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Me & Fandom
So, if people ask me what fandom I'm in, I have two options: pull out the long text file that I use when I'm offering to beta or write in a multifandom fest; or say "just fandom!"
I have been "in" a fandom a few times, in the sense of really working to build relationships and creations within a particular canon, but I never quite felt comfortable; we were brought together by one thing only, and it was fun, but just by nature of being limited to that one shared interest, there was a lot of conformity and round pegs jammed in square holes. And then I went multifannish, and then panfannish, and then just plain fannish, and this is where my head belongs, really always has. But right now, I'm, to a really kind of strange extent, keeping my fandom-as-community separate from my fandom-as-creativity.
By which I mean, the people I interact with fannishly are the people on my friendlists, message boards, and local RL fan gatherings. Sometimes we're consuming and creating in the same story worlds. Just as often, we're not. Sometimes I read their fic, sometimes I don't, sometimes we've stopped writing fic. It isn't actually all that important, because we click as people, and we don't just talk about story worlds; or we talk about them in ways that apply to all stories. But it's still important that we're culturally fannish, because without that shared ground, we wouldn't be able to talk about those- our stories, our lives, our random brainfarts- with the vocabulary and strategies and modes and shared allusions that fandom has given us. I don't think it's possible to be panfannish without shifing to this mode in some way; you simply can't be active in *every* fandom the same way you'd be active in one, nobody has the time. And internet social networks, and cross-fandom tools like![[journalfen.net profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fandom_wank and metafandom, have let us find a happy medium, and I think panfannishness in this sense is getting more common.
But the other side of my fandom activity - the part that involves vids and fic and art, and discussion about things like that one scene in that one episode - I get, these days, in less personal ways. It's not a strict wall: there's still a few pairing-based LJ communities I keep up with, and engage with (a little bit) on both levels, and there are good fandom friends I share stories with, but to a large extent, that part of fandom I've been keeping private or anonymous. Most of the fic I read comes from recs, del.icio.us ( http://delicious.com/popular/slash is the best way ever to keep abreast of good fic), or mad googling sprees when I simply *must* have MOAR HL FIC NAO. And the things I create for myself - mostly stay for myself.
Part of the reason I was so ready to move to Journalfen when I stormed out of LJ in a huff is that I'd been feeling very constricted at Livejournal then - I'd somehow convinced myself that my LJ friends were expecting the second type of content, when I was more interested in the first. And Journalfen is a great place for someone who is a fan, just not in any particular fandom: in some ways, it's the last refuge of people who aren't really into fandoms any more but still like being fans; and a sanctuary for people who are in a fandom and need to go someplace where nobody gives a damn about their pairing wars.
But it's also really, really encouraged me in my complete lack of traditional fannish production lately. For a site that's supposed to be all about that, there's very little of it on JF; and when nobody else is posting it, and I have no indication that the people I interact with would be interested, and the people who would be interested are people I have no investment in - I have little motivation to do the work of making something fit for public consumption.
So one thing I'm hoping my new fresh start here will do is help me make a place where I can be panfannish, butterfly around and be attached to no particular fandom, but still be both productive and connected in a new way. I'm going to keep my JF account, and keep posting there the kind of things I've been posting, and try to post here the sorts of things I've been failing-to-post there, and build a network that'll help me do that. I think the watch/trust split will help with that, too; I can have reading-people and interacting-people and they can be both, but they don't have to be.
We'll see if it works!
(So far, so good. This was originally going to be a very different post about how cool it is that, according to del.icio.us, the most common fandom tags for fanfic at the moment are Merlin, bandom, SGA, SPN, Torchwood, Harry Potter - and Yuletide. Apparently I am not the only person who's engaging through tiny fandoms as much as large ones!)
I have been "in" a fandom a few times, in the sense of really working to build relationships and creations within a particular canon, but I never quite felt comfortable; we were brought together by one thing only, and it was fun, but just by nature of being limited to that one shared interest, there was a lot of conformity and round pegs jammed in square holes. And then I went multifannish, and then panfannish, and then just plain fannish, and this is where my head belongs, really always has. But right now, I'm, to a really kind of strange extent, keeping my fandom-as-community separate from my fandom-as-creativity.
By which I mean, the people I interact with fannishly are the people on my friendlists, message boards, and local RL fan gatherings. Sometimes we're consuming and creating in the same story worlds. Just as often, we're not. Sometimes I read their fic, sometimes I don't, sometimes we've stopped writing fic. It isn't actually all that important, because we click as people, and we don't just talk about story worlds; or we talk about them in ways that apply to all stories. But it's still important that we're culturally fannish, because without that shared ground, we wouldn't be able to talk about those- our stories, our lives, our random brainfarts- with the vocabulary and strategies and modes and shared allusions that fandom has given us. I don't think it's possible to be panfannish without shifing to this mode in some way; you simply can't be active in *every* fandom the same way you'd be active in one, nobody has the time. And internet social networks, and cross-fandom tools like
fandom_wank and metafandom, have let us find a happy medium, and I think panfannishness in this sense is getting more common.But the other side of my fandom activity - the part that involves vids and fic and art, and discussion about things like that one scene in that one episode - I get, these days, in less personal ways. It's not a strict wall: there's still a few pairing-based LJ communities I keep up with, and engage with (a little bit) on both levels, and there are good fandom friends I share stories with, but to a large extent, that part of fandom I've been keeping private or anonymous. Most of the fic I read comes from recs, del.icio.us ( http://delicious.com/popular/slash is the best way ever to keep abreast of good fic), or mad googling sprees when I simply *must* have MOAR HL FIC NAO. And the things I create for myself - mostly stay for myself.
Part of the reason I was so ready to move to Journalfen when I stormed out of LJ in a huff is that I'd been feeling very constricted at Livejournal then - I'd somehow convinced myself that my LJ friends were expecting the second type of content, when I was more interested in the first. And Journalfen is a great place for someone who is a fan, just not in any particular fandom: in some ways, it's the last refuge of people who aren't really into fandoms any more but still like being fans; and a sanctuary for people who are in a fandom and need to go someplace where nobody gives a damn about their pairing wars.
But it's also really, really encouraged me in my complete lack of traditional fannish production lately. For a site that's supposed to be all about that, there's very little of it on JF; and when nobody else is posting it, and I have no indication that the people I interact with would be interested, and the people who would be interested are people I have no investment in - I have little motivation to do the work of making something fit for public consumption.
So one thing I'm hoping my new fresh start here will do is help me make a place where I can be panfannish, butterfly around and be attached to no particular fandom, but still be both productive and connected in a new way. I'm going to keep my JF account, and keep posting there the kind of things I've been posting, and try to post here the sorts of things I've been failing-to-post there, and build a network that'll help me do that. I think the watch/trust split will help with that, too; I can have reading-people and interacting-people and they can be both, but they don't have to be.
We'll see if it works!
(So far, so good. This was originally going to be a very different post about how cool it is that, according to del.icio.us, the most common fandom tags for fanfic at the moment are Merlin, bandom, SGA, SPN, Torchwood, Harry Potter - and Yuletide. Apparently I am not the only person who's engaging through tiny fandoms as much as large ones!)
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I am not sure yet what I am going to get out of DW, other than perhaps the fresh start in that so many people who friended me way back when I was into Harry Potter, who never defriend anyone, can finally say, "whew, I don't have to pretend to read HER journal any more!"
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Are you planning to do a complete break with LJ and come here, or do some sort of cross-posting for awhile? I haven't even announced that I'm here on my LJ yet; I might wait till we're a lot closer to open beta before I do that. Or till I actually have some real fanwork up here to brag about!
(Of course, the people there who haven't found me on JF or DW yet probably *are* the ones who were glad they could drop me with no drama! And I don't blame them.)
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And it's so much fun to see the people show up here with slightly-different usernames and realize that must be what they meant all along.
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And: after thinking about this post for a while, I realized that most of the people I interact with on lj in a fans-of-fandom sense are the ones talking excitedly about DW (er, that's DreamWidth, not Doctor Who), and the people in the fandoms I am lurkishly fannish about (like Sharpe and LotR) are not. But unfortunately the split is not perfect, so I will still have to think about what I want to use my various accounts for.
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I think that there's a core network of fans-of-fandom who are the people currently talking excitedly about DW, and have had shared topics of conversation many times in the past. They are my people, in a way that people-I-just-happen-to-share-fandoms-with aren't, but I don't really know how to define them other than that.