Fandom
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say about fandom:
Fannish organizations and spaces exist on nearly all planets. In general, the more fannish a planet is, the more hospitable it is to hitchhikers.
The moons of Rathnor-5, for example, have long been considered the science fiction convention center of the galaxy. The most prominent convention, on the largest moon, has been running for 753 years.
Yipla’s devotion to fandom has caused significant problems, such as the Great Ship War of 2247, which led to widespread vandalism and an intense, city-wide food fight.
Vogons do not appreciate fanfiction.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
sociopaths-slitheen-and-snape:
You know you’re deep in a fandom when your phone stops autocorrecting things from it
So I’ve been thinking about Sherlock & fandom & creators while watching a lot of HGTV (I’m an old fuddy duddy so I love me some HGTV) and I realized an analogy that works for me:
Imagine a show called Your Dream Show House with Steven & Mark where I am the homeowner and they swoop in to help me spend my insane budget on my dream.
I am happy to have Moffat & Gatiss be my architecture and design team. They pick out gorgeous stuff that I want. They show me pictures and I get all inspired. Their look book is fabulous and the blueprints make me ooh and ahh.
I do not want them as my general contractors. I’ve seen their work. When they start building, it doesn’t look like what the blueprints seemed to show. The designers get these odd ideas halfway through and they don’t match (a portcullis? What? On a craftsman bungalow? And woah, get the grass off the walls)
No, I want Fandom for my contractor. Fan artists and metawriters and gif makers and fic writers and headcanoneers. They make stiff I like! They adapt! They don’t give a fuck about being exciting and shocking for the sake of it or whatever. They create with love. They will put an octopus in my pool of I want it.
They will give me 2 bedrooms (will we be needing both?) or one bedroom or seventeen.They do fabulous work, fandom does./end HGTV analogy
What is significant about fan fiction is that it often spins the kind of stories that showrunners wouldn’t think to tell, because fanficcers often come from a different demographic. The discomfort seems to be not that the shows are being reinterpreted by fans, but that they are being reinterpreted by the wrong sorts of fans – women, people of colour, queer kids, horny teenagers, people who are not professional writers, people who actually care about continuity (sorry). The proper way for cultural mythmaking to progress, it is implied, is for privileged men to recreate the works of privileged men from previous generations whilst everyone else listens quietly.
Sherlock and the Adventure of the Overzealous Fanbase by Laurie Penny (via linpatootie)
