seriousfic

Those fans are what you are not and what people you dislike (and do not wish to be associated with) are

Basically, the general public has a less than positive ~~but more or less accurate~~ idea of fandom. Fandom helps this by confirming those stereotypes, but saying they're one of the good fans. There are various ways of labelling this conflict. "Nerds versus fanboys" (Y HELO THAR!), "true fans versus bad fans," "trekkers versus trekkies," and so on. The first thing these "good fans" do is codify the ways in which what they do is good and what others do is bad. As you might've guessed, Fandom Wank makes a living at this.

Shit rolls down hill here, with (near the top of the spectrum) the casual fan of Lost looking down at the "Lostie" that has played the online games and such to find out what the numbers mean. I'm sorry to say that writers of erotic fanfic are near the bottom of the spectrum, just a little ways above furries, looking down at writers of bad erotic fanfic. From there, fen look down at 'cest shippers, who look down at non-conners, who look down at channers, who look down at Hitler-slashers. As for the Hitler-slashers? They look down at channers, because Sie schreiben Geschichten! Über Haben des Geschlechtes! Mit Kindern!

As you might've guessed, I'm more of a fan of stopping all this talk of being good fans or bad fans and just being fans. All fandoms are created equal and just because someone ships soccer players, that doesn't make their OTP any less valid than McShep. And if someone takes a look at us, warts and all, that can make up their own damn minds about whether we're freaks or not, without Uncle Toms pandering to some whitebread notion of normalcy. Let's face it, life's more interesting when you're weird anyway. Insert overused metaphor of how sports fans are accepted, but sci-fi fans aren't here.

Although chan is a bit much, you must admit.