Fandom meta

[sakura_no_miko]

I Don't Want to F*** Him, I Want to BE Him

As a child, most of the fictional characters I related to were male. I spent my time imaging that I was Aladdin, Luke Skywalker, Ford Prefect, Batman, Boba Fett, and Billy the Blue Ranger. Part of this was a numbers game—there are far more male characters to look up to, especially if you’re into sci-fi and fantasy. Part of this was down to genderfluidity on my part, which I hadn’t really reconciled at that point in time. But the older I got, the more that relationship changed; suddenly I was told that I liked Obi-Wan Kenobi because I liked him. Because he was handsome and I was a girl, and having a poster with Ewan McGregor on your wall was a very specific tell in the late nineties and early aughts. It was deeply puzzling to me, because on the one hand, they weren’t wrong—Ewan McGregor was and remains a very attractive dude. But Obi-Wan Kenobi was precious to me for a completely different list of reasons. He was sarcastic, and he was a Jedi, and he was kind of a mess in a way that I found incredibly relatable. John Crichton from Farscape was another one. Yes, he was a gorgeous guy, and I noticed because people generally do notice those things. But John was also funny and responded to stress with nerdy pop culture references. He was smart, and he was a soppy romantic, and he was insanely adaptable. I wanted to be that, not marry it.

This one isn't directly about fanfiction, but it's still pretty relevant to fandom, and how we interact with fandom.