Elections and the Exhausted Fan

I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m nursing a post-election hangover..

 

Not because I stayed up late to hear the results come in, I didn’t, we went to bed before eight last night actually, though the pigs woke me up at 12:30 (I’ve no idea why, I think they were mad that their water froze) -just in time to feed the stove and hear the election results. I’ve got a hangover because ‘election day’ is so full of emotion for everyone around me. So many people pinning their hopes and dreams on one person. Facebook is full of argument and exultation.

I’d like to keep it light today. Jenna’s post last week was delightful! Reading about Jenna’s Harry Potter fandom always makes me want to go to one of the fan conventions, I know I wouldn’t really belong, but I’d like it if I wasn't alone. Jenna, if there’s ever one on the east coast, you can stay with us, and we can go together. I won’t think or say anything snarky, I’ll just enjoy myself.

Jenna mentioned textual analysis in her post on fandom. Analyzing the texts we love is a big part of loving for many of us..(and not just in literary fandom, my husband and I have talked for hours about various hidden beauties in Firefly!) So when we analyze how often to we critique? Or is it just all affirmation (for me, it is mostly affirmation..I like to defend my favorites, even against my own mind). But occasionally, I’ll be tough. I think. Maybe…hmm..I can’t really think of a time, but I know they exist. I’ve thought that Tolkien should have had longer appendices, that he could have included more of the daily-life of the various races, that he might of added more history..nothing that actually would have increased the popularity of the books, I’m sure, but things I would have preferred. Textual analysis of my favorite books is almost always submissive to The Fan Instinct, but it is a delightful aspect, and the language of Tolkien allows me to analyze as I would myth or hagiography, instead of fiction - dorky, I know, but absolutely delightful. I like grand themes and minutiae, I like character histories, but not too much information. I like mystery too.

How do you analyze your favorites? What aspects do you find most intriguing? How does it develop your relationship to the text?

The Fan..

 

I thought we’d talk about literary fandom this week. Last week, I linked a post I’d found about the fans of Twilight. It was interesting, in that it gave an idea of how we tend to dismiss Other Fans as ridiculous without looking for the shared experience. The blogger is not a Twilight fan, neither am I, and it’s true I have trouble understanding why fans of the series don’t see the issues I see in the books, but the post had a tone that tended toward unkind. Not being a fan of the series, I missed a lot of the attitude in my first look. But I can catch it in any review of Tolkien because I'm fan. Not the dorky kind, the one who names her kids after characters or watches the awful movies Peter Jackson made from The Lord of the

Rings over and over. I’m kind that learned elvish and Old English in College, studies the Appendices and can tell you all about the First Age of Middle Earth. So, the dorkier kind, I guess. I never really put myself under the label: Tolkien Fan until I caught myself correcting someone on a tiny detail from the Silmarrillion, my husband looked at me and grinned, knowing I’d have to see it now. So I’m developing a sympathy for Harry Potter fans, and Twilight fans. It’s not Tolkien, but there is something similar in the way all fans relate to their books. For me the real relationship was possible because there was a whole mythology, there was depth and meaning and intention, along with a story to follow and characters to love. I like knowing that there is information I’ll never know, I like the grandness of it all and the obsessiveness of the author. I like being able to fall into a world that is real enough to believe in. But there are other reasons books have fans. What is similar? What’s different?