I completely understand that.
Sometimes his characters are beautiful, sometimes they're not.
Sometimes he looks a little tired, off colour, or whatever, sometimes (mostly, imo!) he looks absolutely and uniquely stunning - for me, for instance, he was the most beautiful, graceful guy on the red carpet at The Oscars; when he rocks it, he really rocks it!!!
Sometimes, too, he can talk about a book or a piece of music or whatever and inspire me to seek it out; he's incredibly intelligent. And sometimes he says things that are child like and lovably naive.
I think he's a beautiful bundle of contradictions, so I'm definitely Ben-addicted! (And probably a bit too old to be!!!)

Last edited by Tinks (April 16, 2014 7:34 am)

Too true

besleybean wrote:

Oh I'm old and wise enough to know I would never have a chance with Benedict...and I'm married!

Same with me. Benedict is my big puppy love at the moment. I live it out (to the extreme) in this brilliant forum and with the very very nice girls I met in person because of it.

It's so different to be a fan nowadays. Back in the 1980s I had to wait for articles in newspapers, TV performances or newsletters from a fanclub (which were REAL letters!), went to shops for anything to buy and write letters, to get any contact to other fans.
Thanks to the internet with all it's possibilities being a fan is much more intensive.
 

No, I hadn't slash fantasies, though I was fan of a band of young handsome lads. But it was more "important" for us that they were straight back then.

Quite so.

gently69 wrote:

It's so different to be a fan nowadays. Back in the 1980s I had to wait for articles in newspapers, TV performances or newsletters from a fanclub (which were REAL letters!), went to shops for anything to buy and write letters, to get any contact to other fans.
Thanks to the internet with all it's possibilities being a fan is much more intensive.
 

 
For me who's born in the late 90's I find this really cool. I haven't really thought about how people did before as fans but I'd like to know more. I find it fascinating!

Last edited by batchlock (April 16, 2014 12:40 pm)

It WAS fascinating ... somehow. But you always had to wait ... on news ... on things to buy ... on contacts to like-minded people ... on everything.

Now you go into the internet, buy stuff, talk to people and get news, pictures, videos ... loads of ...

The only thing you have to wait for is another Sherlock season.

Yeah, fandom is pretty instant now. Back in the 90's, what the hardest thing for me as a dedicated anglophile was that it was very complicated (and often expensive) to get to see/read things in their original version. This was before we had DVDs or online stores. If you wanted a movie that was not dubbed into German, you had to either travel to the UK or US, or have people there who would record or buy things for you and send them by mail.

In the end I found ways and suppliers, like a tiny bookstore in Unna (1 hour travel each way) that would sell only English books, or a video rental in the city centre of Düsseldorf that would carry some movies/TV shows on VHS in English (e.g. Star Trek). But often that meant long delays because these English versions always took a while (weeks, sometimes months) to be available in Germany. It was all a huge exercise in patience and often also in creativity.

Does anyone else remember fanclub maganizes? There were no blogs or fan fiction portals. You'd become a member of a local (or national) fanclub, and they'd publish a newsletter or a magazine on a regular basis, sometimes with articles and news about your fandom, sometimes with printed fan fictions. I still remember typing up reports of fan meetings on my mum's typewriter.

Oh, the good old times! But I must say, even though sometimes all the instant availability of information and the corresponding ephemeral tendencies in this day and age are a bit disconcerting, I much prefer that to how fandom worked twenty years ago. It certainly makes fangirling so much easier and more gratifying.

I wouldn't want to be in a world without internet, now.
But it certainly doesn't squash debate.

Oh, I know that, tonnaree.