Frankenstein's Meme Day 6 & 7

[thisbluespirit]

6. What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? What fandom was it? Not necessarily your oldest fandom, but a fandom that you started and still continue to read/write/create content for in some way.

Unsurprisingly, Doctor Who! I didn't write actual fic for until 1995 when I discovered the internet and usenet and therefore alt.drwho.creative at uni, but I loved it from the first five minutes I saw aged 11, and soon after started reading past Doctor Target novelisations and found Doctor Who Magazine after it got cancelled, and I used to have my own OC self-insert that I made up stories about inside my head and kind of did-but-didn't ship Seven/Ace (even though I really don't now; teenage me totally would have, and Sylvester/Sophie). It just took a while to be in contact with fellow fans fully, and I've still never had offline fandom friends, only online.


7. What would make you leave a fandom, or prevent you from getting into it in the first place?

I'm not very good at leaving fandoms. If I'm into a canon enough to be genuinely fannish about it, I'll probably just rotate it around, maybe with diminishing returns if it was only a minor fixation and maybe it doesn't age so well in some way with me.

Currently I find it almost impossible to get into any fandom because I don't deal well with global tagging mobile-device orientated platforms and even when I try, there just seems to be a wall of headcanons and assumptions that aren't really my thing, and I can't get past it to find wherever my sort of corner might be.

Actually, weirdly, trying SW last year was much easier than anything else has been, probably because of the mega-fandom size and high level of antis, because you get all sorts of helpful chilled out corners in reaction to that, plus it turns up regularly in exchanges & still has a slight Dreamwidth presence, which means there are really good fic writers I could find easily and go through all their stuff, and their bookmarks and so on, and that's often the best way in. But my SW fannishness comes and goes in waves, and the downside was so few comments from the wider fandom it was terrifying, and by the time I'd adjusted to that, my SW wave had ebbed again.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

I keep hoping that fandom will migrate to a platform more suitable to my personal needs, but instead it just keeps drifting farther and farther away! So it goes, I suppose...

[theseatheseatheopensea]

I've still never had offline fandom friends, only online.

Same here!

I'm not very good at leaving fandoms. If I'm into a canon enough to be genuinely fannish about it, I'll probably just rotate it around

And same here as well! XD

And I feel you about fandom platforms. I've tried a bunch, and nothing works better for me than DW/journals.

[liadt]

I tend to cycle fandoms around too or think maybe one day the white heat will come back for that fandom so I couldn't abandon them fully.

I'm glad the mega-fandom went well!

[shannonsequitur]

One of the best things about doing fandom on LJ or Dreamwidth is/was the distinction between personal journals and communities. I miss opting in to people’s personal stuff, my few voyages into Tumblr tags have been a mess.

Also I’m probably going to get roasted for this, but remember when fandom/the internet in general wasn’t just All Identity Politics, All The Time? 🤦‍♀️

[lyr]

Doctor Who is my oldest fandom, too. I was so young when I first started watching that I can't even remember a time before that.

[thisbluespirit]

One day they'll reinvent the wheel or something, I suppose! Maybe... :/

[thisbluespirit]

Yes. I mean, I'm okay at tumblr, but it's always rather frustrating in comparison to how it was on LJ.

[thisbluespirit]

LOve is eternal! (Mostly.)

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, there was a lot more of the ability to choose what you saw and who you interacted with on different levels and I find it hard to manage without that. I think a lot of the other "social justice" angle is part of that, too - it would previously have either been over in whole other non-fannish comms, or people's journals under a cut, or actual critical discussion of a fandom in an appropriate place and not random post screaming about being offensive because you don't share somebody's headcanon about a character or ship, or co-opting all of that into ship wars, or getting complete stranger's personal posts in the middle of a stream of fannish nonsense. Social justice is good and important; shoving it in the middle of fandom shipping arguments and claiming people are evil if they disagree or don't like it being there is not.

ETA: Sorry about all the editing; I can't type straight this morning.

[thisbluespirit]

Aww! I did see some when I was pretty small, but sadly I hated the theme music so much I buried my head under a cushion and shouted for someone to turn it off! Little did I know... XD

[kalium]

Also I’m probably going to get roasted for this...

I can at least tell you that there are those of us out there who will be sitting in the oven with you! I think my current identity is not having an identity.

[a_phoenixdragon]

Ahhh, fandom!

*HUGS*