Fannish identity & communication style

[extrapenguin]

I haven't actually been doing sunshine_challenge, but I did clean up my sticky post and add my friending policy there. I've also meant to give some Guardian fic recs for a bit. Today's post, however, is mostly inspired by sewn's post on fannish identity.

Like sewn, I, too, am Finnish, but came to Anglophone fandom instead of FinFanFun. (I basically exclusively read English-language obscure sci-fi, which has zero fic fandom in Finnish. At least on the Anglophone internet, I can connect with the one other person who's read the book and wants to chat fic.) Nevertheless, I'm Finnish. On the internet, one of my primary identities is "not American". I wish I could make people grok that I don't want to have to give a fuck about the US issue du jour, but alas, that is hard.

But the reason I'm writing this slightly incoherent post is communication styles. I watch people do that squeesplosion/cutesy communication and I just ... can't. I can sort of follow, but if I tried to mimic it, I'd cringe so hard my brain would escape through my ears. I'm most at home in content-first, dry-humor communication styles, and that's what my posts and comments reflect.

So. I'm direct and get to the point if I have one. I don't habitually shroud my opinions in a veil of caveats and insecurity. And I'm much happier amongst oldskool types than the modern fandom youth of today, communication style -wise. (And I am very grateful that Guardian fandom is mostly people for whom 15 is a distant memory rather than present reality!)

Comments

[schneefink]

FinFanFun is a wonderful name xD

[extrapenguin]

It is delightful, though as someone who basically never was there I might've gotten it wrong by accident. :P

[maggie33]

And I'm much happier amongst oldskool types than the modern fandom youth of today, communication style -wise. (And I am very grateful that Guardian fandom is mostly people for whom 15 is a distant memory rather than present reality!)

Oh yes, me too. To both those things. When I started 20 years ago in Vampire Chronicles fandom I was 28 and my impression was that most of the people were at least over 20 and many were older than me. I mean I’m sure there were some teenagers, but they never talked about their age. From the message board I frequented I remember one person who admitted that she was under 18. Just one person. I'm so grateful for Guardian fandom here, I couldn't and wouldn't do it on tumblr or twitter.

[extrapenguin]

When I started 20 years ago in Vampire Chronicles fandom I was 28 and my impression was that most of the people were at least over 20 and many were older than me.
I started at a younger age, but yeah, I definitely felt like a kid in the cool adults's club!

My previous fandom was Modao Zushi, which has an animated adaption and thus became super popular and infested with minors. People openly admit to being 16! Suddenly I was one of the oldest people present*! This was not okay at all! I'm very glad I could escape to Guardian fandom over here.

* I'm a taxpaying adult, but not that old. If I'm the oldest person in the fandom, there is a serious problem and I want to find the emergency escape ASAP.

[krait]

Ahaahaha, your Modao Zushi experience sounds like my Homestuck experience.

It was a canon with such great material for the adult side of fandom (as in, rated Adult), but there were SO MANY KIDS. I think the average fan age was less than half of my own. Very nice people, probably, but talking to them about Adult Subjects In Our Shared Fandom was definitely "this was not okay at all!" territory.

[extrapenguin]

Very nice people, probably, but talking to them about Adult Subjects In Our Shared Fandom was definitely "this was not okay at all!" territory.
YUP. It was also a shocking example of how, well, one-dimensional teenagers' thought patterns tend to be. Everything was flattened into good-or-bad, and everyone hated nuance. Even the people who claimed to be 26 (but had the maturity of a 16-year-old at most). It was just so frustrating on many counts.

[krait]

also a shocking example of how, well, one-dimensional teenagers' thought patterns tend to be.

Yep, this was also a feature of my time in a young-leaning fandom. A lot of the younger side of Homestuck fandom only cared about the sexual ships, had long heated arguments over liking villains (to be fair I think a number of older fans also partook of these) or whether a particular character was a villain at all, wrote alien characters as identical to humans, and/or just shipped the humans.

On the porn side, 99% of the smut was either human junk, human junk but paletteswapped to 'alien' colours, or tentacock futanari. It was like someone had had a neat idea early on, and the entire rest of the fandom just said, "yeah, that's good enough" and didn't explore any further!

The situation was not helped by the fact that a third of the fandom was too young to be writing porny fic, and the quarter of fandom old enough to have new ideas for porny fic setups were leery of talking about them to anybody for fear of discovering midway through that our conversational partner was in 9th grade. :/

[extrapenguin]

Urgh, that sucks. Modao Zushi didn't have any nonhumans, but it did have a canon explicit sex scene(!), and kids having lots of opinions about the canon couple and their sex scene that belied a deep lack of understanding how sex and humans work. The fic is mostly unreadable, too; the protagonist's personality gets interpreted as being The Uke and all his actual personality traits are forgotten. But mostly I'm just ... Kids, this thing has an E-rated sex scene, whyyyy are you telling us you're 16?

[firestar]

(And I am very grateful that Guardian fandom is mostly people for whom 15 is a distant memory rather than present reality!)

Saaaaaaaaaaaame. And also I'm very glad there's no dudebros off in some other corner shitting everywhere, like in my previous big fandom. D:

I wish I could make people grok that I don't want to have to give a fuck about the US issue du jour, but alas, that is hard.

Also same, unfortunately US issues tend to get everywhere, regardless. Not that I can talk much, because I feel like the UK is getting our shit everywhere too, especially at the moment.

[extrapenguin]

Dudebros? My condolences.

I feel like the UK is getting our shit everywhere too, especially at the moment.
Well, from my POV as a European, you are slightly more excused due to the Brexit thing affecting the EU and thus Finland. The US I just wish would chill for a month.

[firestar]

Alas. :( Fortunately they didn't come over much to my little corner but sometimes the reverberations would still spill over.

Hah, yes. On both counts.

[bonibaru]

The US I just wish would chill for a month.

So say we all ... imagine what it's like to live here (long row of crying face emojis)

[tsubame_17]

GO OLDSKOOL! (I have more than 20 years at internet, more like I'm in the silver anniversary)

I'm Argentine but I live in the Basque Country (it's Spain but isn't) so I'm latino but I'm REALLY not, I understand what you say about being "not American"

[extrapenguin]

May your fannishness last forever! (And oldskoolness in communication style remain present in fandom.)

Yeah, the whole US thing is ... please learn that countries outside the US exist, Standard Average American! sgfkaaklfhdjdsd

[jo_lasalle]

I'm most at home in content-first, dry-humor communication styles, and that's what my posts and comments reflect.

Interesting post! I enjoy your posting style and find it fun to read. I'm similar, which may not be entirely shocking, albeit probably more in a "direct but belaboring the point to explain what I really, really mean" way. *g* Over the years I've adapted to and adopted some degree of flail, because sometimes that is just my heart's response to Shen Wei pining secretly or Zhao Yunlan having a knife at his throat, though! (I can get genuinely overwhelmed when it's nothing but that. I've literally had to step away from the Twitter at certain points when the sheer volume of KEYSMASHFEELS was starting to put me off a thing, even if I had no issue with the content of what was being said. I need the correct dosage of flail for my maximum happiness. *g*)

I've also spent ten years in a fandom that uses English as its lingua franca but is genuinely international, so Guardian is my first fandom in a long time where there's a majority American contingent. It's been an interesting shift. ^_^

[extrapenguin]

I've adapted to and adopted some degree of flail, because sometimes that is just my heart's response to Shen Wei pining secretly or Zhao Yunlan having a knife at his throat, though!
See, when I'm having that degree of feels, I am going !!! and can't type! There's a demarcation between "capable of forming coherent sentences" and "not capable of typing" for me, so if I were to try and express the flailing, it'd be *after* the emotions calmed down and I'd be faking it post facto. (I suppose there are some complicating matters here, such as my Asperger's affecting how I experience emotions and experience myself experiencing emotions, but idek. Someone else can write that treatise! :P)

I've literally had to step away from the Twitter at certain points when the sheer volume of KEYSMASHFEELS was starting to put me off a thing, even if I had no issue with the content of what was being said.
I feel you - I have done the same thing, albeit not with Twitter. It's just ... could I have some actual content that's not just "omgyaysquee"?

Guardian is my first fandom in a long time where there's a majority American contingent.
I was about to go "But surely you mean German?" but them I remembered that we have at least two Americans and likely more, bringing them past Germans as the majority nationality. :P Looking at it, Europeans seem to be disproportionately represented within my Guardian DW circle, though idk if that's some subconscious bias or just some culture/communication thing.

[jo_lasalle]

It's just ... could I have some actual content that's not just "omgyaysquee"?

Just to be... me overly precise, I really meant omgyaysquee stuff I do too. It's just cumulative for me. Like, fun, fun, FUN, fun... OMG OVERLOAD TOO MUCH INCOHERENCE.

I was about to go "But surely you mean German?" but them I remembered that we have at least two Americans and likely more, bringing them past Germans as the majority nationality.

LOL! The Germans get into everything too, granted. ^_^ But if I do a roll-call of "people I interact with / see active both on DW and Twitter", I think I get about 50% American?

[extrapenguin]

OMG OVERLOAD TOO MUCH INCOHERENCE.
Ahh yeah, I get you.

But if I do a roll-call of "people I interact with / see active both on DW and Twitter", I think I get about 50% American?
Maybe! I guess the Americans are just less explicit about where they're from (because erryone is from America ofc etc), unlike us non-Americans? Or I have blanked out the US-ness for my sanity. *g* It's not like I've counted.

[phyrry]

There's a demarcation between "capable of forming coherent sentences" and "not capable of typing" for me, so if I were to try and express the flailing, it'd be *after* the emotions calmed down and I'd be faking it post facto.

My two emotional states are 'numb' and 'distressed' so a lot of flailing just seems performative to me. (Yay mental illness goggles! /s) Sometimes I can perform it, sometimes I don't have the energy it takes to do so. Either way is kinda uncomfortable and I would rather be talking about the canon or headcanons. (However, I can certainly appreciate the aesthetic appeal of various scenes, just... not the same way as most people, apparently.)

[extrapenguin]

You can perform it? That's already better than me. *g* (Sad neuroatypicality high-five!) The best I can do is "Oh wow this was amazing!" which doesn't even count. I agree that I'd rather be talking about something rather than doing the flail thing.

not the same way as most people
Are you still talking about the flailing (i.e. showing one's appreciation) or experiencing the appreciation?

[phyrry]

Sometimes. Unfortunately acting out emotions I don't feel is a required skill for life around my mother. My success rate is ... moderate.

Are you still talking about the flailing (i.e. showing one's appreciation) or experiencing the appreciation?
Experiencing the appreciation. I don't experience sexual attraction at all, so a lot of fanservice that most people flail about just leaves me disturbed or confused, or I end up finding other things to enjoy about it (like emotional intimacy or character studies in smut).

[extrapenguin]

Urgh, sympathies. Having to act out emotions sucks.

a lot of fanservice that most people flail about just leaves me disturbed or confused, or I end up finding other things to enjoy about it
Nodnod. As someone who's almost exclusively attracted to women, I can sympathize about the whole "I suppose this is fanservice, but I do not find it in the least appealing" thing.

[solo]

I watch people do that squeesplosion/cutesy communication and I just ... can't. I can sort of follow, but if I tried to mimic it, I'd cringe so hard my brain would escape through my ears. I'm most at home in content-first, dry-humor communication styles, and that's what my posts and comments reflect.

SISTER! How I get you! I mean, I can squee, sort of, but it usually takes the form of keysmashes so I don't have to use actual words to squee because I wouldn't know what to say. And so totally the content-first thing. If I don't have content, I kind of... say nothing. Which is why often I'm silent for long periods of time. >_>

[(Anonymous)]

I, too, can do keysmashes, but mostly I just go for !!!! or ???? because those are clear emotions that can be comprehended by others as well, lol! My biggest problem is when I'm replying to fic comments, since then I have to try and come up with a way to respond to the zomgsquee and hyperbole and keyboard smashes in a way that doesn't sound completely fake to me, which is very hard.

[extrapenguin]

Stop losing my login cookies, DW! gdi

[zeest]

The way I type sometimes change depending on who I'm talking to but I still can't do the squeesplosion thing. I used to think people who type like that must be in their teens but I've since realised that there are people who just type that way. That's when I find it helpful to know what someone's communication style is, so I can dial it up or down to my wavelength.

The fandoms I'm in are usually mostly populated by people around my age, so I've been lucky in that aspect. (I'll probably try MDZS/Untamed one day but I'm pretty sure I won't be getting into the fandom for that.)

[extrapenguin]

Mm yeah, code switching! Still a thing for text-based mediums.

I thought that all the squeesplosion people must be teens, too, but then I ran into evidence that there were people who did that/something similar to that who are decades older than me, so. IDK. I still prefer to be the dictionary. *g*

I'll probably try MDZS/Untamed one day but I'm pretty sure I won't be getting into the fandom for that.
Yeah, don't get into it. The MDZS fans all seem to be either 15 or mentally 15, and it seems it's now one of those things where it's a franchise and people are fans of the franchise, instead of the drama splitting off to have its own fanbase. Ah well.