Snowflake Challenge #6: Things I Want in Fandom

[corpsebrigadier]

In your own space, make a list — anything between one and ten things is a sweet spot, but don't feel constrained by that! - of things that you wish existed in fandom or elsewhere, or that you'd like someone to make for you. Are you dying for podfic of your writing? Do you need icons for a character that doesn't get much fanart? Is there a story you want to read? Are you looking for new canons to get into? Would you like a collaborator for a project?

So yeah... playing some catch up with this challenge after making it through most of my first week of the new semester, wherein I have a reasonably pleased director, a decent assistantship assignment, and an actually relaxing seminar to audit.



1. More People in my Fandoms: I'm always in a bit of a conflict over what I want out of fandom here, as I tend to gravitate toward teeny tiny fandoms where there aren't a lot of fans to begin with and I tend to like niche characters and absurd rarepairs. I honestly enjoy the feeling of being a big fish in a small pond, but I often wish that the pond was just the slightest bit bigger. Generally, I just would love for a few more people who are into FFT or semi-obscure literary fandoms or movies featuring Tadunobu Asano getting beaten up to share my enthusiasm--which is a large part of why I do exchanges. (Yuletide is very good to me.)

2. MORE META!: Fandom is my escape from academia, but I'd love to have more of a venue for to do what feels like Academia Lite within it. As tumblr sinks into the sea and fandom discussion moves more toward ephemeral and/or space-constrained platforms like Twitter or Discord, I find I'm jonesing more for lengthy essays on why things work the way they do in canons I love.

3. More Offbeat Fanworks: unconventionalfanworkex was basically a godsend to me, because I really just love to work in every medium I can when it comes to things about which I'm enthused. I'd love to see more interactive fanfiction, more fannish crafts, fannish audio dramas, fannish recipes, fannish whatever that goes beyond typical fic and art. I know such material is out there, but I'd just like more of it, because I am greedy and desire more opportunities to eat, wear, and generally play around with the canons I love.

4. More Laid Back, Every Day Fandom Archival Efforts: After what happened with Yahoo Groups and 8tracks last year, I think a lot of casual fans are understanding the importance of fandom archival efforts, but I'd really love there to be more of a culture of archival spelunking and putting together lists of archived links and downloaded works people are willing to swap. Something I often do that's very soothing is chilling out with the Wayback Machine and trying to retrace my fannish browsing activity circa the early aughts, and I've managed to dredge up a surprising amount of stuff I thought lost to the ages. I slapped up some of my discoveries on my rad early-aughts-esque Neocities site, but I wish there was just more of an established venue for this kind of activity.

5. Extensive Author's Notes to Make a Comeback: I don't particularly miss the goofy dialogue between authors and characters that often preceded texts (charming as I found them), but I absolutely would love to see more lengthy director's commentaries on minutiae in fic, works outside of canon that informed author's writing styles, and similar stuff. I want to know that you slipped in a literary reference to The Sorrows of Young Werther in your smut or that you meant the marigolds in your fix-it fic to be a grim reminder of character's canonical deaths that have been averted. I eat that stuff up with a spoon.

6. More People Shipping My Weird Ship: I have been insanely blessed exchangewise in that somebody was genuinely enthused by my rambling ship manifesto about why Zalbag Beoulve and Wiegraf Folles should hook up and that somebody else wrote me amazing fic for this pairing, but I will never be sated in my quixotic desire for more and more human beings to realize the brilliance of these two 90s JRPG boss fights getting together despite never encountering one another in the game they inhabit.

7. Some Beneficent Angel of Languages to Translate My Doujinshi Collection: I will probably spend the money some day to commission translations for a few of the cooler looking ones, but since I'm just indulgently wishing here, I might as well wish big.

Comments

[chacusha]

I'm always in a bit of a conflict over what I want out of fandom here, as I tend to gravitate toward teeny tiny fandoms where there aren't a lot of fans to begin with and I tend to like niche characters and absurd rarepairs. I honestly enjoy the feeling of being a big fish in a small pond, but I often wish that the pond was just the slightest bit bigger.

I know what you mean. I'm the same -- I can't really get into huge bustling fandoms where I feel like a nobody but I also don't want to be talking to myself in an empty room either. XD Need to hit that sweet spot of having like a cadre of ~a couple dozen fans that don't have to be super active at the same time to generate discussion/fanworks, but also small enough to all park themselves in a single community.

I'd love more meta too, but I also don't have that much to say about most of my video game fandoms so... I can't really help out here.

I too would love to see more extended author commentary on fic. Getting an explanation of the meaning of Ex Ornamentis's title was illuminating! Maybe if ao3commentoftheday's Trivia Tuesday concept takes off it would be more common to get that kind of info!

[corpsebrigadier]

Huge fandoms kind of intimidate me. I used to be into Doctor Who (both before and after the RTD era began in 2005) and the moving from "We're a half dozen Americans who probably watched this show at 1 AM on PBS" to "This is an actual mainstream, popular thing where you can buy a dalek shirt at Walmart" was honestly sort of nerve-wracking. Big fandoms can give you so much more of a sense that people are scrutinizing you while simultaneously still feeling kind of lonely. It's hard finding the right balance!

As for meta, it honestly used to be my big thing back when I was into lit fandoms, and it's been really weird moving onto old timey video games where there isn't quite the same sense that meta is innately a part of interaction with canon. Don't get me wrong, there exists plenty of immensely fine video game meta that I've read (although FFT fandom seems tiny/dead enough that it's not so much a thing), but it isn't as prevalent in the way that--say--Shakespeare fandom meta is, and I really miss that. As for authorial commentary, I hadn't known that Trivia Tuesday was a thing (and this is really tempting me to look at my tumblr more than once every few weeks)! I hope it catches on in general though, because I'd really love to feel less awkward about my innate desire to just infodump about how I looked up information about monastical oblates or tried to chart out the exact dates of the Romandan conflict or stuff like that.

[duskpeterson]

Regarding #4 on your list, would you be comfortable if I linked to this post in my next Links Roundup at fandomhistoryproject?

[corpsebrigadier]

Sure, go for it!

[duskpeterson]

Thanks!