The four feet of fandom
May. 6th, 2003 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321.
As far as I see it, my fandom has four feet (plus numerous toes): community, fic, boy-on-boy, and fandom.
Foot nr.1: Community
I've come round to thinking that this is actually the single most important ingredient for me in the fandom, and possibly for everybody. So I'm actually going to come back to community at the end.
Foot nr.2: Fic
It's a community built around fanfic (initially - or it was for me). I came for the fic, and stayed for the friends. The writing is not of equal importance to everyone but in my particular niche of the fandom the writing is taken very seriously, and as a result I have taken my own writing more and more seriously. The writing also guarantees a certain degree of literacy which I value a lot.
Foot nr.3: Boy-on-boy lust
When I say, I came for the fic, it's more accurate to say I came for the slash. That was it initially: boy-on-boy action, and I was willing to compromise on plot or quality. (This is no longer so; I now need the quality.) I've had the man/man bug for decades, at least since the age of 8 when I fantasized over Winnetou/Old Shatterhand and various original characters that populated my imaginative life (one scenario stays in my mind: made-up boy Peter saves made-up boy Paul from certain fall to his death while dangling from a cliff - all very melodramatic and highly charged -- in retrospect, pure Pecos-style slash).
So slash filled that niche amazingly and fully. I'm still astounded that it took me so long to discover it.
Now that I have discovered it, the writing tends to be more important than the specifically slash-writing. I suppose I've had my overdose and while I still love the occasional shameless pwp, I now also read complicated het plots.
Foot nr.4: Fandom
I realise that for many peope this is the prime motivator. But for me fandom has always been a side-effect of writing for the community. In fact, for various reasons I tend to think that fandom is actually not really a fourth foot but a subset or big toe of community. Fans purport to be gaga about their chosen celebrities but in actual fact they are gaga about each other, and they do fannish things together and tell each other about them in an excited fashion. It's not enough to drool or stalk a celebritiy in isolation; fans tend to do it together and then talk to each other about it endlessly -- otherwise, where is the fun? We on LJ make icons for *each other*. We write stories *for each other*, often *dedicated to each other*. It's all about community.
So having realised this, I can happily put up with the fandom aspect. Because the fan in fandom refers to the person (many of whom make up the community) and not all to the celebrity (unless, of course, you choose to see the word 'dom' in and of itself inseparable from Him Who Is Named Thus, *gg*).
Back to foot nr.1: Community
The fandom has insider jokes. The fandom has insider pics. The fandom has sub-fandoms (endless permutations of Friends and Friends-Of lists plus even more intricate customised lists; memberships of whole branchlines of yahoo groups; the intimate circle all the way to the vast anonymitiy of Closer Than Brothers). The fandom has mechanisms both to communicate with other communities (crossovers, etc.) and to demarcate its own territory (My fandom is older than yours etc.). The fandom has a whole vocabulary to speak about its subject matter.
The fandom is, in fact, a community.
And the writing, in many ways, is part of the glue that holds the community together as well: The droolings (fandom) plus the writing (fic), they're both glue. Because even though some writers say we write for ourselves, for me that is not true. Yes, the writing itself, the actual crafting of words, can be a solo affair, and nobody else will possible care about my obsession with certain words, but I, for one, always have the ultimate goal of audience communication in mind. Eventually, this fic will be *posted*, and that drives all my writing. It's *for* somebody.
Finally, the boy-on-boy. Apart from my genetically hardwired lust-fantasies, I can see that the boy-on-boy factor also fuels interaction among the community. Often, the droolings over boy-on-boy are displaced droolings over each other (sometimes spilling over into not-so-displaced drooling-rhetoric, *g*). It works along the lines of 'I love Karl/Viggo', and others chiming in, 'Ooh yes, me too. Write a fic, please?'. And, by the by, every single pairing and OT3 really also entails its own mini-subcommunities and specialised forms of rhetoric and conventions. Not conventions that have to be followed, necessarily: they can be followed, adapted, worked through or rejected -- but they are there, in the background.
Fanon is the collective product of the fandom community. Fanon is always in flux.
Fifth foot? Sexuality
P.S. Added a bit later: But there is, nevertheless, the sexuality. I'm not sure if the sex is a fifth foot (or perhaps even a fourth one, if I decide to move 'fandom' to be a toe of 'community', see above) or if sexuality is a subset of boy-on-boy lust -- or possibly also a glue in the manner of fandom and fic.
Some stories I read for the quality and the plot, but lots of stories just give that extra little kick of a turn-on as well. Whereabouts that one fits into the feet and toes, I haven't as yet figured out, but it's there and it's important. To me, anway.
It reminds me of when I first discovered slash and pondered the difference (for me) between porn and slash. Porn, for me, loses all interest once "used" for its purpose, as were. Read, come, throw away -- that's about it. But slash gives me a resonant tingle as well that goes right down into some lovely inner gut place. And it's not at all about the celebrities for me (I have got this tingle from reading stories about people I had never heard of from some weird contiguous fandom, e.g. NSync).
As far as I see it, my fandom has four feet (plus numerous toes): community, fic, boy-on-boy, and fandom.
Foot nr.1: Community
I've come round to thinking that this is actually the single most important ingredient for me in the fandom, and possibly for everybody. So I'm actually going to come back to community at the end.
Foot nr.2: Fic
It's a community built around fanfic (initially - or it was for me). I came for the fic, and stayed for the friends. The writing is not of equal importance to everyone but in my particular niche of the fandom the writing is taken very seriously, and as a result I have taken my own writing more and more seriously. The writing also guarantees a certain degree of literacy which I value a lot.
Foot nr.3: Boy-on-boy lust
When I say, I came for the fic, it's more accurate to say I came for the slash. That was it initially: boy-on-boy action, and I was willing to compromise on plot or quality. (This is no longer so; I now need the quality.) I've had the man/man bug for decades, at least since the age of 8 when I fantasized over Winnetou/Old Shatterhand and various original characters that populated my imaginative life (one scenario stays in my mind: made-up boy Peter saves made-up boy Paul from certain fall to his death while dangling from a cliff - all very melodramatic and highly charged -- in retrospect, pure Pecos-style slash).
So slash filled that niche amazingly and fully. I'm still astounded that it took me so long to discover it.
Now that I have discovered it, the writing tends to be more important than the specifically slash-writing. I suppose I've had my overdose and while I still love the occasional shameless pwp, I now also read complicated het plots.
Foot nr.4: Fandom
I realise that for many peope this is the prime motivator. But for me fandom has always been a side-effect of writing for the community. In fact, for various reasons I tend to think that fandom is actually not really a fourth foot but a subset or big toe of community. Fans purport to be gaga about their chosen celebrities but in actual fact they are gaga about each other, and they do fannish things together and tell each other about them in an excited fashion. It's not enough to drool or stalk a celebritiy in isolation; fans tend to do it together and then talk to each other about it endlessly -- otherwise, where is the fun? We on LJ make icons for *each other*. We write stories *for each other*, often *dedicated to each other*. It's all about community.
So having realised this, I can happily put up with the fandom aspect. Because the fan in fandom refers to the person (many of whom make up the community) and not all to the celebrity (unless, of course, you choose to see the word 'dom' in and of itself inseparable from Him Who Is Named Thus, *gg*).
Back to foot nr.1: Community
The fandom has insider jokes. The fandom has insider pics. The fandom has sub-fandoms (endless permutations of Friends and Friends-Of lists plus even more intricate customised lists; memberships of whole branchlines of yahoo groups; the intimate circle all the way to the vast anonymitiy of Closer Than Brothers). The fandom has mechanisms both to communicate with other communities (crossovers, etc.) and to demarcate its own territory (My fandom is older than yours etc.). The fandom has a whole vocabulary to speak about its subject matter.
The fandom is, in fact, a community.
And the writing, in many ways, is part of the glue that holds the community together as well: The droolings (fandom) plus the writing (fic), they're both glue. Because even though some writers say we write for ourselves, for me that is not true. Yes, the writing itself, the actual crafting of words, can be a solo affair, and nobody else will possible care about my obsession with certain words, but I, for one, always have the ultimate goal of audience communication in mind. Eventually, this fic will be *posted*, and that drives all my writing. It's *for* somebody.
Finally, the boy-on-boy. Apart from my genetically hardwired lust-fantasies, I can see that the boy-on-boy factor also fuels interaction among the community. Often, the droolings over boy-on-boy are displaced droolings over each other (sometimes spilling over into not-so-displaced drooling-rhetoric, *g*). It works along the lines of 'I love Karl/Viggo', and others chiming in, 'Ooh yes, me too. Write a fic, please?'. And, by the by, every single pairing and OT3 really also entails its own mini-subcommunities and specialised forms of rhetoric and conventions. Not conventions that have to be followed, necessarily: they can be followed, adapted, worked through or rejected -- but they are there, in the background.
Fanon is the collective product of the fandom community. Fanon is always in flux.
Fifth foot? Sexuality
P.S. Added a bit later: But there is, nevertheless, the sexuality. I'm not sure if the sex is a fifth foot (or perhaps even a fourth one, if I decide to move 'fandom' to be a toe of 'community', see above) or if sexuality is a subset of boy-on-boy lust -- or possibly also a glue in the manner of fandom and fic.
Some stories I read for the quality and the plot, but lots of stories just give that extra little kick of a turn-on as well. Whereabouts that one fits into the feet and toes, I haven't as yet figured out, but it's there and it's important. To me, anway.
It reminds me of when I first discovered slash and pondered the difference (for me) between porn and slash. Porn, for me, loses all interest once "used" for its purpose, as were. Read, come, throw away -- that's about it. But slash gives me a resonant tingle as well that goes right down into some lovely inner gut place. And it's not at all about the celebrities for me (I have got this tingle from reading stories about people I had never heard of from some weird contiguous fandom, e.g. NSync).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-06 05:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-06 07:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-06 07:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-06 07:48 am (UTC)Community - that makes me think about different ways of experiencing fandom. I love the community aspect - the communication. It seems a world away now from the days when I just lurked and read fic and lurked some more, although that was quite exciting at the time. It's the community aspect that's addictive to me now - the interaction.
Sexuality - Yes, because there is just something slash does that other writing doesn't necessarily do, and there's something slash does that porn doesn't do either.
And it's not at all about the celebrities for me (I have got this tingle from reading stories about people I had never heard of from some weird contiguous fandom, e.g. NSync).
I've experienced that too, and then there's FPS with no corresponding visuals, like book-slash. I get the same feeling from reading about characters who haven't been played by anyone on film and TV, as from reading about those who have, or about characters based on real people.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-06 09:10 am (UTC)Absolutely!!! Slash seems a sort of outlet for that. My current thinking is that there is something genetically hardwired into some (all?) women (because I left out the *feminine* aspect in my feet as well!! To me, that is very important.) and it expresses itself at the moment in slash. However, I do know that for some people the fandom aspect is much more important, and for some people it doesn't matter either whether their co-fans (or Friends) are male or female.
To me it does. I find men in slash anomalous. To me, it's a completely woman thing.
But to get back to the fact that it can pop up anywhere: in books, too! I love it when novels suddenly, on page 354 spring a slashy moment at you! And now, of course, I'm so much more *alert* to these moments and 3/4 of the time they happen in books written by women. And actually, they happen quite a lot! I can't help smiling and thinking, "Hm, I wonder what websites *she* visits when she's not writing her latest novel...."
(no subject)
Date: 2003-05-06 01:54 pm (UTC)Yes, definitely. Sometimes I'll be watching TV with female friends and they'll make comments which make me think that it they'd probably quite enjoy slash, if it weren't for the fact that they're not particularly fannish about anything. And I agree about it being a female thing. I'm intrigued by men who are interested in slash, but they're very few and far between. My housemate, for instance, likes reading gay literature and likes looking at pictures of Orlando, but has little interest in reading Orlando slash. The two things are entirely seperate for him.
I love it when novels suddenly, on page 354 spring a slashy moment at you! And now, of course, I'm so much more *alert* to these moments and 3/4 of the time they happen in books written by women.
Oh yes, I can think of a few of those myself...
Interesting observations
Date: 2003-05-06 08:37 pm (UTC)Forgive the quirk of my eyebrow, but just what does "- all very melodramatic and highly charged -- in retrospect, pure Pecos-style slash)." actually mean? I choose not to be offended, unless you really are being mean, in which case I'm too clueless to notice adn love you too much to care.
Re: Interesting observations
Date: 2003-05-07 03:35 am (UTC)charged -- in retrospect, pure Pecos-style slash)." actually mean?
Oh no, this is pure compliment and homage! By Pecos-style I meant the hanging-off-the-cliff aspect. My girlish fantasies often involved physically dangerous adventures and rescues from the brink of death, and the only person who writes that kind of stuff in this fandom is you! Which perhaps explains why I enjoy it so much (helictoper crash: *swoon* -- see? I find that erotic! Orli limping through the wilderness... I only get that from your stories.). The very first one I read by you, the kidnap-one, was a revelation to me in that way!