Falling Into Fandom
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Falling Into Fandom |
| Creator: | "A Fellow BATB Lover!" |
| Date(s): | December 18, 2012 |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Beauty and the Beast (TV) |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | Falling Into Fandom, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Falling Into Fandom is a 2012 Beauty and the Beast (TV) essay by "A Fellow BATB Lover!"
The focus is how a fan can become involved in this fandom. It is a primer for cons, discussion boards, Facebook pages, and more. It does not mention fanzines.
Excerpts
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Fandom! Perhaps you are feeling a bit disconcerted with how rapidly you’ve fallen. Let me relieve your mind. This is not at all an unusual experience! Let me tell you my story, and see if we don’t share some similarities.
I have a fairly large DVD collection that I try to watch every year to year and a half (justification for owning so many, don’t you know!). I had discovered the three season set of Beauty and the Beast while browsing a local retailer and had purchased it a while before. I had seen the series when it was first broadcast and loved it (okay, not so much the last season!). There it sat among my collection. So I thought it would be fun to see it again. Popped in the DVD’s and watched. Unfortunately, I got a bad set of DVD’s so some episodes just wouldn’t play through. How frustrating is that when you are trying to revisit a show you liked! So I hopped on to Amazon, looked into ordering another set (by then the local retailer was no longer carrying it) and I found through reviews that there was a bad batch of the three season set, so instead, I ordered the single season versions.
These fan sites offered all manner of enticing content. Did you know there are talented people out there who draw such exquisite pictures of Catherine, Vincent, and other characters? Or produce fantastic photo montages that make excellent desktop pictures to keep these wonderful characters close by? Other talented folks write imaginative stories, sometimes extending story lines from episodes and even writing a much better ending for the show than the actual show writers! By the way, these stories are called fanfics, which you begin to discover there is a whole vocabulary in fandom that you never knew before! I was particularly taken by some stories I read and emailed the author my appreciation. I got back a response! Thanking me and welcoming me into the love of BATB shared by so many. Wow!
These fanfics, and the sites that had them, are what sucked me further into the vortex of fandom. I discovered that people get together through the internet to watch episodes together, and talk about them! What the heck, I thought, why not try it? If it gets too weird, all I have to do is sign off, right? (I also had to learn about Skype, but it was about time I did!). So, bravely, I sent the email requesting to join and got back the instructions.
Let me share with you my natural tendencies to be a lurker on internet boards. I love reading what others have to share, but I am content not to chime in myself. How friendly could strangers be! I was amazed at how welcoming these folks were, and where they were from—not just the United States! I just hadn’t thought about BATB playing in other countries, but you know it did. Why shouldn’t they fall in love with it as much as we did! So now my fandom has an international flair! But before I knew it, I started writing comments as the episode played and even spoke a comment or two.