off to see karl; thoughts on fangirling

Going to see the Bourne Supremacy with the family in 1 1/2 hours. Karl!

I know I've lost interest in that fandom but I don't think I could ever completely lose interest in those I've made fuck each other so passionately.

So yes: Karl! :-) *can't suppress that tiny flutter*

But will I be able to tear myself away from the Olympics for the 2 hours? I am such an Olympic addict. I watch anything: any sport, any country. But I love most:

- gymnastics
- athletics
- weight lifting

They are my top three, both men and women. But what hey, boxing is good, and synchro-jumping (didn't even know that existed until this morning and ETA: as hesychasm pointed out, the slashiest sport evah!), and rowing, and badminton, and all the weird and wonderful variety out there.

Thoughts on fangirling
I was always perturbed by my propensity to fangirl when still in lotrips. I had never taken myself to be a 'fan' in that sense, was slightly embarrassed by the whole fan-thing, took it to be an anomalous side-effect of my slash-lust. Now I'm in HP and I fangirl with just as much passion. How can this be? These are not real people, this is fps, these are invented fantasy characters.

This made me realise that I've been fangirling over invented characters all along. I drooled over Dom because I had written Dom, and he was my Dom, and the walking, talking Dom on the television screen was simply a walking, talking illustration of my fictional Dom. And now I drool over Dudley, and this is because he's my Dudley and it colours all my re-readings of canon (I don't do film HP). And it is, come to think of it, not so different from when I used to fantasise about men I had completely invented: Felix, the main character of a fic that I wrote over several years but never finished and over whom I still sometimes drool; and, to go back to childhood, two boys called Klaus and Peter who used to rescue each others' lives a lot and had angsty moments hanging from cliff edges and who were such a proto-OTP I wonder that I hadn't realised it before. I don't think I knew yet what drooling was when I was eight or nine but whatever you do when you're that age, I did it over 'Klaus' and 'Peter'.

I have never really had very intensive Mary-Sue fantasies. My fantasies have tended to be more narrative, more in the third person, basically: more in the slashy mode. Especially once I figured out that I could subtract the woman element altogether and just observe. (I appear to be a voyeuristic fantasist which is counter-Mary Sue, is it not?)

(This is not to say that I don't think the old Sue has an important part to play in the writing of fiction. But that is another matter.)