I want to create a community, but I'm scared because I've never done that before and people always give off the impression that managing one can be hard work.

... which probably means I should do it. I so rarely find myself in situations where there's an actual choice involved in deciding whether to do something or not; usually I either run into an obstacle before I even get to that point or I don't have any doubts in the first place. There are no in-betweens with me. Usually.

So this is a novel experience. I get to choose! And the worst that can happen is that I end up with a poorly managed, unpopular community that eventually dies out, right? Not exactly a huge risk.

Although, come to think of it - there is that one problem that has nothing to do with being a community maintainer per se. I'm worried that if I attempt to start a discussion, I'll get exactly one reply and be unable to say anything in response. I have mentioned before that reviews and meta posts often make me feel stupid, and so do simple conversations between fans at times. People post their reactions to the latest book or episode and all I can think is, "Wow. I didn't notice ANY OF THESE THINGS."

While I may be good with words, the less said about my observational skills, the better. (I once tried to use a simile to express this, which resulted in a long internal debate on the possibility of sentient brick walls, followed by speculations about the observational skills of trees and deaf moles, respectively. Since then I have aspired to stay as far away from similes as possible.)

Still, I suppose it's not like being The One Who Started It comes with any obligations. And if I feel obliged regardless, I can always say something along the lines of "Congratulations, you have just proven that you're way smarter than I am."

It probably won't get many members, anyway.

I think I just started to figure out what it is that keeps me from getting properly involved in fandom. That question has been bugging me for ages because it's certainly not a lack of interest: I want to get involved because I do get pretty excited about things and having people to talk to who share the sentiment would ne neat, really! Part of the problem is obviously that I don't have much to contribute, what with never having finished a single fanfic and appearing to have lost all my icon-making skillz - but that can't be the only reason, you know? I even suspect that if I did get involved somehow, I'd be way more inspired and eventually would end up finishing a fic. Interaction can do that to you.

One thing that's definitely holding me back is that I don't have the money to immediately buy each new album/book/DVD/etc. that comes out, so I regularly have to skip a lot of posts for fear of spoilers and by the time I finally catch up, everyone else's excitement has already passed. Well, with any luck that's going to change once I have my own place.

What I just realised is that I often feel left out for an entirely different reason as well though, and it has something to do with the fact that a large part of fandom is basically about sexual attraction. We look at pictures of our favourite characters/celebrities because we find them attractive, and what was the most popular fanfiction genre again? Right. Romance. Which some only read for the porn. :P That's all nice and well, but despite being utterly addicted to romantic fluff and picture-browsing myself, I often get the impression that what goes on in my head when I do these things is very, very different from other people's thoughts. The way they talk quite frankly disturbs me most of the time. I could never join a conversation that is all about how badly you wank to fuck that person, sorry.

Speaking of which, is it actually possible to get aroused just from looking at pictures of an attractive person?? I can never tell when people are joking. Especially when I'm too busy being disturbed.

Meta discussions never apply to me, either. I don't seem to have much in common with the average fan, the average female fan, the average female fan who likes slash ... or the typical representation of any other group that I'm technically a part of. It's quite frustrating. I always get the feeling that all those people who appear to be enjoying the same thing as I am are coming at it from such a different perspective that it's not really the same thing at all. How am I supposed to communicate with them under these conditions?

For some reason I was completely unaware of this problem until just now.