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Fandom Thoughts
May. 26th, 2020 10:37 pmNot sure if anyone still follows me. I totally failed at migrating back to Dreamwidth when tumblr semi-collapsed. But anyway...
I just went and saved all my old Supernatural fanfic that's been languishing on Livejournal for years. Probably should stick it on AO3 so people who read my Bucky fics can find it. I mean, if they want to. I don't know, they might like it. It's very...on brand, for me. Lots of suffering and angst.
It just got me thinking about Supernatural, and how I once loved those characters so much that I wanted to write my own stories about them. Fandom can honestly be kind of like a romantic relationship, you know? I mean, I loved Dean. I projected so hard on him. Because he was the good child, the peacemaker in his family who had to watch his parent fight with his siblings. Because he was fucked up. Because that sibling bond was so strong. (And of course because he was so pretty, and so well-acted, so many subtle moments to appreciate.)
And then the shine started to fade, as the character arcs got less and less meaningful and the character got...do we still say Flanderized? It was a long process of falling out of love. And now, today, I look back and I remember that love, but I don't feel it anymore, and the pain of losing it has also faded, and I'm just kind of like...bewildered that I felt that way. Like I'd loved characters before--I loved Spike from Buffy, I loved Logan from Veronica Mars. (Crichton from Farscape, though I can't remember if I watched it before or after SPN.) But Dean was something special. And like...was the writing bad all along? Did I just make up the things about the character that I loved? I don't think so. I think the writers really had something there, but it got lost over time. Which is why I'm very strongly in favor of shows having an ending planned and sticking to it. Even though I found season 5 of SPN disappointing.
But anyway. I guess I'm way more fandom-monogamous than most people. I just do not fall in love with characters easily. They have to be attractive to me, they have to have some complexity to them, and they have to suffer. So I was kind of in no fandoms for a while until I found Bucky Barnes. And that's still weird to me because honestly, there isn't that much there to work with. I mean he's well-acted, there's a lot of subtlety you can read into things, but there just isn't a lot of canon. And honestly, the reason I got into the fandom in the first place was kind of weird--like, I enjoyed the movie, but I didn't love it, but I kept thinking about the bank vault scene and then I was like, hmm, I bet somebody has written some fic about this.
And there was fic. There was so much good fic. And now I think the character of Bucky Barnes I have in my head is...an amalgam of my favorite fic Buckys? Like, he's a lot more complex than in the movies. And it's just such a strange way to fall in love with a character, you know? Like, did he just have to be pretty and get tortured? But I guess it was just seeing so much potential there and seeing the way fic writers took it and ran with it.
And now I'm...I don't know. Between fandoms again. I still love Bucky and I'm excited for the Falcon and the Winter Soldier show, but I've mostly stopped reading fic, because it just feels like I've seen it all. And I've dipped my toe in some other fandoms, I've read some Witcher fic and some Good Omens fic, Star Wars, I can't remember what all else. But I miss that feeling of being in love with a character.
And yeah, as a writer, I do have my own characters that I love and project onto. And I'm also weirdly monogamous about them? Like, I'll obsess over one character for years, and then eventually move on to another one, and I think I've only had like...three or four that I did this with for a significant length of time. (There were a lot of briefer flings with characters, too.) And they are also generally pretty and get tortured, and also have qualities that resonate with me somehow. Not sure exactly where I'm going with this. I guess I'm thinking about how I want to be the one who creates characters that other people love. I want to share my angsty babies with the world. And I hope someday I'll have the chance to do that.
(End ramble)
I just went and saved all my old Supernatural fanfic that's been languishing on Livejournal for years. Probably should stick it on AO3 so people who read my Bucky fics can find it. I mean, if they want to. I don't know, they might like it. It's very...on brand, for me. Lots of suffering and angst.
It just got me thinking about Supernatural, and how I once loved those characters so much that I wanted to write my own stories about them. Fandom can honestly be kind of like a romantic relationship, you know? I mean, I loved Dean. I projected so hard on him. Because he was the good child, the peacemaker in his family who had to watch his parent fight with his siblings. Because he was fucked up. Because that sibling bond was so strong. (And of course because he was so pretty, and so well-acted, so many subtle moments to appreciate.)
And then the shine started to fade, as the character arcs got less and less meaningful and the character got...do we still say Flanderized? It was a long process of falling out of love. And now, today, I look back and I remember that love, but I don't feel it anymore, and the pain of losing it has also faded, and I'm just kind of like...bewildered that I felt that way. Like I'd loved characters before--I loved Spike from Buffy, I loved Logan from Veronica Mars. (Crichton from Farscape, though I can't remember if I watched it before or after SPN.) But Dean was something special. And like...was the writing bad all along? Did I just make up the things about the character that I loved? I don't think so. I think the writers really had something there, but it got lost over time. Which is why I'm very strongly in favor of shows having an ending planned and sticking to it. Even though I found season 5 of SPN disappointing.
But anyway. I guess I'm way more fandom-monogamous than most people. I just do not fall in love with characters easily. They have to be attractive to me, they have to have some complexity to them, and they have to suffer. So I was kind of in no fandoms for a while until I found Bucky Barnes. And that's still weird to me because honestly, there isn't that much there to work with. I mean he's well-acted, there's a lot of subtlety you can read into things, but there just isn't a lot of canon. And honestly, the reason I got into the fandom in the first place was kind of weird--like, I enjoyed the movie, but I didn't love it, but I kept thinking about the bank vault scene and then I was like, hmm, I bet somebody has written some fic about this.
And there was fic. There was so much good fic. And now I think the character of Bucky Barnes I have in my head is...an amalgam of my favorite fic Buckys? Like, he's a lot more complex than in the movies. And it's just such a strange way to fall in love with a character, you know? Like, did he just have to be pretty and get tortured? But I guess it was just seeing so much potential there and seeing the way fic writers took it and ran with it.
And now I'm...I don't know. Between fandoms again. I still love Bucky and I'm excited for the Falcon and the Winter Soldier show, but I've mostly stopped reading fic, because it just feels like I've seen it all. And I've dipped my toe in some other fandoms, I've read some Witcher fic and some Good Omens fic, Star Wars, I can't remember what all else. But I miss that feeling of being in love with a character.
And yeah, as a writer, I do have my own characters that I love and project onto. And I'm also weirdly monogamous about them? Like, I'll obsess over one character for years, and then eventually move on to another one, and I think I've only had like...three or four that I did this with for a significant length of time. (There were a lot of briefer flings with characters, too.) And they are also generally pretty and get tortured, and also have qualities that resonate with me somehow. Not sure exactly where I'm going with this. I guess I'm thinking about how I want to be the one who creates characters that other people love. I want to share my angsty babies with the world. And I hope someday I'll have the chance to do that.
(End ramble)
