Eunice

Life is weird sometimes. I just had a really great conversation with merryish over coffee this morning about privilege and fandom, only to come online afterwords to discover yet another round of racism and Who, umpteenth thousand verse, same as the first. And it occurs to me that I'm not a very good ally. Because I generally don't talk about this stuff very much in public. A lot of it is for the reasons previously stated in this LJ that I cling to my squee like a life preserver and, frankly, it's difficult for me to engage with things that will harsh it. But that's the thing, isn't it? The reason I can watch my shows the way I do is because I'm watching from a privileged position. That's just...true. In the same way that, intentional or not, the fact that my show, this show that I love for so many reasons, continues to perpetuate racist and sexist undertones is also...just true.

I'm not quite sure how to resolve that conflict between needing a place of escapism and recognizing that the very place I'm hiding is also capable of being exclusionary and hurtful. I do know that I don't want to be silent. I don't want my squee to be taken as an endorsement of troubling patterns. And when those troubling patterns are pointed out, I don't want to be counted on the side that waves it's hands in furious denial and pretends they don't exist...because there they are. And if we're not willing to see them, how on earth will we ever get around to fixing them?

I think it's possible for squee and awareness to co-exist. It has to, because we are so deeply steeped in this shit all around us, that if it weren't there'd be nothing left but anger, and I can't live like that, much less be fannish like that (and again, is this because I have the privilege to say that? How nice for me.) I dunno. I don't have the answer, not for me, not for fandom. I wish I did. I do know that arguing that the conflict doesn't exist at all, that the hurt doesn't happen, isn't on the list.

Mostly just...thinking out loud here. And wishing I were stronger or smarter or less selfish about all of this.

Am going over almost finished vid of past, and yeah, I think I'm going to finish it. Am also remembering intensely why I do love Rose so much. One of the frustrating things for me about...all this fandom crap, is that when it comes down to it Rose the character was the thing that drew me in to New Who. It was the Doctor who then made me fall in love with the whole universe, but it was Rose who made me fall in love with companions, which was my starting point. Without her, I probably wouldn't have watched long enough to fall for the Doctor and what all that led to. And I love her for that. So much. So the thing is, when I hit fandom and I kept reading all this stuff that implied that people like me didn't love Rose because I didn't 'ship her in a specific way, or because I found that Rose was the just the first, but not the only one to show me how the role of companion was to mash all sorts of buttons of mine...it hurt. Probably more than it should have, it's only fandom after all, right? Thing of it is, it's sort of childish for me to then be "Well, fine, who needs Rose ANYWAY, you can have her." which I find myself doing more than I really want to. I just..want to be in a place where Rose is again part of my big whomping companion love, that Doctor/Rose is one more playground to explore the Doctor/Companion dynamics I find so compelling. It bothers me that, although the fandom stuff is not what stalled my Rose vid (I was still in my bubble of one when I was making it), it was actually a factor when I dusted it off this morning and wondered about finishing it. It shouldn't be. So, I'm going to do my best to not let it be. Thus endeth my ramble.

Also, new Supernatural tonight that I am home for, so yay other show to talk about too! I kinda want to post about Pushing Daisies, but I"m not sure what to say other than that I am utterly charmed by it, maybe next week? I also have a Heroes post rambling somewhere in my head that just hasn't yet gelled into a real post.

This looks like fun (grabbed from cereta

Comment with one of my fandoms, and I'll reply with:

01. The first character I first fell in love with
02. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now
03. The character everyone else loves that I don't
04. The character I love that everyone else hates
05. The character I used to love but don't any longer
06. The character I would shag anytime
07. The character I'd want to be like
08. The character I'd slap
09. A pairing that I love
10. A pairing that I despise

I hate being sick. Woke up on Saturday with a scratchy throat and a small fever. By Sunday morning I was in full hack/cough/sneeze mode that hasn't let up since. Which has nothing to do with my fandom thoughts but I'm whiny when I'm sick and if I have to miserable, dammit you all have to hear about it.

Right, so fandom thoughts for a Monday morning. It's sort of amazing to me how hypersensitized hanging out in fandom can make people to one aspect of a show/movie/book (especially 'ships or characters that provoke strong reactions), often completely out of proportion to the actual amount of time devoted to the thing in canon. Not that I don't think obsessively focusing on or picking apart the details isn't a good thing. Hell, it's part of what makes fandom so fun and how we bond.

But just from hanging out among various fannish communities (and this has happened in every fandom I've ever been around), you'd think that vastly more amounts of screen (or page) time is devoted to whatever the thing is than ever really is. It's like the constant hyperfocus and discussion tunes us in so strongly to whatever that even the smallest mention gains far more weight and, I dunno, presence than everything else. An objectively short scene ends up feeling like, and being discussed as though, it's taken up half of the story when really the overwhelming majority of the time was spent on the search for whoozits or fighting demons or aliens or completely unrelated relationships or characters. And when it's a character or ship that irritates you, and you've just spent several hours arguing about it with people who obsessively love it as much as you dislike it (or vice versa) it really does feel like that one or two scenes is the end all, be all of what makes or breaks the story.

It worries me how easily that kind of investment (positive or negative) in any one aspect or character can just...shut everything else out. When I go back and rewatch or reread something after the intense furor and focus has died down I'm always surprised at how little of the Big Fannish Focus ever shows up, and how many other interesting or potentially enjoyable things I completely missed on first watch. I'm not sure how you solve that, or if it's even a good idea to. What would fandom be without the thrill of devoting hours to decoding what a single look means? Or doing a happy dance of joy around your living room and rushing to express OMGCAPSGLEE with fifty other people over the tiniest bit of backstory that supports a theory or fic idea? I just kinda wish that it was possible sometimes to at least step back and recognize that how we talk about a story really, really, really does affect how we see it. And even though we wish Character X would die in a fire, or that references to this or that 'ship were banished forever and ever to the dimension of puppets, and we know that their fans will be utterly obnoxious for the next three weeks over that five minutes, it honestly was just five minutes and not the five hours it felt like.

This is Eunice on cough medicine. Carry on.

I went and was social! With actual other people. Go me! celli hosted a fangirl game night (because she rocks like that), and much fun was had. 'Cause, how can you not have fun with 16 fangirls in a living room? Well, I suppose you could not have fun but you'd probably be dead. There were games and SPN (Dean, ya big dork..I *heart* you) and fannish squee and talk of fanfic and I always forget just how delightful it is to be in a room where people have to be reminded not to talk too loudly about BSDM Care Bears porn in front of open windows. Fangirls are the best people in the world I tell ya.