Fannish expectations

[dysprositos]

The conversation over in oliviacirce's posts about the differences between the Scary Ponies Oh No (commonly referred to as "book fandom", "SF fandom", "con-going fandom", and "those fanboys over there") and the Pretty Princess Monsters Blargh (a.k.a. "media fandom", "LJ fandom", "us fangirls", and "LJ-centered Western media fandom which reads Metafandom") is spawning all sorts of interesting discussion.

There have been all sorts of distinctions made, among them:

• Demographics: mostly white men versus women with a more-proportional white:nonwhite ratio;


• Fanacs: LARPing, collecting, trivia, filk versus fanfic, meta, fanart, fanvids


• Primary location: conventions versus Internet


• Thinking style: linear versus hypertext


• Relationship with the PTB: worshipful with a side of "I'll be one someday" leading to a tendency to side with them, friendly, officially-sanctioned versus neutral or adversarial, resistive to attempts at commercialization, and little interest in becoming a PTB


• Attitude towards fanacs: commercially viable and potentially career-launching versus fun and non-commercial amateur hobby


• Attitude towards canon: love or hate, but don't criticize, only fixable by fanwank, only one canon versus love and hate, criticize even your favorite shows if they deserve to be, fixable by fanfic, multiple canons

(Note that this is about the overall culture, not individuals by any means. There's far too much overlap for this to be at all a useful metric on the individual level.)

These differences lead to larger differences like the Scary Ponies Oh No dismissing activities, like fanfiction, associated with the Pretty Princess Monsters Blargh, often either because it's not being used as a launching point for a career (because the path from consumer to creator is so much a part of Scary Ponies Oh No expectations, if you stop midway, you're not an amateur, you're a failure); because it's perceived as trying to "fix" or, worse, redo canon and is thus an insult to the PTB; because it's a girl thing; or some combination of the preceding.

(Or, just thought of this, the tendency of Scary Ponies Oh No to bring their "squee, not critique" attitude to bear on themselves, so there are a lot of celebrations of fannishness but not so much introspection of what it means to be a Scary Pony Oh No or what needs to be improved or fixed. There tends to be a lot of "what do we do about the graying of fandom" hand-wringing, but also a marked resistance to any kind of change within fandom, without which young people are less likely to be interested. [Have you seen the SFWA website?] And not many discussions of things like sexism, homophobia, racism, and so on within fandom--whenever people do try to bring it up, the reaction of "we're not like that!" or "if we are, it doesn't matter!" or "we are like that and it matters, but there's nothing we can do about it but wait for the Old Guard to die off" is strong. Whereas one of the defining features of the Pretty Princess Monsters Blargh is a tendency toward introspection and self-critique; that's what Metafandom is for, after all: discussions of fandom, like this one.)

One of the points I made was

I think it is also worth noting that (it seems to me that, standard disclaimers apply) Scary Ponies Oh No expect a greater degree of homogeneity of interests outside the obviously fannish. I.e.: cats, computers, chocolate, RenFaire and/or D&D (or GURPS or whatever), a passing familiarity at least with Morris dancing, anti-Microsoft, &c. I'm not really sure what the equivalents for Pretty Princess Monsters Blargh would be; it's my perception that we're (much?) more likely to be liberal or leftist in some way, while Scary Ponies Oh No have a higher degree of libertarianism, and certainly if nothing else Pretty Princess Monsters Blargh fandom as a whole seems to expect anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, &c. sentiment.

to which aamcnamara replied

I think that the Pretty Princess Monsters Blargh also (to a certain degree) are anti-Microsoft--there are definitely expectations, just different ones. Like you, though, I am not certain exactly what those are.

So, lest this question get lost in the larger discussion: what expectations do we (Western media fandom as found on LJ and other journaling services, and united with such communities as Metafandom, Fandom_Wank, Fandom_Secrets, and so on) have of each other that are not related to fandom but that are not expectations we would have for humanity at large?

I'll start, adding to my comment above: I think that we have a tendency to expect each other to have some familiarity (even if only in passing, through reading each other's meta and reaction posts and out-of-fandom fic) with particular source texts that have or had large fandoms, e.g., Xena: Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel: the Series, Firefly, the Sentinel, the Man From UNCLE, Stargate: Atlantis and Stargate: SG-1, Harry Potter, Doctor Who and Torchwood, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Star Trek, Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, and more recently Merlin, Supernatural, and Dollhouse. Not necessarily be fannish about, not necessarily have seen the canon for, but at least have heard of it and maybe have some knowledge of what it's about, main character names, &c.

Comments

[elspethdixon]

I expect fannish people to be moderate-to-liberal on the social/political spectrum as opposed to conservative. Not necessarily pro-life/feminist/etc., but not a member of Focus on the Family or an avid fan of Rush Limbaugh, either.

Most importantly, though, I expect people in fandom to have an intense emotional investment in at least one book series/show/movie/comic/some form of fictional thing, and in particular an intense emotional investment in one of more the the characters from said source canon. If their major fannish thing is RPF, I expect them to also be fannish about something fictional or to have been in the past (like J2 fans generally also being SPN fans, LotRPS coming out of LotR fandom, Bandom having strong connections to slash fandom as a whole, etc.). I tend to associate strong investment in the world/setting of a canon but not the characters in particular a little more with the Old School SF fandom crowd, and strong investment in the characters with the fanfic crowd (not that people from both crowds aren't interested in both, but I have this impression that the fanfiction/slash/mediafandom crowd are more likely to be character fans before all else).

I expect other slash/het (as opposed to gen) fans to have shipping preferences -- I know there are many people who don't, but every time I run into someone who reads/writes slash or het but doesn't ship, I'm amazed all over again that such people exist. You'd think I'd have learned better by now, but die-hard OTPing is such a vital part of the way I'm fannish about things that I have as hard a time groking people who don't get/like OTPs as I do those people who can't see slashy subtext even when the writers/actors/creators put it there on purpose ("There is no homoerotic subtext in the movie Ben Hur. You're imagining things.")

The intense emotional investment in a canon/characters is the one I really think is the true constant, more than which canon it is -- because as another commenter pointed out, the fandoms common on fandom_secrets don't line up 100% with the fandoms common on metafandom, but the intensity of fannish love and squee/hate remains the same.

edited to add: I actually associate this (criticize even your favorite shows if they deserve to be) pretty much only with the metafandom circles of lj fandom,, which is the only place I've seen it turn up frequently -- the idea that the things one is fannish about ought to be criticized and examined on the basis of race/gender/etc. I'd say that critical reception of a text is the exception, and uncomplicated squee/love/hate based primarily on one's emotional reaction to the storyline/perceived quality (ex: "the Star Wars prequels suck! You have betrayed us, Lucas!" "Frank Quitely's art makes my eyes *bleed*!" "[writer's name here] is a talentless hack!" and so forth) is the pan-fannish rule.

[vehemently]

I feel the need to report that, back in the lamb-white days days of USENET, critical reception did exist. Why, the X-Files had a whole separate newsgroup for it, because it was so unwieldy and abstruse. A fair proportion of the B5 moderated group ended up in in-depth discussions too: in both cases, more on the fact-checking and imagery-gathering and "wait, that makes no sense" side of criticism than on the social-issues side.

Some of the participants therein ended up Princesses as we know them now (and on LJ, though none are associated with Metafandom that I know of); and some I think were Scary Ponies testing out the waters (B5 was a particularly Pony-friendly fandom). Quite a few others would not today identify themselves with any flavor of fandom.

So it's not the critical reading itself that has developed as the Princesses have gone LJ; it's the spread of critical reading from one or two areas across the wide spectrum of Princess culture (and onto topics more weighty and political). Or anyway, the spectrum of LJ-based Princess culture.

[elspethdixon]

Hmm... I think there's a qualitiative difference between paying critical attention to quality/consistancy/characterization/storytelling and criticism based on idealogy. Lots of fans will cheerfully admit that the thing they're fannish about is, well, not actually very good, but far fewer people want to discuss whether it's problematic/[x]-ist/Wrong.

You don't have to feel guilty for loving something that's riddled with continuity errors, whereas there can be a "enjoying this makes you a bad person!/By judging this I also judge you!" vibe to social/political criticism (ex: the way women often get criticized for reading romance novels: "How can you read something so riddled with sexist and heteronormative gender assumptions? You're a bad feminist/being complicit in your own oppression!")

[vehemently]

You'd be surprised. "Criticism" like mistake-noticing and "criticism" like social analysis elide together as often as not. I think that, 10 years ago, the cultures I participated in did not have the groundswell of people and tools to discuss race issues as LJ-Princesses do now; but that was a function of avoidance of a specific topic, not of a lack of interest in social criticism. (I remember spending many, many words on other topics in a social-analysis way, especially sexism and sexuality.)

I would say that LJ-Princesses have developed over time the willingness to be much more openly confrontational of a fannish object's social defects; whereas the older communities I describe tended to be resigned or ironic in their observations of same. I don't think that's a difference in analysis, however, but a difference in audiencing, tactics, and intent among the analyzers. Also, I mean, that development has been very gradual and recent: maybe three years, maybe four.

(Pardon me, I must go shake my cane and some children on my lawn.)

[jlh]

If their major fannish thing is RPF, I expect them to also be fannish about something fictional or to have been in the past (like J2 fans generally also being SPN fans, LotRPS coming out of LotR fandom, Bandom having strong connections to slash fandom as a whole, etc.).

That's really interesting, because one of the things I've noticed with assumptions about RPF is that actor-rpf or perhaps bandom—the rpf that is closely connected to fpf fandoms—is the majority of rpf. I don't find that to be true, at all. I'm not sure that the politifandom/fakenews people are necessarily linked in, and I find the rockfic people to be much further out. Idolslash/SYTYCD seems to be a first fandom for a lot of folks, and if anything, they're likely to go into the kinds of fandoms that are new and not tied to SF-F, like Gossip Girl or The Office or HIMYM. I see a growing group of relatively young people who write fanfic as a matter of course while being fannish about any thing, not as part of being a certain kind of SF-F fan. The one place they might have been was main HP fandom, but they saw HP as a teen book, a mystery book, but not primarily a fantasy book—not unlike Twilight.

That said, coming out of HP fandom and all that "feral fandom" criticism, I've been much more aware of the differences between the fandoms I've been involved with and main SF-F fandom (whether old school or new), and as the assumptions that all things fannish are the same slide away, I'm more interested in the similarities, because I think there are many.

[dysprositos]

That's really interesting, because one of the things I've noticed with assumptions about RPF is that actor-rpf or perhaps bandom—the rpf that is closely connected to fpf fandoms—is the majority of rpf.

Yeah, I think Pretty Princess Monsters Blargh people tend to think of things like J2 and other show/network-centric RPF, plus bandom, when thinking of RPF. I know I do, which is stupid, because, as you point out, Fake News can/tends to involve RL people as well as character!people, and obviously politifandom (is that what it's called? I tend to think of it as "stories where Rahm Emanuel is awesome rather than sadface", but then I haven't read any since before inauguration) and reality television fanfiction of all kinds.

The Metafandom Selection Effect strikes again!

That said, coming out of HP fandom and all that "feral fandom" criticism,

Argh worst meme ever Y/N? Right before "Snapefen are crazy because they all think they're married to Snape on the astral plane!" It was one woman, people. She did not represent the mainstream. *refuses to say things disparaging furries as a result of HP and Snape fandom disparagement*

(It wouldn't be so bad if I was, oh, I don't know, Cassandra Cla(i)re. I don't like seeing the whole fandom get tarred with the same brush just because her circle of friends and enemies was wanky. I'LL JUST BE OVER HERE LISTENING TO SNAPECAST AND READING REALLY OLD HP4GU POSTS OKAY.)

[jlh]

Full disclosure: I was very close friends with Cassie at the time—more real life friends than fandom friends, as we live in the same city—but for mysterious reasons (I think mostly having to do with my being neither hugely popular nor particularly wanky) my name (Clio) was never connected to most of the wank. (I was also very close personal friends with msscribe.) But yes, things got very crazy up in there, and stayed crazy for a while. Though I don't think it was all of that, that really lead to the feral fandom claims.

Interesting that you were in Snape fandom, as I think that was the fandom that was the most interconnected to traditional SF-F fandom, while the rest of fandom (especially the H/D slashers, etc) were coming more out of anime fandom, or were in their first fandom. Snape fandom always seemed very separate from the rest of what was going on.

[dysprositos]

Full disclosure: I was very close friends with Cassie at the time—more real life friends than fandom friends, as we live in the same city—but for mysterious reasons (I think mostly having to do with my being neither hugely popular nor particularly wanky) my name (Clio) was never connected to most of the wank. (I was also very close personal friends with msscribe.) But yes, things got very crazy up in there, and stayed crazy for a while. Though I don't think it was all of that, that really lead to the feral fandom claims.

Wow! So the two of us have had almost polar opposite experiences with HP wank of that era--I wasn't in fandom, so I'm stuck reading reports, and you were right up close to it all. Did you get hit with a "May you live in interesting times" curse? o.O

Anyway, yeah, I think those were the years that convinced everyone that all of HP fandom was a huge wankfest (and what do you expect, with a Tower named for Gryffindor involved? /obligatory Gryff dig) which is ridiculous, because it's too damn huge to be homogeneous in any way.

Interesting that you were in Snape fandom, as I think that was the fandom that was the most interconnected to traditional SF-F fandom, while the rest of fandom (especially the H/D slashers, etc) were coming more out of anime fandom, or were in their first fandom. Snape fandom always seemed very separate from the rest of what was going on.

I don't know about fandom overlap particularly, but yeah, Snape fandom was rather separated from everything else. Mostly because the average person reading the Harry Potter series tended to get the message of "Slytherins: ugly and evil, except for Draco, who is pretty and evil; Snape is an especially ugly git who may still uncomprehensibly be working for good; yay Marauders and Fred and George, isn't Sirius Black hawt?!" Which, um, was a radically different reading from the ones we had, which tended to go more "Dumbledore is a git who oppresses the Slytherins and lets them get bullied TO DEATH, no wonder they all turn out to hate everyone else, it's a survival mechanism to keep them from getting killed by the Weasley twins or Potter; even the best of the Marauders is a coward and an enabler; isn't Severus Snape conflicted and interesting?!"

It was always a shock reading discussions in other fora on topics like "Was Severus Snape born wicked, or was he raised that way?" (answer: he was born wicked, and grew worse) and "Snape's Worst Memory: did he totally have it coming and just got put in his place, or were the Marauders just having a bit of harmless fun?" I'd be sputtering things like "but--it was sexual assault" and "Rowling didn't even show the whole scene, if she thinks it's bad enough to fade-to-black it's awful!" The fact that Rowling thought attraction to Draco was "bad boy syndrome" when the worst things he did paled in comparison to the Trio's worst things, and she herself has this huge crush on Sirius Black--!

*cough* Anyway, yeah, separate, largely incompatible in mindset. I can still type out my favorite authors on LJ in a flash, get to Snapecast or the Snapedom (in hindsight, a bit more iffy of a name than I realized) comm pretty quickly, but I will stare at you blankly if you ask for pretty much any other kind of HP fanfiction but one that recognizes that Slytherin isn't all that bad. Or stories without Snape in them. Umm...Lust Over Pendle? Copperbadge's HP fic? Maya had a bunch of H/D and Hufflepuff fic? I could find some crossovers I liked....

Advantage of huge fandom: insularity within subfandoms.