A love letter I've been meaning to write

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Title:	a love letter I've been meaning to write
Creator:	synecdochic
Date(s):	March 4, 2007
Medium:	online
Fandom:
Topic:	fandom
External Links:	a love letter I've been meaning to write
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a love letter I've been meaning to write is a post by synecdochic with 127 comments.

It is a love letter to fandom.

Excerpts

And the thing is, fandom, she is brutal sometimes, and fandom, she is a bitch sometimes, but fandom -- it's not a thing, it's a people, it's a collection of people, and some of them are my people and some of them aren't, and we all have different needs and different goals and different starting and ending points. There's no entrance exam, and there's no checklist; there's nothing to say that I am of fandom and you are of fandom; my fandom isn't your fandom and your experience isn't my experience. And fandom, she is composed of brilliant people, passionate people, smart and talented and motivated and caring people, and fandom, she is full of the kind of people you'd never want to invite over for dinner, and the thing is about fandom is -- fandom, she is a mirror; you get what you bring to the table, you just get more.

We, fandom-we, spend so much time hashing out our own social norms, and we spend so much time being concerned about face and manners and politeness, and there are so many things we don't talk about because we're worried about who'll hear and who'll judge. And I have so many theories on why, and so many thoughts on why we do it, and I keep thinking of a post one of my favorite knitting bloggers made a while ago: her thoughts were specifically on knitting, but it says so many things about women, too, and fandom, as a whole, is more women than men. And women are taught, are trained, to step aside. We're told a thousand ways that it's not right to take credit for what we do, and it's not modest to accept praise, and it's not good and it's not right to say yes, I worked hard on this, and I am proud of how it came out; we must say oh, it's nothing instead.

So this is my love letter: to fandom, to fans, to you, to us, to the giant crazy juggernaut that fandom is and was and ever will be. You are amazing. You. You've given me so much, and you give me more and more every day I'm here, just by being there. Whether we're the fastest of friends or just casual acquaintances, whether we've never spoken or talk every day, whether I've dropped everything to fly cross-country to hold your hand or never said a word to you where you could hear, you've made my life a bigger, richer, crazier space, and I'm a better person for it, in ways it'll take me years to even begin to understand the depths of. Thank you.