December Daily: active fannishness

[resonant]

cesperanza asks: what are the things that get you to write, fannishly? Have you been able to articulate the circumstances that get you from passive to active fannishness about a particular source?

I really love this question, because when I began giving it some thought, the answer was not at all what I expected it to be.



Of course I will tend to be motivated by the presence of a certain kind of character (the smart one whose pride sets up an almost unscalable wall around his loneliness -- start with Benton Fraser and just go on from there). Fortunately (though weirdly), television and movie creators seem to be just as much in love with this guy as I am, though they generally don't share my determination to heal him with gay sex and hugs.

I don't require my source materials to be flawless, lord knows, but certain kinds of flaws present an unsurmountable obstacle for me. I can deal with cheerful stupidity but not smug wrongheadedness (e.g. the we're-going-to-fuck-with-the-rule-of-law-but-it's-OK-because-America of "Leverage").

And you can't overlook my fundamental laziness. Probably everybody who's ever tried to pimp me into a fandom knows that if there's too much canon to get a grip on, I bail. (My apologies to the kidlet, who has been trying so hard to hook me on "Homestuck.")

But when I think back on how I got bonded enough to any given fandom to actually write anything, the answer is almost always the fandom itself.

... where people were writing interesting stuff ...

... where people were having interesting conversations ...

... where there were plotholes or ethical dilemmas or characterization problems in the source material, and fans were coming up with the best solutions ...

When I abruptly unbonded from "Sherlock," it was because of my sense of fans arguing and staring and silently judging. And when I bond with a fandom, it's with the sense of fans as a group of people in the back row of the theater talking and talking and talking. That's the party I want to be at!

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Wow; given your averseness to coming to grips with a big amount of canon, I'd say we were so lucky to get you in on something approaching the ground floor of SG-1.

I reread your stories in SG-1 and Sentinel A LOT.

Thank you for being here.

[china_shop]

This answer really resonates (ha!) with me. What you look for in a show isn't the same as me, but the fannish side of things (and the aversion to large canons), yes. *hearts*

[dira]

*gestures helpfully in the direction of Steve Rogers and his three movies*

[kass]

And when I bond with a fandom, it's with the sense of fans as a group of people in the back row of the theater talking and talking and talking. That's the party I want to be at!

YES. Me too.

[out_there]

And when I bond with a fandom, it's with the sense of fans as a group of people in the back row of the theater talking and talking and talking.

Yes, absolutely. That's my favourite part of fandom and it also feels like the part of fandom that's slowly fading away. A great fandom can make up for a lot of flaws in the source, and keep me happily reading and writing for years.