Passion: More than Just a Fruit

[andpuff]

Yesterday, a friend of mine wrote about meeting an author she'd long admired and how the response to her passionate enthusiasm was, essentially, dickish

Comments

[catalana]

Very nicely said - I agree!

[willowschild]

I adore this post. I have certainly felt spurned by those artists who feel they are better than us mere mortals who look up to, respect, revere and honor with our passionate displays of fandom. I told my husband just the other day that one of my favorite things is being able to interact with the authors, musicians and actors who remember that their fans are the reason they get to do what they love. Passion drive us all and makes life so much more fun. It was also awesome for me to learn that you, Tanya, love so many of the same things I do. (I'm also a Kaniac.) It makes you more approachable. Thank you, Tanya for being one of the good ones!

[kimuro]

I find it difficult to express passion about anything - there is much in my personality that lurks on the sidelines, watching and enjoying others while mildly wondering how they get to be like that. (Asperger syndrome can be like that.) (OTOH, what I'm interested in, I am obsessed with and can't be shut up about ... not the same thing, though).

BUT...

I'm amused by the fact that I was talking about Christian Kane to someone today - I'd used his character's name from Leverage as a mnemonic for her name and then had to explain the cryptic comment I'd made.

AND ...
further coincidence, I was burbling on to someone about the comment made in The Long Hot Summoning about the Apocalypse in the season finale of Buffy. I LOVE that comment. :-D

(See, that's why I don't do enthusiasm - I don't know what to say and I sound like an idiot.)

(And you get the Neil Gaiman icon 'cause you're cool.)

[andpuff]

Telling someone you love something they've written seems like the perfect thing to say! Thank you!

[theniwokesoftly]

I've never had an author be a dick to me, but I've had a couple of actors at cons be rather snotty, and seriously? They wouldn't be famous if we didn't like them, and if they don't like fans (or in one case, sci-fi/fantasy fans- a very famous actor made fun of my Harry Potter costume), maybe they shouldn't be at cons.

[starmalachite]

This dovetails oddly with a story I heard on NPR about an hour ago about why it's been almost 20 years since an American has won the Nobel for literature. The interviewee's answer was that editors & MFA programs encourage & train writers not only to write what they know, but that it is somehow presumptuous to use their imaginations enough to put them into the skin of a character substantially unlike themselves. (One example given was the critical pasting William Styron got for daring to write from the perspective of the leader of a slave revolt in The Confessions of Nat Turner, quite apart from the merits or flaws of the book itself

[e_moon60]

Agreed. Part of being passionate is risking being a bore to people who don't share that passion--though the *really* passionate can often set others afire for their interests--they're so happy about it (not just seriously focused) that it draws in others.