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nym_wibblyI turn 45 in a few days. It took me nearly all of that time on planet Earth to figure out that joy is where I find it; that it doesn't need to come in the form of an all-consuming obsession. In my childhood, teens, even my twenties, I think I invested far too much emotionally in fandom. I'm not saying that fandom, or specific fandoms, aren't worth that investment - of course they are. But I did find it bothersome to put all my emotional eggs in one fannish basket at a time, be that a pairing, a show, a community, a story. An ambition, a dream. Anything. It's like an ill-advised love-affair, then; it can go bad without warning and leave me broken and crying when it used to be... well, my happy place! I need it not to do that - to help me hang onto my wellbeing, not to undermine it.
I need that fandom escape. I have to protect it, make sure it's always there when my soul nopes out of real life. My way of doing that has been to diversify. To find more and more ways of taking my joy as micro-payments from the universe instead of the all-or-nothing of those early, heady, ultimately shattering fandom love-affairs of mine.
There was this thing my mother used to talk about. I think it was the title of a radio programme - 'the tingle factor'. In that context, it meant music; those tunes, lyrics, chords, changes, and power-solos that cover you in goosebumps. I have musical ones, for sure, and would loosely count musicals in general, if not specific titles, among my fandoms. Musicals have long been one of my happy places. One of my earliest happy-place memories is being taken to see an early Bill Kenwright production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I'd go on to see it almost annually throughout my teens and into my twenties, being lucky enough to see two of my favourite Josephs of all time - Philip Schofield in the London revival, and Mike Holoway on the later Kenwright tours. I saw him a really lot. I never failed to leave the theatre elated, glad to be alive. Not so much a tingle as as buzz. Les Miserables has two tingles, fairly close together at the end; one bitter, when Thenardier sings, 'I raise my eyes to see the heavens and only the moon looks down... the harvest moon shines down.' And one pure, at the very end. 'To love another person is to see the face of god.' A physical reaction to the sound of music. What's that all about? It feels like joy to me, even when it's bittersweet. Even when it leaves me crying. Pure elation. But I can't live like that. Those moments are like chocolates - occasional treats.
Fandom, which for me is canon + meta + fanfiction, hits much the same spot for me, but in different and increasingly diverse ways. Spread out and measured instead of that short, sharp shock of a tingle moment. I rarely get that visceral reaction to a TV show or a novel - that tingle, the goosebumps, but I think I used to. I still shed a tear at appropriate moments, but I can step away afterwards now. Keep it in perspective. I can remember hurting inside for weeks with a broken heart when a character died or a show was cancelled; being so moved that I couldn't easily step back into real life and leave the fiction behind. Once when an actor died, the grief straddled that RL/happy place divide. I think that's when I began, unconsciously at first, to avoid putting all my happy place eggs in one basket. To think smaller.
The snowflake challenge post refers to self-care. What I've found is that being good to myself (or to others) doesn't need to involve anything big, or lasting. It doesn't have to mean the epiphanies, the pinnacle of an achievement, a dream coming true like I'm at the climax of my own storyline. It can be something tiny. A perfectly-chosen word. A short musical phrase. The wordless look that an actor in the background of a scene contributes on behalf of their character, which sparks six months of enthusiastic fannish discussion and creativity for dozens of people. Joy is easy to find when you learn how to look for it on the small scale. It's absolutely everywhere in fandom.
Fanfiction is my conscious happy place (and an awful lot easier on the bank balance than the musical theatre!). Reading it, writing it. Has been ever since I discovered that fanfic was a thing, somewhere around 1986/7. Before then I just thought I was weird to have my own ideas about fictional characters - to find it so hard to let go when the book ended or the episode was over. Life made loads more sense once I found out what a plotbunny is. The things I've learned from fandom and from other fans since then... Wow. I couldn't even begin. I've learned so much. That's an ongoing joy.
Fanfic's where I'll escape to when I have both the opportunity and the energy at the same time. I can't read much any more, and I can't read at all if I want the energy left to write. I've chosen to put writing first, and I spend my escape time either writing fanfic or thinking about it. I miss reading it. But I still know it's out there - all that wonderful work by all those inspired people, pouring their passion into coffee-shop AU's, crack pairings, drabbles, fests, epics, and ideas. Even when I can't participate, I love nothing more than being surrounded by that peculiarly fannish brand of creativity. I grin watching a story's comments go wild with squee, even if I'm only peripherally aware of the story itself. I laugh more at fandom's humour than I do at anything else, especially when we get tongue-in-cheek, in-jokey, and ironical, as many of us did on our way out of Tumblr.
I love what we do, fanpeople. I love that we do it. I love that we love it. I don't even have to take part to make it my happy place; I feel better just knowing it's out here, happening.
I need that fandom escape. I have to protect it, make sure it's always there when my soul nopes out of real life. My way of doing that has been to diversify. To find more and more ways of taking my joy as micro-payments from the universe instead of the all-or-nothing of those early, heady, ultimately shattering fandom love-affairs of mine.
There was this thing my mother used to talk about. I think it was the title of a radio programme - 'the tingle factor'. In that context, it meant music; those tunes, lyrics, chords, changes, and power-solos that cover you in goosebumps. I have musical ones, for sure, and would loosely count musicals in general, if not specific titles, among my fandoms. Musicals have long been one of my happy places. One of my earliest happy-place memories is being taken to see an early Bill Kenwright production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I'd go on to see it almost annually throughout my teens and into my twenties, being lucky enough to see two of my favourite Josephs of all time - Philip Schofield in the London revival, and Mike Holoway on the later Kenwright tours. I saw him a really lot. I never failed to leave the theatre elated, glad to be alive. Not so much a tingle as as buzz. Les Miserables has two tingles, fairly close together at the end; one bitter, when Thenardier sings, 'I raise my eyes to see the heavens and only the moon looks down... the harvest moon shines down.' And one pure, at the very end. 'To love another person is to see the face of god.' A physical reaction to the sound of music. What's that all about? It feels like joy to me, even when it's bittersweet. Even when it leaves me crying. Pure elation. But I can't live like that. Those moments are like chocolates - occasional treats.
Fandom, which for me is canon + meta + fanfiction, hits much the same spot for me, but in different and increasingly diverse ways. Spread out and measured instead of that short, sharp shock of a tingle moment. I rarely get that visceral reaction to a TV show or a novel - that tingle, the goosebumps, but I think I used to. I still shed a tear at appropriate moments, but I can step away afterwards now. Keep it in perspective. I can remember hurting inside for weeks with a broken heart when a character died or a show was cancelled; being so moved that I couldn't easily step back into real life and leave the fiction behind. Once when an actor died, the grief straddled that RL/happy place divide. I think that's when I began, unconsciously at first, to avoid putting all my happy place eggs in one basket. To think smaller.
The snowflake challenge post refers to self-care. What I've found is that being good to myself (or to others) doesn't need to involve anything big, or lasting. It doesn't have to mean the epiphanies, the pinnacle of an achievement, a dream coming true like I'm at the climax of my own storyline. It can be something tiny. A perfectly-chosen word. A short musical phrase. The wordless look that an actor in the background of a scene contributes on behalf of their character, which sparks six months of enthusiastic fannish discussion and creativity for dozens of people. Joy is easy to find when you learn how to look for it on the small scale. It's absolutely everywhere in fandom.
Fanfiction is my conscious happy place (and an awful lot easier on the bank balance than the musical theatre!). Reading it, writing it. Has been ever since I discovered that fanfic was a thing, somewhere around 1986/7. Before then I just thought I was weird to have my own ideas about fictional characters - to find it so hard to let go when the book ended or the episode was over. Life made loads more sense once I found out what a plotbunny is. The things I've learned from fandom and from other fans since then... Wow. I couldn't even begin. I've learned so much. That's an ongoing joy.
Fanfic's where I'll escape to when I have both the opportunity and the energy at the same time. I can't read much any more, and I can't read at all if I want the energy left to write. I've chosen to put writing first, and I spend my escape time either writing fanfic or thinking about it. I miss reading it. But I still know it's out there - all that wonderful work by all those inspired people, pouring their passion into coffee-shop AU's, crack pairings, drabbles, fests, epics, and ideas. Even when I can't participate, I love nothing more than being surrounded by that peculiarly fannish brand of creativity. I grin watching a story's comments go wild with squee, even if I'm only peripherally aware of the story itself. I laugh more at fandom's humour than I do at anything else, especially when we get tongue-in-cheek, in-jokey, and ironical, as many of us did on our way out of Tumblr.
I love what we do, fanpeople. I love that we do it. I love that we love it. I don't even have to take part to make it my happy place; I feel better just knowing it's out here, happening.
no subject
Date: 1 Jan 2019 20:02 (UTC)I'm like you, if I am writing, I can't be reading at the same time. All my energy goes into creating and not consuming.
no subject
Date: 1 Jan 2019 22:56 (UTC)