Raving mad and somewhat slightly dazed

...though it might be one day.

ya know, in fandom, I think there's a distinction between "enjoyable" and "personally meaningful" Or at least, there /should/ be.

There's a difference between things that are fun and things that are important, and I haven't seen it addressed.  There's a difference, between a fun romp for an afternoon and something that resonates in your chest and heart- between background noise in your brain and the something that slots into the empty places in your soul and makes you /stable/ in a way you weren't before.

For example: The Dresden Files are enjoyable. Discworld saved my fucking soul. There is a /difference/.

(And both kinds matter! One cannot live off emotional intensity alone; i have an entire section of fiction and music for those times when I don't want to feel anything.)

And I think it should be acknowledged, when talking about a piece's flaws, that there's a distinction? In defending one's attachment to a piece (or a fandom, or a ship, etc), rather.  "yes there's some icky bits but it's fun" and "yes there's some icky bits but it kept me alive when I wanted to die" are not the same statement, and they shouldn't be treated the same.

I've just been thinking about this, the last couple of days.

...I should sleep now.

I need things that are mine, and mine alone. There is an exhilaration in shared experience, but it is something between, something that only exists in the shared and not in any one person. It can be greater than any of them, water poured into a shared well, and yet, and yet.

Stories are me. I am a collection of tales bound up in flesh, little story factories tucked away inside of bone and muscle and nerve tissue. Stories from me, stories about me - I don't know how to exist except as narrative distilled. (Maybe I'm broken, but that's for another day.)

But if all of my stories are us or them; if everything is shared and between - do I still exist at all? If I'm just the place where all of those shared experiences overlap, am I still real? (Is anyone?) If that particular combination of different us-stories and we-stories is unique, does that make a difference?

I don't know. I just know that i don't like it. I feel hollow. Everywhere my mind turns there's someone else there, tugged in by that story-that-is-us, and I have to deal with us when I want to deal with me. There are invaders in my head, strings attached to other pople strung everywhere. It's like walking into a room I thought was empty and finding it full of people.

So I need things that are mine. I need stories that I own, that are mine and no one else's. (Or at least stories that feel that way.) I need - spaces in my head where I can go and find no one else waiting for me there, where I know that if all of those shared experiences drop away, there will still be a /me/ left over.

Maybe it's privacy, a place where I don't feel the weight of shared experiences on my back, without the ghosts of other people surrounding me. Maybe it's security, the knowledge that if -when - people leave, they won't drag everything I love and care about with them. Maybe it's an anchor, being able to say this is me, this is from me and to me, weaving the stories into myself instead of spreading them outwards. Maybe it's all of them.

But I think it's something I need. A room of my own, as it were. So maybe that's okay? Psychological me-time, I suppose. (Do other people need this? Does that matter, if I need it?)

Hmm.