I’m going to talk about readers today. I promise I am.
But first…
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the WNBA. One can debate and disagree, of course, but for my taste, when it comes to basketball, the women’s game is just a better product.
I don’t mean the players are faster, stronger, more adroit, or in any other way more skilled. In fact, I’m sure that if the WNBA Champion (*) Las Vegas Aces played pretty much any NBA team, they would not fare well. But, whereas teams in “the M” (NBA) have a sameness to them, “the W” still contains a multitude of approaches. So, for my aesthetic, the women’s game is vastly more fun to watch.
My two cents say this is at least partially because the game is a quarter step slower, and a majority of the players can’t dunk, which makes for a game that relies on fundamentals and core strategies that can be more intricate. The men’s game is played above the rim. The women’s game is played below it. The women’s game is still physical. Don’t pretend otherwise. The players are super-athletic. But at its basis, the women’s game is more finesse and teamwork than the men’s game, which is about power, speed, and raw athleticism.
In this way, the women’s game reminds me a lot of the men’s college game I grew up with in the late 70s and early 80s.
I’ve been paying attention to it since the late 1990s, but following it closely only since we moved to Las Vegas and found that tickets were affordable. With the new CBA being finalized now, I’m guessing this will change in 2027, but as I type this, it’s fair to say that, even in Vegas, the cost of a ticket is quite reasonable.
So, yes, having been a season ticket holder for the past few seasons, and having hung on daily news about whether there would be a season or not, I can 100% call myself a true Aces fan.
It’s been a while since I’ve gotten so deeply into a sport that I find myself actively rooting for a team. Which is fun. I thought my days of such attachment were behind me. I mean, I pay attention to the Cubs because, well, because Go Cubs! But I don’t live and die by them—certainly not like I used to live and die by my beloved alma mater, the Louisville Cardinal hoopers of back in the days of Griff and Derek and Rodney and Milt and …
Anyway, now that I’m back in the game, I’m finding it interesting to look at fandom (and, of course, readers).
I realize now that, in a sense, focusing on fandom was what I was doing when I wrote my On Writing installment, On Creating (And Celebrating!) Characters. But that book was about the characters themselves—the Intellectual Properties that fandom gets attracted to. This little essay is about fandom itself: what it is, how it works, and how it can warp everything around it.
As a general rule, I think kids of today are more inclusive in how they consume and talk about their favorite things. Readers admire and relate to characters in books or movies or (often) games, and speaking broadly, I think they tolerate difference better than kids did when I was their age. Music genres, too, seem more widely accepted across the whole of youth culture. Today, it’s commonplace to hear fans of a property stan on characters or ship them (yes, I’m sure those terms are already out of date) in ways that I can’t remember my generation doing. Perhaps it’s just the technology around us that’s changed. Perhaps it’s society itself. Or perhaps it’s a bit of both.
Maybe this is a natural outcome of the kinds of fandom that were generated by various properties when I was a kid. Back then, our understanding of celebrity and fandoms across society was just beginning to get more robust than whatever it was that Hollywood was doing when the studios focused on creating stars as heavily as they focused on stories. Today, readership and viewership are fragmented, whereas back then, it was all on three channels and the bookstore’s bestseller rack.
As is maybe obvious…
I’m focusing on this today at least partially because the WNBA collective bargaining agreement has been reached, and because watching the process has revealed to me what it means to say that the league has been going through a series of tectonic shifts.
“The W’s” popularity was swelling when I got to Vegas.
The team was selling games out at a startling rate—nine of their 20 home games in 2023, and then every home game since. The season of the rookies swelled the gate again as Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and a bunch of others brought compelling stories and even more eyeballs to the league…and fandom exploded. The numbers were astounding. It was Larry Bird and Magic Johnson all over again, only the “W” flavor rather than the “M.”
What began as a steady groundswell became a raging torrent.
As the fan base talked among itself, though, you could see a real schism.
The core of what it means to be a fan of something is almost perfectly designed for creating conflict, because, you know, people gonna people. And what people love too much eventually becomes tied up so closely with their identity that it’s sometimes hard to separate.
In what WNBA, old guard TrueFans got their feathers ruffled when the new guard touted Clark/Reese, et al as the reason for the swell. NewFans got their dander up when the old guard suggested their faves were not particularly stronger players than the women who had been here before. Yes, indeed, Magic/Bird all over again.
Ultimately, both sides are both right and wrong.
Fandom is strange, though.
I’ve been enjoying these dynamics as the league has gone through its collective bargaining negotiations, and…
I’m finding it eerily similar to some of the explosions that happened in the Science Fiction field as the genre was growing out of its ghetto phase and into a genre that is effectively now mainstream.
Generalizing greatly, the WNBA’s NewFans, while hyped up about the things that brought them in, feel belittled by the old-guard TrueFans, and the old-guard TrueFans, while happy to have the new players, take offense at what they feel is disrespect coming from these NewFans as they push their stans so hard.
There’s a keyword in that paragraph.
Disrespect.
Or, rather, the need to be respected.
This need for respect is a thing that is true about fans of all ilk, but may be most starkly seen in the die-hard Sports Fan. The modern-day fan is arguably more interested in having everyone agree that their favorite whatever is the best than they are in having that same team or player prove it on the field of battle.
It’s something I don’t like about modern sports fandom.
That attitude is soooo focused on whether someone “respects” their team. Such polarization, right?
Maybe it’s always been this way, but I don’t recall it as being so prevalent when I was a kid.
These days, however, it’s not good enough for a commentator or pundit to say someone is “good.” Instead, be they NewFan or TrueFan, the fan requires complete fealty—their team, or their player, must be seen by pundits as the absolute best at all times, else that pundit is somehow the bane of all existence.
When I was a baby writer…
In the world of SF it was common for First Fandom (as the old guard referred to themselves) to bemoan the fact that the new kids today weren’t reading any of the classics. Guys like Clifford Simak, Alfred Bester, or Edward Hamilton, to pick a few, were never on the lips of any NewFan. In fact, some NewFans would even go so far as to point to the names of the Golden Age and suggest their work was stilted, or stodgy, or just poorly done. In addition, some of these NewFans were into all sorts of weird things…like mixing comics with SF. And movies! Don’t get me started with movies, which were always so much worse than the book that some of the old guard would even consider refusing to see a movie so as not to destroy the book.
Fandom is what fandom does.
Writers would talk that way, too, but their conversation wasn’t as caustic. No one was a complete idiot for not having read writers of the 50s or 60s, but there was a sense of angst among more established writers about the foundation being lost. Any writer even slightly long in the tooth was always recommending that newbies read in the field to ensure they understood where it was coming from.
I read Edward Hamilton, for example (and was better off for it), specifically because Mike Resnick pointed him out to me. Same with Simak and Robert Sheckley. I came upon C. L. Moore, a truly important female SF writer from as far back as the 30s because other writers pointed her out. So, I’ll do the same today. If you haven’t read C. L. Moore, get thee hence and do so. It’s wonderful stuff and stands as raw proof that women have always been in the field that was arguably originated by another woman.
But I digress.
Reader Fandom is an interesting thing, though.
Now that I’m along in this writing thing, I find it harder to read purely as a fan.
I’m always analyzing.
It’s just in me to do it that way, I suppose. That’s why I love finding something I can fall into that way. I loved absorbing the now-old Orphan Black television series a few years back for this reason. Its deep SF elements and thriller pacing swept me up. I loved the characters. Especially Helena and Cosim, but Sarah and Allison were awesome, too. And Felix. And Arthur. And … I had to watch the whole thing again to do my analysis.
I’m thinking about this today because I just started watching the newest Bridgerton series alongside my wife. To date, I‘ve seen them all. And I like them (yes, gents, it’s 100% possible to watch or read fiction directed toward women). I would call myself a fan.
Except I’m not a fan like my sweetie is a fan.
As the story goes by, I hear her chortling at various events and happenings, or see her smile at a particular character’s approach. She’ll make comments in response to a character’s expression and I’ll know she’s simply reveling in the warm waters of the situation.
She is a true, real fan.
She’s interacting with the story as it breathes—almost becoming one with it. For her, this story comes infused with something special. She’s open to it. While I am studying the blocking and tackling of the storytelling (and let me tell you, there is a helluva lot of storytelling in a Regency), my sweetie is simply fangirling the whole way.
This is important to us creatives.
Or at least it’s important to us as creatives who want to be read, watched, seen, or listened to. Unfortunately, since this essence of fandom is as hard to define as the color blue, I’m not quite sure how it’s important, except to say that, as we go about creating our stories, it’s this person we need to focus on the most. True Fans want to have fun—however they define it. True Fans want to revel in the moment. True Fans want to steep in the tea. When we are a True Fan of something, we want to laugh or cry or feel whatever we need to feel while we’re enjoying it. The Heart wants what the heart wants, and nowhere is that more true than in the heart of the true fan.
I think this is coming in the ways that independently published writers (in particular) have begun to crack open the code on how to attract readers.
Trad publishers have looked at things in their own ways—pushing this writer or that, or collaborating with bookstores to determine how genres might be best described in the expectation that this will help net more readers. But the modern independent writer has taken it further by breaking the 4th wall to speak directly to the reader, and vice versa, really. The modern reader talks straight to the independent writer. What comes out is, I think, a new take on genre breakouts—specifically, today, called “tropes.”
The term “trope” has been skewed from what it was when I was a baby writer.
Back then, tropes were considered barren and dry, cliché, and to be avoided at all costs.
But today, when you hear readers talk, they talk in something that they call tropes, but are, in the vernacular of my writer’s circle, called “reader cookies,” which are things that are so yummy to Reader X that, when baked properly, Reader X can’t help but pick up and love.
Readers think in these things. They talk in these things.
At least some do. Or a lot of them do, anyway.
When my wife is chortling at a Regency thing inside Bridgerton, she’s eating a watcher cookie—and invariably, these watcher cookies are what the modern Indie writer is putting on one of those ubiquitous Trope Charts one can see all over Kickstarter and various marketing material.
So, I hear you. What does all this mean?
To be fair to myself, I may not be sure of exactly what I’m getting to. But here’s a thought experiment to leave you with.
What does Caitlin Clark represent to a fan of the WNBA?
What is her story? How does it play against that of Angel Reese? Or against that of established superstar A’ja Wilson, or of recently retired mega-star Diana Taurasi?
Pick your own favorite sports star. Compare their stories to a player from another team.
As noted before, fandom is as fandom does.
But I’m thinking today that fandom is about Story, really (note the capital S). No Story, no excitement. No excitement, no fandom. I’m thinking that fans become fans specifically because of what the creator of Story gives them. In the case of sports figures, that creator is the player themselves, who crashes against the situation they find themselves in with whatever skills and personalities they have, and hence make a story that is as compelling as the stakes a fan can contrive. True fandom eventually allows those fans to take part in the creation of the creator.
Let that line twist around inside your head a while.
And here’s a second thought experiment, too: For a writer, then, what does it mean to have a fan? What—if anything—do you own them? Does that even cross your mind? How do you create one? How do you know who they are?
As a writer, do you ever think of your true fans?
And, finally, is it possible that in the writing itself, you become one yourself?