fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2259 ]

[ SECRET POST #2259 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2259 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 100 secrets from Secret Submission Post #323.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Do you ever take a step back from your fandom and realize how weird it must look to people who aren't in it?

I love reading discussions about fandoms I'm not in and trying to figure out what's going on in the canons by piecing together bits from those fan discussions, and trying to figure out which canons are really freaking weird and which ones just seem that way to me because of lack of context.

And today it also occured to me that I'm kind of sad I'm already a Homestuck fan, because discussions about Homestuck from the POV of a non-Homestuck are probably the most wonderfully bizarre thing ever.

BioWare fans look like creepers from the outside I'm sure...well...they look like that from the inside a lot too.

+1

Especially if you visit the Mass Effect character threads on BSN. I mean I love Garrus but COME ON.

/shudder

No, I think it's Minecraft fandom that looks like Creepers. >_>

Sometimes I imagine what fandom in general looks like from the outside. And it makes me cringe. Hard.

Edited 2013-03-10 20:31 (UTC)

I was sitting in a coffee shop yesterday watching Nekomonogatari on my pad, and after a while I turn and see some pretty girl on one of the benches behind me just staring with the perfect look of 'what the fuck is this'.

And I had a sudden moment of clarity when I was struck by 'what does this look like to someone without context'.

Fandom as a whole is weird for non-fandom people. It will most likely ALWAYS be this way. For every one 'fandom' person you have there will be 20 casual viewers.

Edited 2013-03-10 20:39 (UTC)

and let's be honest, it wouldn't be as fun if everyone everywhere got it. We all like being part of an exclusive club. Even if it IS a weird one.

I think Homestuck is a webcomic? But probably one that updates fairly often, because the fandom is active. It has a distinctive art style that looks like it could have been drawn in MSPaint. The characters are possibly all kids, but some of them have horns and are trolls.

The plot has something to do with a computer game. For awhile I thought maybe there was an actual gaming element to the fandom itself, but I think that was something I picked up wrong and it's all a webcomic.

Thematically, Homestuck says interesting things about game theory. Or at least the arguments its fandom has always sounded very game theory. This might have some connection to the existence of the 'troll' characters.

On F!S the people who ID as trolls and do those incredibly embarrassing troll score cards all seem to be Homestuck fans. I don't know if that means that the trolls in Homestuck are some kind of proxy for internet trolls, or if the people trying to score internet trolls are actually making Homestuck references and I've been misinterpreting them all this time.

Not all the characters are corporeal or even still alive probably, but they're all sexing each other as is the case of every fandom ever.

ARE YOU ME??? I fucking LOVE trying to figure out WTF people are talking about in fandoms whose canon I'm not familiar with. It is one of my most entertaining methods of procrastination, because I never get sick of it. :D

I used to be really into Thief.

Then I took a break from Thief for a few years.

Now I look at Thief fandom and it's like... the fuck is wrong with these people?

I still find the non-homestuck discussions hilarious myself.

I sometimes look at the IM convos I have with my partner about WoW and realize what gibberish it must look like to outsiders.

But it's sort of hard for me to really be baffled by fandoms? Like, I'm used to it, so I understand that other fandoms have lingo and jargon that I'm not familiar with, and I happily chalk it up to that and go about my business. I can see something and be like, "I don't understand this," and move on. It's not like some great mystery to me, and I don't feel any need to figure out what people are talking about, especially when I'm wholly unfamiliar with the subject content. I guess this makes me weird? idk

I guess it's always odd to step back and see that most non-fandom people are heterocentric and pretty much find slash/femslash kinda weird.

LOL very much this. And also, the more time you spend in fandom the more desensitized you get to really unusual kinks. I was so embarrassed the other day when I was watching a show with my mom and a character walked past a sex swing and made a passing comment on it, and my mom was like "wtf is that?" and without thinking I answered "sex swing, it's a kink thing"...I don't think she has looked me in the eye since.

Re: Fandoms viewed from the outside

(Anonymous) - 2013-03-10 23:15 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Fandoms viewed from the outside

(Anonymous) - 2013-03-10 23:57 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Fandoms viewed from the outside

(Anonymous) - 2013-03-11 00:42 (UTC) - Expand

Quite a few of my friends share only one or two of my fandoms.

I'm sure I've done more harm than good trying to explain Homestuck to some of them. (Though they seemed interested.)

I'm pretty sure I horrified the same friends when I and another friend were discussing Warhammer 40k, and I was waxing rhapsodic about the Sisters of Battle, which is my favourite Imperial faction, and started talking about the Repentia.

As someone who already is in fandom, I like reading about "alien" fandoms, even though I know I'll likely never get into them. But to complete outsiders, fandom itself is really strange as a whole.

I was telling a colleague about the video games I play (Assassin's Creed and Tomb Raider, at the moment) and all she took away from that was that I "kill virtual people" :(

I have no shame telling people I love fanfic, and they always give me this weird look of "why would you read something that's not from the actual author/director/etc?"

Oh yes! I've often wondered what would my Touhou fanboyish-ness and the fandom as a whole would look like from the afar. The results are... not pretty, to say the least.

I saw Mass Effect fandom from the outside before ever playing the series on PS3. Yes, it looked scary.

Kinda still is from the inside, but an outsider's impression makes it look ALL bad. There's still lots of bad but I've met tons of great people.

In reverse: when I was in hockey fandom I had the impression that an outsider's view must have been 'EVERYONE SLASHES ALL THE PLAYERS EVER' .... Since I left, it doesn't look that way. At least not as bad as I thought. It's more elitism.

All the time, fandom is really fucking weird, I love it but I don't even try to pretend that it's a normal hobby or anything. I wish more people in fandom realised that as well and stopped trying to have discussions about fic or shipping with the creators/writers/actors involved.

FUCK YES.

But this is because my main fandom is legitimately really weird. Like, my main pairing last season had a heartwrenching emotional arc involving celebrity impersonators, a pillow/blanket fort civil war, an air conditioning repair cult, and a crossover into a dark timeline. Gifs of them wearing cute pillow hats and frowning send me into sadness.

Also their declaration of love happened during a zombie apocalypse but then they got brainwiped and forgot it ever happened.

It's a little difficult to talk to outsiders about Community.

This show sounds amazing and I want to watch it now.

Re: Fandoms viewed from the outside

biohazardgirl - 2013-03-11 02:09 (UTC) - Expand

Ahhhh, Community. One of my favorite things ever, but man, is it hard to try to explain it to people who have never seen it without them thinking you're a complete lunatic.

People seem to mention a lot that Transformers fandom is really weird, just cause we're into robots, so... I don't really need to step back to get that impression? XD idk, Transformers canon is kinda straightforward--giant robots in a war in every continuity--so I don't think figuring out the plot would be difficult for outsiders.

But hopefully figuring out why anyone would ship robots from space that are trying to kill each other is entertainingly bizarre. They're hot ok, don't judge us.

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