Everything I Know I Learned From Fandom

[whyareyoulikethis]

I had a moment a few months back when, discussing a movie score with a stopitsomemore, the following sentence left my mouth: "Actually it was especially interesting because the violin is the musical instrument closest in range and tone to the human voice." (For the record, I was talking about the Sherlock Holmes movie.)

Now, that's a pretty impressively pretentious statement all on its own, but it was especially funny because I actually know jack shit about the violin. I've never played it before. The closest I ever came to one was that year I was in an ear-bleeding elementary school orchestra, my cello quickly abandoned because that business was heavy and annoying as crap to drag on the schoolbus.

So where did I pick up that fascinating piece of violin trivia? Well, we can thank toft_froggy's Stargate Atlantis music AU fic String Theory, a Concerto for Violin in D Minor for that.

And it's definitely not the only time this has happened to me. I've picked up scads of useful information from my fandom readings, everything from the world of professional Hockey (thanks, Due South fandom!) to the proper way to make a macchiato (thanks, countess barista AUs!) to the ins and outs of snorting cocaine off a prostitute's ass (thanks, J2 fic, no really).

But the point is, fandom makes learning fun! Like the proverbial spoon full of sugar, knowledge is way more palpable when you swallow it down with some gay sex. And if anyone ever asks, I can just pretend I watch a lot of National Geographic channel and PBS.



"Ignore that educational programming, son. All you need to know is right here."

So has this ever happened to you, dear readers? What random shit do you know that you wouldn't were it not for fandom?

Comments

[esmenet]

The only things I can definitely think of off the top of my head is the length of time the brain can be deprived of oxygen before unrecoverable death (five minutes), and a bunch of random stuff about Japanese culture. For instance, you do not ever stick your chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice, because that's a ceremonial thing at funerals. For the same reason, you don't pick up something with your chopsticks at the same time as someone else, because that's the way you pick up your dead friend's bones after the cremation. (Yeah, Japanese funerals are kind of weird.) Also, the word 'four' in Japanese is pronounced the same way as the word 'death', and most buildings don't have a room 42 because four+two is pronounced the same as 'die'. And samurai who didn't have a lot of money knitted socks in their spare time to sell.

[asitor]

it is so so sad and also unutterably hilarious that I knew all of these things and nodded along with them.

[fanofall]

Anything having anything to do with string theory, mathematics, or male-to-male gay sex.

[newwaters.wordpress.com]

Most recently, and thoroughly, shit about rowing AND how British Universities work. It was all fascinating. I had no idea the way degrees worked was so different. Thanks to Syllic's Modern!Merlin-AU Easy There http://archiveofourown.org/works/7197