Fandom... In protest of PIPA/SOPA
As websites blackout and protest continues over these bills, I find myself wanting to get these thoughts out "on paper" as it were.....regarding fandom and how much it has impacted my life.
While there are other issues with these bills, like the major one of what they would do to innovation, the ever growing digital world and the jobs within it (welcome to the 21st century, Hollywood!) this entry is about fandom alone.
I've been writing stories in my head almost as far back as I can remember. My best friend and I, when we were little kids, created this entire fictional world with our stuffed animals that had its own continuity and storylines. It was our home away from home that became a fandom of our very own with fanfiction that was acted out. Some of the very best memories of my life were made then.
I turned to writing as I grew up - I was writing fanfiction before I even knew the definition. Before I received my first computer. Before I knew anything about "fandom". Because of my passion for it, I developed a love of writing that's been with me longer than almost everything I own. Before the computer, I had no one but my mom to share my hobby with. When I received a computer as a gift and I got online for the first time and saw how many people out there that were like me....it was just awesome. There are no words to describe it really. Suddenly, I wasn't 'weird' anymore. Or if I was, tons of other fans were too. :)
It was like coming home.
I can't tell you all the time I spent online in fandoms, writing fanfiction, sharing and meeting other fans that I would never have known without the absolutely amazing internet.
In 2007, my mother passed away suddenly from heart disease in the middle of the night. We were like the Gilmores. It shook me to my core, sent my muse down into a black hole, and I've spent the last five years slowly recovering the pieces. I let fandom go, became silent, because real life issues like moving several times and my deteriorating relationship with my father due to his financial issues and wanting to move away became too too pressing.
The last conversation I had with my mom was on the night before her death - she was helping me with a fanfic. It stopped at 20 chapters. I haven't been able to update it since she died.
I've taken it for granted that fandom and writing would still be there when I got my life together. And then came these bills.
Fandom - fanart, fanfiction, icons and graphics..... None of it has ever turned me away from the official fiction: the movie or the show, or the official merchandse, which this collector has bought plenty of! It's quite the opposite - fandom has always enhanced my love for it. It's fandom (and research for fanfic!) that has made me see a movie several times in theaters.
It's fandom that adds to my love of the merchandise. I have several of my Transformers figure displays set up based on my would be fanfiction - a fanfiction I'll never get to write or share if these bills were to pass.
I've never made a dime off of anything I've written. But the passion, the fans, the fun.....it's always been priceless.
And it means enough to me to never see another movie in the theater again if this passes, and to make sure I buy all of my media content used so as not to support the power and money hungry Hollywood Companies that want to use this bill to suffocate a world they don't understand and refuse to learn how to understand.
Hollywood has made its money off of me, and a large part of that is thanks to the fandoms, to the ever growing online world.
These bills that would stifle the internet would also stifle a part of my own soul. It isn't just the internet that's in danger of being censored....it's me and all of the people like me.
A world without creativity, without creative freedom and expression? I want no part of it.
While there are other issues with these bills, like the major one of what they would do to innovation, the ever growing digital world and the jobs within it (welcome to the 21st century, Hollywood!) this entry is about fandom alone.
I've been writing stories in my head almost as far back as I can remember. My best friend and I, when we were little kids, created this entire fictional world with our stuffed animals that had its own continuity and storylines. It was our home away from home that became a fandom of our very own with fanfiction that was acted out. Some of the very best memories of my life were made then.
I turned to writing as I grew up - I was writing fanfiction before I even knew the definition. Before I received my first computer. Before I knew anything about "fandom". Because of my passion for it, I developed a love of writing that's been with me longer than almost everything I own. Before the computer, I had no one but my mom to share my hobby with. When I received a computer as a gift and I got online for the first time and saw how many people out there that were like me....it was just awesome. There are no words to describe it really. Suddenly, I wasn't 'weird' anymore. Or if I was, tons of other fans were too. :)
It was like coming home.
I can't tell you all the time I spent online in fandoms, writing fanfiction, sharing and meeting other fans that I would never have known without the absolutely amazing internet.
In 2007, my mother passed away suddenly from heart disease in the middle of the night. We were like the Gilmores. It shook me to my core, sent my muse down into a black hole, and I've spent the last five years slowly recovering the pieces. I let fandom go, became silent, because real life issues like moving several times and my deteriorating relationship with my father due to his financial issues and wanting to move away became too too pressing.
The last conversation I had with my mom was on the night before her death - she was helping me with a fanfic. It stopped at 20 chapters. I haven't been able to update it since she died.
I've taken it for granted that fandom and writing would still be there when I got my life together. And then came these bills.
Fandom - fanart, fanfiction, icons and graphics..... None of it has ever turned me away from the official fiction: the movie or the show, or the official merchandse, which this collector has bought plenty of! It's quite the opposite - fandom has always enhanced my love for it. It's fandom (and research for fanfic!) that has made me see a movie several times in theaters.
It's fandom that adds to my love of the merchandise. I have several of my Transformers figure displays set up based on my would be fanfiction - a fanfiction I'll never get to write or share if these bills were to pass.
I've never made a dime off of anything I've written. But the passion, the fans, the fun.....it's always been priceless.
And it means enough to me to never see another movie in the theater again if this passes, and to make sure I buy all of my media content used so as not to support the power and money hungry Hollywood Companies that want to use this bill to suffocate a world they don't understand and refuse to learn how to understand.
Hollywood has made its money off of me, and a large part of that is thanks to the fandoms, to the ever growing online world.
These bills that would stifle the internet would also stifle a part of my own soul. It isn't just the internet that's in danger of being censored....it's me and all of the people like me.
A world without creativity, without creative freedom and expression? I want no part of it.