![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Best and Worst
Aug. 4th, 2019 05:47 pmAtlin Merrick asked a while back for stories about best fandom experiences. Even though I have been in "fandom" for nearly twenty years, my answer was easy. It was "Lost". I know there was drama and I'm sure there were nasty people in the fandom SOMEWHERE, but I was lucky enough that my experience was entirely positive. I found a circle of brilliant women on Livejournal who would have in-depth discussions every week about the latest plot developments and theorize about where the show was headed and what everything meant. We had debates about time travel and suicide theory and they challenged me to really THINK about the show on a deeper level and my enjoyment of the show itself was enriched all the more for it.
But thinking about my best fandom experience of course led me to consider the worst. This was also easy. Hands down, it was "Sherlock". I was describing my experience with "Lost" to a coworker recently and because I neglected to say what fandom it was, he thought I was talking about "Sherlock". He was surprised by the speed with which I said "oh, hell no!" Basically, "Sherlock" fandom was the polar opposite of "Lost" fandom for me. I'm sure there were plenty of lovely people there somewhere, but all I seemed capable of finding was the ones who were deeply invested in ugly shipper wars and making fun of people who like literally any other adaptation of Sherlock Holmes stories. At its worst, I was made an object of such scorn and ridicule in one Twitter group that I nearly gave up ALL of fandom entirely because MY GOD I should have left this shitty drama behind when I graduated high school.
Anyway. Those are the extreme ends of my fandom experience. Most of them fall somewhere between those.
But thinking about my best fandom experience of course led me to consider the worst. This was also easy. Hands down, it was "Sherlock". I was describing my experience with "Lost" to a coworker recently and because I neglected to say what fandom it was, he thought I was talking about "Sherlock". He was surprised by the speed with which I said "oh, hell no!" Basically, "Sherlock" fandom was the polar opposite of "Lost" fandom for me. I'm sure there were plenty of lovely people there somewhere, but all I seemed capable of finding was the ones who were deeply invested in ugly shipper wars and making fun of people who like literally any other adaptation of Sherlock Holmes stories. At its worst, I was made an object of such scorn and ridicule in one Twitter group that I nearly gave up ALL of fandom entirely because MY GOD I should have left this shitty drama behind when I graduated high school.
Anyway. Those are the extreme ends of my fandom experience. Most of them fall somewhere between those.
