a rant

[bronze_ribbons]

At the moment, I am tired of fandom being characterized as weird, maniacal, and crazy, both among our own and in the larger world. Aside from the fact that fandom is not and has never been a monolithic entity, I just don't believe spending time on derivative stories and/or art is any weirder or inappropriate than mainstream society's collective devotion to watching a bunch of males in unflattering clothing beating up on each other or whaling on plastic projectiles. Both sets of activities induce pleasure, pain, glee, and wild surges of hope and adrenalin among fans, and they bore, baffle, and/or trigger resentment in those who are not.

I enjoy sports myself. I lettered in track and cross-country in high school, I had a season pass to Michigan Stadium during graduate school, and when the Bulls won their first championship, I saw it on tv as it happened and then stayed up watching my fellow Chicagoans literally dancing for joy in the parking lot across from my apartment.

That said, you'll never hear me claim that being a White Sox fan is a hobby for the rational (and I'm married to a man who roots for the Yankees. The WOE!). I'm also coming to believe that making kids practice in full pads in this weather ought to rate as some form of abuse. [Another Southerner and I were talking about one team local to him a couple of weeks ago, and he said, "And the thing is, they're not even that good." On the saner end of the spectrum, some of the schools in one of the counties next to mine are delaying tonight's games by thirty minutes to wait out the heat.] As far as I'm concerned, if someone wants to pontificate about fandom's objectification of imaginary minors, I'm going to have trouble taking them seriously unless they can tell me how their principles apply to athletic prodigies -- say, for instance, gymnasts -- and other child performers (and if the argument falls back on artistic/inspirational merit, well, that's an age-old impasse, isn't it).

And, as many of you know, I don't even write about underage characters 98% of the time. And there are Kentucky fans who don't paint their faces blue on a routine basis or shoot out newspaper boxes when the team gets sanctioned. Even so, I do have some fondness for the, er, more expressive participants in both HP and sports fandom -- I mean, yeah, sometimes they're rude or mean or gross or shrill, but they're also often hilarious and inventive and wildly entertaining. But when they're written or spoken of as representative of all of us? It makes me annoyed and tired. Not because I'm saner or morally superior to them, but because they aren't me, and I never did particularly take well to being ignored. If people are going to generalize about fandom, I want them to include or at least acknowledge my kind in their considerations.

Naturally, I'd prefer that people refrain from generalizing altogether, but that would truly be veering into realms of unreality (not to mention hurling stones from my glass cave), and this is already longer than I meant for it to be. :-/

[/cantankerous]

Comments

[scribbulus_ink.insanejournal.com]

Here's irony in action for you: my RL best friend's husband is a rabid sports fan and exhibits most of the typical signs of obsessiveness - and yet, he's derisive of my friend's fannish activities and mocks her for attending SF conventions. No matter how much anyone tries to explain it to him, he absolutely cannot see any parallels between what she does and what he does in pursuit of their respective interests. Go figure.

[aunty_marion.insanejournal.com]

I've never thought of fandom as being particularly weird, maniacal, and crazy. It's home to me, and has been ever since I discovered the Star Trek branch of it over 30 years ago. Where else can I be taken seriously when I say I need to research ways of knitting legs for an orang utan, after all?

I do agree that sports 'fans' have absolutely no right to throw balls at our glass houses, though.

[bronze_ribbons.insanejournal.com]

There was a Usenet thread a couple of eons ago where someone asserted that people who are genuinely weird (as opposed to self-appointed weird for the sake of rebellion or trendiness) have to have it pointed out to them, and I thought, "Hey, I resemble that remark!" ;-)

A friend and I were talking last night about the blurry line between creative vs creepy obsessiveness, passionate intensity vs. self-/socially destructive behavior, etc. (she's just started reading The Bell Jar, so the question came up of whether Plath's poems would be compelling if she hadn't been such a volatile mess). And I've been stumbling over various generalizations about fandom and its collective behavior/expectations during this week's surfings-around, which has my inner seventy-year-old murmuring "Flee from the crowd and dwell with truthfulness, grasshopper" while the inner seven-year-old insists on throwing a tantrum and whining "It's not faaaairrrrr." *rueful smile*

[ednama.insanejournal.com]

In my country, every fanish behaviour is kind of considered as uncool, but I have no illusion that being in Harry Potter fandom would be the absolute bottom of uncoolness.
Sports are considered like a hobby for 'active' people whereas it is hard to strike as being active when you're stuck behind a computer or behind a book. Misconception, of course. All those years where I was practicing handball and modern dancing did not make me an active people.;)

[snapetoy.insanejournal.com]

What a fabulous rant! I'm so glad you had it! *memories* It's a good reminder that we're so not homogenous!

[ellid.insanejournal.com]

Fandom is no weirder than, say, swamp buggy racing, which is not only weird, but *muddy*. We all have our weirdnesses....

[xanthophyllippa.insanejournal.com]

bunch of males in unflattering clothing beating up on each other or whaling on plastic projectiles.

You've been watching badminton on ESPN2 again, haven't you?

Hi. I miss you. I've been on and offline lately and obviously am not spending enough time over here. (Am among those who have reservations about the host's references to mental illness. Am also currently among the batshit crazy, so draw your own conclusions. *wink*)

[bronze_ribbons.insanejournal.com]

*blinks* I have no idea what badminton uniforms even look like. Perhaps I should go look...

[back]

Oh dear, I see what you mean.

I miss you too, and have been hoping your week turned out less crunchy than it was sounding. How'd the event requiring heels go?

I've actually been offline more than not (not that you can tell from this weekend's spammage) and am not pretending to keep up consistently with anyone or anything for the foreseeable future - just peeking around here and there when I need a break from the various Sisyphean pileups I can't seem to escape from.

I can understand why a number of folks are steering clear of IJ - it's a reason I didn't even consider transferring my RL journal here - but the above rant notwithstanding, I do think a significant segment of HP fandom takes pride in being Not Quite Right, and there have been plenty of times where I've been told "You're insane" as a compliment and taken it as such, and I hear/see phrases such as "Join the insanity" used in common discourse all the time to recruit folks for fandom fests, real-life projects, what have you, so there's a part of me that actually finds the name appropriate.

That would be a long way of saying that, inconsistent or no, I don't have enough of a problem with IJ's interface for it to count against its current advantages. Does my implicit okay-ness with perpetuating thoughtless references to mental illness make me a jerk? In all seriousness, there's a part of me that thinks the word "insane" is in the same category as "gay" and "sucks" and other words where the origin of the word has become so disconnected with everyday usage that it's fruitless to fight the latter. (The hyper-intellectual uber-feminist in me vehemently dislikes the word "sucks" because, dammit, a blow-job is not a degrading, submissive act in and of itself. But I use it as much as everyone else in informal speech and e-mails, because it comes readily to my lips (so to speak) and it sounds so right -- "sucks" has a resonance and slap to it that outweighs "stinks" when it comes to describing unpleasantness, just as "damn" possesses more oomph to it than "darn," and "hell" has a linger to it that "heck" does not.) There's another part of me that automatically rejects that argument on the basis that majority thoughtlessness doesn't excuse individual lapses, and there's a third part of my brain pointing out that I really ought to direct its energy towards easier projects such as the work I'm currently avoiding. *wince*

All blathering aside, I hope things are or will get easier for you very soon. *sending you hugs and strength*

[xanthophyllippa.insanejournal.com]

Does my implicit okay-ness with perpetuating thoughtless references to mental illness make me a jerk?

No, not in the least. It just means I'm in a place where the language hits a little too close to home. I agree with what you've said, though, about "insane" being like "gay" and "sucks," because we all throw it around the time - what are you, crazy? that's nuts! dude, you're, like, insane or something. I'd be a little more okay with the interface myself if the mascot and the little username icon were different, too.

I may end up spending more time here even despite it all, only because most of my LJ friends have come here rather than GJ or JF. At least one thing has settled down - I deposited my dissertation last week, and am now OFFICIALLY FINISHED. So maybe, just maybe, everything else will start coming around to okay now.

[bronze_ribbons.insanejournal.com]

I deposited my dissertation last week, and am now OFFICIALLY FINISHED

WOOT!

Work be damned, this calls for a celebratory Min/Hooch drabble (at least!). I don't promise to be quick about it, but send prompt! *hugs*