That's interesting about the video games. My son had a part-time job this summer testing videogames developed for the hardware my husband's working on right now (at the same company.) They needed people who could go through the games very quickly, because it was at the higher levels that the really cool features of the hardware came into play. It tickled me that playing a large complicated RTS could be considered a marketable skill...
You're spot-on about fandom when you say that it's making an interactive game out of a "static property."
Fandom to me is very basic - it's the group of Paleolithic people around the campfire at night telling stories to each other. The "static" part comes in because most stories are based on and derive from others before them. The dynamic part comes in when the teller looks around and sees either the Ooohs and Aahhs (or the yawns) of those before him or her. That's when the story comes to life - through the process of "telling" (whatever form that may take) as well as the life it takes on within the hearers' minds - and many of those hearers become new "tellers" themselves.
That's one thing I really like about fanfiction, too - it's a *living* mythology that evolves. You can watch it in action, a laboratory for changing and spreading memes. (When people say that "Susan Kay is a virus in the canon," they might mean it insultingly, but it's dead-on accurate.)
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That's interesting about the video games. My son had a part-time job this summer testing videogames developed for the hardware my husband's working on right now (at the same company.) They needed people who could go through the games very quickly, because it was at the higher levels that the really cool features of the hardware came into play. It tickled me that playing a large complicated RTS could be considered a marketable skill...
You're spot-on about fandom when you say that it's making an interactive game out of a "static property."
Fandom to me is very basic - it's the group of Paleolithic people around the campfire at night telling stories to each other. The "static" part comes in because most stories are based on and derive from others before them. The dynamic part comes in when the teller looks around and sees either the Ooohs and Aahhs (or the yawns) of those before him or her. That's when the story comes to life - through the process of "telling" (whatever form that may take) as well as the life it takes on within the hearers' minds - and many of those hearers become new "tellers" themselves.
That's one thing I really like about fanfiction, too - it's a *living* mythology that evolves. You can watch it in action, a laboratory for changing and spreading memes. (When people say that "Susan Kay is a virus in the canon," they might mean it insultingly, but it's dead-on accurate.)