lunabee34

Yeah, I did, but the thing is: I have a dog (am a fan) because I love dogs (fandom) in general, and I love my dog (any of my canons) in particular more than any other dog (canon) in the world; she's my perfect dog (canon), so I'm perfectly willing to put up with the realities of having a dog (fandom), because my dog makes me kind of spastically happy. (To extend the analogy even further: there are no dog parks where I live. This is much like trying to find f/f in SGA: it doesn't work, and clearly, they don't want my kind here. So I let my dog run around off-leash where I shouldn't, and I write stories that no one will read. But I will persevere, or else I will move to a place that does want me.)

It's not that I don't love (my) fandom(s), and it's not that I'm not happy with where I am (both in my specific fandoms and in fandom in general) — although I will point out that your Buffy/Faith got more feedback than 98% of the Buffy/Faith I've ever read (it was also vastly better than 98% of the Buffy/Faith I've read, but that doesn't really seem to have much to do with it) — it's that there are inherent problems in fandom as in real life, and they mitigate the ideal pleasure that might be had.

I think that was part of the backdrop to mosca's post: the real problem with fandom is that it's inhabited with fans. That is, there are actual people out there on the other end of the etherline, and they have their own problems and ideas and limits and sometimes those problems and ideas and limits run up against our own problems and ideas and limits.

In my perfect world, all the Spike/Xander would be replaced with Faith/Willow (with lots of nice realistic lesbian sex), and there would never be any hurt feelings or irritability or nastiness between fans, and everyone would offer generous, honest, and constructive feedback on everything.

But fandom is not my perfect world; it's got it's own dog shit, even in the middle of that gorgeous springtime walk up the California coast at sunset after a storm.