Rambling about fandom.

ethrosdemon declared today Meta Sunday, and although I'm nowhere near as articulate as she is, I'll gladly babble a bit on something I was thinking about last night.

So there's this vid called "Us" by lim that I'm pretty sure everyone has more or less heard of through your flists or whatnot. I highly urge everyone to watch it, because after reading the comments and several posts/reactions, it seems that everyone in some way has a varied response to it, be it extremely visceral or just "meh". But I do think it should be required viewing for anyone who loves fandom as a whole; not Fandom X, but fandom, i.e. the collective hive of fen.

I remember several years ago, when I was immersed in XF fandom, being assigned to write a paper about What is Good Writing. I chose to discuss fanfiction, and I printed off pages of excerpts from my favorite fics and passed them out to the class as instructed--I had to have examples to back up my thesis. I still remember the look on my professor's face (and the rest of the class) when I started to explain just what, exactly, fanfiction (and ultimately fandom) was. You'd think I was describing a newly formed solar system. Everyone was polite and vaguely intrigued, but I think when it came right down to it, no one considered what I was discussing to be "true" writing.

But the debate over whether or not fanfic is "true" writing isn't my point. No one in that class understood because they just didn't get it. You can use the analogy of the Packers fan who paints himself green and yellow every Sunday to illustrate fannish love, but in the end, you either get it, or you don't. And that's what makes fandom so amazing; to have people from all walks of life, all areas of the planet who KNOW what it's like to watch that brand new episode or read the latest comic or listen to the latest album and want to explode with the glee it brings. That we care enough to want to share that glee with people we've never met (and most likely will never meet) is what makes this community (and I mean this in the broadest of terms) special and unique.

That Wall Street Journal article last year made fandom and fanfiction sound like some kind of recent phenomenon, and that just makes me giggle. Yes, we sometimes forget that fandom tends to exist in its own squee-filled bubble--it's hard for me to remember that no, not everyone and their dog watches Sci-Fi Channel on Sunday nights, or thinks Jensen Ackles is hotter than a hot thing, or cares that Joss Whedon directed an episode of The Office. But fangirls and fanboys have been around for eons, writing their own versions of whatever fannish love they can wrap their hearts around, through fanfic, meta, or abusing capslock with a simple OMGZ YAY!!!1.

I guess what I'm trying to convey here (albeit roughly, LOL), is that fandom for me is a giant sing-a-long of the Cheers theme; for better or infinitely worse, I'm always glad I came.

/cheeze :P