On Fannishness
18 Feb 2020 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneWe've shifted furniture around to allow Wax to snap some clear photos of the antique ones that we hope to sell from MIL's estate. In the process we found a drawer full of MIL's father's army medals from the Winter War and apparently all the correspondence he ever saved in his life, his coin collection, etc. Wax had to arrange and photograph the medals to show to antique stores for a quote as well, and staring at the collection of war medals was quite surreal because it really makes you think about the nature of fandom. Of course learning about historical wars is important, and often very interesting, but the passions of people who collect these medals are something else, and it's quite difficult to understand how people can be fannish about them and collecting them (for me, habitually).
I did manage it eventually by imagining that each individual medal was instead a piece of a pen or mechanical pencil the same age, which enabled me to have some empathy for the collector's interest. Of course, medals aren't potentially used, but then I'm well aware that, unlike me, most of the people with interest in fountain pens collect them far beyond what they could even attempt to use and mostly just keep them in boxes.
Then my mental exercise rebounded on me, giving me a brief, cold glimpse through the eyes of someone uninterested in antique writing instruments, or even fully functional and useful ones, and I had an awe-inspiring moment of contemplating the nature of all fannishness, even beyond fannishness that is interested in the curation of objects. Suddenly I remembered that nearly every topic can provide enough to write a doctoral dissertation or publish a life's work on, if you have the right set of magnifying glasses, and that fannishness is rooted in the human brain and not in the information itself. (Except in the brains of the unfannish and uncurious - and I don't think any amount of empathy will grant me any insight to them.)
I did manage it eventually by imagining that each individual medal was instead a piece of a pen or mechanical pencil the same age, which enabled me to have some empathy for the collector's interest. Of course, medals aren't potentially used, but then I'm well aware that, unlike me, most of the people with interest in fountain pens collect them far beyond what they could even attempt to use and mostly just keep them in boxes.
Then my mental exercise rebounded on me, giving me a brief, cold glimpse through the eyes of someone uninterested in antique writing instruments, or even fully functional and useful ones, and I had an awe-inspiring moment of contemplating the nature of all fannishness, even beyond fannishness that is interested in the curation of objects. Suddenly I remembered that nearly every topic can provide enough to write a doctoral dissertation or publish a life's work on, if you have the right set of magnifying glasses, and that fannishness is rooted in the human brain and not in the information itself. (Except in the brains of the unfannish and uncurious - and I don't think any amount of empathy will grant me any insight to them.)
(no subject)
Date: 18 Feb 2020 01:35 pm (UTC)It's always interesting to eavesdrop on other people's fannish enthusiasms and see if there are similiarities.
Nearly everyone is passionate about something.
(no subject)
Date: 18 Feb 2020 03:43 pm (UTC)Bra fit hobbyists (the lingerie review community) and bra bloggers spring to mind, as well as nail polish collectors, but also there's a community for example dedicated to making the ideal copycats of various famous restaurants' Chicago-style deep-dish pizzas. At the Red Cross store I had a coworker across the aisle who was a build-your-own-computer-case enthusiast, that is, they build the computer too (which is already a hobby for other people and of interest to many professions of course), but the focus of their hobbiness is putting the working computer into original and custom boxes instead of the boxes that computers are supposed to come in, like aquariums filled with oil and homemade wooden boxes and adjusting the air pressure with different fans. He was incredibly disappointed that I wouldn't let him build me a new computer that I didn't need with fans to give it positive air pressure so it would be blowing air out of it all the time and not take any dust in. Apparently it was practically criminal that I hadn't already done such an important and elementary task.