'cause time is short and life is cruel
thefourthvine has a poll up about whether or not your friends/family/SOs/co-workers know about your fannish activities, and it's interesting to me, because my immediate family knows - it's never come up with extended family, and I wouldn't really care if it did? except that I'd worry about boring people who weren't interested - and I believe I've told the story where my dad announced at the annual 4th of July bbq a few years ago that I write gay porn on the internet, and also the story where my brother asked me to write him some hot girl-on-girl action for the new Bionic Woman.
My LJ/DW is always logged in on my dad's computer, but he has absolutely no interest in reading any of it and he's always looked surprised when I've asked if he had. "Why would I do that?" he says. My mother was one of my betas on my very first posted story, as was my boss at the time. (I would not do that here, but as I said in TFV's comments, mostly because I would not want them to know how much fannish stuff I do on work time. And also because I suspect my boss is not a genre fan. She is a fan of Treme, though. We've discussed that.)
When my oldest niece was younger and very into HP, I let her read some of my pg-rated Ron/Hermione, since that was her pairing, and I told her to check with me about things if she ran into a story she wanted to read but wasn't sure about the content. She actually wrote some Ron & Harry bff fic for a class assignment in, like, sixth grade.
My oldest nephew has apparently rewatched the LotR movies repeatedly (though he's never seen the extended versions, which reminds me, I am supposed to bring them with me when I got out there for Father's Day), though he's not into any kind of online fandom thing that I'm aware of.
My younger nephew is a ridiculously passionate Mets and Giants fan, which, you know, is probably more heartbreaking year after year than being a fan of any show. but I mean, he's the kind of fan who collects autographs, who spouts stats, who when the family is on vacation at Lake George, goes to the Giants' training camp in Albany. My brother inherited my uncle's season tickets for the Giants. It's fannish behavior.
My parents are fannish, though never in any organized way. They were huge Trek fans back in the day. Back when MASH was still airing in first run, on Monday nights, we'd watch it three times on Monday nights - the reruns at 7 pm and 11 pm and the first run at 9 pm. They are currently addicted to Dr. Who, and my dad has alerts on Amazon to let him know when the latest series of Midsomer Murders dvds are released etc.
My sister came to being a sports fan late - within the past couple of years she's suddenly become a passionate Giants fan, which is kind of hilarious, because before that she was just meh about the whole enterprise - and also, when we saw the midnight show of PotC: At World's End, she walked out of the theatre in a rage (we didn't stay for the post-credits sequence) because of what happened to Will and Elizabeth. While I don't think she would have used the term shipper, she was totally a Will/Elizabeth shipper, and the fact that they seemingly didn't get a happy ending made her declare the series dead to her! It was pretty hilarious.
Even my sister-in-law, who would scoff at being labeled fannish, spent a lot of time in her youth seeing the Rolling Stones every time they came within driving distance of NYC, and she still has a devotion to Mick Jagger that borders on obsessive. These days, she and her daughters are all into Vampire Diaries. I would not be surprised one day to find out either niece has taken to reading fanfic for it or any other show they end up invested in.
So all of my family members are fannish in their way, though aside from certain mass participation rituals of a sports or music sort (i.e., watching or going to games or concerts), they don't really participate in Western media fandom.
I also think that too many people in the LJ/DW portion of fandom have a too-narrow view of what constitutes being "in" fandom (as opposed to being in a fandom). I always say this when the topic comes up, but there are so many ways to participate in fandom; writing and reading fanfiction (and often, people hosting these discussions narrow it further by defining it as m/m slash fandom) is only one way. It's the dominant way in these particular (mostly Western media fandom) circles, but it's one small section of a much larger beast. (Which is to say, if you are having that kind of discussion, please be specific! Or I will probably be pedantic and comment to the effect that m/m slash fandom is not the end-all and be-all of fandom.)
Wow, okay, that was not what I was expecting when I opened up the update window this morning. Huh. I was just going to complain about how I thought I was writing a silly story about Superboy drawing on himself, but of course, somehow it's more melancholy than funny. What even is that?
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This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/336311.html.
people have commented there.