Fans stereotyped as non-introverts

[foxinthestars]

One small passage in the OTW's latest news roundup post finally got me to post a brief reply, born of a more long-standing irritation, and I thought I should take a moment here to post a possibly-cranky somewhat longer reflection on it.

I had joined the OTW a year before (and somehow managed never to hear from them again), but when I renewed my membership and became more active late last year, I found that I was stepping in in the middle of some controversies as various fans were saying that the OTW was failing to perceive and honor their fannish experiences --- anime/manga fans stick in my mind because I am one myself, but it wasn't just them.

Since then, not so cuttingly but persistently, I have also come to feel that the OTW doesn't perceive and honor my fannish experience --- of solitariness. I could go into all the pathetic-sounding stuff about my early fan-creativity against the backdrop of my not-atrocious-but-bad-enough childhood. During my JFW years at the very least, I have been part of a creative community, but for much of my fan-creative career, I've experienced myself as working mostly by myself or with a small circle of supporters who were creative in their own separate spheres --- basically, more like the pros who are disidentified with fanfic in the above-linked post than within a fannish "community." Or at times I may experience my work as something that I do on my own and offer to the community, but still not something that "arises" from the community.

This is not to say that such solitariness is good (I honestly wish I weren't so socially inhibited and just haven't managed a sustained effort to fix it), but it also isn't intrinsically bad, IMO, and it should not be invalidated. Some people have quite understandable reasons to be socially inhibited and to view community collaboration as emotionally and/or creatively risky. Some people get territorial out of the sheer personal power of their visions. Some people just like to work that way.

It's a weakness in the OTW if people like that come to it, wanting to combat their solitariness or find a new level with it or advocate for themselves whether they want a bunch of other people up in their creative work or not, and once they arrive, see themselves casually defined out of their own art form.

Comments

[unjapanologist]

Community is a hard thing to define, isn't it? Sometimes I get the impression that we just use "fan community" as a shorthand for a very very amorphous thing. The word makes fans sound far more closely knit than they really are. There clearly isn't any sort of "common" set of rules or ethics that all "fans" subscribe to, and "participation" takes so many forms, from people who comment on twenty things every day and collaborate on making stuff to people who lurk to people who write fic just for themselves.

I guess my own view is that everybody who does something fannish about some source work does contribute to the "community" around that work, the way people who just use a piece of software or who tweak it by themselves without getting involved in the forums and other "community" activities around that software also contribute. There's never any sort of community without the (perhaps unconscious) support of vast numbers of people who do things differently than the louder people who are at the center. Defining all those people who contribute in some way as a "community" has some serious drawbacks, though, because the word suggests much stronger ties between everyone than there really are, and as you say, some people just don't feel that they're part of a community at al. Can't think of a better word than "community" right away, though... Hmm.

Anyway, I have no idea how the person who posted that news roundup would define "community" or "collective fandom" or whatnot. I suspect there's a bunch of differing views within the OTW as well, but because it's an organization designed to help fans band together, perhaps a lot of people who like to emphasize "community" stuff gravitate towards the org.

[foxinthestars]

And of course it's natural that people who tend to keep to themselves and be quiet are less likely to be heard (hence me deciding to say something). But yeah, whether intentionally or not, emphasis on "fanfic is about community!" creates the impression that fan-creatives are expected to approach their art as a social activity, which really rubs me the wrong way.

While I had gotten this impression before, the passage here (and I didn't read the entire article it was from, although I probably should) was especially problematic in drawing a distinction and trying to create a definition. Firstly, the mentioned pros work(ed) in their own communities, and there isn't a safe way to thread the needle between theirs and ours, and secondly, I really think you would have to broaden the word "community" beyond any particular meaning (as you would with many/most words) before it becomes non-toxic as a boundary line around people's art.