Meta-ish

[lierdumoa]

So I was talking to permetaform today and somehow that 20 Questions to a Better Personality meme came up. It came up again in a conversation with my roommate, adrienne2. It's a basic personality test. Only twenty questions, of course, so with a larger margin for error than the version of it you'd find in your average psychology class. Now I saw this meme and instantly fell in love with it. I usually hate memes. I loved this one because after I got my archetype, I went to look at all the other personalities. The quiz basically described each personality with all the most interesting aspects of that personality. So of course I read them and thought -- I want to meet these people. I want to write these characters.

Which fits my personality perfectly. I'm the Ayn Rand Ideal. I look at everything as a tool to help me with my goals (in this case, fic writing). I scored exactly 50/50 on the wacky/sober scale), so I also qualify as The Golden God. I found these results interesting because whenever I took personality tests (usually some school sanctioned thing) I was told I had definite leadership qualities. I don't think of myself as a leader at all, so it didn't really fit until I looked at these two personalities. The Ayn Rand Ideal doesn't want to lead so much as be the best. The Golden God doesn't want to lead so much as be admired and respected by everyone. Leadership qualities, but without the inclination to do any leading.

On a somewhat related note, any Harry Potter meme I ever took put me in either Ravenclaw or Slytherin.

As an avid fan of gender studies, I thought about how interesting it would be if the meme had come with statistics as to which personalities were more common to women/men. When I was thirteen I read an article on how little girls in our culture are taught to be self-depreciating. Any compliment is to be downplayed. Little boys, on the other hand, are taught to boast. To be competitive. I suppose I'm something of a born feminist, because at 13 I remember reading that article and thinking I am not like that, though most of my female classmates fit the description. I was just like my dad -- an overachiever with a short temper. Loud and smart and not afraid to say so.

Being in fandom, my next thought was of how this personality could be applied to various fandom types. The BNF, for example. Most BNF's are producers. Fic writers or vidders. Fanartists, as I can tell, are usually only BNF's to other fanartists, as fanart is it's own fandom, and kind of isolated as fandoms go. The same goes with vidding, though there's more crossover. Fandoms are generally fic centric, so of course fic writers would predominate. I'm digressing. It would be pointless to try to place any one personality type on BNF's, but I think it would be safe to assume that a personality that encourages followers is more likely to have leadership qualities.

Of course, even before I'm naming rules, I'm finding exceptions to them. As I mentioned, I was talking to permetaform. She said the personality type she got was the wacky rational constructive follower. The Paul Begala type. Paul Begala helped President Clinton get elected (I like the guy already). If you tried to define him with an adjective, I think the word you were looking for would be Enabler. permetaform is the only BNF I know of in fandom who became hugely popular not by producing, but by encouraging others to produce.

One last interesting note -- the three people I saw who got The Politician as a personality type didn't associate themselves with the description it gave. Two of them were in fact offended.

Comments

[spaggel.livejournal.com]

Fan artists, as I can tell, are usually only BNF's to other fan artists, as fanart is it's own fandom, and kind of isolated as fandom’s go.

Well, I don't really agree with that. Fanart, for the most part, isn't dominate in the RL fandom’s. Why? I don't know, I can only assume it's because in RL fandom’s, you have actors who, at any given time, can express a wide range of emotions. In face if not in body motion, unlike in anime where you can only do so much with the medium. It's simply easier to Icon or create wallpaper from RL photo's then to create a new piece of art work.

Being in the QAF, there is no really Fanart. I can name a couple, but from my own personal experience, drawing a RL character is often intimidating. OF course, fandom’s like Harry Potter are the above and beyond exception. Fanfic and art are mingled in to the very core of it. Like the BNF's of fic, there are BNF's (I can name more then 5) of art and they too often receive up to 2+ pages (LJ wise) of comments. People rec it and there are communities that 2000+ people watch (example - hp_art_daily) People often write fics based off fanart, or vica versa. Image are drawn as "gifts" just as a fic writer would write a drabble/fic for someone.

Then there is the Anime fandom’s. I'm not to much into them myself anymore, but when I was, and what I see of it still, is that fanart is still very very strong. Like Harry Potter, fanartist's have many people watch their LJ just for their art as most do for the fic. The doodles and scribbles receive just the same "omg, so sweet and cute!" etc etc, that drabbles often do.

It isn't it's own fandom, it's just a different medium. The quantity, if any, is often based off the fandom it's self. I can say that I have only seen 3-4 Buffy or 5 QAF fanarts (but it's getting to be much more common), while I get 3-4 new pieces of HP fanart running through my LJ list everyday.

You can't exclude a part of a series based fandom and then group it with everything else. I know you vid from many fandom’s, but your work is still a major part of the fandom no matter what else you vid too. The OZ vid is a perfect example, they don't group you as "a fandom vidder", they obviously see you as a contributor to the fandom that they love, even though your not in the fandom. They don't say, "look! Oz fic! oh.. and someone might have done a vid, but it's on fandom. The OZ vidding fandom."

There are Just fart or just fanfic communities, there are also intermingled. It just depends on what a person wants. I have just fanfic and just fanart communities I am in, then again I have shipping based communities as well. Fanart, while not big in some fandom’s, is STILL a part of any fandom that it's drawn for.



Done. Not meant to be bitchy, because I love you Lama, I do. Art to me is like Vidding to you, I'm very passionate about it and wanted to represent it in a better light.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I think we got wires crossed somewhere.

I know that drawing tends to be more prevalent in anime fandoms and book fandoms. When I think fanart, because I belong to live action fandoms for the most part, my first thought is generally not drawing. Most of the fanartists I know are people like linzeems (whom you probably don't know, she's mostly in Smallville). She does collages, for the most part. She also vids, but it's secondary to her collaging.

A collage, while it looks nice, isn't as accessible to the average fan as fic is. The average fan usually lacks the vocabulary to explain why they think one collage is better than another or critique it critically. Virtually anyone in the Smallville fandom can read a fic and say if the characterization is off. Only another fanartist is going to be able to look at your collage and tell you that you're not properly utilizing negative space. The average SV fan is never going to read fanart meta or know about fanartist wank (which from what I can tell, is often totally unrelated to general SV wank).

Now drawing is different from collaging. Drawing is usually very accessible to the average fan. Drawing tends to have far more in common with fic than other types of fanart.



You can't exclude a part of a series based fandom and then group it with everything else.

I didn't mean to be exclusionary. I'm not imposing this behavior on vidders and fanartists. Most of the vidders I know do in fact group themselves with other vidders more than they group themselves with the fandoms they vid in. f1renze and kitkatbyte are just as well known among vidders than they are among QaF fen.

I didn't come up with the idea that vidding is it's own fandom. This attitude is fairly prevalent among elitist vidders. I hang out with elitist vidders all day long. And yes, the fans of a show might just see a good vid as a tribute to their fandom, but any serious vidder doesn't get to be a serious vidder by pleasing fans. That's just a happy benefit. All the serious vidders I know are multifandom in watching, even if they aren't very multi-fandom in what they make. We have our own BNF's. Your typical fan probably wouldn't know who laurashapiro is unless they were in the fandoms she vids in, but virtually every vidder I talk to knows who she is regardless of whether they have any fandoms in common with her.

Vidding is generally more independent of the fandoms being vidded than fic is. It has it's own meta, wank, BNF's, etc. Some branches of fanart are not as fandom based as others. Some might be fandom based, but are still alienated from the fandoms their in to the point that they can have their own meta, own wank, own BNF's etc. And of course, there are exceptions to every rule. There are some fandoms whose vid community has no connection to the vidding community at large. Charmed for example. That doesn't mean vidding isn't it's own fandom. It means that not all vidders are in the vidding fandom. The same way I could write a Pirates of the Carribbean fic right now and I would not be in the PotC fandom.

[permetaform]

This attitude is fairly prevalent among elitist vidders. I hang out with elitist vidders all day long. And yes, the fans of a show might just see a good vid as a tribute to their fandom, but any serious vidder doesn't get to be a serious vidder by pleasing fans. That's just a happy benefit. All the serious vidders I know are multifandom in watching, even if they aren't very multi-fandom in what they make. We have our own BNF's.

o.0;

um. m'dear? call me tomorrow. or email me.

::facepalm::