– The fic starts out great, nice style, language, captivating summary. It’s unfinished and has been abandoned since 2013.
– The fic is complete, nice style, language, tons of kudos speak for themselves. It’s about your NOTP.
– The fic is about your OTP, it’s complete, it’s kinky as hell. The plot is absolutely dumbass.
– The plot sounds great, it’s about your OTP, it’s complete. The characters are horribly OOC.
– Everything is perfect in this fic, starting from the first letter and ending with the last full stop. It’s exactly 800 words long.
– The fic’s word count is a six-figure number, it’s about your OTP, characters are compliant with your head-canon. It’s dull and boring as seven hells.
– The beginning is enthralling, everything’s great, the plot, the style, it’s long and it’s even about your OTP. It features something that makes you close the tab as soon as you open it, like father/daughter incest or mpreg or some other squicky thing.
– Everything is perfect in this fic, the length, the characters, the language, the style, you forget you’re reading fanfic, thinking it’s a masterpiece of true literature, you cry tears of joy and write a huge review full of gushing love and then rush to the author’s profile to read every other thing they’ve written. It’s their only work.
I really really love the concept in Moffat’s Who of ‘the Doctor’ not as our main character’s true identity, but rather as one he constructed for himself.
It makes me think of him at the Academy, dreaming of being some sort of intergalactic hero instead of whatever waited for him on Gallifrey, creating the name, the role, perhaps even the sort of clothes he’d wear, dreaming up adventures
then stealing a TARDIS and realizing ‘wait, I can totally BE the Doctor now’
because so much of the Doctor’s personality really is that sort of childlike wonder at the universe, and a very real desire for things to be fair and good
And when you look at the Doctor not as The Doctor but as a runaway kid trying very hard to live up to the imaginary persona he doodled in the back of his notebook, he makes so much sense
and he makes even more sense on those days when being The Doctor is just too hard.
And that makes him even more a hero for the kids watching, because if that’s the case, he’s doing what they all wish they could do – he’s another kid just like them, trying to grow up into a role he’s imagined for himself, not always managing, but still trying.
[Fandom] takes the place of some of the functions of a church in a small town: A place where people come together, ostensibly to worship something. But really what’s happening is you’re forming a community. It’s less about what you’re worshiping and more about, “We have these interests in common.” Someone has a sick aunt and suddenly it’s about that, raising money to help her or sharing resources to make her life easier. That’s what it was about with The X-Files on the Internet.
I’ve never really seen any celebrity “get” fandom the way Duchovny did. A lot of people read that quote and, at the time, mistakenly read it as David saying he was like a god. But what he meant was that (as I believe he clarified elsewhere) fans didn’t need him to make an appearance. Fandom wasn’t about him. It was about us–the fans.
I want us to not forget that. When the fandom’s centre stops being the community of fans and becomes, instead, focused on–even blinded by–the glittering idol, then fandom itself becomes nothing more than idolatry–with all of us, as individuals, jockeying for a touch or a piece of that idol and stomping over each other to get it.
I’ve seen fandoms fall apart when that happens. I’ve seen fandoms become places where fans know and care more about the celebrities than we do about each other.
I know there are good reasons for fans to create personas and screen names. But this might be a good time to re-introduce ourselves to each other. And to think about how much more important that is than is meeting a famous person at the stage door.
I’m working earlier and this guy comes in and seems anxious. We usually wait until people need help to ask, but he comes over and tells me, “I’m cosplaying Bowser and need spiked wristbands.” I immediately start heading towards the jewelry / accessories and try to strike up some friendly conversation
I respond, “Ah, cool. You doing NonCon at all?” remembering that our local convention is this coming weekend.
He looks at me super seriously and replies, “no, my friends and I are going go-karting downstairs and we’re all dressed up as Mario Kart characters.”
