a question. please let me know I'm not in a soundless void here.

[bedlamsbard]

Okay, my ducklings, a question. And answer honestly.

What brings you to fandom? What is it about a show/movie/book/etc. that makes you google it, search it in LJ interests, click on the dreaded ff.net link? Why that story, and not another? And why do you go looking for more of it?

I go to fandom for an extension of canon. I like the canon, I see something there, and that something doesn't come fast enough, so I want more. Maybe it dies before its time. Maybe I think I can do it better than canon can. Maybe canon's left a couple holes open and I think I can fill 'em. Maybe I want to know what other people have done to fill those holes. Maybe it's because there's a whole fucking universe out there waiting for stories. Maybe it's the characters, maybe it's the world, maybe it's the holes. Maybe it's some combination of the three. I don't know. How 'bout you?

(No, this is not some sneaky way of saying I may be writing in a different fandom.)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I like what-ifs. And I've lurked in fandom for so long, I think it's just become a bad habit. CSI:NY is, I think, my seventh.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Hmm. It's not the what-ifs for me so much as it is the whys, but the what ifs can be pretty awesome.

*counts on fingers* Wait, are we counting fandoms I read in or fandoms I've participated in, because with fandoms I've read...at least twenty, and I'm probably missing a few. Fandoms I've written in...my sixth, I think. And oh yeah, fandom's a bad habit. An addiction, one might say.

[(Anonymous)]

I was counting fandoms I've lurked in, or spent a lot of time reading. (They're not quite the same thing. I lurk in HP and CSI:NY. I read in X-Men.)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Ah. I try to stay out of fandom in general -- you may have noticed that I very seldom stray from my little corner of LJ, partly because I grew up in HP at a young and impressionable age (and also during -- what are they calling it now, the long summer? The stretch between GoF and OotP. Yeah. That says everything), partly because there's just too much crap to wade through in fandom to get through the good stuff. I read, I look for good meta, I look at the pretty fanart, I lurk on the good journals but usually not the comms...*shrugs* I avoid message boards if at all possible.

[(Anonymous)]

I probably should have clarified. HP was my second or third fandom; I started reading when the HP section on ff.net could be browsed in one afternoon. I lurked a little at Fiction Alley, but I never really got into the discussions. I have a short list of epics in progress that I check back on every couple of months or so, but I agree that it's grown a little too scary to actually go sifting through the listings for good fic. As I told someone else, it's a bit like being on the dumpster detail of fandom. :P

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

the HP section on ff.net could be browsed in one afternoon

Was this before it became the Pit of Voles? Because I was there then, and then I got standards. Well, actually I went to Fiction Alley and was there for two and a half years, then OotP killed me and I went. Away. Far away. And stayed away, except for the few good epics, which have gotten fewer and fewer by the years. It's down to authors now. Well, with me, it's almost always about the authors.

And HP was my first. That probably explains a lot.

[(Anonymous)]

Pit of Voles? I'm not familiar with the term.

I was at ff.net until they banned NC-17 fic, as I recall. I think that was when most of the interesting authors who were writing darker stuff moved on to fresh pastures. Now I check for updates at witchfics.org every few months or so, and that's pretty much it.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

ff.net became the Pit of Voles once everyone with access to a computer and what they assumed were working imaginations went there. *nods* Yeah.

I left before then, I think; I'd mostly moved over to Fiction Alley by then. I remember the kerfuffle, though. I just keep up with a few select authors' LJ, occasionally check out the one WIP at witchfics I'm interested in, although I think the author may have abandoned it. Occasionally I'll venture over to hp_essays -- I'd rather the intelligent meta than the bad fic and the discussion boards.

[(Anonymous)]

Which WIP? I'm still hoping for updates to Last Tango in Paris, myself.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Last Tango in Paris! Man, we have good taste. *grins* Same one. I loved "Jewel of the Nile" madly.

[(Anonymous)]

Definitely the best Sybil Trelawney backstory I've ever seen. :)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Oh, I was all about Bill. It's the Indiana Jones-esque-ness. It's all about the archaeology. But that Sybil definitely rocked.