fannish gratitude
My mood is a lot better now after taking a nice walk in the sunshine. I can tell I'm readjusting to Minnesota weather--I saw that the temperature was 41 degrees (that's 5 degrees Celsius) and thought "I'd better go out; it would be a shame to waste this lovely warm afternoon."
So, in the spirit of being less grumpy: today's fannish5 asked what 5 fannish things you're most grateful for.
1) Male/male slash
I'm one of those people who started slashing fictional characters long before I knew that there was such a thing as fanfiction. And I recently realized that my slashy interest goes back further before puberty than I'd thought: when I was a little kid, maybe five or six, I loved a show called Emergency!, and the show's two paramedic best buddies were my imaginary friends. I loved stories about male friendship. And when I got to be 13 or so, I realized that male homosexuality didn't disgust me, even though I knew it was supposed to. I liked thinking about it, and my fantasies about intensely charged male friendships acquired a sexual component.
I assumed it must be a pretty rare taste, although I knew, thanks to the novels of Mary Renault, that I wasn't the only female-bodied person in the world who enjoyed thinking of men loving other men.
I first heard about slash when I was nineteen. I was studying in France at the time, and killed an afternoon at the library of the Centre Pompidou (one of the few French libraries with open shelf access) reading books in English. I stumbled across an anthology of essays about science fiction which happened to include one about Kirk/Spock slash. Somehow, though, it never occurred to me to seek out fandom. I'd never been into Star Trek, and frankly I was a terrible television-hating snob at that age.
I was in graduate school for most of my twenties, and didn't have much time to think about anything else. Then I moved to Washington DC for my first academic job and was lonely and bored. I started watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and learned that TV could be well-written and engaging. Then, in the spring of 2003, I went to Toronto for a conference and happened to see a program of sex-related documentaries on Canadian TV that had a segment about slash. That inspired me to search the internet for Giles-related slash. And I've been in fandom ever since.
Those first few months were incredibly blissful. I'd always craved male/male homoerotic stories, and had never found enough to satisfy me. Discovering boyslash on the internet was like stumbling upon buried treasure. And realizing that my tastes weren't so rare helped me feel less ashamed, less freakish, and it let me begin to accept myself as a genderqueer person. (Most female-bodied boyslash fans aren't genderqueer, of course, but for me, online fandom created a sort of mental space for self-understanding.)
That initial delirious happiness couldn't last, of course--that sort of thing never does--but boyslash really does help keep me sane and functioning. Through boyslash I can experience, in story, the life and the self that I want but can't really have. That's lifesaving. Soul-saving.
2) Internet fandom
I would never have gotten into fandom were it not for the internet. There were zines before the internet, of course, and cons, but to find zines you have to be pretty clued in already. And to go to cons you have to (a) know about them, (b) live within reach of the sort of large city where cons are held, (c) be able to afford the registration, and (d) have a relatively outgoing personality. I still haven't been to a con, because I'm shy and I don't like crowds. And give how uncomfortable I was, at first, about my interest in boyslash, I needed the privacy of the internet to go exploring in.
3) Generosity
Fans work for weeks, months, sometimes years on stories, drawings, vids, etc.--and then post them online so that everyone can enjoy them for free. Fans moderate communities, create and maintain websites, make screencaps, and do all kinds of labor, much of it tedious, out of love for their fandoms. Fans raise over $50,000 for the campaign against Proposition 8. Fans give to other fans who are going through hard times. Fandom can be, sometimes, a little refuge from the brutalities of capitalism.
4) Enthusiasm
Modern western cultures are fairly suspicious of enthusiasm. We're not supposed to care deeply about much, and certainly not about stories. But in fandom, we know that stories matter. We embrace them, love them, quarrel with them, debate about them, and sometimes create our own stories in response to them. We evangelize for our fandoms because we want others to love them too. And yes, occasionally we care too much, leading to shipwars and people who believe they're married to Professor Snape on the astral plane. Allowing the imagination to be stirred can have a price, but I think it's better than the alternative.
5) Community
Fandom isn't all rainbows and puppies. I've been through far too many kerfuffles and controversies ever to think that. But it's full of people I love to talk to and things I love to talk about, and that's rare for me. I suspect it's rare for a lot of us, since most fans are geeks of one variety or other--people who care about things that many other people think are unimportant. We all know how lonely geekiness can be (remember high school?), but in fandom, we've got each other.
*****
So, in the spirit of being less grumpy: today's fannish5 asked what 5 fannish things you're most grateful for.
1) Male/male slash
I'm one of those people who started slashing fictional characters long before I knew that there was such a thing as fanfiction. And I recently realized that my slashy interest goes back further before puberty than I'd thought: when I was a little kid, maybe five or six, I loved a show called Emergency!, and the show's two paramedic best buddies were my imaginary friends. I loved stories about male friendship. And when I got to be 13 or so, I realized that male homosexuality didn't disgust me, even though I knew it was supposed to. I liked thinking about it, and my fantasies about intensely charged male friendships acquired a sexual component.
I assumed it must be a pretty rare taste, although I knew, thanks to the novels of Mary Renault, that I wasn't the only female-bodied person in the world who enjoyed thinking of men loving other men.
I first heard about slash when I was nineteen. I was studying in France at the time, and killed an afternoon at the library of the Centre Pompidou (one of the few French libraries with open shelf access) reading books in English. I stumbled across an anthology of essays about science fiction which happened to include one about Kirk/Spock slash. Somehow, though, it never occurred to me to seek out fandom. I'd never been into Star Trek, and frankly I was a terrible television-hating snob at that age.
I was in graduate school for most of my twenties, and didn't have much time to think about anything else. Then I moved to Washington DC for my first academic job and was lonely and bored. I started watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and learned that TV could be well-written and engaging. Then, in the spring of 2003, I went to Toronto for a conference and happened to see a program of sex-related documentaries on Canadian TV that had a segment about slash. That inspired me to search the internet for Giles-related slash. And I've been in fandom ever since.
Those first few months were incredibly blissful. I'd always craved male/male homoerotic stories, and had never found enough to satisfy me. Discovering boyslash on the internet was like stumbling upon buried treasure. And realizing that my tastes weren't so rare helped me feel less ashamed, less freakish, and it let me begin to accept myself as a genderqueer person. (Most female-bodied boyslash fans aren't genderqueer, of course, but for me, online fandom created a sort of mental space for self-understanding.)
That initial delirious happiness couldn't last, of course--that sort of thing never does--but boyslash really does help keep me sane and functioning. Through boyslash I can experience, in story, the life and the self that I want but can't really have. That's lifesaving. Soul-saving.
2) Internet fandom
I would never have gotten into fandom were it not for the internet. There were zines before the internet, of course, and cons, but to find zines you have to be pretty clued in already. And to go to cons you have to (a) know about them, (b) live within reach of the sort of large city where cons are held, (c) be able to afford the registration, and (d) have a relatively outgoing personality. I still haven't been to a con, because I'm shy and I don't like crowds. And give how uncomfortable I was, at first, about my interest in boyslash, I needed the privacy of the internet to go exploring in.
3) Generosity
Fans work for weeks, months, sometimes years on stories, drawings, vids, etc.--and then post them online so that everyone can enjoy them for free. Fans moderate communities, create and maintain websites, make screencaps, and do all kinds of labor, much of it tedious, out of love for their fandoms. Fans raise over $50,000 for the campaign against Proposition 8. Fans give to other fans who are going through hard times. Fandom can be, sometimes, a little refuge from the brutalities of capitalism.
4) Enthusiasm
Modern western cultures are fairly suspicious of enthusiasm. We're not supposed to care deeply about much, and certainly not about stories. But in fandom, we know that stories matter. We embrace them, love them, quarrel with them, debate about them, and sometimes create our own stories in response to them. We evangelize for our fandoms because we want others to love them too. And yes, occasionally we care too much, leading to shipwars and people who believe they're married to Professor Snape on the astral plane. Allowing the imagination to be stirred can have a price, but I think it's better than the alternative.
5) Community
Fandom isn't all rainbows and puppies. I've been through far too many kerfuffles and controversies ever to think that. But it's full of people I love to talk to and things I love to talk about, and that's rare for me. I suspect it's rare for a lot of us, since most fans are geeks of one variety or other--people who care about things that many other people think are unimportant. We all know how lonely geekiness can be (remember high school?), but in fandom, we've got each other.
*****