Some Data and Analysis on Genre Identity/Preference in Tolkien Fandom

[dawn_felagund]

Over on the post about my paper presentation this weekend, the issue of genre was brought up because I didn't address it in the paper but I definitely asked about it in the survey. I decided not to include it in the paper because it involved defining and explaining terminology (genfic, het, slash) that I just didn't have time for, and I wasn't sure

Comments

[dawn_felagund]

I have to admit that the genfic persecution complex makes me roll my eyes. I mean, come on. Most Tolkienfic is genfic. There are two large genfic archives. Writers of genfic stories never had to worry about their work being ineligible for the MEFAs. Writers of genfic don't get flamed on ff.net for writing genfic.

I think part of it is that slash and het writers kind of took their toys to other corners of the Internet and had a lot of fun there. Maybe the genfic writers felt left out? I don't know. We're all left out from something is this fandom. Perhaps it is also a form of rationalization: "Many of us don't want you (the writers of erotica) to share our spaces, but at the end of the day, you have more readers than we do." Like they are making a sacrifice by not being kewl and writing erotica.

(I should say that I do not mean this of all genfic writers. I am a genfic writer, for pity's sake! But some do have a persecution complex that ... doesn't exactly seem to bear out in the numbers.)

Page clicks would be another interesting way to look at the same question (and would be really easy to do). On the SWG, By the Light of Roses appears to be my most clicked-on story aside from my ficlet collections and AMC, but it would be interesting to look at my short slash/femslash stories compared to short genfic stories.

Femslash does seem to have the biggest gap between reader interest and author production. I don't know that that means that there will be a high demand; some of those readers might be picky beyond genre. But it does seem that there is a potential audience for something that is not yet being produced in great numbers.

My femslash "The Sailing Forth" was almost 11,000 words ... not a novel but longish. And ... it has just 184 clicks, compared to roughly 1,000/chapter for By the Light of Roses. I agree that it is a genre that deserves more attention from writers.

[heartofoshun]

My femslash "The Sailing Forth" was almost 11,000 words ... not a novel but longish.,

That is long in the world of femslash.

I don't know how last year's production for me would change my figures, because I wrote a lot of slash and not a lot of short-short stories, but at the end of 2013 I did an analysis of my lifetime fanfic production and found I was a majority Gen fic writer! OMG! I thought I was slash writer with one big het novel under my belt. Serious world-building will do that to a writer. People say sex and death are the big issues/problems/mysteries of life but it takes a lot of Gen fic to set that up!! Even adventure or plotty/plotty things like mystery novels are dull as dirt with the world in which they are set being well-developed. News: that is Gen fic!

[dawn_felagund]

When I wrote BtLoR, I think people were getting ready to tar and feather me because it took so long to get any sex in the story. The same is true of The Sovereign and the Priest; people were like, "You wrote a novel for SinS!" and I replied, "I had to build a world in which the request made sense to me!" I can't just throw two characters in bed, and the more unlikely the pairing seems to me (Feanor/Erestor, Finrod/Celegorm ... although apparently the latter is more popular than I knew!), the more work it will take to get there.

I have written all four of the genres here: slash, femslash, straight-up het erotica. But I am also primarily a genfic writer. Funny how a few stories in the other genres can skew that perception (but a few genfic stories in the portfolio of a writer who wrote primarily non-genfic probably would not have the same effect).