Before we get into the meatier part of the piece, a quick background check: I grew up with Beast Wars (Biocombat, as it was known in Italy) though only really season one. I lost sight of most Transformers anything - bar some Italian-dubbed Car Robots episodes, and including Battimus Primal and Megalligator, under a bed during a holiday - until the 2007 live action Paramount movie. I slowly got back into the franchise from there, exploring Animated, picking up old toys I had in boxes and storage, but it was 2009 that fully sucked me in again, and due to other interests of mine, I eventually gravitated towards the comics.
Here's the 'confessional' part: I have yet to fully watch all of G1, and probably never will. I have seen the 1986 Transformers movie a handful of times, but have no real attachment to it. I am, to all intents and purposes and despite there being no such thing, a Fake Geek. And I am a Fake Geek for most of the fandoms I'm a part of, Transformers as much as Star Wars, comic books as much as sci-fi literature, contemporary poetry as much as roleplaying. I've dabbled in all of them; I have immersed myself, truly, in none.
Yet I stumbled into a number of online communities that were more than welcoming at the time, and have changed shape, some radically, some less so, since then. Seibertron.com is one of them, of course, for which I later became news staff, and have been for the best part of the past five years (holy ****). Twitter, Facebook groups, convention crews, are examples of others.
I have since become News Administrator, have met and keep in touch with professionals in the toy and comics industries, work behind the scenes at a number of Transformers-based events, and spend a lot more of the time I don't really have on something I find myself not always fully invested in.
If you've been active online in talks surrounding general science fiction material in the past year (from comic book movies to Star Wars to Transformers, too, though not as much) you might have encountered people discussing the difference between curative and creative fandom, denoting two different ways to enjoy and - dare I say it? - consume media which is part of a franchise. Curative fandom is the part more easily associated with 'wiki' style attention, curating an interest for information, references, knowledge seen as a collection of facts and trivia, assimilating the media offered by creators (official or not) of the franchise. Creative fandom is, on the other hand, the more hands-on interaction with a franchise: expressing your interest not necessarily through knowledge but generating new content, often unofficial, such as custom work, fan art, fan fiction, fan events, videos, shorts, even sh**posting, why not. Neither is the better way, of course, and neither is wrong, though both receive scorn from the other side despite a lot of fans finding themselves somewhere in between the two.
Myself, I'm squarely in neither. I don't consider myself creative in this sense, as I have never invested time in generating anything new except the handful of photocomics or paintjobs, and do not have any intention to develop drawing or writing or customising skills. I'm happy, really, with admiring other people's work. I'm also, for the reasons pointed out at the start, not a curator-type: I simply do not have the knowledge, or the interest, to be so. I thought I initially did, for the early IDW material, but have long since lost interest for that type of investment. I'm also, as many know, not really a toy collector any longer, at least not in the usually perceived sense of the word in toy fandoms.
If anything, then, I side more with an emotive stand, as Temple Phoenix suggested during the same discussion on Twitter. I cannot bring myself to call myself a 'critic', though that is technically what I do, through reviews and readings of media that I work with - be it Transformers, other comics, or any other medium I discuss - and while I do apply critical reasoning to my approaches to things, the emotive side is fortunately never far. (If anyone believes that the two are separate, that's fine. You're wrong, but it's fine.)
I do get invested in narratives, in stories, in interactions, dynamics, relations, spools, knots and unravelling, fictional or otherwise. It may be fleeting, or it may be lasting. I may drop something if I get tired with it, without seeing it to its end. I may pick something up halfway, or just sample it and never go back to it again. And that applies equally to media and physical objects, such as figures or artwork.
I spoke briefly to someone else on staff about this, and they replied - quite straightforward - with:
I think it's mainly about joy. Does it make you happier to have the figure than not? Or do you find more joy in talking to people in the fandom? Or creating things? Or writing? Or taking photos? Or comics?
You can enjoy bits and pieces of a fandom without having to make yourself enjoy all of it.
And at this stage, my honest answer is: I don't know. If I were not where I am with Seibertron.com, TFNation, and the comics world more in general, would I still be participating in fandom, in any way? And if not - why am I where I am?
This is the first part of a potentially monthly series exploring contemporary Transformers fandom through the perspective of a number of members of the community, starting with myself. If you'd like to contribute a post, please get in touch! And, as always, do join the discussion in the Energon Pub!