avrelia: (Default)
avrelia ([personal profile] avrelia) wrote2004-08-31 11:33 am

Avrelia was thinking. Run untill it's too late!

It came to my attention that Buffy fandom has an inordinate amount of lawyers (future, past, and present) in it.

I can think of three possible explanations:

1) I notice them (birds of a father and all that), and they take a prominent position in my mind, but not in reality.
2) The amount of lawyers in the fandom represents proportionally the amount of lawyers among the general population.
3) The fandom attracts freaks of nature.


What is your opinion?

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/automatedalice_/ 2004-08-31 08:56 am (UTC)(link)
i'll choose C. i really think that if you took a huge general survey of fandoms you'd find that there are a high percentage of BtVS fans with advanced degrees, weird degrees, or "weird" occupations. & i think you'd find a large number of people in the IT field as trek fans. i think you're a lot more likely to have fans with humanities/liberal arts degrees as BtVS fans than as trek fans, just because of the nature of the storytelling. arcs, etc. & i think the arcs & the weird backgrounds, etc. connect well & that's why you get the high degree of obsessiveness/rabidity in BtVS fandom. we have a thriving community of people still talking after a show is over & the narrative of those conversations is a lot deeper than arguing about farpoint or saying "wouldn't it be cool if captain picard had done such-&-such..."

& yeah, i'm polarizing fandom & making sweeping generalizations about trek fans. all i know is that the viewing parties i've been to are radically different. it's OK to argue with ME, but if you argue with gene roddenberry's construction of morality, you're making an affront to the entire universe.

[identity profile] gobi-rex.livejournal.com 2004-08-31 01:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Hmm... this is something I've wondered about for some time. I noticed that the BtVS fandom has a high percentage of people with degrees in humanities/liberal arts. I myself studied a rather technical (i.e. mathematical) social science and I sometimes feel at a disadvantage because of that. Actually, there was a time I could have gone either way, but in the end I chose the more technical field, believing that I could always read other books in my free time. Which I did, but it's not the same as formally studying literature and etc.

I admire [livejournal.com profile] doyle_sb4 (who's a terrific fic writer and a brilliant physics brain) and [livejournal.com profile] paratti (also, a terrific writer and who, I believe, had economics training as well), who seem to successfully utilize both sides of their brain. For me, it's a constant struggle for control, to use the left side of my brain for professional endeavors and to feed my right brain with humanities and etc. and not feel like I'm betraying either one.