On quality control in the online 'verse, or why we're spoiled in the dS fandom
marag posted a link to an essay on the quality of fanfiction and the possible impact a participatory culture has on issues like artistic merit and quality control. The author makes some excellent points about how valuable fanfic can be as a place where writers can experiment and learn to improve as writers. I've never heard arguments in favor of fanfic put so succinctly before: whenever I've participated in an academic discussion about it the whole conversation gets derailed when the subject of slash comes up. When I came out as a fanfic writer in a Cultural Studies course back in undergrad the only question the professor could think to ask me was, "Have you written a Mary Sue?" *headdesk*
Seekrit message to troyswann: That was Stan Beeler. I'm not sure if you know him, but the man writes books on Buffy and Stargate and he is possibly the most judgemental nerd I've ever met :-)
I got into fandom life in 1996 with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, back when fannish culture was just beginning to really take shape online. My early fic is terrible in the way all fic written by sixteen year olds is, and I'd provide a link for everyone's amusement but I'm trying to say good things here about participatory culture. After that I fell into Ds9 and never published any fic but read some really fabulous stories. After that it was DC Comics and it occurs to me now how little I read in the fandom. I wrote my first 100,000+word story for the Batverse but I don't think I read more than a handful of fics (Te, of course, and DC Luder and Chris Dee and marag and smittywing and keriwythn and, _marcelo, who was just starting out) and that's about it. It may have been because I tend to either read gen or search out Batman/Catwoman OTP-related fic, but DC Comics as a whole and the Batverse specifically seemed to offer mainly slash, which wasn't my cup of tea back then, or chan, which really squicks me.
The upside of all of this was that I was reading very specific material in a fandom that is large and diverse but whose fanfic quality sometimes suffers because of the lack of good centralized archives beyond the anything-goes world of the Pit of Voles. I wasn't aware of LJ during most of my time in that fandom and so finding quality fic was always a problem. My personal experience with reading DCU fic mainly involved wading through a sea of crap in order to locate good authors or find strong stories about my particular pairing of choice. I was in that fandom for three or four years and yet I was only able to locate a few pairing-specific archives in addition to (ugh) ff.net and mailing lists like the Glass Onion. Getting into the Firefly fandom was better - BlueSunRoom.net and the discovery of LJ as a fanfic resource offered a tremendous boost in the amount and quality of available fic. After nearly 12 years of steady fandom participation I'd finally begun to read fanfic regularly with Firefly.
And now I've hit upon the fairly unique fandom ofdue South. All of this has been said before, I'm sure, but the dS fandom offers a good example of the way an online fandom can help emerging writers hone their skills and improve/expand on the source material. dS is, in a lot of ways, an ideal fandom because quality stuff really does rise to the top. Stories are relatively easy to find and access once you surpass the initial hurdle of "but where do I start?": the main centralized archives (such as Hexwood/Exwood and dueslash) and LJ communities like ds_recs and ds_recsredux, ds_noticeboard and ds_ficfinders offer a lot of options in terms of fic-searching. Plus the fans are always recommending good stories or providing meta commentary on what makes a good dS story. After nearly a year of reading dS fic I'm still finding and reading fantastic, insightful and thought-provoking stories, and the well isn't showing any signs of drying up. Another reason dS is a special case is, I think, the relative age of the fan base. The show has been off the air nearly ten years, and new fans seem to be discovering it either through fic, because they have fond memories of it as a child (as in my case) or they stumbled across reruns by chance. Most of the dS fen seem to be in their mid-to-late 20s or older, and most seem to be professional women with university degrees and strong writing skills. After being lost for so many years in the wilderness of teen-based fandoms where the emphasis was decidedly not on writing mechanics it's a refreshing change to see so much intelligence and writerly ability on display.
That's not to say dS bad!fic doesn't exist. (Just ask jamiethel_bane. She's got stories.) What it does mean is that the usual flying-devil-monkeys of fandom life - inexperienced writers posting fic to do-it-yourself upload archives, young/immature/virginal fans attempting their very first dramatic and/or sexually explicit story, a lack of a solid community base from which to offer recommendations, meta commentary, and critiques - aren't really a problem in dS. In addition, good writing encourages more good writing when people begin to see what's possible. I'm not sure where the fandom would be without the early influence of top-quality stories. The work produced by these authors (and I won't go through the list because, well, you already know who they are) provides a standard of quality that everyone else in the fandom is constantly striving to meet. I don't think anything like that had been produced in my previous fandoms: there were pairing-specific stories that were well-read and well-liked, of course, but nothing that so firmly laid the foundation for future characterization and pairing interaction. The influential work of these BNFs as well as the largely courteous and helpful fan base provides a great starting point for someone new to the fandom. Our hypotheical new dS fan has a wealth of resources unavailable in most other fandoms and I think this too shows in the kind of quality fic produced by newish members. I'd offer the fandom of an example of fannish interaction and productivity at its finest.
Of course I totally missed the Ray Wars, so perhaps my picture of the dS fandom is a bit rose-tinted. Perhaps that made the community as a whole stronger and more stable. What do you guys think?
Please share your own experiences with other fandoms in comparison (or not, if it isn't your bag) to dS. Am I being far too general in my assessment of the DCU and BtVS fandoms? Too generous to dS? This stuff really interests me, as so many people seem to cross-pollinate between all of these domains but each fandom community is fairly unique.
Seekrit message to troyswann: That was Stan Beeler. I'm not sure if you know him, but the man writes books on Buffy and Stargate and he is possibly the most judgemental nerd I've ever met :-)
I got into fandom life in 1996 with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, back when fannish culture was just beginning to really take shape online. My early fic is terrible in the way all fic written by sixteen year olds is, and I'd provide a link for everyone's amusement but I'm trying to say good things here about participatory culture. After that I fell into Ds9 and never published any fic but read some really fabulous stories. After that it was DC Comics and it occurs to me now how little I read in the fandom. I wrote my first 100,000+word story for the Batverse but I don't think I read more than a handful of fics (Te, of course, and DC Luder and Chris Dee and marag and smittywing and keriwythn and, _marcelo, who was just starting out) and that's about it. It may have been because I tend to either read gen or search out Batman/Catwoman OTP-related fic, but DC Comics as a whole and the Batverse specifically seemed to offer mainly slash, which wasn't my cup of tea back then, or chan, which really squicks me.
The upside of all of this was that I was reading very specific material in a fandom that is large and diverse but whose fanfic quality sometimes suffers because of the lack of good centralized archives beyond the anything-goes world of the Pit of Voles. I wasn't aware of LJ during most of my time in that fandom and so finding quality fic was always a problem. My personal experience with reading DCU fic mainly involved wading through a sea of crap in order to locate good authors or find strong stories about my particular pairing of choice. I was in that fandom for three or four years and yet I was only able to locate a few pairing-specific archives in addition to (ugh) ff.net and mailing lists like the Glass Onion. Getting into the Firefly fandom was better - BlueSunRoom.net and the discovery of LJ as a fanfic resource offered a tremendous boost in the amount and quality of available fic. After nearly 12 years of steady fandom participation I'd finally begun to read fanfic regularly with Firefly.
And now I've hit upon the fairly unique fandom ofdue South. All of this has been said before, I'm sure, but the dS fandom offers a good example of the way an online fandom can help emerging writers hone their skills and improve/expand on the source material. dS is, in a lot of ways, an ideal fandom because quality stuff really does rise to the top. Stories are relatively easy to find and access once you surpass the initial hurdle of "but where do I start?": the main centralized archives (such as Hexwood/Exwood and dueslash) and LJ communities like ds_recs and ds_recsredux, ds_noticeboard and ds_ficfinders offer a lot of options in terms of fic-searching. Plus the fans are always recommending good stories or providing meta commentary on what makes a good dS story. After nearly a year of reading dS fic I'm still finding and reading fantastic, insightful and thought-provoking stories, and the well isn't showing any signs of drying up. Another reason dS is a special case is, I think, the relative age of the fan base. The show has been off the air nearly ten years, and new fans seem to be discovering it either through fic, because they have fond memories of it as a child (as in my case) or they stumbled across reruns by chance. Most of the dS fen seem to be in their mid-to-late 20s or older, and most seem to be professional women with university degrees and strong writing skills. After being lost for so many years in the wilderness of teen-based fandoms where the emphasis was decidedly not on writing mechanics it's a refreshing change to see so much intelligence and writerly ability on display.
That's not to say dS bad!fic doesn't exist. (Just ask jamiethel_bane. She's got stories.) What it does mean is that the usual flying-devil-monkeys of fandom life - inexperienced writers posting fic to do-it-yourself upload archives, young/immature/virginal fans attempting their very first dramatic and/or sexually explicit story, a lack of a solid community base from which to offer recommendations, meta commentary, and critiques - aren't really a problem in dS. In addition, good writing encourages more good writing when people begin to see what's possible. I'm not sure where the fandom would be without the early influence of top-quality stories. The work produced by these authors (and I won't go through the list because, well, you already know who they are) provides a standard of quality that everyone else in the fandom is constantly striving to meet. I don't think anything like that had been produced in my previous fandoms: there were pairing-specific stories that were well-read and well-liked, of course, but nothing that so firmly laid the foundation for future characterization and pairing interaction. The influential work of these BNFs as well as the largely courteous and helpful fan base provides a great starting point for someone new to the fandom. Our hypotheical new dS fan has a wealth of resources unavailable in most other fandoms and I think this too shows in the kind of quality fic produced by newish members. I'd offer the fandom of an example of fannish interaction and productivity at its finest.
Of course I totally missed the Ray Wars, so perhaps my picture of the dS fandom is a bit rose-tinted. Perhaps that made the community as a whole stronger and more stable. What do you guys think?
Please share your own experiences with other fandoms in comparison (or not, if it isn't your bag) to dS. Am I being far too general in my assessment of the DCU and BtVS fandoms? Too generous to dS? This stuff really interests me, as so many people seem to cross-pollinate between all of these domains but each fandom community is fairly unique.