Brain and Brain, ow the pain. Also, Fandom!

[tzikeh]

Work ate my brain. My brain is eaten. I have no brain anymore. The Web Experts did it to me again, and for the second year in a row I have been working on a weekend instead of attending taraljc's lovely Onion Soup party. The Experts so screwed up my schedule and my workload and so stressed me this time that my head a splode. Literally. I was knocked back by a headache which sprang, fully-formed, into the left side of my head with such force, out of nowhere, that when I called my GP and described it to him, he ordered me to the Emergency Room for a CT scan, for fear that I had burst something in my head. Whee. I'm going to start a collection of ER admittance bracelets.

The CT came back negative, and the ER doc "reassured" me by telling me that you know, CTs are only 80% accurate and a small bleed could easily be missed. I asked if maybe there weren't some way to be 100% sure, since, you know, my head might be bleeding on the inside. He said yeah, a lumbar puncture (spinal tap). If it gives you an indication of just how bad this headache was, I was seriously considering letting them do it to be sure. My GP and the ER doc had a conference call and we all decided not to go ahead with that, but that I should return to the ER if anything changed for the worse. So I went home to rest, and went back to work on Sunday. Because I had to.

It's been three days, and I'm not dead, and the headache is better, so we'll assume all is well. This is apparently what they call a "tension headache". I think I will call mine "Athena", because Zeus had to be downing the Advil like Skittles after that little adventure.

In order to re-grow my brain, I need a little fun time, a little down time, a little me time. For many people, this might mean a long bubble bath and a mug of hot cocoa, or a night of dancing and karaoke, or possibly a long weekend of anonymous sex with a variety of well-heeled foreigners in a private retreat cleverly hidden behind the facade of an Indian take-out place.

Er. But, you know, not for me.



As media fandom has become more and more widely appropriated and diluted (and I don't mean since 1996, I mean since the early 1970s), there no longer seem to be any hard and fast lines dividing that which is fannish from that which isn't. Rather, each of us defines the term for ourselves along a sliding scale, and then sifts through the teeming masses to find people whose definitions most closely overlap our own, and clings to those people.

The key difference for me between just liking something and being fannish about it is in how I think about the show when it's not on, or the movie when I'm not watching it, or the book when I'm not reading it. If I wonder what the characters do outside of the stories we've been handed, or I tease out the rules of the universe, or I mull what would happen if a story took a left when, in canon, it took a right, then that is the tipping point from enjoying a product to being fannish about it. Otherwise, I could just as well say "I like X" instead of "I'm fannish about X".

For me, being fannish can be both passive and active -- I can be fannish about a show or movie or book without buying merchandise, writing or reading fanfiction, vidding or watching vids, joining lists, heck - I don't even have to talk about it with other people. So long as I'm thinking fannishly about it, the show is now a fandom for me, and not just a show I watch or a movie I saw or a book I read that I liked a whole lot.

A great example of a show I watch which I am not fannish about is Law and Order. I love Law and Order. I can watch it all day, and sometimes I do watch it all day. I love the characters, I love the process, I even love the "shocking last-minute twist, ripped from the headlines". If a conversation begins about Jack McCoy's predilection for sleeping with his assistants, I will readily agree that he's got some work-related problems. But the second the show is over, it is gone from my mind. Left to my own devices, I don't think about what Jack McCoy does when the case is over. I don't wonder how Ben Stone is. I don't try to come up with a case and determine how it would go. I am not fannish about Law and Order, but I still think it's good television. Why didn't Law and Order tip over into my fannish life, where other shows like West Wing did? Who knows. We talk about "the hook", that thing that grabs you, but I cannot find a common denominator to all of my fannish pursuits over the years, and so, for now, I leave it a mystery.

For my own edification, and for those of you who love lists (you know who you are), here's a semi-exhaustive collection of tv shows I have been fannish about. Bold indicates some kind of fannish activity (attending panels at cons, joining clubs, marathon viewing sessions, collecting merchandise, buying tapes/dvds, pimping, vidding, reading fanfiction, joining discussion lists, etc.) was involved.

A-Team
Adventures of Brisco County, Junior
Alias
Alien Nation
American Gothic
Animaniacs
Angel

Battlestar Galactica
Best of the West
Blackadder
Boomtown
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Carnivale
Covington Cross
Cupid

Danger Mouse
Dead Like Me
Dead Zone
Doctor, Doctor
Doctor Who
Due South
Dungeons and Dragons

EZ Streets

Family Guy
Farscape
Freakazoid!

Get Smart
Gvs.E (Good vs. Evil)
Greatest American Hero

Homicide: Life on the Street

I Spy
Invisible Man

Jake 2.0
Joan of Arcadia

Knight Rider

Legend
Little House on the Prairie
Lois & Clark

Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Max Headroom
Monkees
Moonlighting
Muppets Tonight!
Mystery Science Theatre 3000

Night Court
Northern Exposure
Nothing Sacred
Now and Again
Nowhere Man

Oz

Police Squad!
Prisoner
Profit

Quantum Leap

Real Ghostbusters
Remington Steele

Scarecrow and Mrs. King
Scrubs
Six Feet Under
Sledge Hammer!
Smallville
Sopranos
South Park
Sports Night
St. Elsewhere
Star Trek
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Voyager
Strange Luck

Tick (anim)
Tick (live)
Twin Peaks

Upstairs, Downstairs

Voyagers!

West Wing
Wild Wild West
Wiseguy
WKRP in Cincinnati

X-Files

Comments

[destina.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're feeling better - brain pain is very, very scary.

Voyagers!

*chuckle* I wrote a Voyager Handbook when I was about 13. It was chock full of rules and regulations. I might even still have it somewhere.

Poor Jon-Erik Hexum. That was my first traumatic death-of-a-crush.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Oh man, that was traumatic - I remember being in homeroom and talking about it! What was he thinking?

Sigh.

[vickita.livejournal.com]

:::blink::: Huh. I was just thinking about this this morning.

I was in L.A. I remember hearing about it on the news in a hotel room in a Ramada Inn in Burbank. I was there because I was interviewing for a job with the Lockheed Skunkworks. (Didn't take it, 'cause TRW, the place where I did all the weird stuff, made me a better offer and put me up in a nicer hotel.)

I always associate my memories of that day with the death of Jon-Erik Hexum.

[thebratqueen.livejournal.com]

You mean I'm not the only person alive who remembers "Doctor, Doctor"?!? :D

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Oh MAN, that show fucking ruled. They re-ran it for a bit a few years ago and my then-roommate whatssnoo taped a bunch of them. I wonder if she still has them.

[thebratqueen.livejournal.com]

It was such a shame when they cancelled it! Highly underrated show, if you ask me.

[the-star-fish.livejournal.com]

Oh, baby, I loved that show. Pissed me off mightily when it was cancelled.

Matt Frewer is just my kind of geek, y'know?

[tingler.livejournal.com]

I *adored* "Doctor, Doctor". For a short time a couple of years ago, USA was running it in the mornings. *sigh* Dr. Butterfield ended up on "Murphy Brown" for awhile there.

[dragovianknight.livejournal.com]

Wow, almost all your shows make me squee fondly!

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Yeah - it was a really nice walk down Alphabetized Memory Lane. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but this has got to be pretty close to all the tv shows. I'm not touching movies and books. ;)

[amilyn.livejournal.com]

I am sorry you were feeling awful and are still not feeling up to par. I am VERY sorry that you missed onion soup and that we missed you at onion soup.

Your definition of fannishness pretty well matches mine. Your list makes me want to make my own list.

I wrote a paper for my humanities class in high school about how Sledge Hammer! was absurdist. My teachers didn't think I could make a good argument for that and strongly discouraged the topic. Then she gave me an A on it. :-)

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Make your own list! I had a good time doing it.

"Go, Hammer!"

"Go, bomb!"

[amilyn.livejournal.com]

I made a list! *grin*

[sanj.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, that headache sounds brutal. Here's a hug in a box for you to open when you need it.

Your list reads quite a lot like mine (duh); I enjoyed many of the same shows, but I wasn't pimptastic until the late 90s.

I can never quite put my finger on what makes the switch over from "like the show" to "openly fannish about the show," myself. Sometimes I sit on the fence for years and then, apropos of nothing, leap off the fence post and start pimping like a mad thing. The reverse is also true, of course -- one episode can change me from drooling fangirl into cooly polite viewer.

I've never been able to put my finger on what exactly is that quintessence that makes the difference, though.

Feel better!!

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I still think the hot bath and cocoa sounds like a winner.

Your list?
I've only gotten fannish about 15 or so of them But i still have A-Team trading cards!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Okay, this has to stop. No more of my friends are going to the hospital or emergency rooms for the rest of the year! It ceasts and desists now!

(In case you didn't know, sandy was in the hospital this weekend; and a couple other folks here in Seattle were having health crises. I think I broke my little finger, but I'm staying away from the hospital, dammit!)

You know what scares me? I'm tempted to do your meme, but I'm not sure i could remember all the shows. It's that bad. And I had to work too much this weekend too, so I sympathize and send hugs. Not looking forward to another 60 hour week, either.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Hee!

You know how I did my list - I went to www.epguides.com and just went through the alphabetical menus.

Yeah, I heard about Sandy and other things. Shitty week all around last week.

[jackiekjono.livejournal.com]

...and then there is bonibaru's surgery tomorrow.

I certainly hope that goes well.

[kirbyfest.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. Glad the CT was negative, but I'm sorry that the headache has earned its own name. Headaches do not deserve their own names, dammit. They deserve to be GONE, and you deserve to be headache-less.

Take care of you.

[elke-tanzer.livejournal.com]

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

My gawd, what a repulsive weekend. I'm so sorry to hear that.

Your analysis is edifying, your list frightening. I can't imagine ever being fannish about that many things, even if I were in fandom until I keel over at age 100.

But I like the way you define fannish interest vs. interest. prillalar says, on the same subject, "Well, I like ___, but I'm not all online about it." Heh.

[klia.livejournal.com]

What a frightening experience! I'm relieved and happy you're feeling better now, and that you've been treating yourself well, too. Sending you virtual hugs, though I wish I could give you one in person at Escapade!

[asimaiyat.livejournal.com]

Boomtown fandom? Have you written fic? Because I would enjoy reading that.