tavie.com

The thing about the whole JCM thing that makes me just thrum with happiness-- well, the MAIN thing, I think there are many very obvious reasons to be happy-- is that it isn't that it's a regular fan-idol meeting. It's not that Matt won a contest. It's not that JCM is meeting him as a favour, or as a kind act from a celebrity to his fan, because JCM wants to give a kid a thrill. It's not because Matt showed up on his doorstep and JCM feels sorry for him. It's not because Matt is the president of his fan club or writes him a million fan letters a day.

It's because Matt produced a brilliant piece of writing, and it was on the strength of this creation, of this product of Matt's intellect, on the manifestation of Matt's genius, that this godlike idol-figure felt compelled to contact him. It's a beautiful thing, almost beyond expression. It's an inversion of the normal processes of fan-relations; who is a fan of whom here? Who appreciates whose work?

I think about fandom a lot. There's lots of angst, lots of thumbings through Henry Jenkins' Textual Poachers. There's lots of self-deprecation and justification, of intellectualizing of fannish activities and theorizing about fan creativity and formation of communities. There's lots of mooning and sighing. Fandom is so much larger a part of my life than I ever would have wished that I can't help but continually analyze it and its place in the culture and subcultures in which I find myself, and wonder about its place in my own self-identification process. Therefore it has a large emotional significance for me, and so when something like this happens, it makes my heart so light.

So light.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:46 PM | shower me with attention