i miss ship wars like so much

This is an unreasonable rant. You are warned. Also, I love all acafen and especially the ones on my flist and I would let you study me if you asked whenever you want, mmkay? I am just saying, this is a rant and I am not reasonable right now.

Reference: That Entire Fannish Survey Thing - Links. Oh God, so many links.

So for the last twenty-four hours, I've been slowly but surely building up to a towering rage at the entire SurveyFail in new and strange ways. I am seriously sitting here with the unflattering realization that fandom--well, me in fandom--is a freaking regency romance heroine in need of rescue like, a lot.



I am aware it is unreasonable to resent this, but I am seriously getting to the point where I spent more time worrying about my fannishness and discussing my fannishness and exploring the cognitive conceptualization of fannishness and like, metaing on the abstract theory of fannishness than actually, y'know, being goddamn fannish. About anything. Anywhere. If I had a timesheet that broke down my fannish activities, it would not include "squee on Merlin" or "squee on reboot" or "writing" in my top ten fannish activities. It would have a lot about a theoretical meaning of being a fan. I mean, I am seriously kind of longing for arguments over feminism in Merlin here*, **. And I don't actually remember liking that sort of thing when it was happening. I miss ship wars, God help me. They did not require an advanced degree to comprehend. I remember those days. They were nice.

[* this is a theoretical construct of an actual fannish meta argument. Not an actual one. I mean, I'm sure it was an actual one, but I don't remember, since I can't remember the last time I engaged in meta about like, source.]

[** yes, this is exaggerated, but I am having a severe case of fannish entitlement.]

Here is the thing. SurveyFail confirms a thing I've been doing every since this New York Arts article thing showed up in google once talking about my fic The Wasteland and using the word slashies or something--if in my inbox is anything from anyone using the words 'research' or 'article', I delete without even like, finishing the email. Sometimes I have felt bad. Right now I am relieved. I do this because I do not know these people or their intentions and safe better than sorry. I have no clue how many legit people I ignored because I have no idea how to tell the difference between "good", "well-meaning", "run for your life", or someone who might be all of those at once. That was not in my fannish welcome package, and really, why not?

[This was seriously a weird article. No clue what was up with that. I still sometimes go to look at it and try to work out wtf.]

It should not be detrimental to my fannish experience that I do not have the IRB memorized. I seriously really would like not to know what the IRB is. I'd prefer not to have to wiki neuroscience and the ethics of experimental human subjects unless I'm writing a fic about it. I liked psychology a lot--that is why whenever I graduate, I will somehow have managed to achieve like, a minor in it by sheer accident, which is why I am a cliche of a college student, because you would not believe how many areas I managed to be three hours short of a minor in--but I also like pizza and I do not want to drag psychology and pizza everywhere I go.

But the thing is, I kind of have to, because while I love the acafen are my white knights and all, oh my God I am hovering behind them with smelling salts while they defend fandom's honor and that is totally not on.

I want to say this--I don't know where I am getting the time to do this. I just don't. This is worse than a twenty-four credit hour semester, because it never fucking ends, it's every semester and I don't even get to graduate and no one gives me a class schedule, it just shows up suddenly and I'm in for a sixteen week course where I have to guess at the reading material and sometimes, I'm not even sure what I'm studying. There are many things I've learned in fandom that I appreciate, but I have to draw a line somewhere, and I have no idea where, because on top of spending time researching things that are actually important to me as a human being, and writing, and enjoying fannish meta, and chatting with friends, and I don't know, actually interacting with my source text, I have to figure out now if some researchers are using my people as fodder for a exploitative book.

I checked my timesheet--apparently I am creating hours from air for this, because the day is still twenty-four hours long, but my fannish life is taking thirty-six all on its own, and I still haven't finished reading History of the Jewish State or found my copy of What If for creative writing, and there's a small but growing pile of books at the foot of my bed that I have yet to get to and I'm two hundred behind on my flist. I mean, this isn't bad time management here; my time management is a damn miracle. It is creating time from a vortex of not-time.

I mean, don't get me wrong--yay acafen!--but it's not that I am not acafen, it is that I don't want to be, and I feel like I am spending more time trying to become something that I not only don't want to be but also am not very good at in an independent study setting with no professor to guide my research and a lot of sketchy research material, and I forgot how to do MLA because I found it boring. And yet.

These are the new things I need to learn this week: correct statistical surveying techniques, the history of neuroscience, the entirety of how a proper research study is done, goddamn evolutionary psychology again and I hated that class, and how to analyze a survey for sketchiness. Because otherwise, I have to depend on my flist to explain to me in small words why x is bad and y is not, and while I know the acafen are not petting us all and telling us not to worry our pretty heads, it is seriously not working for me to not know what the hell is going on. It has been banged into us that ignorance is not an excuse for screwing up, and the thing is, I agree so completely. But I'd really like science to get to direct RNA transfer and flatworm-eating as a way of passing knowledge already.

I am reading up on literary critique and I'm only on page thirty and that was in July.

I am actually aware that this is not only a dramatically first world problem, but that my hopes for the universe are unreasonable and beyond unrealistic. But seriously, when I posted Manipulation ten years and one month ago and started this trek through fandom, I really did not see myself here a decade later exploring the underpinnings of my fannish experience using words that I am still not convinced actually exist.

...seriously, this was a rant, not an accusation, I am just kind of burned out. You will notice the run-on sentences? I am trying to figure out where I can schedule in some time for sleep. Also, the study of people's craniums to find out if they were deviant came up and I have a headache. Yes, it is a discredited field and boy, that was interesting. I can honestly say that if I'd known I'd need this when I was taking Physical Anthropology, I would have studied that chapter much more than I did.

In closing--yay acafen! I do not resent you, it's more I resent that I do not have a dolphin brain. My life would be so much easier.



This entire rant is courtesy of Britney Spears Circus. How freakishly appropriate.

ETA: Comment here might clarify why this has apparently become for me some kind of--thing. IDK.

Comments

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I want to test out of this now. I think I could pass.

[niqaeli]

I think we could ALL pass.

I should probably have noted that fandom has also been a course in ablism, queer theory, and a few other things as well? And it's not been inherently bad, you know. Becoming a more educated, better individual is something I appreciate, really I do. But I also totally want the course credit because I'm apparently in the class getting detailed theory and all of that, whether I want to be or not.

And then I listen to myself saying things like that and kind of hate myself for my first world problems, oh wah my life is so hard. And then? I just say FUCK IT, because I cannot deal with any of it anymore and read some goddamned porn.

AUGH. PORN NOW.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Becoming a more educated, better individual is something I appreciate, really I do. But I also totally want the course credit because I'm apparently in the class getting detailed theory and all of that, whether I want to be or not.

Yeah. See, I didn't see that coming when I thought "Hey, I can write stories here!"

And then I listen to myself saying things like that and kind of hate myself for my first world problems, oh wah my life is so hard. And then? I just say FUCK IT, because I cannot deal with any of it anymore and read some goddamned porn.

THIS TIMES TEN.

[niqaeli]

Syne posted porn. It is happy-making.

I should probably go back to overthinking the fuck out of Star Trek or something. It seems to help my sanity lots, that.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, though, it's weird, but I have a feeling that *not* being acafan is the new thing. As fandom was dominated by certain classes and groups, self-selection ended up with a lot of people whose career was doing this sort of thing. So the skew is toward examining it as a field of study by habit, which would explain why a lot seem to be confused that those of us aren't into it. Like, at all.

[elynross.livejournal.com]

I think a couple of things about this. I think first that the fannish move to LJ opened up fandom to be more about/have more meta in ways that weren't as likely before. You started seeing a lot more meta posts that were cross-fandoms, and about fannishness itself, and more people became known as Meta Fans, like some are writers, some vidders, etc.

And then you had the increasing notice given to fannishness from outside, which may have meant more people finding out about fandom through academic paths and coming in as acafans, as well as more fans who became acafans as they went to college and thought, "Hey, I can combine my school and my fun, and do my thesis/PhD on fannish topics!"

I think fandom is experiencing a lot of growing pains, in a lot of ways, and it's impacting all kinds of thing. Thank you for speaking up about this, because I've had conversations like this with several people in the last few months, about how it seems to be more and more problematic and difficult to just be a fan, without about how what you do will be perceived. I wouldn't give up my newish lenses, but they do definitely change how I experience and whether I enjoy fandom as much as I used to.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping--for what value of hope there is when it's my fannish experience and I have theoretical control over bits--that we'll even out into something that isn't so skewed one direction or another all the time.

I was going somewhere with this about intensity and fanperson predisposition to it anyway, but I'm not sure how to frame it.