Thanks so much for your advice about getting more involved in journal-based fandom. It is something I'm interested in, but I just need to work on getting a bit more confident about delurking and joining with conversations.
I wonder if this is because there was no focus on fanfic? I mean, that sounds obvious, but for me, discussion has always had a lot of elements of "what if?" This might be because I also write fic, but there are some canons I'm interested in for which I'm not interesting in writing fic; I mostly just want to discuss. But even for those canons I'll tend to get shippy, or tend to want to explore things which aren't explicitly in canon, but which canon suggests.
This is what I was trying to get at and not expressing particularly clearly. On the forums, I've found discussion is more on what is there, and less on potentials or possibilities. That's not to say that discussion of characters' relationships didn't ever happen, but it took place as a part of a much greater whole. I think it ties back in with the lack of fanfic thing, since it's my experience that the majority of people interested in fic are primarily interested in pairings and shipping. (I know there are many out there who aren't, or who are interested in shipping as part of a greater whole, but that's certainly the impression that I get from reading fanfic and meta about fanfic.) Does that make sense?
Re: My comment was too long...
I wonder if this is because there was no focus on fanfic? I mean, that sounds obvious, but for me, discussion has always had a lot of elements of "what if?" This might be because I also write fic, but there are some canons I'm interested in for which I'm not interesting in writing fic; I mostly just want to discuss. But even for those canons I'll tend to get shippy, or tend to want to explore things which aren't explicitly in canon, but which canon suggests.
This is what I was trying to get at and not expressing particularly clearly. On the forums, I've found discussion is more on what is there, and less on potentials or possibilities. That's not to say that discussion of characters' relationships didn't ever happen, but it took place as a part of a much greater whole. I think it ties back in with the lack of fanfic thing, since it's my experience that the majority of people interested in fic are primarily interested in pairings and shipping. (I know there are many out there who aren't, or who are interested in shipping as part of a greater whole, but that's certainly the impression that I get from reading fanfic and meta about fanfic.) Does that make sense?