kassidy62 | (no subject)

I looked for something I'd posted before on LJ and instead read my older posts, taken in by the passing years.

Fandom's been important to me, off and on, since I was pre-teen. Only I didn't know to call it fandom. I didn't know about secretive fiction magazines and snail-mail exchanges and the like. I missed it, but am nonetheless glad of its existence, and that it grew. Then the internet came, and the separate legs of fandom kicked and struggled, sprung up new, grew or died. Maybe not died, exactly--the thing about fandoms is they can be revived years later--a DVD gets first release, new fans come online... I've not seen a fandom flourish once it's slowed, but the fans trickling in afterward add to the narrative.

Weren't we all told to get our head out of the TV at some point? As if the places our brains go to after having seen an inspiring TV show or movie, or after having read a book, isn't important. Keeping your imagination alive in the face of all the mundane bullshit in our ordinary lives is more than important. It's imperative.

Anything creative has to be important, isn't it? Stories we tell each other, things we've pieced together that come from inspiration of all kinds: art, folktales, fairytales, pop culture, all of it brightness that leads our brains to imagine so many paths and struggles and solutions and loves. Of course, stories and art come from other places, too--from surviving very bad things. We work it out on paper and screen and canvas.

Or it comes from both places, or other places. It's about our journeys.

People who don't get into fandom point at us, and they don't understand, but they can't make it unimportant.

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Damn right they can't make it unimportant! Imagination is the great rescuer when reality is a little harsh, and who gets to judge where inspiration for imagination comes from?

I know more than a few people who say, "I don't watch television." They say it in the same tone of voice that they might say, "I don't use heroin." I mean come on!

Viva La TV!

I have heard that as well--TV rots the brain and all that, as if there's nothing at all good that can come of it. Total bullshit. For one thing, TV shows kids/people in some bad situations that there are alternatives out in the world, and that alone is huge.

Absolutely! And think of shows for kids like Sesame Street and Electric Company that gave powerful but gentle lessons on racism and sexism and just growing up to be a decent person.

*hugs Kass and this entire very inportant post*

*biggest of hugs right back!*

Fuck 'em and their big pointy fingers anyway.
*mwah* Loves you!

You've always been the concise one:) Love you, too

Totally what she said. Great post.

thankee:) It's just such a huge thing, and people who don't get it REALLY seem ... baffled, is the nicest word I can come up with.

Got any more PotA floating around in that head of yours by any chance? By the way, LOVE your PotA vid, The Lunatics--it's on rotation in my big old vid show that Cass and I watch. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed that you're into some of the same fandoms as me.