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

[borgmama1of5.livejournal.com]

I would love to engage in a thoughtful discussion but I'm all out of thoughts tonight...

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

No worries, this entry will be up for a while ;)

[grasshopr-molly.livejournal.com]

I told my mom about the Epic and she said, "Why don't you just change the names and sell it as a real novel?"

I just had to breathe for a second.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Oh man, EXACTLY!

Like, people tell this to me after I've explained that it's a Supernatural/Harry Potter crossover... HOW CAN THAT POSSIBLY BE CHANGED INTO AN ORIGINAL NOVEL BY JUST "CHANGING THE NAMES"!?

Drives me crazy.

[grasshopr-molly.livejournal.com]

Yeah, no. The Epic's the same thing: First person narrative, based on one of the show's alternate history eps and involving time-travel and retelling of previous seasons. No, I cannot tweak that; I'd have to rip out three quarters of it and start over.

Then again, Shards of Honor began life as Trek fic. :)

[ria-oaks.livejournal.com]

Always a tricky one I know... I'm open about my fannishness in general (ie. about being a sci fi fan and a geek and such) but a bit less so about fanfic/slash/etc. Which annoys me at the same time that I know why I do it - because too many people still think it's weird/stupid/whatever and I don't want to argue about it. At the same time... part of me wants to say fuck off to all of them and proudly call myself a slasher. :)

I've always been primarily friends with other fans - I don't think I've ever actually had a non-fannish friend since I was a kid. Guess I just gravitate towards befriending people with the same interests. It's been a bit awkward at times, though, having such a big fan community at the Cafe where everyone is a fan but not necessarily, you know, a fan like us. I mean people are generally cool about it, but even from my closest friends there I get teased about being into fic/being a slasher ("what are you drawing? is it gay porn??") and I get a bit sick of it. I might have possibly blown up (mildly) about it awhile back. ^^ But yeah, even though people there don't really care, I wish there were more who were into fic and such! A lot of them just think it's kinda weird and don't get it, and occasionally say annoyingly hurtful and offensive things about fic. I get a bit sensitive about it at times, because I figure... we're all fans, and isn't the point of fandom to be accepting of all kinds of fannishness? I think a lot of non-fic readers in fandom tend to look down on it and assume it's all crap, and I try to educate people that a lot of it is actually very good, but... yeah. Mostly they still just giggle about how I draw gay porn. ^^

Which is a long way of saying... that yeah, even within real life fandom, it can be hard being a fic/slash/etc fan! I was more closed off about it when I first started going to the Cafe, and eventually I was like "fuck it, I draw, read, and once in a blue moon even write gay slash porn. Go me!" But there are still some parts of fandom, ie. RPF, that I don't really feel comfortable talking about there.

My family knows about my fannishness because I've been a fan since I was like 12, and I wasn't exactly circumspect about it. "Hey Mom, look at this gay porn I drew! What do you think?" yeah that was me at 14. wtf self. Mostly she just rolls her eyes and is used to it. I'm super lucky in that two of my co-workers are geeks - neither are into the fic side of things and I haven't really mentioned it, but hey, I work with people who understand my love of Buffy and Doctor Who so yay! They're even coming to FanExpo.

Sorry that was mostly just a long ramble. I've had Feelings about this for awhile. Bottom line, though, I completely understand why some people keep fandom and RL separate, esp the slash/fic/etc side of fandom. Because sadly some people just won't get it and will judge us for it. And much though I want to just say "whatever, screw you all this is who I am", when it comes to real life and business and stuff that's not always going to fly. But I'm generally happy that fandom is becoming more mainstream and accepted, so we can start coming out of the closet. Although it does dilute the 'special secret club' aspect of fandom, it's refreshing to see people getting more educated about it and hopefully coming to judge it less.

[ramblin_rosie]

I'm fairly open in personal conversation about the fact that I'm involved in fandom, but usually only with select audiences (if that makes sense). I'm generally pickier about who actually gets links to my stuff. But really, that's more a matter of trying to be more careful than I used to be about RL details getting to fandom folks than being at all ashamed about the stuff I write, although there are certain fandoms (SPN especially) where I have to be careful about getting a o.O reaction over the theology on points where the canon doesn't square at all with what I believe. Haven't gotten the "change the names and sell it" spiel--but I have taken a few plot points from abandoned fics and worked them into original fic.

[khek.livejournal.com]

I keep mine separate. Not so much because of immediate family, but because of the people connected through them. Do I really want my mother's office partner (who used to be my best friend growing up) that I'm that into TV shows? And what shows they are? Or my cousin, who is Mr. Judgmental? Or my snobby coworker, who only watches PBS and reads "LITrature", who is a facebook friend of another coworker who is on my friends list?

It's not that I'm ashamed of what I do, or watch, or read about, it's just that I like my privacy and I want to know who knows what. And if you put it out there on Facebook, eventually friends of friends of friends will know.

So for me, keeping fandom friends and RL connections will be mostly separate. And really, it's for my peace of mind. For whatever that's worth!

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's basically how I feel about it too. It's a privacy issue for me. I want to be in control of who knows, and putting it out there attached to my real name (even on my "top privacy settings" FB account) is too much (especially because FB is unpredictable with privacy.)

It's different when you publish things with your own name attached, but fanfic is always written under a pseudonym and I see that as a gift to privacy.

[ria-oaks.livejournal.com]

Oh and as a follow up because I didn't mention it - that all said, I do keep most of my fannishness off Facebook... or rather, the fic/LJ/etc side of it. I'm open about what I like, but when my friend from the Cafe suggested I post my Tony/Steve slash drawing on FB so she could see it I was like "um no. Just no. I will send you a link instead." The lines are blurring more and more from having Cafe friends on FB, and it gets hard to keep them separate... and really sometimes I'm not sure how much I want to separate them, but otoh there are old colleagues and such on my FB that remain useful connections to have, and they don't need to know this stuff...

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

I used to be less careful about IRL stuff getting out to fandom... and I probably still am less careful then I should be. There's another fan though that has the exact same first name as me though who is MUCH different than me (and also a bigger name in some SPN fan spaces) so I quickly took my name off this account so that there would hopefully be no confusion about us being the same person (it's not a common name.)

But for the most part I'm pretty open about my personal life in fandom places, but not fandom in personal life places.

With my friends, I'm fairly open about being a fan, and a few of them know that I write - but I try not to talk about it too much and I downplay it. And yeah, it's only with selective audiences, because, as I said, I'm a strangely private person even among family/friends.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's how I feel about FB - there's such a mash of different people on it, that it just doesn't make sense to share my writing with EVERYONE there. I mean, the guy I went on two dates with in 2006 doesn't need to know that I wrote Sherlock/John slash. :P

The lines do blur though, and it kind of drives me a little crazy...especially when I have to send emails to people and say "listen, I rejected your friend request - but it's not because you aren't my friend, it's because you're my LJ friend not my FB friend. No offense?"

The Cafe people kind of blur those lines a lot, which is part of the reason that I pretend my fannish behaviour is a bit more superficial when I do meet up with them, because some of them are on my FB and if you're on my FB, it means that I'm only going to give you the superficial version of my life.

[cappy712.livejournal.com]

I keep my interests separate too! My immediate family knows that I love the show and that I read stories (they don't know much about the stories whatever they are - and they seem to think that I'm going through my second teen years - hehe) I don't talk about it unless someone else brings up the show.

I even have two separate Facebook accounts (personal and fandom) my Mother is the one who suggested I separate my accounts. She was being asked questions about posts that I was putting on my account and she said they should ask me but instead they kept going to her in person wth? So I created a whole separate one just to keep the two apart. It's actually been very freeing. With one not having the others as friends at all - never the two meeting - I don't have to edit my comments on my fan page (I do anyway) but it is easier to post and not worry about comments being said to my Mother with each post.

I understand where your family is concerned - they are encouraging you and want to share. They don't see that what you write is for fans (especially if they are not fans).

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's a whole other discussion that could take place about the different stratas and groups within Fandom and you negotiate those... because there's a huge difference between going to a FanExpo and drawing/writing slash.

And things like Fifty Shades of Grey don't help, because people see one example of fanfiction and assume it represents ALL fanfiction - which is as ridiculous as assuming every cat is ginger, because the first cat you saw was ginger.

But you do bring up a good point - sometimes it's not about "fan shame" sometimes it's about feeling like you have a "special secret club" and LIKING that feeling. So, there are good sides (less fan shame) and bad sides (less special secret club) to fandom becoming more mainstream.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what I always tell people "I'd have to completely rewrite it - and if I were going to do that, I might as well just write a new original novel from scratch."

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've debated getting separate accounts. Especially since I'm the only one with my name in the entire world, so I lose basically ALL anonymity whenever someone finds out my name. (Which many many people have done, because I've sent a lot of PDF copies of my writing to fans from my personal email account.)

Anyway, by now I kind of feel like that ship has sailed. :P

Oddly enough though, the time when I wish that I COULD post on facebook about fandom related stuff is the times when I don't want fandom related people to read what I'm saying, because I'm complaining about them. :P So, getting a separate account wouldn't solve that problem, but telling my friends/family about my fanworks WOULD.

I think my sister just thought I should share, because I spend a LOT of my time writing (and am open about this) but no one ever gets to see the results. She thought that maybe people would be interested to know that I'm actually capable of writing and writing well, rather than assume that I'm only writing for myself and/or suck at it.

[ria-oaks.livejournal.com]

Lol yeah, there are too many different people on FB... I don't mind friending fannish/LJ people there in theory, but I'd need to caution them first to be a bit circumspect about what they say on my wall or wherever! But I'm crossing lines more and more and getting fed up with being in the closet... even as I know that 'coming out' could lead to negative consequences in business/work/etc.

The Cafe people are pretty used to fic talk now from me and they're basically cool about it. Several of them have said they think it's awesome that I do it even if they're not into it. It's just sometimes the teasing gets tiresome - I mean yeah, we all razz each other a lot about different things, but this is one thing I get sensitive about with them. I wish there were more of us fic/slash fans that go regularly so we can band together there! I mean I love them all, but there are parts of my fannish experience they just... don't get. And I wish I had more people there to share those parts with. I spend a hell of a lot of time with those people, lol, and I want to be able to talk more about fic!

[baruchan.livejournal.com]

Mostly I try to hide porny/disturbing/age-inappropriate fandom stuff from my younger cousins (who add me on Facebook); otherwise, I don't make it a secret in RL that I participate in fannish things. Being a fan is a huge part of my personal identity, so I find it pointless to try to downplay what I do with 60% of my free time.

That said, I generally don't disclose personal details on fan spaces. I think it's a holdover from my days as a 12-year-old sneaking into adults-only communities :P

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, that's the other problem with FB, my nieces and nephews are on there. As it is, I already forget about them and say inappropriate things... I just hope they're only there for the games and don't actually care about their weird Aunt who rarely talks to them.

I try to keep my name out of fannish spaces, but then I blew that completely when I just decided to send out PDFs from my personal email account... of course, I always put the disclaimer not to use my name for evil, but my name is NOT common (*sings "the wonderful thing about tiggers..."*)

But yeah, as it is, I think anyone with a brain could figure out exactly where I live... maybe not the house, but definitely the neighbourhood.

[ria-oaks.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I really just want to sit down and explain to people who don't get it, just what exactly fandom and fic means and how it is empowering. I mean, there's been lots of academic research and shit done on fandom - back in university I took several Popular Culture classes out in Ontario, including one called 'Audience Studies'. We had several classes on fandom (in which the prof mis-used the term slash and made me go ARGH, because Clark/Chloe is not slash! It's het! Slash does not mean the same thing as ship!). I did a seminar presentation on slash (actually I did a couple that year, lol) - now that was interesting... got a lot of blank stares.

But really, in an academic setting you think people would've been more open to learning about it. I talked a lot about how slash (especially in the early days of Kirk/Spock) is a way of resisting the hetero-normativity of most mainstream media by recognizing and building on queer subtext. Even though many fans are straight cis-women, many are definitely not and also most of us straight cis-women care a lot about things like gay rights and empowering queerness and all of that. Not saying that slash has to be political or anything, but I think a case can be made that there's sometimes an element of that. We want more gay people in our TV and dammit we will write fic since we don't get it in canon. ;) (I also talked about how writing erotic fiction is a way of empowering female sexuality because we are being open about our desires and communicating them through our writing... now that got blank stares!)

Anyway, my rambling point is that I want to claim fanfiction/fanart/etc as something we do that is empowering and creative and awesome, and explain it to people that way. Because what is shameful or weird about engaging critically and creatively with the media we consume? Would people prefer if we just passively sat back and stare at the TV without thinking about what we're consuming? And by creating fic and fandom we create a strong community full of creative, smart, and open-minded (well in general/ideally!) individuals. Transformative works are awesome things and I want more people to understand why! (I also wrote a paper on fan charities that year of university - wanted to prove that fandom can have 'real-life' positive effects too!)

And yeah, the secret club thing is always an issue when small things go mainstream... and it's an understandable reaction, really, because people LIKE things that are exclusive and special and that other people don't know about. It can be nice, and that's not always a bad thing. But really, more people liking the stuff we like should be a good thing, not a bad one, even if our gut reaction is sometimes to say "I was here first, go away!" lol.

god I'm talkative tonight. Sorry. I've had these thoughts boiling over for awhile.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Don't apologize, they are good thoughts!

And I completely agree with all of them. It'd be nice if people just understood - if you could somehow sit them down and EXPLAIN everything to them and have them go "Oh! I get it!" and they actually do.

I don't know, maybe one day someone will write a book that we can just hand to our non-fandom friends/family and say "talk to me after you read this" :P

(Sidenote: it drives me nuts when people call het slash.)

[ria-oaks.livejournal.com]

Haha we should write a book like that. ;) I mean there are academic essays/studies done on fandom and various books, but we need something short and pithy that explains it. Course everyone's experience of fandom is different, but I think there are some commonalities that most of us could agree on...

I just need to get better at defending it in person - I'm not very good at debating because I don't really like conflict. But I want to stand up for myself and say "No, this is not some weird thing I do! It is awesome and empowering for X-Y-Z reasons!"

(also massive agreement to the person below who said that they don't want to deny something that is a big part of their personal identity or hide what they do with most of their spare time. In part because it's really hard for me to think of hobbies/things I like that AREN'T related to fandom! "Umm, I like travel. And drawing. And I used to do martial arts? Yeah I'm out." At least drawing is an easy one if I don't say WHAT I draw. "gay porn? what gay porn?"

[quickreaver.livejournal.com]

I don't keep my fannishness under a bushel, but I don't wave it like a banner either. It's a hobby of mine that I really love, and that's kinda that! I am mindful that clients might stumble on it, so I'm pretty vanilla. If I feel like getting dicier, I can do so out of the 'quickreaver' zone. I'm pretty simple like that.

Also, I know the sort of crazy reputation 'fans' can get; I want to prove that wrong. One can be a functional adult AND a fangirl. It's O.KAY. No different than being a sports fanatic, imho.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

It's true, and that's an argument for being open about it - because that way people can see that it doesn't mean that you're a weird awkward person who lives in a basement and does whatever it is that people currently think that fans do. :P

My stuff is pretty vanilla, so it's not really the content that I'm afraid of sharing... it's more the privacy aspect of it, where I really just like having secrets.

But then there is also the aspect of not wanting to have to explain myself again and again to people who have the wrong idea about it all - whether that's laziness, or what, I don't know.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a little pamphlete or something we could just hand people. :P

I think that's the problem with a lot of fans though (especially women) we don't like conflict, so people make comments and we just let them and then change the subject and we don't educate.

And yeah, it IS hard to explain your hobbies and not be honest about fandom. "I write" - but no one ever sees any of it. "I read" - oh, what are you reading? - "uh, just romances mostly, you know... nothing too interesting." :P