Why I Love Fandom

So, looking back on the entirety of our class and everything that we've been working for the entire semester here is what I have to say...

"I love fandom!"

If it was possible, I would go online right now, get ordained and marry myself to fandom and have lots of fandom children.

Why, you might ask, would I love a thing were any Tom, Dick, and Harriet can spew their opinions all over each other and then descend into faux-fisitcuffs over character interpretation?

"Why" is exactly the reason for this.

As a person who has always asked why, always questioned, curioused, wondered and pushed for a concrete reason behind any action that I was asked --read ordered--to take, fans take all of the millions of whys and hows and whos and create whole universes in order to develop, defend and state their reasoning.

The creators of whatever have already given us these characters, a setting and a world but that's not even for the discerning fan these days. We have to ask why, we have to know more and we have to be able to take an active role in the texts we're taking in.

At the end of the day, Harry Potter belongs to JK, Teen Wolf belongs to Davis and various and sundry fandoms sprouted as a result of the source material and that's wonderful.  Fans take their work and play with it:

They put themselves in it, change the setting, throw characters into alternate verses, mesh two fandoms together in a gooey mix, and interpret the source material in ways that the original creators either refused to or couldn't due to marketing, sales, or vision.

One of my very favorite things about FanFiction in particular is the way that fans ask billions of questions and then proceed to answer them themselves before the book is even half way done.

Sites like FanFiction, AO3, Tumblr, LiveJournal, AdultFanFiction and the like are avenues for writers, readers, artists, critics, etc to contribute to a thing they absolutely love.

 

Take for instance this iconic image. Baby Potter probably being left on a Surrey porch the night/morning of October 31, November 1st by Dumbledore, McGonagall and Hagrid, three powerful yet stupid wizards who decided that it's OK, he'll live throughout the cold weather and he'll be fine.

This image right here has launched thousands of fics

1. Instead of a lightning bolt, it's the Yucatec sign of the Sun and Harry is actually the Avatar for Kinich Ahau, a Mayan sun god. 
2. Harry is left out in the cold for too long and as a result develops an inner ear infection: he is deaf for the rest of his life and because he was without magical healing for the first 11 years of his life, could not be put to rights.
3. Harry dies in the cold of the night, as a baby might and passes into the Spirit World, unfortunately due to the looming prophecy, he is brought back by Dumbledore with Dark Magic to do his bidding.
4. Harry is kidnapped by vampires hunting in the night and trained to hate all Wizarding kind; he eventually slaughters all of Wizarding Britain.
5. The Horcrux in Harry's scar takes over in this moment of weakness as Harry's magic struggles to keep him alive. He is squib, unable to use Harry's magic but proceeds to terrorize the Dursley's/Little Whinging until such time as he is allowed into the Wizarding world.

 And then of course there are the thousands upon thousands of Not BWL!Harry or Mistaken!BWL Harry where his twin or younger sibling is either really the Boy Who Lived or actually not and Lily and James, who survive due to Voldemort's extreme mercy; fanonically, it's hilarious to think about Voldemort firing Stunners at Lily and James but that's what ends up happening more times than not. 

And this is just one moment of the movie, a visible representation of the books. It amazes me how much care, attention and time goes into really good Fanfiction, fanart and fanvids. These people, like the rest of us, have lives: school, work, families whatever and still have the time to devote to this living, breathing entity. It  amazes me every time I read a new Fanfiction or see a new video, read new meta or just log into Tumblr.


I personally don't need to own a thing in order to appreciate it, take pleasure in it and ultimately challenge its existence.

At the end of a day, fandom is a powerful, independent collosus with the ability to dissect a text in less than ten minutes.

So give yourselves a big pat on the back, play this song on your listening device and walk out like:

You A Boss Ass B*!<#

Disclaimer: There is foul language, cursing and general blackness going on in this video. If you are easily offended please do not watch it!

Harry Potter and the Highway to Hell

So, my first interaction with the Harry Potter series was very interesting to say the least. I had actually checked out Prisoner of Azkkaban from my school library when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. I didn't really know what it was or that there were two books before this one but I though it looked interesting and I've always been a fan of Fantasy novels.

Suffice it to say that my mother was not happy. She had just recently found God again (no offense to the religious folk in the class) and according to her Good Book, Harry Potter was going to put me on the Highway to Hell.

 Now I saw this online a few weeks ago and knew I needed to save it for the first week of discussion. What is this woman doing? Telling these people that a fictional character is the enemy of her God?

 This is part of a sermon I found posted on Tumblr denouncing Harry Potter and his magic as Satan's work.

(Jesus Camp, 2006)



I needed to be saved from the dark forces that were clearly taking hold of me. By this time, I had decided for myself that organized religion was not for me and had stopped worshiping. Of course, this was another sign of my descent into madness and witchcraft.

I'm not saying this is representative of all religions everywhere but I had my fair share of experiences as a child and it says a lot about the power and pervasiveness of this text and its fans that sermons like this have gone on and still do go on around the country.

In 2012, the Harry Potter series was the most banned collection of texts in the country. Meanwhile, fans of all ages, choose Houses, live the dream of going to Harry Potter world, cosplay to the extreme and create original content all of the time, in spite of being told no.

Telling children it's wrong to read Harry Potter is stupid. Don't make them read it if they don't want to but it's definitely a part of the fabric of our generation.

I know I desperately waited for my Hogwarts letter, realized I was in America and thus would be attending the Salem Witche's Insitute, concluded that it was an all gir's school and waited for someone to tell me I was magical

BBC Sherlock Unaired Pilot

If you are a true blue BBC Sherlock fan then you cannot say that you have truly lived until you've seen the unaired pilot. Trust me, it is not an experience you can live without.

Clearly, the quality of these two gifs are not equal but just looking at them you get the reason why you so desperately need to see this unaired pilot.

It is shorter, there are less cameos (Mycroft doesn't get his fabulously dramatic entrance) and it's thirty minutes shorter but what it lacks in pure quality and polished charm is the raw, unfinished nature of it.

It is so apparent that all of them (Moffat, Benedict, Martin, Rupert) have not finished making all of the great and small decisions about their characters, about the relationship and about the structure as a whole.

Both Sherlock and John are younger in the unaired pilot, Sherlock is practically a teenager while John is less an aged, world-weary soldier and more defianlty homosexual Three Continents Watson. 

Some of the delivery is sloppy, Sherlock moves likes he's just recently learned but he's open in a way that actual canon denies possible. 

John is dressed in stylish coats and open collar dress shirts. The limp is incredibly disgusting and fake but he's also eye-fucking Sherlock over the firelight and shooting the cabbie. 

Every time I really get into a fandom, I try and watch the unaired pilot. First of all, to see who that one actor/actress is that gets replaced (in this case, Sally Donovan is some other black English woman with less power and weaker line delivery. They really dodged a bullet there)

It's so apparent in some cases how much deliberation and minute action goes into a character. The littlest things like the cut of a coat can tell you so much about a person and their motivations. Watching the pilot was like getting a glimpse at Johnlock (ship name) in utero.

If this last gif does not convince you then you're dead inside.

That is all.

For everyone who has not seen the wonderfulness that is the unaired pilot, please go to 

 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtsdwg_ssherlock-2010-unaired-pilot_shortfilms

The Pride and Prejudice AU Craze!

So, looking back on our conversation of the novel and the way it seems to permeate popular culture even if some of us (myself included) had not actually read it before I started to think that maybe I had read it before and then it came to me: The Pride and Prejudice AU craze:

For those of you still confused by this term, AU is an abbreviation of Alternate Universe. In Fanfiction terms, you take your fandom and place them in a different setting, like the future, or the Middle Ages or even more popular the Pride and Prejudice era.

So why do fans care enough about this book/era/idea to transplate their ships there?

I honestly have no idea.

Realistically, it's not a lovey-dovey romance story, filled with all of the picnics and promises girls are supposed to dream of and boys are supposed to inherently offer.

But, as can be seen, fandoms, particularly well-established ones have their examples of this AU:

Supernatural: Destiel

Glee: Klaine

 Merlin: Merthur

 BBC Sherlock: Johnlock

Teen Wolf: Sterek

 Naruto: Sasukura

This is just the bare bones of what I could find given ten minutes and a basic Google search but there's so much more Fanfiction, fanvideos and fan appreciation for this period that ones has to wonder why it is.

One way to look at it is that Lizzie and Darcy offer a more combative, fighting relationship that heightens sexual tension and allows our favorite character to duke it out with sarcasm and dance cards. It might also be the edge of titillation we get from seeing our beloved couples: most of whom are in a homosexual relationship, profess their love in a time where it means naught but danger and death.

Neither of those reasons really mean anything though. A Regency area romance, deemed trashy dollar books by polite/upper society, has all of that and more (actual sex) in a much faster read.

So yes I have to do proclaim that I am still not OK with this. Austen told a story with interesting people in a not so interesting time and yet still remains.

In the end, it's probably all of the English majors finding an outlet for their degrees while they work menial jobs to support themselves. "I may not have any valuable skills to offer society but I sure know my Austen!"

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: WoooHooo!

So I have to admit that I hadn't read Pride and Prejudice before this(nor had I ever really wanted to read it.) I, through the course of my time on this Earth as both a reader, an English major and a fan, have made the conscious decision to both seek out and avoid certain things. It's always been one of those books that I put on my "Do Not Read Ever" lists because it came with so much Pomp & Circumstance:

It's all about ball gowns and parties and rich entitled white people stewing in their wealth and privilege. "Hmm, hmm. Look at all our money. Hmm, hmm."

Just by virtue of being an English major, I've been exposed to the genre of "Rich, White People And Their Problems" and it's been one of mutual dislike. All of the things that this genre represents are all things that I have decided I don't care about personally. Taking a step back, I can read into the subtleties and complexities of everything the time offers them.

Just based on my personality, I am all about the snide comments, backhanded compliments and daggers in the back. That's the beautiful part of this for me and it should be enough to sustain me but not really.

But then came the Lizzie Bennet Diaries:

At first I was really skeptical of everything that might be happening with this:

But then I started watching it and it all made sense now. Lizzie Bennet rocks. She's so real and down-to-earth and so snarky. It's a beautiful introduction and experience to take part in even though I am still not a fan of Pride & Prejudice.

The whole time she is doing this (on behalf of Hank Green and the VlogBrothers) she's sucking us into the story (which in spirit is exactly what Austen does) but gives us the ability to put it into perspective and then take this and put it back into a spacial-temporal perspective that Austen gave us.

"Please Hate the Players, Don't Hate the Game": Romeo and Juliet

Now, no one is more of a skeptic than me, especially in the case of a barely teenage girl and a boy of some indeterminate age but who's definitely not old, get together and think that the Sun, Moon and Stars were hung in honor of their undying love for one another

That is all that needs to be said about that.

One second read however, a lot of more of the subtlety and language comes through. You realize that yes, this may well be the origin of the "Love at first sight" cliche but that does not make what is being said less valid, only the figures themselves and their desire to be together without any thought toward long-term goals or the family feud that's been waging for however many years.

"Hate the player, not the game." This reversal of the adage makes sense in their context because Romeo and Juliet, along with Mercutio, Tybalt and all the other bastards are merely players on a stage, taking part in Shakespeare's epic game.

What is his game exactly? Why, to show the mercurial nature of teen hearts? To ultimately punish and therefore train the Montague's and Capulet's for their misdeed? To send a message to parents of the time: keep a close eye on your kids?

I have no idea what the central idea of this play is. It offers the reader a look at decision making and cause and effect outcomes in a visceral and poisonous way. It develops the idea of history and the importance of knowing where you came from but also that evolution of thoughts and ideas is necessary for survival. It's a satirical commentary on the state of relationships and arranged marriages of the era.

Whatever it is that is occurring behind the scenes in Shakespeare's mind, we all have to keep in mind that although we are sick of Romeo and Juliet and their thousands of reincarnations, someone somewhere made the unwise decision to keep these things in circulation so let's learn from them what we can so we can finally put them to rest.

Star Wars: The Original Three Aren't Enough

Star Wars has always been one of those movies that's come under a lot of scrutiny. Experts-read nerds-extol their knowledge and the brilliance of George Lucas when all he did was retell a story that's been told for millennia by his point in time. 

Why is this such a "good movie"? The location, the dialogue, the lovable charactes, the space magic?

Any one of these things could be considered Lucas' great idea but what does he give us really? A predictable story line full of characters we love only because it's obvious they're the good ones. Bad characters and an Empire that's evil because people said so (discounting the reboot that Fans think is awful, what has the Empire done until Alderan that's so bad.) Leia and her ilk are the rebels yet the white of her dress and their proved individuality clearly proclaim them righteous. 

I was not one for the original Star Wars. I think the reboot is actually much better because it had more of the space magic that I enjoy and look for. 

That 's all Star Wars is for me, space wizards fighting bad space wizards using 'muggles' as cannon fodder and human meat walls. In th end, that's what it comes down to. The only difference between the original three and the prequels is that Vader killed th Jedi thus giving himself the advantage in the temporal-galatix Jedi-Sith war. 

Again, my issues with Star Wars stem from my eternal hatred of heavy-handed moral lessons shoveling  right and wrong down my throat. Instead of waiting for a prophecy child Obi-Wan and Yoda should have just ganged up on Vader and the Emperor and murdered him. But of course they couldn't. Such actions would only be driven by anger and vengeance: two things that definitely lead to the Dark Side. (as we really learn and explore in the prequels)

We talked about the repeat of certain tropes, archetypes and formats in literature/storytelling and while it's true that these things can be seen, they do not encompass a good story. New, experimental things might be unpopular but could serve to shake things up. 

One last thought I want to leave this post with: the whole idea of this series is not to me because of the idea that is at the heart of it: good always triumphs over evil. False. This is not true and this fear of letting evil win has infected us since time began. If we simply stopped trying to hide from it we could explore it.