[ SECRET POST #329 ]

[degrees.livejournal.com]

⌈ Secret Post #329 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Reminder: We're going to close the secret submission post at 350, and we're nearly there, so don't forget to submit!

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #047.
Secrets Not Posted: 0 broken links, 0 not!secrets, 0 repeats.
Next Secret Post: Tomorrow, Saturday, December 1st, 2007.
Current Secret Submission Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[hieronymousb.livejournal.com]

I suppose your secret did dismay me, but not in the sense that I blamed you. I don't. But I did see it and think to myself, fuck, if this person of obvious Earth Logic likes Envy but completely avoids his fandom, then how many Sane, Logical Envy fans might there be out there who are avoiding the fandom who--if they simply found one another--could actually make a better fandom by interacting? Maybe there are a lot more people out there like you than you think, Anonymous OP. Also, I don't think FmA fandom is that gigantic. And everyone has to start somewhere. The fandom, including Envy fandom, had already been established when I started writing, and that didn't stop me from churning out some 200,000 words of meta posing as fanfic wutwut. I mean, people were saying the fandom was dying the very same month I began writing fan fiction at all, so imagine how much of a crushing blow to my drive that was, y'know? I am not trying to berate you or push you into writing fic if you don't want to. I'm just saying that it's never too late and you may be underestimating yourself. And honestly, one can help to alter a fandom simply by writing meta or chatting with other fans or spreading the good word. Interaction, discussion, comments--if you love talking about Envy, then really, I think you should talk about him to people. Maybe just in doing that, you can get people to re-consider him. I have before. And believe me, I have fought a lot of that "lol palmtree" shit myself, and I've not made a dent in a LOT of it, but I have changed a few people's minds about Envy. I've made some of my friends re-consider his worth as a character, and for every fanbrat I fail to persuade to see Envy as a deeper, more interesting character, those ONE or TWO changed minds mean SOMETHING.

So regardless of what you do, OP, I hope you will consider that maybe your opinion means more than you realize. (http://hieronymousb.livejournal.com/202642.html) If you love Envy and you have a great passion for discussing him, you can draw out the interests of others. Maybe not everyone. But someone.

Edit. I am aware that making a post about your fandom secret on my LJ and making the big deal out of it that I did there may seem a touch creepy or stalker-ish or obsessive, and I sometimes worry about running other Envy fans off with excessive enthusiasm myself (the exact opposite of what I wish for), but when I saw your secret, it REALLY spoke to me, and I thought of writing a secret in reply, but I couldn't think of what to say and it wouldn't have been terribly secret anyway. Even though I can see you're feeling upset and disillusioned with the fandom even more now, I am glad you replied here, and even if you ultimately disagree with everything else I have said, I hope you will consider the part about your opinion as a lurker meaning a great deal.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you. I want to let you know that what you said meant the absolute world to me, and I think you influenced me enough to reevaluate fandom for the better. Don't worry - you didn't sound stalker-ish at all! If anything, I'm rather baffled (in a good way!) that someone, anyone cares so much about this issue and that something I said started so much discussion amongst people who, IMO, are quite intelligent.

I am glad that you and I share a lot of the same frustrations about Envy fandom. I hadn't thought that some of the differences in interpretation may be due to the difference in manga Envy vs. anime Envy. You're right - neither of them were completely developed in canon, but I think that's what makes Envy so fascinating in that, as you pointed out, he can be interpreted and developed in an infinite amount of ways. If he had been too developed in canon, I highly doubt I would have been as intrigued by him. Canon gives us so little information about how he feels, what his motivations are, and hell, even 99% of what his backstory may have been, but that's what makes us fans yearn for more and want to explore these details (and the "what if's") so greatly.

And I think this is what bothers me about a lot of the fandom, because I don't feel as though a lot of fans attempt to explore him in any kind of way. Or at least, not in any kind of rational way. All he has in canon is a complex persona and unfortunately, few people seem to appreciate the beauty in what canon delivers.

About lurking (and I suppose this is kind of my reply to your meta) I suspect that one of the greatest problems for me is that FMA was my first anime, and I didn't know fandom even existed until after I had watched FMA in its entirety, so from the very beginning I developed my own unique ideas about basic characterization, shipping preferences, etc. before I was influenced by other fans. And while it's great to be influenced positively by amazing fanfiction, and to hold intriguing discussions, and hell, to even disagree with people on certain points, I unfortunately found that a lot of fandom operates on a hivemind mentality. Luckily, FMA isn't nearly as bad as some of the HUGE fandoms, but it is still kind of threatening to someone such as myself who holds very different viewpoints about everything, whether it be Envy, or my OTP, or whatnot. It's not like I can't listen to other people or appreciate other people's interpretations or even change my mind because of a fanfic I read, but I always feel like the odd one out and I have a hard time coming forth when I feel I might be jumped on. I see Fandom Wank and I don't want to end up there! It's easy to believe that I am perhaps unwelcome here. Hence, I tend to do a lot of lurking. So, I think you're right when you say that there are a lot of Sane, Logical Envy fans who may also be hiding in lurkerdom.

But you are right - chances are I could do some good in fandom if I became more vocal about my interpretations and I began discussing things, because even if I can't change the whole fandom, I could probably persuade at least a few people. And maybe I could even get a few more lost souls to delurk and share their own ideas.

Hearing your experience actually helped me realize that I'm not alone on this issue and it reinstated the faith I really needed to have - both in myself and in fandom, because now I'll look at both in a different light. I just never really felt welcome, I guess, but now I'm convinced I'm needed somewhere.

So I wanted to tell you - thank you for having faith in me, and for spending all this time replying to some anonymous person on the Interwebs :D

[cryogenia.livejournal.com]

As a completely unrelated lurker in this thread (well, unrelated other than the fact that we apparently share a fandom ;) - I can solidly say, yes, hey, we want you here! I think that fandoms are made better by newcomers, not worse...there are so many various facets to explore and many different possible communities and meta-communities to get involved with. You may not fit in with every last person in a given fandom community, but I hope you are encouraged to find people you do like. The old saw about teaching is that all you need for a school is a teacher, a student, and a log to sit on. I think it applies to fandom too - all you need is two fen willing to communicate, and a journal on which they can talk :)

(And for the record? I wasn't the one who submitted the above secret, but I have to admit I had exactly the same thought when I first read your secret - "holy crap, this person needs to hook up with hieronymousb!" I've gotten to know her these past few months and I've really enjoyed talking about Envy with her...and well, I'm a crazy HeiEd shipper XD; )

[hieronymousb.livejournal.com]

Well, look, Anonymous Envy Fan (sorry, but I don't know what else to call you?), I don't know where you've been reading fan fiction or what your experience in the Envy fandom has been, but if you are willing to contact me (Ambre Nosmada AIM, perjautse@graffiti.net MSN)--or if you even just watch my journal, because I'm doing an Envy fic rec list--I can hook you up with quite a lot of decent Envy fan fiction of various genres and pairings. The problem is, I know it's hard to find good fic on LJ because LJ doesn't have any easy search method such as FFN does. But I've been around the block here for a long time, and I can find you just about any kind of Envy fic you want (and what doesn't exist, I'm personally willing to try to write myself, but I gotta be honest when I say it helps to have some support for an idea before I can give it the go ahead of writing it out).

My story is this: Two years ago--just a bit over now--in November of 2005, I became obsessed with Envy. However, I didn't really begin writing fan fic until I met a number of others from the FmA community (most of them not Envy fans, but the good writers of the fan community such as Cryogenia and Mikkeneko and Sky Dark and the like) and was inspired by their enthusiasm for the series and their works. In March of 2006, I began writing a very long and in-depth (perhaps overly in-depth, as it is often quite internalized) fanfic about Edward and Envy which attempts to both have a plot and explore their characters--but especially Envy's--and tease out all the vulnerable and broken elements of Envy's personality while also satisfying my kinks and incorporating something of a plot. Fic is now over 200,000 words long. The month I began writing said fic is the month the anime completed its first dubbed run in the United States. Immediately after the anime concluded, there was a huge fandom drop-off. People began saying the fandom was "dying". I had just started writing. I was a bit devastated, but I kept writing. And I'm still writing today. Not as quickly, no, but I've not given up.

I have a number of friends who would not in any way give Envy the time of day if it weren't for the time I have spent trying to convince people that he has the potential to be a complex and interesting character. I think they would be willing to attest as much. psycholullaby, the poster below you, is one of them. I have not made a dent in the entire Envy fandom, no. There will always be palmtree jokes, dreaded shallow Envy fics, inept AUs, childishness, and people who simply prefer those takes on Envy or who have their own good but quite fixed takes which I can't even begin to touch. But I know I've influenced some people just by talking about Envy and writing Envy a lot. So I believe one person can make a difference.

Now again, I'm not saying we'd see Envy in exactly the same way. But I have spent a ton of time analyzing his motives and drawing conclusions. Yet I've rarely cultivated many friendships with people who already had strong opinions about Envy for themselves. Most people I've talked about Envy with have either been people I've convinced to give him a chance or people who began liking him in the first place due to my fan fiction extrapolations of his character. I suppose there is a cowardly part of me which is somewhat afraid that I'll get my hopes up with other Envy fans--that I'll try to talk to them and realize that we see him so differently and that we fail to see eye to eye to such an extent that even if they have strong opinions about him, I will be unable to relate, and I admit that in some childish way it is slightly hurtful to go to someone thinking you have something major in common only to feel thwarted by their indifference towards your perspective.

[hieronymousb.livejournal.com]

HOWEVER, I have a good feeling about you, based on how you seem to see the character. You described him as "vulnerable [always a good word to start off with for Envy, imho--and not all Envy fans would agree there, but fuck, this is my perspective], angry [YES] and violent". All qualities I see in him. Anyway, if you want to talk Envy (or if you want to talk, period), my email is also perjautse@gmail.com. I'm planning to try to make an Envy meta post in my LJ soon to stir up some discussion on the character, alternatively.

I know you're shy and possibly married to the idea of being a lurker, but hey, I'm all about courting lurkers and getting them to come out of the woodwork, so I hope you'll consider what I've said here. You DO seem like someone I'd rather like to get to know.