Fandom

This is not a legitimate entry. Come back next time for regular programming.

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When I was twelve, I wandered into fandom. And really, if you're the kind of person who really devotes time to fandom rather than, you know, having a real life, you end up crossing fandoms. From Harry Potter I went through Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, Mary Russell, Discworld, Rex Stout, Terry Pratchett, Diana Wynne Jones, blah blah blah. It was all downhill from my first click into Mena Baines' website, Hermione's World.

My involvement in the various fandoms varies from time to time--lurking here, actual participation in fic exchanges there. However, one thing it has never dipped into is large-scale, real-life encounters. (One of the highlights of my life, though, came really close: I got sent three books by Dan and Jerri Chase, from the LordPeter groups, all the way from California to my humble home in Laguna.) I know fan communities regularly meet up via conventions, but I've never had the courage to go to any of those, and anyway, there have never been too many of them in the Philippines--except for anime, and I'm only going to dip my toes into that, not dive the whole way by cosplaying. (I guess that's because most of my fandoms are less based on graphics and based more on books; harder to cosplay, then.) I did meet one friend, though, who shares most of my fandoms (both DWs: Doctor Who and Discworld, plus a handful of other fandoms) and I remember how thrilling it was to be sitting, shatteringly terrified, in a Starbucks until a girl in a La Salle jacket came up to me and said, "Oh, hello, are you wallyflower?" That was the best. I know we didn't really remain close friends, but occasionally we still talk to each other online, and somehow, that connection can feel so much more concrete, so much more real, than a lot of connections you can make in real life.

I read recently that the internet tricks us into a facsimile of friendship; it convinces us that it's enough to send a person a message via FB, and that it's not as necessary to meet up in order to maintain a friendship. To some extent, I agree. I'm facebook friends with all of my close friends, but I haven't met up with 72% of those closest friends within the last year, and I wouldn't even know what they're thinking, who they're in a relationship with, what their after-school jobs are like, how their families are doing--because the peremptory FB status and that comfortable, lukewarm button "Like" has replaced some of the need for phone calls and meet-ups.

On the other hand, I don't know where I'd be without the internet. For the socially awkward, fandoms are a safe haven, and sometimes they can be the only happy thing in a grey, mean week. Not just because of the anonymity--you'd think that, maybe, but actually a lot of lj friends really post pictures of themselves and you'd know where they live and who their relatives are--but because, like it or not, it's the least threatening way of making a connection. You can't really reason that the reason we veer into fandom is that we're afraid of being rejected in real life, because rejections happen in fandom all the time. Comment counts on lj entries and lj-posted stories, as well as the number of people on your flist, are a way of "gauging" how rejected you are by your fan community. Replies to reviews left in stories can brush you off like a speck of dust.

In fact in so many ways, if we're talking actual livejournals or blogs rather than a profile page in FB or myspace or whatever, fandom interaction is so much like real life. You have the popular kids--the "BNFs" (big name fic writers), like Cassandra Clare, who will probably migrate into "legitimate writing" even as their comment counts and lj friends skyrocket to the thousands. You have the nobodies--people with under 20 friends, who never get comments on their ljs, whose stories hardly ever get reviewed. You have the sycophants and the hangers on (OK, if you want a really entertaining read and want to waste the next ten hours of your life, read The MsScribe Story, which is a weirdly fascinating account of a pathological liar who created earthquakes in the early days of the Harry Potter fandom).

You have the cool kids who just don't care--people who are genuinely talented but don't seek attention or advertise themselves and just do it for fun, and who basically keep to themselves. (In case you're wondering, I'm a nobody, and I think it's better that way because you're not as self-conscious about how you write, and you're surer to get solid criticism if you're a relative unknown.) So I think it's less about escapism, than about trying to find people who are more like you, to assure yourself you are not quite so alone or not quite so weird and horrible as you imagined.

It's just... it's always home. No matter what has happened elsewhere, you will still find the same community waiting for you. If you're talking to people who are genuinely interested in the same things, it's like you speak an entire language, and they just get you. They won't know your favorite colors or your mother's maiden name, but they will talk to you about the things you are most passionate about--writing, writing, writing--and they'll know what you mean when you say it's the glorious 25th of May, and they'll know what you were feeling the moment Amelia Pond was tucked into bed by a time-travelling alien she'd waited for all her life. They'll know it's seventeen steps to 221B Baker street and they'll know The Lord of the Rings is legitimately one book, not three.

I guess all I want to say is what Kathleen Kelly, as shopgirl, said to ny152.

The odd thing about this form of communication is that you're more likely to talk about nothing than something.

But I just want to say that all this nothing has meant more to me than so many... somethings.

So thanks.