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Another day! Still building taxonomies. It's... wow, I'm exhausted right now.
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gamesiplay asked: You have a tag called "FIAWOL"; it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out what that was an acronym for. What does fandom as A Way Of Life mean to you?
So "fandom is a way of life" is certainly a set phrase that's older than I am, and I don't suppose I use it in the same way as those who coined it did, or possibly many other people, but, anyway, here goes.
There’s a quotation sourced to Lev Grossman that does the rounds periodically about how what fandom is, basically, is, punk. Here it is:
( really aggressive towards the source text )
That's exactly it, to my mind. I guess, what I mean by fandom as a way of life is that fandom is important to me in the abstract sense as well as the day-to-day specifics. I think fandom is, both in substance and function, transformative. I’ve written before about how I believe that it was fandom, in conjunction with other things that mostly were also brought into my life by fandom, that transformed me from a shy and awkward thirteen-year-old to a shy and awkward, but settled-in-herself, adult. Fandom gave me community and the confidence to take my place in that community, and a cheerful cognisance that my community was really a global community: that I belonged to something greater than myself. But in some sense that transformation is over – I’m grown up now! Twenty-seven next month! What even happened? – and now I’m sort of getting ready to push off into that long haul of adulthood and I suppose, yes, it is the time to think about what fandom is to me now.
I guess, to be in fandom for me, regardless of whether I’m currently writing a 20,000-word epic story about Parks & Rec and alien invasions, or not; or whether I’m super-excited about a TV show about spaceships, or not; or if I went to four cons this year or none or wanted to but couldn’t afford to or saw fangirls last weekend or haven’t in months; regardless of any of those things: fandom is to make a choice, every day, to be part of a transformative world. To think, I can tell that story better, or differently, or just, with more cock jokes. To make people in power angry. To be such a threatening force in the world that we must needs take our place in the grand litany of women’s writing and art, and the writing and art of other subaltern groups, and be trivialised, demeaned and category-errored out of existence. Fandom is what teenage girls do (because, of course, to be young and a woman at the same time is the worst crime society can conceive of). Fandom is derivative and unoriginal (which is bad, unless it’s Margaret Attwood or Shakespeare doing it, in which case it’s innovative and literary). Fandom is theft (because to create a means of production of culture for no material gain is worryingly anti-capitalist). Fandom is nothing but badly-written porn (because mainstream porn is, of course, so suffused in quality, and young girls and women mustn’t be allowed to think for a moment that they can claim ownership of their own sexuality). I’m over all of that bullshit and people who peddle it. Those people are scared of fandom and they ought to be. Fandom teaches, you can retell the story your way. Consider how powerful an idea that is. Today it'll be the stories we tell ourselves about spaceships. Tomorrow, it'll be the stories we tell ourselves about justice. The day after it will be both of those at once.
(Relatedly, I loathe this pseudo-cute fannish thing right now of white fans saying things like, “Fandom loves [pretty white boys]”, or “I love [X], but of course fandom doesn’t, fandom only likes [Y] [because he's a cute boy] etc”. I am fandom. I have been fandom every day for thirteen years. It’s super-precious that you want to erase me for the sake of making a rhetorical point, except, actually, it’s not.)
And as well as that, fandom is love. Fandom is, well, fandom is how to be open to that – to look at the world and think, wow, there’s so much there to be excited about. Some people kissed on TV and it was awesome and it made me so happy and I want to go tell all my friends about it! Some other people successfully hit a small round object through a standing structure in front of thousands of spectators (and it was awesome and it made me so happy and I want to go tell all my friends about it!) There was a movie about giant robots! There was a book about spaceships for great justice! There was a story retelling another story that was itself a retelling of a story written 5,000 years ago by human beings just like us! (And it was awesome! And it made me so happy! And… you get it.)
So I guess the rumours are true and that fandom does skew young - in mind, I suppose, rather than body; because it demands of you the capacity to remain angry, to remain punk, to reject cynicism, to love them all and their faces so damn much. I think, at this stage of slightly unwilling adulthood, that's okay.
gamesiplay asked: You have a tag called "FIAWOL"; it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out what that was an acronym for. What does fandom as A Way Of Life mean to you?So "fandom is a way of life" is certainly a set phrase that's older than I am, and I don't suppose I use it in the same way as those who coined it did, or possibly many other people, but, anyway, here goes.
There’s a quotation sourced to Lev Grossman that does the rounds periodically about how what fandom is, basically, is, punk. Here it is:
( really aggressive towards the source text )
That's exactly it, to my mind. I guess, what I mean by fandom as a way of life is that fandom is important to me in the abstract sense as well as the day-to-day specifics. I think fandom is, both in substance and function, transformative. I’ve written before about how I believe that it was fandom, in conjunction with other things that mostly were also brought into my life by fandom, that transformed me from a shy and awkward thirteen-year-old to a shy and awkward, but settled-in-herself, adult. Fandom gave me community and the confidence to take my place in that community, and a cheerful cognisance that my community was really a global community: that I belonged to something greater than myself. But in some sense that transformation is over – I’m grown up now! Twenty-seven next month! What even happened? – and now I’m sort of getting ready to push off into that long haul of adulthood and I suppose, yes, it is the time to think about what fandom is to me now.
I guess, to be in fandom for me, regardless of whether I’m currently writing a 20,000-word epic story about Parks & Rec and alien invasions, or not; or whether I’m super-excited about a TV show about spaceships, or not; or if I went to four cons this year or none or wanted to but couldn’t afford to or saw fangirls last weekend or haven’t in months; regardless of any of those things: fandom is to make a choice, every day, to be part of a transformative world. To think, I can tell that story better, or differently, or just, with more cock jokes. To make people in power angry. To be such a threatening force in the world that we must needs take our place in the grand litany of women’s writing and art, and the writing and art of other subaltern groups, and be trivialised, demeaned and category-errored out of existence. Fandom is what teenage girls do (because, of course, to be young and a woman at the same time is the worst crime society can conceive of). Fandom is derivative and unoriginal (which is bad, unless it’s Margaret Attwood or Shakespeare doing it, in which case it’s innovative and literary). Fandom is theft (because to create a means of production of culture for no material gain is worryingly anti-capitalist). Fandom is nothing but badly-written porn (because mainstream porn is, of course, so suffused in quality, and young girls and women mustn’t be allowed to think for a moment that they can claim ownership of their own sexuality). I’m over all of that bullshit and people who peddle it. Those people are scared of fandom and they ought to be. Fandom teaches, you can retell the story your way. Consider how powerful an idea that is. Today it'll be the stories we tell ourselves about spaceships. Tomorrow, it'll be the stories we tell ourselves about justice. The day after it will be both of those at once.
(Relatedly, I loathe this pseudo-cute fannish thing right now of white fans saying things like, “Fandom loves [pretty white boys]”, or “I love [X], but of course fandom doesn’t, fandom only likes [Y] [because he's a cute boy] etc”. I am fandom. I have been fandom every day for thirteen years. It’s super-precious that you want to erase me for the sake of making a rhetorical point, except, actually, it’s not.)
And as well as that, fandom is love. Fandom is, well, fandom is how to be open to that – to look at the world and think, wow, there’s so much there to be excited about. Some people kissed on TV and it was awesome and it made me so happy and I want to go tell all my friends about it! Some other people successfully hit a small round object through a standing structure in front of thousands of spectators (and it was awesome and it made me so happy and I want to go tell all my friends about it!) There was a movie about giant robots! There was a book about spaceships for great justice! There was a story retelling another story that was itself a retelling of a story written 5,000 years ago by human beings just like us! (And it was awesome! And it made me so happy! And… you get it.)
So I guess the rumours are true and that fandom does skew young - in mind, I suppose, rather than body; because it demands of you the capacity to remain angry, to remain punk, to reject cynicism, to love them all and their faces so damn much. I think, at this stage of slightly unwilling adulthood, that's okay.