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[futuresoon]

I had a thought, a while back, and today I decided to look into it; I thought, huh, anime and manga fandom are kinda different from live-action fandom. More of a focus on fanart, of course, but then I started seeing stuff on the hetalia comm about local get-togethers, and pictures of those showed dozens of people, all in the same area (admittedly, the

Comments

[th_esaurus]

The big culture-shock I had in the transition from manga/anime fandom to live-action was definitely fanart. I spent far more time looking at fanart and reading doujinshi (especially on Japanese sites) than I ever did reading fic, while in manga fandom. Same for my output - much more fanart than fic. And then when I got into live-action fandom, I got endlessly frustrated at the 'fanart' tags in communities that contained only icons or graphics or rubbishy manips. It's near impossible to find decent fanart, and this distressed me a lot for a long time. I've pretty much accepted it's not the done thing now. My own output is vastly more fic than art now, because I feel too embarrassed to draw the kind of things I used to for manga fandoms. Luckily, as you point out, the tendency is that live-action fandoms will have a higher ratio of good writers, but still. Fanart ;__; I miss you

[futuresoon]

Live-action fandom isn't entirely bereft of fanart--I know SGA has a few, and Supernatural has some very good photomanippers. But I see far, far more fanart on the Hetalia comm than I have in any other fandom, to be sure, and I've drawn far more fanart for Hetalia than I have for pretty much anything ever. It is kind of nice, actually! Fanart provides a much quicker satisfaction than reading fic, and as for doujinshi, well. Well. *cough*

[th_esaurus]

SGA was like a godsend for fanart. There were some amazing artists! I found a couple in Iron Man fandom too, there was some really good stuff there. And then I moved on and was once more bereft ;__; I think it was just the shock of going from spending hours looking at new art every day, to getting maybe one new piece a week. If I'm lucky.

[lovestories]

You know, that's a really interesting point! Although I don't think bigger fandom necessarily equals bigger comm membership? For example, like you pointed out, Supernatural, SGA, and Merlin are larger, more popular fandoms on the Internetz and all three average 2000-3000 members. gossipgirltv, on the other hand, has 7630. Gossip Girl, while probably medium-largeish as a fandom, doesn't really compare to the other three. However, Gossip Girl fandom doesn't have much (DECENT) fannish output. There are maybe ten good writers in fandom, and really, it's pretty much all icons of varying degrees of pretty and wank lurking around every corner.

In addition, I think the larger a fandom is, the more it fractures. Off the top of my head, I can think of three "main" Merlin comms. And then there's the 3942043204032 ship comms. merlinxarthur has about 3000 members alone, and obviously not the entire Merlin fandom ships Arthur/Merlin (it's probably pretty close, though). I know that I, personally, just join comms for fic/icons/a pairing I'm interested in, and very rarely

[futuresoon]

...Gossip Girl has that many? Seriously? I am impressed, yo. Hetalia does have a lot of icon posts, I'll admit, plus hella fanmixes (which are also not as common in live-action fandoms, I think). And while there are comms for individual ships, they're not very big and the most action definitely goes on in hetalia. So many data points! I wonder if there's a way to actually quantify any of these things? Probably it would take too much effort, though.

[lovestories]

Well, you could run a mutivariate regression output and then analyze the correlation (ohhhh, application of AP Stats to FANNISH THINGS), but you would need alooooooot of data. AND I AM LAZY.

[rionaleonhart]

I appear, entirely because of you, to have watched the first three episodes of Hetalia.

Rarely have I been so confused.

[futuresoon]

yessssss THAT IS HOW YOU KNOW IT'S WORKING. Watch the rest, you've barely seen the Allies yet and if you read the manga you'll meet a whole bunch of other characters who aren't really in the anime yet (Prussia! Poland and Lithuania! Sweden and Finland! Canada!) and omg everyone is so awesome I love them so much. <3<3<3 Basically what I am saying is, it becomes marginally less confusing once you get to know everybody! (There is a lot of everybody.)

[yavieriel]

... wandered over here from the Hetalia comm (I love your Hetalia/Doctor Who crossover) and saw this