lettered | Fandom far afield

When was the last time you participated in fandom on the internet not through a journaling site? I don't really mean posting fanfic to something like fanfiction.net, unless you also post and discuss in the forums there. I mean discussion, meta, the posting of fanfic, the making of graphics, etc, all being share through a medium other than LJ, DW, Insane Journal, JournalFen, etc. This would be a forum, website, mailing list . . . if you did something like a fanzine, not online, I'm interested in that too.

1) What fandom was it?
2) What was the medium? (e.g. was it a forum, a mailing list, etc)
3) When was this?
4) Are you still active in that fandom?
5) Why did you participate there, and not at a journaling site?
6) Are you more active in fandom on journaling sites or at other places?
7) How did the different mode of interaction affect your fandom participation?
8) Does there seem to you to be a difference in fen between the other medium and journaling sites? What are the differences? Why do you think those differences exist? Is it the nature of that fandom, or do you think it has anything to do with where that fandom is taking place?
9) What were the fen in the other medium's thoughts on yaoi? (No, seriously. What was the general sentiment towards slash?)
10) Was it easier or harder to get into a fandom through a medium other than a journaling site?
11) Which medium do you prefer?

If it sounds like I'm doing a study, I'm not. I'm just dabbling around in this other fandom, the fen of which seems mainly to congregate around a forum rather than playing on LJ/DW. I'm wondering how many people share my experiences there. Forums used to be my main method of fandom access. I was comfortable in them and found LJ inconvenient and not very suited to my style. I became used to it because I decided a lot of cool people were here...and now I'm beginning to think it's the only way!

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(too intimidating!)

...I left RoP because I feel like I was effectively stifled there. I wanted to talk about fanfic; they didn't like it. Fanfic there used to be like you described on forums--we would talk to each other, not necessarily even the author, about where a story was going, our theories, etc. I love it when fen can treat fanfic as a canon. This was really discouraged at RoP and I'm pretty sure the rules they started making were a result of me and a small group of other trouble makers. It was very stifling there.

I'm not sure (and I doubt one could find out) if it's the fandom that shapes the fans or just that the fans that are attracted to it tend to be people who either don't mind heterocentrism (because, for example, they don't feel it), or are actively heterocentric themselves.

I think you're right that we probably can't find out, but wouldn't it be nifty if we could get people to contribute their own thoughts on it? E.g., how many people did what I did--went from not minding heterocentricity to having a problem with it, and did it correspond to a change in fandom? To a change in age? Education? Personal experience?

I like the novel for its political aspects perhaps even more than any other thing about it, and no fic I've found really deals with it.

I . . . feel funny about my interest in N&S. I had the very visceral shipper reaction to it that leads me to most fandoms--I want the two main characters to get together and I go to fandom to get it done, whether it's Jim Kirk and Mr. Spock or Margaret Hale and Mr. Thornton. But I want to think that the reason N&S sucker punched me the way it did was because the main characters have very strong social concerns, and very interesting social disputes, and I want to see that explored.

So I almost immediately sit down and start writing the crackiest fic imaginable, where of course there can be a lot of porn, and I can make the two main characters hook up in new ways. But I am interested in the social aspects. So suddenly I have this leviathan of a fanfic, wherein half of it is this very mushy romance that is somehow about Victorian repression of female desire, and the other half is extremely clunky discussion of social politics which doesn't go anywhere, because it was never meant to be there to begin with. It's just sort of stuck in, because I like it.

Um....it's late in the evening and I've become all tangenty. What I find shocking is that, like you, I haven't been able to find any fic that deals with what I find interesting. But my fic only deals with what I find intellectually interesting half the time. The other half the time, my lizard brain has taken over and I just want to ship like my life depends on it. In the novel, I did not find their romance compelling. In the adaptation, I did--but the adaptation has far less intricate social politics, partly because they just did not have time, partly because the format is not suited to a lot of the minor details, and partly because this mini-series is a music video made to hopefully cash in on the Austen crowd.

I think they're not big on journaling sites because they're already big elsewhere.

Well, but I feel like N&S shot up after the adaptation, which came in 2005--why did they flock to a forum first, instead of a journaling site?

(Actually, there's a bit of movement here for the Age of Sails fandom, which is mainly slash, about the navy.)

Yes, I've seen that! It's made me happy. Last time I watched Horatio Hornblower, I got very very obsessed with Hornblower/Bush for about 3 weeks, and lamented what I thought was a serious tragedy: there wasn't going to be any fic about this. But now I see it alive and hopping, and I just . . . wish that was so for N&S, and JA with like minded folk.

Thanks again for the link to your post.

I suspect that with the N&S forum, there's crossover with JA fans, and so the people who founded it were not new in fandom--it was not a clean slate. And well, to be honest, I don't really think journaling sites are reasonable places to suppose there will be a fandom or that fandoms can be built there, if they were new people. They're way too decentralized. I can only wonder at people who thought to move their fandom here in the first place and what prompted it.

I guess only we can make it active here--I know you're not the only one to prefer the journaling sites--but I wonder how...

suspect that with the N&S forum, there's crossover with JA fans,

I think you're right.

I don't really think journaling sites are reasonable places to suppose there will be a fandom or that fandoms can be built there,

I agree completely. Even though I'm not new, I find journaling sites ridiculous as fandom hubs. It's not true that I actually prefer it here; it's that the people I've found here are . . . more in line with my kind of thinking that people I find afield.

Well, that's not quite true. One of my fandoms is fandom, and while you can get a sense of community in a forum, you don't have that overarching idea of fandom that you do at journaling sites. In that sense, forums/mailing lists are decentralized, and LJ is centralized.

I guess only we can make it active here--I know you're not the only one to prefer the journaling sites--but I wonder how...

We should plan a mass uprising. Or something. I feel like I should've tried to connect with more fen before implementing my fanfic exchange plan--then people might've been able to make judgments about whether it was actually worth participating in. The trouble is I don't know where to go to find fen for these sorts of fandom on lj.

That's weird... I have felt that fandom is my fandom since I started to be multi-fannish, and that was a bit before I actually settled on lj. I do think lj makes it more comfortable to be part of a multifannish group that do not necessarily share fandoms all the time, true. (In fact, most of my--smallish--circle at dw (in which I'm more active than lj) is not on any of my fandoms at all.

I would be more comfortable participating either on dw or the AO3 (the code for challenges there is improving all the time, even), but I can help you by reaching out to the people I know. I suspect I don't know many you don't, though. Two or three authors, and a couple readers more (and I can't guarantee they will participate).

I've always been multi-fandom in that I've participated in a lot of a fandoms, but I'm usually only really active in one at a time. I still maintain interest (...sometimes real estate) in all of them, though, which made me really interested in fandom as a whole. The problem was I could never find anyone talking about fandom, as in the whole thing, and the nature of fannishness. You could not step far back enough in a forum about JA, you know? But maybe there are non-journaling places who do.

Well, I want to move over to DW more completely anyway. If we're starting a movement, we might as well do it where we prefer ;o) I have to check with my friend about what she meant about JA fandom at DW--it's possible I misunderstood her. What I remember her saying was that she knew people on DW who seemed to be trying to use DW for JAF. Anyway, thanks! I guess what I really want to do is just find the people who are active in JAF on journal sites, and then find the people like me who didn't know how to find them, you know?

Fandom far afield

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