Epiphany about fans

[sqbr]

So I've read a bunch of online fannish arguments where people go "These sorts of fans are crazy" and give examples, and then talk about the way fans should actually think, and end up conflating "Crazy fans" and "People whose attitudes are rational, but different to mine". And I had thought about where one should draw the line.

Some examples of sane attitudes for a fan (most people won't have all of these at once):

• The one true text (such as it is) is the canon. Fanfic can be fun and all (maybe even better than the original text), but it's not the way the story actually happens;
  
• There are infinitely many possible interpretations and offshoots of canon, all valid and interesting, and potentially as worthy of being taken seriously as the original source;
  
• It's the authors perogative to write whatever they like, but we're under no obligation to like it;
  
• You can enjoy something while also enjoying picking it apart and looking at all it's flaws, but that's not the only way to enjoy something;
  
• If the author wants to be any good they should pay attention to constructive criticism (especially on stuff like unconscious bias).
  

Crazy attitudes for a fan:

• There is One True Version of the text. Anyone who doesn't see this is a fool. Anyone criticises the One True Text is an evil heathen. Anyone who enjoys thinking about or writing different versions of the story is an evil heretic who Misses the Point;
  
• ..and that one true text is imperfectly reflected by the "canon", meaning that the author is an evil heretic too, who must be made to see the light about how their story actually goes.
  

I feel a bit weird using the words "crazy" and "sane", but no better ones come to mind. Also, I banged my elbow this morning and it still hurts :( (Yeah, ok, so those of you who know sonnlich may not see my mild twinges as all that terrible. I don't care, I like whining!)

Comments

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

Nonononononono. It's much simpler than that.

Crazy(batshit) attitudes for a fan:
• Being in Avatar fandom.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, because they're no crazy fans in any of the other fandoms :D

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

Avatards make Lexicongate look like a philosophical discussion of the highest calibre. It's bizarre. Even Harmoanians think they're crazy.

[volandum.livejournal.com]

Okay, enlighten me.

[tevriel.livejournal.com]

Pain is still pain. :) Pain that is less painful or long-lasting than my pain is still sucky and I endorse your right to whine about it.

I agree with you, although the question of canon as One True Text gets more complicated in fandoms that have internally inconsistent fandoms. (e.g. Star Trek, which is more or less the Original Fandom even, and comics fandom, which... well, Pick Your Own Canon, for reals.)

[alias_sqbr]

That's true, as someone who tends to the "The canon is somewhat immutable" side I tend to avoid inconsistent, vaguely defined canon. I wonder about people getting narky about quibbling details in Star Trek etc that the writers couldn't keep straight from one episode to the next (Klingon blood colour for example) On the other hand, you have people coming from fandoms like Star Trek into something like Harry Potter who go "It's meaningless to talk about canon, it's all so fuzzily defined with lots of different authors!" when in that context there really is a pretty sharp (though not perfect) divide between canon and not-canon. Which doesn't mean you can't ignore it if you want, but it's definitely there.

[nico-wolfwood.livejournal.com]

Yes! As someone who grew up on X-Men (and can go on and on about the Phoenix saga and the improbable retconning thereof) I do find it can be hard to have a cannon when all the writers are free to do whatever they want to each others work.

(wank wank)

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

The biggest issue I have with fan culture is its tendency to exalt that which I consider most base. I just can't fathom why people invest so much time in works considered trivial entertainments even by their authors (authors, like your JKs and your Joss Whedons, who when questioned about their work tend to refer to a sort of desperate pseudo-science of embedding serious content in such trivial vessels).

That probably makes me a critical conservative outside the carnivalised objective-value-free post-modern menagerie of fandom. It also makes me someone who wishes people could stop talking about Trek and Potter (and stop talking about talking about them, and ...). Sometimes it's the literary equivalent of the pop charts being dominated for decades by endless remixes and covers of "Ice Ice Baby" and "She Loves You".

But it upsets me that genre is a ghetto, both in an artistic sense and in the sense of market penetration, because I love certain types of work that, on some level, are insultingly understood by the broader public as equivalent to Trek or Potter. And there's a "reverse racism" to it as well, when established creators outside the ghetto who have managed to escape its narrow categorisation dissociate themselves from it utterly (Atwood famously).

But then finally, and in total contradiction, one comes to love this same ghetto for the unique creative constraints it places on the art produced within it, and for the misshapen yet oddly charming hunchbacks of works that result, e.g. the pulp writers who've become some of my great favourites despite all of the absurd tics of their work.

Re: (wank wank)

[alias_sqbr]

You know I'm not sure I see how this relates much to my actual point :P

Anyway, I think there's two issues here.

There's the fact many people have bad taste (which is just the way things go in any genre or classification) and there's the fact that people in fandom (and fanficcers in particular) often focus their most intense energies on things they acknowledge aren't any good but feel deeply attached to anyway.

I think the sorts of stories that inspire fanfic are often ones with engaging ideas and characters badly or patchily executed, so that the writer is inspired to fix it/fill in the blanks. I mean I kind of enjoyed reading the Harry Potter books but on the whole think they're pretty mediocre. Regardless, I still enjoy the social aspect of discussing plotpoints with other fans and reading stories which explore the rather paper-thin but engaging characters in more depth. There's a lot of fanficcers with degrees in literary theory writing long essays on why they enjoy writing complex novels based on objectively bad tv :)

Personally I'm just glad speculative fiction contains so many great works of literature (no, not Harry Potter) and don't really care that the outside world doesn't realise this. I get more annoyed at the derision directed towards fans, since that affects me directly.

Anyway, you have invalidated your whole point by putting down Joss Whedon. Clearly you have no taste and your opinions are meaningless :D

(wank wonk)

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree, it's at best tangential to the OP. Too bad!

(oh, and on the subject of too bad, Joss Whedon sucks ;-).

That boorish intro out of the way, I think the point is that fan communities are sustained primarily by the value their participants place on the social interactions enabled thereby, and only partly by the value of their supposed organising subjects.

This, I think, touches on what I'm trying to say:

"there's the fact that people in fandom (and fanficcers in particular) often focus their most intense energies on things they acknowledge aren't any good but feel deeply attached to anyway"

The thing is why are they deeply attached? It's because of what the emotional payoffs they get from interacting with the community around these mediocre works.

Fans, typically outside the mainstream socially, are always in search of social scenarios where the bar for participation is lowered.

RPG sessions are a classic case. They provide an opportunity for socially awkward people to interact in a structured, safe environment.

Harry Potter fandom is another. Everyone's read the Harry Potter books. They're easy to read. It's easy to insist of them that they should be regarded as cheap entertainment and nothing more (and thereby avoid elevating discussion to a more exclusive level). The bar to getting into HP fandom is way, way low.

But it's what you do once you're in that counts ...

The trouble is that even the simulation of a social structure eventually becomes genuine, with real castes, status and prejudices, and the "pretend importance" habitually placed on irrelevancies like the OTP or who ships who, or whether one PC is able to beat another one up in-game also becomes real importance, especially for people who have become accustomed to enjoying an in-community status that they are deeply insecure about their ability to achieve in the wider world. Like the status enjoyed by a GM or a dedicated, skilful fic-reccer and beta reader (or the small degree of status I once enjoyed as UniSFA's best Tekken player!).

So the "crazy" fans you're referring to perhaps are these people. People acting logically according to the parameters of a constructed reality the solidity of which depends on the emotional investment of the other crazies. And that's why their opinions on canon seem like fundamentalist doctrine - because they are religious doctrine, the only substantial commandments of the only community with which they really identify ...

And when the buzz dies, when the range and intensity of others' emotional investment reduces, they're quick to stake out another field of interest (usu. another TV show or book series) which will provide them with a better payoff-for-time ratio.

Re: (wank wonk)

[alias_sqbr]

I think you're right about fan-communities (and subcultures in general) creating their own little hierarchy and value system, and that those who forget that there's more to life than fandom (or Tekken etc :)) can become too involved in this separate world and lose contact with reality.

Also Big Name Fans (like Secret Masters of Fandom), generally very popular fanfic writers, can become dominant in what is theoretically an egalitarian social structure. There's all kinds of genuinely crazy stuff that grows out of this, e.g. the Msscribe affair (a woman created multiple accounts to take over a chunk of Harry Potter fandom and become friends with the BNFs)

But I think there's more to it than that. I kept trying and failing to articulate what, so asked a bunch of fanficcy types, I hope you don't mind (I'm mainly worried I did that "express argument I disagree with so that it sounds much worse than it actually is" thing) I'm happy to edit the post to a better articulation of your point, or of course you could join in the discussion yourself if you can be bothered (I imagine the question is more interesting to me than you) and you don't mind the danger of a lot of angry fanficcers coming after you with pitchforks for denigrating fanfic/Joss Whedon etc :D (This danger is why I didn't just like to your comment)

Re: (wank wonk)

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I jumped in with boots on ... hopefully I might get someone's goat, that's pretty much why I post in your comments anyway, you understand ;-)

Re: (wank wonk)

[alias_sqbr]

Pfft, if you REALLY wanted to get someones goat you'd post on the ljs of more vehement and cantankerous (and less passive-aggressive) fanfic-fans than me...oh wait you just did. And they're so far ignoring your jibes to thoughtfully answer my question, nerr to you :)

I must say I find it hard to tell the difference betwen you as troll and you being sincere but brusque. I'm not sure if this reflects badly on you or on me (possibly it reflects well on your inability to not make interesting points, even when trolling).

Also, while I like fanfic, I haven't reached the same blase attitude to it's wierdness that I have with wider sff fandom. One reason I don't have sparate lj's for my different interests (beyond laziness) is that this way if I get into anything too odd I know you guys will be there going "Ewww" at me. I realise that wanting people to express disagreement with me means I may have to have my internet rights revoked :)

Re: (wank wonk)

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was pretty mild ... I even opened with a disclaimer! I guess fans don't care that they're only in fandom because they can't kick people around with overpowering domain knowledge and undeserved status in real life. Or maybe they just can't do it as well ;-)

I'm probably a very mild troll, or an unusually "brusque" person all the time. I wouldn't seriously come here and try to piss you or your commenters off ...

I'm glad you're still out of the deeper abyss of weirdness. Don't start writing all your comments in coded capitals.

OK I ARE NOT USIN LOLCATSPAEK FOR TALKING ON TEH INTARWEBZ

[alias_sqbr]

Heh. Yeah, you weren't that bad. I get the impression from the repetitive responses that many of the commenters didn't bother reading any of the comments above them, because they are people, on the internet.

[sonictail.livejournal.com]

That's a good summary, but I have one better

Fan: Sane, Open Minded and Nice. Can have polite conversation and enjoys discussion.
Fanatic: Fucking Jackass, Lock em in a closet and throw away the key. You don't want other people to know that people like them even exist.

[alias_sqbr]

Your classification is rather tautological :)