I return!
My goodness, it has been a long time.
Doesn’t real life get pesky like that?
But never fear, I am here again and still, and I return with musings.
Musings on fannish behavior, as is my wont.
This time around, I’ve been thinking about fannish mono- and/or polygamy.
Now, me, I’m a very monogamous fan. If I’m reading Buffy fic, I’m not also reading Harry Potter. I can spend a really long and involved time in a given fandom; wallow and rejoice and squee and hang on its every move with baited breath… and then move on to another one and never return to the first.
I know some fen are able to happily read anything that comes along in any number of fandoms, even ones they may not be so active in anymore. And some fen are easily able to be simultaneously active in lots of fandoms.
Me? Not so much.
This wouldn’t give me pause at all, except that I’m now in a sort of uniquely odd place with this whole fandom mono/polygamy thing.
See, there’s this fandom. This tiny crossover random fandom of AWESOME, and it is the fandom of my heart, and my fannish experience with it was and is BY FAR the best fannish experience I have ever had in my history of fannishness. It brought me no end of glee and joy and education and amusement.
But I did eventually move on from it, for it is a tiny thing, and based on canon sources that are over and done, and I wanted more fanworks to consume than this one little (albeit amazing) place on the internet could provide.
And what I moved on to is a behemoth of a fandom. It is based on a currently-active canon, and it’s a trendy spot for lots of fen these days, which means I get pretty much all the fanworks I could want, and I can pick and choose among them to the delight of my picky fangirl heart.
But much as New Fandom (NF) is full of the pretty and keeping me nicely entertained, Tiny Fandom of Awesome (TFA) still perks up and offers something new once in a while.
And here is where my guilt sets in.
Because despite all the massive amounts of love and warmth I still have in my heart for TFA, I find myself putting those stories on the back burner for reading and feedbacking, while I plow ahead with NF stories. I am now several stories behind on TFA, and I can’t help but feel like I’m somehow letting down the community of TFA-fen (which is a small group, who offer and deserve beautifully detailed and erudite feedback). Like I’m cheating on TFA. Like, if I love it so much, then what am I doing running all around town with NF.
Do you find yourselves getting emotionally wrapped up in your fannish experiences like this?
For those of you who are fannishly polygamous, how does that work for you? Do you find yourself focusing more on one fandom at a time or are you equal opportunity?
For you fandom monogamists out there, have you run into this before? How do you feel about once-loved fandoms you’re not active in anymore?
Help me assuage my guilt, oh wise fellow fen.
I’m a polygamous fan and I don’t share your experience of fandom guilt, so I’m afraid I can’t help you there. For me, one fandom is never enough. I want the variety of experience that activity in multiple fandoms provides. A single fandom is too limiting for me – only one story/mood/cast of characters to work with? I would become bored very quickly.
I usually have one or two primary fandoms and a few secondary fandoms at any given time. I do most of my writing and reading in the primary ones with occasional forays into the secondaries. I’ve found this arrangement to be invaluable when I run into some kind of issue in a primary fandom (as tends to happen, since both of my primary fandoms are problematic) – there is always a fandom waiting there in the wings that I can turn to when things go sour.
Your small crossover fandom will still be there, whenever you are inspired to catch up on reading – and I’m sure there will come a time when you are. That fandom doesn’t tend to let go once it’s got its sharp, spindly claws in you.
See, I wish I could be fannishly polygamous like this. It would solve so many problems. And I like that idea that you can take a break from a fandom that’s giving you agita, which NF definitely does for me (as I’m sure it does for you).
I will take heart from your wise suggestion that those spindly fingers of TFA will never relinquish their hold completely, and someday my head will turn that way again.
Hmm, sounds familiar
I have a similar conundrum — am madly obsessing over Shiny New Fandom (albeit not as fine and featuresome as your own) and it’s an effort of will to turn away from SNF towards Rare and Precious Older Fandom. But, I do find the two complement one another: there are times when I want that sense of connection, familiarity, old loves that Rare and Precious Older Fandom provides.
I do know what you mean about feeling disloyal, though: I am actually feeling more disloyal t’wards my last Shiny New Fandom, SG:A, which has completely and instantly lost its shine, for me. I’m not even rereading old favourites — the fics I read once every few months just because they were so fabulous.
Fandoms are like friends (and / or lovers). I have fled fandoms in a (largely metaphorical) flood of tears, and not really ever felt the same about ‘em; had partings of the ways where the shine has dulled; drifted apart because it never quite clicked; been so hacked off by the fandom’s friends that I quit; taken the relationship as far as it could go at that time; not to mention a few one-fic stands.
It’s true that your Tiny Fandom of Awesome probably appreciates your interest more than Shiny New Fandom; that doesn’t mean your love for it is necessarily, now, as ardent as it was to start with.
And hard-hearted Agony Aunt Gloria says “if you don’t love it any more, you don’t love it: you’re under no obligation.”
In short: I feel your pain, and don’t have much to offer in the way of advice, except to observe that in my experience the shiny flames of New Fandom love will mellow sooner or later, allowing you to appreciate older loves for their different charms.
Isn’t it funny how closely fan/fandom relationships parallel the broad strokes of person/person relationships? All the oft-used metaphors of flings and commitment and cheating and lust and love and guilt. We’re a fun and funny bunch, we fen.
I do, as you say, have a history of fandoms that I’ve ‘broken up with’ in various ways along the scale of amicable parting to violent and irrevocable disagreement, but mostly I tend to just drift away.
TFA is the first fandom in which I am actively sad *not* to be as participatory as I once was. We’ll see how long NF love lasts here. And yes, I take comfort in knowing that TFA is still out there waiting for whenever I want to return.
Oh, man, I’m totally doing this at the moment with SPN and Sherlock Holmes. I’ve spent four years dedicated to SPN, and I’m meant to be writing my first Big Bang for it – something that should, really, be one of my greatest achievements in the fandom, but I keep finding myself sneaking off to read Holmes/Watson fics instead. It’s because SPN canon is so very very depressing at the moment, plus it feels like I’ve read almost every fic/trope/basic plot already, so nothing’s new, whereas everything in Holmes is new, I guess.
I just wish I could have waited until after writing my Big Bang. Finding motivation is hard enough as it is, without adding in a craving for gay Victorians.
Sneaky little Holmes/Watson, creeping up on you like that. How dare they!
I’m amused by how Sherlock Holmes fandom is sort of being treated like everyone’s guilty pleasure. Like all the fen realize they’re having a fling and are throwing their hands up at it like, ‘Oh well… nothin’ I can do’.
[...] very thoroughly historically researched), one of those Tiny Fandoms of Awesome types that I have mentioned previously as being so addictively engrossing to a select few. Personally, I’m tickled by the idea [...]