I'm not cut out for fandom...

[tencrush]

I have epic meta in my head about Ianto, but I can't seem to order my thoughts and I'm reluctant to write anything fandom related because I'm still in one of those moods where the words will come out all wrong and I'll end up coming across as a bitch or something. I honestly never set out to do that, but I do pretty much most of the time anyway, so there you go.

I'm still having this fume over who_anon for no real reason just because everyone on there seems to think it's full of luls and all I can see is a bunch of people finding reasons to point at and mock other people, and I really don't like it. The first time I was mentioned, when I was called an attention whore, I really didn't feel I'd done anything particularly attention-seeking that would deserve that kind of remark. I ended up getting really upset, not even really because of some anon with a grudge posting that shit, but because nobody bothered to step up in my defense either, so I figured everyone agreed and hated me. I actually debated deleting this journal for a bit, but figured that because of the thirty day change-your-mind thing, I'd probably just end up reinstating it and being called an attention whore over that instead. If you could instantly delete your journal I probably would have. Since then, I've been mentioned a few times, and I'll be honest, most of those times were when I did indeed post something reasonably wanky, I jumped in non-anon once or twice to defend myself, but then I stopped doing that as well. And now I've stopped reading it alltogether. WHICH IS FUCKING HARD, I must admit, the temptation to just mosey in is really high, but the last time I looked (yeah, I'll admit that was a day or two ago, AFTER I said I'd stopped reading it) all I saw, again, was people being shitty about other people.

And now that whole paragraph up there will just come across as bitchy, again, I'm sure. If you're on my flist and you're on the meme, good luck to you. I'm not calling anyone on it a bully (I don't really think it qualifies as bullying if you actively have to seek it out, surely? People will always bitch about other people, that's what people do. I totally get that, I just bitched about other people on this very journal, it's just the anon part I don't really understand.) or a Cult-of-Meanist or anything like that, I'm sure loads of you just go there and have a laugh and that's great, have fun, I'm not judging anyone, I'm really not. I just can't do it, I don't know why. I'm not really a fandom person, I guess, the whole culture just sort of flies over my head most of the time.

So yeah, I have this epic meta in my head about Ianto, but I can't order my thoughts and I think one of the reasons I can't order my thoughts is that my brain is asking itself Why would you want to write epic meta about a tv character anyways? I've reached one of those points in my fannish experience where I really cannot fathom the point of sharing out any opinion or theory about anything because it will just get read and commented upon and is that really what I want? Also, I can't order my thoughts because they're really unordered. And also, I know someone already made a list once of how many times Jack cries in Torchwood and could someone point me at it so I can stop with the rewatching every episode already? It's tiresome and I keep remembering how many episodes I actively dislike. FAIL.

LOL. I'm so crap.

Comments

[pontisbright.livejournal.com]

I don't tend to dive in to defend folks over there, because doing so tends to perpetuate the topic of 'X from my flist is an arse', and I worry that any positive comment will backfire since there will inevitably be those presuming it's the insulted party anon-defending themselves, perpetuating the topic even more. I didn't dive in to defend myself when I was being reamed for what I still consider a perfectly reasonable sequence of events, because there's just no point.

I do think there are positives about that place: it's not all bitching, and it's made me smile on multiple occasions over the last few months. But ye gods, it's demonstrated a side to fandom (and humanity in general) of late which is plain ugly. I lost sleep over this shit last night, and I'm a reasonably sane and competent human being with a career and a life and all that shiny stuff. I'm actively angry about how several friends of mine have been treated, and I hate feeling hamstrung about expressing that, for fear that I'll just make it worse, or (cowardice alert!) invite even more crap upon my own head.

In other words: I sympathise, I'm sorry you feel undefended, you aren't the only person feeling like this, and I hope it's a temporary fandom-on-hiatus-thus-bored-and-bitchy thing that sort of fades away when there's new canon to pick at instead of actual real live human beings. (And as a side-note to that, I think people tend to be comfy slinging casual mud at you, because your fandom persona is that of a cheery teflon type who will shrug it off. I think a lot of people are assuming that about each other. I don't think anyone alive could be that fucking teflon.)

It's not you being crap. Now go about your daily awesome, please.

[tencrush]

Thanks. That means a lot.