reposted from Tumblr
I want to follow all those amazing people who write great articles and opinions on the Sherlock BFI screening incident, and I want to read and comment and share and discuss… but I feel terribly drained, emotionally, at the moment.
This whole thing is bothering me so much, for so many reasons. I’ve been very passionate about fandoms for a long time now. They play a very important role in my life, for personal as well as professional reasons. I think a lot about what happens on the shows I watch, as well as behind the scenes. I trained to be a TV producer because I wanted nothing more than to learn everything about the business. And I wrote my Bachelor thesis about shipping because I think that shipping is a very focal point in making fictional TV nowadays – in every genre.
So investing emotionally into all that as much as I do, the past days have been just awful; I’m cranky and exhausted and can’t sleep properly. Because I feel powerless. I want to turn back time and stop all this from happening. I want to take mildredandbobbin’s fic from Moran and tell her that what she’s planning to do is not okay. I want to let the cast and creators and audience have a great and amusing and relaxed Q&A everyone enjoys and will remember with a smile on their face. I can’t do any of that.
There is this one thing that occurred to me: We are alone. While we can write all those wonderful and intelligent articles and blog entries that have been going around Tumblr since Sunday, and while we can be in uproar, we don’t really have a platform. Yes, we have the internet, and of course we have each other – but that’s about it. We can’t go out on the streets, protest for our cause, demonstrate against those who mock and belittle us. We won’t be featured in the big 8pm news, or in any actual printed newspaper, and anyways wouldn’t people care because they don’t know. They just don’t know. Political interests, economical issues, social matters – whenever people go out on the streets, everyone usually at least knows vaguely what it is about. Because there’s this constant stream of information in mainstream media that keeps you up-to-date – on whatever they deem important. Even if a particular topic doesn’t interest you – you at least know.
But people out there, the person next to you, might not know about fandoms, about our wonderful communities, about how we talk and find friends among strangers, about how we love our fandoms so much that we spend hours creating fanworks. Hell, my boss has been in TV business for several decades and he doesn’t know.
You may say now, that’s okay, because we know, and that’s all that matters. And a week ago, I would have agreed, wholeheartedly so. But if Caitlin Moran has shown us one thing, then that right now, we’re not safe. One evening, one stupid woman, and so much damage. And there is damage; there really is. Because we are alone, because despite counting millions of people all around the world being part of our respective fandom, we nevertheless are (commonly!) unknown, unsupported and unprotected by the world’s biggest and most powerful institution called media.
Maybe I’m just too tired. Maybe I think about all this too much at the moment. Maybe I’m really missing someone to talk about it, in person.
But right now, and while I’m proud of a fandom, a whole fanworld fighting as it does at the moment, I just want this all to end and go away.
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