The Fan

No, I'm not talking about crappy Robert DeNiro baseball movies. This is something I've been thinking about quite often, the more invested I get in certain tv shows and other media, the more I contemplate the intricacies of fandom, the more certain things start bothering me. These issues have merely been highlighted by reading such sites as Television Without Pity. I love TwoP... and the forums, and its posters are a generally well-informed bunch. But there is such a thing as over-analysis, and becoming so invested that you lose sight of the creator's vision and start imposing yours instead.

The lovely utsusemia wrote an excellent post on the subject. (I haven't asked her if I can link to this, but I hope its alright. And for anyone with any interest in VM fanfic, read her Nightfall, quite possibly the most beautiful work of fanfiction ever.)

"Have you noticed that the more people are obsessed with something, the less they seem to actually like the thing they are obsessed about? I never really experienced this before Harry Potter, but since then I keep noticing this strange "I hate the thing I love" torture going on with alot of fan(girl)s. My first obsessive experience, outside of a book, was in anime, which I'm guessing is a very different sort of thing, mainly because by the time you get obesssed with any anime, the entire show is finished and you just sit back and watch it. I'm thinking that it's the impression of a collaborative experience that you get with an obsession with an ongoing show that brings out the strange "fangirl hate" phenomena. I call it strange because it doesn't really happen to me Call me crazy, but the reason I love the sixth Harry Potter is the same reason I loved the first, and whoever the hell Harry or Ron or Hermione get together with isn't going to change my enjoyment of it. To be clear: I'm not the author. I may be involved emotionally, but it's still not my story."

So. Much. Word.