[013] On Fandom, and My Participation (or lack thereof) Therein [very long and kinda depressing]

[helenorvana]

I love to read. This is no great secret to anyone with even a passing acquaintance with me. I love reading. I am most often found reading, be it a book, a magazine, or online. I have the equivalent of an entire wall covered floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves, themselves covered with stacks upon stacks of books, almost all of which I have read, many of which I have read more than once.

Online fandom, therefore, is a happy place for me. It is full of hundreds, nay, thousands of other individuals (mostly women) whom share my love for the written word. Better yet, there are hundreds whom love the same books (and movies and TV shows) that I do, and see so much more that could happen in those universes, and write about it, thus providing me with even more reading material about things I love in which to lose myself.

I devour online fic. Particularly during my July vacation last year and in the months since I quit my job, I have read more fic that exists source material - more fic than is truly healthy, in a number of different fandoms. This is a contributing factor - a significant contributing factor - in why I have no social life, and thus have even less demands upon my time to draw me away from my computer. The lives these varying characters lead are so much more interesting than my own, and I find myself far more invested in their adventures and drama than I am in my own sad existence.

I will be 23 this year. I have been on one date five years ago (in which I was very nearly stood up, because he was five years older than me and yet did not have a driver's license, and thus was walking), and one sort-of group date early last year that was so entertaining I completely forgot about it until just a handful of days ago. I have never had a boyfriend (or girlfriend). I don't even know whether I would prefer a boyfriend over a girlfriend. I have never been kissed. I have never succeeded in keeping in contact with anyone whom I called friend after moving, or graduating. I have never had a "best" friend. I know whom I would want to be my [matron]-of-honor where I to get married right now, but if she or I were to move? Fandom is not entirely to blame for this, but again, it is a significant contributing factor.

I don't know how to interact with people. I can fake it well enough, and can be perfectly pleasant to deal with. But with the exception of my possibly future-matron-of-honor, I realize I have never actually succeeded in moving beyond "friendly acquaintance" to true "friend." They're really very friendly acquaintances, yes, but still only so.

This lack of social grace and experience dictates how I behave online. In many ways I am still so very young, the shy, nerdy outcast of a girl who wants the popular kids to like her. I am reminded suddenly of some of my very first FCA meetings at HHS, with Coach Madison, wherein I sat in the desk in the far corner of the classroom and just doodled and listened. I lurked. Part of it was because I had a crush on Coach Madison (married or not, he was a very handsome man, and I was fourteen), but it was also because the other members were Murray's friends; glamorous, outgoing, confident upperclassmen who were well-liked and well-known throughout the school. Popular kids, and I wanted them to like me, but I was (and still remain) shy, and didn't want to draw attention to myself. And so I lurked.

I still lurk. I am a terrible lurking lurker who lurks, as some would say. I was not much older when I first got onto Livejournal, and excited, and my journal reflects that. I'd like to think I've grown past that, but I find myself still paranoid that if I speak up, if I draw attention to myself in any way, they will see how childishly excited I was back then, and think less of me now. Which isn't terribly fair to the ambiguous "they," I know, but that is how my mind works. My journal has become something I am ashamed of, embarrassed by, and it was never intended to be that way.

(This is partially why (though I am only just realizing it now) I was so eager not only to create a journal on Dreamwidth, but also to hide all ties between my identity here and my first journal. It was the opportunity to recreate myself, to form a new, more composed - adult - identity separate from the childish beginnings of my original, default online footprint.)

So I lurk. I read hundreds of thousands of words worth of fic every day, and there are many that make me laugh out loud, or infuriate me, make my heart ache or move me to tears; make me think and view the world and people in new and interesting ways. But I will very, very rarely comment, even to tell an author I liked their story. (Livejournal/Dreamwidth need a "Like" button, a la Facebook. I approve of bauble's polls.) Because the best comment is one that tells the author why you likes a story; what did you like about it? And I have yet to be able to articulate even to myself why any particular story hits me in ways and places another did not.

I posted a rec to fancake yesterday (and first posts to new comms are always so nerve-wracking - it took half an hour and four open tabs for me to be sure I was doing it correctly, that it wouldn't be embarrassing), and when I got all the coding and tags (which I later removed before posting because I remembered the mod would do all the tagging herself) correct, I found myself stumped by one section: Reccer's Notes. Why should they read this story?

I had just read this fic. I had (a milestone for me) left long and detailed comments on every chapter saying exactly what I liked about the chapter. But while they said why I liked each chapter, they didn't really summarize what I liked about the fic as a whole. I sat back and asked aloud: "Why should they read this fic?" And I drew a complete blank. I was a beautiful fic. I loved it, and I wanted to tell other people about it. But I couldn't articulate why. fancake does say you can just write "because it's a good example of the theme of the month," but that feels like cheating, and no one else had needed to resort to it.

Plenty of people have said that any feedback is good. But just saying "OMG I love it/you!" seems to me a cop-out, and undignified. It's a perfectly acceptable form of feedback, and I mean no offense whatsoever to those who use it, but this goes back to wanting to seem like an adult. To be composed, dignified - for people to like me, to regard me as intelligent. I want to be able to contribute more than *incoherent noises of glee* or "Aww, so adorable!" and I can't. And that is nearly insurmountably frustrating. These authors are the celebrities, the popular kids of my world, and I want to make a good impression, but I don't know how to approach people without making a fool of myself (in my eyes, at least).

I'm one of those people who will laugh at herself when she embarrasses herself in public, but will go home and find every possible way to avoid ever again encountering anyone who saw her. I don't like looking like an idiot - which is also why I don't like starting new things, because I don't like not knowing what I'm doing and making a fool of myself that way. Even when I'm not supposed to know because I'm a beginning - no one expects otherwise. I feel like I should know more than I do by now - I feel like I didn't learn basic things everyone else did (like how to dance) because they went to public school and I was home-schooled. One of my first classes this semester is strength training. I'm sure it will be fine throughout the semester, but I'm terrified of the first session. What do I wear? (Don't laugh.) Are jeans and a T-shirt OK for the first day? Do I need to be wearing sweats (or shorts) and a tank top (never mind it's January in a desert), or will that be too eager, and people will laugh at me? The damn course description doesn't say! I don't have these kind of panic attacks about other, classroom classes, because at least I don't need to worry about clothes in those!

Anyway.

I'd like to be able to contribute to fandom in some way beyond lurking and occasionally commenting, but how?

I love to write. I've been telling stories since I was able to talk, and have been writing them down for nearly as long. I've been working on The Separatist War since I was seven. I've started hundreds of stories, and more recently have done world-building work for hundreds more. With the exception of really short ficlets or school projects, I've never succeeded in finishing any single story because I became too busy world-building. But while I've started some actual fanfic, in a couple of different fandoms, there's nothing I would ever ever post. Because I am a terrible writer. Fond of the Mary Sue, and I; even knowing this I can't seem to correct myself. My characters all lack anything resembling real personalities, and whenever I try playing around with pre-made characters from [insert fandom], they all behave very OOC.

I can come up with some really fantastic plot bunnies; I can pretty much do all the world-building necessary (see this_. In the case of TSW, I even pretty much know exactly what happens - I could write a history textbook. But while I know the events, I find myself utterly incapable of sussing out the stories within the events.

I would love to be able to collaborate with someone on a fic - either fanfic or an original work. I need to team up with an author who can see the story I can't and write it if I give them the basic idea. Hell, I'd give them as much more information they could possibly want or need! For most of my ideas, I don't even care if my contribution is mentioned - I just want to be able to read the story, to know it exists somewhere other than in my own head. The problem here is twofold: I don't have any sort of relationship with any author - online or otherwise - where I could go up to them and say "I have an idea for a story, [insert story idea here] - is it something you think you might like to try your hand at?"; none of my bunnies are small. I'm pretty sure for any of them to be fully realized rather than just a tantalizing snippet would require epics of Big Bang proportions.

So fic is out.

I love to draw. And, wonder of wonders, I'm good at it. Not fantastic, certainly not a petite_madame or an ileliberte, but good enough that I wouldn't be ashamed/embarrassed to put my name to any piece. I've drawn some pieces that I look back on and say "I drew that? I can't believe I drew that - that's good." I wasn't always good; like LVA and the clarinet, it's something I've spent years improving. I'll never be defined by my art, be remembered for it, but it, unlike my failed attempts at fic, is fit for (semi) public consumption.

No, the difficulties with contributing art to the fandoms in which I "participate" lie not with a lack of artistic ability but rather a lack of proper equipment. I do not have Photoshop. The most sophisticated digital art program I possess is Windows Paint. There's not a whole lot you can do with Paint, and even if there were I also do not have a mouse (or a tablet). Everything would have to be done with the fingerpad of my laptop, which, no. Plus, I've never had any sort of practice with digital art.

So I do everything by hand. Not at all unusual - there are plenty of artists who do the same. Sometimes I paint, but 99% of the time it will be me, a mechanical pencil, and a sketchbook. And therein lies the problem. I use sketchbooks that are 9 x 12. Anything smaller than that starts to feel a little cramped and is harder to work with. It's a normal, average-sized sketchbook.

A normal, average-sized scanner, on the other hand, is 8 1/2 x 11. My own scanner I think is even smaller. It is also old, falling apart, doesn't work half the time, and won't talk to my computer the other half. I don't like taking pages out up my sketchbook unless absolutely necessary, so getting anything from there to my computer is a nightmare and a half at the best of times. At the worst of times, the only things preventing me from taking a sledgehammer to the damn thing are that this is usually at oh-dark-thirty (like now) and the sound would undoubtedly wake everyone in the house, with unpleasant results, and the fact that I don't even have enough money for a pack of pencils, much less a new scanner.

Therefore, while I will quite happily do art for fandoms, it also will never see the light of day, however willing I am for this to happen, simply because getting it on my computer and thus online is next to impossible, a headache with which I am done dealing.

I would also like to try my hand at a little podficcing, but again, lack of equipment. Plus the thought of reading aloud any sort of porn makes me blush from the tips of my toes to the tips of my hair. Just, no.

I love fandom, I really do. I would like to get over my issues and actually interact with it in meaningful ways. But thus far, it just doesn't seem possible, and that depresses me. And if you actually read all of this, I'm truly sorry. This really did start off with an attempt at light-heartedness. I don't know what happened. Here, have a cookie.