Your mission should you choose to accept it

[firecat]

This is coming up for me as a result of a combination of things, including: having started to read Star Trek the Reboot fanfic, conversations I heard at Wiscon, and posts I saw today, including this one.

Describe science fiction fandom.
Describe media fandom.
What fandoms do you consider yourself to belong to or feel some affinity with?
What terms do you use to describe them?

Comments

[wyvernwell.livejournal.com]

Okay.

Spent three years of my life doing more things that you can count in LOTR fandom incl. meeting and hanging with celebs and film crews, costuming and performing, art, and reading/writing fanfic. To describe fandom I'd say it's a media phenomenon in any format that becomes a hobby.

Fandom is fun and time consuming. It's an opportunity to meet new people and hang out with old friends. It can be expensive. It can also be memorable.

One of the best things about LOTR fandom is that in general it is a very sane, creative, mature, intelligent, and literary group. Tolkien-based stuff goes different places than, you know, something like Pokemon fandom.

My OTP = Sam and Frodo. It's a very typical boring everyday OTP and is practically canon, but S/F shippers get very passionate about their OTP and sometimes there is spillover into "real person slash" which is kind of dumb IMHO. The most stupid thing in the fandom was a massive fandom wank involving a group of ppl called "tinhats" who were convinced that Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan were sleeping together. I still scratch my head over that.

YAY ST REBOOT :)

[firecat]

Thanks!

I really wish I had had LOTR fans to hang out with when I was about 8-12 years old. (Not so much for slash purposes, but I was very identified with LOTR and didn't have anyone to talk to about it except my dad.)

What is "real person slash"? The idea that the actors who play the characters are sleeping together? Hm, that sounds kind of dumb to me too. (I'm all for leaving celebrities' personal lives alone, in general.)

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

That's a fair enough description of RPS/RPF, although bandom kind of blurs the line (particularly in well-done bandfic [pls note: not "badfic" which is a whole other animal]); how much of a musician's public persona is a role they take on and how much is the musician themself? Bowie is a particularly interesting manifestation of this phenomenon, by the way.

I used to write bandslash for Duran, but never once have I thought that the real band members had sex with each other. Well, maybe once, but that had more to do with Simon kissing John on stage than anything else. I stopped out of boredom with the band more than anything.

However, a lack of understanding that actor != role does seem to be endemic in a lot of actor!RPS. I never really read other bandslash or bandfic, so I can't speak to it; Duran fans in general seem pretty rational on this point (one of the few places they are, oddly), and the band seems more amused by it than anything. If they'd ever said anything that implied they found it objectionable, I would have stopped.

Man, am I rambling on.

[firecat]

how much of a musician's public persona is a role they take on and how much is the musician themself? Bowie is a particularly interesting manifestation of this phenomenon, by the way.

OK, I can see that...