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month_of_meta
Warnings: Very brief discussion of depression and anxiety
This essay is a personal narrative about my involvement in fandom. It is not intended to be a prescriptive look at fandom but rather a very personal and individually descriptive one. There are as many ways to experience fandom as there are fannish people, and I celebrate that diversity. I would never attempt to impose my experience of fandom on another fan or pretend to have the authority to dictate the multifaceted and varied beast that is Fandom. All I can do is share my own story.
That being said, I think that many fans tend to follow a handful of trajectories as their time in fandom increases, one of which is a growing sense of isolation and disconnection from fandom. I remember seeing posts describing feelings of alienation from fans who’d been around a long time when I was just a newbie and not having any idea what those fans were talking about. Now that I’m feeling a bit alienated and disconnected myself, I’ve been struggling with how to maintain ties and recover the sense of belonging I once felt.
In this essay, I discuss the factors that have contributed to my sense of disconnection, what I’ve done to try to make fandom a vital part of my life again, and the ways in which I’m still floundering. I hope this essay generates discussion; I am very interested in your fannish stories as well as staring at my own navel. If you feel disconnected from fandom, why? If not, what’s helped to maintain your sense of belonging? If you no longer feel as tied to fandom as you did in the beginning of your fannish journey, how have you chosen to deal with that change?
Fannish Trajectories: Isolation, a Sense of Disconnection from Fandom, and How We Deal
I joined online media fandom in December 2004. I immediately became very active in fandom—writing and posting fic to my journal and a variety of fic comms, participating in ficathons and other organized fannish events, posting meta and other discussions, actively following the meta discussions linked on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
metafandom and my flist, reading and reccing extensively, and co-creating and –modding club_joss (a Jossverse fic discussion comm) and sga_talk (a Stargate Atlantis fic discussion comm). Just as an example of the degree to which I was invested in fandom in a typical month, in March 2007 I hosted a No Pressure SPN ficathon, posted 10 rec posts, posted 5 SPN fics, made 2 meta posts, and posted 2 meta-ish SPN episode reviews.
Several factors contributed to my high degree of involvement in fandom.
1. The amazing people I encountered, the amazing writing, and the amazing conversation going on around me (one of two factors which has not changed for me as time has passed).
2. It allowed me to be creative again (another permanent draw for me). I had written poetry as a teenager and taken multiple poetry workshops as an undergrad, but as soon as I started grad school, that creative outlet was gone. I was, and continue to be, so grateful for the chance to write and read in a community whose feedback makes me a better writer. And I’ve recaptured the joy of writing that was so important to me when I was younger.
3. I was a graduate student who was close to being finished with coursework and on a 2-1 teaching load. I wasn’t employed anywhere else or working on my dissertation like I should have been, so I had a lot of free time during the week.
4. My daughter was 2 at this point, but I was still suffering lingering effects of post-partum depression, and I really appreciated the escape fandom afforded me. It allowed me to immerse myself in a seemingly never-ending succession of fantasies and what-ifs. It allowed me to be obsessive about something pretty innocuous (Must Read ALL the Big Bangs!), and prevented me from dwelling on the negatives in my real life.
In the last four years, I have found myself growing increasingly more distanced from fandom and struggling to feel as if I belong. So what happened between then and now? What changed for me? Again, several factors contributed.
1. My life situation has changed. I have a career now as a tenure track professor of English. I’m teaching a 5-5 load, chairing every committee in operation on campus it feels like, and finishing up my dissertation all at the same time. I have a family I like to spend time with sometimes. :) Exercise is important to me, so I try to carve out time daily. I like my Tuesday night TV (Holla, New Girl) and my Friday night TV (Why can’t I be touched by an angel?). We have standing social activities with our friends two nights a week. I just don’t have the time to invest in fandom that I once did. Unfortunately, one of the things that kept me so connected and feeling like I belonged was the interaction that comes with frequently posting and commenting. Answering feedback to fic, hosting and participating in meta conversations, leaving feedback on other people’s work—all these things helped solidify my sense of place in fandom. I sometimes think my inability to do a lot of commenting on other people’s fic and posts is more of an issue than the shortage of posts to my own journal. Fandom 101 tells us that if you want people to talk to you, you have to talk to them first. The more you put yourself out there in fandom at large, the more interaction you’ll find happening in your own journal space. Since I don’t have time to heavily engage anymore, I’ve seen that interaction dwindle over time.
2. I’m still using fandom as an escape from feelings of anxiety and depression, but in a different way. Where before I concentrated my obsessive tendencies on writing and meta, now I’m concentrating almost exclusively on reading. If I have two free hours, I’m much more likely to start reading an epic HP fic on AO3 than writing a fic of my own or making a post to my journal. I think this is because I expend so much energy at work that when I come home, I don’t want to *do* anything. I just want to passively consume.
3. The Jossverse was my gateway to fandom. Over time, I started seeing SGA slowly overtake my flist, so I gladly followed my friends into that fandom and into SPN when it became common among my flist. But now, the fannish drift between me and my flist is pretty large. Many of them are currently most fannish about shows I don’t watch or even have a passing familiarity with like Hawaii 5-0 or Fringe or White Collar. And even though I do plan to watch some of these shows eventually, that will be far in the future when I can take a weekend and mainline a season or two at a go. To be clear, is this totally not a whine that my friends have all abandoned me, woe woe, or something equally dramatic. I’ve super stoked that they’ve got source material they’re excited about and that when I eventually get there myself, I’ll already know where all the good fic and recs are.
4. Losing people and communities has also been a part of why I’m feeling this way. For example, I have no idea where![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chocgood84 is now or what he’s currently doing. We co-founded and –modded club_joss together in the way back and spent many a night IM-ing into the wee hours of the morning, and somehow I just lost track of him. He hasn’t been online in years. In terms of comms, I had started posting to a slash comm a few years ago that did weekly (I think; maybe it was bi-weekly or monthly) challenges slashing different characters from the Jossverse. It was a lot of fun and forced me to be very creative (you try finding a canonically plausible way to slash Ben and Xander, mkay). It allowed me to meet new people and also meant that I was regularly posting fic to my journal. Unfortunately, not long after I started participating, the comm went defunct. I really, really miss that comm. :(
5. I find it very difficult to switch between different kinds of writing. I am working on my dissertation, writing articles for publication and conference presentation, and drafting proposals for my job. It’s very hard for me to step out of that academic writing mode and into a creative one. It’s like I can concentrate on only one at a time, and since the dissertation work is ongoing, that really impairs my creative writing ability.
So, given all this, how have I handled this issue? What have I done to deal? Not a whole heck of a lot as you’re about to see.
1. Since one of my issues is time, I want to maximize the small amount of time I can spend online. For me that’s meant keeping my friends list very small and not having every comm I join show up in my friends list, only the ones for which I read the majority of the posts. Fic comms are usually pretty post-heavy and scrolling through pages of fic posts just to get to your flist can be daunting. I don’t use reading filters, but I know a lot of people do, so that might also be an option for me in future. One of the things I still need to work on here is the duplication of journals I read on LJ and DW. Most of the content that shows up on my DW circle is duplicated on LJ, and that’s a time-waster to be scrolling through the same posts twice even if I’m not exactly reading them twice. I still haven’t quite figured out how to deal with that especially since sometimes people make LJ-only or DW-only posts.
2. I’ve found a couple of ways to consistently participate in fandom that I enjoy. I always do Remix and Yuletide every year, and I keep my ears open for other activities I might be interested in participating in (like thismonth_of_meta, for instance). Knowing that I’m going to have at least two moments in the year when I’m fully engaged with fandom is really meaningful to me.
3. I try to wish everybody on my flist a happy birthday when the time rolls around. I read all the posts to my flist even though I don’t comment on all of them. This is a way to let my flist know I’m still thinking about them.
Other than that, y’all, I got nothing. I would love to hear suggestions that have worked for you.
month_of_metaWarnings: Very brief discussion of depression and anxiety
This essay is a personal narrative about my involvement in fandom. It is not intended to be a prescriptive look at fandom but rather a very personal and individually descriptive one. There are as many ways to experience fandom as there are fannish people, and I celebrate that diversity. I would never attempt to impose my experience of fandom on another fan or pretend to have the authority to dictate the multifaceted and varied beast that is Fandom. All I can do is share my own story.
That being said, I think that many fans tend to follow a handful of trajectories as their time in fandom increases, one of which is a growing sense of isolation and disconnection from fandom. I remember seeing posts describing feelings of alienation from fans who’d been around a long time when I was just a newbie and not having any idea what those fans were talking about. Now that I’m feeling a bit alienated and disconnected myself, I’ve been struggling with how to maintain ties and recover the sense of belonging I once felt.
In this essay, I discuss the factors that have contributed to my sense of disconnection, what I’ve done to try to make fandom a vital part of my life again, and the ways in which I’m still floundering. I hope this essay generates discussion; I am very interested in your fannish stories as well as staring at my own navel. If you feel disconnected from fandom, why? If not, what’s helped to maintain your sense of belonging? If you no longer feel as tied to fandom as you did in the beginning of your fannish journey, how have you chosen to deal with that change?
Fannish Trajectories: Isolation, a Sense of Disconnection from Fandom, and How We Deal
I joined online media fandom in December 2004. I immediately became very active in fandom—writing and posting fic to my journal and a variety of fic comms, participating in ficathons and other organized fannish events, posting meta and other discussions, actively following the meta discussions linked on
metafandom and my flist, reading and reccing extensively, and co-creating and –modding club_joss (a Jossverse fic discussion comm) and sga_talk (a Stargate Atlantis fic discussion comm). Just as an example of the degree to which I was invested in fandom in a typical month, in March 2007 I hosted a No Pressure SPN ficathon, posted 10 rec posts, posted 5 SPN fics, made 2 meta posts, and posted 2 meta-ish SPN episode reviews.Several factors contributed to my high degree of involvement in fandom.
1. The amazing people I encountered, the amazing writing, and the amazing conversation going on around me (one of two factors which has not changed for me as time has passed).
2. It allowed me to be creative again (another permanent draw for me). I had written poetry as a teenager and taken multiple poetry workshops as an undergrad, but as soon as I started grad school, that creative outlet was gone. I was, and continue to be, so grateful for the chance to write and read in a community whose feedback makes me a better writer. And I’ve recaptured the joy of writing that was so important to me when I was younger.
3. I was a graduate student who was close to being finished with coursework and on a 2-1 teaching load. I wasn’t employed anywhere else or working on my dissertation like I should have been, so I had a lot of free time during the week.
4. My daughter was 2 at this point, but I was still suffering lingering effects of post-partum depression, and I really appreciated the escape fandom afforded me. It allowed me to immerse myself in a seemingly never-ending succession of fantasies and what-ifs. It allowed me to be obsessive about something pretty innocuous (Must Read ALL the Big Bangs!), and prevented me from dwelling on the negatives in my real life.
In the last four years, I have found myself growing increasingly more distanced from fandom and struggling to feel as if I belong. So what happened between then and now? What changed for me? Again, several factors contributed.
1. My life situation has changed. I have a career now as a tenure track professor of English. I’m teaching a 5-5 load, chairing every committee in operation on campus it feels like, and finishing up my dissertation all at the same time. I have a family I like to spend time with sometimes. :) Exercise is important to me, so I try to carve out time daily. I like my Tuesday night TV (Holla, New Girl) and my Friday night TV (Why can’t I be touched by an angel?). We have standing social activities with our friends two nights a week. I just don’t have the time to invest in fandom that I once did. Unfortunately, one of the things that kept me so connected and feeling like I belonged was the interaction that comes with frequently posting and commenting. Answering feedback to fic, hosting and participating in meta conversations, leaving feedback on other people’s work—all these things helped solidify my sense of place in fandom. I sometimes think my inability to do a lot of commenting on other people’s fic and posts is more of an issue than the shortage of posts to my own journal. Fandom 101 tells us that if you want people to talk to you, you have to talk to them first. The more you put yourself out there in fandom at large, the more interaction you’ll find happening in your own journal space. Since I don’t have time to heavily engage anymore, I’ve seen that interaction dwindle over time.
2. I’m still using fandom as an escape from feelings of anxiety and depression, but in a different way. Where before I concentrated my obsessive tendencies on writing and meta, now I’m concentrating almost exclusively on reading. If I have two free hours, I’m much more likely to start reading an epic HP fic on AO3 than writing a fic of my own or making a post to my journal. I think this is because I expend so much energy at work that when I come home, I don’t want to *do* anything. I just want to passively consume.
3. The Jossverse was my gateway to fandom. Over time, I started seeing SGA slowly overtake my flist, so I gladly followed my friends into that fandom and into SPN when it became common among my flist. But now, the fannish drift between me and my flist is pretty large. Many of them are currently most fannish about shows I don’t watch or even have a passing familiarity with like Hawaii 5-0 or Fringe or White Collar. And even though I do plan to watch some of these shows eventually, that will be far in the future when I can take a weekend and mainline a season or two at a go. To be clear, is this totally not a whine that my friends have all abandoned me, woe woe, or something equally dramatic. I’ve super stoked that they’ve got source material they’re excited about and that when I eventually get there myself, I’ll already know where all the good fic and recs are.
4. Losing people and communities has also been a part of why I’m feeling this way. For example, I have no idea where
chocgood84 is now or what he’s currently doing. We co-founded and –modded club_joss together in the way back and spent many a night IM-ing into the wee hours of the morning, and somehow I just lost track of him. He hasn’t been online in years. In terms of comms, I had started posting to a slash comm a few years ago that did weekly (I think; maybe it was bi-weekly or monthly) challenges slashing different characters from the Jossverse. It was a lot of fun and forced me to be very creative (you try finding a canonically plausible way to slash Ben and Xander, mkay). It allowed me to meet new people and also meant that I was regularly posting fic to my journal. Unfortunately, not long after I started participating, the comm went defunct. I really, really miss that comm. :(5. I find it very difficult to switch between different kinds of writing. I am working on my dissertation, writing articles for publication and conference presentation, and drafting proposals for my job. It’s very hard for me to step out of that academic writing mode and into a creative one. It’s like I can concentrate on only one at a time, and since the dissertation work is ongoing, that really impairs my creative writing ability.
So, given all this, how have I handled this issue? What have I done to deal? Not a whole heck of a lot as you’re about to see.
1. Since one of my issues is time, I want to maximize the small amount of time I can spend online. For me that’s meant keeping my friends list very small and not having every comm I join show up in my friends list, only the ones for which I read the majority of the posts. Fic comms are usually pretty post-heavy and scrolling through pages of fic posts just to get to your flist can be daunting. I don’t use reading filters, but I know a lot of people do, so that might also be an option for me in future. One of the things I still need to work on here is the duplication of journals I read on LJ and DW. Most of the content that shows up on my DW circle is duplicated on LJ, and that’s a time-waster to be scrolling through the same posts twice even if I’m not exactly reading them twice. I still haven’t quite figured out how to deal with that especially since sometimes people make LJ-only or DW-only posts.
2. I’ve found a couple of ways to consistently participate in fandom that I enjoy. I always do Remix and Yuletide every year, and I keep my ears open for other activities I might be interested in participating in (like this
month_of_meta, for instance). Knowing that I’m going to have at least two moments in the year when I’m fully engaged with fandom is really meaningful to me.3. I try to wish everybody on my flist a happy birthday when the time rolls around. I read all the posts to my flist even though I don’t comment on all of them. This is a way to let my flist know I’m still thinking about them.
Other than that, y’all, I got nothing. I would love to hear suggestions that have worked for you.
