Con Report: Is the medium the mistress?

[tartysuz]

I had a blast co-modding this panel with kahtyasofia and elynross. None of us knew how exactly we ended up on the panel, but from my point of view, it turned out to be a great experience.

What follows is my takeaway from the session -- and our chatty group had a lot to say, so this is by no means comprehensive!



Source versus fandom

• Just about anything can be a source, from standard sources like movies or TV shows, to commercials, like the Isaiah Mustafa Old Spice commercials.
  
• A fandom creates transformative works on an on-going basis, i.e., not just at Yuletide or as one-offs.

Single- versus multiple-source fandoms

• The biggest challenge for single-source fandoms is how to keep the community going when there is no more material to play with. For example, Inception is just one movie; it is not based on another work; it has not spun off any other official work (such as video games or book tie-ins). While the dream worlds of Inception allow for endless scenarios, more character data is coming from the actors' past and future projects. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has inspired Inception/3rd Rock from the Sun fic; JGL and Tom Hardy's casting in the upcoming Christopher Nolan-produced Batman movie is another potential source for fic.
  
• Long-running, multiple-source fandoms like Star Trek and Star Wars present many canon options, including AUs. Although the amount of canon may reduce the opportunity for speculation, it also provides fic writers with more material to work with, more stories to tell.
  
• The more contained Generation Kill fandom has fewer sources (autobiographical book, TV drama, interviews with the real people behind the characters or the actors portraying them) that are more integrated.

Storytelling style

• Many fan fic writers prefer to write more naturalistic stories. This is particularly useful for supplementing more artificial or genre-driven source material, such as science fiction shows.
  
• Naturalistic dramatic material may not attract as much fic because it doesn't need to be "fixed" by fic. Emphasis on realistic portrayals may encourage fic writers to shy away from writing from the POV of characters of a different ethnicity, either because they don't feel they are qualified to so, or they fear blacklash for doing so. Thus, a show like The Wire may generate few fics.

Tone of a fandom

• Often, the tone of a fandom is determined by who is writing in it first. Popular writers who write in a new fandom may take readers along with them. What they write initially may set the tone for future fics. Similarly, a group of new writers in an established fandom may change the types of stories depending on their interests. Sometimes, these changes are independent of events in canon or changes in the source material.

That's all I can recall at the moment. If anyone has anything to add, or remembers anything differently, please comment!

Also, the Clan Short Fiction universe came up in conversation. Does anyone have a link?