(Sorry for the borked formatting, LJ is chucking a mental)
I'm reccing at calufrax this week, and since calapine pointed out the tragically small number of slash recs so far, I'll be serving up an all-slash, all old-skool (or old/new crossover) selection of fics.
Finding stories has been interesting - possibly in a way which is just a reflection of my own reading habits - but it made me ponder. My automatic reaction was to go looking for slash I'd already loved on LJ, in the hope that I'd find it at Teaspoon, with varying degrees of success. Some people seem to upload everything they write as a matter of course, both to multiple comms and to Teaspoon: some stories only crop up on LJ (often in small comms, where there’s likely an small audience of familiar faces): some (especially older) fics are on knackered old geocities sites where the author has likely forgotten they’re even still there (and it’s only thanks to the likes of ghost2 and the who_otp Masterlist of Doooom that we ever find them again).
Conclusion: it seems as if a lot of writers of slash and femslash don’t use Teaspoon – or if they do, they’re selective about what they post there, especially with stories involving explicit sexual content.
So, I’ve got two questions. One: is that accurate? (I'm more than happy to be proved entirely wrong!) And two: if I’m not just being crap, what’s the likely reasoning behind writers being selective at Teaspoon? Is it the notion of small LJ comms being a cosy coterie – and if so, is that a lovely thing or a problem? Readers, do you mentally categorize Teaspoon and LJ differently in terms of expectations? Writers, are there some stories you’ve written that you feel are ‘more Teaspoony’ than others? Can you unpick what your notion of ‘Teaspooniness’ is?
(Please note: this is in no way a dig at Teaspoon, which I love with a burny flamy love. Nor a dig at LJ comms or individuals. I know that some stories seem to have the best ‘fit’ in certain locations; some were written as commentfic or ficathon entries or in-jokes, and outside of that context they can read as oddities, weird deviations from the author’s usual style, or just plain incomprehensible. And that’s before we get to the fics that we regret for one reason or another, and will happily let vanish in the LJ scroll (as much as anything ever can) instead of placing them somewhere more accessible like the ‘official’ fic archive. It’s entirely up to you where you post your fic: I’m just curious about the reasoning, that’s all.)
Teaspoon – for ‘proper’ fic which you’ve spent a bit of time over and reckon is worth showing to people outside LJ (despite the fact that you value the opinion of those on LJ more): feels a bit more detached from the audience
ff.net etc – not worth even looking at
Apologies for the tl;dr. Am interested to know if other people's heads are quite so keen on compartmentalisation as mine, anyway...
Comments
Um ... speaking as a Teaspoon mod, the slash I see is usually one of the big established pairings -- Doctor/Master, Doctor/Jack and Jack/Ianto. Everything else sort of bubbles under, and femmeslash is relatively rare.
I suspect, and others may thwap me if this is inaccurate, that the great rise of slash culture in fandom, and the concurrent emphasis on non-canon pairings, coincided approximately with the rise of LJ as the primary base for fannish activity. In all of my fandoms, those sorts of fics just don't get posted to major archives with the same frequency. Sometimes authors seem to equate all archives with FF.net; others just prefer to have more control over where their fic is, what the pages look like and who can read it. I don't know.
Teaspoon also has a greater proportion of male authors than a lot of fanfic archives. This might lead people to think slash is less welcome? I'm not sure, but I'd be curious to know.
Certainly LJ seems more 'friendly' to random pairings etc to me - but I don't know how much of that is just a self-perpetuating thing: I don't think of it as especially slashy, therefore it remains not especially slashy... And yes, perhaps DW as a fandom with a lot of blokes in it might have an influence. But maybe it is a cross-fandom thing as you say: LJ is the natural home of the marginal, and major archives just never will be. Interesting to consider how that migh affect the likes of OTW, if it ever happens.
*is even more curious now*
/spamming teh comments
I often forget to post to Teaspoon for a couple days after LJ, and I'd give up Teaspoon in lieu of keeping LJ if I had to make a choice, but I don't have any fears or anything about posting to one or the other.
I kinda hate trolling the various comms where fic could go because personally I hate scrolling along my flist and seeing the same fic five times or more, so I try to post it just to my own LJ and one or two appropriate comms at most. (I just posted a fic involving both book and audio characters and posted links to it on
Teaspoon was created to archive Who fic, for goddess's sake; it should bloody well be open to all fic. But I don't need to rant about the blasted thing.
I agree with you on the appropriate comms thing; I try to post at two max, three in very rare cases if I'm trying to promote the ficathon it was for, or something. But sometimes that involves trying to figure out where the right audience is, and realizing you're probably losing some potential readers. Teaspoon is great because it is just there, and people can click or not click, as they wish.
The archive is certainly open to all fic, but these days it's just overwhelmed with certain pairings, unfortunately (a ton of Torchwood fic coming through the queue right now, actually, and I hate having to read them to validate them). All I can say is - everyone reading this, archive there! Archive your strange things and weird pairings and all sorts of great stuff!
And Teaspoon does say it's for everything, and is for everything: I just wonder if there are lurking hang-ups there since I seem to have a few.
I did notice the lack of slash on
What, me ramble back? Sorry.
Sounds like my week's recs will go down like a lead balloon. 'Hey everyone, here's some random porn with characters you probably don't know!' Ah well, it's made me happy to read new things and rediscover some old ones.
And you should absolutely cull from Cloister Bell, for there is gorgeousness there.
Interesting question. When I wrote my first Jack/Doctor slash fic I put it up on Flexible and posted it to comms. Teaspoon was then all about Rose/Doctor and I didn't think slash would be welcome. Then, when Torchwood started it looked as if there was going to be a main fic archive and three of my fics were uploaded there, as well as x-posted to my LJ, but the archive died a death. As did Flexible.
And to me Teaspoon seemed to be a DW archive so... I didn't really think about it as a centralised archive. Factor in a bad browser experience trying to upload a fic to Wraithbait and there you have it. I was reticent about coding (possible differences between coding for LJ and elsewhere) and then it was the idea of uploading all the drabbles and fic again. *sigh*
It's been the practicalities for me, not fandom or any perception of types of readers and/or feedback.
Someone asked the other day on
One thing I still need to figure out is why people love the fics I like the least, especially on Teaspoon and now Prydonian. The ones with the most cliches and the shakiest writing, with some really appalling confusing POV shifts and descriptions. And the fact that a crappy Ten/Master/Lucy threesome is getting fuckloads of reads, where I was under the impression that slashers run screaming from any mention of vag. I can maybe understand the popularity of Valeriana, as woefully old-fashioned as it is, because there isn't enough Five/Ainley out there (WHY, GODS, WHY? NEEDS MOAR). So, yeah. At least Teaspoon is making me go "WTF" at fandom, if nothing else...
There really isn't enough Five/Ainley out there. You'd think Ten/Simm would prompt it, but I'm not sure that's going to happen. (Popularity of Valeriana = indication that people would read more hard slash of them if there only was more it, though?)
The 'people like this but I think it's a bit crap' thing is so confusing. It's like when people leave reviews which suggest they really didn't quite get what you were trying to do: it seems ungrateful to carp, but it's still this weird non-validation. Odd.
I was already pipped to the post with reccing that majestic post-Singularity one of yours. Then again, I'm trying very hard not to put Turlough into every single rec, since that's probably not really the done thing.
You should put things there, though. Then I will get to reread them and be gleeful, and this will prompt me to poke you about Time's Folly, which might result in more of it, and thus fandom shall be saved. Hurrah!
I usually mean to post things to Teaspoon when they are done being WIPs and then forget all about it. I meant to edit the Turlough one so it was paced a bit better and put it there but I keep not getting round to it cause it's such a hideous monster and really ought to be vetted by a saintly beta. Also I am going through a phase where I am being astoundingly embarrassed of all my naughty fics.
You have warped me forever, BTW, I got to listen to Exotron today and found myself not a little turned on by the tortured Davison argh's. Sigh.
Not that I'm actually complaining. Um.