Being "in a fandom."

[amanuensis1]

gmth has a post about the difficulties of losing interest in a fandom and the inability to just "make" oneself obsessed with a new one. You can't court the thunderbolt.

It's hard to sustain fannishness for just one thing. And yet, we're only as deeply fannish as we can be when it is for just one thing.

That's how it's been for me with HP. (More specifically HP slash, but let's allow the source material to stand for the smaller focus.) For the most part, I still eat, sleep, and breathe it, but it's a different eat/sleep/breathe than it was at the beginning. At first I was devoted to writing fic, reading fic, viewing art, commenting on fic/art, meta and responding to meta. Over the years it's become something else: reading fic, viewing art, commenting on fic/art, interacting with the friends I've made through HP (and with whom HP is still a large part of our discussions), reacting to disillusionment over the canon, and thinking about writing fic more than the actual writing of it. ^_^

You'd look at that evolution of my obsession and you might say that a lot of that is not HP; surfing livejournal is not merely HP; sympathising with someone over their grandmother's illness is not at all HP; discussing the 300 trailer is not at all HP. But I'd respond, I would not have a livejournal if not for HP. Not just that HP brought me to livejournal; I mean that if HP were not in my life I would be unlikely to want to sustain the journal. When I talk to someone about Torchwood or Pet Shop of Horrors or their cat, there's still this sense of connection that we became interactive friends because we share or once shared that fondness for HP. There's this bit from an old French TV show where Sherlock Holmes's character quotes something, and then says, "Shakespeare." Watson says, wait, that's not Shakespeare, that's Dickens. Holmes quips, "Tout est Shakespeare. Même Dickens," (Everything's Shakespeare. Even Dickens). (ETA: Or is that "Tout sont Shakespeare"? Here I admit my monolingualness, despite all that study.)

All through that, yes, I have had other interests. You might even call them fannish; you might even call them fandoms. I'm not sure I would, because I think fandom implies major dedicated interest. Yes, even as I adore HP fandom, I do watch television, see movies, read books. Stories, in prose and in audio and in visual media, are my life. I do not ever want to have children because that would cut into all of that and I'd effing resent that. I've never missed an episode of 24, never missed one of the new Doctor Who. I have even scribbled a ficlet for each of those sources, and have read a bit of fanfiction for them. Am I in their fandom? I don't really feel I am. I'm a fan, yes. But there needs to be more, needs to be a sense of, "I love this thing, I am really dedicated to thinking about these characters/situations, am highly needy to know more about their off-screen lives and how they'd be in situations that I dream up. I want to see pictures of that and read stories about that and you know what, I have the stories in my head I want to see and I know no one will write them precisely the way I want to see them written so I gotta do it, in fact I can hardly wait to do it, where's my Microsoft Word icon, new document, yes, yes, yes..."

No, I don't think that "in fandom" must equal "fanfiction writer/fanartist" for everyone. Some people have no need to create in that way, and so can't be held to those criteria. But I think you have to want more than the canon, have to think about what's beyond the canon a lot, be needy about it. If you don't die of squee a bit when you discover that someone has drawn a picture of your OTP from the canon, I don't think you really have a deep enough devotion to be "in" the fandom. For me, that latter's a really good criterion; my heart pulses faster when I see the words Harry/Lucius, Harry/Draco, Harry/Sirius on a link in hp_art_daily. To this day it does, oh yeah.

Some of that is because I really, really, really, really don't want another fandom than HP--I'm spoiled by its vastness. I read Lois McMaster Bujold's The Sharing Knife some months back, freakin' loved it, searched the 'net for any fansites devoted to it. I really wanted me some fanart of the characters. There isn't s**t out there for it. So I squelched my disappointment and thanked my lucky stars again for having been thunderbolted into HP, the fandom which has entire communities devoted to skirtporn and SnapeSlash. Am I eager to stay in this fandom, to actively resist being sucked into another? Hell, yes. Will that matter, will my character be any less if it does happen one day? Hey, you try hiding from a determined thunderbolt.

Comments

[scribbulus-ink.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much my take on it too. Although I read and watch a lot of different things, there's very little that actually sparks me enough to want to write about it or to want more than just canon. I was actively involved in only 2 online fandoms prior to HP, meaning I wrote and read fanfiction, sought out fan art, participated on lists, and was generally "visible" in the fandom.

I've dabbled in other fandoms, but mostly in the form of drabbles written on request. The only thing that I've written anything longer than a ficlet for of my own volition was the new Battlestar Galactica, and that didn't last long. I wrote 2 ficlets, and that was all I was compelled to write, and then I stopped watching the show.

I've been a passive consumer in a handful of other fandoms: Highlander, Farscape, Angel: The Series, among others. But I was never sparked to write, and my interest in reading waned after a while.

I love Supernatural, House, and a few other fandoms that I've seen all over my flist, but I'm not sparked to read or write in them. Canon is enough. HP is the last thing that really, really sparked me to create and participate, and I'm content to remain here until something - if anything - sparks me anew. I need the spark, and if it happens, great; if not, that's fine too. I'm still interested and involved in HP, and while I'm apprehensive about what will happen in book 7, I'm not ready to preemptively bail.

[delfeus.livejournal.com]

I love HP because it really has everything. It's such a big fandom, with various pairings and kinks, that when I decide that I want to try, say, Bloody Baron/Harry, I'm sure that I can find someone who has written it. That's really what I like best about HP.

Some other fandoms, on the other hand... Well, PSOH fandom = Leon/D, with perhaps a little Papa D or Grandpa D or Tetsu thrown in. If you're lucky. And it's pretty much the same with other anime fandoms.

For instance, probably 4/5 (or more!) of anything Death Note you find is L/Raito or Raito/L, and the remaining amount has some variation, but not much. And there's practically no Mikami/Raito or Raito/Mikami, despite the fact that Mikami considers Raito to be a god and would do anything he asked. Noo... of course everyone and their dog go for the rival slash in L/R. :P

In Eyeshield 21 you can pair pretty much anyone/anything and it becomes almost-canon sooner or later, but the pairings in fic, art & doujinshi are still very limited. I mean, Eyeshield has more potential than HP! A good example of this is how some doujinshikas started randomly shipping Juumonji and Sena, which felt like a bit of a WTF pairing at that point, although I could see where they were coming from. Well, a few feeks later, there came a certain manga chapter... Sena was out of the field (they play American football), but his somewhat psychotic opponent (who is OTP with chains - they literally keep him in chains because he goes a bit psycho at times) was still heading for him, and Sena was all OMG because he's so small and he'd get crushed... and then Juumonji suddenly shows up in between them and stops Ikari all "hands off my uke" like. XD The über!OTP for the series is Hiruma(icon)/anyone-he-wants, though... and Hiruma/guns. But yeah, both fics and doujinshi in the fandom are rather limited, although there seems to be a bit more variation nowadays.

[josanpq.livejournal.com]

If you decide to play in McMaster's pool, beware. Her fans are very book oriented.

If you liked TSK, try her Vorkosigan series. I found them better written. There is some fanfic in that fandom, but not that much.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I know that if certain characters die in DH, there's a chance that I will not want to read/write about those characters much any longer--there can be a sense of "I'm pathetically flailing here, aren't I," with resurrection fic. That did happen to me years ago after the conclusion of the Xena series; I wasn't in the fandom and had not even read any fanfiction for it, but the end of the series left me heartbroken, and I went to the 'net to see if people were writing fanfiction that could soothe my heart. I found fic, and it didn't help. It felt, as I say, like flailing against reality, like foolish denial. And yet. Yet I'm still perfectly happy to embrace "Sirius never died" AU for the sake of a character I really loved and felt it made no narrative sense to kill. So who knows?

[melpemone.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this post - you've addressed a subject I've been thinking about for a while; that being the definition of 'belonging' to a fandom. I'd never considered myself capable of being multifannish until I recently found myself with one main fandom and several minor fandoms, and I've recently come to the conclusion that I was right all along, I'm not cut out for that at all: my 'minor' fandoms are media I enjoy the hell out of and consider fic for and talk about, but simply don't eat my brain the way my 'main' fandom does. For my other interests I don't read meta, and I skip clicking cuts, and I don't force my way through awful fic just because it features my pairing. And trying to be multifannish has done nothing more than split my concentration and screw with my ability to write fic. So. Epiphany. :-)

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I've read everything Bujold's written, the minute it comes out! ^_^ But it was The Sharing Knife that made me say, I want to see fans' visual interpretations of these characters.

[delfeus.livejournal.com]

...you can see some Eyeshield 21 pics here:
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~miasaikk/eye/

I made a post about Banba/Harao and one about Hiruma/Agon on LJ ages ago. They are just two of the many pairings there... and I know one person who's written Banba/Harao, and I've seen one fic with Hiruma/Agon.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Hee, there's probably Bloody Baron/Harry First Time, AU, noncon, BDSM and skirtporn, all for the finding. ^_^

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I've been really stubborn about it, too--if anyone said to me (hypothetically; no one has to date), "Oh, you're in the Battlestar Galactica fandom now," I'd be defensive about it, I would. I'd say, no, I've never read a piece of fanfiction, never gone looking for fanart. I just watch the show and maybe speculate with others here and there on what's coming; that's not enough for me to be "in" the fandom. Not by my own definitions, anyway. ^_^

[delfeus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm sure about that. XD

[incapricious.livejournal.com]

I think, for me, the only reason I'm actually "in" the HP fandom as much as I am is because it is so big. I mean, I doubt I would have fallen into it like I did were it not for the initial sense I got of having tripped over a stone and found it was actually the tip of a rock that extended all the way to the center of the earth. I didn't want to read or write HP fanfiction until I had already read a whole bunch of it... I guess since that made me see what a wide variety of things were possible. Or something.

Not just that HP brought me to livejournal; I mean that if HP were not in my life I would be unlikely to want to sustain the journal.

Yes, exactly! I feel the same way.

[incapricious.livejournal.com]

Same for me with BSG. Although I may have purchased a pair of dogtags on eBay the other week, which may have pushed me across some line... theoretically (*makes innocent face*). I don't know. And I may have had a crazy Kara Thrace/Logan Echolls crossover fic bunny in my head for a while, but I beat it up and it went away... ahem.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I don't think it would happen that I would, you know, decide I don't like HP anymore and abandon my livejournal altogether. But when I don't have anything to say about HP, I don't just start posting random stuff to fill up the days. I'll post non-HP things but generally I want it to be something my fandom/slash/etc.-oriented flist will find at least peripherally entertaining.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Sometimes you can beat up the plotbunnies and make them go away. When you can't, you know you're hooked. ^_^

[mtnjoy.livejournal.com]

This is a very interesting post, and I agree with it completely.

*has nothing further to say*

So, uh. Yeah.

*wanders off in search of coffee*

[silverhielm.livejournal.com]

Great post. I love the joy you communicate, it's catching!

I used to be a fan of HP slash. Nowadays I am a fan of HP slash fandom. This is the only difference.
And I'm so jealous of my fandom, I could never have another one O_O

[belleamant.livejournal.com]

Thank you. This is absolutely the right words. I started out in fandom because of GundamW when I was a freshman in high school, and I spent all of my spare time looking up facts and art and fic and talking to my friends about it. Then, as the years passed, I vaguely shifted into Weiss Kreuz (which is another anime), but it just wasn't the same. I found Harry Potter (after brief ficlets here and there throughout high school) summer after my senior year, and I was hooked. I don't write much (on this journal or my other), but I'm certainly in the fandom, talking about it and reading and commenting, and I am actively trying to stay in the fandom, though there are times when I want to read Avatar slash (of which there isn't much), Harry Potter is still my fandom at this point, and I hope it stays that way for a while, though I know that my mood will probably switch at some point. -Belle

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you came by! If I had coffee I would give you some. ^_^

[ladysorka]

As a non-creator, I don't tend to consider myself "in" a fandom until I've been interested in reading the fiction and the meta for longer than a week or two. If I maintain interest after I've read through the main fic archive, then I'm in the fandom. If I start randomly adding lj users because they write good fic or say interesting things about the source, then I'm really in the fandom.

I qualify it that way because I tend to get bored and randomly read fic for shows that I've never even seen, let alone been fannish about. I am multi-fannish, and often have 2-3 "main" fandoms at once, usually with 5-6 "minor" fandoms underneath - I tend to consider a fandom "minor" for me when it's a fandom that would be main, except for the fact that it's a really, really tiny fandom.

But within any given week, I've probably read fic in 15-20 fandoms. And I'm sure as hell not in all of them.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Nowadays I am a fan of HP slash fandom.

Such an interesting distinction! Yes, when I look at my flist and see the long-term people on there, and think about who's not posting much fic any more, and who's wandered away from HP altogether, I remind myself, "That is only MY flist. We are long-termers and the quantity of fic/art we're bringing to the fandom is less, but look at all these new names all over comment pages, all over the communities! It's still going strong." ^_^

[eibbil-libbie.livejournal.com]

I think I must now shower you with love and cookies...in that order. Must be a groupthink thing going on, because I've been debating the very same things lately and looks like loads of others as well. HP fandom's been a very big, very REAL part of my life going on...dear God...over five years now. This journal just had it's fourth birthday. And while my role and interaction within it have shifted from active posting, fic writing/reading/reccing/reviewing to mainly roleplaying and meta discussions...and while the lunatic fringes of the fandom have had me throwing up my hands in disgust more times than I can count in those five years...I'm still here. And have no plans to leave.

So rather than restate, I will link to this if it's all right. Because you said what I'm thinking FAR better than I ever could.

*aforementioned love and cookies*

[gmth.livejournal.com]

You can't court the thunderbolt.

Oh how I wish I'd thought of this phrase myself. It would have made a perfect title for that post. :-)

I like the way you talk about the shift in your fannish activities here, especially the shift toward more interaction with friends and more thinking about fic than writing it. That's pretty much where I am, although even my thinking about writing fic has dropped off pretty precipitously in the past few months. My problem is I really, really don't want to lose touch with the friends I've made in fandom. You all are the most important thing I've gained from my time in HP, and for that reason alone I doubt I will ever leave 100%. There will always be that common ground, you know? It's the other stuff I am shedding more and more as time goes on.

Anyway, great post. :-)

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, all of this -- yes. I've felt myself floating a bit about writing fanfic lately and just haven't felt the desire or the drive to write anything, but yet, I enjoy being here so much. I love reading my flist and talking about fandom stuff and working on Slahcast, and there's an extent to which that's been my fannish activity for a couple of months now. I haven't read a fic since the holiday exchanges, and I've struggled to write one -- it's like I'm just not interested in it right now.

There's something about the multi-fandom nature of LJ that's really appealing to me, and while HP is a huge part of that, it's not the only part, you know?

[nyxxxxx.livejournal.com]

Well, even if i've never had the luck to talk to you... it'd be sad if you weren't in the fandom. Because there are never enough people like you, who are so "in" the fandom, who make you want to live for it, for just a moment. XD
Thanks
Nyx
ps: it's "Tout est Shakespeare" ^_^ oh and sorry if i made mistakes, my english still needs to be tamed.

[maddiec24.livejournal.com]

Coincidentally, my husband and I were discussing this last night. I was saying how X Files, specifically Skinner/Krycek, was my first fandom in which I read and wrote fic, and while I still love it and read fic in it, I'm not as excited about it as I once was. Same with Oz and Beecher/Keller, my other main fandom. I used to write it, and now I still read it, but I'm just not as into it as before.

But HP... oh my. I'm still very excited about it, possibly because it is so vast, and because I have so many different pairings that I love. I've never felt the desire to write in it(too intimidated by all the wonderful writers here, I think!). I do feel sad thinking there might come a day when I'm *not* excited about HP.

I have other things I like, and consider minor fandoms of mine - - Buffy/Angel/Firefly, Smallville, Torchwood, Life on Mars, PotC. Then there are the ones I like, but don't consider consider them fandoms of mine, as I've never sought out fic or art in them.

Just rambling now, but excellent topic for discussion!