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Teaspoon and slash: a pondering

  • Mar. 9th, 2008 at 11:59 PM
pontisbright: pontisbright (Default)

(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.)  

LJ – for any old thing, which you can pass off as just fluff if need be, but which can also result in nice quick feedback and the making of fannish friends
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

[identity profile] pontisbright.livejournal.com wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 02:52 am (UTC)
If only I could be bothered to like Ten/Simm!Master. I dunno, it just doesn't ping for me in spite of the oodles of angst potential. But it is nice to see a socking great slash pairing in the new skool.

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.
[identity profile] wishfulaces.livejournal.com wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 03:06 am (UTC)
Yeah, I don't follow the Ten/Simm!Master stuff either. Then again, it might just be simple "I don't want to follow the crowd!" contrariness? *shrug*

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?
[identity profile] pontisbright.livejournal.com wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 03:15 am (UTC)
I love that aspect of fandom: brings out the failed academic in me. All of these stories, existing as part of this huge fannish history that you don't even need to be aware of to be hugely influenced by, in a completely inescapable way. It's not like any of us sat down and consciously thought 'It appears the climate is at last propitious for some classic Whovian filth: have at it, Harry!' and yet here we are. It's a brilliant and exciting thing, being part of that tide (or as you say consciously opting out of it), but it's no less brilliant and exciting to step back and squint at it.