No ficlet today... instead: Discussion Question!

[hells_half_acre]

I'm not doing a ficlet today, because
A)I can't think of anything to go with today's prompt. (Which seem to be a song about being on a city bus.)
B)I'm behind on work and I'm thinking I'll probably have to work until 11pm or something ridiculous to make up for it.

On the one hand, I could just churn out anything so that I successfully post a ficlet on every single day in April... but I find that I actually do care a little bit about the quality of the fics, so I don't want to do that.

So, instead, how about we discuss something...

My younger sister thinks that I should share my fanfiction writing (not this blog, but my AO3 account) with my friends/family on facebook. I'm against this for various reasons, but she thinks they're all stupid reasons and I should do it anyway. Now, my mum already knows about and reads this blog, and I've already shared my AO3 account with my eldest sister. My other older sister knows that I write fanfiction (she's seen the bound books that a fan made of my demented'verse), but she's never asked to read it (or maybe she has, and I sent her the link and I've just forgotten.)

Now, my reasoning is that if people that already know that I write fanfiction were interested, they would ask for links (as my eldest/youngest sister have done.) My younger sister argument to that was that she assumed because I didn't OFFER the links, that I didn't want her to read it, and it made her sad. But, in my mind, if you want a book, you go buy it from the author - you don't wait for authors to show up at your door and offer you their books. Anyway... that's a whole separate argument and really reflects more the differences in our styles of interactions with the world around us.

What I DID want to ask though was how you all felt about the whole Fandom/IRL divide?

Do you keep your fandom life and your "real" life completely separate? (As I try to.) Why, why not? Do you think they SHOULD be separate?

Personally, I like to keep them separate. I (rarely) friend fandom friends on facebook, since I see FB as mainly a place to keep in touch with old-school mates and family. Twitter is a bit more of a hodge podge though, but because of that I'm never exactly sure what to say on it.

I used to have a non-fandom LJ, but it's been inactive for years, because there's more engagement over here - and I think I also just grew out of the narcissistic stage in life where I thought people might care about my inner thoughts. (Blogging is so '00s).

Now, the reasons I like to keep everything separate is because...

A) I've always liked to keep things separated from each other. I even have different groups of RL friends, and I get really uncomfortable when they come into contact with each other.

B) Since I first found online fandom back in the 90s, it just seemed like something that was supposed to be a secret.... like fight club. :P I don't know if that's a product of the whole "fan shame" thing or if it's a product of the fact that people who aren't in fandom just honestly don't understand and/or care about anything fandom related. (My younger sister argues that they would care about my fanfiction because it's my WRITING and that's interesting - but I think she just says that because she's very sweet and she cares about my writing despite not watching the shows that I write about... other people wouldn't, I don't think.)

C) When I HAVE told other people about my fanfiction/fandom activities, they've sometimes started trying to figure out how I can monetize it.... which, you know, it's nice that they're trying to figure out how to get me a career that I actually enjoy, but that goes against like ALL THE CODES OF CONDUCT OF FANDOM, and sometimes I've had  quite a hard time getting that message across. You can monetize fanart, not fanfiction, and unless I start putting in years of study, I'm not going to suddenly become a monetized fanartist. (And seriously, "just change the names of the characters in the fanfiction, it worked for Fifty Shades of Grey"  - and then I've gotta explain the difference between AU-writers and canon-writers.... and it just goes on and on. So, maybe this reason is: TOO MUCH EXPLAINING IS ANNOYING!

D) I'm a very weirdly selectively private person. I mean, I'll happily answer basically any question honestly, but I don't like offering information about myself... especially when it comes to my family for some odd reason. Like, I just don't want them to know things about me. It's really really weird. Basically, I probably have psychological problems when it comes to issues of vulnerability or some such psychobabble. I like to live secret lives... I think it's part of the reason I don't date - I honestly DON'T want to share my life with anyone. :P

Anyway, I'd be interested to here how you feel about the issue. Should we be coming out of the fandom closet, or is that door there for a reason?

Comments

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

I'm all about never the twain shall meet when it comes to real life and fandom. Well, that's not exactly true. I don't want anything that ties my real life and name to my fannish activities, but I'm quite happy to share RL details with my flist.

Part of it is, yes, it is fun to have a secret club. Part of it is that fandom is not really well understood in the mainstream, and to cop to it is to get tagged with those things the mainstream associates with fandom. Part of it is that, yeah, fandom is a wide umbrella, and that includes the absolutely batshit insane. Tin hatters exist, and in numbers large enough that although they're not representative, we can't exactly just pretend that isn't part of fandom. There's also the fact that fandom gets off in a big way (literally, sometime) in breaking taboos (and I suspect this has a lot to do with the fact that it IS a secret club, and there's a lot of fun in embracing something you know you couldn't get away with elsewhere).

And as much as I know that there are kinks out there that people may have always wanted to explore and share, just looking at some of the kinks that become popular in fandom...how to say this...while I accept that there are some people who always got a little hot under the collar at the thought of incestuous BDSM with a side order of male pregnancy and bestiality, I very, very, very much doubt they were in anywhere near enough numbers to explain the massive popularity of werewolf mpreg A/B/O fics. Plus, and this is just a general sense I've gotten from watching the evolution of such things...I think if you look back over a fandom's history, you can see that there always seems to be the urge to push the envelope. When I first joined fandom, RPS was really kind of controversial. And now no one bats an eye. Anyway, I'm digressing. My point is that owning up to fandom means owning up to that, too. Even as a gen person, I'm still part of that culture. I may not read it, but that's about as far as I go. It doesn't weird me out like it does people who aren't in fandom. It's like that little video on fannish culture that PBS put together. It was pretty good, and it was meant positively, but yeah, they interviewed someone talking about her fic, which was not only transformers porn, but it was fannish-trope porn (I can't remember exactly. Mpreg or wingfic or SOMETHING). I got what she was saying. It wasn't my cup of tea, but I got why she was doing what she was doing. But I could imagine a non-fannish person nodding along with most of the video and then...cue record scratch music. There's no, no, no way that doesn't sound absolutely insane unless you're already part of the conversation. And I think that goes right back to the secret-club aspect. What we're doing is engaging with media, but we're doing it communally, and all of our fannish endeavors in some way boil down to making a statement that showcases not only our reaction to a text, but our reaction to other people's reaction to the text. We're stuck in an echo chamber- not in the sense of being stuck to the same old ideas, but because we're kind of a self-selected group, the conversation becomes very, very, very insular.


But that's also one of the perks. One of the things I like about having a fannish identity, at least online, is that it's kind of liberating. And I don't mean just in the PORN PORN PORN kind of way- it's not that there aren't expectations here of who I am or how I'll act, but they're very different then the ones I live under in real life, and I'd argue that they're less restrictive. Here, I can like things and discuss things without making it my identity (feminism! comic books! Genre television!). I am just as passionate about skiing as I am fandom, but if I were to be upfront about my involvement in fandom, that would make me a fangirl, but I'd have to make skiing my WHOLE LIFE before people'd seriously consider me a ski bum. Somehow, fandom or feminism or even just really liking watching hot guys in spandex beat the crap out of each other on the big screen either becomes something you have to hedge around and justify, or you have to embrace it as your life.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Plus, and this is just a general sense I've gotten from watching the evolution of such things...I think if you look back over a fandom's history, you can see that there always seems to be the urge to push the envelope.

I agree, but I'm not sure it's necessarily about taboos.. I mean, yeah, part of it is. But I also think that things like A/B/O fics and even beastiality, underage, mpreg, whatever... they aren't so much about taboos as playing with idea of gender and power-imbalances. You push the envelope in order to expose the underlying psychology of a trope and in so doing you create another trope that someone else wants to twist and expose the underbelly of. So, yeah, part of it is about taboos (and you will get people who are almost taboo trolls, who, perhaps, get off on shocking people and it's not even about the porn, but about the offense), but I think the majority is about digging up that underbelly to everything we do and constantly trying to discuss it by exposing it...

But that's all besides the point. I completely agree with what you're saying - it's a rabbit hole of increasing levels of debauchery. And it's hard to explain, in part, I think, because so little of the inner workings of female erotic fantasy are understood or discussed or even acknowledged in mainstream culture. Women aren't supposed to like porn, and they're definitely not supposed to like really fucked-up psychological porn. :P

So, yeah, the conversations are all insular, because it's easiest to explore these things with people who "get" it - to take it further and further, until you're basically in the equivalent of the 10th season of fandom, and unless someone's been there from the beginning, they're not going to understand a single thing that's going on, because they don't have the back story. Now, of course, there are new fans discovering fandom everyday... but there's a difference between coming to it willingly and having it be thrust upon you.

Somehow, fandom or feminism or even just really liking watching hot guys in spandex beat the crap out of each other on the big screen either becomes something you have to hedge around and justify, or you have to embrace it as your life.

I think this is one of my main problems with mixing fandom and RL - I absolutely hate belonging to groups or communities. I know communities are meant to support you and whatnot and that's great, but I balk at anything external to me that people might use to try to "define" me in some way. And willingly advertising the fact that I'm a member of a fandom would do exactly that - it would link me with a group.

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

There are communities, and then there are communities. I just moved to another country. Living in London, there are a lot of people in that same boat, and when I got sat at a table full of other north americans, we all kind of bonded over that. But it's not my primary identity and no one expects it to be. It's pretty far down the list of identity-markers. Same with being a PhD student, and a classicist, and so on. All of these things are communities I belong to, but there's no sense that they own me or I need to own them. And that's how I like it. But I'm never going to walk into a comic shop to buy a copy of Hawkeye, even though I think it's great, because I'm not comfortable with the mantel of FEMALE in the COMIC BOOK SHOP. And it's the same with fandom. So I think we're on the same wave length there.

Also, that's a really interesting way of looking at what goes on with the evolution of fan tropes (and porn). They're actually fairly complementary theories, when I think about it. Taboos often do intersect with the dynamics and strictures of our lives, and violating them via thought experiment is definitely a way to lay those intersections bare.

As to fucked up psychological porn...you're right. Women aren't supposed to really have erotic fantasies, let alone the fucked up ones. And if they do, it's because it Means Something. (and about all womankind, likely).

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

It's true, there are some communities that I can't help but belong to, and I don't MIND belonging to... white, female, canadian, university educated (various university alumnus, etc).

I WILL walk into a comic shop, but I'll do it to buy one comic and ignore 99% of what's in there, and I won't identify myself as anything other than a casual fan of anything - even Supernatural. Another example is over on youtube, where I've watched the vlogbrothers since their first year of creation, yet I don't want to identify myself with their community of "nerdfighters" - and the same goes for any other you-tube channel that I subscribe to. It's the difference, in my opinion, of being a fan, and being a "fangirl/boy."

There's this idea that if you're a fan of something it has to form some aspect of your personality. If you like comics, you have to like ALL THE COMICS. I like some of the comics when I'm in the mood. I like Supernatural, and I participate a little bit in the fan community associated with it, but one day it will be over and I will move on to other things and hardly think of it at all.

As to fucked up psychological porn...you're right. Women aren't supposed to really have erotic fantasies, let alone the fucked up ones. And if they do, it's because it Means Something. (and about all womankind, likely).

Arg, yes, that's another thing that drives me nuts. We're back to the weird notion where someone sees one ginger cat and then assumes that it must mean that all cats are ginger. God help womenkind if someone decided that I should be chosen as representative.