There's Nothing Wrong With Fandom That Getting Rid Of All The People Won't Fix

[icarus]

There's Nothing Wrong With Fandom That Getting Rid Of All The People Won't Fix

Every now and then I read about a major wank, or I hear a loud declaration that fandom is all screwed up. That once upon a time fandom was warm and welcoming, filled with love and roses... but no more. Newcomers have changed it.

Or else, once upon a time we entered into a fandom with open hearts and then had our souls crushed by the [fill in the pet peeve of choice]. Now that we know better the kinds of people we'll meet in fandom, we're going to [put on our magic ring and depart like Bilbo / choose only the people we deem worthy of ourselves and f-lock mightily / other more imaginative exit designed to make our point that fandom is fucked and we are right about this].

Honestly, the only problem with fandom is that we bring ourselves to it.

Fandom is like a Rorschach test. It's a map of our own personal issues whether we're aware of them or not. Have a hair-trigger temper? Oddly enough, something in fandom will set it off. Have a lingering issue with relationships? How dare all those people talk about marriage as if it's a good thing! As it happens, Yoda was right: What's in fandom? "Only what you bring with you."

It takes a lot of self-honesty to negotiate fandom. These are personal journals where many people (unless it's their tendency to be shy)... write journals. Let it all hang out. Personal stuff, tough questions, issues, opinions and politics. At the same time, there's a quasi-anonymity that allows us to project ourselves or our own issues onto these blank slates more easily than if we saw a person and a face. I had somebody come by and make a political comment and I was quick to make an assumption that turned out to be wrong. What was that? Well, it had nothing to do with the commenter, it was my own frustration with WG's Bush-supporting family..

Now we humor our BNFs and many people believe "oh, well this BNF is surrounded by fawning fans that let them get away with appalling behavior."

Well. Not really.

You see, there's a central office located about four blocks north of Queen Street in Toronto, Ontario,* that is dedicated to BNF-management. The moment a BNF has a meltdown they get a call, "Oh, hell. How many WIPs are at risk? And a Fic-A-Thon assignment -- plus an archive? Shit. We'll get right on it."

They then dispatch professional "soothers" whose job it is to ensure the steady flow of fiction. After all, we're not paying the BNF to write. They are producing massive amounts of work for us, for free. The work of the OBNFMT (Ontario BNF Management Team, Ltd.) is a pragmatic side of the gift economy. It's not a job I could do, but I'd like to thank the soothers of OBNFMT from the bottom of my heart.

It's up to the BNF, like any other star, to be honest with themselves and recognize when they're being handled. Not that being handled isn't very nice. The palanquin alone is worth the price of admission.



* What? You're suprised it's a Canadian firm?

Comments

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

as a relative newbie to All This, both the net, fanfic and slash, all this is totally fascinating to me, still yet.

I don't think it ever stops being fascinating, to tell the truth.

For some reason this reminds me of the time I tried waitressing back in the late 80s. I was a terrible waitress. I was a waitress so bad the regulars lined up at the bar, smirking, just to see what would happen. I never remembered anyone's order, had terrible hand-writing, and most of all didn't care.

So one day this guy ordered tea with a slice of lemon. I got him his tea, but there was no lemon. He got all upset because he didn't get his damned lemon and started making a big fuss. I put my hands on my hips (the regulars leaned over to watch because they knew this was going to be good) and told him:

"There're people starving in Africa, leprosy in India, the Chinese have taken over Tibet and are torturing Buddhist monks, but what you're upset about is the fact that you didn't get a slice of lemon?" I stomped over to get him a slice of lemon, which he huffily tried to say he didn't want anymore. "No. Here. I want you to have your lemon. I want you to be happy. But you have to understand that if you're going to get all upset about a slice of lemon, your priorities are all messed up."

He got even huffier and acid, and said something along the lines of 'well, what are you doing about world hunger, huh?' Which was really the wrong thing to say because, "I'm a Buddhist. I protest the occupation of Tibet on a regular basis -- not that it seems to be doing much good, though I think practice and prayer is more long-term solution -- I spend my entire life devoted to spiritual practice and I'm building a Buddhist temple -- except when I'm forced to be here to pay the bills. Serving you lemon. Now. Drink your tea."

He looked a little flabbergasted and whimpered, "But I just wanted some lemon...."

"Yes. You should have your lemon. You should be happy. But don't get all upset about it."

I think the other waitresses practically expired trying not to laugh. As I stomped off, I heard one of the regulars say "We warned you not to complain."

Apparently I was very entertaining for the three weeks before I was fired. And I suspect that the entertainment value was the main reason it took that long. ;)

Appropos of nothing of course, except that my mind apparently jumped tracks. ;)

the thought police can't kill you and eat you for writing kid fic or HS au's or unpopular pairings, but some of us cower as if they could.

It's funny, this post isn't really in reference to people discouraging pairings or certain fics, though I can see how it would seem that way because I've discussed that lately.

I had a friend storm off, blasting fandom, and I've seen that so many times. At the old LotR site there was someone who went by the name Red, and she would leave about once a year. Her departure I think was more embarrassing for her because she always came back. She was a big wheel, and there was always someone clinging to her leg as she left (I fell for it the first year).

After a while you realized it was really her issues, because the topics that she complained about changed, but her behavior repeated.

That said, going back to the topic of several days ago, people should be able to have the freedom to write whatever they will without attacks from the thought police.

I should point out that technically, in the Harry Potter fandom, there is a very legitimate concern about underage fic in Australia. The child pornography laws have been written in such a way that just owning Keri Hulme's The Bone People, which contains some scenes of child molestation (fade to black), could potentially get you arrested with a permanent record. I'm sure the framers of that law assumed that "real literature" couldn't possibly have child molestation. *eyeroll*

/long-winded, rambling response. My excuse is it's lazy, sleepy weather and I'm posting meta because I can't seem to concentrate to write.

Icarus

[princessofg.livejournal.com]

will you marry me?

rotfl. Thanks for the waitress story; there's so much there. it would be really fun to write that up as a short story, because i love the actual punch line: the guy should have his fucking lemon, fine, that's the rules and the whole point, but he SHOULDN"T get so excited about it. that's the part where he loses perspective.... i love how you don't minimize the fact that you, in fact, were a terrible waitress by the rules they had, yet the irony was that you became kind of a standup comedian.... that's a meta, right there. so thank you for that. it cheered me up immensely in a twisted monday morning kind of way. bless you for that.

buddhism daunts me for this reason (so if you can shed some light on it for me, have at it): i have a hard time making the leap from love of my kids, for example, to the kid of universal, unattached compassion that it seems to require. i don't know how that works; i can't grok it. it seems to me that my love for my kids or husband is inextricably linked with a kind of desire, you know? also i don't actually get how it helps you in a situation where achievement and ambition and persistence is actually necessary -- like in a high-pressure work situation. it would seem that just the setup, the rules, if you will, of American-style achievement are antithetical to Buddhism. you would have to throw out the system and start over to actually apply its vaules.

but i love what i know about meditation, the sense of humor it can give you, the egalitarian nature of it, the idea of attachment and nonattachment, which really resonated for me because of my use of 12-step principles about detachment. i've sample a lot of religious/spiritual ideas in a misspent life, so i love talking about it..... anyway. another digression, since we're not writing. :)

about the fandom thought police thing: well, i was throwing out examples of how bnf's can pressure writers and people in fandom to do things their way, and how we fall for that.

your example of the person huffing in and out of that lotr site is something i've seen before also. bnf's aren't always drama queens, and drama queens aren't always bnfs, and we all have our issues, don't we?

btw, i've been happily reading my way through your big stargate recs list. thank you for doing that. you've also got some stories and authors i haven't found on other lists, and that's really great. some of the older listings are inactive now, but you probably knew that. it's a moving target in fandom.

thanks again for making my monday all shiny.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

i have a hard time making the leap from love of my kids, for example, to the kid of universal, unattached compassion that it seems to require. i don't know how that works

You don't make a leap. You make a promise to make a leap, and then you chip away at it.

For example, I could have empathy for starving people in Africa, but bugs? Yealch. So I worked on it for a while. I ran across one of those National Geographic nature shows on a bored Sunday afternoon and watched how, geeze, the life of a bug sucks. There's no maternal care, they're under constant threat of predators, and most of them die horribly (hitting a windshield, squashed under a tire, eaten alive -- augh).

Their lives are so devoid of anything good that they only have two modes: Fear/Not-Fear. Try to help a bug and watch it panic.

So I guess looking at things from a bug's point of view (walking a mile in a bug's mocassins?) helped me stop viewing at them as just ew-bugs, but see their circumstances. And then you find something or someone else that you just can't see having compassion for and work on that for a while.

i've been happily reading my way through your big stargate recs list. thank you for doing that. you've also got some stories and authors i haven't found on other lists, and that's really great. some of the older listings are inactive now, but you probably knew that.

You're welcome. I noticed the other day that Keiko Kirin's website is gone, so there goes another one. Sigh.

Icarus

[princessofg.livejournal.com]

also forgot to say: yeah, i had heard about that new australian law. something similar comes and goes in the US, though we did get a crucial supreme court ruling a few years ago about virtual porn, and the First Amendment is a pretty broad protection of speech that is not considered mainstream. they even defeated a "ban flag burning" amendment to the constitution this year; yeah. a ray of hope in a desolate landscape. don't get me started on USA politics, kay? :)