rusty_halo | Have you read those posts about affirmational vs transformational fandom?

I went to a meeting of the Supernatural NYC Meetup Group a couple weekends ago. We met at 11am in the childrens’ resource room of the Brooklyn Heights Public Library (srsly) and marathoned several Dean episodes via a laptop hooked up to a projector. It was a bit… surreal. (Also I’d slept only three hours and got up early on a Saturday, so I was barely functional, in addition to my usual pathological shyness in social situations.)

It was fun to watch the show with other real life people. The organizers obviously worked hard to run the event, and everyone was very welcoming to me. I’m not sure if it was the right place for me, though. I’ve been trying to put my finger on why and I think it ties into the posts I’ve been reading recently on metafandom about two different approaches to fandom, affirmational vs transformational. I’m pretty firmly on the transformational side, especially when it comes to something like Supernatural, which I find incredibly problematic, and which I’m into for the fandom and fanwork and fan criticism at least as much as for the text itself.

The Meetup group was pretty firmly on the affirmational side, at least as far as I could tell (some of the others were shy, too). Only one person acknowledged being into fanfic and she did so like there was something embarrassing about it. There wasn’t much discussion and what there was wasn’t critical* or analytical–it was very positive and focused on the actors and on behind-the-scenes trivia.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this–it just hit me that what I wanted wasn’t just real life people to watch the show with, it was real life people who share something closer to my approach to fandom. (Again, I mean no offense to the people there.)

ANYWAY. The point is that I’ve been absolutely fascinated by the discussions about the differences between affirmational and transformational approaches to fandom, because they put names on phenomena that I’ve been aware of for a long time but haven’t been able to articulate. If you’re interested, this post by obsession_inc is a great starting point. I’d also recommend this post by oliviacirce and this particular comment thread, and also this post by damned_colonial. Obviously, there’s overlap between the two approaches, and the definitions are still being hashed out, but there is definitely something really interesting to explore here.

Also, kaigou took this as a starting point for a post about the structural differences between the two approaches to fandom–how affirmational fandom places the author at the center and how transformational fandom is far more decentralized and chaotic, complete with these amazing diagrams. (It takes a while to figure out but they’re definitely worth looking at.) I’m not sure if I agree with her conclusion about anti-fanfic pro-writers feeling threatened by BNFs, but I love her illustrations of how fandoms evolve to center around fan-created ideas, and how far removed these fan-created zones can be from the canon’s creator or hir intent.

It really rings true with my experience of Supernatural, which is that I’m far more interested in learning what soundingsea or netweight think about the show than about what Eric Kripke does, and I’m infinitely more interested in reading jolielaide’s fanfic recs than in reading tie-in novels (the Meetup group is also doing a tie-in novel book club, which I couldn’t be less interested in). I think it also explains why I’ve always felt so much happier at fan-run conventions, the ones focused on fanworks and the voices of fans themselves, rather than at those pro cons where you worship at the altar of your superiors and if you’re lucky they’ll validate your life by acknowledging your existence (often for an offensively large sum of money). (Sorry, some residual bitterness there.)

* Okay, a little more about the Meetup. When I said I love many aspects of the show but am bothered by the rampant misogyny, everyone at the Meetup looked at me like I had three heads, the atmosphere immediately chilled, and one person said, "I don't think the show is misogynist, because Dean calls Sam a bitch more than he calls women bitches." To which I could only gape and quickly change the subject.

(For so very many reasons--I'm shy, I was new, I was there to make friends, and I couldn't figure out a way to respond without either anger or condescension. And just... the word "bitch" is itself misogynist regardless of at whom it's directed, men insulting each other by comparing each other to women is misogynist, and the use of the term "bitch" is only one item in a very long list of ways the show is misogynist--it rarely passes the Bechdel test, it portrays most women as either victims or villains, it kills every recurring female character it introduces, it's part of a long tradition of stories that focus on straight white cisgendered men at the expense of everyone else, on and on. The only way I'm able to enjoy the good aspects of the show is to acknowledge and critique the problematic aspects, but obviously that's not true of everyone.)

I feel bad about complaining about this here and bad about not speaking up there, but I've been poring over this in my head and wanted to at least articulate my thoughts somewhere. I'm hoping no one from the group finds this, because I don't want a fight and I probably would like to go to another meetup again sometime.

*sigh* :(

Originally published at rusty-halo.com. You can comment here or there.