Poll: Where's the fannish love?

[resonant]

I know I could look at other people's state of the fandom polls, but I'm lazy so I'm posting my own. Anyone can participate, but it's not clear to me whether people can participate more than once? If you want to and you can't, you can fill in your other fandoms in the comments.

Pimp, warn, whatever. I miss y'all.

Poll #26653 Where's the fannish love?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 47

View Respondents

I'm fannish about this show/movie/book/podcast/whatever:

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The canon is:

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Actually good
27 (57.4%)

The kind of good that makes for good fanfic
28 (59.6%)

Other (elaborate in comments if desired)
9 (19.1%)

The canon is:

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Closed (the book's complete, the show's cancelled, whatever)
23 (50.0%)

Still in progress
18 (39.1%)

Depends on what you consider 'canon'
12 (26.1%)

Other (elaborate in comments if you want)
4 (8.7%)

The fandom:

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Is large and active
22 (46.8%)

Is not so very large and/or active
9 (19.1%)

Is small but nice
10 (21.3%)

Is dormant but occasionally stirs
1 (2.1%)

Exists? Sort of?
5 (10.6%)

Is basically just me
1 (2.1%)

Other (elaborate in comments if you want)
1 (2.1%)

Where does the squee/critique/gossip happen? (Discord, Tumblr, here?)

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The problem with this fandom is:

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Canon is hard to take if you're depressed about all the [gestures at the world] everything
5 (11.4%)

Canon was good for a while and then it wasn't
3 (6.8%)

Intrafandom conflict
16 (36.4%)

One of the canon creators has ... disappointed us
4 (9.1%)

There isn't enough canon
7 (15.9%)

There's too much canon
9 (20.5%)

Canon is hard to get access to
3 (6.8%)

There just aren't enough fans
9 (20.5%)

Other (elaborate in comments if you like}
17 (38.6%)

Comments

[fox]

I don't know how to answer the poll because of where I am in my fannish renaissance but I'm back on due South, res. DUE SOUTH. What.

[resonant]

Wow! That's vintage now! Are you rewatching? Are you ... writing?

Stargate Atlantis had a mini-renaissance recently - I think one of the reccing communities featured it.

[cathexys]

That's so great :) I actually just started a watch/rewatch with some folks on the Escapade server (one of my Roswell fans who'd never seen it organized it, and she loved the pilot last night. I'd forgotten just how much fun the show is--fast and funny without being ridiculous. Also PGross is so pretty!!! :)

[china_shop]

Re Guardian, the fandom is small but active -- and more importantly for me, there's activity on Dreamwidth. (I actually feel a bit like there are distinct fandoms for it on each platform, with some people being in more than one of those, but that might just be my perspective as a DW-only type.)

[resonant]

In the mailing list days, each list had a distinct feel, but there was a lot of overlap, a lot of one person subscribing and posting to multiple lists. And the *demographics* of Serge vs. Bindlestitch were probably very similar, whereas a Discord group vs. a Twitter group vs. a Reddit group vs. us here probably vary a lot in age, and maybe in other ways as well.

[lizbee]

My canon problem is that they killed my favourite character, and although other changes took place at the same time and the show has arguably improved objectively, my fave remains dead. It's extremely rude of them and makes me sad.

[resonant]

Rude! They should at least give you a mirror universe or something.

[celli]

I said Nancy Drew - was going to say Roswell NM and someone else had you covered, but, enthusiastic second!

ND has a, hm. I love my fellow fans that happen to like it, but I haven't had a ton of luck making new friends from within the fandom.

Also we have no idea if it's being renewed for next season or not.

That said, I love that I have a m/f, m/m, and f/f OTP.

[resonant]

Do you like the show, or is it homework?

Come to think of it, I really never start with liking the canon and then get interested in the fandom. It always goes the other way around

[mecurtin]

I have found very little that's a problem with Good Omens fandom. Right now it's in a little bit of a lull, but I expect it will ramp up to a frenzy when the new season is released in 2023.

[resonant]

I used to read and enjoy Good Omens, and then I watched the show and something went Click and I was done. All my questions had been answered, all my loose ends had been tied up, I didn't need any more. I mean I'm interested in the further adventures of Adam and the Them, but as far as Aziraphale and Crowley, I'm happy with where they are.

We'll see if the new series opens it up again.

[ellen_fremedon]

Les Misérables has a small but lovely fandom, and I hope I never want to leave it. (I'm on my eleventh reading of the book right now and I'm going to feel some sort of way about the canon forever.)

[resonant]

You certainly don't have to have that feeling like when you're watching a John Hughes movie for the fourth time to catch a bit of dialog and you think, "Could I be spending my time on higher-quality source material?"

Thanks

[jesse_the_k]

For this public service

Re: Thanks

[resonant]

I keep hoping someone will pimp me successfully, but so far I've been pimp proof.

[james]

When the books were coming out, a lot of folks hadn't made the sort of realisations that are necessary to realise how horribley rapey the canon is. And at some point in the books it becomes Too Much or the canon goes off in the wrong direction (depending on which character a person likes.)

Every pairing is a small pairing so it's hard for fandom to get huge; you gotta find a few peeps and just hope they don't get tired of making/enjoying fannish content.

Yuletide used to be awesome for injecting a dozen or more stories for the fandom then YT decided the fandom was "too big" and ruled us out. So now it just happens in dribbles, when someone gets a bug in the butt to write something. And most of the time whatever new gets posted isn't for my preferred person/pairing.

[resonant]

I enjoyed a couple of books, and then something tripped my torture squick (which is powerful but hard to predict) and I just never went back. Pity about Yuletide, though - maybe there needs to be a medium-fandom fest.

[archaeologist_d]

I adore my Merlin fandom but it's slowly dying because it's been almost ten years since it last aired. I don't want it to go. I love that show and fandom was awesome in how much content they put out.

[resonant]

Oh, for a while Merlin fic was everywhere. Sad when a fandom fades away like that.

[out_there]

I answered The Untamed in the poll, and wanted to say the problem with fandom = Other would be:
a) subtitles. There is no dubbed version of the show (The Untamed/CQL) so you have to accept watching 50 episodes with subtitles. (At the same time, this is one of the few shows where I was involved enough to mutter back at the screen -- mostly outrage at jerks being jerks -- but there's a lot of shows I don't care about enough to talk back at them) But sometimes the subtitle choices are a little funny, so you have to overlook it. (minor things, like terms that are technically English words but you've never heard of)
b) I'm a show-only fan, but the show was based on a webnovel where things happened differently (different order, slightly different plot points, but the characterisation is mostly consistent). It means there is a whole lot of other canon if you care, but you can also just love it based on the show.

The advantages of the Untamed:
a) easily available. It's on Netflix, it's free on Youtube, it's on Viki, and I'm sure it's in other places too. Different weird subtitle choices from each
b) canon is m/m slash and you feel it. There might be censorship that stops anyone from kissing, but the showrunners applied those rules to the het couples too and there was a point around episode 13 where I suddenly realised what I'd assumed was subtext and misreading cultural cues was totally... unstated text. It's definitely a romance, it just feels very Jane Austen where a shared smile is the height of romantic understanding.
c) the show is full of very pretty Chinese boys playing the scenes very gay. Most of the characters do not feel straight, even if they'll probably marry due to political reasons. Big cast of queer characters means the fandom writes a lot more than just the canon OTP.
d) it's actually a huge cast with political intrigue happening, and while you start by figuring out who people are by the colour of their robes -- you end the story with definite opinions on the main 12+ characters, their flaws and virtues, and their personal tragedies.

It's a show that's confusing and pretty when you start, and then you care about them.


Other fandoms that I keep flickering past are Good Omens and Loki at the moment, but I've been reading Untamed fic for a year now, and considering re-watching canon at some point.

[resonant]

I've avoided it because of canon too big, actors too young, language too scary. (Also I prefer non-canon pairings - if I want a scavenger hunt, I'm disappointed to be given a banquet table.) But it certainly is generating a ton of fic,some of which I can read and enjoy with zero knowledge.

[kiezh]

Somehow I've ended up in multiple fandoms that have major adaptations to different media going on... and the accompanying fandom infighting, sigh.

MDZS/Untamed is the closed-canon one, and the fighting over which canon is "better" seems to have died down (or at least I'm not seeing it anymore), but it's still hard to find enjoyable meta and discussion, especially since a character I loathe is a fandom woobie. (People are allowed to like him! I just don't ever want to read another essay about his sad feelings as long as I live.) Main pairing is great, though, and there's a firehose of fic! Wangxian fic has been my primary coping mechanism for the last 3 years.

Wheel of Time season 1 was good, and I felt like they balanced the expectations of long-term book fans and the appeal to new fans pretty well. Also canon main character f/f, gotta love that! Unfortunately the fandom is plagued by a really vocal and aggressive set of bigots who literally named themselves after a fascist military cult from the books, you cannot make this stuff up! Somehow they can believe that they are the True Fans and Defenders of the Books while identifying strongly with the fantasy KKK who are unambiguously villains in said books...
Anyway WoT fandom is pretty dead at the moment but when s2 comes out I'm sure there will be a ton of discussion. Hopefully the bigots will either get tired and wander off, and/or sane people will moderate the hell out of them on any forum that allows moderation.

Also watching Legend of Vox Machina, an animated show adapted from a campaign of Critical Role (D&D livestream). Hard to find discussion that includes knowledge of the campaign but isn't obsessively focused on cataloguing the adaptation changes.

In both LoVM and WoT fandoms, Youtube reactions have been a place to find enthusiastic squee from new fans who are not carrying adaptation baggage and are willing to take a show on its own terms. I'm not really a video person and wish the text liveblog would come back into fashion, but it is fun to see people get excited about Cool Stuff that's all new to them.

[resonant]

That's a lot of shows with huge canons! Sad (though maybe predictable) about the Fantasy KKK.

[cathexys]

Thirding [?] Roswell. It's such a great H/C canon (like serious physical and psychological trauma for our guys) with some good queer representation and fun found (and real) families.

It feels a lot like old slash canons if that makes sense--the sweet spot between really good TV and so crappy but great fanfic fodder...

[cathexys]

OMG, I just realized I missed the assignment :)

I was supposed to tell you what's bad about the fandom... Canon has gotten kinda ridiculous though I usually see that as just a higher challenge for fanficcers :) And there's been some real unpleasant stuff a couple of years ago when Season 2 aired (that made a bunch of people up and leave, some even taking their stories!) and just very recently there was a strange public callout post that was really out there and while naming no names was incredibly pointed (and to my mind extremely wrongheaded!). Add the usual race issues and writer errors...

Still loving my repressed boys with their inability to communicate and the "bisexual alien blast."

[destina]

The canon of my sort of fandom WAS closed, but then one of the actors and his wife had to go create a production company, buy the damn rights and create a prequel. I mean. Yay? Maybe? I reserve the right to disavow. Also the worst problem with the fandom is the factionalization chasm that happened literally 12 years ago (a LIFETIME in fandom years) and then grew into a vacuum of empty space between distant planets after the third to last episode when a 'did our ship just become canon, WAIT did they just bury our gays' scenario threw the internet into chaos (so glad I was alive and online and watching tumblr in the year of our lord 2020 when Supernatural fandom took down tumblr and half of social media for several gleeful/distraught hours).

So. Not a boring fandom, I guess.

[resonant]

The kidlet and I are distance-watching Supernatural together -- or a select set of Supernatural episodes that the kidlet has declared essential for either information or characterization. We're in season 3 now and have just met Cas.

[torch]

I opened up a comment window to explain why I'd checked several apparently contradictory boxes for every question, but apparently this is where my brain stopped. I've consumed three different versions of the canon, or four depending on how you look at it -- the live-action series, the original novel, the donghua, and MDZSQ, which is like a chibi series of light-hearted moments in-between the operatic AAAGH of the donghua. no, wait, there's a manwha, too. and an audio drama. neither of which I've checked out but they're probably closest to the novel in plot. I think.

This is probably a good way to scare you away from even glancing at the canon, isn't it... I know my eyes would glaze over. XD

[resonant]

Yeah, that sounds like comics fandom -- "Oh, you'll absolutely want to read the 1941 run, except skip volumes 3 and 11, but we all agree that the 1970s never happened."

I've read and enjoyed a few modern AU/fairy tale AU/crossover stories that could be enjoyed with no canon knowledge, though.

This is one of the four fandoms that I'm seeing clumps of in my poll (the others being Star Wars, Guardian, and Roswell New Mexico). Everything else is more or less a one-off.

[luzula]

Well all right, since you want people to pimp their fandoms... : )

Flight of the Heron is a book from 1925 by D K Broster, an author who would undoubtedly be a slash writer if she had lived later. She's written several books mining the rich vein of hurt-comfort, enemies-to-lovers, comrades in arms, and the conflicts of being torn between love, honor and duty.

The canon is freely available online (see link above), and there is a small but devoted fandom, which mostly happens in people's personal DW journals. The fic is, somewhat confusingly, under The Jacobite Trilogy on AO3. There are no fandom conflicts and everyone is very encouraging towards new people. We recently had a read-along that attracted some new people. A potential drawback (or a plus, depending on your inclinations) is that writing for the canon requires lots of research about the 18th century, since the canon itself is very well researched. For me personally it's a plus, I love that sort of thing, and the fandom generally is into it. And it's not the sort of fandom which has ventured into modern AU:s and the like.

Obviously no worries if this is not your cup of tea! : )

[resonant]

Huh. I do like book fandoms -- more accessible to me. I'll check it out.

[lobelia321]

I see zero problem with HP canon. It is like fandom fodder. The epilogue from hell (all those wrong het marriages) is the canon that launched a thousand fic. It's like fandom gold. The evolution of fanon fills me with delight (partially mirrored in affiliate canon): Harry reinvented as messy-haired Indian wizard Hari; Hermione as kinky-haired Black witch. And for a while there was the glory of ungendered Zabini. I am amazed that people are still writing in it. Amazed and humbled.

[resonant]

Right at the moment I'm finding it impossible to take any pleasure in HP, either canon or fanfic. I don't know if that's permanent or not -- it's not a logical decision but an instinctive revulsion. It sucks because the fans have done so much amazing creation in the fandom, and we deserve for those characters to belong to US now, dammit.

The Magnus Archives

[rydra_wong]

Canon is actually good, including landing its ending pretty successfully, and also is not a hot mess in the way that (imho) is the most fruitful for fanfic. However, it is certainly fic-able, and the author has provided several superb and generous Fanfic Gaps.

The fandom is huge by the standards of any podcast fandom that isn't Night Vale, but that's still relatively small compared to many other media properties.

It's had some bouts of discourse and also plain wank, but my major complaint is that it's largely on Tumblr (where I am not) and I would love to be able to talk about it more with folks on DW.

Re: The Magnus Archives

[resonant]

I listened to it for a while and then bogged down in the End of the World. At that point it seemed like everything was having an End of the World, including possibly the canon that we ourselves are living in, and I just couldn't. But the characters were great.

[melannen]

I have been wading into Minecraft SMP fandoms lately - I knew they were out there and huge on AO3, and I've been playing the game since the winter I had to come into work every day but the building was shut down and it was the only game on the work computers, and then recently somebody linked to something that seemed like a starting point for the biggest SMP fandom and I was like, okay, I'm not currently obsessed with anything else and it's February and it's cold and dark, this might as well happen.

It has been a Journey. I have been struggling to even figure out how to describe what these fandoms *are* to people who don't. In a way they kind of remind me of being in British Panel Show fandoms, in that it's basically just a bunch of friends who have figured out how to make a living pretending to play games with each other but actually just doing chatty improv comedy structured around the game. And in a way it reminds me more than anything of following the old nocturne_alley LJ roleplay comms, in that it's a bunch of friends playing a freeform, social-media-mediated, realtime fantasy roleplay game with each other that inexplicably got wildly popular as a virtual world lots of other non-players are deeply invested in, and having to deal on the fly with how to adapt to that. (Also like nocturne_alley, a lot of the people involved are TINY CHILDREN, but in the n_a days I too was a tiny child, so it hits different.)

And in some ways it reminds me more than anything of late-night AM talk radio, in that it's intensely parasocial, there's a ton of audience input and no fourth wall, massive amounts of content is produced (often live, and often treated as disposable - I'm currently watching through early Dream SMP stuff and it's not rare for there to be 12+ hours of canon put out in a *single day*, most days of the week, at least half of which has been lost forever, because different players will all stream their POV simultaneously and they weren't all recorded), the primary audience is lonely people who are awake at 3 AM, and there's this immensely huge fanbase that is almost entirely unknown to people who aren't part of it.

Anyway the other issue is that I have no idea how to navigate it! It's one of those fandom communities that built itself largely from scratch (and while it does use AO3 for archiving it's in a somewhat adversarial way as AO3 has been very unaccommodating of its needs and norms), I don't know anybody to be a guide, and most of the methods I learned from media fandom of finding the good stuff don't work.

But it's keeping my February busy! And that's the main thing.

[resonant]

Wow, this is an ENTIRELY new one for me. Isn't it interesting how the fannish impulse just shows up everywhere?

[burnishedvictory]

Ted Lasso and The Witcher! Ted Lasso seems to be mostly on AO3 and tumblr and The Witcher is on AO3, tumblr, and has a BNF who has a discord that's very active and delightful. Both fandoms are pretty active.

The Witcher's canon is a bit depressing, I guess, but there's not really an expectation to actually watch/read/play the game, you can just dive straight into the fic. The canon is technically open, but there are so many different versions of "canon" that it's pretty much pick the parts you like. The BNF that centers the discord is inexplicifics, and I'd recommend starting with this fic if you're interested: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23273713 - there's a lot more if you like it. Her fic often gets rid of one of the most depressing parts of canon - the fact that Witchers mostly wander the world alone.

Ted Lasso's canon is awesome and worth watching regardless of whether you want to participate in the fandom or not. It's still open (at least one more season expected). I find the downside to the fandom is that I compare all my fandoms to the juggernauts that I was in back in the day (HP, SGA, J2, bandom) and there's not the wealth of great fic yet. It's not as bad as 1D fandom, where it seemed a lot of the writers were really really young (and it was reflected in their writing), but there doesn't seem to yet be the same amount of spectacular writers that there were in some of the other fandoms I mentioned.

[resonant]

I've read quite a bit of Witcher (including some of Inexplicifics' work) and am always eager to read more, if you have recs -- so far I haven't located anything that would tempt me to play/read/watch, but I also haven't located any characters I won't read.

I've read a few Ted Lasso stories. The canon sounds amazing and I'll probably watch it eventually. As far as any actual effort to romance Ted, the mustache is ... a barrier.

So, let me tell you about Homestuck

[mme_hardy]

(listens for the roar of your retreating footsteps)

I got into the fandom well after the peak. I'm kind of sad about that, but somehow I ususally join fandoms only after all my friends have been gasping about it for years. (It's a thing. I speed-read all of The Hunger Games in the week before the last book came out.)

The last act was, everybody agrees, more than a bit of a mess. Then the Epilogues came out, after a two (I think?) year gap. They were incredibly meanspirited. When people protested that all the characters were unhappy (and sometimes in out-of-character ways), they were told that your 20s were just like that. A beloved major character did a mustache-twirling heel turn that I thought was brilliant as a plot twist but was devastating to a lot of people. One of my favorite characters was primarily notable, in both timelines, for cockblocking the #1 slash pairing.

It eventually came out that Hussie had gotten heartily sick of his fandom (and who can blame him) and had turned over most of the writing of the Epilogues to a selected team of fans, who started from his outline. This came out after Homestuck^2, a followon comic, began and almost nothing happened in a year of updates.

Then people were making death threats to some of the new team (which does not surprise but depresses me) and Hussie pulled Homestuck^2 off the public Internet and announced that the whole thing would be released at once, after the entire thing had finished.

I think everybody, including Hussie, would have been a lot happier if he'd thrown up his hands right around Act 6 and gone off to herd llamas.

It's still the fandom of my heart, dammit, and even though I keep swearing I'll never write another Homestuck, I keep signing up for exchanges, nonetheless.

Someday I'll pick up on a fandom early.

Hockey RPF

[exceptinsects]

Yeah so I got into this mainly because authors I liked got into it (which is really how I get into most fandoms).
The whole ‘canon’ thing is interesting because it’s, well, NOT interesting to me, particularly. I have watched literally one hockey game ever. 🤷🏻‍♀️

But it doesn’t really matter anyway, there are apparently an endless supply of new hockey boys so if one gets married or does something publicly horrible they just move on to the next ones and it’s all fine. There was definitely a big fall-off after Patrick Kane (part of one of the main ships as you may know) was accused of sexual assault and now the fandom is quieter and more niche-y but I think in a nice way.

I like repressed longing and friends to lovers and lots of cuddling and pining and this fandom has that in spades.
Also there’s a fair bit of original fic in this space which is great and I would not know the difference if it wasn’t labeled (see above re haven’t watched hockey at all and don’t plan to).
As a middle aged lady I also appreciate that there’s quite a bit of future fic dealing with aspects of aging and life changes as you might imagine in professional sports.
If you’re not into the RPF aspect I highly recommend original fic by theundiagnosable, and if you don’t mind RPF, anything by Linsky.

[lobelia321]

Since Feb, I've fallen head over heels so here's another set of replies! (I love surveys.)

I'm fannish about Our Flag Means Death.
The canon is actually good. In fact, phenomenal. Have never been in a fandom where the canon was as good if not better than the fic. Never.
The canon is still in progress.
The fandom is large and super-active. 10k fic on AO3 in the first four months.
Where does the squee happen? (Well, I'm not even sure the next generation knows what 'squee' means but they engage in it!) It's on twitter, tumblr, AO3 and (I am led to believe) discord.
The problem with this fandom is: there isn't enough canon, and canon is hard to get hold off.