… Bond fandom (here personified by David of Licence To Queer) in person, at the author talk for Double Or Nothing at the British Library. It was an excellent night with many lovely people. I think I’ve mentioned before that Bond fandom is refreshingly straightforward: we all know our fave is problematic, and that means we can skip straight to the fun part, which is talking about it.
I still feel slightly odd being fannish on main: it probably wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t fallen into a Twitter conversation. But it’s been a good eighteen months now and nothing too weird has resulted. Actually, I promised myself last year that I was just going to let myself enjoy stuff and be fannish about things. This being the sort of year it’s been, I haven’t really got into anything with any degree of enthusiasm.
Although, thinking about it, that doesn’t necessarily follow. My last significant illness – early 2017 – I fell headfirst into Yuri!!! on Ice and stayed there for a long time. Maybe there’s hope for me yet, even if all the narrative complexity I can cope with at the moment is ‘can this woman get down this hill faster than the previous woman did?’ and rooting for the Italians on the extremely shallow justification that they have the best national anthem.
Anyway, there’s no sense trying to predict it. Last year I fell for Romeo and Juliet like I was fifteen all over again. I certainly didn’t see that coming. All I can really do is wait for whatever the next thing is. And try not to get hype backlash before that pirate thing gets to the BBC. (I am dreadfully susceptible to hype backlash. It’s one of my least favourite things about myself. But if one friend too many enthuses about their New Thing, or if one friend enthuses once too often about the New Thing, I get fed up with it. Not their fault, nor yet the New Thing’s.) In the meantime, there’s no harm in falling back on an old favourite or (double O) seven.
Photo by Antony Lowbridge-Ellis
Kathleen Jowitt 