oh fandom, NO!

[rm]

http://community.livejournal.com/jackxianto/3668643.html
in which someone says something that sounds an awful lot like "die-hard SF/F fans are an oppressed minority."

http://community.livejournal.com/jackxianto/3668643.html?view=12636067#t12636067
In which I yell.

thanks for the heads-up from starstealingirl

Subcutlures, because they are by definitions not the mainstream dominant culture, are technically minorities.

But here's the deal, I'm a minority because I'm queer, because I'm Jewish, because I am not as white as look.

Engaging with enterainment in a non-culturally dominant way may be responsible for affecting the tone of huge swathes of my life, but it doesn't define it. Being a member of an actual minority does.

I am not a minority because I like SF/F or because I cried and cried and cried for Ianto or even because I have an unpopular fannish opinion in the sense that I'm not all worked up about RTD and whether he respects fandom or not -- I don't care, I don't need his approval.

Believe me, I get what you are saying. For older fen in particular, there is this very real sense of being in this small, sort of looked down upon subculture and since many of us interact with the world differently than the mainstream (there are studies on the high incidence of the non-neurotypical in the fannish community), I do sort of get why you chose this angle to frame your point.

But with things like Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Comic Con, Dragon*Con, and, yes, the Children of Earth miniseries, fannishness is now a pretty nearly mainstream activity.

But more than that: no one ever threw beer bottles at me for being fannish. No one ever threatened to rape me for being fannish. No one fucking threatened to beat my face in with a brick for being fannish. They have (the first two) because I was gay and (the third) because I'm Jewish.

Considering one of the biggest plot points and now fandom controversies relates to the show's handling of Ianto's sexuality, you really might want to check yourself here.

I am a minority and it's not because I loved a man who never was, even though I did.

Comments

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

Looking at this whole clusterf*ck, I'm honestly glad I will never make it mainstream, or big budget. The crazy, the passive-aggressiveness, the rants, the death threats... I mean, really. I'm sure the writer had his reasons, and he can do whatever he darn well pleases. It's his characters. Playing the passive-aggressive card is, in my humble opionion, pathetic.

I'm writing this from the perspective of somebody who's been called a bastard and a horrible writer on the basis of the fact that my characters did what they did and I didn't let them have a happily-ever after one third through the story. Just because I failed to do what some people wanted me to do, I was called all kinds of names. I can't even imagine what the writer of CoE went/goes through.

It's those passive-aggressive, self-entitled "fans" that make reaching out and contact with your readers such a very precarious thing.

(Plus, co-opting real minorities for your little passive-aggressive spazzing? Not cool).

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you really meant to say self-entitled(perhaps you meant self-titled)but it is just the perfect description.

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

Hah. Both works. Case in point is: when "fan" becomes synonymous with demanding, passive-aggressive, spazzy "mob", then the word is really not quite what people think it is. That's the point where I think "fan" needs to be replaced with "bully", or even "freak" (and I'm totally aware of my own freakishness, but fucking around with writers and artists and mobbign them? Not cool).

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

I'm Your Biggest Fandom: a large number of self-obsessive wackadoos who would cheerfully tie you to a bed and break your legs to make you write what they want.

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

AKA: Get a life, whackjob.

(I really need to dig out that very weird "fan" email I once got... It deserves more public ridicule)

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

I'd be willing to work on that!