Your fandom is not Fandom

[schmevil]

Coming Clean: 2009 & The End of Dumb Things, by 2-perseph

I imagine that those of you who are interested in this sort of thing have already read the post. I found it a few days after the fact, via a post on my flist. I haven't been keeping up with things, what with being sick, but I made time for this, since it's Relevant To My Interests.
Fandom was a

Comments

[cryptoxin]

Yeah, thanks for saying it so well. The fandom = fanworks mentality always baffles me, because there are so many fandoms & fan cultures that don't revolve around that stuff at all. I usually assume that when people say 'fandom' it's shorthand for 'our kind of fandom over here', until it becomes clear that they don't. And yet I keep getting surprised when that provincialism pops up.

[schmevil]

Provincialism is a great way to put it! In chat, a friend brought up the Shaw quote: "he is a barbarian [who] thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."

[parsimonia]

I must've missed it on metafandom, but I've now read through it and commented and HOO BOY, the rage.

it offends me when my fellow fen model fandom in such a way as to invalidate my fannish experience, and that of my friends.

This, yes.

I took turns at being amused and enraged by the "AND THEN THE FANGIRLS CAME..." bit, considering how that exact phrase has such a different meaning in comics fandom, and probably even just the word "fangirl".

I got into fandom simply because I wanted to talk about the shows and books I was interested in, whenever I wanted to.

Mind you, I suppose my first "derivative" fanwork was when I was in nursery school. I did a painting (they were just blobs of colour, but to my little mind back then they were of course accurate and recognizable representations) of my family and several characters from the Ghostbusters cartoon. And although I don't really remember, I suspect any feedback or con-crit I received was not particularly related to the fandom. :D

[schmevil]

The fangirls bit grabbed me too. Hence my comment about Twilighters at ComicCon, because that's exactly what it reminded me of. RUN FOR THE HILLS, THE FANGIRLS ARE COMING! And I'm so incredibly tired of getting that bullshit in comics fandom, that I have no tolerance for it in the supposedly female-friendly parts of fandom. There's nothing wrong with being young, female, and excited about your beautiful cake.

[parsimonia]

Exactly. It feels almost comically unfair to be getting that negativity from two sides (no pun intended).

[parsimonia]

What am I saying, I like puns.

[dlasta]

Thankee for the link. For some reason I totally missed it.
...not that the message is particularly shiny, I just like to know what's going on.:)

[schmevil]

NP. It was an interesting read.

[elspethdixon]

Personally, I tend to consider meta/discussion/analysis and scans posts like the kind that go up on scans_daily to be a kind of fanwork in their own right, just as fic and vids and art are. They're just... a nonfiction kind of fanwork, as opposed to a fictional kind, I guess. But the kind of analysis and thought and engagement with canon that goes into writing fic also goes into discussing Why Civil War/Infinite Crisis/Dark Reign/Whatever Thing We Hate Today sucks and why Character X was OOC in it.

It's the active/engaged with other fen and/or producing something to be seen by/shared with other fen element (or at least being aware of and a participant in that community by virtue of reading/lurking -- not everyone on s_d actually posts or even necessarily comments, and I lurk in about 80% of the fandoms I read in) that makes the difference between "fan of X thing" and "fan who is in X thing fandom" for me.

Is insignificant, because it's part of ~boys fandomI suspect, sometimes, that at least part of that attitude comes from a

[schmevil]

I... sort of consider that stuff to be fanworks too. The only problem I see there, is that we might be defining an activity in a way that's anathema to the people engaged in it. So if there are fans who don't want their critique/reviews/picspam/whatever to be lumped in with 'fanworks', then we should cease and desist. I get the impression that there might be some who would object. There's also value, I think, in modeling fandom in terms of how you think about your fannish activity (ie. fanworks fans vs. discussion fans). So yeah. Sort of agree, sort of disagree.

However, I do agree with your distinction between "fan of X thing" and "fan who is in X thing fandom". That's how I look at it too. :)

I suspect, sometimes, that at least part of that attitude comes from a reaction against the way ~girls fannish activities are often treated

I think you're absolutely right, and that's a shame.

[stubbleupdate]

Why does the word fen exists when it seems to serve the same purpose as fans?

[schmevil]

Cause it's cute.

You asked for this...

[stubbleupdate]

Also, pm to follow

[outlawpoet]

actually, it's a plural form meant to distinguish between active members of fandom and somebody who might just watch a football game, or a tv show.

Kinda like the difference between a nosotros and a ellos tensed pluralized verb. (or so I think).