Today in things I really should have realized years ago
So I mentioned yesterday that I had been thinking a lot about fandom, and why it is that my fannish output has dropped so very far in the last couple of years. You can track it in my fic journal, if you're so inclined. But anyway.
The other day someone left very kind comments on some of my old FF6 fic, and I went back and re-read some of it, and it's actually pretty good! I used to do cool things with fandom! Why did I stop doing it?
Some of it is time, but the thing is - I've kept up my word generation, it's just been a lot of original fiction instead of fandom, which isn't a problem, but also has never really stopped me from doing fandom before. Some of it, too, is that I categorically refuse to be involved on Tumblr, and there's a lot of fic and meta and stuff happening over there, though demonstrably there's also plenty of it happening over here on DW/LJ as well. Both of those are contributing factors.
The biggest one, though, is that I started telling myself that having fun was doing it Wrong, and then building myself nice high walls of ways to do it Right, but because I am who I am and I don't push boundaries, I would then fence myself in tighter so I didn't touch the walls, and suddenly everything that used to be fun wasn't available to me (by my own fucking design), so it stopped being fun so I stopped doing it. I did this to myself.
Now, I am really good at taking things that are supposed to be fun and making them not-that (see also: when I start approaching my backlog like a job instead of "here is a hobby I enjoy"; see also: I won't allow myself to replay a favorite game because I "need" to beat new ones instead; see also: setting myself deadlines (???) for things I'm sewing). Thanks, brain, you're a peach. The way I did this with regard to fandom is that I decided I wasn't "allowed" to write short, fun things because Jesus Rina nobody needs yet another fic about Locke and Celes negotiating the colossal fuckery that is their relationship in a post-Kefka world. Nobody wants to read another Balthier/Ashe snark fic. Nobody cares about your ridiculous summoner meta or Kain's fall from grace because you've DONE THAT already do something NEW already.
Except, demonstrably, fandom has room for all of these things. Fandom has room for an author to write their favorite pairing as many times as desired. Fandom thrives on authors revisiting the same pairings and themes and tropes and ideas and doing them different ways, and even if it didn't, there's actually nothing wrong with writing it again. This is my fun time. This is not my hard heavy-lifting Srs Cat Makes Srs Words I Have Something To Say About This original fiction.
At some point, instead of being something I do as a companion to/break from/supplemental learning for original fiction (....Look, I just did it again, I turned fandom into a thing I Should Do instead of a thing I do for fun, and I'm letting that stand instead of deleting it because this right here is what I'm talking about), fandom turned into having to be just as serious and original and unique as I want my original fiction to be. And I have original fiction for that.
I made myself a set of Rules By Which To Fandom, and surprisingly, when I made a rule that all the stuff I enjoy writing in fandom was verboten, fandom stopped being fun!
Side bar: Some people do fandom as their heavy lifting, serious writing, and that's cool! I like reading those fics! But that's not why I write in fandom, and in retrospect I'm really sad that I looked at myself and said "wow you are doing everything wrong."
I guess the abbreviated version of this post is "fuck it, YOLO" and I'll write whatever I want, whether that's a fifth "Celes turning traitor" or a seventeenth "Ashe and Balthier and snark and sex" or whatever, because I miss fandom.
I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1165038.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has
comments.
The other day someone left very kind comments on some of my old FF6 fic, and I went back and re-read some of it, and it's actually pretty good! I used to do cool things with fandom! Why did I stop doing it?
Some of it is time, but the thing is - I've kept up my word generation, it's just been a lot of original fiction instead of fandom, which isn't a problem, but also has never really stopped me from doing fandom before. Some of it, too, is that I categorically refuse to be involved on Tumblr, and there's a lot of fic and meta and stuff happening over there, though demonstrably there's also plenty of it happening over here on DW/LJ as well. Both of those are contributing factors.
The biggest one, though, is that I started telling myself that having fun was doing it Wrong, and then building myself nice high walls of ways to do it Right, but because I am who I am and I don't push boundaries, I would then fence myself in tighter so I didn't touch the walls, and suddenly everything that used to be fun wasn't available to me (by my own fucking design), so it stopped being fun so I stopped doing it. I did this to myself.
Now, I am really good at taking things that are supposed to be fun and making them not-that (see also: when I start approaching my backlog like a job instead of "here is a hobby I enjoy"; see also: I won't allow myself to replay a favorite game because I "need" to beat new ones instead; see also: setting myself deadlines (???) for things I'm sewing). Thanks, brain, you're a peach. The way I did this with regard to fandom is that I decided I wasn't "allowed" to write short, fun things because Jesus Rina nobody needs yet another fic about Locke and Celes negotiating the colossal fuckery that is their relationship in a post-Kefka world. Nobody wants to read another Balthier/Ashe snark fic. Nobody cares about your ridiculous summoner meta or Kain's fall from grace because you've DONE THAT already do something NEW already.
Except, demonstrably, fandom has room for all of these things. Fandom has room for an author to write their favorite pairing as many times as desired. Fandom thrives on authors revisiting the same pairings and themes and tropes and ideas and doing them different ways, and even if it didn't, there's actually nothing wrong with writing it again. This is my fun time. This is not my hard heavy-lifting Srs Cat Makes Srs Words I Have Something To Say About This original fiction.
At some point, instead of being something I do as a companion to/break from/supplemental learning for original fiction (....Look, I just did it again, I turned fandom into a thing I Should Do instead of a thing I do for fun, and I'm letting that stand instead of deleting it because this right here is what I'm talking about), fandom turned into having to be just as serious and original and unique as I want my original fiction to be. And I have original fiction for that.
I made myself a set of Rules By Which To Fandom, and surprisingly, when I made a rule that all the stuff I enjoy writing in fandom was verboten, fandom stopped being fun!
Side bar: Some people do fandom as their heavy lifting, serious writing, and that's cool! I like reading those fics! But that's not why I write in fandom, and in retrospect I'm really sad that I looked at myself and said "wow you are doing everything wrong."
I guess the abbreviated version of this post is "fuck it, YOLO" and I'll write whatever I want, whether that's a fifth "Celes turning traitor" or a seventeenth "Ashe and Balthier and snark and sex" or whatever, because I miss fandom.
I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1165038.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has
comments.