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Oct. 6th, 2006 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hathycolSo, I was thinking. I do it sometimes. And I was thinking about fandom. And I was thinking about why is so bloody odd and why I sort of despair of it a bit now.
Because, man, when I was a teenager and still in high school, fandom was the BEST PLACE EVER. It was full of the MOST AWESOME AND ERUDITE PEOPLE EVER. I devoured fanfiction and all the popular theories and I spent what felt like years of my life sifting through e-mails from Yahoo Mailing Lists about the relative merits of Jack O'Neill and Sam/Daniel (SHUT UP YOU LOT) and making some real and genuine friends. I went to conventions and I had a whale of a time and oh god, I miss it.
And, you see, now I think I know why I miss it but why I don't think I could be as involved as that ever again. Because now, you see, I'm beginning to quietly sort into some social norms. Before you all start yelling at me, just bear with me, okay?
Fandom does, indeed, have a wide and varied amount of people. Depending on how large the fandom is, I've spoken to doctors, lawyers, people who are fairly high up in various companies, stay at home mothers, the unemployed, students, schoolkids, writers, tailors, office jobs, IT technicians, teachers... you name it. And I've spoken to people of all ages. The youngest was an 11 year old, the oldest was hitting her seventies. Every continent bar Antartica is covered, too. On my flist alone, I can think of lots of lovely people from South America, North America, all over Europe, Ausatralasia. I've spoken to people from Hong Kong and from Singapore. There's a wide and varied amount of skills - singers, dancers, musicians, actors, artists, writers, listeners, talkers. Married, single, divorced, polyamorous, mongamous. Male, female. Black, white, all the bits in the middle. Gay, straight, bisexual, undecided, asexual, transgender. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, Pastafarian, atheist, Hindu.
All that unites us, really, is whatever we all 'get'. We might like different parts of the fandom, we might like different ships to each other, but we sit on the internet every night - and get this - type our hearts and often our deepest secrets to total strangers. Complete and utter strangers where all we have in common is some fictional characters. Dude, we're united by Elves and Time Lords and fictional Air Force colonels and living spaceships and mutants. Just stop and think about that for a moment. I've met maybe a third of the 102 people on my friends-of list, but all of you know a fairly large amount about me, and to be honest, more than a lot of my friends might do.
And I wouldn't trade a single one of you in for any of it, but I could never, ever be as dedicated as the wee teenage version of me was.
Because, well, all of us fandom peeps? There are, of course, exceptions. You can't make gross exaggerations. I don't mean to insult anyone when I say this. However *deep breath*
We are not normal.
That is obviously for a given standard of, you know, normality. Quite apart from the obvious mildly obsessive parts of our lives, well, the general theme is that there's something a bit off.
Maybe I'm judging by my own standards here. See, I was the most massively fucked up teenager you'd ever find. I've been told I'm older than my years by maybe five years or so, and that's true. The horrible self-introspection and destructive period you're meant to really get into at about, say, 15? Where you write bad poetry and keep a diary and wonder if you have any friends? Yeah, see, I hit that at about eleven (noticeably, around the time I used to make a lot of time for Star Trek: Voyager) and it went downhill from there. I had never looked like normal kids because I had big, fluffy hair and kids are cruel if you look different. I had trouble from day one in making friends and as soon as I hit 11, well, that was about it. There are some years noticeably 12, The Year Before Fandom, and 13, The Year Of Discovery. I don't really remember having any close friends. That's quite depressing, isn't it? I had people I spoke to in school, but nearly every lunchtime was spent apart from other people, just... reading. By that point I was already heavily into fantasy literature, because it was such an escape. I can't describe it, but it was wonderful. I know why people write Mary-Sues, because I used to imagine them every waking moment. (I have entirely different viewpoints about putting them on the internet, though.) I had no real friends in dancing, no real friends in Guides, and I am under no illusion that I was a horrible person at about that point too, because I was as miserable as sin.
I will never rescind the opinion that fandom changed my life and significantly for the better. I was miserable and at a miserable time, I found this amazing community of Stargate fans. They didn't care that I had fuzzy hair, they didn't care that I was painfully aware that I was, um, brighter than most of my classmates (that's a little thing about fandom too; I find that they are generally all very intelligent), they didn't care that I couldn't yet pronounce the sound of 'th' when it was in words like thief and thunder, they just cared that I joined in and wrote some quite dismal fanfiction.
Even though that age was possibly the worst few years of my life (and one of the many reasons I am very much against Catholic schools in general; when I was being bullied to death and becoming worried that I was possibly the only gay person in the world the only solid action ever taken was to tell people that calling people a lesbian as an insult was bad because - get this - 'Catholics shouldn't believe in that sort of thing') it was also the happiest of my life, in terms of fandom. I was deeply outside of normal life in school, but I had a few RL fandom friends and I had e-mail correspondents who I could come home to at the end of the day and talk to and feel normal for a little bit. I got confidence. Do you have any idea how good nice feedback is about your sappy little Sam/Dan story, when people tell you all day what a freak you are?
It eve carried on through college, and then my fandom participation begin to die a little bit. I had to worry about A-Levels, and I had some friends, and I got into going out and drinking a little bit. And then I went to university.
And I am, apparently, a normal student. We have a DocSoc. I drink a lot. I have sort of become a bit hetrosexual and I'm not dealing with being judged for my sexuality on a daily basis. I'm not saying I'm happier now, but now that I have a fall-back option, where society is not constantly ridiculing me, I feel... less dependent on fandom, and I can see its faults. I never want to leave fandom, because then where will the safe place be? We come to depend on these anonymous places, where all that matters is the content of our brains and the fact that we all watch and read and appreciate the same things. And my best friends are in fandom, and still are, and will always be. I'm getting married to a fandom bod. But I've sort of become a bit normal, and I have boring normal things like cooking and cleaning and uni work and wedding planning to distract me.
I see the pattern a lot. I think LJ has highlighted it a bit, you know? I can see that people who don't necessarily fit into complete societal norms are more likely to partipate in fandom. And I am not saying anything against the people who do co-operate a lot, because if societal norms means spitting at people, and chanting 'DYKE, DYKE!' at you down the stairs of a bus, and failing your exams and getting a self-tan and a Brazillian wax, then I reckon I'm well shut of them. To be honest, if I didn't have DocSoc EATING MY BRAIN AND ALSO MY SPARE TIME I think I would participate a lot more, because hell, I am participating, I'm just not online to do it. I'm brave enough to admit my fandom to other people. I'm in the process of finishing something I promised AGES ago for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spockette and there's something quietly forming in the back of my brain that I might put down on paper on the train back home.
But I don't need that crutch quite as much. I will always need it, I think, because I think a small part of me is always going to be this incredibly insecure teenager who got spat on in the corridors and thought that Bilbo Baggins and Kathryn Janeway were some of the most amazing people in the world. I sat around tonight, though, with people I barely knew, in a house I've never been to before, and didn't feel the usual NUMBING FEAR that they were going to judge me, 'cause I didn't care any more. Fandom taught me that, and in a way, taught me how to survive without fandom.
And this might explain the in-fighting, because I think, deep at heart, a lot of us still feel the way high school, or work, or whatever other hellish judgemental thing felt like. So we panic and react with what we know and immediately think that we are BEING JUDGED AND OMFG FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT.
This isn't very coherant, and it wasn't supposed to be so much about me, but I've ended up using me as a case study. I've been pottering around in fandom for HOLY FUCK SEVEN YEARS, so I'm getting near to expert status, surely?
Well, thoughts? (Also, this is my new thinking icon. Spock agrees with me.)
ETA: This is an interesting pointy made bykts2k and I'm adding it for the point of fairness.
Because, man, when I was a teenager and still in high school, fandom was the BEST PLACE EVER. It was full of the MOST AWESOME AND ERUDITE PEOPLE EVER. I devoured fanfiction and all the popular theories and I spent what felt like years of my life sifting through e-mails from Yahoo Mailing Lists about the relative merits of Jack O'Neill and Sam/Daniel (SHUT UP YOU LOT) and making some real and genuine friends. I went to conventions and I had a whale of a time and oh god, I miss it.
And, you see, now I think I know why I miss it but why I don't think I could be as involved as that ever again. Because now, you see, I'm beginning to quietly sort into some social norms. Before you all start yelling at me, just bear with me, okay?
Fandom does, indeed, have a wide and varied amount of people. Depending on how large the fandom is, I've spoken to doctors, lawyers, people who are fairly high up in various companies, stay at home mothers, the unemployed, students, schoolkids, writers, tailors, office jobs, IT technicians, teachers... you name it. And I've spoken to people of all ages. The youngest was an 11 year old, the oldest was hitting her seventies. Every continent bar Antartica is covered, too. On my flist alone, I can think of lots of lovely people from South America, North America, all over Europe, Ausatralasia. I've spoken to people from Hong Kong and from Singapore. There's a wide and varied amount of skills - singers, dancers, musicians, actors, artists, writers, listeners, talkers. Married, single, divorced, polyamorous, mongamous. Male, female. Black, white, all the bits in the middle. Gay, straight, bisexual, undecided, asexual, transgender. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, Pastafarian, atheist, Hindu.
All that unites us, really, is whatever we all 'get'. We might like different parts of the fandom, we might like different ships to each other, but we sit on the internet every night - and get this - type our hearts and often our deepest secrets to total strangers. Complete and utter strangers where all we have in common is some fictional characters. Dude, we're united by Elves and Time Lords and fictional Air Force colonels and living spaceships and mutants. Just stop and think about that for a moment. I've met maybe a third of the 102 people on my friends-of list, but all of you know a fairly large amount about me, and to be honest, more than a lot of my friends might do.
And I wouldn't trade a single one of you in for any of it, but I could never, ever be as dedicated as the wee teenage version of me was.
Because, well, all of us fandom peeps? There are, of course, exceptions. You can't make gross exaggerations. I don't mean to insult anyone when I say this. However *deep breath*
We are not normal.
That is obviously for a given standard of, you know, normality. Quite apart from the obvious mildly obsessive parts of our lives, well, the general theme is that there's something a bit off.
Maybe I'm judging by my own standards here. See, I was the most massively fucked up teenager you'd ever find. I've been told I'm older than my years by maybe five years or so, and that's true. The horrible self-introspection and destructive period you're meant to really get into at about, say, 15? Where you write bad poetry and keep a diary and wonder if you have any friends? Yeah, see, I hit that at about eleven (noticeably, around the time I used to make a lot of time for Star Trek: Voyager) and it went downhill from there. I had never looked like normal kids because I had big, fluffy hair and kids are cruel if you look different. I had trouble from day one in making friends and as soon as I hit 11, well, that was about it. There are some years noticeably 12, The Year Before Fandom, and 13, The Year Of Discovery. I don't really remember having any close friends. That's quite depressing, isn't it? I had people I spoke to in school, but nearly every lunchtime was spent apart from other people, just... reading. By that point I was already heavily into fantasy literature, because it was such an escape. I can't describe it, but it was wonderful. I know why people write Mary-Sues, because I used to imagine them every waking moment. (I have entirely different viewpoints about putting them on the internet, though.) I had no real friends in dancing, no real friends in Guides, and I am under no illusion that I was a horrible person at about that point too, because I was as miserable as sin.
I will never rescind the opinion that fandom changed my life and significantly for the better. I was miserable and at a miserable time, I found this amazing community of Stargate fans. They didn't care that I had fuzzy hair, they didn't care that I was painfully aware that I was, um, brighter than most of my classmates (that's a little thing about fandom too; I find that they are generally all very intelligent), they didn't care that I couldn't yet pronounce the sound of 'th' when it was in words like thief and thunder, they just cared that I joined in and wrote some quite dismal fanfiction.
Even though that age was possibly the worst few years of my life (and one of the many reasons I am very much against Catholic schools in general; when I was being bullied to death and becoming worried that I was possibly the only gay person in the world the only solid action ever taken was to tell people that calling people a lesbian as an insult was bad because - get this - 'Catholics shouldn't believe in that sort of thing') it was also the happiest of my life, in terms of fandom. I was deeply outside of normal life in school, but I had a few RL fandom friends and I had e-mail correspondents who I could come home to at the end of the day and talk to and feel normal for a little bit. I got confidence. Do you have any idea how good nice feedback is about your sappy little Sam/Dan story, when people tell you all day what a freak you are?
It eve carried on through college, and then my fandom participation begin to die a little bit. I had to worry about A-Levels, and I had some friends, and I got into going out and drinking a little bit. And then I went to university.
And I am, apparently, a normal student. We have a DocSoc. I drink a lot. I have sort of become a bit hetrosexual and I'm not dealing with being judged for my sexuality on a daily basis. I'm not saying I'm happier now, but now that I have a fall-back option, where society is not constantly ridiculing me, I feel... less dependent on fandom, and I can see its faults. I never want to leave fandom, because then where will the safe place be? We come to depend on these anonymous places, where all that matters is the content of our brains and the fact that we all watch and read and appreciate the same things. And my best friends are in fandom, and still are, and will always be. I'm getting married to a fandom bod. But I've sort of become a bit normal, and I have boring normal things like cooking and cleaning and uni work and wedding planning to distract me.
I see the pattern a lot. I think LJ has highlighted it a bit, you know? I can see that people who don't necessarily fit into complete societal norms are more likely to partipate in fandom. And I am not saying anything against the people who do co-operate a lot, because if societal norms means spitting at people, and chanting 'DYKE, DYKE!' at you down the stairs of a bus, and failing your exams and getting a self-tan and a Brazillian wax, then I reckon I'm well shut of them. To be honest, if I didn't have DocSoc EATING MY BRAIN AND ALSO MY SPARE TIME I think I would participate a lot more, because hell, I am participating, I'm just not online to do it. I'm brave enough to admit my fandom to other people. I'm in the process of finishing something I promised AGES ago for
spockette and there's something quietly forming in the back of my brain that I might put down on paper on the train back home.But I don't need that crutch quite as much. I will always need it, I think, because I think a small part of me is always going to be this incredibly insecure teenager who got spat on in the corridors and thought that Bilbo Baggins and Kathryn Janeway were some of the most amazing people in the world. I sat around tonight, though, with people I barely knew, in a house I've never been to before, and didn't feel the usual NUMBING FEAR that they were going to judge me, 'cause I didn't care any more. Fandom taught me that, and in a way, taught me how to survive without fandom.
And this might explain the in-fighting, because I think, deep at heart, a lot of us still feel the way high school, or work, or whatever other hellish judgemental thing felt like. So we panic and react with what we know and immediately think that we are BEING JUDGED AND OMFG FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT.
This isn't very coherant, and it wasn't supposed to be so much about me, but I've ended up using me as a case study. I've been pottering around in fandom for HOLY FUCK SEVEN YEARS, so I'm getting near to expert status, surely?
Well, thoughts? (Also, this is my new thinking icon. Spock agrees with me.)
ETA: This is an interesting pointy made by
kts2k and I'm adding it for the point of fairness.
