lettered: (Default)
It's Lion Turtles all the way down ([personal profile] lettered) wrote2010-04-15 10:32 am

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!

Re: My comment was too long...

[identity profile] dolorosa-12.livejournal.com 2010-04-23 12:58 pm (UTC)(link)
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?