Musing

[niko]

Something I wonder about sometimes:  Why is there so little cross-fandom discussion or meta about hurt/comfort in fandom?

It's a genre (or whatever) that has a lot of fans, it tends to be a preference that follows a person from show to show, and I personally, at least, have a number of meta-y questions that I'd love to see thrown out to a diverse group of h/c fans for discussion.

And yet, the couple multifandom comms I've seen here on LJ fizzled pretty quickly or never got off the ground...  ( *sniffles sadly at theonesyoulove *  ) and the one comm on DW also has no traffic.  I always wonder if its an advertising problem (word didn't get around to a broad enough group of fans that the comms existed)  or if I'm just in the minority, and most fans really have no interest in discussing their tastes outside of a specific fandom environment, comparing notes on fandoms that lend themselves to h/c, etc.   It's a bit of a bummer, really.

Comments

Talk in fandom

[jnutley.livejournal.com]

I don't see much of it. Didn't see a lot back in the day when we ordered fansubbed VHS tapes from each others clubs. People choose to
a) watch an anime
a1) read a manga
b) write a fanfic
c) read a fanfic
d) talk/write about their structure, etc

option (d) gets buried.

Re: Talk in fandom

[nikojen.livejournal.com]

Good point. Many segments of anime fandom, in particular, can be pretty shallow in the sort of conversations they have. (I check in on 4-5 anime forums regularly, and if it wasn't for the same topics recycled over and over, there'd never be any traffic at all :P). And media fandom, in general, often prioritizes fanworks with interesting takes on characters/situations over plain old discussion about the same ideas.

That said, I've been in several comms on LJ/DW over the years that *have* included a fair share of interesting pure-discussion topics... for a while, at least. It's just that most of them are comms with a very narrow focus on a single show. It'd be nice to see that level of interest in a broader sort of community where it's assumed that everyone has at least a familiarity with certain shows/franchises. (Similar to how a general science fiction forum can work because, even if not everyone's seen every obscure or brand new series yet, folks can be pretty sure that most everyone is at least vaguely familiar with Star Wars/Star Trek/etc. and that gives the board a common language to work from.)

[solosundance.livejournal.com]

you'd think there were enough people relatively committed to more than one fandom (and to this particular genre) to make cross-fandom discussion comms more popular really. You're right, it is a bit of a bummer.

[nikojen.livejournal.com]

*swoon* Haven't seen the Ezra-tongue icon for a while. :)

Yeah, it's a bummer. My gut-instinct is to chalk it up to lack of advertising and/or poorly worded "mission statements" for the comm that don't make it seem inclusive or something. That's why I'm sad "theonesyoulove" never got officially opened. The ladies behind that are rather BNF-y and may have had a better chance of capturing attention.

Ah, well. I did find a *forum* focusing on whump and h/c after my kvetching the other day. I'm not sure yet how alive it is for topics outside of the hugely popular shows like SPN and SG:A, but it's a start...