summercomfort (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summercomfort) wrote2014-05-14 12:14 pm
summercomfort) wrote2014-05-14 12:14 pm
Recentering
I've been thinking a lot about my life recently, due to both an impending job change (I'll post about that later), and the recent tumblr-taking-over-my-life thing.
There's a tumblr img set going around showing the wordcount of 2 documents: a fanfic having 10k words and an essay having 17. Last night I was working on a Tisquantum page and I felt this way -- that I'd rather shit out some crappy Captain America fan comic than work on page 53 with these hard poses and this weird perspective (and am I leaving enough space for dialogue?) This is not a healthy place to be, but here I am. Even though I know I should be cutting down on fandom stuff, I keep going back. Why? A month ago I was perfectly content to spend 3-4 hours drawing every night, watching some crappy crime procedural. And yet when I did that last night, it felt hollow and frustrating.
Fandom is too easy. It taps into my desire to feel connected to other people, and is perfectly tuned to a level that work for socially awkward introvert geeks -- it's not like Facebook, where there is a set of normative social rules and you know your posts are being read by both your distant relatives and by that one person you sort of knew from high school. It's also not like real life, where there is awkward socializing that has to happen before you jump into a shared activity or shared interest. In fandom, there is only that shared interest. It's like drinking concentrated syrup. Tumblr has rather successfully captured that sense, by allowing easy reblogs and likes, but making genuine conversations between people who know each other difficult. Feels are easily shared, but thoughts and self-examination less so.
This is not to say that fandom and feels are a bad thing. Connecting to other people feels nice. Getting one's opinions and thoughts validated feels nice. Meeting others who might actually become friends feels nice. Especially in contrast to the lonely work of Tisquantum. But it's too easy to lose your self. This past month I've spent a lot of time thinking about other people's characters, analyzing the emotional relationships of other people's fictional characters, and sharing in other people's feels. Because it's so much easier than generating my own stories. This is why you can write 10k words on a fanfic and only 17 words on an essay -- because the essay is harder to write. The essay requires critical analysis, clean presentation, and most importantly, your own argumentation. The essay demands your assertion of your self.
I need to step back and think about what *I* want, what *I* have to say. Not what my feelings are about Steve and Bucky and Natasha and Sam, but just my feelings, my life, my passions.
I care about teaching history and Chinese. I want to improve my comic storytelling. I think Tisquantum is something worth telling, even if it will not have as much reach in its entire lifetime as that one dumb comic I did about Bucky feeling sad. (1100 notes? really?). The difficult part is that I also want to feel connected to fellow creators, but I'm not sure if tumblr is the right venue for that. (What *is* the right venue? How do 'people you follow' on tumblr become actual people you hang out with?)
To end with the appropriate Thomas Paine Winter Soldier quote: "These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." To devote my waking moments to fandom is to shrink from what I can personally create. I was going to go watch The Winter Soldier movie again today, but maybe it's time to recenter myself.
There's a tumblr img set going around showing the wordcount of 2 documents: a fanfic having 10k words and an essay having 17. Last night I was working on a Tisquantum page and I felt this way -- that I'd rather shit out some crappy Captain America fan comic than work on page 53 with these hard poses and this weird perspective (and am I leaving enough space for dialogue?) This is not a healthy place to be, but here I am. Even though I know I should be cutting down on fandom stuff, I keep going back. Why? A month ago I was perfectly content to spend 3-4 hours drawing every night, watching some crappy crime procedural. And yet when I did that last night, it felt hollow and frustrating.
Fandom is too easy. It taps into my desire to feel connected to other people, and is perfectly tuned to a level that work for socially awkward introvert geeks -- it's not like Facebook, where there is a set of normative social rules and you know your posts are being read by both your distant relatives and by that one person you sort of knew from high school. It's also not like real life, where there is awkward socializing that has to happen before you jump into a shared activity or shared interest. In fandom, there is only that shared interest. It's like drinking concentrated syrup. Tumblr has rather successfully captured that sense, by allowing easy reblogs and likes, but making genuine conversations between people who know each other difficult. Feels are easily shared, but thoughts and self-examination less so.
This is not to say that fandom and feels are a bad thing. Connecting to other people feels nice. Getting one's opinions and thoughts validated feels nice. Meeting others who might actually become friends feels nice. Especially in contrast to the lonely work of Tisquantum. But it's too easy to lose your self. This past month I've spent a lot of time thinking about other people's characters, analyzing the emotional relationships of other people's fictional characters, and sharing in other people's feels. Because it's so much easier than generating my own stories. This is why you can write 10k words on a fanfic and only 17 words on an essay -- because the essay is harder to write. The essay requires critical analysis, clean presentation, and most importantly, your own argumentation. The essay demands your assertion of your self.
I need to step back and think about what *I* want, what *I* have to say. Not what my feelings are about Steve and Bucky and Natasha and Sam, but just my feelings, my life, my passions.
I care about teaching history and Chinese. I want to improve my comic storytelling. I think Tisquantum is something worth telling, even if it will not have as much reach in its entire lifetime as that one dumb comic I did about Bucky feeling sad. (1100 notes? really?). The difficult part is that I also want to feel connected to fellow creators, but I'm not sure if tumblr is the right venue for that. (What *is* the right venue? How do 'people you follow' on tumblr become actual people you hang out with?)
To end with the appropriate Thomas Paine Winter Soldier quote: "These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." To devote my waking moments to fandom is to shrink from what I can personally create. I was going to go watch The Winter Soldier movie again today, but maybe it's time to recenter myself.