Fannish Migration Meme

[selenak]

Seen on various flists.

Have you ever followed friends/favorite authors into a fandom without ever having seen/read the source material?

No, not in the sense of having become a fan, let alone writing fanfiction, without having seen/read the source material. In fact, that's one of my tried and true anti-kinks. I absolutely hate it when someone states "I haven't watched/read XYZ, but here's my story" - few things make me back off faster as a reader. And I've seen it happen in a lot of fandoms- people basing their characterisation on fanfiction, rather than on the source material. (Mind you, in a fandom like Doctor Who, where with 40 years of canon material, some of which has been destroyed forever - thanks, BBC! - it's impossible to have watched everything. However, it's easy to keep writing about what you are familiar with, i.e. if you've only watched New Who, stay away from the previous regenerations and companions, and try to avoid grand sweeping statements about the Doctor's lives and emotional states during same. Or if you've watched Four but no previous regenerations, then kindly stay away from One to Three. And so on.) (And then there is the "I only watched the Methos episodes" phenomen of Highlander fanfiction. Which used to drive me crazy. This might qualify whoever is writing to write about Methos, but the Duncan characterisation almost invariably is faulty or sucks, and often the same is true for the Joe characterisation, for Amanda and Richie.)

All this being said: what did happen to me was that I became curious about fandoms by reading crossovers in which I didn't know one of the fandoms involved, or by "meeting" characters via roleplay at theatrical_muse when I was still active there. This then led to my tracking down the original source material and becoming fannish, or not.

Have you ever really enjoyed the source material, read the work of specific authors into a fandom, and yet have no interest in the fandom as a whole?

That did happen, usually with source material that didn't or doesn't have a large fandom to become involved with, like, say, Dexter, but also with a really big fandom like Harry Potter where I liked the novels and the occasional fanfic by writer I already was familiar with elsewhere, but no more than that. What also happens in regular intervals is that shipping wars and character bashing in various big fandoms drive me crazy and I have to absent myself from doing anything but watch/read the source material for a while. Though the "bah, fandom!" mode usually is then elevated by reading great fanfic or great meta once I get back into it.

Have you ever been strenuously pimped by your friends into another fandom and immediately fell in love with the source material?

Absolutely. Sometimes it took a bit longer - with Buffy, for example, which was pimped to me by fellow Highlander fans, but which I didn't get fannish about until perhaps three quarters of a season, or Alias, where it also took a season and some episodes more - and sometimes it really did happen very quickly. *pauses for mournful thought of having marathoned most of Heroes season 1 during the last s1 hiatus and the effect that had back then*

Have you ever gotten into a TV show/movie before your friends and busily pimped the source material to them in the hopes that a fandom would ensue?

I'm still feeling smug about successfully pimping both Babylon 5 and Alias to andrastewhite. This increased the percentage of Londo/G'Kar and Arvin Sloane fanfiction to no end, which is exactly what I was hoping for. Not the only example of successful pimping - looks at bimo and thaliaseawood - but still one of my favourites.

Have you ever gotten into a TV show/movie and tried to pimp it to your friends only to find out that they’d just gotten into it as well and were about to pimp right back?

Not really, no.

Have you ever been part of a mass migration into another fandom?

Hm, as I joined Buffy fandom between s2 and s3 of the original broadcast time when the show was at the height of its popularity - yes, I suppose? On the other hand, I usually never leave old fandoms behind completely, and keep coming back every now and then. Also, the biggest fannish mass migration in my time on lj was to Supernatural, and I just couldn't follow, even when for a time everyone seemed to be crazy about it. (The "no nasty girls near our boyz"!!! posts around SPN s2 were a big, big reason, admittedly.) Since it's unfair to make judgments about something based on fannish reactions, I eventually got around to watching the first season, decided it really was not for me and have been happy to stay away from that particular migration ever since.

Comments

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I was a fan of Jo and Ellen, and have what would probably be an explosive opinion over the row about alleged misogyny in S3 of Supernatural, which is that some of the tendency people picked up on to have all the female characters ciphers or villainous was directly because of some of the reactions of nutty Wincest fans to the idea of the boys getting on with women.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Given the sheer level of freakout I observed from the sidelines when s2 was broadcast - which presumably didn't get unnoticed by the shows' makers - there might be a connection, yes. But that doesn't excuse the show. Recently I stumbled across a post which quoted the sole female staff writer, Sera Something or the other, being asked (by a very dumb interviewer, by the sound of the quote) about the "ridiculous rape controversy". She replied in earnest and explained the idea that Sam raped a helpless woman every time he had sex with the demon possessing her body squicked her so she put something in her script to make it clear the "hosts" were dead and thus there wasn't a question of consent, but that the boys in the scriptroom all were disappointed in her for being so dainty and chickenish. This doesn't sound like a bunch of scriptwriters who need Wincesters to make them treat female characters badly to me.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Ah, I gave up on the show before whichever of the boys it was started having sex with demons and the resulting blow-up over the implied consent problems. But there were definitely complaints about the portrayal of women in S3 well before that happened.