compare. contrast. sift away the thoughts & see what we find. what was hiding in our subconcious
I've been having these thoughts -- and no, I'm not going to tell you that I'm gay -- about fandom. (And now you scroll down, because really Megan, shut the hell up already)
The thing is, I think about fandom a lot. And when I do, I'm either thinking of a specific fandom (sga, spn, bandom, hp, whatever), or fandom as a whole. Except...I don't see fandom as a whole. If it is a whole, it's a whole that has many parts. And when I say parts, I don't mean specific fandoms. I mean groups of fandoms. The Anime part, the Movie part, the TV part, the Book part. The Real Person part (although that comes into play with the Movie and TV parts as well as being one of its own). The Comics part (counting manga as well as things like the batman comics, I guess. I can't do the same with Anime and TV, for reasons I'll talk about later). There are a lot, okay. Game is probably one too, I guess. And I just can't join the parts together (except of course, sometimes TV and Movie (hi, firefly/serenity fandom), or Book and Movie (hey there Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings...the list goes on), Comics and Movie ... okay so the Movie fandom is a bit of a whore. That's okay. We still love it.)
The thing is, these fandoms react differently to things. How can I lump Anime in with Real Person, when ninety percent of the time, the issues they face are totally different, and that last ten percent of the time, they react differently? Anime fandom is never going to have to face the issue of "OH MY GOD, THE PERSON I'M WRITING FIC ABOUT JUST READ MY FIC," (the reason being duh, the fictional characters in Anime fandom are only singly fictional. That's part of the thing I'll talk about later) and Real Person fandom is never going to have bitch sessions about how the art in one series is totally crap compared to another.
Fandoms make totally different styles of fanworks, too. Try looking for a 'fanvid' in the Anime fandom. Half the time you'll come across a slideshow of images (often yaoi images) set to a completely unrelated song. Okay yes, you also find what I consider a 'fanvid', with scenes and pictures and subtext and context and amazing ideas set to song and said through clips of whatever show, but...I doubt I'd find many of those slideshows in Movie or TV. You know?
Fanfic is the same in all the fandoms. A lot -- and I mean a lot -- of it is cliche terrible stuff, written by someone who appears to have only read/watched/experienced the canon once, maybe twice, maybe only read about it on wikipedia. Characters who have abandoned their canon personalities, boys making out with other boys because it's pretty. Yeah, okay, we get it. You find it arousing, so you have created more. (And hey, I don't mind that stuff at all. The gods know I've written enough of it for a lifetime. Two lifetimes.)
(But some fanfiction isn't like that. Think Underwater Lights or Freedom's Just Another Name For Nothing Left To Lose or Reconcilable Differences. A Thousand Miles makes me cry every time I read it, as does Paranoid, which while being a typically terrible fic (lots of 'jewelled orbs'), really makes me think - what if. Because yes, that's the main idea of fanfiction. Of fandom in general. Half the fandom essays are built on one or two sentences in canon, a throwaway line from a minor character. I've seen a dozen fanvids based around an AU scenario: the clips carefully arranged to suggest something that isn't true. That's what fandom is all about. Making something out of nothing. Making something true that wasn't before. Fucking with the facts. Everyone's Truth is different. And...I'm totally off topic now.)
Fandoms. Compare and contrast. LJ starts cockblocking deleting users. Who was mostly affected? I only really noticed the Harry Potter fandom bitching about it. But surely they're not the most active fandom on LJ. Supernatural is a huge fandom. And I know that there are heaps of people on LJ who aren't in any of the TV or Book fandoms, and are just here for the Comics or Games or Anime.
I think the main reason people try to combine the groups of fandoms is solidarity. Our fandom is threatened? We're going to try to convince you that fucking with us a terribly bad plan. Easiest way to do that? Numbers. Have a larger number of people than the attackers. Safety in numbers. One fandom is nothing: saying "Yeah, well! All the fans of InsertFandomHere are going to come after you!" isn't very impressive. 'All the fans' could be all of three people. Try saying "Fandom is going to come after you. All of fandom." Now that's a lot more impressive.
I have no idea how many people are in fandom. Neither do you. Neither do they.
And you know what? Nobody wants to be that lone person in the corner, notebook in one hand, pen in the other, writing down things that only they understand. Like I said before - safety in numbers. It's not just physical safety. It's an emotional thing. If you're not the only person in the room who thinks one thing, you're going to be way more confident about expressing said opinion. We feel safer in fandom, because come on. Are you going to say "OH MY GOD THOSE TWO WERE SO IN LOVE" about two guys in a movie to someone, even if they're not in fandom. Even if you have no idea if they're in fandom or not? (hint: the answer is probably no. And also, this comes under social norms, because you'd probably feel more comfortable saying it if one of those guys was actually a gal. Not talking about that right now, though)
Linking fandoms makes us feel better, even if there's nothing to link them except the love of fictional characters.
Or non-fictional characters, says the Real Person fandom.
Yes, well. Here's something else.
Real Person fandoms. You include Bandom (Popslash, e-slash...whatever you're calling yourselves these days), 'RPF' which I generally think of as Actorverse, there's probably even a segment of Real Person all about Voice Actors. Fun stuff. Anyway. You guys...you're special.
The thing is, most fandoms are singly fictional to begin with. Let's use Harry Potter as our first example, as it's a mainstream fandom. Harry himself is fictional. Singly fictional (unless we want to talk about the movies, which brings in a whole other section, which will give Megan a headache. So, no. I'll talk about that in a minute). He becomes doubly fictional every time we use him in a fanfic, fanvid or fanart. Because only when the original creator uses him can he be truly himself. Our characterisations are amazing, our ideas are fantastic, but they're not him. We're always going to get something wrong. The character we interact with on a day-to-day basis in fandom is doubly fictional. But the original - who we fell in love with, is singly fictional.
Next comes Bandom. Gerard Way, Ryan Ross, whoever. These guys aren't who we think they are. What we're seeing is not who they are at home. We don't see Mikey Way when he gets up in the morning. We don't know how Lyn-Z acts when she's alone in her room, with nobody to bother her. What we see is who they are in front of the cameras. And that's okay. That's their Fiction. The Frank we see is singly fictional. The Frank we write is doubly fictional. Just like Harry in the last secion.
Now let's talk Supernatural, because that's a fandom where the Real Person part is probably just as big (if not bigger? I'm not sure.) as the TV part, and it's the section that gives me a headache every time I think about it.
See, here's the thing. Our enjoyment of a movie or a show is partly based on the actors. I think "ooh, that movie sounds cool", and then I think "oh but wait, stupid So And So is in it,". No matter how good that movie may be, I'm biased before I've even see n it. On the flipside, I could think "wow, what a great actor. I love his stuff. I'd better go see that new movie," and then hate the character. Or love the character, but never know if it's because of the actor.
Remember, said actor is already singly fictional.
So I like Supernatural, where Sam and Dean are singly fictional, partly because I like the actors, who are also singly fictional. If I write a Supernatural fic, I'm using the doubly fictional Sam and Dean. If I write a fic about the actors, they're doubly fictional, and if I bring in the show that they act on, with the characters that they play who are now also doubly fictional....does that make the fic quadruply fictional?
And what happens when you have a fanfic that is so super popular that people write fics in its universe...are those fan-of-a-fan!fics triply fictional?
...this whole thing is giving me a massive headache. I really suck at this 'meta' thing, but hey, practice makes perfect, right?
The thing is, I think about fandom a lot. And when I do, I'm either thinking of a specific fandom (sga, spn, bandom, hp, whatever), or fandom as a whole. Except...I don't see fandom as a whole. If it is a whole, it's a whole that has many parts. And when I say parts, I don't mean specific fandoms. I mean groups of fandoms. The Anime part, the Movie part, the TV part, the Book part. The Real Person part (although that comes into play with the Movie and TV parts as well as being one of its own). The Comics part (counting manga as well as things like the batman comics, I guess. I can't do the same with Anime and TV, for reasons I'll talk about later). There are a lot, okay. Game is probably one too, I guess. And I just can't join the parts together (except of course, sometimes TV and Movie (hi, firefly/serenity fandom), or Book and Movie (hey there Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings...the list goes on), Comics and Movie ... okay so the Movie fandom is a bit of a whore. That's okay. We still love it.)
The thing is, these fandoms react differently to things. How can I lump Anime in with Real Person, when ninety percent of the time, the issues they face are totally different, and that last ten percent of the time, they react differently? Anime fandom is never going to have to face the issue of "OH MY GOD, THE PERSON I'M WRITING FIC ABOUT JUST READ MY FIC," (the reason being duh, the fictional characters in Anime fandom are only singly fictional. That's part of the thing I'll talk about later) and Real Person fandom is never going to have bitch sessions about how the art in one series is totally crap compared to another.
Fandoms make totally different styles of fanworks, too. Try looking for a 'fanvid' in the Anime fandom. Half the time you'll come across a slideshow of images (often yaoi images) set to a completely unrelated song. Okay yes, you also find what I consider a 'fanvid', with scenes and pictures and subtext and context and amazing ideas set to song and said through clips of whatever show, but...I doubt I'd find many of those slideshows in Movie or TV. You know?
Fanfic is the same in all the fandoms. A lot -- and I mean a lot -- of it is cliche terrible stuff, written by someone who appears to have only read/watched/experienced the canon once, maybe twice, maybe only read about it on wikipedia. Characters who have abandoned their canon personalities, boys making out with other boys because it's pretty. Yeah, okay, we get it. You find it arousing, so you have created more. (And hey, I don't mind that stuff at all. The gods know I've written enough of it for a lifetime. Two lifetimes.)
(But some fanfiction isn't like that. Think Underwater Lights or Freedom's Just Another Name For Nothing Left To Lose or Reconcilable Differences. A Thousand Miles makes me cry every time I read it, as does Paranoid, which while being a typically terrible fic (lots of 'jewelled orbs'), really makes me think - what if. Because yes, that's the main idea of fanfiction. Of fandom in general. Half the fandom essays are built on one or two sentences in canon, a throwaway line from a minor character. I've seen a dozen fanvids based around an AU scenario: the clips carefully arranged to suggest something that isn't true. That's what fandom is all about. Making something out of nothing. Making something true that wasn't before. Fucking with the facts. Everyone's Truth is different. And...I'm totally off topic now.)
Fandoms. Compare and contrast. LJ starts cockblocking deleting users. Who was mostly affected? I only really noticed the Harry Potter fandom bitching about it. But surely they're not the most active fandom on LJ. Supernatural is a huge fandom. And I know that there are heaps of people on LJ who aren't in any of the TV or Book fandoms, and are just here for the Comics or Games or Anime.
I think the main reason people try to combine the groups of fandoms is solidarity. Our fandom is threatened? We're going to try to convince you that fucking with us a terribly bad plan. Easiest way to do that? Numbers. Have a larger number of people than the attackers. Safety in numbers. One fandom is nothing: saying "Yeah, well! All the fans of InsertFandomHere are going to come after you!" isn't very impressive. 'All the fans' could be all of three people. Try saying "Fandom is going to come after you. All of fandom." Now that's a lot more impressive.
I have no idea how many people are in fandom. Neither do you. Neither do they.
And you know what? Nobody wants to be that lone person in the corner, notebook in one hand, pen in the other, writing down things that only they understand. Like I said before - safety in numbers. It's not just physical safety. It's an emotional thing. If you're not the only person in the room who thinks one thing, you're going to be way more confident about expressing said opinion. We feel safer in fandom, because come on. Are you going to say "OH MY GOD THOSE TWO WERE SO IN LOVE" about two guys in a movie to someone, even if they're not in fandom. Even if you have no idea if they're in fandom or not? (hint: the answer is probably no. And also, this comes under social norms, because you'd probably feel more comfortable saying it if one of those guys was actually a gal. Not talking about that right now, though)
Linking fandoms makes us feel better, even if there's nothing to link them except the love of fictional characters.
Or non-fictional characters, says the Real Person fandom.
Yes, well. Here's something else.
Real Person fandoms. You include Bandom (Popslash, e-slash...whatever you're calling yourselves these days), 'RPF' which I generally think of as Actorverse, there's probably even a segment of Real Person all about Voice Actors. Fun stuff. Anyway. You guys...you're special.
The thing is, most fandoms are singly fictional to begin with. Let's use Harry Potter as our first example, as it's a mainstream fandom. Harry himself is fictional. Singly fictional (unless we want to talk about the movies, which brings in a whole other section, which will give Megan a headache. So, no. I'll talk about that in a minute). He becomes doubly fictional every time we use him in a fanfic, fanvid or fanart. Because only when the original creator uses him can he be truly himself. Our characterisations are amazing, our ideas are fantastic, but they're not him. We're always going to get something wrong. The character we interact with on a day-to-day basis in fandom is doubly fictional. But the original - who we fell in love with, is singly fictional.
Next comes Bandom. Gerard Way, Ryan Ross, whoever. These guys aren't who we think they are. What we're seeing is not who they are at home. We don't see Mikey Way when he gets up in the morning. We don't know how Lyn-Z acts when she's alone in her room, with nobody to bother her. What we see is who they are in front of the cameras. And that's okay. That's their Fiction. The Frank we see is singly fictional. The Frank we write is doubly fictional. Just like Harry in the last secion.
Now let's talk Supernatural, because that's a fandom where the Real Person part is probably just as big (if not bigger? I'm not sure.) as the TV part, and it's the section that gives me a headache every time I think about it.
See, here's the thing. Our enjoyment of a movie or a show is partly based on the actors. I think "ooh, that movie sounds cool", and then I think "oh but wait, stupid So And So is in it,". No matter how good that movie may be, I'm biased before I've even see n it. On the flipside, I could think "wow, what a great actor. I love his stuff. I'd better go see that new movie," and then hate the character. Or love the character, but never know if it's because of the actor.
Remember, said actor is already singly fictional.
So I like Supernatural, where Sam and Dean are singly fictional, partly because I like the actors, who are also singly fictional. If I write a Supernatural fic, I'm using the doubly fictional Sam and Dean. If I write a fic about the actors, they're doubly fictional, and if I bring in the show that they act on, with the characters that they play who are now also doubly fictional....does that make the fic quadruply fictional?
And what happens when you have a fanfic that is so super popular that people write fics in its universe...are those fan-of-a-fan!fics triply fictional?
...this whole thing is giving me a massive headache. I really suck at this 'meta' thing, but hey, practice makes perfect, right?