The Definition of Fan

[sistermagpie]

Reading about the recent…episode…is reminding me that people have very strong feelings about BNFs--some feelings even border on disturbing. It started me thinking about the question of definitions, specifically

BNF and Fan.

These two words are absolutely central to the fandom experience, yet they’re both argued over all the time. I think part of what makes them both so difficult is that they’re very much "I know it when I see it" words, and when someone tries to define them more clearly they start to drift away from the way they’re really used.

For instance: fan. When I first came into HP fandom I always felt I needed to confess that I wasn’t really a "fan" of the books because they weren’t special books to me. I didn’t re-read them for the pleasure of re-reading them, they weren’t "my books" in that way. But eventually I realized it was pointless for me to protest I wasn’t a fan because I was in the fandom. It didn’t matter that I didn’t loooooove the books, what made me a fan was the way I related to them and focused on them. There might be plenty of other people who profess to love the books more than I do and have far fewer problems with them, but they never think about them when they’re not reading them. I think between me and someone who loved the books but hadn’t given them much thought any random person would accurately name me as the "fan" based on my tons of essays and discussions about them. The other person would be a "fan" in the casual sense—they like the books. I would be a fan meaning I was in the fandom, and that’s the definition I use on lj.

That brings up the question of whether one is no longer a fan if one becomes disappointed with the source material. Some would say one can’t be both, but if it’s true, what do we call the many people who are active in every fandom and also very critical? I stayed in X-Files fandom until the show ended, yet I thought the last couple of seasons were horrible, even to the point of betraying the whole point of the show. Did that make me no longer a fan? It seems pointless to say so, since I was still active in the fandom. I was just now one of the fans to whom people said, "If you don’t like the show, why do you watch it?" and who had to point out that I enjoyed talking about the show, that my fandom interest was never based on just passively liking it. I was still enjoying pulling it apart and seeing how it worked and didn’t work.

The second definition that gets fuzzy is BNF/Big Name Fan. Lately I’ve seen a number of calls to level the playing field in canon by defining BNF as only fen who have some kind of contact with the people involved in the creation of the source material. The closer you are to them, the bigger you are. In HP, for instance, Emerson is a BNF because JKR knows who he is and has been interviewed by him. I would never challenge Emerson’s status as a BNF—on the "I know it when I see it" scale I’d give him a yes (there’s plenty of BNFs I’ve never heard of—HP is a big fandom with lots of people producing stuff). But not because he has had contact with JKR. For me that definition, where he’s a BNF because he has had contact with the "only true" BNF, JKR, is completely strange. First of all, JKR is not a BNF. She is not any kind of F, she’s the author of the source material. Secondly, I just see no more reason to be impressed with someone for having contact with a celebrity than I do to be impressed with someone for writing a widely-read fanfic. Actually, to be honest, I am more impressed with the fanficcer if I admire his/her work.

That’s just the way I center my fandom experience. It’s about creating things in fandom in response to the source material, be it art, Meta, fic or a service for others like an archive. It’s all centered in the fandom community, not the world outside the community. Someone having celebrity contact to me is just like…eh, it’s just a person with a potentially good anecdote (and equal potential for a boring anecdote). I know plenty of people who have interviewed or somehow come into contact with celebrities and it means very little to me—not because I’m so above that sort of thing but because it just literally usually means very little. Celebrities get interviewed; they get seen by regular people sometimes. My coming into contact with one says absolutely nothing about me except that I happened to have this contact with the person one day. If someone has more contact than that, like if they have an ongoing true relationship with a celebrity, and it makes them a BNF, frankly it makes me think less of them, not more, because why are they trading details of their friendship with strangers in fandom?

So it basically comes down to my tailoring my experience in fandom differently than other people do. Some people are interested in the author, the actors, the movie-making or tv-producing process. I’ve always been more about the fictional world and what people have to say about that. It’s like two different fan universes that orbit around different centers and perhaps both think the other is very strange. I’ve read plenty of posts where people argue that fans should "respect the canon" or the author by writing the characters the way that fan thinks the author says they should be written, or not changing certain aspects of the world in fanfic, or agreeing with the author’s take on any random subject.

Clearly they wouldn’t post these things if they didn’t think them, yet to me they’re completely bizarre. It’s like someone telling me to create some fictional master for myself that I must obey and please while I’m in fandom for no reason. Why would I model the things I could say about the books or the world in general on some random person just because they wrote the books? I mean, of course there is a certain respect I pay to the author as a human being. If the author didn’t like people putting up pictures of her child, for instance, I’d respect that opinion (I wouldn’t do it in the first place!). But a lot of the stuff other fans call me to respect seems completely odd to me. The things that some people think make one "cooler" as a fan might be the things that make me cringe with embarrassment and vice versa.

In fact, sometimes it just seems to come back to the same thing everyone claims to want to avoid, which is power imbalance in fandom. If we stop giving undeserved respect to fans on the basis of their sub-creations (fics, art, archives, etc.) and place it where it belongs, with the author, then we’ll all have a more realistic and egalitarian view or ourselves as fans, right? Well, no, wrong. Because as is always seen in fandom, that’s just another power set up based on different principles. It’s almost like the difference between a society with a power base of artisans or intellectuals (using the terms a little tongue-in-cheek since we are talking about fanfic and porn) and one where the power lies with the priests—that is, with fans claiming to be oracles for the god creator. Both systems are easily corrupted or lead to power imbalances. Both are going to create BNFs and those BNFs are going to have circles of friends and so inspire resentment in those inclined to need to be friends with them just because of their status. Both groups of BNFs "control" fandom in different ways. The first group makes people feel that people "only read" fics recced by them or whatever. The second group privileges contributions they deem "author supported" over any they don’t, and quickly comes to mistake their own preferences for canon anyway.

In both cases the real power to "fight against" the oppression lies in the individual him/herself. As I said I do believe that fans can make things unpleasant for other fans and so influence what gets said. There’s sometimes an uneasy balance between people who need to be their own person and learn to deal with disagreement and people who act maliciously (or just poorly) and don’t take real responsibility for it. It’s easy to do the one and accuse everyone else of doing the other.

Comments

[skelkins.livejournal.com]

It's like I was talking about with somebody recently, there's a real culture on lj of "standing up for your friends" when the friends in question are barely known to you.

Funny, I was just talking about that very thing with someone earlier this afternoon! Yes, there's a tendency to conflate the personal and the, erm, quasi-professional (for lack of a better term) in fandom, and it's one that I often find extremely disturbing. Back when I was more active in the fandom, I seemed to find myself getting accused of "disloyalty" rather frequently, and I did find that sort of upsetting. I mean, I wouldn't say that "loyalty" is one of my particular personal virtues, but I don't think that I'm unusually perfidious or treacherous either! It can sting to be accused of being a bad friend when you don't think that you've done anything to warrant that accusation. But there does seem to be a very real and very strong tendency towards partisan politics in the HP fandom (Hey, fandom recapitulates canon!), and that can make people behave in some very strange ways when it comes to "picking sides" and concepts like that.

But I think that conflation of personal and 'professional' is one of the things that makes the BNF issue so very troubling to people. This gets into both what jlh was saying up above and what blackdog says down below, about concerns surrounding the question of personal bias among the movers-and-shakers of a given community. Some people are always going to be more popular or well-known than others, for whatever reason, and often those people are also going to be the ones in charge of things like websites and archives -- for the very reason that one of the ways people become well-known and respected is by making important contributions to the community as a whole.

But when you combine that with a fandom culture that sometimes seems positively tribal in its emphasis on partisan loyalties, then it all becomes rather problematic, because it means that there sometimes seems to be no particular social pressure on the people who hold administrative power to strive to be dispassionate or unbiased in their decision-making.

And I think that's something that really is legimately scary for those who rely on those archives or fora or websites as important parts of their fandom enjoyment. I don't think it's entirely irrational for less influential fans to fear that certain areas of the fandom are somehow being "run" by some kind of shadowy Old Boy's Network, because while that may be a gross over-simplification of the way that fandom dynamics actually work, I don't think that it's necessarily a completely inaccurate description, either. The fandom has become large and dispersed enough at this point that it's become much easier than it used to be to avoid arenas dominated by cliques or factions who may "have it in for you" for whatever reason, but I can't say that I blame people for worrying about it still. It can be difficult to enjoy yourself in a fandom where a group of people have taken against you, and there's a kind of group-think that goes on that really can sometimes lead to people being persecuted.

Of course, I tend to think that it's the group-think, more than the BNFs themselves, which is mainly responsible for that problem. But I can certainly see why people tend to conflate the two issues, especially within the HP fandom, where there are such strong tendencies both towards conflation of the personal and the political and towards partisan divisions and "which side are you on, boy?" factionalism.

Oh, fandoms mirroring their sources in really funky ways, indeed!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Back when I was more active in the fandom, I seemed to find myself getting accused of "disloyalty" rather frequently, and I did find that sort of upsetting.

This is so interesting to me because I've had similar problems. Not in fandom that I remember, but in life. This is kind of a strange way of explaining it, but when I was a teenager not once but twice I had people give me the book "Little Miss Troublemaker." It was one of those Little Mr./Little Miss books and in both cases they had sort of bought a stack to pass out to a group of friends. And both times it was given to me I was like...why this one? When do I get into trouble? So I read the book and the book's about this girl who goes around getting people mad at others by telling lies. She tells Mr. Round that Mr. Square said he was fat, she tells Mr. Happy that Mr. Silly said his gardening sucked--whatever.

Now I'm ever more confused--when do I do that??? It's pretty horrible! And finally the only explanation I could get was that whenever everyone fought with each other, I was never in the fight. I didn't take sides.

You can see the connection. Yet I wasn't even aware that I was doing it. And it wasn't even like I was aware of not wanting anyone angry at me. It was more that I just never felt like one side was right and one was wrong. It was always more like it was temporary and complicated and had nothing to do with me. That's what surprises me in fandom, that people are so ready to stake their own reputations so easily when they have very limited access to the facts or the person's character they're defending. It's not that you shouldn't ever take sides, but I just don't like to take a position that's more extreme than I think I really understand.

Of course, I tend to think that it's the group-think, more than the BNFs themselves, which is mainly responsible for that problem.

Oh, definitely, though of course they can overlap. It's funny when people think they can bring down one group by creating a bigger group, yet without becoming what they claim to despise. I think that's also part of what JLH refers to in saying that it's never so simple as it looks from inside the circle. People rarely feel that they could be "controlling" stuff in fandom even while others agree that they are.

[skelkins.livejournal.com]

Wow, how weird that two different people decided to express their feelings about your tendency to play Switzerland in precisely the same (somewhat passive-aggressive) way! That must have been really disconcerting.

You can see the connection.

I think I can. People often seem to assume that if you don't take sides in some given dispute, then you must be, like, some sort of spy. And I guess I can see how people might then go from there to: "And so since she's a spy, she must be telling my enemy things about me...maybe she's not even telling them true things about me...maybe she's even making bad stuff up about me!" I mean, it's a pretty slanderous leap of (non-)logic, but I can certainly see how people manage to go there. Being involved in disputes tends to foster paranoiac thought processes even under the best of circumstances.

And it wasn't even like I was aware of not wanting anyone angry at me.

Probably a good thing, that, since refusing to take sides is often an excellent way to ensure that everyone will be angry at you!

It was more that I just never felt like one side was right and one was wrong. It was always more like it was temporary and complicated and had nothing to do with me.

Yes, exactly! Especially that "nothing to do with me" part. That's the part that gives people trouble, I think, because they're thinking: "Well, if you were really my friend, then you'd care about what was happening to me." And I can never seem to be able to explain that while I do care about them, that isn't at all the same thing as considering the quarrel itself something on which it would make any sense for me to take a position.

Usually I find myself wishing that the people involved would find some way to sort it out themselves, without feeling the need to drag everyone else into it, because I think that in most (if not all) cases, such situations are only made worse by the involvement of a host of previously-disinterested parties - it often seems to serve only to transform what could have been only a "temporary" falling-out into a much nastier and far more permanent one.

People rarely feel that they could be "controlling" stuff in fandom even while others agree that they are.

Really, I think it's often fairly difficult for people who aren't already incredibly arrogant to accept the notion that their words might have a great deal of influence on other people. Who thinks about themselves that way? It's a lot easier to be aware of your own vulnerabilities than it is to be aware of your own power.

I also think that the problem may be somewhat exacerbated in fandom because so many of the people here were...well, not among the social elite, shall we say, in our younger days? It seems to me, at any rate, that you meet far more self-identified "geeks" in fandom than you do self-identified "Hell, yeah, I was one of the mean popular girls in high school!" types. So perhaps there's a lack of skill set that ties in here as well: nobody is born knowing how to exercise social power responsibly. That's a learned skill. And people who are not accustomed to holding social power are far more likely to scoff at the suggestion that they now really do hold it than they are to say: "Hey, yeah, I guess I sort of do, don't I? Okay, so maybe I should try to be a lot more careful with my words."

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Usually I find myself wishing that the people involved would find some way to sort it out themselves, without feeling the need to drag everyone else into it, because I think that in most (if not all) cases, such situations are only made worse by the involvement of a host of previously-disinterested parties - it often seems to serve only to transform what could have been only a "temporary" falling-out into a much nastier and far more permanent one.

The other thing I noticed about this later was when I discovered I *did* know one friend who did exactly this. She would foster disputes between people all the time. In my life in school there's exactly one person who hated my guts and did so overnight and I've come to believe it must have been this other person telling her something I supposedly said about her. (One person asked her why she hated me and she claimed I'd told everyone she was a slut--which was particularly annoying to me because if I would never call anyone that of all things!)

Anyway, the thing about people like that is that they don't usually wind up with everyone being suspicious of them, probably because they do take sides, very publically, or else give the impression they are, or put themselves in the middle. It's a totally different personality type: one doesn't think friendship requires you to show things you don't feel or believe things you don't believe, the other is all about manipulating those things.

Also, another way this relates to the current wank, I remember seeing how reluctant people were to believe these things about this girl if I ever told them. And I'm not talking about me going around and saying everyone should hate her. I'm saying that when I learned some facts about the situation and shared them, people easily brushed it off, which was bizarre to me. It didn't make them rethink their relationship with her. I remember once my mother, who loved this girl, randomly wondered why I wasn't still friends with her as an adult because she'd always come across to her as a great friend. So I said she really wasn't a great friend, quite the opposite, and my mom starts defending her! Like to her she seemed like a great friend because she looked very together. I was in this odd position of realizing my mother was encouraging me to be friends with somebody she thought was cool for kind of superficial reasons, over people I thought were cool for other reasons.

I imagine this is much the way a lot of people felt in the msscribe thing when they had proof of what she was doing. If you've given someone ISPs etc. and they still need more proof...I can see why that would be frustrating and make it seem like they don't care what this person is doing, period. Especially if you're then accused of having some grudge or being crazy when to you do it, as it seems people were, when to you it looks like such a straightforward case of other people just being mistaken. And that gets back to fandom's ideas about friendship again too--it's hard to read the Jordan Wood saga without feeling like people were actively participating in their own deception and that it was a con based on the same things other cons are based on: greed.

It seems to me, at any rate, that you meet far more self-identified "geeks" in fandom

That reminds me of a comment that surprised me about F_W once where someone compared it to being the small group of nerds snickering at the popular folk or something like that. It's not like I wanted to jump in and say, "You're just like the mean girls in high school!" but it did seem a bizarre thing to think when a lot of wanks come down to hundreds and hundreds of comments directed at one or a small group of people. It did seem like there was this reflex to assume that any group that I'm in is the group of nerds. Besides, even in high school popular girls are known to be set upon and tormented when a big group of people goes after them. You could see the potential danger in people having the power of numbers but also wanting the freedom of being a minority.

[skelkins.livejournal.com]

Well, as I think this recent brou-ha-ha has amply demonstrated - as, for that matter, does most of what goes on at F_W -- there really are people who go out of their way to stir up shit between factions and people for their own ends. I don't know if I've ever had any experience with the Liar Liar variant of Little Miss Troublemaker (if I have done, then I guess I've been successfully duped!), but I've certainly had a lot of experience with her soul-sister, the Spin-Meister.

You've met the Spin-Meister variant on Little Miss Troublemaker, I'm sure? She's quite common in fandom. The Spinmeister says things that are technically truthful, but she never fails to put the worst possible spin on them. She will often quote people directly, for example, and her quotes are always accurate. They're also taken completely out of context, of course, thus totally changing their meaning...but how can you argue with the honesty of a direct quote? She enjoys passing on gossip, but she doesn't really bother to make up lies about what person A said about person B. Instead, she just "reinterprets" them, and always in a way that paints her enemies as utterly villainous, and her allies as pure and innocent victims. When called on her bullshit, she is shocked and indignant. How can you call her a liar? Is not she the only truly honest and forthright person the world has seen, like, evah? (The Spinmeister often likes to portray herself as a lone voice in the wilderness, or as the Only Person Who Dares To Speak Teh TRUTH!!!!) And are not her enemies clearly liars and weasels? You can tell that they're dishonest, of course, because they're not hotly denying the things that she says. Instead, they're resorting to waffle statements like "Yes, I did say that, but what I meant was..." and "Yeah, I wrote that, but if you look at the context..."

It is one of life's little ironies that the best way to appear "dishonest" to some people is to do your very best to tell the truth. Many people don't have a lot of patience for nuance, or for situations in which there are neither easy answers nor obvious heroes and villains.

I'm not entirely sure which I think is more damaging, in fact, the prevalence of Little Miss Spinmeisters in the HP fandom, or the prevalence of her natural followers - people who see the world in starkly partisan terms. They sort of go together, really. It's a symbiotic relationship: where you find one, there you will inevitably find the other.

Bah. A pox, I say! A pox on all their houses! I say it's spinach, and I say to hell with it! ;->

It is a pity, though, that so much of what goes on in fandom winds up reading like a rather crassly and obviously-written satire of the very dumbest aspects of modern American politics.

That reminds me of a comment that surprised me about F_W once where someone compared it to being the small group of nerds snickering at the popular folk or something like that.

Oh, I know! I remember having the same reaction to that comment. It really does tie into an issue that often comes up in canon discussions as well, though: the tendency for people to think that bullying is perfectly okay, so long as they can find some way to position themselves as the ones With Right On Their Side, or to position their enemies as Bad People Who Got What They Had Coming To Them.

I think that it's also often a lot easier for people to behave badly if they can convince themselves that they're acting from an intrinsic position of powerlessness. If with power comes responsibility, then with powerlessness comes a kind of freedom: after all, if I'm powerless, then nothing I do can really hurt anybody anyway, so that means that it must be okay for me to do whatever the hell I want. Right?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

It is one of life's little ironies that the best way to appear "dishonest" to some people is to do your very best to tell the truth. Many people don't have a lot of patience for nuance, or for situations in which there are neither easy answers nor obvious heroes and villains.

Yeah, I've noticed.:-) It's one of those things that really scares me because I always have this stupid idea that if you could just sit down and talk with people eventually you'd reach a compromise. I figure even somebody said something rude that can be gotten over. People say stupid stuff--it's unfortunate that on the Internet it's in writing. But then you see how people are happier to spin things to create more trouble, or read things in a way that makes them more inflammatory, or bringing up stuff to get people angry. What's weird is that somehow the culture of the 'net is perfect for people to stir things up because, like we said, there's that whole culture of showing how loyal you are to different people, even if you don't know them.

I feel like emotions in general get exaggerated on lj--even stuff like {{hugs}}--saying that to someone is actually a different gesture than giving them a hug. Things get exaggerated to the point where you can even feel a pressure to be more emotional and demonstrative when you think you're dealing with a space that's all about the mind and words, you know? Would the Spin Meister really be able to cause quite as much trouble in the real world if people could talk to each other or maybe see expressions? It just seems especially strange that with the msscribe thing, where people were played for what side they were on, doesn't change that. There are people who are now reconnecting, apparently, who fought back then, but it still seems like a common enemy thing. It's like another shuffling of alliances.

I was thinking today about the whole suspicion of people not seeing something in black and white and I thought hey, yet again I picked the right lj name--magpies are black AND white. (And if you look at them closely they're really blue and green as well.) They're supposedly cursed for only wearing half-mourning at the crucifixtion. Talk about spin!

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

This whole sub-discussion has been interesting, and I might have more to say about it later, but I really have to step in and comment on this:

People often seem to assume that if you don't take sides in some given dispute, then you must be, like, some sort of spy.

Heh, that didn't even occur to me. Going a bit TMI, but I can relate to these accusations, not from fandom, or off-line friends, but from the relationship with my parents. They've been divorced for 8 years, but STILL haven't resolved the (economic) conflicts that in large poisened their marriage, and last year it all blew up again, and it's been Cold War ever since. Basically, my mother and father offers two incredibly different stories about how things were, and make the other one out to be pretty much inhuman in their greediness, selfishness and pettiness, and while neither of them has ever offered me and my sister any proof that their side of the story is the correct one, they both expect us to swallow their own story completely, and back them up 100% to the other. When we refuse to do this (which is always, because duh, they're both our parents), they come with strong implications of how ungrateful and disloyal daughters we are, and any questioning of their story, or trying to explain the other's POV, is interpreted as us being completely "duped" by the other parent, and giving them our undivided support. It hadn't occurred to me that they might assume we're "spying" for the other parent, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did, which is kind of ironic, since they're both pretty much expecting us to spy for them. I also find it amazing how our attempts to remain loyal to both of them, is interpreted as disloyalty by both of them. It's really the "with us or against us"-attitude, when all you do, is trying to see things from both sides. It must be easier to live in a world where you paint everything in black and white. (What, me, bitter? Never!)

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Ugh, what a horrible situation! And yet it proves that, as you say, two people can have two completely different versions of how things happened. What do you do when neither seems indisputably right? And then imagine random people you only know over the Internet start demanding that of you.

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it seems unreasonably much to ask of someone else, especially if you're as close, or as distant, from both of them.

To try to return to the original topic of the thread:

Yeah, it's complicated because how do any of us meet, after all? I think in the cases where it's a problem it's more that people decide that they *must* be friends with this person because they're "the best" or whatever, or feel resentful when the friendship doesn't happen.

Yeah, it was something like that I wanted to say, too. The thing is, there is almost always some point before you become friends with someone, or before you fall in love, that at least one of the parties involved must have noticed the other person, and realised they liked what they saw/wanted to get to know the other person, based on something that might all boil down to incorrect assumptions. Only, offline, it's often an impression based on far less knowledge, than it is in online fandom. Er, I don't know if I'm making much sense, but in RL, it can be something as random as how the other person looks, whereas in fandom, it's often what they write, or at least produce (in the case of fan art and fan vids), and how they write/produce it. Not to mention that if you've been a lurker far longer than the other, you may know whatever that poster has chosen to publically reveal about themselves, and you've seen how they interacted with others, so it can soetimes feel like you know them pretty well, even though they don't even know that you exist. Which, in that case, is very similar to the celebrity-crush deal, only difference being, if you want to change that dynamic, you have far more power to do so, than with the celebrity-crush.

But I think what's important to remember in both the case of crushing, or wanting friendship with, someone you've read on the internet, or a RL celebrity, is that it's always by interaction that you actually get to know someone. That's, at least, the way I see it, both online and off. The persons on my flist I consider my closest friends, are the ones I've had most meaningful interaction with, and the ones I consider myself knowing least, are the ones I've had least interaction with, no matter how often they update. I have people on my flist whom have been mutual friends for years, and still we've barely spoken to each other. That's the equivalent of neighbours you're friendly with, and say hello to when you meet them, but nothing more. The difference being, these neighbours can look into my living room, should they choose to, and I can look into theirs. Which sounds creepy, but we've both chosen to leave our doors open, should the neighbours want to have a peak. ;-)

Anyway, as the poster you replied to said, fannish interests can often be good merits to judge how well you would get along with the other, as friends, but no matter how nice -or annoying for that matter- someone seems when you only watch them, you can never really know, until you've interacted with them personally.

[skelkins.livejournal.com]

Wow, I'm really sorry you've been put into that position. That sounds just awful. Sadly, I get the impression it's not that unusual for parents to do that to their kids after a rancorous divorce -- but I'm sure that doesn't make it any easier when it's happening to you.

I also find it amazing how our attempts to remain loyal to both of them, is interpreted as disloyalty by both of them. It's really the "with us or against us"-attitude, when all you do, is trying to see things from both sides.

That's just it. Sometimes neither side seems entirely in the right or entirely in the wrong, and when you don't entirely agree with either interpretation of events, then it's very annoying to be told that this is because you've been "duped" - especially when you're getting that line from both sides at once! It's definitely a manifestation of "with us or against us" thinking, and I find it...oh, disheartening.

[go-back-chief.livejournal.com]

Sometimes neither side seems entirely in the right or entirely in the wrong, and when you don't entirely agree with either interpretation of events, then it's very annoying to be told that this is because you've been "duped" - especially when you're getting that line from both sides at once!

It really is. You do your best to think for yourself, and the consequence is that no one is recognising that you're doing just that. :-(

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Which is why it's so hard to not start a discussion in response to this discussion:

http://wheresthehate.livejournal.com/343.html?thread=119639#t119639

[skelkins.livejournal.com]

Good God. Yes, what a perfect illustration of just the mind-set that I've been bitching about.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh. But honestly, the entire idea that finding oneself in agreement at times with both Angua and Azalais must be proof-positive of an inconsistent and perfidious nature is just so bloody typical of the partisan mindset that annoys me so much in this fandom. You mean you're actually judging people's ideas based on something other than what "side" they're supposed to be on? ZOMG, U flip-flopper!!!111!!!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I'm completely boggled. You'd think from the descriptions this lj is a seething cauldron of battle with me running around lying to everyone. Usually I throw out a topic and people bring their own thoughts to the topic, often while agreeing with the basic idea. I do usually find something to agree with in everyone's post because it adds to things--and it seems more welcoming to someone to say I appreciated their contribution by telling them something they said that I liked. I do vaguely remember the thread where I was probably agreeing with A&A and I'm sure I still do. They were both approaching a subject with different concerns and I don't think I saw any contradiction. Oops.

I once posted a picture here that was that old woman/young woman picture that looks different depending how you look at it. Of course I'm reading that thread wanting to jump in and say, "See, this is just what I mean because it's just your perspectives that's different like in HP the way James, to Snape, is the bully going after the weird kid (who grows on to join the terrorist group) but he's also a great father and a hero and had these great friends... That probably wouldn't be a good idea, though.:-)