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Case ([personal profile] case) wrote in [community profile] fandomsecrets2020-09-24 05:28 pm
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[ SECRET POST #5011 ]


⌈ Secret Post #5011 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 11 secrets from Secret Submission Post #717.
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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(Anonymous) 2020-09-24 09:48 pm (UTC)(link)
It's a bummer. Always so disappointing when the fandom is just not what you're looking for. (For me, the ideal fandom is both kinky smut and character interrogation)

(Anonymous) 2020-09-24 10:01 pm (UTC)(link)
I’m in a pretty similar situation with my current fandom. In my case, I was anticipating interesting, complex, nuanced explorations of my ship. It’s a deeply problematic ship, but also a very loving ship, and I was there to see the dynamics of the ship deeply explored.

Lol, was I new?

98% of the fandom is fetish porn and fluff. And fluffy fetish porn. (And before anybody says it, yes, fetish porn can be used to explore deeper aspects of a ship. But that’s not a caliber of fetish porn I see much of in my fandom.)

(Anonymous) 2020-09-24 10:25 pm (UTC)(link)
What fandoms are known for their sensitive, nuanced, thoughtful explorations of characters and ships, out of curiousity?

(Anonymous) 2020-09-24 11:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Hence the part where I said Lol, was I new?

But actually, one of the things that's great about being in huge fandoms is that there's usually quite a lot of sensitive, nuanced, complex explorations of characters and ships, simply by virtue of the fact that there's way more fic period. Because if only say 0.5% of fanfic is really exceptional, 0.5% of 40K fics is 200, whereas 0.5% of 4K fics is only 20.

My desire for sensitive, nuanced, complex explorations of characters and ships was fairly well satisfied during my seven years in the Sherlock fandom, and my 5 years in the X-Files fandom, because they were huge fandoms. Sure there was tons of badfic and meh fic. But the tiny percentage of fics that were really exceptional were more than enough to be getting on with.

(Anonymous) 2020-09-24 11:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Not joking: homestuck.

The character work you could find in that fandom was incredible.

The fetish smut you could find was also incredible.

The both at once you could find basically spoiled me for every other fandom since.

(Anonymous) 2020-09-25 12:47 am (UTC)(link)
There's a fairly small but still going fandom for a 1950s gay romance novel called The Charioteer which is like this. I think it's because a) the book itself is pretty good about character development and expects the reader to be paying attention to the stuff the unreliable narrator is looking at without really seeing it and b) most of the fans seem to be mature adults--the fandom doesn't seem to attract a ton of teenagers (maybe because it's an older book? idk.)

You can also find some of this in the Les Mis fandom, surprisingly--I think in that case the people creating it are the ones who are fans of the novel first and the musical second, so they have a much better grasp on a lot of things about the characters and the story. You have to work pretty hard to find it there though, since it's vastly outnumbered by grammatically deplorable modern AU fic written by 15 year olds about their one-dimensional OCs, who happen to share the names of the Les Mis characters, making out with each other with some terribly-handled social justice issue as the backdrop. Not that I am bitter.

(Anonymous) 2020-09-25 01:11 am (UTC)(link)
I followed Naraht on LJ back in the day (and was loosely acquainted with her through The X-Files fandom), and I distinctly recall her being very into Mary Renault. She was the kind of fic writer who was highbrow af (in a good way), so it doesn't surprise me to hear The Charioteer fandom being brought up as an example of a fandom with a lot of intelligent, complex writing.

(Anonymous) 2020-09-24 10:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah I've been in many fandoms like this - especially in areas of femslash where it's a toss-up between really super fetish stuff and the absolute abundance of nothing-fluff fics under 500 words.

(Anonymous) 2020-09-24 10:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Literally the worst as a f/f shipper. Wanting something more than the two extremes of either really chaste fluff, or if it's not fluff it's fetish shit if the characters have sex at all. I must have bad luck with media.

(Anonymous) 2020-09-24 10:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Yep

Also sometimes there are fandoms I'll read fic from if the content is good even if I'm not in the fandom. Les Mis femslash fandom is really good for this for some reason IME, very character-focused

(Anonymous) 2020-09-24 10:45 pm (UTC)(link)
So I swear back in the early noughts and earlier that fic tended to center round canon happenings that were fun to explore. I swear that used to be a thing.

Now I look at modern day fandom and think has it really changed this much? Or am I misremembering the whole damn thing?

(Anonymous) 2020-09-25 04:31 am (UTC)(link)
Nah, this was definitely a thing, I remember it too. I really really fucking miss those days.

(Anonymous) 2020-09-25 08:03 am (UTC)(link)
AYRT Me too anon, me too. :(

What Fandom?

(Anonymous) 2020-09-24 11:36 pm (UTC)(link)
^

(Anonymous) 2020-09-24 11:48 pm (UTC)(link)
I feel you. One of my current fandoms is really into an incest ship and it's just... not my thing. Sigh.

(Anonymous) 2020-09-25 01:51 am (UTC)(link)
Oh this was my hell back when I was really into Undertale - it was the first fandom where I wasn't really into shipping anyone and it started off with having some really awesome gen fics. But as it got popular it suddenly got flooded with so much incest skeleton brother porn.
malurette: (maria)

[personal profile] malurette 2020-09-25 07:22 am (UTC)(link)
Meanwhile I am begging for kinky porn but there's zilch for my fandom.

(Anonymous) 2020-09-25 12:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Honestly, as I get older I become more disappointed with fandom. It's all just so surface-level. The recycled plot lines, jokes, and simple character traits based on what was in the piece of media are so noticeable to me now.

I don't think it's because fandom changed, really. I think it's always been this way. I just got older and am more aware of it. I'm harder to impress now and want better character and world exploration. That and I'm in smaller fandoms, which means the number of bigger thinkers is inevitably going to be smaller, too.

It's a real bummer. At this point going to fandom feels like going tanning after experiencing real sun (I'm terrible at analogies, and that one was especially terrible, but you get what I mean.) It's enough to keep me interested and thinking, but it just isn't on the same level as the original work. And eventually it will literally bore me out of the fandom all-together.

This is long and rambly. My point is "maybe your standards have changed, anon," and also "a lot of fandom is popcorn when you want a real meal."
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