Fandom Tennis Match

[hungrytiger11]

Fandom Tennis Match Meme:

Okay, here's how this is going to work. You comment with a fandom question. I answer it and then ask you a question that has some thematic relevance to the question you asked me.

Comments

[weisquared]

You bring up a good point about TV shows. I think the difference is that the majority of TV shows I can think of are ones where "Status Quo is God" - their episodes are meant to be able to stand alone, and there's little-to-no plot movement in a given episode. I don't think it's a ratings thing though, but more of a result of it being important to be able to air re-runs without worrying about order (iirc, anime tends not to get reruns the same way American sit coms do).

I find that if I really like a canon, I'll pretty much always want to talk about it, and in the absence of knowing people who like the canon (or knowing people who like the canon and want to talk about it excessively...) I turn to fandom. For me, actually what I'm looking for is more along the lines of meta, but since that's significantly harder to find than fic (I'm not sure if I just don't know how to look for it, or if there's just less of it), I turn to reading fic (since stories do analyze the series, just in a different way).

Now, you've mentioned "that you know have a fandom," which I'll amend to a relatively large fandom. (Without a large fandom, I run out of stuff I'd want to read and lose interest.) I find that I tend not to enjoy reading stories in fandoms where I dislike the fandom's central focus. For instance, to choose Narnia, I don't like 1) The movie characterizations, 2) incest among the Pevinsies, and 3) sex in any way (since it's a beloved series from my childhood, it feels weird). So, that means to find fic I'll want to read, I have to wade through a lot of stuff I don't, which turns me off the fandom. (Same for instance with a TV show like White Collar, which I know to have a pretty large fandom. However, since I see the two main characters in a father-son-type relationship, and the vast majority of the fandom seems to see them in a slash relationship, it's kind of off putting.)

In this way, Naruto is kind of odd, since I'm pretty uninterested in Kakashi/Iruka and Naruto/Sasuke (... or really any other slash pairing, since I much prefer the ladies), but it's large enough and stratified enough that there seems to be much more diversity in what's offered (while there may be more stuff focusing on the guys, there are also plenty of stories focusing on the girls). So, it's pretty easy to find stories I like, and thus I stay in the fandom.

Another thing that matters a lot to me is whether or not I can find authors/reccers that seem to have similar tastes as I do to help me navigate the fandom initially. I find ff.net to be kind of overwhelming to find stories on, and unless I happen to run into several good rec-lists, I tend to give up in despair. (For instance, I just started watching Detective Conan, and I quite like the anime. Yuletide tells me it's a large fandom, but I've poked around a bit, and I have no idea how to start finding fic in it, since browsing ff.net gives me a lot of sub-par quality fic.)

[hungrytiger11]

"Status Quo is God" - their episodes are meant to be able to stand alone, and there's little-to-no plot movement in a given episode. I don't think it's a ratings thing though, but more of a result of it being important to be able to air re-runs without worrying about order (

I never thought about that and yet, it makes total sense! Of course, I'm a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to that. Normally, the lack of forward motion in terms of character development and plot can be annoying to me, but sometimes I get complainy about it the other way around (for example, Glee's lack of character development drove me from the show, but Season five of New Dr. Who I was wishing the episodes were more stand alone. I'm just a flip-flopper I guess!lol)

For me, actually what I'm looking for is more along the lines of meta, but since that's significantly harder to find than fic I think there is less of it, and its often not marked/catagorized very well either.

I get what you mean about Narnia! Its kinda funny, I'm now able to read Narnia fic but in my head I've managed to separate Narnia-the-book-from-my-childhood-that-also-gave-me-a-lot-of-ideas-about-my-religiuous-beleifs and Narnia-the-fandom-that-is-kinda-cool-but-messed-up. Dunno how that happened....

Fandom seems to sexualize/romantic-love-ize almost every relationship and it makes me sad, really. Almost devalues other relationships, though I've been guilty of it too, probably...

Agreed about Naruto. ANd about finding authors/reccers that seem to have tastes you can trust. I totally stalked certain journals' flists at first till I figured out somethings about whatever fandom I was getting into.