fannishly

[pellucid]

Perhaps you've seen this around, but I highly recommend this article about tv_elf and the friendships we make in fandom. The shows, the characters, the fannish stuff is all fun and important, but this whole thing is really about the people and the communities. We laugh and cry and squee and love each other, and that's pretty damned great

Comments

[gabolange]

I've been following comments around friendsfriends about tv_elf, but I hadn't seen that article . . . and it really says just about everything one could want to say about friendships in fandom. Thank you for that. :)

And yes, "Trials and Tribble-ations" is one of the most awesome episodes of Trek ever, right down to Dulmer and Lucsly. Though I think Dax wins for the best line. Or Julian and the grandfather paradox! Or Miles and the chewing gum! Or . . . *snuggles Trek*

[pellucid]

It's pretty much the conversation we were having the other day while walking around downtown Lexington: that the love for some show or character or pairing is a not insignificant jumping off point, but that so many of these relationships are about so much more than that. *hugs you tight* :)

[meg_tdj]

*nods all the way through the tv_elf article* It amazes me how so many people just don't get it. Even my parents, after meeting you and Kate and Sachi, have a hard time understanding how I can spend an entire day talking to people I "don't even know." We DO know each other! Way better than most people who hang out in person ever do. My RL friends hardly knew me at all, because I would always be so tired from just being in the room with them that I didn't have much conversation in me. So yeah, it bugs me when people think your never-met friends aren't really your friends at all. In a lot of ways, they're the best kind of friends you can possibly have.

In other words... great article. Thanks for the link. :)

[meg_tdj]

Heehee, wow! I'm infamous. ;)

But yeah, my parents are great about people I've actually met, but the people I haven't and probably never will... they just don't get it.

[pellucid]

All friendships, it seems to me, start with the recognition of something in common: maybe it's living in the same place, or working in the same place, or liking the same television show. From that one point of commonality, a friendship may start, or it may not. There are plenty of fannish acquaintances who have not become close friends, just as there are plenty of people I work with who have similarly not become close friends--but in both cases, there are some who have. It's not all that different from any other way of forging a relationship.

Nevertheless, the internet thing is still perceived as weird by a lot of people, and it's so frustrating that that's the case--because as we all know, these are very real and valid relationships that can mean just as much as the ones we have with people we see regularly.

But obviously I'm preaching to the choir here! You and I and all of the rest of us here get it. *hugs*

[admireddisorder]

thank you for the link to that article! i really hadn't know tv_elf at all, but i've been wondering about fandom and friendship and the strange ties we form through our ljs and blogs and stuff for a while now, and, i don't know, this article was beautiful. and a lot about these things i've been pondering.

trials and tribble-ations wins at life! in just so many ways! hell, ds9 wins at life... well, most of the time, anyways.

[pellucid]

I didn't know her, either, but that article captures so much of what is important about what we do here: these are real relationships, and as much as the TV and the fic and the vids and all that are great, it's the community that sticks. And I'd also been thinking about a lot of those issues lately; in fact, gabolange and I just had a related conversation a week ago.

[pellucid]

Well, I'm not complaining about the stuff I've seen so far! But yes, things do seem to be ramping up. If only I had more time for watching... :)

[pellucid]

Hee! :P back at you.

You know, meta is so much easier when I can just point at you and say, "what she said!" *is lazy*