In November, I was working with my friend Adam at the Supanova cons in Australia (think ComicCon or Armageddon). Convention culture hasn’t historically been part of my fandom experience, until Adam invited me to cosplay with him at New York ComicCon a couple of years back. But it meant that the day after the US election, when I would ordinarily have felt extremely depressed, I instead got to spend the whole day surrounded by thousands of fans who were so excited to meet their faves, to show off the incredible things they’d created, and to share in the uninhibited joy of being a fan.
One of the things that struck me as a very casual Star Wars fan was the incredible array of Mandalorian armour on display. Cosplayers weren’t just recreating Boba Fett’s or Din Djarin’s costumes — they were making their own amazing variations. I saw a Mountain Dew Mando, and these amazing Micky and Minnie Mandos:
Used to the incredible fidelity of most cosplayers recreating accurate-to-source outfits, I had to ask Adam what was going on. Turns out the Star Wars lore that developed over the years is that Mandalorians customise their armour, reforging it and repainting it to reflect the clans they come from, the battles they’ve fought, who they follow, and so on.
Fans have taken this and run with it, creating their own, stunning personalised designs for their armour in a rainbow of colours and concepts and construction.
This made me SO happy — a gorgeous burst of transformative joy in such a long-running fandom. AND being surrounded by all that creativity and positivity was the perfect vaccination against all the political nonsense that has followed. As Mike said this week, “they’re on stage but you don’t have to be their audience.”
It also immediately made me start thinking what my armour would be. I’m leaning towards a LEGO theme. Write and tell me about yours.
It’s been impossible to miss the fallout from Vulture’s longform reporting into the allegations against Neil Gaiman (every conceivable TW, look after yourself). This wasn’t a surprise to me because I’d listened to the Tortoise Media podcast Master last year covering the same material, and I wish nothing but love and healing to his victims. For people struggling with what it means to be a fan of someone who turns out to be absolute trash, I can’t recommend enough reading Claire Dederer’s book Monsters: What do we do with great art by bad people? (although in Gaiman’s case, maybe even his art wasn’t his). Also interesting, if you have the spoons — this piece from Emmy Rakete on the political economy that makes this sort of predation possible. And if your tendency is to think “well I was never a fan of his anyway”, then Kayleigh’s piece I don’t care that you never liked that abusive celebrity is for you:
We like to like people, places, things. We like to bask in the warmth of fandom enthusiasm, to get pleasure from the artistic output of those whose talents greatly exceed our own. This is part of what makes life sweet and surprising. But it’s also not a linear journey free of obstacles.
In a week of David Lynch tributes, I loved this interview with Mary Reber, the woman who lives in (and shows fans through) Laura Palmer’s house:
We need each other, we need that interaction. We’re missing it greatly, I think. People say, “What are you doing? You’re letting complete strangers into your home.” I could look at it that way. Or I could look at it as, This person needs to see this place, and we need to have this communication.
Superhot: The Spicy World of Pepper People (Hulu) is a great doco series that explores the world of people who are hooked on incredible hot peppers – growing them, breeding them to increase how hot they are, competitively eating them, making sauces from them. Chilli pepper fandom, in other words. Nurse Aurea de Guzman, who had built up tens of thousands of followers as she learned to grow increasingly hot peppers, is filmed inviting her real-life friends and colleagues over so that she can “come out” as a chilli fan to them – and is shown to be mortified by the reveal of her hobby and convinced her friends will think she’s a freak. It was striking to me that people still make each other feel this way. That people can fear that the things they’re passionate about and have found mutuals for online will be ridiculed if they reveal them to the people they have relationships with offline. What you love matters.
I think of Madison Square Garden as one of my fandom homes, having seen so many Harry Styles concerts there, and now watching ice hockey games played there, so I was boggled on my re-read of Jilly Cooper’s Riders to find Rupert Campbell-Black competing in a showjumping event at MSG! Apparently the National Horse Show was held there until 2002. Anyway, I loved this article about going to a bullriding event at the Garden this month: The Tickling of the Bulls.
Yes, I’ve been thinking about Twilight lately. No, I won’t be getting the Cullen’s house in LEGO. It doesn’t fit in my streets.
Bobby Fingers, the surrealist Irish model maker who is my current YouTube obsession dropped a new video. If you’re not familiar with his oeuvre, I recommend beginning with his Drunk Mel Gibson Arrest Diorama. Pertinent, now that Trump has put him in charge of Hollywood.
