goodbye to two fandoms?
Fandom 1: Lewis
A couple of nights ago I watched the final episode of Lewis .
(Spoiler space ahead)
I felt unexpectedly forlorn and bereaved at the sight of the sign that Hathaway carried as he drove Lewis and Laura Hobson to the airport. Same sign, same airport, almost same unspeakable shirt, and diametrically opposite contexts, final farewell as opposed to the start of a complex, difficult, mutually enriching relationship. The final image - Hathaway, pushing 40, with two problematic family relationships on his hands, striding out of the empty airport - brought tears to my eyes.
(end spoilers)
I doubt that I will ever be able to read, let alone write, Lewis/Hathaway again. Or even to watch the early episodes, knowing how the characters will develop. The knowledge of canon seems to be an unsurmountable obstacle to me. I keep telling myself not to invest so much in a television series (aka Get A Life, You Twit), but the pain of the unfulfilled desire is there, and all I can do is try to unpack it.
Fandom 2: Rawhide
Twenty years ago I re-discovered Rawhide and wrote about twenty stories, of varying quality, based on the relationship betwen trail boss Gil Favor and ramrod Rowdy Yates. The fandom was a minority one, there was very little fan fiction, and all slash fiction was written by me and, for a short while, one other person. Then I wrote no RH for 14 years. Recently I - twenty years older - wrote a couple of RH stories exploring another possible relationship, again with an age difference, but with a stronger potential for complementarity and equality. Almost zero interest from fellow fans. Again, the obviously sensible thing to do is either to stop investing emotionally in fantasies that are mine alone, or to find fantasies that other people actually share, or to fantasise and write for myself alone. I don't seem able to do any of the above.
What, if anything, can be learned from the above?
A couple of nights ago I watched the final episode of Lewis .
(Spoiler space ahead)
I felt unexpectedly forlorn and bereaved at the sight of the sign that Hathaway carried as he drove Lewis and Laura Hobson to the airport. Same sign, same airport, almost same unspeakable shirt, and diametrically opposite contexts, final farewell as opposed to the start of a complex, difficult, mutually enriching relationship. The final image - Hathaway, pushing 40, with two problematic family relationships on his hands, striding out of the empty airport - brought tears to my eyes.
(end spoilers)
I doubt that I will ever be able to read, let alone write, Lewis/Hathaway again. Or even to watch the early episodes, knowing how the characters will develop. The knowledge of canon seems to be an unsurmountable obstacle to me. I keep telling myself not to invest so much in a television series (aka Get A Life, You Twit), but the pain of the unfulfilled desire is there, and all I can do is try to unpack it.
Fandom 2: Rawhide
Twenty years ago I re-discovered Rawhide and wrote about twenty stories, of varying quality, based on the relationship betwen trail boss Gil Favor and ramrod Rowdy Yates. The fandom was a minority one, there was very little fan fiction, and all slash fiction was written by me and, for a short while, one other person. Then I wrote no RH for 14 years. Recently I - twenty years older - wrote a couple of RH stories exploring another possible relationship, again with an age difference, but with a stronger potential for complementarity and equality. Almost zero interest from fellow fans. Again, the obviously sensible thing to do is either to stop investing emotionally in fantasies that are mine alone, or to find fantasies that other people actually share, or to fantasise and write for myself alone. I don't seem able to do any of the above.
What, if anything, can be learned from the above?