I really hate it when people confuse the terms “Canon”, “Headcanon” and “Alternate Universe”.
“Canon”: Something that has been outright been stated in canon outside of a joke, in a way that unambiguously means this exact thing and nothing else.
“Headcanon”: It was never unambiguously specified in canon, but I interpret this on my own in a way that goes along with canon without contradicting it.
there’s very few things that drive me up the wall in fandom as much as this weird new assumption that fandom is primarily a space for younger people that older folks are only accepted into in a trial basis if they promise to centralize and accommodate younger fans, and further, anything else is creepy and predatory. IT’S OKAY FOR ADULTS TO PRODUCE CONTENT FOR OTHER ADULTS.
if I have to read “women in their 30s” used as an insult one more time I swear I’ll – step away from that user and just hang out with the other grownups who consistently create good content because I’m also an adult and too busy comparing car insurance to fight with teenagers on the internet, but goddAMMIT I’ll be annoyed
discourse: DID YOU KNOW that Kingsman is a racist, sexist, gratuitously violent, and not very diverse film??
me: …Yes.
discourse: SO ARE YOU GOING TO STOP LIKING IT??
me: No…
discourse: WHY, YOU IRREDEEMABLE PIECE OF SHIT??
me: Because I can critique something I like and also enjoy the elements that make this film entertaining. I also love how both meta and fic discuss or simply correct the problematic things in canon, though they do also explore said problematic aspects in interesting, complex ways. For the most part, we tend to have a firm grip of what needs to be better represented in not only the movie, but in the general scope of fiction and real life social attitudes and political/economical implications as well.
discourse: …are you going to stop liking it, though
Kids. Teenagers. As someone staring 40 in the face lemme tell you a thing.
You are going to be horrified and embarrassed at some point by the shit you are doing now.
And you are going to wish with all your might you’d done more of it.
You’re gonna wish you had more selfies, more photos, more videos being dumb with your friends. You’re going to wish you’d had your hair even higher or your shoes even sparklier.
Go. Document the shit out of your ridiculous life. Fuck trends but if you wanna be trendy, go all in. Fuck in-groups and subcultures but if one sings to you, do it all. Be exactly as cool or punk rock or goth or fandom or country or hardcore or hip hop or whatever, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.
Just don’t hurt people. That’s the only thing you’ll ever genuinely live to regret.
I think I have talked about this before, but because life doesn’t end at twenty or thirty or forty or fifty and thinking that folks are going to fall out of social media or that there won’t always be someone your age and my age and twice both of our ages interested in [insert anything, ever] is a very limiting worldview.
Somewhere there is a sixty-five year old who unironically loves Taylor Swift’s music and a fifty-two year old writing Superwholock fanfic and a ninty year old who absolutely lives for the next episode of Archer and a seventy-one year old that can kick anyone’s ass in k-pop trivia. There will always be these folks, and all the Internet has done is give fans of all ages a chance to interact in a way that they never had before.
Before BBSes and the Internet and Usenet and the World Wide Web and fanrings and forums and social media, those people would just love it in their own way, in the privacy of their own homes. But now anyone can make an Ao3 account or a basic fansite or tumbl about whatever they want, and sometimes you’re gonna learn those people are old but they still get it, and sometimes you’re going to find out those folks are still kids, twelve or fourteen at the oldest, and marvel at their maturity and skill and attention to detail.
And that is rad as hell, that is fucking incredible, that is… whatever the kids are saying these days, hah.
As a sidenote, once, about a decade ago, I decided to email one of my favourite authors before she bit it … she was pushing 90 at the time. ( … she’s still alive now).
Anyways, we got to having a long discussion, because I shared my deadname with her late husband, and I actually had quite a long conversation with her.
The part of the conversation I’d like to share with you about this now pushing 100-tear-old author isn’t that she developed a liking for her breakfast eggs from her honeymoon in Vienna, or that her Husband would sometimes steal her drafts to read them as soon as he could, or that she superglued a potted plant to her bookshelf to watch her orange cat try to knock it over and fail.
Nono, I mention this to bring up what she would do as a writing exercise whenever she didn’t feel like writing her serious work.
In short, erotic darkwing duck slashfic. You can find it online.
This is the greatest addition this post has gotten so far.
I LOVE THIS FUCKING POST.
I love all the posts written by older fans, with their insight, and their generous attitude towards young fans, and young fanfic writers, and young fanartists.
Older fans who patiently explain to whomever questioned the validity of older fans participation…
that it’s older fans running the AO3 servers and the entire OTW organization;
Older fans most often writing the actually well written fanfic;
Older fans planning, organizing and executing massive cons;
Older fans who write out fandom history dating back to pre-internet so that history can be known and preserved and enjoyed;
Older fan lawyers enforcing Fair Use lawspro bono to keep fans from being sued for creating fic or art or any other media;
Older fans behaving well with life-lived-and-learned healthy boundaries;
or conversely dealing out smack-downs to those not behaving well be they older trolls or naively inexperienced younguns;
Older fans letting fans of all ages remember that zany enthusiasm is not the province only of the young – it is the province of humanity.
And we’re right there loving being human with you.
I’ll say yet again, Tumblr users are older than we think. There’s nothing unusual about a 40-something on here.
This started out as something great and turned into something better
Age is just a number but fandom is forever.
Young people today always think they control everything and that everything is about them.
I blame it on the we’re all special winners philosophy they are all growing up under.
No. Hell no. Do not come onto my post that is all about telling kids to enjoy their youth and be weird, and pretend that it’s OK to yell about young people and their specialness and participation trophies and related nonsense.
Young people are AWESOME. They are enthusiastic and thoughtful and self-aware and creative. They give life and joy and effort and thought and work to fandom. I will take one well-meaning and enthusiastic teenage girl over a dozen half or ironically committed adults any day.
Lots of them are unaware of fandom history because we have been very shitty at keeping fandom history – and that’s on us.
Lots of them don’t care about ‘elders’ because they don’t know they exist, or because they’ve been socialized to believe they shouldn’t exist, that people have to ‘grow up’ sometime – and that’s on us.
Lots of them want elders, they are delighted to discover that they can grow up and keep being as weird and awesome and wonderful as they are right now, that they don’t have to ‘become an adult’ by giving up everything that brings them joy. The notes on this post prove it.
And then lots of them are down on elders because we treat young people like shit a lot of the time, and they are not willing to put up with being treated like shit. I give kids today a lot of credit for refusing to put up with nonsense. That takes strength and courage and self-esteem and love for their friends and for humanity, all things we should encourage.
People have been bitching about the ‘special winners philosophy’ thing since at least Gen X (that’s as far back as my memory goes), and we’re about two and a half generations out from that now. This new crop of kids is hyper aware of when they’re being condescended to, and have no need to respect something without that respect being earned. They don’t think too much of themselves, they just want the same basic shit that everyone’s always wanted only now it’s harder to get – and considering that their parents generation had those things, it feels like an actual loss rather than a hopeful dream for the future.
And let’s remember: they never asked for the participation trophies. Adults did. And participation trophies don’t actually make you feel good, they make you mistrust praise and devalue outside encouragement.
Basically, fuck this attitude in general.
Also, “fandom” is now starting younger (and has been for some time) because fans of franchises aimed towards younger people now have a way of finding fellow fans far, far easier than when a lot of us were growing up. And if their first fandom is for an original property aimed at teens, chances are most of the first other fans they meet are going to be close to them in age, so *of course* it’s going to seem to them like fandom is *for* younger people. That’s not entitlement, that’s basic extrapolation from their experiences.
Not to mention they’re probably getting that, “Loving [show X / book Y] is for babies, when are you going to grow up?” bullshit from at least one older-than-them person in their lives, in which case, they’ve already been told that being passionate about fiction is a sign of immaturity, something that adults shouldn’t do- so why are we surprised when they internalize that?
remember when you had to send in an email saying you were of legal age in order to get on some fansites?
remember when you lied about your age to get on some fansites?
remember when fic didn’t have any warnings at all?
remember when you had to ask a friend to read a fic for you to be sure you could read it safely?
I remember reading some fics at 13 and being like “whoa that was fucked up” and moving on with my life because it was my fault for reading something that was marked “mature” so I wasn’t about to call out the author for not doing anything wrong just because I was weirded out. I took responsibility for my fandom interactions and didn’t expect other people to look out for me. I knew I was reading stuff I probably shouldn’t have been reading, but I wasn’t forced into it by an adult so no one but myself was to blame. I lied about my age more times than I can remember. It never never crossed my mind to call out people for putting explicit or mature material on the internet simply because I was a minor on the internet and I stumbled across it.
like, i’m not saying that adults don’t have a place in fandom. they can and they do, and many are perfectly great people.
but if you’re an adult, say, in your mid to late 20s or older, especially if you’re in a fandom that’s filled mostly with teenagers, you do need to be careful about how you interact with young people in fandom.
you need to be careful about the content you produce or share, and if you do something that people take issue with, you need to be prepared to address that in an honest and meaningful way, instead of blocking the young people who are telling you you’ve done something wrong and going on a rant about how “it’s just fiction” and “ship and let ship” and “do whatever you want” and “i’m too old for this.”
if you’re an adult in fandom, you need to be able to recognize how the content you produce might affect young people, and honestly, you should be able to show maturity when dealing with it, because you are still an adult talking to many people who are literal children.
many of those young people will, by default, view you as a sort of authority figure based on your age alone, as that’s what they’re used to. be careful of the lessons you teach them.
Hm. Okay. Here’s the thing.
We all know who you’re talking about and which situations you’re talking about. What you really have an issue with isn’t anything to do with anyone’s age, it’s about people producing things that other people find hurtful, then not responding the way the hurt people would like them to when called out on it. That can and does happen anywhere, regardless of the ages of the people involved. It’s a separate issue that should be discussed and dealt with.
And yes, in some of those recent situations, the ages of the offenders or the offended were brought into the discussion, by both sides at different times. The age difference does complicate things, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the main issue.
You may be thinking “why do you care if I focus on age, it was a salient part of the argument for me, you’re trying to defend adults who don’t care how their words hurt children!” But here’s the thing.
You may not realize this, but in other fandoms adults have been doxxed, have been threatened, have been outed because they were creating things that someone, somewhere deemed “dangerous for minors.”
Adults who were creating things that were not meant for minors, that were openly and blatantly tagged as being NSFW, explicit, as containing triggering material. I’ve even seen people who weren’t even creating the offending material being harassed, bullied, and threatened, for daring to stand up for the people who were. Not even just online, but in person. I’ve been a victim of it myself, though not to the extent that I’ve seen many others go through.
All because a segment of the fandom decided that because certain content could be dangerous for minors, it should never, ever be posted anywhere a minor might possibly read it. Adults who do post it are responsible for every bad effect it could possibly have on anyone who reads it and are horrible people for not willingly taking on that responsibility.
I know the situations you’re talking about are different. In many of those situations, adults chose to interact with the minors who were complaining about them, and yeah, when you’re choosing to directly interact with a minor you need to tread carefully.
But once you go down the “adults in fandom are responsible for the minors in fandom” road, if lots of people start clinging to that mindset, that is where it can lead. And that is an extremely serious issue. It can literally destroy careers and ruin lives.
I am not in this or any other fandom to produce content for minors. I have asked many times for minors not to follow me; I don’t block them, but I know quite a few people who block any minor who follows them. I produce enough SFW content that I don’t mind minors being able to, say, reblog it from others on their dash, but I do not want them following me and getting explicit content directly from me, full stop. If it becomes an issue, I will start blocking people.
If you’re a minor, I’m old enough to be your mother. But I’ve got my own kid, and I’m not in fandom to babysit anyone else. When I create or reblog content, I do not and will not take the presence of minors into account when doing so. Because that is not my job.
Now, right now I’m choosing to get involved in this discussion, which will involve people much younger than me, including minors. So yeah, I’m being careful about what I say and how I say it. And I agree that any adult who willingly engages in conversation with minors needs to do the same.
But I simply can’t agree with your last two paragraphs. Those “literal children” already have parents. If their own parents aren’t monitoring what media they consume, aren’t having conversations with them about problematic messages in media, it certainly isn’t my job to do so. Period.
This is an excellent time for teens in fandom (and in general) to stop seeing every adult they come in contact with as an “authority figure” and start viewing us as human beings who are living our own lives with our own motivations, problems, desires, and inclinations that have nothing to do with them. That’s something that will serve them well in life.
How people interact with oppressed groups they aren’t a part of who complain about their representation of those oppressed groups is an entirely separate issue that is not about the age of the people on either side. Age can complicate it, especially in that it can be difficult to communicate across a generation gap when people on either side have such enormously different experiences. I think that that has caused some problems.
But any adult who is not willingly choosing to interact with a minor is not responsible for minors who consume their content, and conflating the two issues is downright dangerous.
@porcupine-girl nailed it 100% but this especially bears repeating:
This is an excellent time for teens in fandom (and in general) to stopseeing every adult they come in contact with as an “authority figure” and start viewing us as human beings who are living our own lives with our own motivations, problems, desires, and inclinations that have nothing to do with them. That’s something that will serve them well in life.
Fandom is a good way for teenagers to learn how to interact with people in different age groups as peers. Because that’s what we are, we are fandom peers posting on the same web sites and obsessing over the same shows and no one in fandom has any authority over anyone else (no matter how much some people might try to claim it). I am not your teacher, your parent, your babysitter, or anyone in any position of authority over you or anyone with a responsibility for taking care of you. Nor am I willing to take on that role. The vast majority of the billions of adults in the world fit that description. Only a very few, ones you know in real life, are responsible for you personally – and soon that number will be none as you become an adult yourself.
I block anyone with an age under 18 listed in their profile if they try to follow me – not with any animosity, I’m just not interested in interacting with kids on a fandom level. This is a completely valid option and I think it’s a wise one.
Plus the original post here is predicated on the assumption that fandom belongs to people in their early 20s and younger and the rest of us are just hangers on. Sorry baby, look at the demographics; you’re the minority. We’re not in your house. I, for one, am happy to interact with anyone I have interests in common with and bond over those interests; I think people of all ages have exciting perspectives and interesting minds. But I don’t want to be treated like a second class citizen by anyone, and as said above, I am interested in interacting AS PEERS ONLY. I ain’t your mommy and I have enough people IRL trying to leech emotional labor off me, I got none for strangers on the internet.
I have watched my friends raise their kids in fandom. Literally. Raise. Their. Kids. I’ve watched young things I met carried in arms toddle, walk, run, be 8, 18, 28, marry, come to a convention carrying young things in their arms.
It was assumed that everyone who knew the parent would keep a vague eye on the child because friends don’t let friends’ little ones run into traffic. But at NO POINT was it ever assumed or expressed that the adult fans had to stop being adult fans talking about adult things. If a minor walked into the “How to write explicit bondage” panel, then someone gently suggested that this was not the place for the kid to be. If the kid found the dick pics in the art show, they were told “go ask Mommy what ‘slash’ means.”
I get that the OP wants to protect children, but while it’s my job to make sure someone too little to take care of themselves doesn’t get hurt, it has NEVER, through three generations of fandom, been my job to be anyone’s actual parent or to stop adulting around adults.
Oh, and the line “I’m not saying adults don’t have a place in fandom; they can and they do” – that line? Child, ADULTS BUILT FANDOM. We created the cons and the fanzines and the webrings and the clubs and the fan sites and the VCR tape swaps and the letter writing campaigns and the podcasts. We maintain the fan sites and the fic repositories and the conventions and the rest. Did you think those things just spontaneously evolved? Fuckin’ A we have a place in the culture that we built!
If you’re old enough to be online unsupervised you’re also old enough to police your own fandom experience. Head the tags and warnings, that’s what they are there for.
Also, to be blunt, I am not responsible for anyone’s children. Full stop.
“Try to tag your stuff appropriately so it can be avoided by those who shouldn’t be / don’t want to be seeing it” is a reasonable request, and benefits all ages.
“There are kids in fandom now, so that means you have to stop having the kinds of conversations that have existed in fandom since its inception, just in case a kid stumbles onto them” is ridiculous. Fandom was an adult space before most of us here were even born, and demanding it change entire aspects of its nature to cater to a demographics shift- as opposed to simply reminding people to be courteous towards the now much-present younger demographic and their needs- is NOT reasonable.
Fandom should be- and is- willing to remodel for the sake of the younger generations, but we’re not going to tear down parts of our house because kids mightignore the “Adults Only, Please” signs on certain rooms.
On a related note, how many adults have you told to get rid of any books on their shelves with mature themes because their children or visiting children might read them?
Not to be an old man but what happened to ship names that were just the characters’ names with a / or x between them? Like I shouldn’t need to solve some kind of Dungeon Riddle to know what characters are in the ship, you don’t need to say “I ship Candy In The Wind,” no one knows what that is, just say Charlie Bucket/Avatar Aang
In case @thebibliosphere hasn’t been tagged to death already here.
I suspect the trends like that tend to come and go in waves – I remember when I first was getting into fandom that squishing names together into one name was popular, and then it wasn’t (and oh, was I glad, because I didn’t end up scrolling very fast and twitching lots when looking for fic as much), and now it is again, and I want to whimper, because fuck if I can tell who the hell is shipped unless I’ve been lucky enough to see a post where someone actually mentions the names separately.
(I’d have to build a reference sheet to keep track, and I don’t want to have to, and damnit, it’s not like new fans are going to know who the hell things refer to in the first place, and why are we bewildering the new arrivals anyway?)
Somewhere along the way fanart become worth more than fanfic to fandom.
Artists have Patreon accounts where people pay real money to view their art early or to access special pictures like scraps or tutorials.
Whereas writers are expected to produce more and more, faster, for nothing in return. No one wants to see our “scraps” and writers who do provide Tips and Tricks often get crap for “policing” how people write.
And it falls into the prevailing notion that somehow writing is something easy, something anyone can do.
This isn’t an attack on fanartists. You deserve to receive some sort of compensation and accolades for your work. And so do fanauthors.
Writing fic is hard work. Yes, anyone can type out a story, same as anyone can pick up a pencil to draw, but what makes the difference, what makes a good piece is the experience and talent of an author. It’s all the stories no one saw, it’s all the writing books we’ve read, it’s the classes we have attended, all rolled into a package that works weeks, months, years to bring the fandom their fic. Yes we write for ourselves but we also write to contribute to fandom – just like artists do.
We’re just the same – artists and authors – and we deserve the same respect for our work.
Thank you so much, OP. And thank you to everyone who remembered us on Fic Writers Appreciation Day.
Let’s be clear, writing takes for-fucking-ever to do and it’s hard, lonely, strange, isolating, exhausting work. There is no art that is easy to make. NONE. All art is hard and deserves recognition if it has made you feel something or you enjoyed it.
Allll of this
As both an artist and writer, I have to say that I’ve been struggling and asked to write fanfic faster than I can produce, and I’ve been producing more art than fanfics because it is faster and easier to produce and more people come in. It drove me away from writing and honestly it does help when both sides are appreciated. As everyone else said, both take really long to create, and all should be deserved of recognition.
I can say writing is a lot more exhausting than drawing, but that’s my personal opinion.
^^^^^ this for days
I’m not saying artists have it easier, you guys legit blow my mind and I worship the ground you walk on But people pay for fan art while (most) people still don’t consider writing fan fiction to even be a skill. I’ve STOPPED telling people I write fan fiction because they just roll their eyes and ask if I write anything real.
Like, sorry if my 50k, heavily researched fan fiction with an original plot and excellent dialogue isn’t as “real” as the original six page story you wrote in tenth grade
A GODDAMN MEN. I’m so glad you wrote this OP. Something similar has been pinging around my brainspace for ages and ages and I couldn’t figure out how to say it. It’s like, here, take my soul and my heart and my ideas and my creativity and just *have it*, for nothing. Because I want to talk to you, because I want to connect with you, because we share the same fandom language. And somehow, in the last 3 years or so, Fan Authors have become the strange little hobbyists in the world of fandom, quality doesn’t matter, care doesn’t matter, research and talent and learning about writing doesn’t matter.
Which – if a writer writes a story and no one reads it, does it exist in the fandom? One wonders, and it makes it hard to continue screaming into the void if all you get back is the echo of your own voice, sometimes.
Having been around in fandom for a while, I have some theories about this shift–I think part of it is fandom’s migration to tumblr, which is much more friendly to art than text. But I think more than that is the broader acceptance and acknowledgement of fandom by creators, and what parts of fandom they can engage with.
Majority of creators–the overwhelming majority–won’t read fic for their works. Even the most pro-fic creators, the ones who write fic themselves, don’t do it. Because they have to protect themselves legally. If I write a fic that happens to match an idea that an author had, and the author reads my fic before writing down that idea, it looks suspicious when a book comes out that closely resembles my fic. It opens the doors to legal action where a fan could sue an author, if the fan had reason to believe the author stole their ideas.
So I get why majority of creators stay away from it. Fanart and cosplay are safer for creators to engage with. Majority of the time, there isn’t that same fear of stealing ideas. But as a fic writer, yeah, sometimes it really fucking sucks to see creators gushing over fanart and cosplay–works that absolutely deserve that praise, don’t get me wrong–because I know that they will never talk about fic the same way.
When I first got into fandom, eighteen-ish years ago, fic authors were the superstars of fandom. But over the years, yeah, fic has been relegated to second or third tier. And I’m not sure if some kind of balance will ever come back, where art and fic are put on an even keel, because one of those is able to be lauded by creators and one isn’t. I understand the reasoning behind it, I really do, and I don’t fault creators for making decisions to protect themselves. But there are times when it can be kind of demoralizing.
Reblogging this version too, because @rhiannon42 ‘s comment is spot-on. The ability to get “official” sanction and praise is a large part of why fanart is more respected than fanfic, and it’s not anything that will change anytime soon. It’s more than a bit depressing for authors, if you allow yourself to think about it too much.
Hey fun fact the people 28 and over on this website actually do KNOW that the average age skews much lower so like, reminding us is pretty pointless?
More to the point, as much as you guys are way better at identifying and calling out misogyny than I was at your age, a lot of people are really terrible at picking up on one particular kind of misogyny, and that is the creepy upper age limit for space and existence you’re setting for women in your communities.
This may not be easy to instantly identify because it’s not really ageism across the board, for example, this idea that fandom has an upper age limit is not something that effects a lot of men in fandom. Women, on the other hand, are apparently expected to re-direct their fan obsession, fixation, or hobby to things like crafting, child-rearing, and housekeeping just as soon as they become a mom or reach that “typical mom” age. Adult fangirls are “immature” and “need to grow up,” while adult fanboys are literally just a fact of life, as if we both haven’t always been there.
Whenever you question a woman’s right to this space because of her age or parental status, you are reinforcing a stereotype that has effects that reach beyond that one situation. The expectation, for example, that 40 year old men be catered to when writing comics, but that characters of interest to 40 year old women are obsolete or unprofitable.
When actresses over 30 are written out of their franchises or written exclusively in villain/mother/crone roles, this not only furthers the impression that women over 30 have no interest in these franchises, but actually causes women over 30 to disengage with these franchises as a self fulfilling prophecy. A sudden loss of representation can be a real buzzkill, as many of you already know too well.
Women over 30 are often sexual and a lot of us get fan crushes or thirst at the exact same rate as younger people do, but you’re not going to hear about it because every one of us has been shamed at one point or another for expressing desire for age-appropriate fictional characters that was totally acceptable when we were five years younger. Add to that dissonance the fact that A LOT of you are fixated on and thirsting after characters that are actually closer to OUR age if not our age exactly.
Hell, we transfer directly from EVERYONE wanting to hear about our desires and attractions to people being equally disgusted. This is pretty dissonant on a website stuffed full of explicitly sexual material, and it’s especially difficult and heartbreaking for the 30+ year olds who JUST CAME OUT and get an extra level of taboo on top of what is most likely a heaping dose of internalized homophobia.
And I know it’s coming so I’m just going to head it off at the pass, this OBVIOUSLY does not mean that you need to engage in any overtly sexual topic with an older person if that discomfits you, and it doesn’t even mean you need to INTERACT with us, because well, you don’t HAVE to interact with anyone on this website if you don’t want to.
But realize what you’re doing when your reaction to the desire of a 30 year old woman to a 30 year old fictional character is revulsion or a suggestion that she is over-sharing. Notice your shock when you realize that older women inhabit the fandom and recognize that that shock has nothing to do with those women.
Pay attention to the double standard that allows you to embrace rude bigoted 50 year old male comic creators/collectors and equally feel like there’s something wrong or stunted about a woman into the same things. Think about it because that stuff will sneak up on you, and you are probably pretty sure that you’re not going to turn 28 and magically drop all your interests, because no one should expect you to.
My nerd is just as strong now as it was at 17
My nerd has aged like a fine wine, my nerd is so much stronger now you could get drunk off the fumes.
Fandom is focus. Fandom is obsession. Fandom is insatiable consumption. Fandom is sitting for hours in front of a TV screen a movie screen a computer screen with a comic book a novel on your lap. Fandom is eyestrain and carpal tunnel syndrome and not enough exercise and staying up way, way past your bedtime.
Fandom is people you don’t tell your mother you’re meeting. Fandom is people in the closet, people out and proud, people in costumes, people in T-shirts with slogans only fifty others would understand. Fandom is a loud dinner conversation scaring the waiter and every table nearby.
Fandom is you in Germany and me in the US and him in Australia and her in Japan. Fandom is a sofabed in New York, a roadtrip to Oxnard, a friend behind a face in London. Fandom talks past timezones and accents and backgrounds. Fandom is conversation. Communication. Contact.
Fandom is drama. Fandom is melodrama. Fandom is high school. Fandom is Snacky’s law and Godwin’s law and Murphy’s law. Fandom is smarter than you. Fandom is stupider than you. Fandom is five arguments over and over and over again. Fandom is the first time you’ve ever had them.
Fandom is female. Fandom is male. Fandom lets female play at being male. Fandom bends gender, straight, gay, prude, promiscuous. Fandom is fantasy. Fandom doesn’t care about norms or taboos or boundaries. Fandom cares too much about norms and taboos and boundaries. Fandom is not real life. Fandom is closer than real life. Fandom knows what you’re really like in the bedroom. Fandom is how you would never, could never be in the bedroom.
Fandom is shipping, never shipping, het, slash, gen, none of the above, more than the above. Fandom is love for characters you didn’t create. Fandom is recreating the characters you didn’t create. Fandom is appropriation, subversion, dissention. Fandom is adoration, extrapolation, imitation. Fandom is dissection, criticism, interpretation. Fandom is changing, experimenting, attempting.
Fandom is creating. Fandom is drawing, painting, vidding: nine seasons in four minutes of love. Fandom is words, language, authoring. Fandom is essays, stories, betas, parodies, filks, zines, usenet posts, blog posts, message board posts, emails, chats, petitions, wank, concrit, feedback, recs. Fandom is writing for the first time since you were twelve. Fandom is finally calling yourself a writer.
Fandom is signal and response. Fandom is a stranger moving you to tears, anger, laughter. Fandom is you moving a stranger to speak.
Fandom is distraction. Fandom is endangering your job, your grades, your relationships, your bank account. Fandom gets no work done. Fandom is too much work. Fandom was/is just a phase. Fandom could never be just a phase. Fandom is where you found a friend, a sister, a kindred spirit. Fandom is where you found a talent, a love, a reason.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 