It is true, I am shallow

[trinityvixen]

Explain to me what is fandom to other, normal people. I have this idea that I am insane. It's probably a correct appraisal of my behavior, but all the same, I'd like to know that I'm not alone.

[Poll #1192336]

I just needed to poll. I realize I'm currently fascinated and frustrated by fandoms for two works that really are problematic to be fannish about aside from just enjoying the canon product. One is Battlestar Galactica; the other is Iron Man. The former is hard to enjoy the fan off-shoots because NOTHING is as good as the show. Reading the scripts from the show isn't as good as the show because the show flies less on the words and plot than it does on the acting that makes it happen. The latter is problematic because, gosh darn it, it's pretty near perfect and there's hardly a thing to add or subtract from it, dramatically. (Which makes me very scared for the sequel prospects, but we'll see.)

This is really annoying, in case I haven't made that clear. Stupid fandoms. They're eating my life and giving almost nothing back. And, on top of that, I have trouble mustering interest in anything else. I have friggin' Doctor Who--AND IT'S GOOD!--that I'm not watching because I'm moping around waiting for next Friday (and the inevitable DVD release of Iron Man since I am too po' to go back to the theater again). I thought maybe I'd decompressed after a couple of days with no BSG on the horizon. Nope. I'm back to refreshing TWoP every hour in hopes of a recap update. GAAAAhHHHHH.

How do other people get un-obsessed with fandom? HELP ME!!

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Well, okay, I may have told you this already. I'm not sure I can even say Sweeney Todd was a fandom obsession, since I knew nothing about fanfic or fandom at the time. I was all on my own. Which meant that rather than finding a release, the fannish impulses built up to crazy degrees.

I first encountered Sweeney Todd by borrowing the CD from the library (at the time I was going through their collection of Broadway cast albums alphabetically). The first listen through, I ended up staring at the stereo, completely enthralled, and I had almost no idea what was actually happening since the booklet explaining the plot had been lost. I didn't have internet, and google didn't exist, so looking up a synopsis on line was out. I listened to it obsessively, and eventually learned there was a tape of the original production (well, the touring company, but anyway). The tape was out of print. I found out my local library had a copy.

In one day, I walked the mile and a half from my dorm to the library three times to try to borrow that tape. (Because I wasn't a resident of the town, I kept running into new requirements for getting a library card.) Once I got it, I watched it immediately. Twice. Back to back. I watched it over a dozen times before I had to return it a week later.

Even a few years later, my love hadn't waned and I spent way too much on ebay to get a copy of that tape (which is now available for $20 on DVD). I also found out there was a tape of the original original production at the New York Performing Arts library which you could only get access to if it was for research. I got a professor to assign me a fake paper so I could see it. Even then, I had to sit in the library and they'd only let me play it through once. I took copious notes on the staging so I could look them back over and picture it in my mind. The librarian let me rewatch one scene (only one!) which was such an agony to pick.

That's the most absurd lengths I've ever gone to in service of an obsession.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I match that or not for my obsession with The Matrix (and yet? not one Matrix icon on my LJ. Weird...), but I wouldn't begin to measure them the same because I already know that you beat me when it comes to the crazy involvement in fandom. I never walked across coals for my greatest obsession or anything like it, but it did play a formative role in my life, so I guess that's pretty obsessive. When the thing actually pushes you in a direction, I mean. That movie opened me up to new music, fashion, genre, filmmaking--you name it, it became important to me.

And it got me to start talking to strangers on the internet! FOR WHICH I AM FOREVER GRATEFUl, OH HAI WACHOWSKIS

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I'd actually argue with you about the obsession thing. :) To use the metaphor from the other thread...I think I have a higher on-going obsession level, but when you spike, you spike way higher than me.

Without the internet, I probably would still do ridiculous things for fannishness. There's just sometimes where I get the thought in my head and I neeeeeeed to feed it right now. With the internet, I can usually find what I'm looking for, or if not, at least find something else to distract myself with so the urgency lessens. It's been awhile since something grabbed me so hard that I would go anywhere and pay any amount of money to get a fix, but I think that's mostly cause I manage my obsessiveness. (This sounds really like an addiction, but, you know, that's what it is.) I don't even get involved in fandoms where it would be hard for me to get all of the canon material--why I'm not into comics in a word. If it looks like it would be hard for me to get what I want out of a fandom, I usually don't watch/read the source material in the first place.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

So you're a steady fandom consumer and I'm a binger and a purger. That's entirely accurate. feiran is often quite terrified by how I seize on a new thing and just clamp down on it for months and then...gone. (Prison Break? WHAT THE FUCK?)

The ease of access plays a part, too. Just as you say, I had a hard time with comics for a while because things are always coming back up that I won't have heard about. It's worse than soap operas. Most soaps have only been around a couple of decades. X-Men? FORTY YEARS. DC's had characters who've been around twice that long. It's truly frightening when you wikipedia a character page and they have more offshoots than an almanac entry on a first world country. Intimidates me right off.

So I compartmentalize. I get fannish about Batman the Animated Series or Batman Begins and only dip into comics when I need a good archetype or two. Or I pick up things that cheerfully ignore their own continuity, which is how I, after being sure I would never understand its hold over geeks, got into and came to love Doctor Who.

The other problem I have with fandom is that I get bored easily. When there's no new material, I can almost begin a countdown to me dropping out of the fandom. Because fanfic just isn't new and refreshing ten years later. In fact, ten years later, people are still writing the Mary Sue-leaves-the-Matrix, falls-in-love-with-Neo stories I hated when the movie was still in theaters. This explains the spiking. I quickly am turned off by even deliciously deviant writing if it's going to hammer at the same points, start from the same period, build on the same characters. New characters have to work hard to keep my attention, so new characters don't often refresh old ideas. And then I come down and can suddenly enjoy lots of things again. I suppose I should be grateful.