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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 03:01 am (UTC)
People actually talk to you! That's got to be the clincher, in the end. Pleasing as the stats are (even when they are really quite bizarre), that's the really joyous bit of fandom for me at least, and Teaspoon inevitably doesn't really facilitate that bit.

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.
[identity profile] snowgrouse.livejournal.com wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 04:16 am (UTC)
Yeah. I wonder if with the interactivity of LJ (yet the feel that you're talking to your mates instead of The Big Wide Internet) makes some writers feel that posting stuff into an archive and getting feedback once in a blue moon is a step back? But then, they'd have to be the sort of writers who would remember Them Olden Days. When there was, like, that one, *one* explicit Doctor/Master story in existence (and the other two fics, EVER, of that pairing were non-explicit Three/Delgado romance mush or Ace going "ew, I can smell him on you, you sick fuck" at Seven).

I laugh hard and bitter at "hard slash" and Valeriana being mentioned in the same sentence. If I ever describe two Timeys fucking as "a statue kissed to life by lust" again, you may shoot me. But then ancient fic like that still gets tons of readers, so, fuck... who knows.

[identity profile] pontisbright.livejournal.com wrote:
Mar. 10th, 2008 09:48 pm (UTC)
It's one of the disadvantages of the Great Migration to LJ, sadly: more fic, but often harder to find because there's less likelihood of there being one, 'definitive' archive. If such things ever existed (especially when, as you say, there were times when there was only one story for a pairing, if that). Still, the mateyness is teh shizz. And more likely to involve people pointing you to the good stuff anyway.

I really liked the purpleness of Valeriana: it's like this slice not just of old-skool-Who fic but old-skool-fic fic too - the kind of stuff that never gets written any more because everything's so knowing now, so it's all cliche ficathons and Five Things... and self-conscious crack. I love those things too, don't get me wrong, but I like melodrama and bombast and ridiculousness too. They suit Five. (And I think I was just trying to find a way to describe 'slash where there is lots of fucking' with the 'hard slash' thing. Our terminology needs troubleshooting.)