thinky fandom thoughts
Plus the Gabranth crotch-shot, 'cause that's always awesome.
Today's thinky fandom thought is mostly a curiosity on my part, but it's something I've been batting around in my head for quite a while now, and it has decided it wants to come out and play today. (Also I don't feel like writing cover letters, so I'm pretending this counts as work instead. I know it doesn't, and I'll do real work later, but for now, pretty shinies for to think about.)
So my basic question is: what do you, personally, get out of fandom?
(tl;dr encouraged.)
So, I would have to say that basically what I get out of fandom is the ability to have a community of people who share similar tastes and interests to mine, and who are willing to talk about and unpack source material in a detailed way. The fact that people read my fic helps! I love every single comment I get, even critical ones (really! I do!) But that's not really what I'm here for, and also ultimately not why I write my stories.
So, to unpack this a little bit, and to start with the fic: I freely admit I adore comments. I also kind of shamelessly self-promote; every time I write something, I mention it here. That doesn't mean I expect everyone to go running off and reading it. I love feedback. I want feedback all the time. But I try not to flounce or pout if I don't get it. (Honestly, I've been really fortunate: the things I liked the best, the things I have put the most of myself into, have consistently gotten the best feedback and the most feedback. I know others aren't always that lucky, and that sucks; I try to make it a point to comment on everything I read but I know I fail sometimes because I don't want to do the :D comment or equivalent because I feel like I'm not giving back enough to justify what the author put into the story. Insecurities on parade, I show you them! ) So yeah, it's a little bit about comments.
What it's about more, though, is telling the stories. When a story's done, I usually want to share it-but mostly because I think that someone will enjoy it. Like, if I write something involving Kain and Valvalicia, I can be fairly sure that it might be relevant to the interests of
seventhe or
mithrigil, while if I write Locke/Celes there's a whole batch of you lot who will make happy faces at me. And I'm fortunate to have friends, and fellow fen, who like the same fandoms and pairings that I do! (More on that in a minute.) Once a story is out of my head, I'm pretty much done with it. Heck, I found random stuff on my hard drive I had written and totally forgotten to post, and ended up really liking some of it. I tend to write not so much for others (except on the case of an exchange or something), but because I want to see how that particular story unfolds. And no, I usually don't know ahead of time.
But ultimately, more than the fic and feedback (although they are very squee), the thing about fandom for me is the people. I have met so many truly awesome people through fandom, and found a lot of cool new things I would never have known about otherwise (hi, SMT games/Atlus in general, and that second chance I gave KH, and FMA). I came here for the fic, but honestly if someone posts a personal entry and a fic entry in the same day, the personal entry gets priority in my reading process. I love that I can have ridiculously long meta-discussions with
seventhe or
justira or
celeloriel--all of which friendships I owe to fandom-and that we get to be nerdy about the same things, like deciding the metaphysics of the world.
It's also kind of amazing to just be surrounded (....electronically speaking...) by so many really creative people, and seeing how their processes differ from my own. I like that we don't just write or draw; we write about writing or drawing, we talk about the things that we find interesting, we explore ideas that push our buttons, we extrapolate and play what-if and see what things do when you poke them just so.
So yeah. That's why I'm here. Your thoughts?
Today's thinky fandom thought is mostly a curiosity on my part, but it's something I've been batting around in my head for quite a while now, and it has decided it wants to come out and play today. (Also I don't feel like writing cover letters, so I'm pretending this counts as work instead. I know it doesn't, and I'll do real work later, but for now, pretty shinies for to think about.)
So my basic question is: what do you, personally, get out of fandom?
(tl;dr encouraged.)
So, I would have to say that basically what I get out of fandom is the ability to have a community of people who share similar tastes and interests to mine, and who are willing to talk about and unpack source material in a detailed way. The fact that people read my fic helps! I love every single comment I get, even critical ones (really! I do!) But that's not really what I'm here for, and also ultimately not why I write my stories.
So, to unpack this a little bit, and to start with the fic: I freely admit I adore comments. I also kind of shamelessly self-promote; every time I write something, I mention it here. That doesn't mean I expect everyone to go running off and reading it. I love feedback. I want feedback all the time. But I try not to flounce or pout if I don't get it. (Honestly, I've been really fortunate: the things I liked the best, the things I have put the most of myself into, have consistently gotten the best feedback and the most feedback. I know others aren't always that lucky, and that sucks; I try to make it a point to comment on everything I read but I know I fail sometimes because I don't want to do the :D comment or equivalent because I feel like I'm not giving back enough to justify what the author put into the story. Insecurities on parade, I show you them! ) So yeah, it's a little bit about comments.
What it's about more, though, is telling the stories. When a story's done, I usually want to share it-but mostly because I think that someone will enjoy it. Like, if I write something involving Kain and Valvalicia, I can be fairly sure that it might be relevant to the interests of
seventhe or
mithrigil, while if I write Locke/Celes there's a whole batch of you lot who will make happy faces at me. And I'm fortunate to have friends, and fellow fen, who like the same fandoms and pairings that I do! (More on that in a minute.) Once a story is out of my head, I'm pretty much done with it. Heck, I found random stuff on my hard drive I had written and totally forgotten to post, and ended up really liking some of it. I tend to write not so much for others (except on the case of an exchange or something), but because I want to see how that particular story unfolds. And no, I usually don't know ahead of time.
But ultimately, more than the fic and feedback (although they are very squee), the thing about fandom for me is the people. I have met so many truly awesome people through fandom, and found a lot of cool new things I would never have known about otherwise (hi, SMT games/Atlus in general, and that second chance I gave KH, and FMA). I came here for the fic, but honestly if someone posts a personal entry and a fic entry in the same day, the personal entry gets priority in my reading process. I love that I can have ridiculously long meta-discussions with
seventhe or
justira or
celeloriel--all of which friendships I owe to fandom-and that we get to be nerdy about the same things, like deciding the metaphysics of the world.
It's also kind of amazing to just be surrounded (....electronically speaking...) by so many really creative people, and seeing how their processes differ from my own. I like that we don't just write or draw; we write about writing or drawing, we talk about the things that we find interesting, we explore ideas that push our buttons, we extrapolate and play what-if and see what things do when you poke them just so.
So yeah. That's why I'm here. Your thoughts?