Trifecta

Hello, World Repost

I’ve known since I was young that I go through phases with my interests. When I was fifteen I got really into Latin American culture: the food, the music, the art, the fashions, the histories and narratives. I watched movies with Latin themes, listened to Latin artists, and so on, until I rode out the obsession and moved onto my next. The following year it was Indian and Middle Eastern culture, African the next, and ever since going to Taiwan for the first time in 2009, it’s been East Asian.

That’s where I got the idea to blog about East Asian culture and its transmission to the rest of the world. I tried to link the topic with my experience as an International Relations major, in order to make my blog somewhat academically-worthy. But then Coach suggested I blog about fandom, since I mentioned in my diagnostic that I used to have a Livejournal and was marginally involved in fandom in high school.

That is a lie. I was extremely involved in fandom in high school. On the biography of my fandom Livejournal, I stated that ‘I use this journal when I’m bored with my life.’ And it was true; I would go through periods of being heavily involved in fandom, then lurk, or disappear completely, depending on how demanding rL (netspeak for ‘real life’) was at the time.

Over the years, I did it all: fan sites, fan art, fan comics, fan videos, fan forums—you name it. And it was super, seriously embarrassing. I was hyper-aware of that fact. It was my huge, terrible secret. At school I led a normal teen life: I worked hard enough to maintain grades that would get me into a good college, while on the weekends still partying and prematurely boozing and gsustaining the typical lifestyle of a socially adept, privileged adolescent—a healthily shallow lifestyle that I did not want to compromise by revealing that I went on the internet at night and talked to strangers about nerdy things like… the latest Batman movie and how they shouldn’t have casted that useless Katy Holmes. Weekly discussions and interpretations of each Law & Order episode as it came out. Cartoons aimed at children but that I still enjoyed. Any film starring Christian Bale or Edward Norton. Reviews of the Backstreet Boys’ first album-release after Kevin left. Sailor-freaking-Moon. I mean, how gauche.

Yet as high school came to a close, I realized that I had chosen fandom over many of the shallow relationships I had made over the four years. I even posted about how I wished I could have developed certain friendships more, but ultimately didn’t care, because not doing so had given me more time to geek out. For me, fandom was always changing, always dynamic—an endless community that could keep up with my ever-changing interests. I could always revert back to fandom when I was bored with my current social playground. Like many, I used fandom for escapist purposes, and my journal was an outlet where I didn’t have to keep up appearances. (Well, I still had to remain remarkable enough for my online ‘friends’ to comment on my entries, but at least I was talking about things that interested me, and not just who did what where and who was getting sent to Wilderness Camp this year.)

My need for fandom decreased after I got to college, where I could truly chose the activities I wanted to participate in and the people I wanted to hang out with—rather than the small group I was lumped together with in high school. Also as participatory media becomes an increasingly important part of our culture and society, people naturally become unwittingly integrated in fandom. Considering my personal relationship with online participatory culture, my Communication major, and proximity to new media culture expert, Prof. Henry Jenkins, and cyber culture specialist, Prof. Douglas Thomas, I choose for the topic of this blog Fandom and Participatory Media Culture.

Hopefully my present distance from fandom will encourage somewhat objective, intelligent discussion that isn’t littered with too many irrelevant internet culture references and tropes.


Profile Repost

 "Becoming Truebie" is a blog studying participatory culture, which uses as its case study the HBO series, True Blood. The author is Erin, a student "studying transmedia storytelling, digital marketing, fandom in participatory culture, and all things True Blood. Under the guise of research, I am becoming a True Blood super fangirl” (Erin).

Clearly this blogger has experience in fandom, and seems to be pretty well-versed in the academia surrounding online participatory culture. She also mentions “transmedia storytelling,” and I had absolutely no idea what that was (I know, I’m such a bad COMM student), but helpfully, one of Erin’s introductory posts lets ya’ read all about it. She provides an overview in which she cites articles by Henry Jenkins and Brooke Thompson. Erin also has another introductory post which explains again in academic terms what online participatory culture is, but I’ll save my commentary on that one as I plan on making such a post myself in the future.

Besides, her later posts are meatier and more interesting—and I imagine it would be even more so if I was a consumer of True Blood. One more recent post entitled “Representations of Women in True Blood: Lorena Krasiki,” talks about exactly that:

“The context in which Lorena made Bill into a vampire reveals a mixture of female stereotypes; ... She has been taught that her value is in her appearance, so her self-esteem depends on validation from men. As a result, she prefers to use her power as a beautiful, manipulative woman than her power as a vampire. ... Lorena is simultaneously portrayed as physically strong but psychologically weak ... Again, Lorena's poor self-esteem is apparent as she determines her self-worth by her physical appeal to men ... Lorena uses her power to fill her need for male companionship, and it is her irrational dependence on Bill that prevents her from forming an independent identity required for her power as a vampire to be respected.” (Erin).

Erin basically uses the post to organize and articulate her knowledge and passion for the narratives of True Blood into an arguably academic post on representations of women in pop culture. The format of this post is similar to most of the entries on this blog. Here, she is providing commentary on the actual official True Blood productions, but it’s a post that only a serious fan would take time and effort to write.

I actually wonder if the academic tone she takes in her blog entries would encourage more readership than would a less articulate, less coherent, personal fan blog about True Blood—say, one that simply gives their opinion on the storyline, adaptation, acting... I mean, I don’t know how to measure the traffic either way, but it looks like Erin doesn’t have a lot of comments on her posts. She used to post pretty frequently, but she hasn’t since the end of last spring. However, she is still active on her ‘Truebie’ twitter account, her last update being two weeks ago, and she has... 651 followers, damn. So clearly she has some kind of active readership.

Anyway, I find Erin and her blog “Becoming Truebie,” to be extremely relevant to mine: first, because like me, her intention is to study and write about fandom through a somewhat academic lens, and second, because despite the clinical framework she uses to talk about the True Blood fandom, she is clearly a hardcore fan herself, and this sort of online publication by fans (and consequently her 651-person Twitter audience) is exactly what drives online fan communities. Her posts linking to academics focusing on the world of online participatory culture will certainly be helpful to me, and her case study of the True Blood fandom might serve as an example and reference for me if I ever decide to do something similar.


Voice Repost

One blog I found is "The Geek Girl," authored by Selina Wilken. She has a passion for sci-fi and fantasy entertainment: books, TV shows, videogames, conventions. While her blog is used for fan purposes—to vent or squeal about whatever develops in her fandoms—she also writes objectively about the state and perceptions of fandom, as well as issues pertaining in particular to female participants of online fandom. Hence the title of her blog, which draws attention to her gender, perhaps in defiance to the common perception that geeks are socially inept, WoW-obsessed boys who live in their parents’ basements, and not girls—or that girls, who should be at the mall buying make-up to improve themselves, are simply not supposed be geeks.

(This is something I’ve heard before—that girls are supposed to be rare in sci-fi fandoms. Now I don’t know if that was an older trend, but in my experience, most of the fan activity I’ve come across has been perpetrated overwhelmingly by girls.)

Regardless, this is the tone she takes to her blog: one of self-deprecation, resignation to her fate as a ‘geek girl,’ but still one who is proud to be what she is (almost even snobbish—in that way that fans for some reason can get), and eager to share with others who may be of the same condition as she is.

In her introductory post, “Are You Normal?” she answers that question in the opening sentences of her first paragraph:

“In a word? No. And thank god for that, right? Because I bet that’s why you’re here – desperately combing through search engines looking for someone, anyone on the interweb who feels like you do: isolated, confused, yet strangely proud of your geekdom.”

Here’s the thing about almost all fans participating in online fandom, and she sums it up accurately: they are for the most part aware that their hobbies are not considered ‘normal,’ and are somewhat ashamed of this fact, yet at the same time they think that makes them in a way better than those who aren’t—and are somehow missing out on the joke, the fun.

“In a word? No,” sounds resigned: neither you, nor her, will ever be normal. But the subsequent, “And thank god for that, right?” demonstrates her cheekiness, and sets her blog up right off the bat as one which will abound no doubt in quick, self-deprecating humor.

In a more recent, similarly-related post, titled “I laugh at people who laugh at fandom,” Selina talks about being a fan, the constant feeling of having to hide her fan identity, and how absurd that is.

“I am in particular referring to fans of “geeky things” (anything entertainment), because for some reason our society is way more accepting of sports fans (not people who play sport, people who dress up in crazy costumes and shout at the players. I never get it when these people judge us for our obsessions). Whatever your passion is, if it in any way goes beyond what I’ll classify as mild enjoyment, to many people whose interests are considered normal, you are fair game for heckling, eye-rolling and generic “get a life”-themed comments.”

Her reference to sports fans is humorous because she employs such a matter-of-fact tone, and puts emphasis in just the right places so that you can almost see her rolling her eyes at what society considers normal. Her phrasing and diction also show her as someone who is perceptive and sarcastic—not in a mean way, but in a down-to-earth, tell-it-like-it-is kind of way.

“Whatever your passion is, if it in any way goes beyond what I’ll classify as mild enjoyment, …”

In this sentence she’s picking fun not only at herself and other geeks, but the emphasis on “mild enjoyment” is also cleverly, humorously condescending to those who she considers ‘normal.’ In a way, she’s poking fun at the fact that they cannot attain any deeper connection to the material than mild enjoyment, mild enough to kill time whist waiting for other, regular things to preoccupy themselves with.

The subject of her blog is one that invites poking fun. Spending time on something that is in no way considered productive (other than sports fandom, apparently) invites ridicule. Selina takes that quality to her blog, and as a result she presents herself as witty and smart, but as someone who doesn’t take herself too seriously. Which a good thing; after all, the people who take themselves too seriously are the ones who are ridiculed the most.