I read Neil Gaiman’s blog pretty much every day. Just the blog, not too much else, although his site is chock full o’ wonderful. One post came up recently that had me arching my eyebrows. There’s a gang of his fans that are getting tattoos of his characters. These are permanent tattoos. Like forever.

It got me thinking about why there isn’t a group of Jo Leigh fans out there with tattoos of my characters. When I stopped laughing (which took a long time) I thought about the nature of fandom, and how unique each venue seems to be.

Gaiman tattoos actually make a weird kind of sense, seeing as how he does a lot of visual work. So maybe these tats, while being an homage to Neil’s characters, are really more about the illustrator. No? Maybe?

Anyway, it seems to me as if there are fannish things for each kind of fiction – the science fiction bunch tend to draw stuff, compute stuff, play stuff, act out stuff. The literary fans seem to like to talk a lot, and write from a distance, but I don’t know of any lit fans who do much jousting or wearing of costumes (with the notable exception of characters from ThirtySomething who went as Will and Arial Durant for Halloween). Thriller fans? I’m not sure about them. I assume they don’t actually plot to take over the world, but I could be wrong.

Mystery fans? Depending on the brand, they can go anywhere from knitting something, in front of a fire, preferably, as they listen to their favorite cozy read by a British actor to learning how to light a cigarette with a pack of matches in a dark alley for those noir-lovers out there. But I do think the main thing for mystery fans is making friends with a long standing character and chuckling quietly to themselves as they mentally sneak out of a conversation with whomever they’re really with, to imagine they’re with the witty and wry gumshoe they’ve come to admire.

Then there’s the whole fanfiction thing. That’s all about sharing the wicked. Squeeing over the naughty bits. The forbidden. Somewhere in there is a streak of rebelliousness. That middle-aged housewife you’re standing behind at the grocery store? The one who kinda needs her roots done, wearing the mommy jeans? Only she knows that she’s just written this incredibly dark and disturbing Supernatural slash that’s going to singe the eyebrows off her flist.

Now comes romance. I probably know the least about romance fans. The one thing that I know for sure is that they tend to keep books. All of them. Forever. Moving them from town to town in boxes. Shelving them in every room because it makes them happy just to know they have the books.

I also know some fangirls (or fanboys, not sure about that, either) who have taken on the roll of Author Protector, sworn to destroy the words of anyone who doesn’t understand and appreciate their Beloved Scribe.

Then there are some fans who find bliss in the history, and expand that love to costumes, or at the very least reading nonfiction history books on the Regency period.

But I think there are more ways we show how we’re romance fans. Romance fans feel things so deeply, they must feel the need to express themselves in unique, wonderful ways.

My confession? I’m one of those fans who gets an incredible rush when I meet or speak to a like-minded stranger. Any mention of Hornblower, and I’m beside myself with joy. I’m also that way about Sondheim, the Durants, Carl Sagan, Jane Austen and some characters in TV shows that if I told you, you’d laugh. No matter. The connection for me is where it’s at. The chance encounter.

How does your fangirl come out?

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 11:28 am and is filed under Jo Leigh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.