Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I wouldn't say that BtVS was unprecedented -- I was fannish about things before, and have been fannish since, but not quite in the same way. BtVS was sort of revelatory for me. But I can't always lay my finger on why. There are times when I wonder if it was all arbitrary -- that I needed something to hang my identity on during the rough period of my teens and twenties (which continues, as I near the end of my twenties, to be rough!) and zeroed in on this. I believe a lot in trying to be authentic, but also believe that true authenticity is difficult if not impossible -- that, for me at least, being certain about what goes on inside oneself is difficult, and that identity itself may be an illusion. BtVS both spoke to those fears and also provided a respite, but at the same time I still don't know for sure how much it's because BtVS is that powerful in itself, and how much it's that I made a semiconscious choice to obsess over *something*, and that all that really matters is obsession and that it's a less unhealthy obsession than drugs or whatever. I like to think that the latter interpretation isn't true -- that ultimately I really did and do connect to something real in BtVS. But it's hard to say for sure, especially since so much of what I like about it I can only describe intuitively and not with a full-on evidence based proof.
ETA:
I guess to continue, one thing I think we as a species don't acknowledge often enough, or maybe it's just me, is that we are different people from day to day. There is of course continuity of identity and memory -- but we do change, pretty significantly, and mood can make us, as the saying goes, strangers to ourselves. I think BtVS both captures the confusion and horror at finding parts of ourselves that we don't recognize bubbling up at inopportune times, and I also think that some of what I love about it can be hard to pin down when I'm not that version of myself who relates to a certain part. It is easy to switch between "this is the most emotionally resonant work I've encountered -- absolute truth about the human condition" and "this is silly, with ludicrous plot holes and a lack of resolution, and real people don't actually behave like that," at least for me, depending on what is going on with me at that moment, and for some reason it's hard to access those parts of myself that are not dominant -- even if I remember what I thought before, it's hard to remember exactly why, and the feeling / intuition behind it. I think that makes it hard to pin down my fannishness for the show, because, ultimately, I only understand myself so far.
no subject
ETA:
I guess to continue, one thing I think we as a species don't acknowledge often enough, or maybe it's just me, is that we are different people from day to day. There is of course continuity of identity and memory -- but we do change, pretty significantly, and mood can make us, as the saying goes, strangers to ourselves. I think BtVS both captures the confusion and horror at finding parts of ourselves that we don't recognize bubbling up at inopportune times, and I also think that some of what I love about it can be hard to pin down when I'm not that version of myself who relates to a certain part. It is easy to switch between "this is the most emotionally resonant work I've encountered -- absolute truth about the human condition" and "this is silly, with ludicrous plot holes and a lack of resolution, and real people don't actually behave like that," at least for me, depending on what is going on with me at that moment, and for some reason it's hard to access those parts of myself that are not dominant -- even if I remember what I thought before, it's hard to remember exactly why, and the feeling / intuition behind it. I think that makes it hard to pin down my fannishness for the show, because, ultimately, I only understand myself so far.