fandom, the movie
I got an interesting email a while back (and then forgot to answer it until just now because I thought I already had, eek) and my correspondent was talking about her impression that people in this one fandom were less into mush and sweetness now than they had been some years ago. And it made me think about mush levels in various fandoms, and also that it all depends on where you're coming from and what you're looking at.
I have a pretty clear idea of how I see many of the fandoms I've been in, or am in. The P/K part of Voyager fandom way back when, for instance: candyfloss angst all the way, with the emphasis sometimes on the candyfloss and sometimes on the angst. M/K was grittier (because it was Mulder and Krycek, you know?) and tended more towards comic relief as its lighter side, though I have been given to understand there was more mushiness later on. TPM was a drama queen of a fandom, with space opera-sized torture-n-misery and soulbonds with extra nutrasweet on top. Eroica is surprisingly dark and correctly spelled. Popslash has this interesting polarization between extrapolating the guys as extra cuddly and sweet, and as deeply jaded and/or twisted by celebrity, and is way more meta in its fiction than any other fandom I've ever met. HP fandom is a huge amusement park with sparkly carousels and eep-making rollercoasters and dark little corners where people get dragged in and mugged.
But that's just the view from here. What does your fandom look like? (Is your Eroica or popslash really different from mine?) And does it like mush?
I have a pretty clear idea of how I see many of the fandoms I've been in, or am in. The P/K part of Voyager fandom way back when, for instance: candyfloss angst all the way, with the emphasis sometimes on the candyfloss and sometimes on the angst. M/K was grittier (because it was Mulder and Krycek, you know?) and tended more towards comic relief as its lighter side, though I have been given to understand there was more mushiness later on. TPM was a drama queen of a fandom, with space opera-sized torture-n-misery and soulbonds with extra nutrasweet on top. Eroica is surprisingly dark and correctly spelled. Popslash has this interesting polarization between extrapolating the guys as extra cuddly and sweet, and as deeply jaded and/or twisted by celebrity, and is way more meta in its fiction than any other fandom I've ever met. HP fandom is a huge amusement park with sparkly carousels and eep-making rollercoasters and dark little corners where people get dragged in and mugged.
But that's just the view from here. What does your fandom look like? (Is your Eroica or popslash really different from mine?) And does it like mush?