I'm a fangirl without a fandom.
So I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the nature of being a fangirl and about being into a fandom and how it feels and what it does to you. This came about because I was trying to explain to my sister and her boyfriend what it is to be a fan, because they were asking the kind of questions I often get asked by my family, like "Are you still into Harry Potter, then?" and I was having trouble explaining it to them. I mean, he supports a football team and she’s really into certain bands and celebrities and things, but the notion of fandom was still quite alien to them both, because, well, they’re not fans in the way that I am, and like you may well be, if you're reading this.
And the best that I could come up with was that being in a fandom is like being in a relationship, sort of. As such, you relate to things in different ways and do things differently each time and learn from the past. Maybe I should lay out what I mean in a little more detail.
Two things to bear in mind. Firstly, this is all analogy. There may be an irony in the fact that the relationship archetypes I’m talking about here are things I haven’t actually experienced myself, since I’ve been in a long-term relationship for years, and I’ve never had a one-night-stand or a fuck-buddy in real life. You can read what you like into that. (And as a result, this may stray into metaphorgotten territory at times. That link goes to TV Tropes, by the way, so click with caution.)
Secondly, these are all personal. When I say that a particular fandom is a particular way, I’m talking about my own relationship with the fandom and the source text -- not that everyone relates to it in the same way.
So. In this relationshippy model, Harry Potter was like my first love, and/or my first real long-term relationship. Years went into it, and we grew up together, and ultimately that meant we also changed independently of one another and wanted different things and grew apart. But things never quite turned sour, and although we have little in common any more we still get on, and see each other from time to time and have a catch-up, finding out what’s new. And we had our bad moments but there will probably always be a sweet nostalgic feel to my memories of that time, because there are so many of them.
Before that, there were the teenage crushes and bouts of unrequited love. When I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen I was obsessed with Red Dwarf, and I realise now that my fandom there did resemble a crush, and manifested itself in the same ways. Inside one cover of my exercise book I wrote versions of my married name as it would be when the class brooding hunk finally looked beyond my zits and greasy hair; inside the other cover I drew the Red Dwarf logo. In my diary I made, on one page, a list of all the reasons said brooding hunk and I were destined to be together (me = Gemini, him = Sagittarius, for example) and on the next page, a list of favourite episodes, or favourite moments. These specifics are academic, to an extent; after all, it’s not like I argued with Harry Potter fandom about whose turn it was to wash up because that’s something that happens in adult relationships. The point is, that was my first brush with being a fangirl, and I negotiated it in the same way I handled crushes. I could not conceive of my obsession changing or waning. The idea that this wasn’t forever did not occur to me.
Of course it wasn’t forever. I moved on. I could go off on a long tangent about the reasons for that, too: a lack of new canon at the height of my obsession, for instance, or the fact that despite being a total fangirl, I didn’t actually have any fellow fans to discuss it with, and had no idea at that time of the concept of fanfic or fanart. I won’t go into this in any more detail, because I feel like there’s a whole ‘nother post in that, one which I don’t have the energy to write at the moment. Suffice to say, things faded.
Later in my teens I turned into an absolute stereotype of a Manic Street Preachers fan, complete with glitter, black eyeliner, feather boa, half-drunk bottle of cheap vodka and razor-blade scars up and down my arms. This, though, was different to my normal fannishness, and different to fannishness that has come since; for me, music fandom is like football fandom. While I can be just as devoted to and obsessed with a band as I can anything else, the way I feel is different in a way I’m having some trouble articulating. (Perhaps if fandoms are like relationships, then my music fannishness is more like the way I love my family? Not perfect, but close enough for now.) Ultimately, then, I fell out of that fandom for various reasons, most notably because I started working in a bookshop where I got to read all the books I liked, and then BANG, along came Harry Potter, which kept me going for, god, something like eight years.
The problem with being in an established relationship, of course, is that you become a little institutionalised. If you stay together, no harm done, but when you break up - how do you carry on? And, yeah, since drifting out of Harry Potter fandom I find myself not quite knowing how to be a fangirl. More to the point, I’ve become so used to being in a fandom that now that I don’t have a main one I’m not quite sure how to be a fangirl any more.
One possible source came from Torchwood, which I made a definite effort to get into. On paper, we should have worked so well together. It has aliens, time travel, guys who kiss guys IN CANON, guns, Wales, car chases, humour, sex, swearing, and at least one dinosaur. Yay! Somehow, though, the chemistry wasn’t there. It was as if we had a mutual friend who we both got on with for the same reason, and this mutual friend set us up on a blind date and while we were both up for giving it a go, it just... didn’t quite happen. We fooled around, and had an enjoyable enough time, and then Children of Earth happened and that was like hooking up with that person from the blind date for one more fling and that person does something like tell a homeless person to get a job or laugh at a cat being run over, and your whole opinion changes and you realise, no, I really don’t want to see you again now.
Doctor Who, on the other hand, has snuck up on me, going from being that guy that vaguely knows that weird bloke I work with to, somehow, a good friend and reliable ally. It never got sexual, but somewhere along the line we became very close and I know I can rely on it. (I have a similar relationship with Star Wars. I’m writing this post sitting up in bed in my pyjamas, because I’m off sick with a horrible cold, and if I weren’t writing it it’s fairly likely I’d be watching The Empire Strikes Back; yesterday I watched a lot of the Eleventh Doctor’s episodes. For the record, the fuzzy feelings that envelop me like a hug when Han and Leia first kiss are remarkably close to the ones I get when Eleven sees off the Atraxi. I should also note that obviously the new trilogy isn't included in this; no matter how annoying C3P0 is in that clip I just linked to, I'd gladly spend an eternity stuck in a lift with him over meeting Jar Jar Binks for thirty seconds. But I digress.)
Then there was Merlin, which should have worked but something was all wrong. For a time it was perfect, but then there was the hiatus and I found myself drawn to better options in the meantime. It was like -- it was like a happy, whirlwind summer romance which then unexpectedly made it out of the honeymoon period when it turned out we were on the same course at uni, say, only then one of us went to study abroad and the other stayed and by the time we got back together, we’d grown apart without realising how or noticing when. And the sex appeal was still there but I was no longer able to put up with the immature sense of humour, or the lack of effort in places where I would expect to see effort put in. I’d like to say we still get on, but unfortunately whenever we get together it seems awkward, and then there is toilet humour. And that makes me sad because I remember us having some wonderful times together.
So I’ve spent the last year or so casually dating, fooling around, trying new things. There was Kick-Ass (the film being the thing where you massively and unexpectedly hit it off with someone, and the comic-book being the part where you realise the person is actually a total douchebag and there’s probably a reason all their previous relationships have ended badly). Then I tried Supernatural, where I’ve had the opposite problem to one I’ve had before -- there’s simply too much canon. While my friends are getting excited over Season 6 spoilers, I’ve just finished Season 1. This is like everyone telling you that you would totally get on with their friend, we’ll introduce you, you’d totally hit it off -- but then they’re just way cooler than you and they want to go out to bars every night and you just can’t keep up. Or something like that, anyway. (Yes, I’ll probably keep watching anyway.) And then the last couple of months I’ve thrown myself into -- or, since we don’t choose our obsessions, they choose us, been drawn into -- something of an addiction to Inception. This is a slightly different experience for me since, by this point, I believe I've wised up enough to know from the get-go that it won't last, but I don't see that as a problem per se. So this one is like hooking up with someone with whom you have little in common beyond a sense of humour and shared enjoyment of strong cocktails, but it turns out you’re immensely good together in bed, and as neither of you are under any sort of misapprehension about the future, you may as well keep shagging as long as you both still want to, because why not? It’s fun and it’s not hurting anyone. But soon, soon it’ll wear off, and we’ll go our separate ways. And that’s OK, I think, although when that does happen I’ll once again be a fangirl without a fandom and I’m going to need something to obsess over.
That’s where the metaphor breaks down a little (if it wasn’t already irreparably WTF, obviously). Because it’s OK to be single. If I weren’t in a relationship now I don’t think I’d be desperately looking for one, whereas being a fangirl is something I can’t get out of. Then again, some people are like that, aren’t they - they can’t be single, ever, they break up with one person and are dating someone else within a week. So maybe that’s where I am, only I’ve made my relationships with things instead of people. (Well, and some people as well, obviously. If I hadn’t, I’d probably be a bit antisocial and odd. And to reiterate: this is all analogy. I’m not actually trying to claim that I’ve, like, fucked a film.)
So. Does this analogy work for you and your fandoms? Who have you dated? Is Buffy The Vampire Slayer the best mate you had in school that you fooled around with? Do you yearn to cuddle in front of a flickering fire with Bleach? Trapped in a loveless marriage with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine? Tell me your history.
(As much as anything: convince me I've not gone mad here.)
And the best that I could come up with was that being in a fandom is like being in a relationship, sort of. As such, you relate to things in different ways and do things differently each time and learn from the past. Maybe I should lay out what I mean in a little more detail.
Two things to bear in mind. Firstly, this is all analogy. There may be an irony in the fact that the relationship archetypes I’m talking about here are things I haven’t actually experienced myself, since I’ve been in a long-term relationship for years, and I’ve never had a one-night-stand or a fuck-buddy in real life. You can read what you like into that. (And as a result, this may stray into metaphorgotten territory at times. That link goes to TV Tropes, by the way, so click with caution.)
Secondly, these are all personal. When I say that a particular fandom is a particular way, I’m talking about my own relationship with the fandom and the source text -- not that everyone relates to it in the same way.
So. In this relationshippy model, Harry Potter was like my first love, and/or my first real long-term relationship. Years went into it, and we grew up together, and ultimately that meant we also changed independently of one another and wanted different things and grew apart. But things never quite turned sour, and although we have little in common any more we still get on, and see each other from time to time and have a catch-up, finding out what’s new. And we had our bad moments but there will probably always be a sweet nostalgic feel to my memories of that time, because there are so many of them.
Before that, there were the teenage crushes and bouts of unrequited love. When I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen I was obsessed with Red Dwarf, and I realise now that my fandom there did resemble a crush, and manifested itself in the same ways. Inside one cover of my exercise book I wrote versions of my married name as it would be when the class brooding hunk finally looked beyond my zits and greasy hair; inside the other cover I drew the Red Dwarf logo. In my diary I made, on one page, a list of all the reasons said brooding hunk and I were destined to be together (me = Gemini, him = Sagittarius, for example) and on the next page, a list of favourite episodes, or favourite moments. These specifics are academic, to an extent; after all, it’s not like I argued with Harry Potter fandom about whose turn it was to wash up because that’s something that happens in adult relationships. The point is, that was my first brush with being a fangirl, and I negotiated it in the same way I handled crushes. I could not conceive of my obsession changing or waning. The idea that this wasn’t forever did not occur to me.
Of course it wasn’t forever. I moved on. I could go off on a long tangent about the reasons for that, too: a lack of new canon at the height of my obsession, for instance, or the fact that despite being a total fangirl, I didn’t actually have any fellow fans to discuss it with, and had no idea at that time of the concept of fanfic or fanart. I won’t go into this in any more detail, because I feel like there’s a whole ‘nother post in that, one which I don’t have the energy to write at the moment. Suffice to say, things faded.
Later in my teens I turned into an absolute stereotype of a Manic Street Preachers fan, complete with glitter, black eyeliner, feather boa, half-drunk bottle of cheap vodka and razor-blade scars up and down my arms. This, though, was different to my normal fannishness, and different to fannishness that has come since; for me, music fandom is like football fandom. While I can be just as devoted to and obsessed with a band as I can anything else, the way I feel is different in a way I’m having some trouble articulating. (Perhaps if fandoms are like relationships, then my music fannishness is more like the way I love my family? Not perfect, but close enough for now.) Ultimately, then, I fell out of that fandom for various reasons, most notably because I started working in a bookshop where I got to read all the books I liked, and then BANG, along came Harry Potter, which kept me going for, god, something like eight years.
The problem with being in an established relationship, of course, is that you become a little institutionalised. If you stay together, no harm done, but when you break up - how do you carry on? And, yeah, since drifting out of Harry Potter fandom I find myself not quite knowing how to be a fangirl. More to the point, I’ve become so used to being in a fandom that now that I don’t have a main one I’m not quite sure how to be a fangirl any more.
One possible source came from Torchwood, which I made a definite effort to get into. On paper, we should have worked so well together. It has aliens, time travel, guys who kiss guys IN CANON, guns, Wales, car chases, humour, sex, swearing, and at least one dinosaur. Yay! Somehow, though, the chemistry wasn’t there. It was as if we had a mutual friend who we both got on with for the same reason, and this mutual friend set us up on a blind date and while we were both up for giving it a go, it just... didn’t quite happen. We fooled around, and had an enjoyable enough time, and then Children of Earth happened and that was like hooking up with that person from the blind date for one more fling and that person does something like tell a homeless person to get a job or laugh at a cat being run over, and your whole opinion changes and you realise, no, I really don’t want to see you again now.
Doctor Who, on the other hand, has snuck up on me, going from being that guy that vaguely knows that weird bloke I work with to, somehow, a good friend and reliable ally. It never got sexual, but somewhere along the line we became very close and I know I can rely on it. (I have a similar relationship with Star Wars. I’m writing this post sitting up in bed in my pyjamas, because I’m off sick with a horrible cold, and if I weren’t writing it it’s fairly likely I’d be watching The Empire Strikes Back; yesterday I watched a lot of the Eleventh Doctor’s episodes. For the record, the fuzzy feelings that envelop me like a hug when Han and Leia first kiss are remarkably close to the ones I get when Eleven sees off the Atraxi. I should also note that obviously the new trilogy isn't included in this; no matter how annoying C3P0 is in that clip I just linked to, I'd gladly spend an eternity stuck in a lift with him over meeting Jar Jar Binks for thirty seconds. But I digress.)
Then there was Merlin, which should have worked but something was all wrong. For a time it was perfect, but then there was the hiatus and I found myself drawn to better options in the meantime. It was like -- it was like a happy, whirlwind summer romance which then unexpectedly made it out of the honeymoon period when it turned out we were on the same course at uni, say, only then one of us went to study abroad and the other stayed and by the time we got back together, we’d grown apart without realising how or noticing when. And the sex appeal was still there but I was no longer able to put up with the immature sense of humour, or the lack of effort in places where I would expect to see effort put in. I’d like to say we still get on, but unfortunately whenever we get together it seems awkward, and then there is toilet humour. And that makes me sad because I remember us having some wonderful times together.
So I’ve spent the last year or so casually dating, fooling around, trying new things. There was Kick-Ass (the film being the thing where you massively and unexpectedly hit it off with someone, and the comic-book being the part where you realise the person is actually a total douchebag and there’s probably a reason all their previous relationships have ended badly). Then I tried Supernatural, where I’ve had the opposite problem to one I’ve had before -- there’s simply too much canon. While my friends are getting excited over Season 6 spoilers, I’ve just finished Season 1. This is like everyone telling you that you would totally get on with their friend, we’ll introduce you, you’d totally hit it off -- but then they’re just way cooler than you and they want to go out to bars every night and you just can’t keep up. Or something like that, anyway. (Yes, I’ll probably keep watching anyway.) And then the last couple of months I’ve thrown myself into -- or, since we don’t choose our obsessions, they choose us, been drawn into -- something of an addiction to Inception. This is a slightly different experience for me since, by this point, I believe I've wised up enough to know from the get-go that it won't last, but I don't see that as a problem per se. So this one is like hooking up with someone with whom you have little in common beyond a sense of humour and shared enjoyment of strong cocktails, but it turns out you’re immensely good together in bed, and as neither of you are under any sort of misapprehension about the future, you may as well keep shagging as long as you both still want to, because why not? It’s fun and it’s not hurting anyone. But soon, soon it’ll wear off, and we’ll go our separate ways. And that’s OK, I think, although when that does happen I’ll once again be a fangirl without a fandom and I’m going to need something to obsess over.
That’s where the metaphor breaks down a little (if it wasn’t already irreparably WTF, obviously). Because it’s OK to be single. If I weren’t in a relationship now I don’t think I’d be desperately looking for one, whereas being a fangirl is something I can’t get out of. Then again, some people are like that, aren’t they - they can’t be single, ever, they break up with one person and are dating someone else within a week. So maybe that’s where I am, only I’ve made my relationships with things instead of people. (Well, and some people as well, obviously. If I hadn’t, I’d probably be a bit antisocial and odd. And to reiterate: this is all analogy. I’m not actually trying to claim that I’ve, like, fucked a film.)
So. Does this analogy work for you and your fandoms? Who have you dated? Is Buffy The Vampire Slayer the best mate you had in school that you fooled around with? Do you yearn to cuddle in front of a flickering fire with Bleach? Trapped in a loveless marriage with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine? Tell me your history.
(As much as anything: convince me I've not gone mad here.)