In a post over a Jezebel on angry Twilight fans who are getting vocal about all the criticism their favorite book/movies series has been getting, we spotted this paragraph:

At first, I felt a little guilty about slapping a “sparkly vampire” tag to several Twilight related pieces, but after thinking about it for a while, I realized that this outrage over having an opinion that is anything but positive re: Twilight is the real problem with Twilight fans (or Twihards, or Twilighters, or what have you.) Make a Harry Potter joke, and HP fans will giggle. Say something stupid about Gandalf, and LOTR fans will laugh. Star Trek and Star Wars fans have been the butt of jokes (many of them created lovingly by hardcore fans) for years, but maintain a sense of humor about their fandom.

Hmm… there may be some things to address, here.

Trouble In Paradise: Fans Don’t All Have A Sense Of Humor

I have to wonder just how true that last quoted sentence is. As a veteran of many a convention and newsgroup discussion where these fandoms are concerned, I’ve seen plenty of humorless, po-faced saddoes nearly come to blows over the most esoteric, fannish bullshit imaginable.

This is especially true on the Web (except for the fear of winding up in a physical altercation). For a long time, the Internet was synonymous in my mind with epic flame-filled rage-fests that did nothing but shatter fandoms into bitter warring factions. (I was around during the first outbreak of the Joel vs. Mike wars – it was traumatizing.)

The fandom I’ve been involved with most deeply is the one surrounding Doctor Who. This is the fandom that created such humorous works as The Completely Useless Encyclopedia. But it also created the utterly humorless Television Companion. There is a factionalism in fandom between those who think it’s okay to laugh at what they love, versus those who see any such behavior as evidence that one is not really a fan. If you laugh at it, you could never understand the deep, abiding affection that real fans feel. Worse, you are aligning yourself with those heartless pricks who think it’s cool to make fun of someone’s hobby.

Young Fandoms vs. Old Fandoms: Cults vs. Religions

Comparing Twilight’s fandom to those of Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings is not quite fair. The latter examples are mature fandoms – each of them has been around for more than 25 years. (Even Harry Potter, the youngest fandom mentioned in the quoted section, has been around for twelve years now.) They’ve had time to develop stable relationships between the jokers and the saddoes, yes, but more importantly, these communities have grown into established traditions. Nobody’s going to get that bent out of shape if somebody makes fun of a bunch of sexless Trekkies, because they’ve proven that such fun-making can’t hurt the fandom: It has become indestructible.

Meanwhile, Twilight’s only been around since 2005. There’s still that nagging doubt in the minds of the fan base that, at some point, everyone might realize how silly they’re being and the whole thing could disintegrate overnight. Therefore, deep down, many fans sense that fragility, and they are out to defend the community they’ve established.

As time goes on, and if the Twilight fandom continues to exist, it’s very likely that we’ll see Twilight fans cracking jokes at their own expense, eventually. This is the natural result of the self-confidence spawned by a community’s continued existence.

We Can Say It; You Can’t

One of the ways to defend that community is to fight back against fun-making outsiders, whose derision might pressure some less dedicated fans into abandoning the fandom. This kind of thing becomes less of a concern as time goes own, if a fandom can stay strong for long enough.

Of course, where Twilight fans are concerned, they’ll still probably get upset over the wisecracks of outsiders for quite a while yet. Inter-group teasing is miles different than attacks from outsiders. It just doesn’t feel safe – it feels mean-spirited, judgmental, and shaming. And, yeah, people get defensive about stuff like that.

Here’s To The Future

For myself, I don’t care a bit whether or not Twilight’s fandom continues to exist, and I would never suggest that people don’t have a right to criticize it just because a few feelings might get hurt. But really, it will be interesting to see what happens ten or twenty years from now – when the fandom is more mature.