or, how I became a true believer

You begin to suspect something is wrong when your roommate reads a book where Cheyenne Mountain is being bombed and you are both convinced that the SGC is under attack.

But you become even more certain when a professor says something about "nutcases who think the pyramids were built by aliens" and you take personal offense and mutter, "but, but, but!" and suspect that people might be looking at you oddly and realize that if they were, they'd have a pretty good reason.

Or when you're on the phone and you say, "So when Tolkein translated the Red Book into English..." and you don't see anything wrong with that.

So I figured it out. I think. When you're reading, there's supposed to be a willing suspense of disbelief. Ditto for watching movies or TV shows. So fannish space is really the willing suspense of disbelief. While you're watching something, there is a Stargate, it's in Cheyenne Mountain, and the pyramids were built by the Goa'uld. And when you're a fan, that frame of mind never really goes away. At least for me. I'm a true believer in Middle Earth, and in the Gateverse, and in the Scapeverse, and to a lesser extent in the Dromverse and the Potterverse.

I posit that it's a psychologically sophisticated set of beliefs required to exist in fannish space. I am simultaneously avoiding spoilers for Evolution (pt 2) and thinking about reality as if Daniel were actually at this point in time imprisoned in South America.

So what happened? When did I start existing in this mode 24/7? I guess when the majority of my time became devoted to fannish activities, when the conversion from normal thought to fannish though became useless expenditure, so I started thinking fannishly all the time.

So do I really believe the pyramids were built by aliens? Of course n-- I don't know. Not that this is a belief that requires much practical application, but for all practical purposes, I do believe it. I suppose if I thought about it, I could come to a more rational conclusion, but only if I thought about it with disbelief re: Stargate firmly in place. And it's been a long time since that disbelief has been in place, and there's no real reason to reinstate it right now.

So until then, I remain one of those nutty pyramids-built-by-aliens people.

In conclusion: cognitive dissonance is fun.

(no subject)

Can I hear a "hell yes"?

"It makes me wonder how much (conventional) buddy slash may or may not be about (straight) women's longing for our own past best friends. Most slashers are women, and women do, in fact, form fairly serious emotional bonds with other women (raise your hand if you made a promise to a girl friend, back in your youth, that when you got married you'd live in the same apartment building, or in the house next door, etc.) And then, of course, that doesn't happen--or typically it doesn't happen, anyway. (Your life may be an exception, I don't know.) But typically, for straight women at least, the pattern is marriage and a kind of lessening of emotional intensity between girlfriends, because you're "supposed" to be putting that intensity into your marriage (or, if you're not married, your friend is and now her husband/partner/lover is getting all her emotional energy.) What's interesting to me is the extent to which--okay, follow this. In slash, very often the guys get ambushed by their homosexuality ("Ohmigod, I love Fraser, I'm gay.") But in life, I think, straight women get ambushed by heterosexuality, which breaks up the great romances of their lives--their relationships with other women." -- cesperanza here, in part of the discussion generated by this discussion.

I'm saying "Amen!" every tree seconds, frankly.