beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

Last weekend at the con there were screenings of a documentary about Doctor Who fans. I watched a bit of it, then walked out all :eyeroll: It wasn't being deliberately rude or anything, but it was being drearily tedious in a very gendered way. It was about how Doctor Who fandom is changing, and it seemed really excited about it, and you'd think that would be a good thing. But.

There's this story that fanboys tell themselves, over and over, in a variety of spaces I've seen and been to.
The story goes "And suddenly, women!"

This story is always wrong.

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So if their perception is also true what they need to be asking is why weren't women fans in the same spaces as men?

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The thing is though, if someone can figure out the right questions, the ones about how a variety of people always liked the texts but now they are more likely to share fan spaces and do fan activities, that might get some useful answers. Like, what made people feel safe and welcome? What changed? How do we do it again?

Because the other thing I noticed at the convention - at all the conventions really - is how very very white we tend to be. Much more so than the UK in general. And the convention organiser had a nice speech at the closing ceremony about how everyone is welcome in fan spaces, no matter your gender, sexuality, or race... but I don't reckon you could prove it by the actual attendees. And that might be a failure of eyes on my part, but, the UK is 87% white according to the 2011 census. So there should be 13 people in every 100 that are not white. Even in a 200 person convention, that's 26. And I only actually noticed two.

Unless I missed a couple dozen people, we're too white. We need to understand that lack of diversity.

And asking the right questions seems like a good start.



Of course if a diverse audience actually isn't watching the same texts, okay. Anecdote is not data, and maybe I am that much the special snowflake, and happen to online know the only classic era women or people of color in fandom. But I can't actually believe that.

Which makes with the epic :eyeroll: when some fanboy story takes it as the baseline assumption.

I dreamed something kind of like St Trinians vs Zombies
but it was more like a horror convention used StT's as a venue and then turned out to be made of the ranks of the undead. Enough kinds to fill a video game.
So there was running and screaming and corridors full of zombie walking and the most horrifying school bathrooms ever. The usual.

But I defeated them without all the stab smash stuff this time.
I retreated to holy ground, that looking a lot like a lecture theatre that can project videos, and brought all my friends, and got a bit of meditation going. Probably with a dance soundtrack.
And then I started talking about love. Specifically, fan love.

Fan love is generous. Fan love shares. We like best when others love those we love. And when people show us their shiny, we can see how they love it too. And it's not just about the fictional stories. Those of us who follow certain people around the country, or indeed the world, get to know them a little at a time too. And it's not necessarily because they're unique unusual special people. I've seen some people at conventions dozens of times, and the more you know them, the more they're one of us. All the people I'm a fan of have in common is they were, at least once, involved in a story I really liked. Not even that actually, they might just be great con guests who only ever guested in shows I wouldn't watch for money. So they're just these almost random people. So why do I love them? Because I turned up with the attitude that I would love them, and I listened, and I loved them just a little then and just a little more for all the times I got to know them. They tell stories on themselves, they tell their most embarrassing moment, or the coolest thing that ever happened to them, or what it was like when they met the person they'd stand in line for. And we see they're flawed and human and happy and sad and loving just like the rest of us. It shines out of them. And they're just people, not especially beautiful or necessarily very skilled, they're people getting up and showing us they're people and we love them for it. And then we look around, at these other fans who love the people we love, and hey, more love for all of us! I mean, the guests we love best are the ones who are not so secretly One Of Us, fans. So then, we love other fans. And there's millions of us! That's a lot of love to go around.

And between us we can do great things. The charity work inspired by, carried out by, funded by fandom is spectacular. There's individual actors who most of the world have never heard of who have fanclubs that have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity. There's people who spend their weekends in cosplay being jedi or daleks or whatever else caught their attention and they use it to collect for charities. And they keep doing it, for years, decades even. Acts of kindness on many scales are inspired by and done in the name of fan love.

Little by little, our stories, silly or escapist though they may be, inspire discussions, priorities, values, inspire people, and in splashes of light here and there they make the world a brighter place.

So my dream of an undead con was not defeated but was healed by the generous fan love, because we could share the stories, the ones that taught us how to get through or how to hold on or just that we are never, ever alone, and we could share the love. Bad magic hates the world? Meet the good kind that dreams a better one.

So I woke up full of this warm glow of loving kindness for all the world, or at least all the world that loves stories, and isn't that everyone once they find the right story? I woke up hours ago and I'm still full up of this. It's maybe like being high. I think I was meditating in my sleep a lot or something.

And, yeah, loving kindness needs practice, I need a run up to have this kind of mood and not the one inspired by the newspapers, but everyone needs practice, monks practice even, lots of hours of practice. So I'm not very good at it. *shrugs* It's a pretty good feeling once I get the right mind.

So I'm feeling pretty good about the world right now.

All y'all are awesome, you know?

I seem to be quitting on Torchwood. There's conversation still going on. But I've had a good look at Children of Earth and thought about it a lot and formed conclusions about it. Now, either people agree with me, and then we're both upset together, or they disagree with me, and then I end up upset at them for the same reasons I'm upset at TW CoE. And it's all just the opposite of fun.

And right now fanfic isn't really helping. Usually I can sort of reweave stories so they fit again, but this one is just shredded.

:-(

Am now reading the last 'About Time' book.
There's lots of interesting, but the feeling of Not My Fandom persists... until crystalising in a footnote to one essay.
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I'm not saying his fandom doesn't exist. But I am saying, loudly and with quite a lot of force, MINE DOES TOO. And the fandoms of others are not as he is portraying them. I not be mocking fan activities of others, even if they don't want to be in same fandom as me. We've all got our academics and our writers and our tie in novels and our original novels and everything else. And we're not all blokey gay men down the pub. Please to be leaving room in the narrative for us.


PS hair the color of Ribena is interesting fashion statement. :-p

I read thru metafandom a thingy about calling stories that focus on two gay-identified men in a relationship as “M/M,” rather than “gay fiction,”
It had a point. I read the point. I'm not sure that specific objection proves the point.

Fanfic uses headers. There's a line that fits in the subject line, and there's a bunch of lines in a post that describe the story. Headers are often standardised. Within fandom as a whole they vary vastly, but with particular lists or comms they tend to follow a pattern. The idea of them is to tell you what's in the story so you can see if you want to read it.

M/M is header data, often in the one-line bit that goes in the subject line. Stories can be M/M, M/F, F/F. You could call that gay, het, lesbian. But stories can also be M/M/M, and that too would be gay, but you'd lose data to label it that way. And it can also be M/M/F or M/F/F or M/M/M/F/F or, you know, all those others. It's a scaleable labelling convention. As such it is very handy.

And it's not quite broken by needing more initials for genders, as long as someone notes somewhere what E or H or O or whatever stands for in the context.

Mostly though I see stories with Name/Othername labels instead of M/M. Unless it's Canon/Original, where mostly you'll get Jack/M rather than Jack/some dude you never heard of.


All that up there is not to do with the point the other thing was having. It's just got it's own point, with nice handy logic.

One of the reasons I like fanfic is the header labelling system, with logic. Trying to dig through a couple thousand books I inherited and figure out what's in them just from the backs of the books... oh so not easy. Same with trying to buy stuff at Amazon. Adding headers for print books would simple things up rather.


... huh, now there's a project ...

Am reading "Crafty TV Writing"
Am up to the section on rewriting
he's talking about how to get feedback on spec scripts:

I'd recommend seeking out intelligent fans and writers on the Net. Fans are better than other aspiring writers because they don't want to take over your episode and won't be offended if you don't rewrite it the way they would.

Most popular shows have fan sites. Fan sites often have forums where people post critiques of the latest episodes. Many shows have their own fan newsgroups, for instance, rec.tv.buffy. Many also have Television Without Pity forums. See whose comments you think are insightful. Write to those fans, compliment them, and ask if they'd be willing to read your spec script. They'll probably be thrilled.

I had one of those oddly dizzy moments of looking at us from outside and sideways.
It's like he's recommending spec script writers to go play with fanfic and get a beta reader, only not quite getting there and not getting the terminology.
It also misses out the part where most people asked to beta will figure the result will go into the fan story-economy eventually, and since he's talking about spec scripts to try and sell... maybe not so much.
I don't know as I'd be 'thrilled' by that.

Also, and I don't say this to start wank because it's surely not what he intends, after the whole FanLib debacle I'm a bit jumpy about some ways of phrasing things.

I know what's vaguely bugging me. If someone is trying to write a spec script for a show, why do they need telling there are fan forums? Why are they not already in fandom? Well, because they're doing it for business and money and stuff. They're not actually fans. But the book sends them over to use fans to make their money-maker better. Even though spec scripts aren't actually for selling (they sell the writer's talents, not the specific story) that feels a bit wonky. Not How We Do Things?



I'm not actually saying he's suggesting something wrong, I'm poking my reaction to see why it made me thinky.

I think there are some very different basic assumptions floating around about the whole reader-writer relationship. I mean, up there? He says fans are better than writers. Which is flattering, but he's making two categories, 'fan' and 'writer', and somehow in his head they are seperate categories. Which in my experience isn't so very true, you know? I mean, it's not like fic making is obligatory, but a whole ton of people do it. Maybe fanwriters won't so much try to take over how someone else writes; maybe because if they don't like it they can just wander off and do it their way. Different attitudes of writer, not seperate boxes of non-writer. Yesno? I don't know.


I go away now.

You know the trouble with the long gap between Torchwood seasons is that's just longer for people to decide things aren't really spoilers.

I want to see it like it's new to me once. Just that once. No retcon required.

The middle of the season made me actually hunt spoilers, cause I wouldn't have watched Countrycide if I'd known what it was about, and I really hate the ending to 1-07.
But now I'm back to trying not to find out in advance.



I'm getting Doctor Who spoilers at college. College! I go to class expecting all is safe and then someone starts talking about That Character Who It Probably Is But We Don't Know Yet and I, er, stuck my hands over my ears and went "spoilers! spoilers!" and... was probably not amusing.



I have decided that, whenever someone asks me what I want to do after university, I shall tell them I'm going to write for Doctor Who.

History suggests this is likely a long term career option. So why not?

You know, just because only a tiny handful of people get to, and I have only managed 1/3 of this year's deadlines, and I've never written a script, and my knowledge of DW canon is only serious-fangirl and not encyclopaedic-fanboy yet, doesn't mean it couldn't be me.

*nods*

PS: Have noticed the irony in running a feedback poll and then not replying to any of the comments. Should fix that. But all I can think of to say is *nods*.


Only 3 people thought no feedback was better than lame feedback. Manymany people wanted any feedback at all. Like 42 last time I checked. So that's pretty clear majority then.
Also I should have asked if people are just readers or also writers, cause that could make an opinion difference.

someone via metafandom asked what do you think makes people become fans in the first place?

which made me think of another quote from the lit book I'm reading

about Magic Realism
All these writers have lived through great historical convulsions and wrenching personal upheavals, which they feel cannot be adequately represented in a discourse of undisturbed realism.

In the margin I have writting "Mutants! F&SF!"
... because I could write a lot of specific words, but that whole world that hates and fears them, have you ever tried not being a mutant, right there on top level text about discrimination and difference and all that, that was what sprang to mind for me.

I'm not saying that growing up geeky / isolated / queer / whatever necessarily leads to fandom (well geek in some formulations means fan, but not my point here). I'm saying that for some people, ie me, it leads to having all this Stuff going on that comes out more effectively in these sideways metaphorical ways, mostly because the no-metaphor versions depress the *hell* out of me. I mean, fighting drunks is just nasty, but fighting vampires has a certain degree of cool.

Of course not every form of fandom is to do with magic or metaphor or SF or whatever.

But every form has some person finding in this one thing something that resonates for them, that plugs in to stuff that *matters* to them, and then finding a fandom that sees it too.

That's just all kinds of nifty.

at conventions I have seen

very new babies
... being passed round and introduced to the rituals of their people
assorted birthday celebrations
... including 18, 21, 30, 40 and similar milestones
people getting engaged
... up on stage, in front of a thousand people. courage! (she could have / said no)
people getting married
... okay, I didn't personally see this due to being asleep somewhere, but I think it was on the programme
and no actual funerals
... but a very interesting wake



(fandom is a way of life)



I think people who mock Star Trek weddings and the rest have maybe missed that, while Star Trek is fictional, the wedding is real, and so are all the people at it.

Idea for anyone that wants to give a daring, outré, vaguely naughty gift to their favourite actor:

amazon vouchers

amazon.com sell *everything*

got books, got magazines, got a whole section of sex toys
and if they happen to find fans scary?
gots crossbows too.

And you never really know what they own already, or when they can get in to the shops themselves. So its polite and convenient.



... Things I been reading about... I have to say, I'm officially socially challenged, and *I* know there's things you don't give people you aren't dating. Sheesh.

eta: er, first version of this had a phrasing I wouldn't aim at anyone else ever, so I shouldn't use even for a funny at me. Socially challenged is funny in an entirely different way.
/vague apology

I been thinking about the kind of merchandise that usually gets sold to go with TV shows.

Seems like it boils down to pictures, pictures, pictures and pictures on things - shirts and mugs, usually.

But there are some more interesting things.
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Buffy, Angel, and Stargate seem to have extensive (and expensive) prop auctions, selling off pretty much everything they ever used. Pretty cool.

But there's a site selling Buffy prop replicas where the replicas don't look anything like the originals, which in fact appear to have been bought cheap from ranges still available elsewhere anyways. And the swords available from the Highlander store... some of them are just embarrassing. Nothing like the series, and not even trying.

Cool stuff should be like the sonic screwdriver new Doctor Who toys you can buy, which look right and also make a glowy and work as a pen and UV lamp. Accurate, better than fans can make themselves, and actually to do with the story.

Also-

Happy Birthday MTAS!!! *tweet* *party hat*

(is The Marcus Testory Appreciation Society, which I am part of basically because they throw the best room parties)

6 today!