Fandoms

I'll put that behind a cut because it's kinda melancholy, and I don't want to drag down the mood of anyone expecting squeeing about things I love under the headline "Fandoms". Mostly this is reasons why I'm not involved in fandoms.

That should be enough to let people decide if they want to read, I hope

So...

I've mostly beein hanging around the edges of fandoms, for various reasons.

One is that I don't like fanfic much. (No value judgement, just personal disinterest.) I mean, I even stopped reading Star Wars expanded universe stuff, because it got on my nerves to see interpretations of a character that contradicted each other. (I would have thought something "officially" published was edited for consistency.)

And the fandoms where I actively participated in discussions... well.

There was Elfquest (and with the new series coming out currently, I'm dipping a toe in again). Years ago I was put off by those fans badmouthing any artist who wasn't Wendy Pini, and those putting down comics in general except for Elfquest, and those putting together websites to rag on a character they disliked.

I joined two newsgroups for Terry Pratchett fans. Those I left mostly because they ate too much time, but the guy joining and then badmouthing Germans at every opportunity was part of the reason.

Then there was one for Bujold fans. The last straw that led me to leave was people who were religious and people who were not religious getting in a vitriolic fight.
One thing that hurt me personally was posting a thought on the Sharing Knife series, namely that Lakewalkers share a lot of traits with elves, including examples, which someone "refuted" by talking about Tolkien's elves only, as if there had not been half a century of books, games, and other media including elves after Lord of the Rings.

Reminded me of literary fiction. About that I learned at school that I was not allowed to have original thoughts; I was just supposed to learn to guess what the teacher wanted to hear. And after school, when I tried to find out on my own what was supposed to be so great about the stuff we had to read, I found groups litFic fans sneering at anyone who read other genres, and claiming reading for fun would be the downfall of civilisation.

I see different fandoms in passing on tumblr, and a lot of the time it's fun, but I feel stung when the messages take the form of "if you don't like XYZ, you are doing life wrong/can't be my friend/are a soulless monster". It's bad enough when people put other people down like that over religion or politics, but about something as trivial as their reading or TV viewing preferences?

It makes me sad.

Probably there's some envy for the people who are less vitriolic than the people who put me off, and who're having a lot of fun in fandom, but sometimes I can't help but think about how "fan" is shortened from "fanatic", and fanatics often being rather unpleasant people.