Andare, Partire, Tornare

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slight musings on fandom

I have a weird relationship with the idea of being a fan. I do, like many people, get wildly and deeply involved in things, and a lot of those things have established fandoms that express their love of whatever it is in various *cough* fannish ways. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Anita Blake, X-Men, X-Files (and in the past, MacGyver and Quantum Leap) are all Things of Interest to me. So I browse through the fandoms, and occasionally get sucked in. I never stay long, however. I'm not sure if it's just a part of my inherent misanthropy, the fact that I get bored with watching people replay the same arguments over and over again, or the fact that my interest tends to fade slightly after a certain time, but I have to back away from websites and mailing lists after a certain point because I just don't care that much anymore. It's happening right now with Harry Potter - I was thrilled to see the new book come out, I devoured it, and I changed my settings on Harry Potter for Grownups to get daily digests. After reading a lot of the torrent of posts, I began to back off slightly, and at this point, I'm deleting most of the digests unread, because I can't keep up and I'm falling back into that sense of not caring. Or rather, it's not that I don't care - I do care - just not as passionately. And my fannish interests tend to become inverted instead of extroverted, so sharing things with other fans just doesn't appeal to me.

This doesn't mean that I don't read much of the HPfGU discussion with interest - there's a good thread going on there right now. And I occasionally read fanfic, because despite the many misspelled, squealing fics out there, there is frequently gold among the dross. But in true egocentric fashion, I internalize a lot of what happens - I want to enter the world myself - and so my interactions with the Thing of Interest become very personal. It's why the Harry Potter fanfic I was writing turned out to be heavily shaded with Mary-Sue-ism, which I got rightly called on, and it's also why I reacted so childishly to getting called on it. It's also why I don't mind stories where people from our world travel to another - like Kay's Fionovar Tapestry - because that sort of exploration fascinates me. (note: in the end, it really is all about me *g*)

I suppose that's what most people see in the fandoms they choose to go into - something about the Thing of Interest that they find personally compelling. And for some, the way to express that is to submerge themselves into those communities to argue and make acronyms and draw fan art. And there are people like me, who enjoy fandom in small doses and move on to other fandoms, or other interests. Right now, I've been focused on Leage of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but now that I've read the graphic novel, that'll start to fade slightly. I'll probably be in limbo until November and the release of The Two Towers on DVD.

It's all good. And if Snape in the guise of Alan Rickman does show up at my door, all the better. Or Lupin. Lupin would be just fiiiinnnnneeeee. Or Boromir and Faramir. Or...

1:41 p.m. - 2003-07-16

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