fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3994 ]

[ SECRET POST #3994 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3994 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 49 secrets from Secret Submission Post #572.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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I was reading an article that suggested that Dashcon killed Superwholock. I missed Superwholock, but I know it had a huge presence at one point on tumblr and it didn't exactly have a good reputation outside the group. Sherlock especially seemed to experience a pretty massive popularity drop after season 3, roughly around the time backlash hit Benedict Cumberbatch and/or Moffat.

It is true, though, that huge crossover fandoms like SWL and that Brave/How To Train Your Dragon/Rise of the Guardians/Tangled crossover seem to have more-or-less died off.

What happened to them? Did everyone age out of them or did they collapse under their own weight?

I doubt dashcon killed megafandoms. My theory is that abrasive, moralistic nature and the "stay in your lane" mindset of fandom right now is not conductive to fanworks so there's less silly fun stuff being made.

Have we really reached the point where we're willing to defend Superwholock if it gives us an excuse to shit on Tumblr?

I mean, seriously. Superwholock.

Superwholock was a product of tumblr, so I'm getting conflicting messages here.

Additionally any megafandom will have its crazies. Acting like superwholock is some unspeakable evil instead of a crossover that was sort of obnoxious is dishonest.

Re: What killed crossover fandoms (ie. Superwholock)?

(Anonymous) - 2017-12-10 21:40 (UTC) - Expand

Re: What killed crossover fandoms (ie. Superwholock)?

(Anonymous) - 2017-12-10 21:42 (UTC) - Expand

They didn’t even say anything about Tumblr, wtf. Little bit defensive, are we?

Re: What killed crossover fandoms (ie. Superwholock)?

(Anonymous) - 2017-12-10 21:40 (UTC) - Expand

I miss fandoms producing a lot of crack works. Like, stuff like Superwholock or Tuna!Lock was weird but it was FUN! I miss that. :(

Seconding this so damn hard. I was never into Superwholock personally, but I saw plenty of it around and I always kind of liked it. And I loved Tuna!lock for being utterly cracktastic and stupid and not giving a fuck.

Sherlock in particular seemed to have a ton of crack works. There was that one fic where John and Sherlock were turned into dessert sprinkles. And that other one where the whole cast was small sea creatures. Or that awesome series that wasn't even crack where they were Were!Velociraptors. Good times.

People talk so much shit about the big fandoms, but for the most part I love them.

Yeah, with Superwholock specifically, I suspect that the answer has a huge amount to do with the Stephen Moffat backlash and Sherlock's later seasons being bad.

I don't really know about crossover fandoms more generally. I guess a lot of the fandoms that have become popular recently don't lend themselves so easily to crossovers? IDK.

I don't know and I don't care, I hated them. I'm so glad to be finally rid of RotBFTD!

Dashcon wasn't a nearly big enough event to "kill" some very popular fandom mashups, imo.
Personally, I think these things collapsed for several reasons. Once the whole "omg let's all fock to this new thing it's awesome" sense had worn off, a lot of people got bored with it. Then there's people moving on to new fandoms - and even if it's just partially (like for example moving on from Supernatural but not Sherlock), it still kills the whole mashup thing. Given the fact that a lot of the fandoms involved in those mashups where classic cases of "migratory (slash) fandoms" and in the case of Doctor Who, there tends to be a big divide between Doctor incarnation preferences, this probably happened a lot.

And one of the main reasons is probably that each one of those fandoms usually involved in the huge crossovers are very drama- and lately, discourse/wank-prone fandoms. So things probably imploded due to infighting and calling each other out and accusing each other of being problematic in various ways.

I was just thinking that. Rise Of The Brave Tangled Dragons and Superwholock were annoying, but they were at least creative.

The current obsession with canon pairing canon shipping what do the creators ship super-canon is just as annoying, and sad and obnoxious to boot.

I still like crossovers

are they dead? good.

I'm sure there are a bajillion factors. Fanbase maybe not so much aging as changing tastes, the weird purity culture on tumblr, the lack of actual source material to create and sustain new crossovers, the general fandom backlash to the mere existence of such phenomenon, etc.

I mean, what movies/shows have come out recently that still would mesh with each other in a way where relating them to one another wouldn't be a massive stretch? The animated movie one was because most of those films were aesthetically similar enough to inspire one "what if they took place in the same universe" blog and boom, crossover born. What has recently come out with that kind of cross-fandom chemistry?

I think the lack of source material is probably the biggest factor, personally. But I think everything you listed contributes.

If you look at the sort of fandoms that tend to remain big for a long time there's either 1) popular regularly-released ongoing canon to keep fans invested (TV shows like SPN or DW, the MCU) or 2) a huge completed source to draw from (LotR and the Silmarillion, old-school Star Trek fandom) or some combination of the two (a lot of video game fandoms).

Superwholock and Rise of the ??????s had neither. There has never been an official Superwholock TV show. The next Frozen movie isn't going to feature Elsa/Jack Frost. The only thing to fuel the fandom is fans themselves, and the moment the BNFs and major writers and artists move on, the whole thing collapses.

that's kind of what I thought, having no dogs in any of those fights and only seeing it from the outside. There hasn't been any "new" Sherlock for how long? There was a new Doctor, too. So whatever propped that megaverse up fell apart.

are they really dead? i thought the trend of carrying over pairings when a popular actor switches shows (and polluting the new show's tags with unrelated shipping shit from whatever other show they were in) was still very much in place?

The only example I can think of is Sherlock crossovers involving The Hobbit (and particularly Smaug/Bilbo shipping, a ship that I suspect wouldn't have been nearly as pervasive without the Sherlock influence).

I remember it also happening with the actress who plays Lexa from the 100 when she left to star in The Walking Dead spinoff or whatever it was.

I think there might be a little in the MCU, too, what with both actors being in that.

I definitely doubt we'd have gotten Bilbo/Smaug (outside of the odd crack fic) without the actor connection. I sometimes day-dream about going back in time and telling Tolkien fans that in the future, people will ship it.

I recently saw a mention in an MCU fic of Steven Strange having Sherlock as a cousin, but it was only a mention.

I'm not sure it's dead. Fandom goes through phases where certain tropes get popular and then it plateaus out, rinse and repeat.

Of course if the fandom isn't as active anymore (I don't think Sherlock is?), that'll impact fandom creations as well.

I can't imagine it's completely dead, not that I saw much of it anyway, even when it was at it's height. But I imagine that it's decrease in activity is due to at least Sherlock having very little output and a terribly received 3rd and 4th seasons that put people off that side of things, Dr Who changing actors and some people getting bored with Spn.

That and the natural ebb and flow of fandom easing it out over time.

Nothing stays consistently popular forever. It's probably mostly down to a lot of people becoming less interested in at least one of those fandoms or just becoming less interested in crossing them over.

Crack is fun, but crack-ish fandom things tend to be fads that come and go faster than most fandoms as a whole. You need more substance to maintain something over longer periods of time.

I still see both Supernatural and Doctor Who pop up in Sherlock fics on AO3, so I wouldn't say this is completely dead. Maybe it's just the silly fan art and gif posts on tumblr that are dead, but I rarely look at tumblr so I don't know.

Well, the popular and pretty Doctor regenerated twice and production there has been sluggish. Sherlock had one great season before it started floundering. SPN is always SPN and bless their hearts.

I suspect that the return of mega-franchises is stealing some crossover thunder: Marvel, DC, Star Wars, and Star Trek are all putting out new material right now.

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