Inception: My Newest Fandom
The last two times I've 'fallen in love with' a work of fiction and gotten involved in its fandom, I've written an essay about how I became a fan of that work, why I like it so much, and what being a fan has been like so far. Before that, I also wrote two other LJ entries describing how I got into two of my earlier fandoms. I've recently gotten into yet another fandom, so this entry is the fifth in my series of essays on that topic. All previous entries in the series are filed under my "newestfandom" tag, but it's neither necessary nor required that you read the previous ones first.
(I've realized that I never wrote one of these for "House" when I started getting into it last year. Oops. Maybe I should write a mini-post about why I like it.)
"What's the most resilient parasite? A bacteria? A virus? An intestinal parasite? ... An idea. Resilient, highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold in the brain, it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed, fully understood? That sticks."
- Dominic Cobb
I'm using this quote from the movie as an epigraph for this entry because it describes the way I feel when I first "fall in love with" a new fandom rather well. In my previous entry in this series, I described this feeling as a constant background hum in my mind, made up of thoughts about my new fandom and how awesome it is. I've got that feeling going on again now. (It's stronger than it was for Watchmen and not quite as strong as it was for Pirates, but it was approaching the level of the latter at first.) This time around, I've had it since the evening of Friday, August 6, when I first went out to see Inception. I was with my mom, who had been to see it with my dad a few weeks earlier, and who had recommended it to me highly. Watching the movie for the first time was one of those amazingly, delightfully captivating experiences that sparks and ignites my imagination, inspiring me to think and create and expand upon what I saw. In those respects, the experience was very similar to seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End in theaters, except for the fact that AWE was part of a series that I was already familiar with and invested in, and Inception was a standalone movie.
I enjoyed absolutely everything about the movie, especially the fact that it made you think, in more than one sense of the phrase: I had to work to keep track of what was going on, and it was thought-provoking for me. (I did see it again on August 21st, and I had a much easier time keeping track of things, and just as much fun.) On a different note, personally, I love it when the storyteller ends a story on an ambiguous note and leaves it to the audience to decide what happens after the point where the story cuts off, as is the case with both Watchmen and Inception. I like to think that the top does fall over... of course, the possibilities for further storytelling are intriguing if it doesn't... oh, it's delicious torture! :-D
There were two main reasons why I fell so hard for Inception. One of them was the fact that the idea and concept behind it were completely brand-new, fresh, and exciting to me. Yes, I'm aware now that this premise (or a similar one) has been used before in Paprika, eXistenZ, Psychonauts, etc., but at the time, I was completely ignorant of what any of those were about. -_-;; I was looking at the concept of a world where dream-sharing technology existed with fresh eyes, and I was captivated and inspired by it.
In the "newest fandom" essay I wrote about Pirates of the Caribbean, I mentioned that one of the reasons I was so much in love with it was that there was so, so much potential for further stories in the Flying Dutchman, and the rest of that world's supernatural stuff and mythology. Likewise for the PASIV technology and its potential applications, legal and otherwise. That was the other reason I fell in love. The universe of Inception is original, fantastic, adventure-laden, and absolutely filled with the potential for further stories. A universe fitting this description, I observe, is the common element that makes me fall in love with almost all my fandoms (Star Wars, Digimon, Star Trek, Harry Potter, POTC, and Watchmen are the major ones that come to mind). Just like every time that happens to me, the idea and the possibilities of this new world took over my mind, and made me want to keep exploring it by imagining and creating things based on it. (More on that subject later.)
After the movie, my mom and I went out to dinner, and we had one of the best, longest (it lasted at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half), most interesting, most intellectual conversations we'd had in years. We talked about what had happened in the movie, the ending, the different motifs used, the ideas, and what it all meant. It was truly a precious and well-spent evening. When we were finished with dinner, we went to the local coffee shop to spend some time on our laptop computers. Of course, the very first place I went was the TVTropes page for Inception, to keep the imagination-high going. It worked. Like every other time, I went on to do a bunch of creative stuff inspired by my new fandom.
Back in 2007, Pirates gave me enough creative energy and ideas to inspire not only about half of the art pieces I created for naarmamo that year, but several thousand words of that year's Nanowrimo novel as well. In the day or two after I saw Inception for the first time, I made a plan. I planned to ride the creative high I was on all the way through August and spend that month doing prewriting and making plans for a story called "Secrets of the ORCAS," then write that story during the 3-Day Novel event over Labor Day weekend. "ORCAS" is a cyberpunk story that would be served well by a touch of reality-vs.-false-reality confusion, and whose premise features cybernetic interface technology that involves the subject having simulated experiences by receiving artificial sensory input while their actual body is asleep. (Except I did it without the IVs because I hate needles in real life.) It's been around and half-finished since 2004. Unfortunately, it didn't get finished this year, either. A lot of stuff happened on Labor Day Weekend, and I had completely failed to plan time to complete the 3-Day Novel challenge, not that it mattered, because I didn't officially register for it anyway. The inspiration I got for "ORCAS" from Inception is still there in my mind, though, so whenever "ORCAS" does get finished, it's definitely going to show the influence of Inception as well as that of its original inspiration (The Matrix). (An aside: It occurs to me to wonder, why didn't I fall in love with The Matrix when it first came out? Then I remember: Oh, yeah, because I was madly in love with Star Wars at the time.)
Every August, I participate in two creative challenge communities here on LJ: august_writing and naarmamo . The former challenges you to write something every day in August, the latter to create a piece of art every day in August (the abbreviation is short for "National Art Making Month"). I have observed that the degree to which my newest fandom dominates my creative output for those comms is directly proportional to how close to the beginning of August it was when I got into that fandom. Inception ended up almost completely taking over my August Writing output for this year, and inspiring about three pieces of art. Pirates inspired five August Writing entries in 2007, plus 15 or more pieces of art, and I'd seen it on May 31 of that year. Watchmen inspired only two August Writing entries in 2009 and no art at all, and I'd read and seen it all the way back in February and March of that year.
I've been much, much more actively involved in the LiveJournal fandom for Inception than I ever have been for anything else I've been a fan of, even Pirates. I started by browsing inceptionfilm and branched out from there into more aspects of fandom than ever before. The next comm I joined was inception100 , our drabble challenge community, which was the first ongoing commitment I made to participate in the fandom. All the drabbles I wrote for it are also posted on my journal, and I'm proud of them. Then I joined inception_land (GO TEAM MARK!!! :-D ), where I am having an AWESOME time. :-) A little later on, I filled one prompt for genfic over at inception_kink , and posted my own genfic prompt (anonymously) in this most recent round, Round 8. Until this year, I had never participated in any of these types of comms, so I'd never really had the full experience of being in fandom before. I'm glad I decided to get into it, because I've been having a ton of fun and making some really cool new friends. :-) Inception fandom has been good to me so far, and I'm going to keep on enjoying the ride.
A postscript: When I was in seventh grade (1998-1999), I had a friend named Jessie who had the biggest crush on Leonardo DiCaprio. We watched Romeo and Juliet together, but I didn't share her enthusiasm then. Jessie, you're not reading this, but all these years later, I finally understand your crush on Leonardo DiCaprio... because now I have one, too. I dunno, I guess I just like my men more mature.
(I've realized that I never wrote one of these for "House" when I started getting into it last year. Oops. Maybe I should write a mini-post about why I like it.)
"What's the most resilient parasite? A bacteria? A virus? An intestinal parasite? ... An idea. Resilient, highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold in the brain, it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed, fully understood? That sticks."
- Dominic Cobb
I'm using this quote from the movie as an epigraph for this entry because it describes the way I feel when I first "fall in love with" a new fandom rather well. In my previous entry in this series, I described this feeling as a constant background hum in my mind, made up of thoughts about my new fandom and how awesome it is. I've got that feeling going on again now. (It's stronger than it was for Watchmen and not quite as strong as it was for Pirates, but it was approaching the level of the latter at first.) This time around, I've had it since the evening of Friday, August 6, when I first went out to see Inception. I was with my mom, who had been to see it with my dad a few weeks earlier, and who had recommended it to me highly. Watching the movie for the first time was one of those amazingly, delightfully captivating experiences that sparks and ignites my imagination, inspiring me to think and create and expand upon what I saw. In those respects, the experience was very similar to seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End in theaters, except for the fact that AWE was part of a series that I was already familiar with and invested in, and Inception was a standalone movie.
I enjoyed absolutely everything about the movie, especially the fact that it made you think, in more than one sense of the phrase: I had to work to keep track of what was going on, and it was thought-provoking for me. (I did see it again on August 21st, and I had a much easier time keeping track of things, and just as much fun.) On a different note, personally, I love it when the storyteller ends a story on an ambiguous note and leaves it to the audience to decide what happens after the point where the story cuts off, as is the case with both Watchmen and Inception. I like to think that the top does fall over... of course, the possibilities for further storytelling are intriguing if it doesn't... oh, it's delicious torture! :-D
There were two main reasons why I fell so hard for Inception. One of them was the fact that the idea and concept behind it were completely brand-new, fresh, and exciting to me. Yes, I'm aware now that this premise (or a similar one) has been used before in Paprika, eXistenZ, Psychonauts, etc., but at the time, I was completely ignorant of what any of those were about. -_-;; I was looking at the concept of a world where dream-sharing technology existed with fresh eyes, and I was captivated and inspired by it.
In the "newest fandom" essay I wrote about Pirates of the Caribbean, I mentioned that one of the reasons I was so much in love with it was that there was so, so much potential for further stories in the Flying Dutchman, and the rest of that world's supernatural stuff and mythology. Likewise for the PASIV technology and its potential applications, legal and otherwise. That was the other reason I fell in love. The universe of Inception is original, fantastic, adventure-laden, and absolutely filled with the potential for further stories. A universe fitting this description, I observe, is the common element that makes me fall in love with almost all my fandoms (Star Wars, Digimon, Star Trek, Harry Potter, POTC, and Watchmen are the major ones that come to mind). Just like every time that happens to me, the idea and the possibilities of this new world took over my mind, and made me want to keep exploring it by imagining and creating things based on it. (More on that subject later.)
After the movie, my mom and I went out to dinner, and we had one of the best, longest (it lasted at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half), most interesting, most intellectual conversations we'd had in years. We talked about what had happened in the movie, the ending, the different motifs used, the ideas, and what it all meant. It was truly a precious and well-spent evening. When we were finished with dinner, we went to the local coffee shop to spend some time on our laptop computers. Of course, the very first place I went was the TVTropes page for Inception, to keep the imagination-high going. It worked. Like every other time, I went on to do a bunch of creative stuff inspired by my new fandom.
Back in 2007, Pirates gave me enough creative energy and ideas to inspire not only about half of the art pieces I created for naarmamo that year, but several thousand words of that year's Nanowrimo novel as well. In the day or two after I saw Inception for the first time, I made a plan. I planned to ride the creative high I was on all the way through August and spend that month doing prewriting and making plans for a story called "Secrets of the ORCAS," then write that story during the 3-Day Novel event over Labor Day weekend. "ORCAS" is a cyberpunk story that would be served well by a touch of reality-vs.-false-reality confusion, and whose premise features cybernetic interface technology that involves the subject having simulated experiences by receiving artificial sensory input while their actual body is asleep. (Except I did it without the IVs because I hate needles in real life.) It's been around and half-finished since 2004. Unfortunately, it didn't get finished this year, either. A lot of stuff happened on Labor Day Weekend, and I had completely failed to plan time to complete the 3-Day Novel challenge, not that it mattered, because I didn't officially register for it anyway. The inspiration I got for "ORCAS" from Inception is still there in my mind, though, so whenever "ORCAS" does get finished, it's definitely going to show the influence of Inception as well as that of its original inspiration (The Matrix). (An aside: It occurs to me to wonder, why didn't I fall in love with The Matrix when it first came out? Then I remember: Oh, yeah, because I was madly in love with Star Wars at the time.)
Every August, I participate in two creative challenge communities here on LJ: august_writing and naarmamo . The former challenges you to write something every day in August, the latter to create a piece of art every day in August (the abbreviation is short for "National Art Making Month"). I have observed that the degree to which my newest fandom dominates my creative output for those comms is directly proportional to how close to the beginning of August it was when I got into that fandom. Inception ended up almost completely taking over my August Writing output for this year, and inspiring about three pieces of art. Pirates inspired five August Writing entries in 2007, plus 15 or more pieces of art, and I'd seen it on May 31 of that year. Watchmen inspired only two August Writing entries in 2009 and no art at all, and I'd read and seen it all the way back in February and March of that year.
I've been much, much more actively involved in the LiveJournal fandom for Inception than I ever have been for anything else I've been a fan of, even Pirates. I started by browsing inceptionfilm and branched out from there into more aspects of fandom than ever before. The next comm I joined was inception100 , our drabble challenge community, which was the first ongoing commitment I made to participate in the fandom. All the drabbles I wrote for it are also posted on my journal, and I'm proud of them. Then I joined inception_land (GO TEAM MARK!!! :-D ), where I am having an AWESOME time. :-) A little later on, I filled one prompt for genfic over at inception_kink , and posted my own genfic prompt (anonymously) in this most recent round, Round 8. Until this year, I had never participated in any of these types of comms, so I'd never really had the full experience of being in fandom before. I'm glad I decided to get into it, because I've been having a ton of fun and making some really cool new friends. :-) Inception fandom has been good to me so far, and I'm going to keep on enjoying the ride.
A postscript: When I was in seventh grade (1998-1999), I had a friend named Jessie who had the biggest crush on Leonardo DiCaprio. We watched Romeo and Juliet together, but I didn't share her enthusiasm then. Jessie, you're not reading this, but all these years later, I finally understand your crush on Leonardo DiCaprio... because now I have one, too. I dunno, I guess I just like my men more mature.