Unclassified Noodling

[cephalopod]

Three words:

fandom: marine_biology. There is no actual marine biology in this post. I tell you this now.

I'm beginning to wonder if fandom as a concept doesn't just function as some sort of meta-structure overlay on my hardwired sex is everywhere filter. I also wonder--scratch that, I just reread that last sentence and I know for sure--if I have been watching too much GitS. :D

If that's even possible anyway.

Seriously, though. Is marine biology a fandom? Is the fact that my jade plant and a spool of thread are totally doin' it right now a fandom? I feel a little like Magritte, when he was feeling all theoretical and made bad, dull paintings with a solid black block in the place of a cloud or something, helpfully labeled "cloud". What is fandom? Does being a fan of something make it a fandom? Does making derivative works of something cause a fandom to occur, and is fandom a thing or a state?

I suppose this is the question: how far can the idea of 'fandom' travel from the notion of derivative works from a specific creative source before it ceases to be fandom and becomes unclassified noodling? It seems that it is important to locate the line of demarcation, so that one may avoid making bad, dull painting-equivalents when one just wants to make goofy porn.

This post, for example: too much theory. Needs moar goofy porn.

Comments

[cypher]

...Man, watch me take this question seriously, too.

I feel like some element of community/exchange is central to the idea of "fandom," so...I don't know, you'd need to have jade plant/spool of thread fanfic that people could comment on, or a message board full of angry, poorly spelled messages about how slashing them was RUINING THEIR CHARACTERIZATION!!!1! or something, and then it would be a fandom.

There is or at least was a comm on LJ for posting fic that slashed inanimate objects or abstract concepts, though, so presumably there is such a fandom.

Because the internet is a beautiful place full of magic, rainbows, and most of all porn.

[cephalopod]

It's got a srs bzns quality that sneaks up on one, doesn't it?

I think the community aspect is a good qualifier, by which standard my jade plant does not qualify but marine biology does. On the other hand, there's the supplemental question of whether that community needs to be focused on derivative works or if simply liking and talking about Thing X is enough to qualify as a Thing X fandom.

Is fandom a valid part of literary dialogue? plz check Y/N

[subtext]

I like the community aspect as a qualifier too. I also have a ridiculously large bunch of other thoughts on this that raise more questions-- I wanted to engage in this conversation so much when I saw it this morning, I took my laptop out with me on errands and typed things up at lunch like a dork.

I'm of two minds (or at least, two potential arguments) on this. If you define fandom as narrowly as "relating to previously published material" then obviously, jade plant/string can't have a fandom you can participate in until someone publishes it and opens the potential for a community to form (but if you start that community by publishing the concept first when it doesn't belong to anyone else, you are not engaging in fandom; you're writing original stuff). If, however, you define fandom as relating to "concepts I like," then you can have anything you damn well want in the fan-bag and make an argument for it being a fandom simply because you are a fan of it existing, whether or not you are the first person to actually publish stories about it (publishing it online counts, here).

I'm going to go with "fandom" as really meaning "writing derivative fiction based in another author's preexisting world," here, as my own actual (and best defensible) viewpoint, but that can get a little sticky when you ask certain questions.

(Asking certain questions and getting kind of off-topic now.) Is Milton's Paradise Lost in a fandom? Is it fanfic? What about Star Trek, which Roddenberry said was inspired by the Hornblower novels about a sea captain? What about Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan adventures, the concept for which (I heard) she admitted began as Star Trek fanfic that she later filed serial numbers off and revised?

What about A Companion to Wolves, which is a response to genre conventions in fantasy, but which reads to me as being very much patterned on and responding directly to one companion-animal fantasy novel in particular, (quasi-spoiler text in white in case anyone hasn't read it yet and cares) Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight?

Where does one fandom stop and a new author's original work begin, when they're inspired by the same thing? (We all wake up and decide to write cyberpunk with entirely original characters and our own terms for netrunning, jacking in, razorgirls, street samurai, etc, after reading William Gibson's Neuromancer.)

SO. Getting back around to being relevant: what's the difference between a fandom and a genre? I'd say marine biology counts as a genre more than a fandom, but can it be both?

(I'll stop editing this now despite it being kind of a mess still.)

Re: Is fandom a valid part of literary dialogue? plz check Y/N

[subtext]

Ooooog, see, because I was thinking about this after only being able to glance at your post, I repeated your questions and went totally off-topic without really properly addressing them. I apologize.

Wanna go back to school again and do research on the sociology/psychology/literary roots/etc of online gaming and writing fandoms? We could talk about the underlying meaning and structure of things we do all the time anyway, and eventually publish awesomely dorktastic things, just like so many other people lately. ;)

Re: Is fandom a valid part of literary dialogue? plz check Y/N

[cephalopod]

I didn't think you went off-topic, actually. Determining the line between original works and derivative ones is another facet of the question. And also between the genre of a work being fanned on rather than the work itself--look at lolcats, for example. It's a rare lolcat that actually gets its own following, whereas lolcat as a whole has a fucking crazy-huge fandom.

Fuck it all, let's do our thing in the real world for a few years and then totally become fandom scholars.