My other "fandom"
I've had my World of Warcraft journal for almost a year now. I created it on 15 November but even before that the game had started to find its way into this journal. At first I was mostly playing only by myself, and my posts in the journal were few and far apart, posted randomly when something out of the ordinary happened to my character.
Then I joined a guild with a couple of dozen other people, started raiding with them and suddenly I had more to say. We did things together, my guild mates were both funny and frustrating and I suddenly had a purpose.
Originally I created ambersnake to post about fandom but that quickly turned to writing a diary about my real life. I think this was because no matter how avidly I read fics and essays and watched pretty pictures, I was never a part of the creative element of fandom. I could read fics and discussions and have opinions them but you know that thing they say about opinions and assholes? I never made a difference in fandom, never really mattered to anyone else's participation.
As a member of a guild with some fifty people and a raid with twenty-four of the same people, I matter. I don't create anything in the sense the fic writers do but I do give my contribution to several other people. You could think of our guild as a WoW mini-fandom where I help the other fans to progress.
My success and failure make a difference in their "fandom" lives. Fic writers bounce ideas off each other, have betas and readers to give them critique and can save someone's day with a great piece. I don't really have much things happening in my RL and as a result my posting is sporadic at best, whereas in my WoW journal I have something to say everyday. It's not one-to-one but the point I'm trying to make that in WoW I have something to contribute and I have things happening to. I don't just passively take in what others create but I can make things happen too.
I also have a couple of readers from that other "fandom", which interestingly influences my posts. Here, I write based on the assumption that no one reads it. Several people have friended me but they're all inside the fandom and I don't assume my real life interests them that much. I sometimes get comments and I know that a couple of darling people do read my posts about mundane things but I think it would be very different if I was in the fandom as well, creating universes with them.
On my WoW journal I have received comments from at least a dozen different people who have identified themselves. I never intended that journal to be read by anyone else besides N and me but I forgot that LJ doesn't automatically ask search engines to exclude journal and someone in my first raiding guild found me, by accident I suppose. The knowledge of its existence was revealed to my current guild as well, and as a result a few people over there read my journal.
It makes writing interesting. Here, I'm a nobody in fandom, I rarely have opinions about anything and even then they don't really matter to the people actively in the fandom. In my WoW guild I'm no big shot either but my opinions and commentary do matter to an extent because I am an active member of that "fandom" and what I do there is directly relevant to their own actions.
I write in my WoW journal six days of the week about things we have achieved together, random weird and funny things that happen in the game and community around it, people and events that frustrate or delight me, and even about my own feelings. And since I have readers I know about and who I hang out with daily within the "fandom", I have to be a lot more careful about what I write. Don't get me wrong, I still whine about the people who annoy or upset me, or what I think is stupid about our policies and so on but sometimes I have to walk a fine line about being honest and not outright insulting anyone. So while all the same things are there, I have to put more thought into the tone and wording than I do here.
It's great to get a little glimpse of what life might be like for fic writers.
Then I joined a guild with a couple of dozen other people, started raiding with them and suddenly I had more to say. We did things together, my guild mates were both funny and frustrating and I suddenly had a purpose.
Originally I created ambersnake to post about fandom but that quickly turned to writing a diary about my real life. I think this was because no matter how avidly I read fics and essays and watched pretty pictures, I was never a part of the creative element of fandom. I could read fics and discussions and have opinions them but you know that thing they say about opinions and assholes? I never made a difference in fandom, never really mattered to anyone else's participation.
As a member of a guild with some fifty people and a raid with twenty-four of the same people, I matter. I don't create anything in the sense the fic writers do but I do give my contribution to several other people. You could think of our guild as a WoW mini-fandom where I help the other fans to progress.
My success and failure make a difference in their "fandom" lives. Fic writers bounce ideas off each other, have betas and readers to give them critique and can save someone's day with a great piece. I don't really have much things happening in my RL and as a result my posting is sporadic at best, whereas in my WoW journal I have something to say everyday. It's not one-to-one but the point I'm trying to make that in WoW I have something to contribute and I have things happening to. I don't just passively take in what others create but I can make things happen too.
I also have a couple of readers from that other "fandom", which interestingly influences my posts. Here, I write based on the assumption that no one reads it. Several people have friended me but they're all inside the fandom and I don't assume my real life interests them that much. I sometimes get comments and I know that a couple of darling people do read my posts about mundane things but I think it would be very different if I was in the fandom as well, creating universes with them.
On my WoW journal I have received comments from at least a dozen different people who have identified themselves. I never intended that journal to be read by anyone else besides N and me but I forgot that LJ doesn't automatically ask search engines to exclude journal and someone in my first raiding guild found me, by accident I suppose. The knowledge of its existence was revealed to my current guild as well, and as a result a few people over there read my journal.
It makes writing interesting. Here, I'm a nobody in fandom, I rarely have opinions about anything and even then they don't really matter to the people actively in the fandom. In my WoW guild I'm no big shot either but my opinions and commentary do matter to an extent because I am an active member of that "fandom" and what I do there is directly relevant to their own actions.
I write in my WoW journal six days of the week about things we have achieved together, random weird and funny things that happen in the game and community around it, people and events that frustrate or delight me, and even about my own feelings. And since I have readers I know about and who I hang out with daily within the "fandom", I have to be a lot more careful about what I write. Don't get me wrong, I still whine about the people who annoy or upset me, or what I think is stupid about our policies and so on but sometimes I have to walk a fine line about being honest and not outright insulting anyone. So while all the same things are there, I have to put more thought into the tone and wording than I do here.
It's great to get a little glimpse of what life might be like for fic writers.