Fiction =/= Reality, Take 345,645,625.

jaydk has nifty Torchwood meta.

She's going out of town this weekend and I have no idea what to do. How am I supposed to spend two days off work with no drunken Doctor Who marathon? Oh, I'm sure I'll entertain myself by catching up on the John Simm back catalog, but it's just not the same without jaydk to share the squee and the snark.

***

Fandom is getting me down today.

Some feng shui guy analyzed me once and told me that my element is fire. I'm sure he was a hack and he probably only said it because I had red hair at the time, but a lot of what he said about my personality rang true. He said I'm all or nothing about things; either I love them or I hate them. I'm either 100% committed and passionate or else I couldn't care less.

I'm like this with fandoms; I either love shows or I hate them. I either love characters or I hate them. When I love them, they can do no wrong, and when I hate them, I bitch and snark. The fact that I'm a bitch in fandom doesn't mean I'm a bitch in real life.

Just because I dislike a show/character doesn't mean I hate the people who like it. Just because I can be casually nasty about fictional "people" doesn't mean I'd ever be like that towards real people. There is a huge divide between how I interact with fiction and how I interact with reality.

This is one of those things about fandom that really bothers me. The way the line between fiction and reality blurs; the way we attack each other *personally* based on our opinions about fiction. I understand where the impulse comes from, but it's wrong. First of all, real people have real feelings, and fictional people don't.

Plus, I've met a lot of fannish people in real life and as often as not, I totally don't connect with people who share my opinions, and I end up getting along wonderfully with people whose opinions are the opposite of mine. And as I move into different fandoms, I find that the people I agree with in one fandom have completely divergent opinions in another. Fictional kinks do not have any obvious correlation to real life opinions and personalities.

I don't hate *anyone* in fandom. If you love characters I hate--fine, I'm glad they make you happy! Why would I hate *you* for that? To the rest of the world, we're all a bunch of freaks who talk about TV shows on the internet; in the grand scheme of things, we're in this together, and who cares if we disagree about the little things? Hell, it gives us more to talk about; fandom would be *boring* if everyone agreed about everything.

I don't mean to say "it's just fandom," because I've made some of the best friends of my life via fandom. This can be an amazing bonding experience. But I will say "it's just fiction," because seriously, there is no reason to hate other people based on their fannish opinions.

[Cross-posted to InsaneJournal]