Four Points of Devotion
Jan. 22nd, 2006 01:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stuttermoanCaution: Rambling and TMI. This is me exploring my fandom involvement, and the background that lead up to it.
I like to write.
I like to write poetry. I like to write one-scene fics, and I've got myself caught up in a longer, complicated, meandering work-in-progress, a fic of which I am alternately proud and terrified.
That should be all there is to it, right? I'm a fan, and I like doing this, so I'm doing it (and intending to publicly post more of it someday, I assure you). It should be that simple, and maybe from some viewpoint, it is...but to me, right now, it ain't.
Let me try to break it down logically. The influencing factors: fandom involvement, love of HP, slash, writing.
Fandom Involvement - Okay, I've got the crazed-fan thing down fairly well. I was an EverQuest fangirl for four years. I went to conventions. I read forums. I printed out pages and pages of quest info. I bought expansions. I sat up until obscene hours of the morning, leveling my characters. I know about, and have lived, the lifestyle that accompanies illogical devotion. I outgrew psychological addiction. I now know how to enjoy fangirling without it taking over my life.
The problem with the HP shade of fan involvement is that it involves much more complex ways of dealing with others. And unlike any online game, involvement here is self-created. There are no game mechanics forcing us to rely on each other, and seek each other out. Nothing pushing us to socialize, and with goals much less clear than character experience, or quest completion, or a shiny new piece of equip. I knew the social rules of that world of fans, but I have no clue about this one. What gets me by in real life, being observant and polite, doesn't seem to be enough. I've been at this for almost 10 months, and I'm still painfully intimidated.
Love of HP - I was late on this. I always intended to read the books, but never got around to it until summer of 2004 (I think). I went Snape-crazy spring of '05, during an insanely stressful period of my life, and began reading fanfic (Snape/Harry, I chose randomly) as a means of escape.
It worked. Lord, how it worked. I was a machine. I was astoundingly content, and I slept even less than I had during my EverQuest heyday, back when I was in the closest thing to an uberguild I probably ever will be in. There is no doubt that the love is still there, although I've thankfully gone past the honeymoon stage, and now get respectable amounts of sleep on weekdays.
Slash - I did this before I knew about the internet culture of it. In our early teens (during the mid 1990's), my best friend and I slashed together for about five years. Our works were vastly male/male in pairing (because femmeslash, to us, seemed a bit too close to the truth, I think). We started with "Tenkuu no Escaflowne" characters (Dilandau/Chesta!). We wrote stories, and we slashed our original characters. We slashed the band members of Marilyn Manson and Metallica. We slashed pretty much anything she became interested in, because she was one of those people that gets serial obsessions for a couple months at a time.
Eventually, we slashed each other. And when my few blessed months were up, and she was no longer interested in me 'in that way' (or, apparently, at all), we fought, and we split, and I was left on my own, feeling like some undefinable sexual deviant. Not only was I apparently a lesbian (or at least bi), but I liked writing/roleplaying from the perspective of a gay guy.
It was intensely confusing, and something that affected me deeply. I don't regret it. The sexual awakenings of my friend and I were not caused by slash, but it was certainly a component.
Writing - I have always written stories. Before I could write, I made up stories aloud. My mom has many of them on cassette tape. My Barbies had complex pasts and plotty, complicated lives. In third grade, I won an award for a story I wrote. It involved a peasant girl who became a magician's apprentice. I was specifically complimented for my use of the word "bedraggled."
During my years with my above-mentioned friend, she and I wrote a massive amount. We loved starting new storylines, and deciding how characters would react to each other on first meeting. We loved tension, and angst, and shame, not to mention non-con and chan. We never finished anything, but we had fun. And when I write, I still have fun.
So, to recap...
Fandom Involvement - Needs work.
Love of HP - Definitely there, and still going strong.
Slash - Got the history, trying to make my perception of it match my grown-up self.
Writing - I enjoy it, and I'm decent at it.
My friend, by the way, is now a moderately-known Star Wars fic writer. We don't speak anymore. She wrote HP fic for a while, which makes me wonder how we'd have turned out, fan-wise, if we had stayed together. If she'd have settled on that one obsession, and we had worked together, I could easily picture us as a BNF powercouple. Trippy. I'm off-topic, so I'll shut up now.
I like to write.
I like to write poetry. I like to write one-scene fics, and I've got myself caught up in a longer, complicated, meandering work-in-progress, a fic of which I am alternately proud and terrified.
That should be all there is to it, right? I'm a fan, and I like doing this, so I'm doing it (and intending to publicly post more of it someday, I assure you). It should be that simple, and maybe from some viewpoint, it is...but to me, right now, it ain't.
Let me try to break it down logically. The influencing factors: fandom involvement, love of HP, slash, writing.
Fandom Involvement - Okay, I've got the crazed-fan thing down fairly well. I was an EverQuest fangirl for four years. I went to conventions. I read forums. I printed out pages and pages of quest info. I bought expansions. I sat up until obscene hours of the morning, leveling my characters. I know about, and have lived, the lifestyle that accompanies illogical devotion. I outgrew psychological addiction. I now know how to enjoy fangirling without it taking over my life.
The problem with the HP shade of fan involvement is that it involves much more complex ways of dealing with others. And unlike any online game, involvement here is self-created. There are no game mechanics forcing us to rely on each other, and seek each other out. Nothing pushing us to socialize, and with goals much less clear than character experience, or quest completion, or a shiny new piece of equip. I knew the social rules of that world of fans, but I have no clue about this one. What gets me by in real life, being observant and polite, doesn't seem to be enough. I've been at this for almost 10 months, and I'm still painfully intimidated.
Love of HP - I was late on this. I always intended to read the books, but never got around to it until summer of 2004 (I think). I went Snape-crazy spring of '05, during an insanely stressful period of my life, and began reading fanfic (Snape/Harry, I chose randomly) as a means of escape.
It worked. Lord, how it worked. I was a machine. I was astoundingly content, and I slept even less than I had during my EverQuest heyday, back when I was in the closest thing to an uberguild I probably ever will be in. There is no doubt that the love is still there, although I've thankfully gone past the honeymoon stage, and now get respectable amounts of sleep on weekdays.
Slash - I did this before I knew about the internet culture of it. In our early teens (during the mid 1990's), my best friend and I slashed together for about five years. Our works were vastly male/male in pairing (because femmeslash, to us, seemed a bit too close to the truth, I think). We started with "Tenkuu no Escaflowne" characters (Dilandau/Chesta!). We wrote stories, and we slashed our original characters. We slashed the band members of Marilyn Manson and Metallica. We slashed pretty much anything she became interested in, because she was one of those people that gets serial obsessions for a couple months at a time.
Eventually, we slashed each other. And when my few blessed months were up, and she was no longer interested in me 'in that way' (or, apparently, at all), we fought, and we split, and I was left on my own, feeling like some undefinable sexual deviant. Not only was I apparently a lesbian (or at least bi), but I liked writing/roleplaying from the perspective of a gay guy.
It was intensely confusing, and something that affected me deeply. I don't regret it. The sexual awakenings of my friend and I were not caused by slash, but it was certainly a component.
Writing - I have always written stories. Before I could write, I made up stories aloud. My mom has many of them on cassette tape. My Barbies had complex pasts and plotty, complicated lives. In third grade, I won an award for a story I wrote. It involved a peasant girl who became a magician's apprentice. I was specifically complimented for my use of the word "bedraggled."
During my years with my above-mentioned friend, she and I wrote a massive amount. We loved starting new storylines, and deciding how characters would react to each other on first meeting. We loved tension, and angst, and shame, not to mention non-con and chan. We never finished anything, but we had fun. And when I write, I still have fun.
So, to recap...
Fandom Involvement - Needs work.
Love of HP - Definitely there, and still going strong.
Slash - Got the history, trying to make my perception of it match my grown-up self.
Writing - I enjoy it, and I'm decent at it.
My friend, by the way, is now a moderately-known Star Wars fic writer. We don't speak anymore. She wrote HP fic for a while, which makes me wonder how we'd have turned out, fan-wise, if we had stayed together. If she'd have settled on that one obsession, and we had worked together, I could easily picture us as a BNF powercouple. Trippy. I'm off-topic, so I'll shut up now.
