Where are the closet doors?

[foxinthestars]

I forgot yesterday that I wanted to add some personal thoughts on the "everyone has a closet" thing.

When I was a kid, fanfic was my closet (my sister can corroborate this). I mean it was to the point that it felt like the stories you hear about people struggling with LGBT identity. I thought I was the only freak in the world who was like that and there was something wrong with me but I just couldn't stop feeling the way I felt/doing what I did. This went on until like my senior year in high school when I got internet access (I was rural and isolated enough that I didn't really have access to cons or zines or such). In some sense that's still like a baseline for me, like I consider my fanfic beautiful and meaningful but I have a deeply ingrained sense that it will be stigmatizing and shameful in the eyes of everyone else, or everyone else outside of an online fan-culture preserve (which I'm kind of leery of too but I'm not ready to get into that now).

Lately I've been looking back at my childhood anguish and actually wondering, was that normal (for want of a better word)? Why would I have felt that way? I think I had a general strategy at the time of maintaining safe space for myself inside my own head and maybe that got caught up in it, that because it was so meaningful to me I didn't trust other people with it...

F-list, any of you go through anything like that? Especially if you're old enough to have been fanficcing before you got online (oh god I feel old now). Thoughts on whether that would have been "normal"?

This is a bit of an issue now with my Unitarians. When I tell them I've written something they get excited and supportive and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. I've even been open with them about writing fanfic and they haven't been judgmental or anything but I can't get my head around the idea that they would really want to/could be trusted to read it.

Partly this comes up because I'm at a vexing stage in the process with Mildly Related Prequel --- whose actual title is "Evening Tide," by the way so I can stop referring to it so clunkily. I'm having trouble finding alphas/betas (thank you to the one person who wanted to read it; to the rest of you, this is not a poke, you bear no responsibility for my projects, I just want to talk about stuff), and being leery of online fan-culture serves me badly here on a selfish level because I lack connections and savvy at a time like this. I posted on DW/LJ beta-finding comms. I even tried looking at the beta listings on FF.net and sent a couple of PMs although that kind of seems like a waste of time (anyone have any experience with that?). Aforementioned leeriness makes seeking out Hunger Games-specific fandom spaces just about my last choice as of now (probably below "do the best I can on my own and say to heck with it").

The more confusing one right now is, should I offer to let the Unitarians/RL friends read it? Am I just shying away because on some level I'm still in my closet?

Comments

[smurasaki]

Fanfic is an odd thing, at least when it comes to whether or not to tell people outside of fandom. Though I was well into fanning before I realized fanfic was something looked down on in some circles. (Hilarious thing: when I was in high school I merrily wrote fanfic to entertain myself without even knowing fanfic was a thing. Extra hilarious, I mainly wrote crossovers between Star Wars and the Disney Afternoon.) People sold old fanzines at the cons I went to in the 90s and people bought them. It seemed to just be part of fandom. I swear it's not until things like ff.net were a thing that fanfic was "weird."

I've let a couple of coworkers read my stuff, and my parents. Though the coworkers don't quite count, being thoroughly geeky themselves. (Even my parents are borderline. People who've contemplated having "Speak Friend and Enter" painted over their front door aren't exactly NON-geeky.)

I'd say if your friends know you write fanfic and are supportive, go for it.

Then again, I tie myself in knots more over writing adventure fiction than I do over writing fanfic. I struggle with similar internalized negative thoughts about the genre I love. :\

[foxinthestars]

crossovers between Star Wars and the Disney Afternoon

That sounds wonderfully fun. ^_^ I think probably a lot of people have merrily written fanfic without knowing it was a thing because it's just such a natural impulse. My family didn't get it though (misapplied the word "plagiarism" even), and not having any real access to fandom space at the time I guess made it rough.

But maybe there is something to the idea that the gremlins will try to seal off what you care about most in some misguided attempt at self-protection and the rest is just rationalizing...

I think now with the RL friends I'm tying myself in knots over the angst and darkness as much or more than the fanfic part. Like one of the internal critic gremlins is the internalized voice of my Mom whom I would never try out on something with that list of trigger warnings.

(I actually mentioned that it was Hunger Games fanfic to one of the Unitarians and she didn't like Book 3 either. Not sure I've found anyone outside of the Amazon reviews who actually does like Book 3...)

[smurasaki]

And I feel like angst and darkness are much more ethical to write. (The world sucks and is terrible and making entertainment out of violence is wrong, according to my critic gremlins.) I suspect nasty little inner guys will always tell one that what one likes best is wrong. :\

I'm sorry your family doesn't get it, but glad that your friends do.

[foxinthestars]

My family is better than they used to be. My sister is pretty geeky herself (I'd also say she merrily wrote fanfic before knowing it was a thing) and so is my sister-in-law (she's actually the one person who's wanted to read Evening Tide so far), and my parents are iffy but not entirely negative (I'd worry about getting the "you should be doing something monetizable" and Mom has like negative grimdark tolerance, but they're not completely clueless and have read my stuff before).

(And even/especially if the world sucks and is terrible, it's good for people to have fun, positive images of agency and efficacy to help empower them. Easy to say...)

[smurasaki]

I'm glad your family is better now.

And stories that are dark and angsty are another way to deal with the world sucking. They're important too. But, yes, easy to say...

[foxinthestars]

Easy to say, but still appreciated. ^_^