A Fandom Valentine
Feb. 14th, 2010 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inteligrrlDear Fandom
I've been floating around various areas of fandom for around half my life. In that time I've seen BNF's come and go, fandom's begin and end, and read a truly terrifying amount of fanfiction. I try not to be involved in most of the meta topics or episodes of fandom wankery that periodically pop up, but I know or follow people who are more active fandom participants, which serves to keep me vaguely abreast of the latest dramas. Meta is great, and has often altered my perception of issues, but usually I prefer to spend my spare time pursuing creative works, rather than follow page after page of comments with escalating frustration levels.
Despite my tendency to avoid drama, I am well aware that many people are frustrated with fandom in general. Misogyny, race/privilege, warning labels, triggering, and a variety of other issues have taken their place in fandom discussion alongside the old stand-bys of shipwars, character hatred, plagiarism, trolling, and general wankery. People seem collectively unhappy with fandom, a state of affairs I find a bit distressing, because fandom is something I truly love.
In an environment where every post seems to incite someone else's outrage, I'm hoping no one takes this post the wrong way. What I've spent two rambling paragraphs trying to say, is this is my personal story of fandom, and this is why I love it.
Fandom: A Love Story
I was born a fan with parents that are inherently unfanish. Cartoons that I liked too much were banned (Rainbow Bright, Smurfs, Carebears, My Little Ponies, most of Disney, etc.). Book genres or series that I really enjoyed were regulated or banned, while parentally approved books were pushed. Music choices were Christian or classical - the height of unfairness when most of my fellow conservatives were at least allowed to listen to 50's and 60's pop. My tendency toward fanishness was there, but each time I found something I really enjoyed it was pulled from my grasp. It is almost impossible to have a real understanding of worlds or characters based off of half an episode of Power Rangers or TNMT I saw before I was told to "turn that garbage off." But at the age of eight my Dad made a fatal mistake; he rented Star Wars.
What Dad saw as a harmless set of movies to let his kids see once, was a revelation to me. All of a sudden I had a complete fantasy world, with characters I knew, and a story arc I could build off of indefinitely. So, like millions of children before me, I fell in love. Lacking the movies to rewatch (my parents were unlikely to make the mistake of renting them a second time) I devoured the novels, read the quote books and droid guide, and developed misguided affection for certain characters (For years my default alias was Calista Skywalker - that I was young and melodramatic is my only defense). Star Wars opened my eyes to science fiction, world building, mythology, and fandom in general. Suddenly I knew what I had been missing, and I desperately wanted it all.
I learned to be good at subterfuge, and watched as many episodes of Star Trek(TNG) and the animated X-Men as I possibly could, impressing on my siblings that it was better if my parents didn't know what show Jubilee was from - after all, if they didn't know we watched X-Men it couldn't be banned for "promoting evolution." All of a sudden there were entirely new worlds to explore, worlds that focused on people who were different, who didn't fit in, who fought the conventions or had powers all their own, and my imagination was set on fire.
I might have spent my entire life engaging with fandom on this level, planning to go to a Star Trek convention with friends once we were old enough, and existing on a solely canonical plane, but at thirteen everything changed. At thirteen I moved from Arkansas to New Mexico. Now, instead of being on good terms with most the other homeschooled kids, and having a few close geekish friends, I was the outcast. I was overweight, the only girl in my age group, and fresh out of the completely foreign culture of the South. Miserable, depressed, and very lonely, I began to seriously contemplate suicide (or more accurately murder-suicide, as my parents had informed me years ago that I shouldn't feel sorry for suicides, as suicide was "the most selfish thing a person could ever do" because of how much it hurt their family. To my depressed brain the only logical solution was to kill everyone in their sleep so that I could kill myself guilt free. Yes, I really was that unhinged - if you've never been severely depressed I don't think you can understand the level of disconnect from reality that occurs). Somewhere in this time period I was on the internet and stumbled across a piece of X-Files fanfiction.
I had never really watched the X-Files, but a bit of X-Files AU by Sneakers brought something shiny and new and desperately needed into my life. I threw myself into X-Files with wild abandon, and with fandom as an escape and refuge I was able to take my first halting movements toward becoming a person who could survive the world I had to live in.
When I say fandom saved my life I'm not saying it was a miracle cure. Fandom gave me time to save myself in the barest of increments. Fandom was the currency I used to barter with death - I couldn't kill myself until I'd seen the resolution to the cliffhanger season finale, watched the LotR movie, read the end of the w.i.p. I was in the middle of. Beyond the gift of time, fandom gave me an open window to see outside of my own closed world and into the wider range of human experience.
While I understand the frustration with fandom's shortcomings, I am also unable to really agree with it. For me fandom has consistently broken barriers of understanding through meta, the sharing of personal experience, and most often through fanfiction. It has been a gradual process, with missteps along the way, but I know I have developed into a more open-minded, socially-conscious, and mentally healthy human being in a large part due to fandom.
When I found X-Files fandom sex was already a huge issue for me. I was smart enough to understand I was missing vital information on sex at a relatively young age, and also smart enough to know that my parents weren't going to tell me. When my parents found out that their nine year old daughter had learned about sex from her older cousins they handled it... badly (and on a side note, comprehensive sex-ed is a lot better than letting kids learn from their peers at school. Everything I learned about how sex worked from my public school attending cousins was pedophilia, rape, and prostitution thinly disguised as jokes - and we thought that was perfectly normal. Not teaching kids about sex is not sheltering them, but setting them up with really fucked up ideas about how human relationships should work. /end rant). I was fascinated by sex. I had absolutely no concept of healthy sexuality and a truly staggering amount of shame at the same time. Before I found fandom I had begun spending time in x-rated chat rooms, pretending to be a co-ed who liked to play the child in pedophilia fantasies. Had I been just a little bit more stupid or a little bit less private I'm pretty certain I would have ended up a statistic on America's Most Wanted. I remember thinking with annoyance at one point that, since I hadn't started my period, I could have had sex without worrying about pregnancy the month before if I'd just known it was going to take so long. At the same time I had crippling anxiety attacks that masqueraded as guilt. When I started reading the porn I found in X-Files archives I remember having one such attack, and making a deal with myself and God that I would give up all porn unless it was in a fic where Mulder and Scully were married. It took me a long time and a lot of fanfiction to get over a lot of my ingrained shame and even longer to work through some of my other issues - but it was really the fanfiction examples of how human relationships work that helped me to develop expectations of my future sex life that weren't as demeaning as those I had read on Nifty Archive (if you know what that is, I'm sorry. If you don't then be glad and trust me - don't google it. No badfic can come close, really).
I was homeschooled by right-wing fundamentalists, and even though the automatic condemnation of homosexuality distressed me at a pretty young age, I couldn't see my way around the rhetoric I had been brought up with. Khirsah's Unlikely Heroes , it was an accidental read, and her beautiful writing and characterization opened a whole new subdivision of fandom and humanity up to me. Homosexuality went from being something I was sympathetic to, despite its incomprehensibility, to being something I could understand and grasp in a nearly tangible way, and something I was completely unable to condone condemning. If I could understand it, than there must be a way that God could as well - so I began researching theological answers to my dilemma, trying to reconcile my old world with the new. In the process I began to discard some of the doctrine of condemnation I had been so bound up in. My ultimate journey to reconciling my worldviews with my theology takes place largely outside of fandom, but it has its roots here, and I give fandom partial credit for the incarnation of faith that I possess today.
Fandom has continued to challenge my world view over the years. Heteronorms, polyamory, gender roles, bisexuality, BDSM, transexuality, asexuality, other lifestyles and concepts have crossed the line from "I don't really get it, but whatever" into understanding, support, and, in some cases, an active part of my life because of fandom.
Joss Whedon, Gillian Anderson, and Neil Gaiman can take credit for much of what has shaped my concept of what women should be in fiction and in life. Neil Gaiman once said that he was baffled when someone asked him how he wrote such strong women. His reply to the question was something along the lines of "I try to write strong characters, some of whom are also women." That concept of building a character who is a women, rather than building a frame work of what a women is and then attempting to use it as a mold create a character blew my mind as a budding writer. It made me examine all the stereotypes I was using to frame my own writing and I have tried to be conscious of his lesson ever since. In my own mind, Joss Whedon is the television parallel to Neil's written example. The women of Buffy and Firefly are characters to me first, and their gender is - well not secondary, but it doesn't define them much more than their hair color. Along those lines, Dana Scully will always hold a special place in my heart as a woman. Dana Scully was tough, smart, and she could hold her own, God help anyone who dared to say otherwise. She carried herself with the knowledge that she was the equal of any other man or woman out there, no matter what the rest of the world might have had to say about the matter. She was the first woman who I looked at and said "I want to be like her" without reservation.
My ability to comprehend transgendered issues has been directly affected by fandom. The ability to follow the journey of one trans author has been amazing, but by far the most important part of my own journey of understanding has been brought about through fanfiction. This is part of why I get frustrated with meta arguments. Don't just tell me there is a problem, show me. When done right nothing is more powerful or identifiable than a well crafted story. Write the compelling story or character that conveys your point and leaves me with an insatiable thirst to see/ write more of the same. This is how you change fandom, change minds, change the world. I can tell you first hand that it works and that I've seen it done to perfection before.
There are things I've toyed with over the years, ideas that I have struggled with or not fully understood my own thoughts on for years. And while I struggle to deal with these issues I've found fics that have helped me to understand current dilemmas, long term problems, and world view issues. Fandom collectively has a wealth of experience and thought, and I feel so privileged to be allowed access to these experiences and thoughts. I remember years ago feeling such resonance with Mercutio's story Shoot Me , and even though I am (thankfully) no longer in a position where I identify, I still remember reading it with tears rolling down my cheeks. In her story Second Circle, Stele's careful research and explanation helped resolve several questions that had been rolling around my head for years.bexless and her Unholy Verse contains some of the best theological statements I have ever run into, and when I read it I find myself feeling closer to God, my own faith reaffirmed by a fictional character. The stories I've mentioned here are the tiniest fraction of the stories profoundly affected my life, a small cross section of why I am grateful for fandom. None of this is even mention the amazing people I've met and friends that I've made through fandom - that could be another thousand words.
I've written over two thousand words about how grateful I am for fandom personally, and I don't think I can finish this entry without saying something about how beneficial fandom is to the world at large. People likeastolat , pinkfinity , and others have done amazing things for fandom at large through their work on Organization for Transformative Works, Archive of Our Own, Yuletide , fandom friendly Dreamwidth , and the various cons/fests/etc. I've seen fandom come together collectively to raise thousands upon thousands of dollars for charity every year. We have an impact on creators, networks, and the world – and that’s pretty damn cool.
Fandom is amazing, and I love every bit of it. So keep on doing your thing, battle stupidity with p0rn, show up on Fandom Wank, write fanfiction, complain about newbies and bad characterizations , give me new things to think about and struggle with every damn day. Just remember to have fun, and love what you're doing because that's the only reason to keep doing anything. You're all awesome, and I'd just like to say thank you. Thank you for being amazing. Thank you for saving my life so many times over the years. Thank you for being you. I am so very grateful.
Just for kicks, I'm going to include my personal rules for fandom survival - I figure that since I've been in it for thirteen years I might have a little insight.
J.Lynn's Rules of Fandom
1. Newbies will be stupid.
2. Fandom will have drama.
3. Some stories are beyond the saving of even a good beta, so stop compulsively reading and delete that mediocre/badfic! tag on delicious.
4. Never dare a fanfic author. Be careful when reading a dare, some things you just can't bleach from your brain (Potter fandom, I'm looking at you).
5. Sometimes taking a break or leaving a fandom is the best thing you can do (but not answering comments is better than deleting all your fic).
6. Protect your anonymity.
7. Protect other's anonymity. DON'T share their works with the Powers That Be - it's both in poor taste and a good way to drive someone from fandom entirely.
8. Never comment to say anything Ms. Manners would disapprove of... unless it's porn, then label NSFW.
9. Always treat the people who visit your journal with kindness, even when they're idiots. Most cases of foot-in-mouth disease are accidental and can be remedied with gentle education - but block all true trolls.
10. Always be respectful of another person in their own journal - make your point, but be polite. If you don't like what they have to say then don't follow them. People will be stupid, but that doesn't mean we have to watch.
11. Comment to tell people when you truly appreciate their work, but don't push for more - it's kind of rude.
And a strong suggestion: Make your flist an RSS feed, the better to skip the people/entries most likely to raise your blood pressure.
I realize that something like three people actually read this journal, but I would love to see people posting their own personal tale of fandom love or rules for fandom survival. Feel free to turn this into a meme or just an invitation to take the opportunity to affirm how awesome fandom is.
Love to you all,
J. Lynn
I've been floating around various areas of fandom for around half my life. In that time I've seen BNF's come and go, fandom's begin and end, and read a truly terrifying amount of fanfiction. I try not to be involved in most of the meta topics or episodes of fandom wankery that periodically pop up, but I know or follow people who are more active fandom participants, which serves to keep me vaguely abreast of the latest dramas. Meta is great, and has often altered my perception of issues, but usually I prefer to spend my spare time pursuing creative works, rather than follow page after page of comments with escalating frustration levels.
Despite my tendency to avoid drama, I am well aware that many people are frustrated with fandom in general. Misogyny, race/privilege, warning labels, triggering, and a variety of other issues have taken their place in fandom discussion alongside the old stand-bys of shipwars, character hatred, plagiarism, trolling, and general wankery. People seem collectively unhappy with fandom, a state of affairs I find a bit distressing, because fandom is something I truly love.
In an environment where every post seems to incite someone else's outrage, I'm hoping no one takes this post the wrong way. What I've spent two rambling paragraphs trying to say, is this is my personal story of fandom, and this is why I love it.
Fandom: A Love Story
I was born a fan with parents that are inherently unfanish. Cartoons that I liked too much were banned (Rainbow Bright, Smurfs, Carebears, My Little Ponies, most of Disney, etc.). Book genres or series that I really enjoyed were regulated or banned, while parentally approved books were pushed. Music choices were Christian or classical - the height of unfairness when most of my fellow conservatives were at least allowed to listen to 50's and 60's pop. My tendency toward fanishness was there, but each time I found something I really enjoyed it was pulled from my grasp. It is almost impossible to have a real understanding of worlds or characters based off of half an episode of Power Rangers or TNMT I saw before I was told to "turn that garbage off." But at the age of eight my Dad made a fatal mistake; he rented Star Wars.
What Dad saw as a harmless set of movies to let his kids see once, was a revelation to me. All of a sudden I had a complete fantasy world, with characters I knew, and a story arc I could build off of indefinitely. So, like millions of children before me, I fell in love. Lacking the movies to rewatch (my parents were unlikely to make the mistake of renting them a second time) I devoured the novels, read the quote books and droid guide, and developed misguided affection for certain characters (For years my default alias was Calista Skywalker - that I was young and melodramatic is my only defense). Star Wars opened my eyes to science fiction, world building, mythology, and fandom in general. Suddenly I knew what I had been missing, and I desperately wanted it all.
I learned to be good at subterfuge, and watched as many episodes of Star Trek(TNG) and the animated X-Men as I possibly could, impressing on my siblings that it was better if my parents didn't know what show Jubilee was from - after all, if they didn't know we watched X-Men it couldn't be banned for "promoting evolution." All of a sudden there were entirely new worlds to explore, worlds that focused on people who were different, who didn't fit in, who fought the conventions or had powers all their own, and my imagination was set on fire.
I might have spent my entire life engaging with fandom on this level, planning to go to a Star Trek convention with friends once we were old enough, and existing on a solely canonical plane, but at thirteen everything changed. At thirteen I moved from Arkansas to New Mexico. Now, instead of being on good terms with most the other homeschooled kids, and having a few close geekish friends, I was the outcast. I was overweight, the only girl in my age group, and fresh out of the completely foreign culture of the South. Miserable, depressed, and very lonely, I began to seriously contemplate suicide (or more accurately murder-suicide, as my parents had informed me years ago that I shouldn't feel sorry for suicides, as suicide was "the most selfish thing a person could ever do" because of how much it hurt their family. To my depressed brain the only logical solution was to kill everyone in their sleep so that I could kill myself guilt free. Yes, I really was that unhinged - if you've never been severely depressed I don't think you can understand the level of disconnect from reality that occurs). Somewhere in this time period I was on the internet and stumbled across a piece of X-Files fanfiction.
I had never really watched the X-Files, but a bit of X-Files AU by Sneakers brought something shiny and new and desperately needed into my life. I threw myself into X-Files with wild abandon, and with fandom as an escape and refuge I was able to take my first halting movements toward becoming a person who could survive the world I had to live in.
When I say fandom saved my life I'm not saying it was a miracle cure. Fandom gave me time to save myself in the barest of increments. Fandom was the currency I used to barter with death - I couldn't kill myself until I'd seen the resolution to the cliffhanger season finale, watched the LotR movie, read the end of the w.i.p. I was in the middle of. Beyond the gift of time, fandom gave me an open window to see outside of my own closed world and into the wider range of human experience.
While I understand the frustration with fandom's shortcomings, I am also unable to really agree with it. For me fandom has consistently broken barriers of understanding through meta, the sharing of personal experience, and most often through fanfiction. It has been a gradual process, with missteps along the way, but I know I have developed into a more open-minded, socially-conscious, and mentally healthy human being in a large part due to fandom.
When I found X-Files fandom sex was already a huge issue for me. I was smart enough to understand I was missing vital information on sex at a relatively young age, and also smart enough to know that my parents weren't going to tell me. When my parents found out that their nine year old daughter had learned about sex from her older cousins they handled it... badly (and on a side note, comprehensive sex-ed is a lot better than letting kids learn from their peers at school. Everything I learned about how sex worked from my public school attending cousins was pedophilia, rape, and prostitution thinly disguised as jokes - and we thought that was perfectly normal. Not teaching kids about sex is not sheltering them, but setting them up with really fucked up ideas about how human relationships should work. /end rant). I was fascinated by sex. I had absolutely no concept of healthy sexuality and a truly staggering amount of shame at the same time. Before I found fandom I had begun spending time in x-rated chat rooms, pretending to be a co-ed who liked to play the child in pedophilia fantasies. Had I been just a little bit more stupid or a little bit less private I'm pretty certain I would have ended up a statistic on America's Most Wanted. I remember thinking with annoyance at one point that, since I hadn't started my period, I could have had sex without worrying about pregnancy the month before if I'd just known it was going to take so long. At the same time I had crippling anxiety attacks that masqueraded as guilt. When I started reading the porn I found in X-Files archives I remember having one such attack, and making a deal with myself and God that I would give up all porn unless it was in a fic where Mulder and Scully were married. It took me a long time and a lot of fanfiction to get over a lot of my ingrained shame and even longer to work through some of my other issues - but it was really the fanfiction examples of how human relationships work that helped me to develop expectations of my future sex life that weren't as demeaning as those I had read on Nifty Archive (if you know what that is, I'm sorry. If you don't then be glad and trust me - don't google it. No badfic can come close, really).
I was homeschooled by right-wing fundamentalists, and even though the automatic condemnation of homosexuality distressed me at a pretty young age, I couldn't see my way around the rhetoric I had been brought up with. Khirsah's Unlikely Heroes , it was an accidental read, and her beautiful writing and characterization opened a whole new subdivision of fandom and humanity up to me. Homosexuality went from being something I was sympathetic to, despite its incomprehensibility, to being something I could understand and grasp in a nearly tangible way, and something I was completely unable to condone condemning. If I could understand it, than there must be a way that God could as well - so I began researching theological answers to my dilemma, trying to reconcile my old world with the new. In the process I began to discard some of the doctrine of condemnation I had been so bound up in. My ultimate journey to reconciling my worldviews with my theology takes place largely outside of fandom, but it has its roots here, and I give fandom partial credit for the incarnation of faith that I possess today.
Fandom has continued to challenge my world view over the years. Heteronorms, polyamory, gender roles, bisexuality, BDSM, transexuality, asexuality, other lifestyles and concepts have crossed the line from "I don't really get it, but whatever" into understanding, support, and, in some cases, an active part of my life because of fandom.
Joss Whedon, Gillian Anderson, and Neil Gaiman can take credit for much of what has shaped my concept of what women should be in fiction and in life. Neil Gaiman once said that he was baffled when someone asked him how he wrote such strong women. His reply to the question was something along the lines of "I try to write strong characters, some of whom are also women." That concept of building a character who is a women, rather than building a frame work of what a women is and then attempting to use it as a mold create a character blew my mind as a budding writer. It made me examine all the stereotypes I was using to frame my own writing and I have tried to be conscious of his lesson ever since. In my own mind, Joss Whedon is the television parallel to Neil's written example. The women of Buffy and Firefly are characters to me first, and their gender is - well not secondary, but it doesn't define them much more than their hair color. Along those lines, Dana Scully will always hold a special place in my heart as a woman. Dana Scully was tough, smart, and she could hold her own, God help anyone who dared to say otherwise. She carried herself with the knowledge that she was the equal of any other man or woman out there, no matter what the rest of the world might have had to say about the matter. She was the first woman who I looked at and said "I want to be like her" without reservation.
My ability to comprehend transgendered issues has been directly affected by fandom. The ability to follow the journey of one trans author has been amazing, but by far the most important part of my own journey of understanding has been brought about through fanfiction. This is part of why I get frustrated with meta arguments. Don't just tell me there is a problem, show me. When done right nothing is more powerful or identifiable than a well crafted story. Write the compelling story or character that conveys your point and leaves me with an insatiable thirst to see/ write more of the same. This is how you change fandom, change minds, change the world. I can tell you first hand that it works and that I've seen it done to perfection before.
There are things I've toyed with over the years, ideas that I have struggled with or not fully understood my own thoughts on for years. And while I struggle to deal with these issues I've found fics that have helped me to understand current dilemmas, long term problems, and world view issues. Fandom collectively has a wealth of experience and thought, and I feel so privileged to be allowed access to these experiences and thoughts. I remember years ago feeling such resonance with Mercutio's story Shoot Me , and even though I am (thankfully) no longer in a position where I identify, I still remember reading it with tears rolling down my cheeks. In her story Second Circle, Stele's careful research and explanation helped resolve several questions that had been rolling around my head for years.
bexless and her Unholy Verse contains some of the best theological statements I have ever run into, and when I read it I find myself feeling closer to God, my own faith reaffirmed by a fictional character. The stories I've mentioned here are the tiniest fraction of the stories profoundly affected my life, a small cross section of why I am grateful for fandom. None of this is even mention the amazing people I've met and friends that I've made through fandom - that could be another thousand words.I've written over two thousand words about how grateful I am for fandom personally, and I don't think I can finish this entry without saying something about how beneficial fandom is to the world at large. People like
astolat , pinkfinity , and others have done amazing things for fandom at large through their work on Organization for Transformative Works, Archive of Our Own, Yuletide , fandom friendly Dreamwidth , and the various cons/fests/etc. I've seen fandom come together collectively to raise thousands upon thousands of dollars for charity every year. We have an impact on creators, networks, and the world – and that’s pretty damn cool.Fandom is amazing, and I love every bit of it. So keep on doing your thing, battle stupidity with p0rn, show up on Fandom Wank, write fanfiction, complain about newbies and bad characterizations , give me new things to think about and struggle with every damn day. Just remember to have fun, and love what you're doing because that's the only reason to keep doing anything. You're all awesome, and I'd just like to say thank you. Thank you for being amazing. Thank you for saving my life so many times over the years. Thank you for being you. I am so very grateful.
Just for kicks, I'm going to include my personal rules for fandom survival - I figure that since I've been in it for thirteen years I might have a little insight.
J.Lynn's Rules of Fandom
1. Newbies will be stupid.
2. Fandom will have drama.
3. Some stories are beyond the saving of even a good beta, so stop compulsively reading and delete that mediocre/badfic! tag on delicious.
4. Never dare a fanfic author. Be careful when reading a dare, some things you just can't bleach from your brain (Potter fandom, I'm looking at you).
5. Sometimes taking a break or leaving a fandom is the best thing you can do (but not answering comments is better than deleting all your fic).
6. Protect your anonymity.
7. Protect other's anonymity. DON'T share their works with the Powers That Be - it's both in poor taste and a good way to drive someone from fandom entirely.
8. Never comment to say anything Ms. Manners would disapprove of... unless it's porn, then label NSFW.
9. Always treat the people who visit your journal with kindness, even when they're idiots. Most cases of foot-in-mouth disease are accidental and can be remedied with gentle education - but block all true trolls.
10. Always be respectful of another person in their own journal - make your point, but be polite. If you don't like what they have to say then don't follow them. People will be stupid, but that doesn't mean we have to watch.
11. Comment to tell people when you truly appreciate their work, but don't push for more - it's kind of rude.
And a strong suggestion: Make your flist an RSS feed, the better to skip the people/entries most likely to raise your blood pressure.
I realize that something like three people actually read this journal, but I would love to see people posting their own personal tale of fandom love or rules for fandom survival. Feel free to turn this into a meme or just an invitation to take the opportunity to affirm how awesome fandom is.
Love to you all,
J. Lynn