An essay, by Hathor
As I sit down to write this, a so-called impartial effort of Fandom in the media, I feel something of a hypocrite. My various posters of Lord of the Rings, Stargate, and Farscape all seem to be glaring down at me. So why am I writing this, a victim of fandoms that I am? I’m basically just trying to get to grips with the nature of fandom... and fill up the essay section of my website.
What is fandom? Technically, it’s classed as… er… well, my pocket oxford dictionary doesn’t exactly wax lyrical over this subject. I’ve been led to understand that a fandom is a fan group and their entire fan works, such as personal dedication sites, chatrooms, fan art, fanfiction, all to their favourite TV show/film/book/band/actor, whatever. The more of such works there are, the larger the fandom. Still with me? Want to go back and re-read? Tough, we don’t have time.
In a fandom, certain hierarchies begin to form quickly. These aren’t hierarchies of people, as such, but levels of favouritism- favourite ship, favourite slash, favourite character, etc. For readers who are new to fandom, ship is a heterosexual relationship between two characters. (For example, “Oh, yeah, I’m a Jim/Mary shipper”). A shipper will try and spot hidden moments between the two, or try and find hidden meanings, etc. Slash is similar, except for a homosexual relationship (“Yeah, I’m a Jim/Bob slasher”). Favourite character is pretty self-explanatory. The point is, if these were the two most popular ships and slashes, they’ll pop up more and more around the fandom. The same refers to favourite characters too. Obviously, there are people who ship and slash other couples, and prefer other characters, but the main ones will pop up the most.
All this is natural. As a general rule, the most popular ships tend to occur between the two main characters. Sod impartiality. Lets take Stargate SG-1. Jack is the main male of the show- his name comes up first, and heck, his company sort of runs the show. Sam is the main, and for a short time, only main female. Voila! A ship is born! It’s a similar state within slash- Daniel is the second top male star. Again, voila!
Favourite character normally depends on who is the hottie of the group. A really good example of this is Lord of the Rings. In the book, Legolas had reasonable popularity. Then they cast the gorgeous Orlando Bloom to play Legolas, and voila! Legolas IS the fandom! (please note: I liked Leggy since day one when I first read the books). Obviously, I speak of the straight female contingent. Guys, wanna get back to me on this?
Most fandoms are quite peaceful lands. Obviously, there’s sniping and so on, but nothing major. People are supportive of each others works, and offer a hand, and run websites at no cost to the fans, and this is good. However, a fandom can get very ugly very quickly. This can normally happen if an unpopular character is introduced, or a popular character is written out. Again, stuff impartiality. A good example of this is the recent kafuffle over the death of popular character Daniel Jackson. Rumours began to fly over him being fired, or deeper reasons behind his leaving. Daniel fans started to get nasty to Jack fans. Jack fans would argue back. The major slash group was suddenly written out of the equation. A fandom is a dangerous place. It may all seem nice, and for the most part, fandoms are relatively harmless, a good way for fans to show devotion and appreciation of a show/film/book/whatever.. But if it turns the wrong way, a fandom can turn very ugly very quickly.
But no not fear! It’s not all doom and gloom. What attracts people to fandom anyway? Most fandoms contain people of every gender, nationality, race group, sexuality and age, so it’s nothing specific there. What unites these people is the love of the show/film/book/whatever in question. Yet why join a fanfiction? Why write fanfiction, draw fanart, build websites?
No doubt there’s some form of deep and psychological reason. However, I’ve never studied psychology, and I highly doubt I ever will, so I can’t answer that part of the question. But take fanfiction. Why do we write it? Reading it is obvious: we wish to here more of our chosen heroes and heroines. Personally, I write fanfiction (and I can only speak for myself) for a few reason. Sometimes it is to fill a wish of my own. “Hey, wouldn’t it be great to see…” Sometimes its me just rambling on-place my hands down on the keyboard and see what comes out. Sometimes, it’s me trying to twist an established situation to my own needs, or to try and add the missing piece of a puzzle in a situation or a character. Yet indeed, why become so embroiled into an aspect of the media to do this at all?
It’s all very puzzling, and yet I’m no nearer to answering the question I set myself. (God, I’m so gonna fail English at this rate.) Perhaps it’s because there’s no real answer to fandom. After three days of wrestling with this particular monster and question (I wrote most of this late at night. Can’t ya tell?), I’ve come to the conclusion (“hurrah” cries the distant voice of my readers) that a fandom is something like a snowball. Once the snowball begins rolling down a steep hill, it cannot stop. Some areas of the snowball gather more snow than the others, yet it always ends up making a similar shape to all snowballs that came before it. The snowball changes direction slightly all the time, yet only drastically changes shape if one part of the snowball changes massively, or is destroyed.
And that, basically, is my long and meandering essay on the nature of fandom. To be honest, it’s not really answered many questions. But if you’d like to get back to me on it, all questions and comments are willingly accepted… Email me! Feed the dragon!
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