fandom detachment

[mamajoan]

liviapenn wrote about how it irks her to see the fandom ("Smallville" in this case) being polarized into the people who like Character A and the people who like Character B -- where each group of people will defend their character, even if it means ignoring certain aspects of canon, and will vilify the other character in order to build theirs up.

I didn't feel I had anything constructive to add in the comments over there, so instead I'll just say it here. This is one of the major reasons that I'm not more involved in fandom than I am. I just get so damn ... TIRED. I've seen this kind of thing happen in just way too many fandoms, and I have no patience for the screeching little girls who seem to think this is the first time anyone has ever discussed these concepts. (I don't mean to include Livia, or anyone specific, in that category -- I don't even know who the screeching little girls are in the Smallville fandom, but I'm sure they exist.) Frankly, I just can't see why people don't get that you can like *both* characters, and that you can hate one thing a character did (or ten things!) and still like him, and that even when the characters do bad things to each other you can STILL like them both. I can't understand people who don't get that, and really I don't have the energy to, nor do I care enough to, try to understand them. I just don't give a crap.

And some of this reminds me of what I was saying in calligrafiti's journal yesterday too. Basically, that the infighting within the fandom, the taking-sides and the forming of cliques and all the little petty grievances and snipings and posturing and all that ... I don't play that. I don't even care enough to say I hate it; it just makes me tired and exasperated. I roll my eyes and shake my head and think, "see, *this* is why I don't read the discussion lists." I'll just be over here in the corner reading the fanfic, 'k?

Incidentally, what I said above about the screeching children who think they're reinventing the fandom wheel -- thamiris, this relates to something I said in your lj a long time ago, about preferring the pairings of older, more mature characters over the young ones. I believe the example I used was preferring Beatrice and Benedick over Hero and Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing. And the aspect of "we are the first people ever to experience this" is a big part of it. I get really irked by people who take that attitude and wilfully ignore how obviously untrue it is. With the older couples, the awareness that they're not discovering anything new about the world -- only something new about themselves -- is what makes the relationship, to me, more interesting, more deep, and in many cases more hot. (And maybe this is part of why I get so irked with Buffy/Angel, because Buffy totally takes that "we are reinventing the concept of love!" attitude, and Angel, who honestly ought to know better, goes along with it. And this is probably *also* why, of late, Giles/Anya is becoming more and more attractive to me.)

But I digress, boy howdy. Uh, that's all for now on this topic.

Comments

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

Boy do I know what you mean. I pretty much gave up on Due South fandom because of all the "I refuse to acknowlede the existence of this character." "In my world, Ray Vecchio never left and Ray Kowalski doesn't exist." "In *my* world, Ray Vecchio doesn't exist." "Oh, the DS producers screwed up when they...." talk.