we're all stories in the end
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
This this this. “Tune in next week for the most obscure ridiculous disgusting dead body and stereotypical suspects EVER!!”
No, bitches, I’m tuning in for the BB.
^ One of the reasons I’ve stopped watching the show as intently as I used to.
Fandom is focus. Fandom is obsession. Fandom is insatiable consumption. Fandom is sitting for hours in front of a TV screen a movie screen a computer screen with a comic book a novel on your lap. Fandom is eyestrain and carpal tunnel syndrome and not enough exercise and staying up way, way past your bedtime.
Fandom is people you don’t tell your mother you’re meeting. Fandom is people in the closet, people out and proud, people in costumes, people in T-shirts with slogans only fifty others would understand. Fandom is a loud dinner conversation scaring the waiter and every table nearby.
Fandom is you in Germany and me in the US and him in Australia and her in Japan. Fandom is a sofabed in New York, a roadtrip to Oxnard, a friend behind a face in London. Fandom talks past timezones and accents and backgrounds. Fandom is conversation. Communication. Contact.
Fandom is drama. Fandom is melodrama. Fandom is high school. Fandom is Snacky’s law and Godwin’s law and Murphy’s law. Fandom is smarter than you. Fandom is stupider than you. Fandom is five arguments over and over and over again. Fandom is the first time you’ve ever had them.
Fandom is female. Fandom is male. Fandom lets female play at being male. Fandom bends gender, straight, gay, prude, promiscuous. Fandom is fantasy. Fandom doesn’t care about norms or taboos or boundaries. Fandom cares too much about norms and taboos and boundaries. Fandom is not real life. Fandom is closer than real life. Fandom knows what you’re really like in the bedroom. Fandom is how you would never, could never be in the bedroom.
Fandom is shipping, never shipping, het, slash, gen, none of the above, more than the above. Fandom is love for characters you didn’t create. Fandom is recreating the characters you didn’t create. Fandom is appropriation, subversion, dissention. Fandom is adoration, extrapolation, imitation. Fandom is dissection, criticism, interpretation. Fandom is changing, experimenting, attempting.
Fandom is creating. Fandom is drawing, painting, vidding: nine seasons in four minutes of love. Fandom is words, language, authoring. Fandom is essays, stories, betas, parodies, filks, zines, usenet posts, blog posts, message board posts, emails, chats, petitions, wank, concrit, feedback, recs. Fandom is writing for the first time since you were twelve. Fandom is finally calling yourself a writer.
Fandom is signal and response. Fandom is a stranger moving you to tears, anger, laughter. Fandom is you moving a stranger to speak.
Fandom is distraction. Fandom is endangering your job, your grades, your relationships, your bank account. Fandom gets no work done. Fandom is too much work. Fandom was/is just a phase. Fandom could never be just a phase. Fandom is where you found a friend, a sister, a kindred spirit. Fandom is where you found a talent, a love, a reason.
Fandom is where you found yourself.
An article on fanfiction that’s not at all gross or condescending! Quite nice given the kind of press fanfiction usually gets.
Fan fiction is what literature might look like if it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by a band of brilliant pop-culture junkies trapped in a sealed bunker. They don’t do it for money. That’s not what it’s about. The writers write it and put it up online just for the satisfaction. They’re fans, but they’re not silent, couchbound consumers of media. The culture talks to them, and they talk back to the culture in its own language.
Fan-fiction writers are not pornographers. (This perception is so pervasive that in order to avoid confusing their friends and colleagues, many of the people interviewed for this article declined to be identified by their real names.) There’s plenty of sex in fan fiction, but it’s only a small part of the picture.
“I’ve been in fandom since early 2005, when I was getting ready to turn 12,” says Kelli Joyce. “For me, starting so young, fanfic became my English teacher, my sex-ed class, my favorite hobby and the source of some of my dearest friends. It also provided me with a crash course in social justice and how to respect and celebrate diversity, both of characters and fic writers.”
It challenges just about everything we thought we knew about art and creativity
.
Fanficiton is like the best thing since chocolate. Seriously XD I mean, I love the original work, but it’s good to have stories made up about them! I love fanfiction too much ♥
There’s bad fanfiction, good fanfiction, and fanfiction that makes you want to curl up and bawl your eyes out because it transcends the original work. It rarely happens, but it does. And I’m glad people are starting to pay attention to fanfiction as a legitimate act of writing and contributing to the collective cultural consciousness.
(via ohmypreciousgirl)
(via twoboobsjohnson)
I miss my old Bones. :( The pre-Season 6 Bones. I find that I am no longer interested in watching the episodes, simply because I’m bored with the cases, the dialogue sounds trite and coming out of (really badly written) fanfiction, and the characters seem like caricatures of themselves.
That being said, I’m still a casual fan of Castle and The Big Bang Theory, and I am really, REALLY, REALLY enjoying Doctor Who. So far, still on the Ninth Doctor, but wow. Just wow. Sheer scale of storytelling. Wow.
Disclaimer: To be completely honest, this is more of a “What not to do”. I’m not entirely uncreative, but infamous among friends and family for jumping into things without any sort of planning or procedure and then completely stuffing it up. As it happens, during the process of making my lab coat I stuffed up almost every step. So rather than me providing you with detailed and helpful instructions, I’m just going to give you the general gist and point out all the things I did wrong, so that if you choose to do this yourself, yours will turn out better than mine. Cool? :)
(via maybetheresknope)
