Ever since I started this blog, I’ve been more comfortable covering other people’s fandoms. From gothic lolitas to Homestucks, the fact that these other communities dovetailed with my own interests simply made it easier for me to write about them from an informative point of view.
So until now, I’ve been hesitant to share my obsessive descent into Yowamushi Pedal fandom.
I’ve liked shows before, sometimes a lot. I was crazy about Natsume’s Book of Friends last year. But it’s always been a passive, individual, and fleeting thing. This is the first time I’ve felt compelled to join a community and create things because of how much I loved a show.
I mentioned earlier that I started writing a fanfic. I finished it, and then I wrote two more. My fics are actually very popular, which isn’t too surprising since I write all the time and I do it for a living. I worry about giving away my livelihood like this, but let me tell you, it will be a cold day in hell before somebody writes on my professional work: “I read your story three times in a row and it got better each time!” Or even more touching: “You made me feel like I was falling in love.”
I have made friends purely because of the fandom. One is a girl whose writing I have admired for years, who I never had the guts to reach out to until I saw we shared this fannish interest. Another draws fan art of my fanfics and sends me gifts in the mail. It feels very special and rare to be in such a predominantly female space online, too—most of my aniblogger friends, for whatever reason, are male.
Until now, I never realized that reporting and blogging on fandom have helped me to keep a degree of distance from it. It’s been since middle school since I felt this heart-pounding, wobbly bundle of emotions about characters. That’s what makes it really embarrassing—none of this is real. I have no right to have so many feelings about something pretend.
So I hide it. I have been deleting my tweets more often. I started a new anonymous Tumblr to keep my fandom from spilling into the rest of my life. I have a weird lifestyle/career in which my blog, Twitter, and even Tumblr support a semi-professional representation of the public image I feel comfortable projecting to everyone—my family, my colleagues, total strangers. My new hobby authoring romantic fanfiction does not mesh with it in the slightest.
I love to write about fandom. But now that it has happened to me—and it really does feel like something that happened, like falling in a hole I can’t get out of—it feels trivial. It’s like some wonderful, horrible dream I should conceal until the inevitable day when the show is over and the spell is broken and I awake, my reason restored, and say “Wow, I sure had a lot of emotions about that show. Thank goodness I didn’t make a mockery of myself by sharing them on the Internet.”
But you know, I have never been drawn to other people’s fandoms in order to poke fun at them. I think it’s incredible when people are more invested in their fandom than anything else, to the point that it drives them to create their own works. To not give myself the same understanding and esteem would be hypocritical.
So this is the giant mass of guilt and embarrassment and deep, obsessive love that has been going through my head the past few weeks. Have you ever fallen too hard for a fandom?
Actual photo of me and my friends via Yowapeda episode 29
6 Comments.
As long as you don’t become a self-hating fan, you have little to worry about. A degree of concern about your fannish interests is healthy- even I tread carefully around my fan pursuits, if only to maintain a degree of professionalism and objectivity- but the trick is not to view your fandom as a pathology or somehow detrimental to your “work life.”
That said, of late it’s been VERY hard to contain my love of Kill la Kill, and I STILL don’t feel comfortable about identifying as a brony.
This is worthy of a full-length response, so I’ll be posting one at Ganriki.org as soon as I finish moving house. :D
Well, there was a study that suggested that creativity outside of your job enhances job performance. Take it as is. :)
Isn’t it wonderful to have such strong feelings for something fictional? And then finding people who are equally passionate about it, in order to share and breed this interest that produces so many good feelings?
Doesn’t matter if it’s not real. The real world can be dull and uninteresting at times, which is why we need things like fictional stories to escape into, in order to feel fulfilled.
I don’t see anything to be ashamed of.
Good for you! Life is best when you allow yourself to fully enjoy what you enjoy. Don’t let fear of what you think other people would think hold you back.
Don’t worry about what somebody else thinks some fandom is like; or the “don’t use that term because some of THOSE people are like THAT”. Just enjoy the media like a passionate reasonably obsessed rabid fan. Call yourself what you like.
And go nuts with your tumblr!
I think I can relate to how you feel, but with video games. As a video games journalist most of us straddle that fine line between being professional (insert video game journalist related joke here) and fan/consumer. As gaming journalist we have to try to be as subjective can with giving any bias to one company. However if a publisher or developer does something wrong and we don’t call them out for it, we are then seen as corporate shill that got bought off.
Or if we sing the praises of one game that we really like and enjoy, or even excited for,again we’re seen as shills. This makes it really difficult to actually share the games that we love for fear of being called a shill. But hey that’s the internet for you.
For me personally, I see it like this: at the end of the day we’re just a bunch of grown adults playing video games and loving it. It’s not like I’m reporting on something important like who is responsible for Benghazi. Sure there are scandals in the gaming industry, just like in any industry, but at the end of the day I’m just a dude who loves video games and wants to share what I love with others.
Will I call out a company if their doing something wrong? Yes. But at the same time if they do something right I will praise them. If a game sucks I will say so and tell people to avoid it. If a game looking interesting I will tell them to keep an eye on it. If I think if its worth playing I will say try it out.
I think what I’m trying to say is: its ok to be a journalist and be a fan at the same time, just be honest with readers if something goes sour and you have to report on it. You should bring back Victoria Holden aka SailorBee and ask her how she balances being a fan and being a marketing/community manager.