How Fandom Entwines Us and Tears Us Apart...
You know...when I was younger, I think I enjoyed television a lot more than I do now, at least in some respects. Because there was no internet, no fandom wars, no shipper wars, no stupid fandom wank, no spoilers...
Because in my opinion...those can really suck the fun out of being a fan. Don't get me wrong I love the internet. In fact, I'm also a spoiler-whore. But it does suck out some of the anticipation if you always know what's going to happen next. I have very little self-control. When I see a headline such as: CHLARK SPOILERS...well, I have to click the link. I can't not do it. Sad, but true. The only show I never checked out spoilers for was Alias. Which could be why it holds a very special place in my heart even though the finale was all kinds of screwed up...grrr...but that's a whole other topic.
Think back to your very first fandom ever...what was it? How old were you? What was your fondest memory of that fandom?
My first fandom was All My Children. Yep, that's right. A soap opera. :P I was five. I kid you not. My barbies were named Tad and Dixie. And I loved that show. Completely, totally loved it. To this day there are scenes that I still vividly recall...like "I'll let you in on a little secret. Chickens don't have fingers." Hah, that will make zero since to anyone who didn't watch AMC back in the early 80's, but it's one of my fondest memories and always makes me chuckle.
There was no, "OMG Tad belongs with Character X and not that bitch Dixie!" Or "Dixie/ADAM FOREVER!!!!" Crap...because there was no online-ness back then. There was no "God this show sucks, please cancel it" all over the internet...there was no flaming hatred between fans of Tad/Dixie and Dixie/Adam. There was just me, my show and my imagination (and the barbies, okay, okay).
Fast forward a few years. And into the X-Files I got...people at school (my awesome friends were the exception) thought I was nuts because I loved the show so much. Well, I didn't care because I didn't like those people anyway. So no big. Went off to college and discovered fan fiction. Fell completely and totally in love with it. Read it day and night, craved more.
I love the fanfiction aspect of fandom. I know I'm getting into a show when I start searching out fanfic for it...or God forbid, start writing it myself. But I'll get to that later.
Moved onto Sliders, devoured every fanfic I could find, and really, there just wasn't a lot. And that's when Roswell started airing. This was a show I wasn't even going to watch until my mom informed me it was about aliens (what can I say, I'm a sucker for sci-fi!). So I was like, "what the hell." Watched it, liked it, continued to watch. By the time the fourth episode "Leaving Normal" aired, I was utterly hooked. I sought out fanfic for that, and began writing it myself.
Back in Roswell days, the email listing was all the rage. I knew nothing about blogs or fanfiction.net at that point. It was an email group mailing...you sent your fanfic in and it got sent out to everyone who was subscribed to that list, and they sent back comments to the list. It was possibly the most amazing high I've ever experienced.
Keep in mind, I grew up writing on a regular basis, but until high school when my friends would read my stuff, no one had any interest in reading what I wrote...so I pretty much began to crave the feedback. It was an addiction. It was this fandom that really jump-started all my other fandom experiences. I think a lot of us can credit Roswell with that one. I met some awesome people via the Roswell fandom. I still remember their names, and often their stories. I'm only really in touch with a couple of them these days *waves at Kara*, which is very sad. I've tried to track down others that I was friends with--Mel, Linda, Ash...but they seem to have vanished. I have no idea where they are or what they're doing or if they're still writing amazing fanfic for some other fandom...but I miss them. It was my love of Roswell that caused me to get into web design, that made me interested in making fandom-related graphics, that helped me work through a great deal of personal issues, and that introduced me to my first "Save our show" campaign.
For those reasons alone, Roswell also owns a special piece of my heart.
Then bad stuff started. Hell, maybe it was there all along and I didn't notice...but there was horrible fandom wars...you had people who hated Tess (me and just about every Dream Girl aka Max/Liz fan) alive. And the Tess lovers hated Liz. And things got really ugly.
So eventually I drifted away from Roswell due to hating the conflict that was always going on, plus how ridiculous some of the storylines had gotten...and I found Angel. I'd never once watched an episode of Buffy...in fact I didn't until some time later that year when they aired a two parter "5 X 5" and "Sanctuary." I fell in love with the Angel/Cordy pairing. And you want to talk about a fandom shipper war? The Buffy/Angel fans Vs. the Cordy/Angel fans was phenomenally insane. B/A'ers HATED us. I mean, with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. It was sort of amusing at first, but it quickly became disturbing how much someone could hate your guts for liking a different romantic pairing on a TV show. :/
So I quit discussing with the fans in that fandom, and just wrote fanfic. I never ventured onto another message board for anything other than fic in the Joss-Verse. I never really connected with any other Angel fans.
Then it was Third Watch. This was the first non-sci-fi show I fell in love with since AMC. It was SO realistic and so wonderfully done. I loved Bosco/Faith *waves at fellow B/F fans!* and created a forum for shippers called 55-David: Boscorelli and Yokas. It was a tiny, tiny board for a long time, and that was great. It was small and intimate and everyone knew everyone else and there were no problems...but when it started getting more popular, issues started coming up and I was not experienced in dealing with having to ban or warn people to knock off the BS. It's sad but I stopped visiting my own forum. I moved onto other TW forums, and they each had similiar issues. I got a LJ about this time, and...well, I'm not going into great detail about the crap that went down there, but let's just say it did and it wasn't pretty.
However, I made a lot of TW friends, some of whom became very very close to my heart. There's only one of whom I'm still every bit as close to now as I was when I first met her *hugs Twin*. But I'm still in contact with most of them, and it's because of LJ. *kisses LJ*
TW got canceled and I moved onto Joan of Arcadia. This show built me up only to rip me to shreds not because of the fans, but because it got canceled and yes, I'm still very bitter. *flips off Les Moonves.* There was a massive campaign to bring it back that failed, but through it I met some awesome people: Heather, Laura, Payton, Elizabeth to name a few. Again, still in touch because of LJ. If there were big flaming hate wars amongst the fans, I wasn't aware of them and that's probably why I harbor no resentment toward the fandom itself.
Dipped briefly into Lost, but the show itself killed my fanatical love for it, though I still watch. I don't venture onto message boards for it, because I just KNOW there have to be some hideous wars going on between Jack/Kate fans and Sawyer/Kate fans. So not going there.
And then...
There is Smallville.
At first, I only spent time in the fanfiction areas, but it wasn't long before I wandered into the discussion forums, thus making my mistake. It wasn't long before I got into an argument with a Clark/Lana fan (if you're new to my flist, I ship Clark/Chloe on Smallville :P). And so it began. I'm not going to claim I was innocent in the whole Chlark fans Vs. Clana fans battle that happened on K-site, because that would be a lie. I did my part to fan the flames and for what? There wasn't really a purpose.
So the Chlark fans and Clana fans hate each other, the Clana and Clois fans hate each other, the Chlark and Clana fans hate each other, the Clois and Chlois people hate one another. Certain groups of shippers hate certain actresses on the show. I'm not even going to make this more confusing by adding in the Lexana or Clex fans, because I think you've all gotten the idea by now.
This fandom...is filled with people who HATE each other. It is astounding and disturbing just how much so in fact.
I guess for me this realization hit me when I began talking to people from shipper groups other than my own. And you know what I found out? Smallville fandom aside, which we obviously disagreed on, we had stuff in common. More important stuff than fandom in fact. Values, goals, dreams, hopes. Bottom line is the people ya'll claim to hate are PEOPLE who might have different opinions from you on a show, and maybe in real life issues, but they are still people.
I've seen it time and again--why do people continue to let fandom make them hate (or if not hate, strongly dislike) someone? It is such an arbitrary thing. Fandom is supposed to be fun, it's supposed to bring people together even if they don't agree on everything, it is supposed to be fiction. Instead, fandom is twisted into this nasty, ugly place where if you don't agree with someone else, well that must mean you're an enemy or a traitor or that you're stupid and wrong.
Seriously, aren't there more important things in life to be concerned about than if someone agrees that Chloe is the real Lois or Ed!Lois is the real Lois or if they agree that Clana is the greatest or worst thing on Smallville, so on and so forth.
I guess this is my way of saying...I'm out. Done. I'm sick of fandom drama and I'm no longer going to take a part in it. I'm not going to let my fandom preferences convince me to dislike someone because their views on the show differ from mine. I'm going to be friends with whoever I want to be friends with regardless of whether they ship Chlark, Clana, Clois, Clex, Lexana or whatever. Fandom has gotten too much of my passion, and it's time to move on to something more important.
Don't get me wrong--I still love fandom and intend to be involved in it. But I'm not going to let it rule me the way it has been. I'm still going to write fanfic, and hell, I might even engage in a fandom discussion on a forum here or there. But it's not worth stressing out over. Whether my pairing of choice ends up together or not is not ultimately that important to my leading a fulfilling life.
So if you're here only for the fandom, well...might wanna consider defriending now.
/End rant
If you made it through that whole post without falling asleep, you deserve a cookie! :P