The Sisterhood of Fandom, or: How We Ate Each Other
Like some other women writers my age, I came up through the fandom circuit. I feel like that’s hard to say—and I know a lot of you will deny your own involvement in it and let me just stop you there, because I know you were right beside me: those long nights on FFN, trying to hide explicit material from your family, searching for ungodly things on DA, hanging in the lull of LJ, the prompts, the yule exchanges, the launch of A03 and the horrors that awaited us there, and your modesty washing off you like loose dirt against the tide, year after year, a dissolution, a devolvement, a triumph of camaraderie, and always, always waiting for the next comment. Like a roller-coaster. Like a drug-fueled delusion.
My point is you’re my sister, and I love and hate you like a sister.
The list of fandoms I’ve been attracted to is long and we don’t have time for it. Instead, I’ll list fandoms I’ve actively participated in, starting with the grand majesty, Yugioh, or Yuugiou (if you’re insufferable). That came first and might as well have been the last for the way I long for its simplicity. I was 13 - 17 when I went through it, but 17 was hazy as I started phasing into my next big thing, Death Note. I mean, fuck, we all remember that, right? It was our nightmare. It was our salvation. FFN was our Somme.
DN lasted, I don’t know, until maybe I was 20. Three years seems to be prominent. Then there was the dry spell, the I don’t know years, where I was little more than a piece of algae in the Pacific. The time went by slow, anyway. What came after that was a real nipple-twister. The thing is, I’m not exactly proud to have been affiliated with the Hannibal fandom, and maybe that’s because it wasn’t too long ago. From ages 24 to about 25 and a half. It was really a short amount of time, but I wrote for it like a madwoman and I watched the fandom in its death throes after the show itself got canceled by the network.
And this is where we are. Let me tell you how I feel about our childhood home.
I was and always will be a proponent of fandom being a haven for women and girls. And yes, when I say women and girls, that’s who I mean. I’m not saying that boys can’t be involved in fandom, they can do whatever they damn well please, but you’d have to be an idiot to not realize these things have been built and carried by a very specific group of people for years. People who organize shit and write shit and draw shit and make sure there are extracurricular things to enjoy. Way back when, that was us and girls before me and girls before them. Girls go wild. Literally. Elvis wouldn’t have been shaking his pelvis so much if girls weren’t throwing money at him and fainting in the front row. Women will show out for shit. I also feel like it’s an important coven where women are allowed to be fucking filthy sexual creatures. We write our own porn for each other because men legit do not know how. They don’t even know what’s sexy about themselves to relay it to us. So yes, in that sense, yay, fandom.
And in another sense, fuck fandoms! Holy shit, they bring out the worst in people. I’m in support of them for being a haven for women to sexually express themselves but then they disperse and form ship cliques and send death threats to people who ship things they don’t think should be shipped. Ideology becomes a factor, which was something prevalent in Hannibal fandom. People would actually get angry if a story didn’t have a HEA, because “Will and Hannibal deserve happiness and my life sucks right now and all I want is some fluff!” … Really, Mary? Fuck their happiness and fuck your fluff. It’s not like there aren’t LITERAL HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of fanfiction on AO3 alone you could read. Or, you know, you could write your own. There’s a novel idea.
I’m highly aware that some of these are early 00’s era lingo. I’m fucking 29.
[Lingo chart for the fandom impaired:
Ship: a relationship with two or more characters romantically/sexually involved
HEA: happily ever after
PWP: plot what plot, or porn without plot, meaning it’s just an excuse to write a sex scene
AMV: anime music video
Fuck off: fuck off]
Here’s how it usually goes down, in terms of eras:
Creation: The fandom is created and all is well. The show/movie/media has been launched successfully and found an audience that’s not only loving it but wanting more and so, they create more. They find places to congregate such as Tumblr (fuck them) and Pinterest (they’re okay) and Instagram (cool) and Twitter (can’t even). Fanfiction starts with “missing scenes” from the source material, general PWPs, wherein fangirls suspect the characters could be fucking. There’s lots of instances of lube hiding in under a tree trunk in the woods. People are feeling it out.
Factions: The separation begins. Oil is spilled into the calm water. Ship A and Ship B rise as the top two interests. Fangirls who don’t identify with either of the king pairings make little nests for their favorites who are less lauded. Satellite pairings. Fanfiction moves into its next phase, which is exploring AUs and taking more liberties with its source material. Followings for specific fanfictions begin, as this era is when the bigger ones take hold, things that are 40ish chapters. AMVs are plentiful. It’s a good time for all.
Disaster: Chaos. Malignancy. Generally speaking, this era is just not good. People get overly excited in what they deem is right and wrong and the fandom begins to deconstruct. More and more people flood the fandom, people who are out to just ruin other’s good times. This is usually when a -gate happens, something that a couple fans do that ruins the name of the whole fandom. Examples are Steven Universe, Creepypasta, Rupaul’s Drag Race. Either linked to doxxing, harassment, death threats, ACTUAL KILLING. Delinquency. Is online delinquency a phrase? Let’s make it one.
Surreal: I know this sounds like a good era but really it’s worse than Disaster in some ways. This occurs when there’s no new source material being pumped out by the creator. People start making fanficton of fanfiction and we start to Russian nesting-doll ourselves. This happened back in Hannibal and I still have war flashbacks, I still hear the bass of the bombs going off in the distance, as I watched some of the most ludicrous stuff being pumped out. Steam is lost. People go on not because it’s fun anymore but because their skeleton demands it of them. Joyless and unnerving. A ghost ship passing you by in the night.
Now, let me say this. Throughout each of these phases, new girls are discovering the show or movie or what have you and they are experiencing that first magical era anew. It’s always Creation Era for some girls and that’s a great thing. It’s a thing I hope I can always remember when I’m frankly horrified by the way fans reduce each other and hate each other over imaginary people.
I know what you’re wondering.
You look at your screen and think, ‘Is Robyn in a fandom now? Is she experiencing Creation Era anew? Or is she bitterly coming to Surreal somewhere?’
The answer to all your questions is always yes. I’m always experiencing some era of some fandom because I eat content for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I even produce for a fandom, although that’s not something I’m going to wave around like a flag. I still participate, but on a smaller scale, and I only ever produce for small hidden things. You get old, you get tired of it. You’re happy for the little ones who dance and sing and frolic, and sometimes you do the same, but it’s never really like that first time. I’ll never rush home from school again and throw my bag down, run to my computer to check comments and start writing while I talk to my friends on MSN or AIM.
But other girls will, do, are. I wish it could be Creation and Faction for everyone, forever, and in a way, if you tilt your head and squint, it kind of is.