Fandom That's a Click Away

Back in my day...

China Mieville’s recent interview with TechCrunch magazine brings up a thought I’ve had about the “ease” of fandom these days, and I appreciate Mieville’s threading of the needle by saying that toxic gate-keeping is bad, but also that, perhaps, “we have actually lost something by the absolute availability of everything if you can be bothered to click it.”

Is it “too easy” to be a fan now? Any question I want answered is merely a click away. It’s all out there waiting to be consumed.

For gaming, this has been a godsend as far as learning about new games, new modules, new ideas for being a better GM, etc. I didn’t play RPGs much as a kid because I didn’t know anyone IRL who played. Now, the internet connects me with tons of people who want to play, discuss games, etc.

What is lost by this easy accessibility? I think we all know what is gained. And those gains are substantial.

The Internet: a terrible mistake?

Implicit in Mieville’s critique of “easy” fandom is an overall critique of the internet itself. At least, that’s my spin on it. When Mieville and guys like Jonathan Haidt descry social media usage, I’m fist-pumping along with them, but all the while I’m muttering, “It’s the whole fraking internet. Not just social media.”

I feel like an ingrate. The internet has made it possible for me to share my writing. Digital technology has enabled me to reach people all around the world. If we could turn back time and say “nah” to the internet, would I really give all that up?

The honest answer is no. Even with all that’s been wrought since the advent of smartphones and social media and now AI and all the rest, I would still take the Faustian bargain. How could I not? I wouldn’t have any sort of writing career resembling what I have now. Maybe if I’d lived during the 1930s or 1950s when pulp magazines and mass market paperbacks, respectively, were giving writers a plethora of marketplaces, maybe then I could have found a career in writing.

But in the early 2000s, with the way traditional publishing was going (is going)? The advent of blogs, ebooks, and all the rest? Without the internet, I would be nowhere.

So for me personally, I can’t say I’d willingly give up the internet, turn back the clock, say “nah” to AOL and Blogger and all the rest. I wouldn’t.

And yet.

I remember what it was like in the eighties and early nineties, when I loved fantasy fiction so much and thrilled to see even a glimpse of a MERP rulebook or Dungeons and Dragons boxed set at the local Waldenbooks. When the only way to get a new fantasy book was to go to the actual bookstore or library and wander the stacks. When the little flyers in the back of the Ace paperback were how you learned about new books and authors. When all this media came by happenstance and at random, in fleeting moments browsing video rental stores or hobby stores. When a spare moment flicking through Saturday-afternoon cable led to treasures like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen or Dragonslayer or Krull.

It was a difficult time in so many ways. I felt isolated as a young girl who loved fantasy. I had to cajole sibling, cousin, and friend to join me in an afternoon playing HeroQuest. I caught glimpses of movies on TV and had to search my grandmother’s TV Guide in hopes of finding the title, in further hopes that I could find it at Blockbuster and rent it.

I loved Middle-Earth and Tolkien and had no one to share them with.

But the difficulties, the struggle, the randomness, the half-knowledge: all of these made the pursuit more meaningful. You had to accept that some information, some texts were outside your reach. You had to be patient. The map of your fandom was full of “Here Be Dragons” mysteries, and you spent months, years even, searching for answers.

The scarcity of things made each one precious. When Willow came out in theaters, I cannot tell you how special it was for me. I had a poster for the movie hanging above my bed. I watched every Entertainment Tonight and similar featurette on the movie as I could to find. I craned my neck at magazines that advertised it, at trailers that ran on TV. Even after seeing it in the theater, I waited with restless impatience for it to come on home video.

The only equivalent experience was with Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, and that came out in the earlier days of the internet, when message boards were ascendant and it still took an hour for the QuickTime file to download the trailers. We went back to the theater after ten viewings to see Fellowship of the Ring one more time and wait for the final credits to roll so that we could catch the special sneak preview trailer for The Two Towers. Even in 2001-2002, we didn’t have all of fandom at our fingertips. There was scarcity, and with that scarcity came a kind of exuberant gratitude.

Now, like so much else on the internet these days, we have a glut. The endless flood of stuff is, in David Foster Wallace’s words, an “abyss of Total Noise.” Everyone—including me—has a platform now, and we fill that abyss with all our thoughts on every franchise and intellectual property we’ve ever loved. Even those words—“franchise,” “intellectual property”—are the language of commerce, of the market. All of fandom has become part of that market. I have a writing career because the internet has made entry into the market seamless, frictionless, and ubiquitous. Everyone can start a Substack! Youtube? Why not?! We can all have a voice, even if no one is paying attention to hear us.

Listen, people were selling stuff back in the eighties and nineties. What is He-Man but an advertisement disguised as a kids’ show? We know this. Fan culture itself isn’t possible without mass media, and mass media started long before the internet.

But I remember when even something as nakedly commercial as the Legends of Zelda animated series felt like a gift from the fantasy gods. These things were hard to come by for a kid in the early nineties. You were either home to watch them or you missed them forever.

Until the internet raised (almost) everything back from the dead.

I think of this most clearly with music. When I was in middle school, the only way I could learn about a cool old band was if someone I knew turned me on to them, or I happened to hear a song on the local public radio music shows. How did I come to love the Grateful Dead? Because my cousin lent me his copy of their greatest hits. How did I come to love The Smiths? Because my best friend in seventh grade lent me her brother’s CDs.

I had no way of learning more about these bands besides looking for books at the library or bookstore or talking to someone older who knew stuff. Loving the Ramones or the Jimi Hendrix Experience was almost entirely an exercise in listening obsessively to my CDs and reading what I could in the liner notes. The love I nurtured for these bands and their music came in disjointed, groping efforts, an idiosyncratic journey that was entirely my own to construct. I didn’t even know I was constructing anything; I was only seeking out what I could and cherishing every fleeting experience.

Now, when I speak to my students about The Smiths or Joy Division or Led Zeppelin, they didn’t discover these bands from their parents or an older relative. They didn’t stumble upon them one night while watching 120 Minutes on MTV, and then struggle to find CDs at the local Harmony House.

They found them in their feeds. The algorithm laid them at their proverbial feet. Every song, every recording. All of it streaming, a figurative torrent of sound and frictionless entertainment. I think it’s funny that the name given to a shared file for pirated media is called a “torrent.” Torrential downpour indeed.

And all it takes to learn everything there is to learn about, say, the feud between Morrisey and Robert Smith is a quick trip to Google. We don’t learn about our favorite artists in piecemeal and circuitous ways anymore; we have everything at the click of a link. All of it, all the time. Give me a few hours of rabbit hole time on the internet, and I can find nearly anything.

Alright, Grandma, enough griping

I know I sound very old. Again, I wouldn’t wish the internet away. I’m too used to it by now. I like its offerings too much. Even when I sometimes wonder if the bad outweighs the good, I’m not willing to give it up. A true addict, I guess.

But Mieville’s point about fandom and the internet feels true for those of us who lived the bridge between the Before Times and what we have now. Perhaps the pathology and toxicity of some fandoms is not only because the internet amplifies and incentivizes negative opinions, but also because entry into these fandoms is “too easy.” The “discourse,” as I’ve mentioned before, has overwhelmed the very art it was centered around in the first place. No story or movie or song or novel can withstand the fandom of so many, continuing on for so long, with so many voices and opinions adding themselves to the stream.

Fandom today isn’t about hours spent trying to find the stuff, it’s about hours spent consuming the flood of “content” fans and creators have made. It’s all right there, laid out like a buffet. Fandom is still a commitment, but it’s a commitment to the never-ending glut. Whereas fandom before was defined by scarcity and treasuring whatever we could find, now it is defined by commitment to consumption. It’s a Pokemon world: Gotta catch it all.

As an older Millennial, I remember what it was like before we had everything at our fingertips, and I kinda, sorta, maybe mourn those days, when all I had was that Willow poster above my bed and the faint hope that maybe, somewhere, some day—the next time Mom took me to Kroger—there would be a LucasFilm Fan Club magazine waiting to be discovered.

---

Mad Mardigan Forever

Speaking of Willow, I have to pay tribute to Val Kilmer who passed away recently.

I cannot overstate how important Mad Mardigan was to my childhood. Perhaps only outclipsed by Sorsha. Sorsha and Eowyn. And Ronia the Robber’s Daughter.

But after those badass ladies, it was Mad Mardigan all the way.

He was the coolest action hero alive, and not a gun-toting one, like so many others. I have always had an antipathy to guns, both real and imaginary. Action heroes who fought with guns were never as cool as those who fought with swords or other hand-to-hand weapons. Give me the Ninja Turtles any day, or Indy with his whip, or the Dread Pirate Roberts, or the king of them all, Mad Mardigan.

It’s because of Kilmer’s charisma and craft as an actor that Mad Mardigan is so iconic. Similar to Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, Kilmer had the “it” factor that made a well-written action hero character leap off the screen as a legend. If the Willow movie had been developed into a franchise, I’m sure that Kilmer’s Mad Mardigan would have become as culturally significant as characters like Conan, Han Solo, Indiana Jones, etc.

Not that Willow would have been a good movie to make into a franchise. Maybe yes, maybe no. But simply that Kilmer’s creation with Mad Mardigan was awesome enough that it could have become a bigger cultural phenomenon.

And unlike another of my favorite movies from childhood—The Princess Bride—Willow was unabashadely high fantasy. Whereas Wesley and Buttercup and Indigo Montoya et al. live on and find new fans year after year, Willow is a bit forgotten by the larger culture (or derided by some). I think this is because The Princess Bride is 1.) a better-written film, and 2.) more accessible because of the comedy and tongue-in-cheek elements and general “fairy tale” vibe.

Straight-up fantasy-fantasy is a harder sell to mainstream audiences (even after Jackson’s LOTR juggernaut and Game of Thrones’ TV dominance), and so Willow was always pushing uphill. Nevertheless, I still think Kilmer’s creation would have become even more of a cultural icon if the movie had spawned worthy sequels.

I was truly saddened by news of Val Kilmer’s passing. He helped shape my childhood.

This is the gift that artists give us: a lasting impact on our imaginations.

---

That’s it for now. As always, thank you for reading!

And if you are looking for Arthurian fantasy, consider my novel, The Thirteen Treasures of Britain, or if you want a dash of nostalgic coming-of-age, 1990s-style, there’s Avalon Summer and its companion fantasy, Gates to Illvelion. Or you can check out my short stories HERE.

Remember, if you enjoyed this post but can’t afford a monthly subscription, you can always buy me a coffee.

---

This newsletter is run on a patron model. If you can support it with a paid subscription, I would be grateful.

As always, this newsletter remains free and open to all who want to join me in exploring the various contours of the fantasy genre. Thank you to ALL my subscribers!