InsaneJournal

Fannish Coloured Glasses: Fandom Is A Way Of Life?
This is probably going to offend some people.

I was IM-ing with someone about LJ and the Clarification of the Clarification. The discussion segued into Fannish tropes and cliches and how the non-fannish can read fanfic and likely understand the story if it's based on a media product they're familiar with or just plain well written without constantly inferring the original source. But there are a heck of a lot of little things they just won't get - the soft touches of inner fanservice - the memes, the subtle parodies that can happen in a drama, the fact that some of those cliches are genres - h/c, mpreg, woke up gay, etc...

Anyway while dealing with some things in the recent move to the new apartment, and having grr and random upset and emotional upheaval it suddenly hit me that if I thought of Christianity as a Fandom, the various people in my life who are Christian are suddenly less annoying/grating/etc to me.



It made me think that anything can be a fandom is there's enough interest in it and enough of a coordinated fan base. And given that I know that fandom has all these cliches, tropes and genres, it put, specifically for me, one friend's life in a whole new context.

She's in Christian Fandom and a diehard Jesus fan.

Christian Fandom rules her life's choices. She goes to fannish concerts, fannish lectures, holds a fannish discussion group in her house once a week, has fannish swag, and speaks using a fannish glossary. Her friends are all fannish and often times use fannish shorthand. There are BNF's, fannish activists, fannish lawyers, and fannish academics .

Moreover, she's part of a subset of her fandom. Which is akin to slash in terms of morality (sexuality/gender exploration?) perhaps, but closer to gen in terms of being seen as smaller and not with the same strong sense of movement; because she's a gay Christian.

So there I am thinking about it this way and suddenly I'm thinking in terms of Christian Fandom Wank, where you have BibleBelter Fans aka Fundamentalist Fans going up against More Inclusive Christian Fans. Sort of like the Harry/Herminone 'shippers battling the Harry/Ginny 'shippers. Or the anti AU-ers.

And then I started thinking OMG, she's a David/Johnathan 'shipper among a small group of same, where everyone insists there's nothing slashy about them what. so. ever.

Maybe it's crazy, but it's helping me think of her, and other Christians in my life in a whole new way. Prothletizing becomes pimping. Seeming bible-thumping becomes 'I am a -strict- canonist'. MCC becomes a slashy fannish movement within the original fandom which allows for off-screen possibilities and a wider exploration of the canonical text....

Her home and her friends felt warmer in retrospect when I felt as if I could understand why I was such an outsider. And the constant 'What do Jews think/do/etc' was suddenly an attempt at cross-fandom exploration and communication instead of a subconscious putting me on the spot as if I answered for the entire nation of Israel. It still made me uncomfortable, but I can put it in a better context now.

Of course there's one just thought of scary side effect of this way of looking at the world.

The current US administration suddenly either becomes a bunch of Mary Sue fanficers going wildly astray of canon and insisting that anyone who disagrees with them are nothing but jealous haters and need to be kicked off the list/community/whatever. Or they're Marti 'I have the powah!' Noxon.