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What use Fandom?
Jun. 20th, 2006 11:57 amWell.
Okay, my involvement in the latest thingummy with fandom comes to exactly, oh, nil, so while some people have asked me for my opinion on it, since I've been around long enough and I know enough people involved, I'm just like every other person watching it in horror. I don't know. I never knew![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
msscribe. I know people who know her, but aside from a few lj comments I've never had an actual conversation with her. So I have no special wisdom or information to offer.
As someone who stayed exclusively in slash fandom, I never a) understood these particular ship wars in question, b) took a side in them (particularly), or b) was of any consequence to anyone from het fandom. To be honest I didn't ever visit GT or SQ, and I couldn't tell you the difference between them. But I remember the GT Hidden Room thing and I remember being pretty grossed out by it. There was some history and some bad blood between one group of people and another, but not knowing all the details (or, more correctly, not being able to keep all the details in my head all at once), most of it was lost on me. While slash fandom is full of wankery of its own (as well as OTPs galore), these particular gripes were mostly nonsensical to me. The conversations going on in het fandom often appeared to be in an entirely different language.
There are lots of apologies flying around right now; I'm not sure what some people are actually apologizing for. But I can say this much: I'm sorry that anyone was ever unfairly painted as a bigot, a racist, or a harbourer of evil people. I'm sorry that anyone was ever made to feel threatened or outed by fandom behaviour. If I ever aided and/or abetted such behaviour, I'm truly sorry for that. But as a sideliner, I'm not sure my feelings on the matter mean much to anyone. I can say that I think truth matters no matter how much time as passed and no matter how many people get hurt by it this time around, and if I was indeed prompted to rip into some sockpuppet in order to provide fodder for someone else's witchhunt of other people in fandom, well, I want to know about it.
Not having anything actually useful to contribute, I'm instead going to set down some thoughts that have sprung up for me around all of this. I've been thinking about my own experience in fandom, and how (and why) I came to be involved the way I was. ( The hows and whys. )
That was a heck of a long chunk of navel-gazing. Sorry about that. The point of all this was really just to say the very obvious thing; that people come into fandoms for reasons of their own. Reading what other people had to say about certain people's motives (those I know and those I don't) made me think a little harder about my own.
Okay, my involvement in the latest thingummy with fandom comes to exactly, oh, nil, so while some people have asked me for my opinion on it, since I've been around long enough and I know enough people involved, I'm just like every other person watching it in horror. I don't know. I never knew
msscribe. I know people who know her, but aside from a few lj comments I've never had an actual conversation with her. So I have no special wisdom or information to offer.As someone who stayed exclusively in slash fandom, I never a) understood these particular ship wars in question, b) took a side in them (particularly), or b) was of any consequence to anyone from het fandom. To be honest I didn't ever visit GT or SQ, and I couldn't tell you the difference between them. But I remember the GT Hidden Room thing and I remember being pretty grossed out by it. There was some history and some bad blood between one group of people and another, but not knowing all the details (or, more correctly, not being able to keep all the details in my head all at once), most of it was lost on me. While slash fandom is full of wankery of its own (as well as OTPs galore), these particular gripes were mostly nonsensical to me. The conversations going on in het fandom often appeared to be in an entirely different language.
There are lots of apologies flying around right now; I'm not sure what some people are actually apologizing for. But I can say this much: I'm sorry that anyone was ever unfairly painted as a bigot, a racist, or a harbourer of evil people. I'm sorry that anyone was ever made to feel threatened or outed by fandom behaviour. If I ever aided and/or abetted such behaviour, I'm truly sorry for that. But as a sideliner, I'm not sure my feelings on the matter mean much to anyone. I can say that I think truth matters no matter how much time as passed and no matter how many people get hurt by it this time around, and if I was indeed prompted to rip into some sockpuppet in order to provide fodder for someone else's witchhunt of other people in fandom, well, I want to know about it.
Not having anything actually useful to contribute, I'm instead going to set down some thoughts that have sprung up for me around all of this. I've been thinking about my own experience in fandom, and how (and why) I came to be involved the way I was. ( The hows and whys. )
That was a heck of a long chunk of navel-gazing. Sorry about that. The point of all this was really just to say the very obvious thing; that people come into fandoms for reasons of their own. Reading what other people had to say about certain people's motives (those I know and those I don't) made me think a little harder about my own.
