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

[ophymirage.livejournal.com]

One of the things that I think is most interesting (and revealing about fandom) is that, even in this thread, people seem to have come away with VERY different impressions of not what RTD said, but HOW he said it - "tone", as stardragonca said. I'm guessing that lots of the reaction was personal interpretation, based on how they already felt about the plot arc.

Me personally, haven't seen the video, was not at ComicCon (LSA was, and has her own definite opinions, withholding judgment till I have time to sit down and watch some of it myself.) As a writer, I am totally unsurprised by the idea that he was reacting 'defensively' to fans' responses. I also completely get why he might be excited/gleeful that he'd had lots of emotional reaction in the fanbase. We always want to know that our work's made an impact. :D

I watched a video from SDCC of JB talking about filming the death scene, and you can see RTD to the side, visibly swallow in what I thought was a moved/pained sort of way, when JB talked about how really fucking hard it was.

As a fan, this makes me happy. I'd like to know that he *did* feel some measure of sadness for a beloved character, and for jack's reaction to Ianto's death. It sounds like the current perception in fandom, based on his recent interviews at SDCC and in other venues, is that he doesn't even feel sad about it at the writer level. I'd like to think that's not true. :)