I Used To Have 10 Toes! A Short Essay on Fandom, Farce and the Silences in Between
F-list, I’m curious.
As a reader or writer or general for one series or game or anime or whatever*, do you ever feel as though participating in fandom online sometimes silences you? As though that, as much as your fandom can let you have means of expressing yourself, there are always some forms of criticism you're not allowed to express here?
(* And I’m assuming everyone reading this is probably is or at least has been involved in fandom before. Because if not… what would you even be doing in this LJ to begin with?)
It’s a question I’ve been mildly obsessing over, especially since I started getting exposed to increasingly strange, alien and maybe even subversive views on society, cognition and emotion for quite some time now. (I swear, grad school first goes for semi-vestigial limbs-- like toes! I used to have ten!-- before starting on a student’s sense of humor. See: the mini-essaylet you‘re currently reading.) And the more I think about it and theorize on it and probably misidentify it, the more I think of fandom as essentially a social place where people allow themselves to be vulnerable to virtual strangers in strange, awkward ways that they’d probably never subject themselves to in real life.
Well, I can’t claim that’s the case with everybody since I am, after all, essentially working from my own experiences and thus starting with a virtual sample size of one. (Maybe even only 9/10th of one, considering the toe I’ve already lost and the fact that grad school has probably already started on my spleen.) But from what I can see, people in fandom often make themselves incredibly open by often literally writing down their fantasies-- not just sexual but also emotional and physical and spiritual and insert whatever other adjective you’d like to put here, it’d probably fit in now-- and often allowing-- even encouraging-- them to be read by anyone who wants open access.
Honestly, I do believe that the Fandom Wankers are right to say that Fandom Is Fucking Funny and that participating in it is frequently incredibly silly. After all, being in a fandom usually means obsessing and writing and reading and drawing fan-made works about imaginary characters that didn’t even come from your own mind. And you’re currently reading something by a woman who’s current pet project involves a traumatized sixteen year old girl, an almost ridiculously transparent arranged marriage plot that’s just an excuse for mad hijinx and the Machiavellian mechanizations of the Manliest Twelve Year Old Of All Time.
Every fandom-- no matter how erudite or childish it is to begin with-- is fucking funny sometimes. And that’s part of why I love being in mine. Viva the silliness! Viva the utter crazy!
But no matter how vanilla the things we read or write or imagine might be, I really do feel as though being in fandom does make you feel exposed-- for better or for worse-- to the judgments of other people. And participating in a collective fantasy might be an intrinsically silly activity, but the feelings and attachments it stirs in its participants-- to the fantasy, to the characters, to other people, to your own thoughts and words and ideas- are often very, very real. People get justifiably emotional about feeling judged in this context. I’ve done it before. I’ve seen others do it before. And god knows, we probably all will continue doing it in the future.
So I wonder… as a member of fandom, do you ever feel the way I do? Do you ever feel as though there are things that you’re just not allowed to say, because of the social consequences?
Things like:
mariagoner is not nearly as delightful or charming as she desperately wants to be.
Or:
mariagoner might think she’s a great writer because she gets a lot of feedback but she’s just popular because she reviews everybody else and expects them to do the same.
Or:
mariagoner is a completely mediocre writer who needs to stop churning out bullshit constantly and thinking there’s anyone out there who cares.
Or
mariagoner needs to stop obsessing over imaginary people.
Or: (And this might be the most unforgivable statement of all)
What mariagoner fantasizes/writes/enjoys makes her a bad/disturbing/disgusting/trite/unimaginative person and I’d never trust my child/dog/hamster/gold-fish/pet-llama/cheese-wheel around her, lest the poor thing come back needing years of therapy or simply be bored to tears.
(Important Note: I was initially going to go with Generic Fandom Member X as the subject of these quotes but I really didn’t want anyone to think I’m pointing these statements at them. And yes, there are all things I’ve been worried others have thought about me. So-- again. These aren’t pointed at anyone else here!)
I guess in the end, all I wanted to ask is this.
Does anyone else ever feel as though there are some things you simply aren’t allowed to say in fandom-- especially a small fandom like FFXII, where everyone seeming knows everybody-- without suffering from public backlash? And if there are, what would the worst of them be?
As a reader or writer or general for one series or game or anime or whatever*, do you ever feel as though participating in fandom online sometimes silences you? As though that, as much as your fandom can let you have means of expressing yourself, there are always some forms of criticism you're not allowed to express here?
(* And I’m assuming everyone reading this is probably is or at least has been involved in fandom before. Because if not… what would you even be doing in this LJ to begin with?)
It’s a question I’ve been mildly obsessing over, especially since I started getting exposed to increasingly strange, alien and maybe even subversive views on society, cognition and emotion for quite some time now. (I swear, grad school first goes for semi-vestigial limbs-- like toes! I used to have ten!-- before starting on a student’s sense of humor. See: the mini-essaylet you‘re currently reading.) And the more I think about it and theorize on it and probably misidentify it, the more I think of fandom as essentially a social place where people allow themselves to be vulnerable to virtual strangers in strange, awkward ways that they’d probably never subject themselves to in real life.
Well, I can’t claim that’s the case with everybody since I am, after all, essentially working from my own experiences and thus starting with a virtual sample size of one. (Maybe even only 9/10th of one, considering the toe I’ve already lost and the fact that grad school has probably already started on my spleen.) But from what I can see, people in fandom often make themselves incredibly open by often literally writing down their fantasies-- not just sexual but also emotional and physical and spiritual and insert whatever other adjective you’d like to put here, it’d probably fit in now-- and often allowing-- even encouraging-- them to be read by anyone who wants open access.
Honestly, I do believe that the Fandom Wankers are right to say that Fandom Is Fucking Funny and that participating in it is frequently incredibly silly. After all, being in a fandom usually means obsessing and writing and reading and drawing fan-made works about imaginary characters that didn’t even come from your own mind. And you’re currently reading something by a woman who’s current pet project involves a traumatized sixteen year old girl, an almost ridiculously transparent arranged marriage plot that’s just an excuse for mad hijinx and the Machiavellian mechanizations of the Manliest Twelve Year Old Of All Time.
Every fandom-- no matter how erudite or childish it is to begin with-- is fucking funny sometimes. And that’s part of why I love being in mine. Viva the silliness! Viva the utter crazy!
But no matter how vanilla the things we read or write or imagine might be, I really do feel as though being in fandom does make you feel exposed-- for better or for worse-- to the judgments of other people. And participating in a collective fantasy might be an intrinsically silly activity, but the feelings and attachments it stirs in its participants-- to the fantasy, to the characters, to other people, to your own thoughts and words and ideas- are often very, very real. People get justifiably emotional about feeling judged in this context. I’ve done it before. I’ve seen others do it before. And god knows, we probably all will continue doing it in the future.
So I wonder… as a member of fandom, do you ever feel the way I do? Do you ever feel as though there are things that you’re just not allowed to say, because of the social consequences?
Things like:
mariagoner is not nearly as delightful or charming as she desperately wants to be.
Or:
mariagoner might think she’s a great writer because she gets a lot of feedback but she’s just popular because she reviews everybody else and expects them to do the same.
Or:
mariagoner is a completely mediocre writer who needs to stop churning out bullshit constantly and thinking there’s anyone out there who cares.
Or
mariagoner needs to stop obsessing over imaginary people.
Or: (And this might be the most unforgivable statement of all)
What mariagoner fantasizes/writes/enjoys makes her a bad/disturbing/disgusting/trite/unimaginative person and I’d never trust my child/dog/hamster/gold-fish/pet-llama/cheese-wheel around her, lest the poor thing come back needing years of therapy or simply be bored to tears.
(Important Note: I was initially going to go with Generic Fandom Member X as the subject of these quotes but I really didn’t want anyone to think I’m pointing these statements at them. And yes, there are all things I’ve been worried others have thought about me. So-- again. These aren’t pointed at anyone else here!)
I guess in the end, all I wanted to ask is this.
Does anyone else ever feel as though there are some things you simply aren’t allowed to say in fandom-- especially a small fandom like FFXII, where everyone seeming knows everybody-- without suffering from public backlash? And if there are, what would the worst of them be?