Ask a simple question...
So, propinquitine is writing a fannish paper for law school and asked for my perspective on fannish differences (or not) of opinion. I started composing a reply, but I got totally sidetracked and ended up writing a ginormous essay on the history of my own fannish interactions and how much I love Fandom. And thus (somewhat edited and slightly expanded from the email I sent her):
***
A True & Faithful Narrative of how one winkingstar, Lady & Geek, discovered the Wide World.
(Being a long-winded love letter to Fandom and the Friends encountered therein.)
by winkingstar
*
Once upon a time, oh, about five years ago, I got back into the world of Fandom after a five or six year hiatus-during which time, thankfully, I matured and was much less of the awkward nerdy type of fangirl. (First awkward nerdy stage of fannishness was during high school when it was all about anime/manga, mostly Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon. I wrote a few reallytrulyomgsoawful fics that are still lurking about on the interwebs to my discredit (different pen-name though!) and make me wince when I think of them. (Do not mock the Sailor Moon-ness itself though. (Not that you would, dear flisters.) Most people who mock it, do so based solely on the dubs, which are in fact rather awful. But the manga series is great and I still love it lots.) (Whoa, lots of parentheticals. *hopes she closed them all, proper-like*)
So, there was much angsty nerdy awkwardness in high school, but it wasn't really a participatory fandom back then because that was back in the days before social networking (*feels old*) when it was just story archives and in order to leave feedback you had to actually send someone an email, which of course no one ever did because it takes far too much effort, as opposed to now when you just click the handy little comment link.
ANYWAY. To return to my initial starting point of five years ago (actually four and a half, to be precise), that was when I rejoined Fandom! And joined LiveJournal and stuff. Yays! It was, again, a Sailor Moon fandom because there was at the time a live action series (Japanese, of course, so it was also my first experience of covertly getting episodes *ahem*). It was a totally, totally cheesy series (they used plastic toys as accessories and weapons and stuff because it was Very Clever product placement for the toys they were actually selling! (um, their target audience was very young girls; their actual (covert) audience was much more diverse, in age, gender, and geography, as fandoms generally are)), but at the same time it was brilliant. They reinvented the story a bit, so it wasn't just another rehashing of the previous manga and anime series and the actors were actually pretty good (with hot guys, even! sometimes in really dorky costumes and wigs! and there were mufflers and burnt cookies and- oh, those were good times!).
So I stumbled upon Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (PGSM) entirely by accident about a month into my senior year at Bryn Mawr (so, October 2004). I was vastly intrigued by the cheese factor and thus investigated further, which led me to a website called Shingetsu (wayback link 'cause it's since died *sadface*) with a messageboard.
And, oh, the PGSM fandom saved my life. Or at least saved me from wallowing in despair. (It was not good times for me during my senior year (and actually it was nothing to do with schoolwork and thesiswork; I was having people issues).) I frittered about on the messageboards, where there were episode/series/character discussions and all manner of tangential things (the usual celebrity stalking, shiny graphics, really random OT stuff (not a lot of fic, though)). And then I fell in with the "cool kids" (or that's how we liked to think of ourselves, anyway; I do think we were some of the most, er, sensible people on the boards-not totally hyper-obsessive, and not total prats) and they were on LiveJournal, so I wandered over to LJ in November 2004. The "cool kids" group was called the Legion of Evil (as in, it was our mission to spread joyful confusion, so more Puckish than actually evil). They, in particular, are who saved my senior year. We had Friday night AIM chats about whatever and people would wander in and out, depending on their time zone and sleep requirements and such. Totally awesome people. The first LJ person I met in real life (lacontessa11) was from that group.
(And thus, after several ridiculously long paragraphs of exposition, we get to the actual fannish interactions which are (possibly) of interest! \o/ )
Due to the diversity of people in fandom, I run into incidentally different opinions all the time. Whether it's someone referring to something in metric measures or praising a fic I didn't like or nitpicking an episode I did like or whatever, there are tons of incidental differences. And I love that. But there are also non-incidental differences.
Thankfully I haven't had to deal with too much Wank, but there have been a few less-than-happy incidents. There are, of course, always shipper wars. I'm happy to say that the shipper wars in PGSM fandom were mostly friendly, though, as far as I saw. In the Legion of Evil, for instance, we had two ships that divided us fairly evenly into two shipper camps, even though the pairings didn't conflict. (And, actually, a couple of us shipped both, myself included.) One was a het pairing, and the other was a femmeslash pairing, and neither of them was canon. But we all still got along. Our little ship kerfuffles were entirely friendly. I wish it were like that everywhere, rather than just small corners here and there. Of course I have favourite ships, but if someone else likes a different ship that conflicts with mine, it doesn't wreck my squee. I am all for finding love wherever you see it. In Stargate: Atlantis (SGA), for instance, I am of course a JohnxRodney shipper. But the existence of RodneyxJennifer on the show (and fen who like that pairing) does not cause me turmoil. On the whole, I find the romance on the show to be badly-written, but there are moments when I can see it working. It's still not my cup of tea (because I am very much an OTPer), but it's totally okay with me that it exists and people like it. Sadly, I know this is not the case with everyone, and the shipping wars in SGA fandom can often read like actual wars rather than differences of opinion.
There was one big incident I got involved in during my PGSM days because it went beyond Wank. There was a website that "reviewed" other PGSM fansites and they gave a nasty review for the site of someone in my group of friends. Like, seriously nasty, to the point where they suggested he should maybe commit suicide in shame and then defended it when we called them on it by saying it was "only their opinion". It takes a lot to get me really and truly angry, but I was seriously pissed off about three sentences into their "review" (before the suicide part, even). So we spent an evening replying on their commentboard until they banned our IP addresses. We were entirely diplomatic in our replies (okay, maybe not entirely diplomatic; there may have been some name-calling, but we certainly never stooped to their level of nastiness), attempting to point out to those morons why suggesting suicide is Not Okay, but of course it didn't have any effect on them. They mocked our attempts at reason and stuck to defending their "opinion". So we didn't change anything in their minds, but we made our friend feel better by coming to his defense, and that was what mattered most.
So, no, Fandom's not always pretty and I don't always agree with everyone. There are some really dense/insensitive/narrowminded/etc. people out there, just like in any aspect of life. So, like in life, I try not to sweat it so long as they're not actively hurting me or my friends. I pick my battles and if someone's just annoying, I let it pass. Actively trying to hurt people based on their opinions (or anything, really, but in internet land we mostly deal in opinions) is way not cool, obviously. Thankfully, all the people I've fallen in with along the way of my Fangirl's Journey have been nothing but awesome. And I do believe that, overall, awesome people win out over stupid people and my overall fannish experience has definitely been very positive.
Fandom for me is about diversity. Of geography, of age, of connections to a show/character, and-most importantly-of opinion. Of course it's cool when you find people who share your interests, but it's equally cool when you also have some differing opinions. I think fannish interactions are a reflection of real world interactions-you need to know how to get along with other people, regardless of cultural or preferential differences, and when to pick your battles. It's really sad to me that so much of fandom fails at diplomatic relations (but then, that's the real world, too). Yeah, there's wankers, but there are also a lot of really awesome people.
And, as I've said many times with regard to my librarianly passions, I am in love with the possibilities of international connections and collaborations, whether personal or digital. I started out with an interest in crossing cultural barriers when I gave that bilingual book to the Korean woman at my library two years ago. I was positively glowing with joy when I saw how happy I'd made her, and I knew that's what I wanted to do as a librarian: connect people through stories, linguistic/cultural barriers be damned. But then when I got a comment on my Merlin podfic a couple months ago, telling me I'd crossed a cultural divide with my voice and someone else's story, my world kind of exploded into even more possibilities. Because of course that's what Fandom itself is about: connecting people through stories, regardless of cultural, linguistic, geographic, what-have-you barriers.
And that is pure magic. ♥
***
So, while this excessively long (but hopefully at least somewhat interesting) essay is mainly to express my love for Fandom in general (though I've used my own specific fandoms as examples), and thereby my love for all of you awesome people I've met through various fandoms (tea is totally a fandom!), I would like to take this opportunity to give a shoutout to all of my SGA friends as we prepare to bid our show farewell: I am still in love with this fandom, and I plan on being around for ages yet (there's still plenty of ficcing and podficcing to be done), but I know that's not true of everyone. I've been through this before when PGSM ended, and we hung out on LJ for a while, but some people disappeared and some just drifted away. So I just want to say, right now, for the record, I love you guys lots and I've had such a wonderful time getting to know you over the past year and a bit since I wandered into SGA fandom. And I would be so, so happy if you stick around forever or at least for a while yet (or come play in Merlin fandom because it is ridiculous and beyond slashy and it makes me go eee with a big dopey grin on my face). ♥
To conclude: Fandom ftw! *hugest hugs and squishes for all* ♥
***
A True & Faithful Narrative of how one winkingstar, Lady & Geek, discovered the Wide World.
(Being a long-winded love letter to Fandom and the Friends encountered therein.)
by winkingstar
*
Once upon a time, oh, about five years ago, I got back into the world of Fandom after a five or six year hiatus-during which time, thankfully, I matured and was much less of the awkward nerdy type of fangirl. (First awkward nerdy stage of fannishness was during high school when it was all about anime/manga, mostly Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon. I wrote a few reallytrulyomgsoawful fics that are still lurking about on the interwebs to my discredit (different pen-name though!) and make me wince when I think of them. (Do not mock the Sailor Moon-ness itself though. (Not that you would, dear flisters.) Most people who mock it, do so based solely on the dubs, which are in fact rather awful. But the manga series is great and I still love it lots.) (Whoa, lots of parentheticals. *hopes she closed them all, proper-like*)
So, there was much angsty nerdy awkwardness in high school, but it wasn't really a participatory fandom back then because that was back in the days before social networking (*feels old*) when it was just story archives and in order to leave feedback you had to actually send someone an email, which of course no one ever did because it takes far too much effort, as opposed to now when you just click the handy little comment link.
ANYWAY. To return to my initial starting point of five years ago (actually four and a half, to be precise), that was when I rejoined Fandom! And joined LiveJournal and stuff. Yays! It was, again, a Sailor Moon fandom because there was at the time a live action series (Japanese, of course, so it was also my first experience of covertly getting episodes *ahem*). It was a totally, totally cheesy series (they used plastic toys as accessories and weapons and stuff because it was Very Clever product placement for the toys they were actually selling! (um, their target audience was very young girls; their actual (covert) audience was much more diverse, in age, gender, and geography, as fandoms generally are)), but at the same time it was brilliant. They reinvented the story a bit, so it wasn't just another rehashing of the previous manga and anime series and the actors were actually pretty good (with hot guys, even! sometimes in really dorky costumes and wigs! and there were mufflers and burnt cookies and- oh, those were good times!).
So I stumbled upon Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (PGSM) entirely by accident about a month into my senior year at Bryn Mawr (so, October 2004). I was vastly intrigued by the cheese factor and thus investigated further, which led me to a website called Shingetsu (wayback link 'cause it's since died *sadface*) with a messageboard.
And, oh, the PGSM fandom saved my life. Or at least saved me from wallowing in despair. (It was not good times for me during my senior year (and actually it was nothing to do with schoolwork and thesiswork; I was having people issues).) I frittered about on the messageboards, where there were episode/series/character discussions and all manner of tangential things (the usual celebrity stalking, shiny graphics, really random OT stuff (not a lot of fic, though)). And then I fell in with the "cool kids" (or that's how we liked to think of ourselves, anyway; I do think we were some of the most, er, sensible people on the boards-not totally hyper-obsessive, and not total prats) and they were on LiveJournal, so I wandered over to LJ in November 2004. The "cool kids" group was called the Legion of Evil (as in, it was our mission to spread joyful confusion, so more Puckish than actually evil). They, in particular, are who saved my senior year. We had Friday night AIM chats about whatever and people would wander in and out, depending on their time zone and sleep requirements and such. Totally awesome people. The first LJ person I met in real life (lacontessa11) was from that group.
(And thus, after several ridiculously long paragraphs of exposition, we get to the actual fannish interactions which are (possibly) of interest! \o/ )
Due to the diversity of people in fandom, I run into incidentally different opinions all the time. Whether it's someone referring to something in metric measures or praising a fic I didn't like or nitpicking an episode I did like or whatever, there are tons of incidental differences. And I love that. But there are also non-incidental differences.
Thankfully I haven't had to deal with too much Wank, but there have been a few less-than-happy incidents. There are, of course, always shipper wars. I'm happy to say that the shipper wars in PGSM fandom were mostly friendly, though, as far as I saw. In the Legion of Evil, for instance, we had two ships that divided us fairly evenly into two shipper camps, even though the pairings didn't conflict. (And, actually, a couple of us shipped both, myself included.) One was a het pairing, and the other was a femmeslash pairing, and neither of them was canon. But we all still got along. Our little ship kerfuffles were entirely friendly. I wish it were like that everywhere, rather than just small corners here and there. Of course I have favourite ships, but if someone else likes a different ship that conflicts with mine, it doesn't wreck my squee. I am all for finding love wherever you see it. In Stargate: Atlantis (SGA), for instance, I am of course a JohnxRodney shipper. But the existence of RodneyxJennifer on the show (and fen who like that pairing) does not cause me turmoil. On the whole, I find the romance on the show to be badly-written, but there are moments when I can see it working. It's still not my cup of tea (because I am very much an OTPer), but it's totally okay with me that it exists and people like it. Sadly, I know this is not the case with everyone, and the shipping wars in SGA fandom can often read like actual wars rather than differences of opinion.
There was one big incident I got involved in during my PGSM days because it went beyond Wank. There was a website that "reviewed" other PGSM fansites and they gave a nasty review for the site of someone in my group of friends. Like, seriously nasty, to the point where they suggested he should maybe commit suicide in shame and then defended it when we called them on it by saying it was "only their opinion". It takes a lot to get me really and truly angry, but I was seriously pissed off about three sentences into their "review" (before the suicide part, even). So we spent an evening replying on their commentboard until they banned our IP addresses. We were entirely diplomatic in our replies (okay, maybe not entirely diplomatic; there may have been some name-calling, but we certainly never stooped to their level of nastiness), attempting to point out to those morons why suggesting suicide is Not Okay, but of course it didn't have any effect on them. They mocked our attempts at reason and stuck to defending their "opinion". So we didn't change anything in their minds, but we made our friend feel better by coming to his defense, and that was what mattered most.
So, no, Fandom's not always pretty and I don't always agree with everyone. There are some really dense/insensitive/narrowminded/etc. people out there, just like in any aspect of life. So, like in life, I try not to sweat it so long as they're not actively hurting me or my friends. I pick my battles and if someone's just annoying, I let it pass. Actively trying to hurt people based on their opinions (or anything, really, but in internet land we mostly deal in opinions) is way not cool, obviously. Thankfully, all the people I've fallen in with along the way of my Fangirl's Journey have been nothing but awesome. And I do believe that, overall, awesome people win out over stupid people and my overall fannish experience has definitely been very positive.
Fandom for me is about diversity. Of geography, of age, of connections to a show/character, and-most importantly-of opinion. Of course it's cool when you find people who share your interests, but it's equally cool when you also have some differing opinions. I think fannish interactions are a reflection of real world interactions-you need to know how to get along with other people, regardless of cultural or preferential differences, and when to pick your battles. It's really sad to me that so much of fandom fails at diplomatic relations (but then, that's the real world, too). Yeah, there's wankers, but there are also a lot of really awesome people.
And, as I've said many times with regard to my librarianly passions, I am in love with the possibilities of international connections and collaborations, whether personal or digital. I started out with an interest in crossing cultural barriers when I gave that bilingual book to the Korean woman at my library two years ago. I was positively glowing with joy when I saw how happy I'd made her, and I knew that's what I wanted to do as a librarian: connect people through stories, linguistic/cultural barriers be damned. But then when I got a comment on my Merlin podfic a couple months ago, telling me I'd crossed a cultural divide with my voice and someone else's story, my world kind of exploded into even more possibilities. Because of course that's what Fandom itself is about: connecting people through stories, regardless of cultural, linguistic, geographic, what-have-you barriers.
And that is pure magic. ♥
***
So, while this excessively long (but hopefully at least somewhat interesting) essay is mainly to express my love for Fandom in general (though I've used my own specific fandoms as examples), and thereby my love for all of you awesome people I've met through various fandoms (tea is totally a fandom!), I would like to take this opportunity to give a shoutout to all of my SGA friends as we prepare to bid our show farewell: I am still in love with this fandom, and I plan on being around for ages yet (there's still plenty of ficcing and podficcing to be done), but I know that's not true of everyone. I've been through this before when PGSM ended, and we hung out on LJ for a while, but some people disappeared and some just drifted away. So I just want to say, right now, for the record, I love you guys lots and I've had such a wonderful time getting to know you over the past year and a bit since I wandered into SGA fandom. And I would be so, so happy if you stick around forever or at least for a while yet (or come play in Merlin fandom because it is ridiculous and beyond slashy and it makes me go eee with a big dopey grin on my face). ♥
To conclude: Fandom ftw! *hugest hugs and squishes for all* ♥