Into the Siken-Verse: Fandom cruelty and the growth of anti-intellectualism in fandom spaces
“There’s no shame in saying that if I were to rank how much time I spend engaging in fandom in comparison to more fruitful endeavors like sleep or budgeting for the upcoming recession, it would still be firmly placed in my top three activities. I was part of fandom culture before most websites would be happy to know I was. I’ve had the same Archive of Our Own account since before they had exclusionary filters and I had a truly cringe-worthy “Incorrect Quotes”-style Tumblr blog for a good part of my middle and high school years. Most of my post-pubescent life has been deeply enmeshed with fandom culture and spaces. This is all to say that it is not a complete outsider telling the fandom that it’s being completely stupid at best and downright malicious at worst when members cannibalize art without actually engaging with it in good faith and then attack its author when he says that he’s uncomfortable with this.”
Richard Siken is a poet. A great one in my opinion. While I’ll admit that I have only read his first novel, “Crush,” I’ve found that his driving diction and ceaseless urgency was crushing (pardon my pun). I discovered him as a young, queer teenager who was first trying to make sense of her world. Siken did not make sense of my world—his world was that of a gay man who survived the AIDS epidemic with insurmountable loss, mine was mine to understand. But, at the very least, I could find a connection out there with his verse. I could find a sense of understanding and empathy even when the Richard Siken who wrote “Crush” and the Mariana who read it were so far apart in years, life stories and conclusions. If it came to it and someone asked me who are some of my favorite poets, Richard Siken’s name would most likely be pretty early during the 20-minute lecture you’ve just signed yourself up for. My predilection for Richard Siken is not rare considering my age and background. He is one of the most commonly known among my generation outside of the standard English high school curriculum circuit, though most of his prominence is unwanted.
When enmeshing yourself in fandom circles, it would not be uncommon to see fragmented excerpts of Richard Siken’s poetry used for any and all fan products especially when it is (relation)ship-based. Fan edits, photo compilations, fan fiction titles and tweets saying “[X ship] is so [insert quote here]” all feature excerpts of Siken’s work, though oftentimes without actually citing the excerpt’s source. It is also not uncommon to see that the people who use Siken’s poetry as a supplementary source of their fan works often do not read Siken himself. Rather, it is often other fan works that inspire the usage of the Siken quotes. The use of these Siken quotes then do not represent a commentary on Siken or on the themes that he explores in his poetry, but rather on its usage within fandom.