This is a post about Fan Identity. And Friendship. And the Upcoming Thor Movie. (But mostly about Friendship.)

I’m now on week four of my new job, and things are going splendidly  (For those of you who don’t know, four weeks ago I transitioned to a full time job in visitor services at a local arboretum.) I took a walk at lunch time yesterday and, walking through a stand of really magnificent conifers, realized “They actually PAY ME to show up here every day!” It was a really good realization that I need to make more often, because I've been a little down lately.

Don’t get me wrong – my new co-workers are lovely, lovely people. But I’m easily the youngest person on staff by twenty years and as such, I have a different sensibility about the way the world works and a totally different view on pop culture.

 

As I put it to my friend the other day, there is a large nerd-shaped hole in my work life.

 At both of my other jobs, I had people I could talk to about movies and books and sci-fi things, and make Star Trek jokes, and that was awesome. Now I’m still trying to figure out if anyone will understand my Star Trek jokes, let alone laugh at them.

Put it this way: I didn't know I liked being able to publicly identify as a nerd and with other nerds/geeks/fans until that identification didn't make a connection with people.

I think my more recent involvement in Tumblr has something to do with this as well – on tumblr, everyone is all fandom all the time. They’re excited to share things they make and find, and I love that enthusiasm.

 I also like to share and ‘real life reblog’ with WILD abandon. We have a board at work where we can write what wildlife we've seen, and  you have no idea how excited I get when I see a new bird and I have something to write on the board. I do this with birds, with books I've read, movies I've seen, and especially movies I want to see.

Except now I have no one to reblog to.

Well, the temporary solution to this problem is going to be dinner after work with my good friend, former co-worker and all-around lovely person on Friday. For the purposes of this blog post and the internet, we’ll call her Artemis. Last night, in planning for said dinner, we talked about a number of museum things (I consider her someone I can talk about professional development stuff with)  and then I said we should make time to see the new Thor movie (we initially bonded over the Avengers films.)

She said this was a GREAT idea, and then she asked a rather interesting question. “Is it bad that I’m more excited to see Loki rather than any other character in that movie?”

I assured her I did not think this was bad in the slightest, and observed that there's a whole HUGE group of people on the internet who fangirl Loki like it's not cool to fangirl Thor.

Please don’t mistake me, I think Loki is a fascinating character, both in the mythological sense and in the Marvel sense.  I just can’t get my head around supporting the embodiment of mischief. My personal mythological fangirlyness has always been directed at Tyr, the son of Odin who loses his hand fighting Fenrir and who is supposed to be the embodiment of the valor befitting warriors. The mythological Thor seemed a little mainstream. And so, it seems, is the Marvel Thor considered a little mainstream.

“It’s the bad boy thing,” Artemis explained. “Girls have this inner need to take care of or help the "lost, dark soul" kind of guy. Thor, on the other hand, is a jock type.”

I agree with this statement. In real life, we often have very little patience for jock types whose confidence and braggadocio can be overwhelming, especially for people who have never had confidence like that. Loki as a character is much more accessible. Particularly in the first movie, where so much of his story line is about trying to find himself. Thor in the first film is also trying to find himself in the wake of loosing Mjolnir and being kicked out of Asgard, but not to the same extent that Loki is.  For fans, and I think particularly for the young women to whom a tortured, dark soul appeals,  his story is one they see reflected in their own lives, where they too are searching for meaning and identity.  One of the places they find their identity is in their fandoms, which leads me back to the issue of identity that I was having, and that Artemis was fulfilling for me with this conversation, and that I am now fulfilling with this blog post.

Anyway.

“Also,” Artemis went on, “A TON of fangirls ship Loki/Thor, which is interesting.”

What do you know, another part of fan identity! I commented that, at least in my fan practice, fangirls as a general rule tend to ship M/M ships. There's actually a considerable body of research on why that I couldn’t get into during the course of our conversation, but some psychologists and media studies folks think this is because many young female fans are at a point in their lives where they may feel threatened or intimidated by the thought of romantic involvement, and therefore writing a relationship that they don’t need to see themselves inside can be grounding. Other media studies folks explain that M/M shipping is a way to rebel or talk back against heteronorming inside mainstream media, which also appeals to teenagers who are trying to explore their sexuality.

Whatever the case may be, I have never considered myself one of those fans. From day one inside the fandom, if I was going to be a fan of a male character, I was also going to write myself (or a better, prettier, much more interesting version of myself) into the story, there was going to be lots of really fabulous, M/F sexual encounters, and that was  going to be that. (I have a pretty stable, boring, mainstream gender identity – probably more information than you wanted to know.)

 “Another part of my issue,” she explained, “is that there are so few well written OCs (male or female) so even when a character is clearly straight [inside the text] it can be easier to see an emotional connection between them and another male rather than a poorly written female OC.”

Now, that I whole-heartedly agree with. OCs are a sticky wicket. But the reason for me writing those characters is also one of the reason I think M/M shipping occurs at the level it does-- because there is a general dearth of female characters inside many mainstream fandoms.  It's simply easier to make an M/M friendship into something more than pairing them with an existing female character, or trying to write a believable original female character, or OC.  As a reader, I want a place to see myself inside the text, which is why I strongly champion, or flat out make up, more female characters. (In general, I think I've been pretty good at writing OCs in the past, and I haven’t gotten too many complaints about them so far.)

“I can support any ship there is evidence for,” Artemis went on. “That people who just throw two characters together who never interact or have any chemistry is a little annoying.” This much I think we can all agree on. “But with the Thor/Loki, I'm the fence, because if you looked at it from the right angle, there could be underlying emotion going on. Even more so when you add in the deleted scenes from the movie.”

I get that. That makes sense to me. The Sherlock/John ship makes sense to me. The Frodo/Sam ship makes sense to me. Heck, even the Kirk/Spock ship makes sense to me. I’m not hating on valid and wonderfully close readings and interpretations of our fan texts. I think that’s great, and as I've gotten older, I've given these ships more credit than I had in the past because I see the close reading that goes into legitimizing those relationships, and I am in awe of some of it. (I just don’t want your Fili/Kili slash on my dashboard. Sorry. Brothers are different.)

But, as I explained to Artemis, another part of me gets kind of angry because I feel like shipping for some of those reasons almost de-values deep friendships between males, like they can't happen without having a romantic root. And I don't think that's fair to men. Not just fictional men, not just John and Sherlock, not just Frodo and Sam – all men. When two female characters have a close friendship, I don’t see the same kind of F/F shipping sprouting up that I see when two men do, just as in real life two women can get away with being much, much closer than two men seem to be able to without people reading the relationship as something that it isn't. 

And I really don’t think that’s fair.

I wish I had someplace interesting and concrete to go with all of this, but I don’t. I suppose the point I could be  making is that identity, especially fan identity, is important to all of us, we should find it where we can, hold up and defend the personally chosen identities of others, and strive, always, to incorporate them and the values they stand for into our real lives as well.

Whatever it is, Artemis is coming over for dinner tomorrow night, and we shall make a good night of it and be fans together.