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]

Were the AO3 numbers for Tolkien fandom only or in general?

One thing I'd like to look at is age differences between writers who identify strongly with one genre or another. Tallulah linked me to The Journal of Slash Research, which showed slash writers to be much younger than the writers who participated in my survey. (JSR was compiled years ago, of course, which might be part of the reason.) The writers who participated in my survey were 2.4 years older, on average, than those who took the AO3 Census.

Getting to my point ... one thing my data did show is that use of Tolkien-specific archives is very much correlated with age. Older writers stick to Tolkien-specific archives; younger writers go for multifandom archives or social media sites. So it could be that, since AO3 is drawing a younger crowd, there is going to be more slash there. Of course, this assumes that the JSR findings also prove true here--that slash writers are relatively young--which I don't know yet.

Every little bit of light I shed on this data makes the darkness of what I don't know seem even larger. ;)

the lack of reviews and hits on femslash fics make it seem the opposite.

Unfortunately, the data doesn't account for other preferences. So, for example, if a third of the readers who like femslash likes Hobbit femslash, a third likes Elf femslash, and a third likes Edain femslash, and none are willing to read the others, then that is not going to create a huge audience. The 4.5 figure kind of assumes that the readers who answered agree or strongly agree when asked about whether they enjoy femslash will read any femslash story just because it's femslash, which is probably not the case.

[heartofoshun]

showed slash writers to be much younger than the writers who participated in my survey

That's because some of them are the same people growing older!

[dawn_felagund]

It could be! But lots of young writers have entered the fandom too. (I am on the computer in the teacher resource room that lets me go on LJ, so I don't have my data handy, but I do know that you and I, as not-under-30s, are definitely a minority! ;) If younger writers are writing slash (tbd) and younger writers are generally posting to AO3 and not fandom-specific archives (which was shown by my survey), then this could explain why AO3 shows "fanfic" to be mostly slash, while Tolkien-specific archives show it to be mostly gen.

[heartofoshun]

And some of it is labeling. I used to label a Gen Fic slash if someone kissed their boyfriend good-bye on his way out the door! The Tolkien fandom required "warnings!" for that unless people decided they were tired of giving it!

I do know a lot of the new Hobbit fics are PWP in the most primitive sense of the term. There are a lot of new PWPs in the Silmarillion area also, but they do tend to have at very least some humor in them (a little OOT, but it matters to me--I need something to make most PWP palatable--characterization or humor or sarcasm--something).

The entire warning business in fandom is a weird fetish. I still want to know how these people managed in school or in a bookstore? Or to walk by a room with a TV blasting away? When my autistic granddaughter lived with me, I did a lot to protect her from certain triggers, help her avoid others, and also to help her learn how to handle unavoidable ones. But I did not consider those the problem of the entire world. Fandom does!

[dawn_felagund]

That's a good point! I remember very clearly reading a story on ff.net where the author was very clear that she didn't think of Maedhros and Fingon as a couple, but they did [omg] hug in the story, so even though she meant it as a platonic hug, then she was warning anyway just in case someone found it slashy.

Even then, when over-warning for things was the norm, that seemed really fucked up to me.

Do you feel like warnings are easing up a bit? AO3 having the "Author Chooses Not to Warn" option seemed big to me. I don't see warnings being used on Tumblr either. (That was one of the revisions we made to our guidelines there: that stories and SSPs posted there had to have ratings and warnings!) And I've seen quite a few people avail themselves of "Author Chooses Not to Rate" and "Author Chooses Not to Warn" on the SWG lately.

I despise rating and warning for stories for all the reasons you mention. Also, the idea that a site/archive should be "family friendly" is pretty laughable to me, like families gather around the old PC at night and read LotR fanfic together, or like small children are looking for fanfic online. I was a good fandom citizen in requiring them on the SWG because they were the norm, but I was so glad to loosen the reins a bit on that. (From an admin perspective, they are also a nightmare because many people don't follow the rules precisely, which leaves you wondering of you should enforce the rules? Make people feel bad over something stupid? [Like not including a warning on a story rated Teens.] Create a hostile impression of the site to new authors? But if you don't, then what's the point of having the rules in the first place?)

On triggers ... this is very non-PC and could get me into trouble, but it occurs to me at times that violent crime rates have dropped big time in recent decades. So there were more crime victims before, yet it didn't seem droves of people were unable to participate in life? I acknowledge that some trauma victims may have triggers. Even on my o-fic, I would always warn for something like rape or child abuse. I do not accept that so many people have triggers of so many things. How do these people participate in life?? I think there is some special snowflakeism going on.

[heartofoshun]

The demands for warnings and ratings on stories have definitely declined. But now there is the Tumblr-style constant requests for tagging anything and everything that might possibly be triggering for anyone. If I had a list of everything I have seen requested to tag on Tumblr, I cannot even begin to imagine how long it would be. Fortunately it is not stuff I often if ever talk about.

But to have to take some personal responsibility for how they spend their time. I would not have taken Maria to birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese's when she was six years old--the crowds, the noise level, bells and whistles and screaming and squealing, with flashing lights, etc. I did not need be a neurologist with training in clinical psychology to know that would be "Not a good idea!" She was so adorable about it. That phrase was one of her favorite ways of warning us when she didn't think she could handle something: "Not a good idea, grandma!" She was seven then and had only been talking for less than a year!

[ladyelleth]

On the topic of warnings and labels - ergh, I'm right there with both of you against overwarning. If someone on tumblr requests something to be tagged for blacklisting purposes that's fine with me - somewhat equivalent to giving a warning to someone scared of clowns/dogs/whatever who hangs out with me a lot to not come to my place when I'm watching Stephen King's It/dogsitting/whathaveyou, or simply putting things under a cut on LJ, so I don't quite get the vitriol against this practice. Unless someone has communicated that something is a real trigger, tagging to me is more of a courtesy than a necessity, and if it goes to ridiculous lengths there is always the unfollow button. I'll just be over here with you scratching my head at how those people live their lives.

Very different in a more anonymous space like a fic archive, imho, because it's impossible both to know and accomodate everybody's needs, and it's on them to exercise caution. Warnings that actually encourage or accomodate bigotry (there's hugging, but they're not gay!!!11!) is where my patience ends; it's making me much less likely to click a fic to begin with - part of the reason that I'm so happy about SWG and AO3 putting femslash and slash into a genre-based category rather than a warning. On the other hand I like the labels especially as a sorting or even advertising tool. I'd be sifting through fics forever if I didn't have a way to get a handy way of getting a list of femslash stories.

[ladyelleth]

So, for example, if a third of the readers who like femslash likes Hobbit femslash, a third likes Elf femslash, and a third likes Edain femslash, and none are willing to read the others, then that is not going to create a huge audience.

I find it unlikely that that's the case. If the tumblr femslash community is anything to go by, femslashers (the ones that are "out" as per my commment below, anyway) are a very supportive bunch. I've gotten replies on there from people I'd never heard of because a multifandom tumblr reblogged one of my femslash SSPs, along the lines of "I don't know the first thing about Tolkien or Middle-earth and I don't think I understood the background but [insert praise here], or - when a big femslash OTP lately became canon and made some waves, my whole dashboard was full of "I don't watch this show, but congratulations on your lesbians!". So when it comes to differentiation within the fandom - and there definitely are preferences - I think these become secondary in favour of the genre.

[oloriel]

I dunno. I'll happily read Indis/Mirien or Nerdanel/Anaire or Galadriel/Lúthien or whatnot. I'm less interested in pairings that don't work for me (I dunno, Thuringwethil/Varda for instance). I don't really care about human slash anymore, so although Arwen/Éowyn could work beautifully, I wouldn't exactly search it out. And Hobbits? You could drop, like, Belladonna Took/Lobelia Sackville-Baggins on my doorstep and I'd have to be very bored to read it; more likely, I'd smile, pat their heads, and let them get on with it - without me watching.

Obviously, I'm not a member of the tumblr femlash community, or any femslash community at all. So I'm aware that my opinion isn't really representative of anything. It does exist, though. And let's be honest, saying "I don't watch that show, but congratulations!" is not the same thing as reading a whole story (however short it may be) and getting invested in its characters. That would be more like "I haven't watched this show so far, but whoa, now I'm definitely gonna catch up with it!"...

[ladyelleth]

I'd smile, pat their heads, and let them get on with it - without me watching.

Fair point, and I don't think you're very far off the mark. I probably generalized the perspective as talking from within the femslash community, without taking into account more "casual" femslash readers, I suppose, might be the word? Because after you brought this up I also noticed that I read much more selectively in genres that exist more frequently and that I'm less emotionally invested in - I like Maedhros/Fingon, but it's is a dime a dozen, so I'll make use of ratings/summaries/reviews/knowledge of authors to find a good story, with femslash (because there is so damn little) there need to pretty strong arguments (like squicks that'll tell me before I'm not going to enjoy it) for me not to click it in the first place. (ETA to clarify: Within canons or fandoms that I'm familiar with. If I'm unfamiliar with the source I'm unlikely to read it - apparently also not true for everyone.)

[dawn_felagund]

If the tumblr femslash community is anything to go by

This is the big caveat for me. I haven't looked too much at how data differs based on type of site (Tolkien-specific archive, multifandom archive, social media) and haven't looked at all at how data differs based on the specific site (so how Tumblr users differ from SWG members), but my spidey-sense would tell me that the Tumblr femslash community differs in some important ways from people who, for instance, are participating on a Tolkien-specific archive, who might enjoy femslash about certain characters or groups but have no interest in general in other characters or groups and, therefore, no interest in femslash about them either.

[heartofoshun]

who might enjoy femslash about certain characters or groups but have no interest in general in other characters or groups and, therefore, no interest in femslash about them either

I know I have pairings that are not among my first choices in femslash the same as I have het or slash pairings would never send me looking for them. Platonic or asexual Fingon and Maedhros would not be at the top of my list. I never say never, because I have read something of almost anything that I ended up liking.

It was a stretch for me to read Indis/Miriel(and it worked because of the writer, not because I was drawn to the concept), but I actively swope down on Galadriel/Aredhel if I catch them out the corner of my eye. I also have plot bunnies I am dying to write of Anairë/Eärwen, same for Nerdanel/Indis. I'd be interested in Amarie/someone but not into writing it. I'd never write Dwarf femslash, but I love Pande's Dwarf-woman of the House of Narvi and her OFC Mélamírë.

[ladyelleth]

Yes, agreed. Lyra pointed out something similar above, and I probably did overgeneralize femslashers' (or others' "special interest" genres/pairings) reading behaviour there (a decision to "swoop in" indiscriminately unless there are deal-breakers, picking and choosing more elsewhere). It would be interesting to see how the data differs based on archive use, though.

[indy1776]

In general. I logged onto AO3 and just copied the numbers from each category. Sad thing is, they're still not entirely accurate because each fic can have more than one category. And there's a number of fics who will list het or femslash pairings even thought they only appear in the background (and sometimes as a way to break up the canon het couple for a m/m pairing without removing the woman from the scene entirely). So the numbers of fics actually dedicated to a specific pairing as a pairing may be significantly fewer than it appears.

Age might have something to do with the amount of slash. (It wouldn't surprise me.) It might also have something to do with that, at least in the beginning, AO3 was significantly populated by people coming over from LJ, many of whom write slash. (I also wonder if the main audience for AO3 Census was from Tumblr, which could also affect its data.)

Older writers stick to Tolkien-specific archives; younger writers go for multifandom archives or social media sites.

This makes me sad. I don't want our fandom to just get subsumed into a large site. And on a personal note, no wonder why I've felt somewhat irrelevant in Silm fandom; it might actually be true. (I know for a fact that the Ask M-e/Tolkien read-along blog had no clue about the Silm reread until someone told her about it while she was prepping for her Silm read-along. And we'd been doing it for months at that point.)

The 4.5 figure kind of assumes that the readers who answered agree or strongly agree when asked about whether they enjoy femslash will read any femslash story just because it's femslash, which is probably not the case.

Thanks for pointing that out! I hadn't thought about it that way. I know I'm picky about what femslash I write and read (to the point where I dithered about going for "agree" or "I don't know" for those questions; I finally went with agree).

Still, the numbers are disheartening.

[brookeoflorien]

I just went and ran the data on the categories on Ao3 for the Tolkien fandom - specifically, LotR books, LotR movies, Hobbit books, Hobbit movies, and Silm and other histories of Middle-earth (the five main categories that are on Ao3 for the fandom). Mainly because there are significant differences that I can tell.

Ao3 divides categories into Gen, M/M, F/M, F/F, Multi, and Other (so not exactly the same as in the survey). Hopefully this link to the spreadsheet with the quickly jotted down data and this link to quickly made pie charts showing that work.

To summarize, in both of the Hobbit categories, M/M slash is 50% (book) or 51% (movies) of the total amount of fic. Gen is the second highest category in both.

In the LotR movies, M/M slash is the biggest category (41%), but not half. Gen fic is the second highest (36%). That's reversed for the LotR books category, where gen fic is the highest category (42%), and M/M is the second highest (35%).

In the Silmarillion and other histories, Gen fic is the highest category and half of the fics (50%). M/M is the second highest (25%).

The fact that both Hobbit categories have the most fics means that the overall fandom goes more towards M/M, but certain subdivisions within the fandom seem to go more towards other categories.

...apologies if I'm just chattering away with uninteresting things.

[ladyelleth]

These are great! Just a quick note, you have the numbers for Silm multi and f/f confused in the spreadsheet and pie charts - it should be 98 multi, 202 femslash.

(There are also LotR: All Media Types and Hobbit: All Media Types categories as well as a general J.R.R. Tolkien: Works category, but there is a lot of pretty arbitrary overlap, so not sure how useful these would be.)