Fandom makes you do the wacky
Jun. 10th, 2003 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynThere’s this thing in gardening called soil tilth — the dictionary emphasizes the meaning of cultivation of soil, but in Seattle there was an organic, natural approach to gardening organization called Tilth where they emphasized the meaning of quality of soil, of the quality of growing things. Since I’m very into gardening, I pay a lot of attention to the quality of soil, and I was working in my garden a little last night checking on some plants that were struggling with my lack of care and poor soil, and it kind of made me think of the two kerfuffles going on that I’ve been reading about the past couple days. I have to state up front that I know only what I read on a couple journals here about James Marsters’s comments at the recent con, and I know almost nothing about the age of consent/smut warning issue beyond people saying what their opinions are. Mostly this is me musing on kerfuffley things, so stop reading if you don’t give a rat’s what I think (which, I realize, includes most people, but that rarely stops me from opining).
So back to my analogy — a long time ago I took a runner cutting from a friend’s honeysuckle vine, and it sat in my car on a 90-degree day for a number of hours, and then I planted it in horrid, horrid soil. The thing about tilth is that you endeavor to create good soil, with lots of microbes and wormy guys and beetles and organic matter and whatnot, in order for plants to thrive. Dry, dusty, lifeless soil isn’t good for anything, but stuff will still grow even in the crappiest soil sometimes — hardy plants that can deal with anything. I planted this poor runner in the most lifeless, wouldn’t-hold-water soil, didn’t amend it much with better material, kind of ignored it, and the damn thing thrived. Every year it gives me heavenly blossoms that perfume the night in my backyard, and I take no care of it except to prune it occasionally. The bed’s been overtaken by grass of the most pernicious kind, it never gets watered in dry weather, and it shouldn’t thrive, but it does.
The thing is, fandom thrives in pretty crappy soil, too, mostly. The majority of the time, we’re (fans) not lucky enough to have been planted in good soil with lots of water. To be fans, especially really active fans, we endure a lot of weather — mundanes who think we’re stupid freaks, people who think we have no real life because we care about a show or actors, friends and family who can’t or won’t support our interests, people who think we’re all stalker types or like that woman who wore her Star Trek uniform to jury duty. We hope that other fans will provide the happy home — the good soil, if you will. Only there’s still strife and arguing and misery. Because the truth is, we can’t be one big happy family. United against the mundane world, sure we are. But inside our own world, it’s fraught with internecine warfare, because we all have different perspectives and different ways of looking at things. There’s no way we can have a united opinion, because we are all so different, even within the fannish world that unites us.
I spent a lot of time in the past few years largely gafiated from fandom — I continued to write and vid, especially in XF and Mag 7, but I didn’t get involved in organized fandom at all after some really embittering experiences (and I mean seriously embittering; these LJ fracas things can’t hold a candle to some of the lovely wars I got caught in the crossfire of). When Spike fell for Buffy, though, it brought me out of my shell, and I started getting involved again, and feeling like it was where I belonged. I am a fan. I’m always going to be a fan, probably till I’m dead. I’ve been a fannish type all my life; I just never got into organized structured fandom until late in life, and even if I don’t stay in it, I’ll still be a fan. I collect stuff about the shows I love, I retextualize the material in fic and vids, I archive and obsess and analyze and mythologize. That is what we as fans do.
For a lot of people, Buffy (or name your Really Huge Fandom) fandom is a new experience. It’s old hat for me, but most folks I meet are way younger than I am and this is the first time they ever felt this way about anything, ever got involved and did fannish things. Going to cons to see actors is their first major foray of this type. So they don’t have a lot of perspective — that’s not a slam, just a fact. It’s totally new; there’s no history. Recently there was a huge flap about someone taking people’s vids without permission to give to the showrunners of a program. A lot of older fans I knew were kind of denigrating the very upset reactions of the vidders because it wasn’t the first time it had happened. Well, no, it wasn’t. But I pointed out, they’re upset because this is the first time it’s happened to them. They didn’t have any history, and in some cases never cared about those who’d gone before them (one of the largest gripes a lot of us older fans have with net newbies is that they believe they invented everything, which kinds of makes us feel negated), so this was a very harsh, new, bad experience for them. I could see both sides. I could see the upset and the “oh get over it.”
And I feel like I can see both sides of the JM remarks issue. For a lot of people, this is their first organized fandom and they hear the actor they admire, almost worship, commenting on what they love, so they put a lot of stock in his comments and beliefs. They are heavily invested in something that they’ve never felt before, so they may take things personally when someone they admire says something that could be construed as denigrating. It’s totally natural — and for it to result in name-calling or derision. It’s how people react when they’re angry or hurt. Of course, it doesn’t excuse rudeness, and it doesn’t excuse the over the top quality of people going “I’ll never watch this show again!” and all of that. But that’s the other side I can see — the “shrug, so what” side. Both of them are familiar to me.
When I first got yanked into media fandom (as opposed to SF fandom), I remember everyone telling me the horrible things Martin Shaw had said about The Professionals and his character and his fans, and how rude he was to fans. All this was a way to try to direct me to feel otherwise about being a Bodie and Doyle lover — that I should only love Bodie because Lewis Collins was a nice guy. I never bought it. How MS acted to people or thought of his character was irrelevant to me insofar only as it would affect my ability to a) get an autograph if I ever saw him on stage or b) delayed the release of the tapes of the show. That over the top quality of their hatred of the actor affecting the way they watched the show annoyed me. I’ve seen it with Buffy lately in people vowing off the show when Spike was made a regular, or when he fell for Buffy or when blah blah blah happened; or recently with Cordelia being written out of the show and people dramatically stating they’ll never watch Angel again. People who make up their minds ahead of time just baffle me. But I try to stay away from that now — only then something like this JM kerfuffle starts, and it’s hard. Because it reminds me of all the times I got upset or was too heavily invested. These days, I’m old and jaded, but I remember what it felt like to be young and new and excited. I get that.
And I admit I know next to nothing about the age kerfuffle, but it seems like yet another example of the cyclical things that happen, the kind of ongoing little viruses and diseases that crop up again and again and infect fandom. The oldsters shake their heads, new people jump up and down. Because this is the first go-round on it for a lot of people, and so they invest their emotions in it more than some of us. I don’t think that the people who get upset necessarily should be chastised for feeling that way; but I also think that sometimes people who get upset could use a hefty dose of perspective, but they’ll only be able to get that over time, really. And some will never get it. I waited for so long to get on the Tabula Rasa mailing list, and then when I did, I played for about a month before realizing it was just as bad as BAPS and filled with angry, draining individuals who were sapping my enjoyment of season 7 so much that I had to just stop reading it. It made me sad, because I wanted a place to play and talk and discuss. But many of them are just too heavily invested to see any POV other than their own, and this is their first go-round, so it’s very intense for them. I just need to be away from that kind of person, mostly. I think the underage and smut warnings and age consents people are probably coming from the same situations.
(Just for full disclosure: I don’t put ratings on my stories, but I do state on my site that if people are underage they should go elsewhere. I think ratings in fandom are shit, I think they’re stupid and worthless and asinine. I despise it when someone puts ratings on my stories if they list me in their links, because most people put these absurd ratings on stuff if there’s even a hint of slash but no actual sex, or because there’s a love scene, whether graphic or not. I think a world where a movie like the Matrix gets an R not for violence but for sexuality, and a movie like X-Men 2 has a PG-13 when it contains one of the most profoundly disturbing scenes of any summer action blockbuster I’ve seen in years [don't get me wrong, I loved X2], is a really fucked up world. I think when fans put NC-17 ratings on stuff when they don’t even understand what that means or just because it has a sex scene, never use the good old R, and put NC-17 adult warnings on slash even when there’s no actual homosexual sex just because homosexuality is wrong and bad and adult, is not a good world. Sorry. Lost control there... /rant)
Anyways. What I’m mostly getting at is that all the stuff that’s going on is stuff that’s been going on for a long time. Pretty soon we’ll probably see the next cycle of the feedback wars and the BNF wars and whatnot. It comes and goes because fandom is always drawing new people. And we don’t really prepare the ground for them anymore. It used to be you got mentored in fandom, especially slash. You met people, they taught you the rules of the game, etc. Now it’s a free-for-all, and so the little seedlings are coming in and have no sense of history of what this is all about. They have invested heavily in this new thing called fandom, but there’s not a lot of places where they might be able to find out about what went before. So the cycles will keep happening, and people will still have their own interpretations different from others’, and actors will say and do inane things, and showrunners will continue to piss us off, and arguments will ensue. Because it’s not a big happy garden where we’re all the same kinds of plants with the same kinds of needs. The things that ail one plant don’t ail another, the stuff that makes some people wither and die is perfectly fine for others.
I’m really glad I’m surrounded by more positive people than I often feel like being, because I am pessimistic and cynical and I tend to get overemotional about things. I get the people who are upset about these kerfuffles, because I often get upset over the least little thing. I need those positive perky people more than I care to admit. I’ve had a great time getting into Spuffy fandom, but I still honestly feel very out of step with others, and I really never felt like I found real connections with others the way I did in many past fandoms. I often disagree with the majority of people I see around me, but it’s still been an interesting ride, maybe just because I did open myself up to people who think and act differently than I do. Unfortunately a lot of us don’t recognize it when we need someone of a different kind around us, and we cluster with other people who might amplify our emotions, or only tell us “you go, girl” when we might need a slap upside the head. It’s the nature of fans. Kerfuffles are the nature of fandom. It’s in our soil. ;-)
And I had a whole separate digression about JM/Spike and how ME never knew what they had with that character, about people giving up on shows, and about the whole myth of women always falling for bad boys, but I guess that’ll have to wait.
So back to my analogy — a long time ago I took a runner cutting from a friend’s honeysuckle vine, and it sat in my car on a 90-degree day for a number of hours, and then I planted it in horrid, horrid soil. The thing about tilth is that you endeavor to create good soil, with lots of microbes and wormy guys and beetles and organic matter and whatnot, in order for plants to thrive. Dry, dusty, lifeless soil isn’t good for anything, but stuff will still grow even in the crappiest soil sometimes — hardy plants that can deal with anything. I planted this poor runner in the most lifeless, wouldn’t-hold-water soil, didn’t amend it much with better material, kind of ignored it, and the damn thing thrived. Every year it gives me heavenly blossoms that perfume the night in my backyard, and I take no care of it except to prune it occasionally. The bed’s been overtaken by grass of the most pernicious kind, it never gets watered in dry weather, and it shouldn’t thrive, but it does.
The thing is, fandom thrives in pretty crappy soil, too, mostly. The majority of the time, we’re (fans) not lucky enough to have been planted in good soil with lots of water. To be fans, especially really active fans, we endure a lot of weather — mundanes who think we’re stupid freaks, people who think we have no real life because we care about a show or actors, friends and family who can’t or won’t support our interests, people who think we’re all stalker types or like that woman who wore her Star Trek uniform to jury duty. We hope that other fans will provide the happy home — the good soil, if you will. Only there’s still strife and arguing and misery. Because the truth is, we can’t be one big happy family. United against the mundane world, sure we are. But inside our own world, it’s fraught with internecine warfare, because we all have different perspectives and different ways of looking at things. There’s no way we can have a united opinion, because we are all so different, even within the fannish world that unites us.
I spent a lot of time in the past few years largely gafiated from fandom — I continued to write and vid, especially in XF and Mag 7, but I didn’t get involved in organized fandom at all after some really embittering experiences (and I mean seriously embittering; these LJ fracas things can’t hold a candle to some of the lovely wars I got caught in the crossfire of). When Spike fell for Buffy, though, it brought me out of my shell, and I started getting involved again, and feeling like it was where I belonged. I am a fan. I’m always going to be a fan, probably till I’m dead. I’ve been a fannish type all my life; I just never got into organized structured fandom until late in life, and even if I don’t stay in it, I’ll still be a fan. I collect stuff about the shows I love, I retextualize the material in fic and vids, I archive and obsess and analyze and mythologize. That is what we as fans do.
For a lot of people, Buffy (or name your Really Huge Fandom) fandom is a new experience. It’s old hat for me, but most folks I meet are way younger than I am and this is the first time they ever felt this way about anything, ever got involved and did fannish things. Going to cons to see actors is their first major foray of this type. So they don’t have a lot of perspective — that’s not a slam, just a fact. It’s totally new; there’s no history. Recently there was a huge flap about someone taking people’s vids without permission to give to the showrunners of a program. A lot of older fans I knew were kind of denigrating the very upset reactions of the vidders because it wasn’t the first time it had happened. Well, no, it wasn’t. But I pointed out, they’re upset because this is the first time it’s happened to them. They didn’t have any history, and in some cases never cared about those who’d gone before them (one of the largest gripes a lot of us older fans have with net newbies is that they believe they invented everything, which kinds of makes us feel negated), so this was a very harsh, new, bad experience for them. I could see both sides. I could see the upset and the “oh get over it.”
And I feel like I can see both sides of the JM remarks issue. For a lot of people, this is their first organized fandom and they hear the actor they admire, almost worship, commenting on what they love, so they put a lot of stock in his comments and beliefs. They are heavily invested in something that they’ve never felt before, so they may take things personally when someone they admire says something that could be construed as denigrating. It’s totally natural — and for it to result in name-calling or derision. It’s how people react when they’re angry or hurt. Of course, it doesn’t excuse rudeness, and it doesn’t excuse the over the top quality of people going “I’ll never watch this show again!” and all of that. But that’s the other side I can see — the “shrug, so what” side. Both of them are familiar to me.
When I first got yanked into media fandom (as opposed to SF fandom), I remember everyone telling me the horrible things Martin Shaw had said about The Professionals and his character and his fans, and how rude he was to fans. All this was a way to try to direct me to feel otherwise about being a Bodie and Doyle lover — that I should only love Bodie because Lewis Collins was a nice guy. I never bought it. How MS acted to people or thought of his character was irrelevant to me insofar only as it would affect my ability to a) get an autograph if I ever saw him on stage or b) delayed the release of the tapes of the show. That over the top quality of their hatred of the actor affecting the way they watched the show annoyed me. I’ve seen it with Buffy lately in people vowing off the show when Spike was made a regular, or when he fell for Buffy or when blah blah blah happened; or recently with Cordelia being written out of the show and people dramatically stating they’ll never watch Angel again. People who make up their minds ahead of time just baffle me. But I try to stay away from that now — only then something like this JM kerfuffle starts, and it’s hard. Because it reminds me of all the times I got upset or was too heavily invested. These days, I’m old and jaded, but I remember what it felt like to be young and new and excited. I get that.
And I admit I know next to nothing about the age kerfuffle, but it seems like yet another example of the cyclical things that happen, the kind of ongoing little viruses and diseases that crop up again and again and infect fandom. The oldsters shake their heads, new people jump up and down. Because this is the first go-round on it for a lot of people, and so they invest their emotions in it more than some of us. I don’t think that the people who get upset necessarily should be chastised for feeling that way; but I also think that sometimes people who get upset could use a hefty dose of perspective, but they’ll only be able to get that over time, really. And some will never get it. I waited for so long to get on the Tabula Rasa mailing list, and then when I did, I played for about a month before realizing it was just as bad as BAPS and filled with angry, draining individuals who were sapping my enjoyment of season 7 so much that I had to just stop reading it. It made me sad, because I wanted a place to play and talk and discuss. But many of them are just too heavily invested to see any POV other than their own, and this is their first go-round, so it’s very intense for them. I just need to be away from that kind of person, mostly. I think the underage and smut warnings and age consents people are probably coming from the same situations.
(Just for full disclosure: I don’t put ratings on my stories, but I do state on my site that if people are underage they should go elsewhere. I think ratings in fandom are shit, I think they’re stupid and worthless and asinine. I despise it when someone puts ratings on my stories if they list me in their links, because most people put these absurd ratings on stuff if there’s even a hint of slash but no actual sex, or because there’s a love scene, whether graphic or not. I think a world where a movie like the Matrix gets an R not for violence but for sexuality, and a movie like X-Men 2 has a PG-13 when it contains one of the most profoundly disturbing scenes of any summer action blockbuster I’ve seen in years [don't get me wrong, I loved X2], is a really fucked up world. I think when fans put NC-17 ratings on stuff when they don’t even understand what that means or just because it has a sex scene, never use the good old R, and put NC-17 adult warnings on slash even when there’s no actual homosexual sex just because homosexuality is wrong and bad and adult, is not a good world. Sorry. Lost control there... /rant)
Anyways. What I’m mostly getting at is that all the stuff that’s going on is stuff that’s been going on for a long time. Pretty soon we’ll probably see the next cycle of the feedback wars and the BNF wars and whatnot. It comes and goes because fandom is always drawing new people. And we don’t really prepare the ground for them anymore. It used to be you got mentored in fandom, especially slash. You met people, they taught you the rules of the game, etc. Now it’s a free-for-all, and so the little seedlings are coming in and have no sense of history of what this is all about. They have invested heavily in this new thing called fandom, but there’s not a lot of places where they might be able to find out about what went before. So the cycles will keep happening, and people will still have their own interpretations different from others’, and actors will say and do inane things, and showrunners will continue to piss us off, and arguments will ensue. Because it’s not a big happy garden where we’re all the same kinds of plants with the same kinds of needs. The things that ail one plant don’t ail another, the stuff that makes some people wither and die is perfectly fine for others.
I’m really glad I’m surrounded by more positive people than I often feel like being, because I am pessimistic and cynical and I tend to get overemotional about things. I get the people who are upset about these kerfuffles, because I often get upset over the least little thing. I need those positive perky people more than I care to admit. I’ve had a great time getting into Spuffy fandom, but I still honestly feel very out of step with others, and I really never felt like I found real connections with others the way I did in many past fandoms. I often disagree with the majority of people I see around me, but it’s still been an interesting ride, maybe just because I did open myself up to people who think and act differently than I do. Unfortunately a lot of us don’t recognize it when we need someone of a different kind around us, and we cluster with other people who might amplify our emotions, or only tell us “you go, girl” when we might need a slap upside the head. It’s the nature of fans. Kerfuffles are the nature of fandom. It’s in our soil. ;-)
And I had a whole separate digression about JM/Spike and how ME never knew what they had with that character, about people giving up on shows, and about the whole myth of women always falling for bad boys, but I guess that’ll have to wait.
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 01:04 pm (UTC)You are so wise. This is so, so true. Flames and kerfuffles and hurt feelings and upset-ness isn't an anomaly; it's a natural occurrence. It's part of being involved in fandom. Shit happens. This is the shit. ::shrug:: Like you said, it's the nature of the fandom.
Very, very excellent post. I heart you. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 01:16 pm (UTC)I ::heart:: you, Gwyn *g*
Again, reason # 289 of why i will beta anything you write...
no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 01:50 pm (UTC)Feel free to loosely recap because, much as it pains me to admit it, I'm one of those types who gets her knickers in a twist when an actor is snotty towards his/her fanbase, but I promise to behave myself. In your journal. :)
no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 02:20 pm (UTC)As for the age/consent kerfuffle, that I have no idea about its location; I've only seen responses to it in some journals.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 03:12 pm (UTC)More than that, he's an actor! A TELEVISION actor! *sobs* Rather than being a student of psychology with the luxury to peer into people's souls, he's in the business of slapping a recognizable facsimile of human emotion up on the screen every week! And do you know what the worst part is? He's surrounded by people JUST LIKE HIM, so he'll never have any idea what truly lies at the depths of a fangirl's soul!
*flings self, weeping, onto bed*
I just can't go on! If my object of lust is not a sterling example to the rest of the human race, as well as a reasonably talented actor...well, there's just no point in living, is there?
...What do you think? Too much sarcasm? ;)
Re: the age thing, I've seen someone musing about it, and the sum total of my response to it is, "Eh."
no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 04:27 pm (UTC)I can't say I wouldn't have felt kind of angry or disappointed if I'd been there -- but I don't really know, and others have said they didn't feel negativity from him at all. And that's why I don't go to actor cons. So the problem is about interpretations, as
let's try again
Date: 2003-06-10 02:12 pm (UTC)I am a fan, too, and I, too, have been a fannish type all my life, starting with books and then with TV shows once they hit out post-communist TV screens, and I, too, collect, mythologize, obsess, archive and analyze. And I get strange looks for it from my family and my RL friends. Internet is a refuge, in a manner of speaking, the place I go to to be the fan that I am, and I have learned long ago that the shows, characters and storylines consuming me completely at one given moment will be relegated to a fond memory years later, and that it is really not worth to spill pages of virtual ink and engage in heated arguments over who Buffy really belongs with and whether Sydney Bristow has inner darkness or not, because 5 years from now the characters we're arguing so vehemently about will be gone from the TV land and exist only in our memories, and in old stories gathering dust somewhere on the top shelf, filed away in binders labeled with names of numerous other fandoms we used to be part of.
Sure, some of these characters or storylines have such power over us that they'll remain with us forever, in some small, sometimes strange way - and thus I will forever "hate" NBC for cancelling Earth 2 and I will always feel that John Grant of Profiler was screwed by the writers who'd turned him into a complete jerk, and "hate" them for it, and will always "hate" John. E. Riley and Maggie DeBeast for ruining "Sunset Beach".
But notice the inverted comas around the word hate.
It really is not worth it to spend your energy - the negative, destructive or hostile kind - on things that passable, that insignificant in the large scheme of things.
What I think of the JM keruffle? I sure have an opinion. And I'm going to keep it to myself, for I don't think it matters to anyone but me. In fact, I don't thinkt it matters that much to me, either. And I'll speak of the next season of Angel when I see it.
All excellent points, Gwyn. Thanks for posting them.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-10 04:35 pm (UTC)I was tempted to just write "Word!"
Date: 2003-06-10 07:12 pm (UTC)And yes, there's nothing better than the garden to see the results of what you've done (amended, planted, whatever), and the results of what you haven't done (amended , watered, picked the right spot/right plant in the first place), and what you have no fucking control over (weather, mostly), all together in one place. Makes me proud and humble pretty much daily.
(if it wasn't after 7pm, and I wasn't still at work, I'd make a "my BSO's actor is an asshat, but BFD!" icon -- not of Spike, but one of my (many) other BSOs...)
Sandy
Sandy
Re: I was tempted to just write "Word!"
Date: 2003-06-10 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-11 05:44 pm (UTC)(Too tired to answer, though.)
PS: Hee. Took that icon I once had, too. Way cool.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-17 03:40 pm (UTC)