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(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...
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Comments
It is strange how fannish life can become compartmentalized in and of itself--like an M. C. Escher print, really. In certain fannish circles I will categorically refuse even to admit I write fic, let alone slash (but mostly probably because of the slash--I don't want to out myself to everybody! Shock, gasp, horror!).
It's intriguing, because it does impact on the overall perception of the fandom (as much as there ever is such a thing). You still encounter people popping up and declaring how disappointed they are in the lack of slash for (old-skool) Who, and however much we can go 'oh look, who_otp, loads!' etc, comparatively it's a tiny little corner of the fandom and a relatively recent development. Which part of me thinks is quite lovely, because there are positive aspects of that coterie atmosphere, but it's also sort of depressing.
And obviously I don't write fic at all, and certainly not that nasty slash, not me sir. *sighs*
comparatively it's a tiny little corner of the fandom and a relatively recent development.
How much het was around before the new series, the advent of LJ, and all the rest? DW's always been a bit different from other ancient (*cough*) fandoms, like Star Trek or MUNCLE, in that respect, hasn't it? Focusing more on the adventure plots and the character stuff but without all the fiddly sex bits? Or am I just imagining that? (Even the NAs never really sexed up the Doctor--there might have been hordes of gay men and a companion shagging in every other novel, but it wasn't really until Eight came along that the Doctor started getting in on the action, it seems to me. I could be wrong, though.)
Yesyesyes to all the weirdness of Who as a fandom, though. Fic suddenly taking a sonic leap from being long droney plot (I like plot, I love plot, but sometimes it's not what makes for great fic) to being comfy with teh sex (as lizbee says, around the same time as LJ started to eat fandom and it became more of a female space: really, the new series couldn't have hit at a better time).
These are the things that make me explode with geekery, because fan history is one of those thrilling things that it's hard to keep track of but is just fascinating. I was not around for the radw days, but from what I gather pron (het or slash) was reserved for silly comments and fic was for being terribly serious and creating complex skientific societies in a hard sci-fi kind of way (rampant generalisation, obviously). Hence the 'oh noes he kissed Grace/half-human' debacle.
Yeah, I've kinda gotten that impression myself. I would never have dreamed of writing slash DW fic, either, were it not for LJ. Hrmmmm. This stuff is fascinating, isn't it?