, "interesting" means something has garnered attention. There are plenty of things that have outraged and annoyed people into posting on social media that would technically count as being "interesting." And while you say you aren't interested in declaring something better or worse than something else, that's exactly what your posts about EJami vs Lumi seem to be aiming for. You say EJami are/were "more interesting," and then you go on not to give examples of why/how that's the case, but instead talking about how and why her pairings with Austin, Lucas, and Rafe didn't work and why her pairing with EJ did. Whether or not they worked isn't the same as whether or not they interested people or got attention, so I hope you can see why people (not just me) are confused as to what point you were trying to make.

Edited January 28, 20214 yr by Michael

38 minutes ago, AlexElizabeth said:

Here's one thing that is a fact: James Scott is not returning, meaning this discussion is completely pointless.

Much like the seven pages of Brenda Barrett talk in the GH thread.  There's no point going on and on about stories that aren't happening.........   except for certain posters to talk about characters the rest of us realize won't be back anytime soon.

3 hours ago, Michael said:

 

I was responding to statement such as "Sami and EJ were a thousand times more interesting than Sami and Lucas." That is not a quantifiable thing. You CAN definitively state something such as, "The ratings for Sami and EJ's wedding were ten times higher than for Sami and Lucas's wedding," or "Sami and EJ's fan event drew ten times more people than a Sami and Lucas event," but you can't measure something like 'interesting' or 'compelling' in a concrete way. It's your (perfectly valid!) opinion that Sami and EJ are/were a more interesting pairing than Sami and Lucas, and that's fine. 

 

I think I understand this more, after walking away for a bit, and reading your response. My statement was admittedly hyperbolic. That being said I disagree with the argument that you can't measure show engagement, fan engagement and general viewing behavior and enthusiasm as an indicator for impact. I just completely disagree with that notion. This is the foundation for Nielsen existing, why Q scores for television series exist, why net promoter scores are used to understand engagement with services/products/television, why market research is a thing and why the ratings themselves are used to direct advertising dollars. It's all more or less borne out of fans willingly sharing their viewing habits and what television series they watch, and using that information to extrapolate how larger audiences feel about their specific shows, in order to measure attachment to the content they are viewing. That's basically what surveying in essence is. We can certainly derive and measure interest from many of the things I laid out in my previous arguments. 

 

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And there were probably a ton of less vocal fans (like me) who didn't really care which one emerged as the victor, because I don't necessarily watch the show for couples and just want the storytelling to be interesting.

Did Sami and EJ garner more outside press for the show? Very possibly, and that's a statement you could make, given the "data points" (as you put it) to back it up. Of course the show wants people to be talking about the show and its content. But you took my example about reactions to Daniel on Twitter and totally twisted it -- mentions and conversations do not necessarily equate to something being "better," which is exactly what you say in your response before completely contradicting yourself. You're right that, in a broad application, "interesting" means something has garnered attention. There are plenty of things that have outraged and annoyed people into posting on social media that would technically count as being "interesting." And while you say you aren't interested in declaring something better or worse than something else, that's exactly what your posts about EJami vs Lumi seem to be aiming for.

 

I think I am understanding the reaction at this point. I was making two separate points (1) EJ and Sami created a response in Days fandom that was notable and generated interest that was unlike her other pairings and (2) In my opinion they were better suited for each other from a narrative perspective. I saw those two statements as exclusive and separate, and not a combined joint statement. My bad for not making those two points separate and clarifying that in my post I guess. I thought the paragraph break made that overt, but it wasn't read through. 

 

I completely get the idea that there are fans in the middle who could care less about shipping, but that also kind of makes my point. Ambivalent watchers don't care either way. Of the two pairings audiences responded more to EJ and Sami from the sources of evidence I already provided. Of the two pairing options the EJ/Sami pairing generated more enthusiasm, interest and excitement. From that response they received significant attention to outside soap viewers and achieved primetime notability. That, is my main point, those indicators are not arguable. That doesn't make them a "better" pairing by itself, it just means they generated more interest and were the more interesting (*ah that controversial word again!*) couple for soap and general audiences. Again using the "interesting" qualifier as a proxy for attention-getting and popularity/notability I guess :shrug:

 

Quote

You say EJami are/were "more interesting," and then you go on not to give examples of why/how that's the case, but instead talking about how and why her pairings with Austin, Lucas, and Rafe didn't work and why her pairing with EJ did. Whether or not they worked isn't the same as whether or not they interested people or got attention, so I hope you can see why people (not just me) are confused as to what point you were trying to make.

 

Yeah, that's my personal opinion and is separate from the "interesting" statement. I get it, thank you for explaining this to me, because I didn't get why people weren't connecting the dots. 

Edited January 28, 20214 yr by Skin

11 hours ago, Skin said:

 

I think I understand this more, after walking away for a bit, and reading your response. My statement was admittedly hyperbolic. That being said I disagree with the argument that you can't measure show engagement, fan engagement and general viewing behavior and enthusiasm as an indicator for impact. I just completely disagree with that notion. This is the foundation for Nielsen existing, why Q scores for television series exist, why net promoter scores are used to understand engagement with services/products/television, why market research is a thing and why the ratings themselves are used to direct advertising dollars. It's all more or less borne out of fans willingly sharing their viewing habits and what television series they watch, and using that information to extrapolate how larger audiences feel about their specific shows, in order to measure attachment to the content they are viewing. That's basically what surveying in essence is. We can certainly derive and measure interest from many of the things I laid out in my previous arguments. 

 

 

I think I am understanding the reaction at this point. I was making two separate points (1) EJ and Sami created a response in Days fandom that was notable and generated interest that was unlike her other pairings and (2) In my opinion they were better suited for each other from a narrative perspective. I saw those two statements as exclusive and separate, and not a combined joint statement. My bad for not making those two points separate and clarifying that in my post I guess. I thought the paragraph break made that overt, but it wasn't read through. 

 

I completely get the idea that there are fans in the middle who could care less about shipping, but that also kind of makes my point. Ambivalent watchers don't care either way. Of the two pairings audiences responded more to EJ and Sami from the sources of evidence I already provided. Of the two pairing options the EJ/Sami pairing generated more enthusiasm, interest and excitement. From that response they received significant attention to outside soap viewers and achieved primetime notability. That, is my main point, those indicators are not arguable. That doesn't make them a "better" pairing by itself, it just means they generated more interest and were the more interesting (*ah that controversial word again!*) couple for soap and general audiences. Again using the "interesting" qualifier as a proxy for attention-getting and popularity/notability I guess :shrug:

 

 

Yeah, that's my personal opinion and is separate from the "interesting" statement. I get it, thank you for explaining this to me, because I didn't get why people weren't connecting the dots. 

 

Thanks for clarifying! The two distinct points make perfect sense on their own.