Jaina (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
effervescible) wrote2005-04-23 01:06 am
effervescible) wrote2005-04-23 01:06 am
Entry tags:
State of the Fandom Address Post
This is the weekend of Catching up on Memes, I already know it. I'm starting with a question I was asked the last time one of those interview memes went `round. (Heh, I have to do my answers for this round, too.) I think it was ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
reizero who asked me to write down my thoughts on the state of the Trigun fandom, but if it was someone else, don't kill me, mystery friend. I wanted a whole post to do a more thought-out post, so here it is.
Oh, and before I get started--wank twins? If you're reading this because you just happened to stop by my journal because you were bored, as you so often do when I post something you don't like, just go away now and save me the trouble of having to tell you to do so later with ruder words.
It sounds silly to say I'm a fandom oldbie for a fandom that's like 5, but I guess I kind of am. I've noticed in various fandoms that fandom participation tends to come in waves and I think I caught the second noe, right after the "omg DVDs are coming out I can't wait to see what happens but I have to wait a month" one. Hence...very, very little fic. Disclaimer: I come from the het side of the Force and didn't know anyone in fandom to begin with, so I can't comment on the yaoi side of things, but to begin with, there was definitely a large majority of Wolfwood/Vash fics and I read the same 5 Vash/Meryl fics...let's save my dignity and just say a lot. For the most part the yaoi and het fans kept to themselves. I never noticed any major flame wars and since at the time the VML was about the only place for het fans to gather, I would have. So not the ideal fandom utopia where everyone shares and respects one another, but a far cry from something like the Wars of the Land of Files X. (Ye gods, THAT taught me how to participate in a flame war properly.) Good het fics were slowly trickling in. Well known and well loved fic authors at the time were Kiri, Astra, and Cadence and I still tend to think of them that way. I suppose there was a lower percentage of crappy fic, but that's really because the numbers were so small. There was still poo to spare.
At some point along the line I popped my NC-17 cherry. Oh, and this popped up in AIM one day:
EmprssGalaxia: Look, it's Jaina, the thoroughly entertaining author from the Vash/Meryl kitchen™!
It was, as they say, the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Note thatarafel also began her acquaintance with me by sucking up. Note that these two are my best friends in the fandom. Note a pattern.
Oh, and just to provefadingembers and I won't make Meryl fuck anyone, here's a snippet of old saved convo I found that amused me:
EmprssGalaxia: hahah...i understand...yesterday, for 3.579545 seconds, a Legato/Meryl popped into my head
EmprssGalaxia: then I screamed, "EW!" and my mother came into the kitchen to make sure I was okay
JainaX: OH EW
JainaX: Literally screamed?
EmprssGalaxia: well, yelled.
EmprssGalaxia: loud enough for the rest of the apartment to hear
JainaX: I don't blame you.
EmprssGalaxia: though i know where it came from...the fact that he has Vash's arm.
EmprssGalaxia: that does not justify it in any way, of course
EmprssGalaxia: you know, still, EW!
JainaX: Still. Ew.
Sometime between when I joined the fandom and when I metarafel, the Vash/Meryl fans kicked it into high gear. This was before Cartoon Network, so I don't know what happened, but that summer the VML exploded with posts and lots of fics began popping up. From here on, the Vash/Meryl fics began to really outnumber the Wolfwood/Vash ones, and I only cared because it meant I could stop re-reading those damn same five fics. Once Cartoon Network did air Trigun, it wasn't a sudden influx of fans, though the numbers did rise. I think that's because people react to Cartoon Network airings differently; some get hooked and rush ahead with DVDs or fansubs, some wait until the end and then seek out fandom, some get hooked and just can't find the fandom for a while...it varies. Overall the fandom got bigger, but it wasn't like fansite hit counts went up 1000% the day after Under the Sky so Blue aired. More fics were written, good and bad. Honestly, the only thing I regret about the Cartoon Network airing is that they cut off the end credits and we got hit with a bunch of fucking fics where people made up their own batshit ways for Vash to return.
Worst author of the time: Blackhat. *violent twitches*
So, Trigun fandom: then and now. In general, Trigun's followed other fandoms in migrating to lj instead of mailing lists, though some still exist. I've noticed that fandom `friendships' tend to be formed faster when people just have to look at members of communities and think "ah, they like the same stuff as me, let's be pals." Not that this didn't happen before, but on mailing lists, usually some conversation had to occur first.
As far as fic goes, I think an equilibrium has been reached. Het and slash are fairly equally represented, like major parties, with alt pairings as the third party that only space hippies vote for. (I ain't saying whether het or slash are the Republican or Democrat parties, though slash certainly does feature a lot of ass...coincidence?) Fic is slow in coming and shitty more often than it is good, but LJ has a better ratio of good:bad than ffnet does. I have no idea why that is. Maybe people who write like retarded monkeys can't figure out how to join communities or download a client. Drabbles are more popular now. Some of this is due to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
100bullets, but drabbles seem to be a growing trend across many fandoms, so I think it's just something whose time has come. Some people wrote them back in the day, but to use a marketing term like the obnoxious almost-grad that I am, it seems that they reached a tipping point.
There's also more porn now, as is only right and proper. Maybe someday someone will even write a decent Milly/Meryl NC-17. Or a decent Knives/Meryl, period. (cadesama's fic excluded.)
Slash and het fans are mingling a lot more. This isn't just in my own social circle, though it turns out that total ashattedness does indeed trump sexual preference in fic, but overall I see people actually talking to each other more. I think this is due to the general Trigun lj comms that are pretty popular. In the mailing list days, pairing lists prevailed, but now people are gravitating towards the comms with no stated preference and that means getting along or quite often getting booted. If I were more optimistic I'd say it's because fandom is maturing but as long asfandom_wank is around I know that will never be true.
Icons are also a whole new fannish industry. There wasn't really a place for them before.
Overall, though fandom is growing, I see it as a loose affiliation of social groups bound by common ties of interest rather than one giant free-for-all. (Though I kind of miss the giant free-for-all. Sniff. Oh X-Files fandom, you were my first love.) There's more crap coming out but once you find a good source of fannish output, it tends to stay good. In some ways I think the fandom has slowed down a little, but it's also produced some mind-bendingly awful fic, and that's the fuel that keeps a fandom going. I look forward to another four years of fic, fun, and batshit insanity. *raises a half-empty bottle of bitch beer as a toast*
reizero who asked me to write down my thoughts on the state of the Trigun fandom, but if it was someone else, don't kill me, mystery friend. I wanted a whole post to do a more thought-out post, so here it is.Oh, and before I get started--wank twins? If you're reading this because you just happened to stop by my journal because you were bored, as you so often do when I post something you don't like, just go away now and save me the trouble of having to tell you to do so later with ruder words.
It sounds silly to say I'm a fandom oldbie for a fandom that's like 5, but I guess I kind of am. I've noticed in various fandoms that fandom participation tends to come in waves and I think I caught the second noe, right after the "omg DVDs are coming out I can't wait to see what happens but I have to wait a month" one. Hence...very, very little fic. Disclaimer: I come from the het side of the Force and didn't know anyone in fandom to begin with, so I can't comment on the yaoi side of things, but to begin with, there was definitely a large majority of Wolfwood/Vash fics and I read the same 5 Vash/Meryl fics...let's save my dignity and just say a lot. For the most part the yaoi and het fans kept to themselves. I never noticed any major flame wars and since at the time the VML was about the only place for het fans to gather, I would have. So not the ideal fandom utopia where everyone shares and respects one another, but a far cry from something like the Wars of the Land of Files X. (Ye gods, THAT taught me how to participate in a flame war properly.) Good het fics were slowly trickling in. Well known and well loved fic authors at the time were Kiri, Astra, and Cadence and I still tend to think of them that way. I suppose there was a lower percentage of crappy fic, but that's really because the numbers were so small. There was still poo to spare.
At some point along the line I popped my NC-17 cherry. Oh, and this popped up in AIM one day:
EmprssGalaxia: Look, it's Jaina, the thoroughly entertaining author from the Vash/Meryl kitchen™!
It was, as they say, the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Note that
arafel also began her acquaintance with me by sucking up. Note that these two are my best friends in the fandom. Note a pattern.Oh, and just to prove
fadingembers and I won't make Meryl fuck anyone, here's a snippet of old saved convo I found that amused me:EmprssGalaxia: hahah...i understand...yesterday, for 3.579545 seconds, a Legato/Meryl popped into my head
EmprssGalaxia: then I screamed, "EW!" and my mother came into the kitchen to make sure I was okay
JainaX: OH EW
JainaX: Literally screamed?
EmprssGalaxia: well, yelled.
EmprssGalaxia: loud enough for the rest of the apartment to hear
JainaX: I don't blame you.
EmprssGalaxia: though i know where it came from...the fact that he has Vash's arm.
EmprssGalaxia: that does not justify it in any way, of course
EmprssGalaxia: you know, still, EW!
JainaX: Still. Ew.
Sometime between when I joined the fandom and when I met
arafel, the Vash/Meryl fans kicked it into high gear. This was before Cartoon Network, so I don't know what happened, but that summer the VML exploded with posts and lots of fics began popping up. From here on, the Vash/Meryl fics began to really outnumber the Wolfwood/Vash ones, and I only cared because it meant I could stop re-reading those damn same five fics. Once Cartoon Network did air Trigun, it wasn't a sudden influx of fans, though the numbers did rise. I think that's because people react to Cartoon Network airings differently; some get hooked and rush ahead with DVDs or fansubs, some wait until the end and then seek out fandom, some get hooked and just can't find the fandom for a while...it varies. Overall the fandom got bigger, but it wasn't like fansite hit counts went up 1000% the day after Under the Sky so Blue aired. More fics were written, good and bad. Honestly, the only thing I regret about the Cartoon Network airing is that they cut off the end credits and we got hit with a bunch of fucking fics where people made up their own batshit ways for Vash to return.Worst author of the time: Blackhat. *violent twitches*
So, Trigun fandom: then and now. In general, Trigun's followed other fandoms in migrating to lj instead of mailing lists, though some still exist. I've noticed that fandom `friendships' tend to be formed faster when people just have to look at members of communities and think "ah, they like the same stuff as me, let's be pals." Not that this didn't happen before, but on mailing lists, usually some conversation had to occur first.
As far as fic goes, I think an equilibrium has been reached. Het and slash are fairly equally represented, like major parties, with alt pairings as the third party that only space hippies vote for. (I ain't saying whether het or slash are the Republican or Democrat parties, though slash certainly does feature a lot of ass...coincidence?) Fic is slow in coming and shitty more often than it is good, but LJ has a better ratio of good:bad than ffnet does. I have no idea why that is. Maybe people who write like retarded monkeys can't figure out how to join communities or download a client. Drabbles are more popular now. Some of this is due to
100bullets, but drabbles seem to be a growing trend across many fandoms, so I think it's just something whose time has come. Some people wrote them back in the day, but to use a marketing term like the obnoxious almost-grad that I am, it seems that they reached a tipping point.There's also more porn now, as is only right and proper. Maybe someday someone will even write a decent Milly/Meryl NC-17. Or a decent Knives/Meryl, period. (
cadesama's fic excluded.)Slash and het fans are mingling a lot more. This isn't just in my own social circle, though it turns out that total ashattedness does indeed trump sexual preference in fic, but overall I see people actually talking to each other more. I think this is due to the general Trigun lj comms that are pretty popular. In the mailing list days, pairing lists prevailed, but now people are gravitating towards the comms with no stated preference and that means getting along or quite often getting booted. If I were more optimistic I'd say it's because fandom is maturing but as long as
fandom_wank is around I know that will never be true.Icons are also a whole new fannish industry. There wasn't really a place for them before.
Overall, though fandom is growing, I see it as a loose affiliation of social groups bound by common ties of interest rather than one giant free-for-all. (Though I kind of miss the giant free-for-all. Sniff. Oh X-Files fandom, you were my first love.) There's more crap coming out but once you find a good source of fannish output, it tends to stay good. In some ways I think the fandom has slowed down a little, but it's also produced some mind-bendingly awful fic, and that's the fuel that keeps a fandom going. I look forward to another four years of fic, fun, and batshit insanity. *raises a half-empty bottle of bitch beer as a toast*
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And that's what I meant re: Nightow and Vash. The manga version. It owns me. I loved all the characters in the anime, even though Vash's idealism/naivete were very frustrating, but there aren't words to express my love for the manga. And manga Vash. And it's more realistic, too, because it makes no sense for Vash to be as rigid in his ideals as he is in the anime, given his intellect and how long he's lived.
And I'm not going to start ranting about what I think it means that it's women writing the rapes in the het
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there aren't words to express my love for the manga. And manga Vash. And it's more realistic, too, because it makes no sense for Vash to be as rigid in his ideals as he is in the anime, given his intellect and how long he's lived.
I think we share a brain XD
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