Fandoms of Potentia and Fandoms of Re, by mikkeneko@tumblr

[magistrate]

I'm posting this here because I want to reference it in a post I want to write, and my experience of linking to / bookmarking things on Tumblr tells me that Tumblr is even less of a persistent medium than the rest of the internet. To give credit as best I can, though, the original URL (as of this post's date) is this post on mikkeneko's tumblr, and the participants in the conversation are mikkeneko and bitchjerked. None of the below are my words.

Credit to storyinmypocket for linking me to the post in the first place; it is very nice to have words to describe phenomena.

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bitchjerked:

do you ever get mad because there’s so much wasted potential in characters and relationships and plotlines in some shows

mikkeneko:

i basically divide up fandoms of continuing media into Fandoms Of Potentia and Fandoms Of Re.

i’m still developing this theory, but it sort of goes like this: there are some pieces of media that attract enormous followings not necessarily for what they are, but what the watchers think they could be, and build castles basically on those dreams of potential.

whereas a fandom of re is a fandom of what the work is, oftentimes a finished work to which no more will be added, which has proven itself in entirety.

And the interesting thing to me is that Fandoms Of Potentia are oftentimes bigger than Fandoms Of Re, bigger and more active, and there’s a couple of reasons for that – one is that a finished work leaves less room to add onto, and a finished work also leaves less need to add onto. The primary driver of fandom works is incompleteness, whether because the work is not yet finished or because it is finished in a way that the audience feels is incomplete.

Fandoms of potentia also have the bigger drama, because the fact is, not every content creator is up to living up to the potential the fans see. Creators are only human after all. So when the story doesn’t live up to the big finish the fans dreamed of, there’s a lot of disappointment, anger and hurt. You see less of that with Fandoms Of Re.

I guess where I’m going with this, is that whenever I see a huge fandom gathering for a work that I think is absolutely not deserving of it, I stop to ask myself whether it might be a Fandom Of Potentia. In which case, they’re fans of something I don’t see at all – they’re fans of the dreams of what might be.

Comments

[magistrate]

Yess. I think I've rambled at you about it a bit, too – considering that Fandoms of Potentia make up roughly 100% of my fandom engagement. (Or, as I like to say, 80% of my fiction writing is driven by spite.) But it's really cool to have actual terms for it, instead of just kludging around "canons need to hit this sweet spot where there's a whole lot of stuff I love and a whole lot of stuff I need to be better" every time I want to talk about a thing. And mikkeneko provides!

[sholio]

That's right, we have talked about that, haven't we? :D

Xparrot calls them Type A and Type B fandoms. I forget off the top of my head which is which, but basically that's her personal shorthand for the ones that are complete and satisfying by themselves, and the ones that require fanfic to make them a satisfying experience. Fandoms of Potentia is a much better all-around term, though!

... though I don't understand Fandoms of Re. The words, I mean; the concept came through just fine. What does Re mean, in that context?

[magistrate]

I'm not altogether sure, but my sense is it's a Latin re / res thing. The fact of the matter, the thing which is, that which exists and not that which is posited?

[sholio]

Ah, that makes sense! (Also, I realized after I'd already posted the question that since you're not the one who coined it, there's not necessarily any reason why you'd know what it means any more than I do ... XD)