[ SECRET POST #2207 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2207 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 023 secrets from Secret Submission Post #315.
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.

Comments

[fscom]

17. http://i45.tinypic.com/rk0gih.jpg

[insanenoodlyguy]

This is what happens when idiots become fans of fandoms instead of the source material. The worst examples often never actually saw/read/listened to the goddamn source material!

[(Anonymous)]

"It seems like (some) fans are just jumping from fandom to fandom, caring little about the actual canon"

This is kind of how I've felt about fandom for a while--maybe ever since Tumblr became the major platform for fannish activities, if I want to be honest with myself. Just this year, it feels like a mass of fans collectively moved from Sherlock to Avengers to Teen Wolf to Skyfall--and now it's The Hobbit. And sometimes it feels a little like writers are just taking on new fandoms so that they don't lose readers and stay on top of the trend.

Or maybe I'm just grumpy because I only see chemistry in two of the fandoms I've listed and couldn't care less about the rest of them.

[(Anonymous)]

You sound like you're a fannish oldtimer. Maybe it's not that quality's dropping but you're more experience, so you're more aware of canon vs. fanon now than you were before.

[(Anonymous)]

I suppose it's just easier to disregard the canon and rely on some well-known fandom tropes, especially if the series in question has been going on for several years and even the canon manages to contradict itself. The whole thing then easily escalates into a circlejerk, where everyone writes the exact same things, because they know that those will get a positive response.

But personally, yes, I agree that those fics that follow canon to their best ability are my favorites, and I don't usually bother reading those that don't put any effort into research.

[(Anonymous)]

...This sounds oddly familiar.

[(Anonymous)]

Phew, wall of text, but at least part of me agrees strongly. It's why I almost always include the "Canon" tag, and I seethe a little every time I see the sort of crap you're describing.

Though the other part of me is like "Eh, creative expression is so subjective, people can write what they want, I don't have to read it."

[(Anonymous)]

Kingdom Hearts?

[intrigueing]

I agree, but eh, I can't really bother to care? I mean, if it's fun for them, they might as well go ahead and have a good time where I can't see them.

The only time they really bugged me was on AO3 back when filtering was kaput, because if I tried to look through the archive for fics, just the cumulative effect of the hundreds of tiny little glimpses of summaries I couldn't help seeing while scrolling past eventually compounded to the point where I was so sick of seeing it that I thought I would quit fandom in sheer irritation if I had to look at one more stupid soppy canonically-irrelevant summary of an inane story idea that had no reason whatsoever to be a fic in that fandom. But now that filtering works again, I can avoid them in peace!

[(Anonymous)]

ACTUALLY I would say this is less a problem I have with fic (because there has always been terribly characterised and stupid fanfic, nothing you can say will convince me otherwise) but with tumblr fandom.

I really like tumblr for a lot of things, but the weird obsession with everything being "fandom" is irritating, because by fandom they seems to mean "white dudes in their 40s talking like 15 year old girls". It seems like they're reducing every single fandom to a series of cute catchphrases, until there is no actual link to canon left.

I don't know, am I totally off here?

[(Anonymous)]

This could apply to sooo many overly ambitious fic writers, not just fandom jumpers. I keep wondering if I'm reading something from a completely different canon, because I sure as hell didn't watch the same show/movie/book as wherever you got all that from.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm in a fandom where the best writers are actively against canon and spork it regularly, but I guess you're not talking about us. We're pretty engaged with canon, just in an adversarial manner.

[dazzledfirestar]

The real fun comes in when you're working on something based on the original source material and the "new" source material people scream bloody murder at you. That's fun.

And by fun, I mean flippin' annoying.

[blueonblue]

I've been poking around a new fandom lately, and this is exactly how I feel. There's nothing wrong with jumping fandoms or writing because it's popular, but I think it does result in lower quality overall.

It's kind of weird to feel excited about writing fic, but also know that it's a complete waste of time and effort.

[brooms]

i love this secret. because while the casual fan in me loves that being a casual fan has become more acceptable, i really do miss the sort of canon investment that used to generate walls of meta and pages upon pages of discussion.

you can still find meta (hidden in tumblr tags), but discussion isn't as common anymore.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm pretty confused by the unwillingness to google myself. My fandom is a large work that recently got turned into a movie, and people cross over the two without having read the original. Some people just go with what they've read in fanfic or make things up.

How hard is it to google this character's son's name? Why pretend your OC is a canon character when you know nothing about the canon character? Why not just introduce them as a new character? I don't know why they don't just admit they're writing movie fic, there's nothing wrong with that.

[al28894]

Barring several exceptions (Touhou), I really wish that fanfic writers at least have the decency to goggle or wiki the plot of an anime or a movie before writing something related to said anime or movie!

[(Anonymous)]

A:TLA? No? Oh, okay.

[(Anonymous)]

You know, I've been in fandom for ten years. All of this stuff you are mentioning? It was there ten years ago too. It will be there ten years from now.

Yes, fandom has changed to some degree. Because of the internet, it is easier to get shows, there is a wider variety of shows available, and it generally doesn't take you as long to get a show as in ye olden days. This means more people can watch more shows and they can watch them quicker. In addition fandom has become more interconnected. With tumblr it is easier to link various fandom together, to be introduce to new fandoms through reblogs etc, and if something happens in this corner of a fandom, it is also much easier to spread information. Back in the day everything was more independent and if something happened over there, it didn't really spread much further than that one place.

Point of all my tl;dr is... the trends? The ones you are complaining about? Have always been there. They have become more noticeable now just cause of sheer numbers and how much easier things spread. But it is not a new thing. And really... it is probably you growing up and your taste maturing more that makes you see these things more. I know there is stuff that I didn't give a toss about even five years ago that grinds my gears now. Doesn't mean it's a new thing, just means I am finally noticing it.

[author_by_night]

I think there's always been a rift between "stick to canon" and "screw canon", but in larger fandoms it's sometimes easier to find the canon people. I was a "canon elitist" in the Harry Potter fandom (not really an elitist, though some of my fellow canon people... were), and we had entire websites we could go to where the fic was as canon-friendly as possible. I've never found anything quite like that - I belong to a really small fandom that's canon-focused, but that's it.

[cyber_chaps]

I agree with the sentiment of this secret, but from my experience, tons of fic writers throughout time have never sweated continuity, world building, or keeping their characters IC. It's why so much fanfiction is terrible. The plots and settings suck or are way underdeveloped because the actual point of the fic is to get to the pairings. The characters are written to appease a certain sect of fandom, and author "interpretations" usually adhere to popular stereotypes and fanon. It's not writing a lot of the time, it's an attention-seeking, trend-riding avalanche of garbage.

[(Anonymous)]

I've noticed this too, but I can't really bring myself to care about it that much because A) it was always like that, and I'm just noticing it now because I've gotten older, my tastes have changed, I'm more picky about what I look for in fanwork, and I grew out of my squee phase, and B) fandom seems to mostly be populated by tweens and young teens in their squee phases, and most of them will eventually grow out of it, look back on those days with horror and embarrassment, and be replaced by a new group of tweens and teens in their squee phases.

[(Anonymous)]

Back in the day, the fandoms where I first noticed this behaviour the most was Weiß Kreuz, where the character traits were basically all a ripoff from everyone else's fanfics because it was most convenient - the anime was not that great and not so easily available- which annoyed me greatly back because one of my favourite characters was the designated stupid and clumsy one, which clashed with the canon.

Another older fandom which did that big time was Gundam Wing, I believe.

[(Anonymous)]

I kinda see where you're coming from... It seems to me that it used to be that people developed their own fanon based on the source material, and that it took at least a little while to develop, and these days it's just cardboard cutout fanons that have no relation to the canon in question. Maybe just me, though.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with you so, so hard.