Miring, not waving

Considering the preponderance of Buffy and Angel fans who have me friended, and are probably hoping for something actually related to those subjects, my misdirection of late might be annoying (who the hell is this dumb bitch? you ask). I'm actually having a lot of ennui related to the fandom right now and where I fit in it, so it's been easier to focus on things like Queer Eye, which makes me so very, very happy, and Vividcon, because right now vids make me happy and my trip to Chicago left me with a big glowy glow.

The thing is, I'm just mired. It's been hard reading the Spuffy hate being thrown around everywhere, feeling like, as someone put it on another LJ (I missed most of the slash kerfuffling going on while I was in Chi-town, but what little I saw left me dispirited and sore), I'm in the Five Minutes Ago column of EW's little in/out chart every week. Shrug. The Spike hate drains me, the Buffy hate makes me cringe, the arguments going on in Mag 7 fandom, while I don't participate there much, just seem so asinine... basically, I wish every day were kerfuffle-free day. This is a great idea, and I wish that it could continue indefinitely. Sometimes I feel as if I've sunk into a big pit of quicksand and there's no one to wave a stick at me and help me climb out.

I write slash and I write het. Both camps seem to disgust the other these days, and I'm stuck in the demilitarized zone, interested in both (just in differing fandoms). And I think there's quicksand in the DMZ, too, and I'm pretty sure it's mined. I got back into fandom last year as a totally happy person, and have felt like the luster of my fannishness is being tarnished lately and that it's time to go away again. Possibly it's because people feel frustrated by the demise of a show that was so important for so many of us; possibly it's other things. Maybe it's just the dog days of summer. People grow and change, though, and we veer off into other areas. It's the nature of the beast, but it's hard when you don't get where your friends are going. That's why I think KFD is such a good idea, trying to build bridges between people's disparate interests rather than polarize.

I can't seem to write -- not that this is a sad thing, I realize no one is sitting there looking at the calendar going "where's the next chapter of Measure?" but I feel weirdly bad for dropping the ball. I wrote up a storm for a couple months, and now it's like someone stole about ten pints of blood (if only it had been Spike, draining me in my sleep) out of me. No energy, no enthusiasm. I'd made a vid that I brought to the con that I was initially proud of, but ended up feeling less than enthusiastic about because of the reactions of a couple people, and I don't know why their response affected me that way. That doesn't usually happen to me.

Maybe it's that it was quite personal -- I wanted to make a vid of my fanfic, in a way. Tell the story visually that I kind of write most of the time: Spike-centric but Spuffy-based, melancholy, sensual (not sexual, just... sensory), bittersweet. The always gracious and supportive killabeez told me it made her feel misty, and sockkpuppett said I'd make a Spuffy of her yet, which I know is not true and that she was saying it simply to be kind, but that kindness meant a lot anyway so I give her big smoochies. Yet I feel like somehow I didn't achieve the goal I wanted, or something -- the audience response was nice, but I think I didn't maybe get that feeling across or something in the vid. I don't know. And it's strange that the intense glowy glow about the con and the response to feochadn's and my Miracles vid hasn't pulled me up out of the mire yet, but it hasn't.

I'm hoping KFD and its aftermath might help, might put me back on track. Make me feel less like hiding and more like I'm participating; less like I'm in limbo and more like I'm a catalyst in the fandom; less like throwing out the fanfic altogether and just concentrating only on RL, which doesn't give me quite the pleasure that fandom does. I dunno. Maybe I'm just old, and the quibbling and bickering wear me out easier, the way kids wear out grandparents faster than their parents. I'm glad to see my friends participating in KFD. I'm glad to see everyone sort of reexamining their responses lately to things, discussing, thinking. That's for the good. I'm hoping it'll trickle down to me like rain after a drought, and renew my interest a little. I'm sorry for not being much of a participant lately -- and hope to be again. I know no one is hanging on my words, but I'm sure there's a couple folks wondering "now, why did I friend this nimrod who talks about stuff I'm don't care about, again?"