My Fannish World

[cimorene]

irisbleu said she was inventing a fannish meme and invited everyone to draw a "visual representation of all the overlaps and relationships between all of an individual's fandoms".

I wanted to draw what fandom looked like to me, but of course, there are such a variety of relationships to represent that it's hard to know how to represent them in only two dimensions. Her own map here focuses on crossovers she's written, shared settings/creators/actors, and so on. But thegoldsky already made a different version representing how the groups of fans she knows have overlapped.

The first time I drew intuitively and ended up with a kind of

The Known Fannish World v.1


You'll observe the overlap between NSYNC and Arashi labelled "popslash", because they are both popslash, but elsewhere, all the fandoms within media slash enclosed inside the media slash blob. Within media slash, for example, Due South is between fantasy/SF and crime, but The Professionals is accidentally in the overlap between the crime/media slash section and Harry Potter (because that section is labelled England! But obviously, while The Professionals and Harry Potter both take place in England, The Pros is not a subset of HP). The proximity of Fandom Wank to LOTR RPS is because that is a fandom I associate with many of my friends from The Cabal That Doesn't Rule Fandom Wank, whereas the overlap of Fandom Wank with tinhats is because, well, you read about tinhats there. You'll also observe a few names of significant people, and hearts attached to fandoms to indicate groups of friends, and arrows indicating the direction my acquaintances migrated from one fandom to the other, or just that they were there, or that two fandoms have something in common.

But I was dissatisfied with the lack of consistency in the ways the relationships between the fandoms were drawn, so my second attempt focuses more closely on qualities of the fandoms themselves. So this one is

The Known Fannish World v.2


I've given each fandom its own little shape and enclosed them within regions. The great blobs of media slash and fantasy overlap in the centre, which is the core of the fannish world for me. Fandoms positioned close to the media blob and the fantasy blob are felt to be more closely related to them. Relationships are noted as between Sherlock Holmes and House, and Holmes and Jeeves & Wooster, for example. You will see the labels "Historicals" and "Very British Stuff", as well as a "Buddy Cops" subset of media slash. There are other labels which could have been added if there were room, like High Fantasy and Kids' Fantasy and Space Opera and Mystery and Adventure.

And that was unexpectedly time-consuming but very satisfying. Despite the fact that the second one is more careful and analytical and logical, I like the first approach better - I feel it captures more of my experience of fandom.

Comments

[anglepoiselamp.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. I don't think I could ever make a map like that. Not only would it be too complex and make my brain short-circuit permanently, it's also too much like the mindmaps we were forced to make in school. Man, I hated making those things. My brain just doesn't work that way. I guess it's because I'm not a visual thinker at all.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

There are lots of fandoms which are huge and aren't really part of my reality, or fandoms which I've been involved in somehow but are really small, and I've left out anything that's too small to have its own fandom community: a source material or potential fandom didn't count, nor ones with only a few stories or a few active authors. If I'd followed irisbleu's pattern of fandoms I've written the picture'd have been quite simple and much less busy, but I considered all the ones I've read extensively and written recs for, because that's the principal part of my fannish output.