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Okay. This might be me jumping on the bandwagon a bit late, but as far as I see it, it's still a pertinent issue. I've just had some time to mull it over a bit, and discuss it with people.
Firstly, I'll start with a disclaimer, because I know both that the internet is a medium that people misunderstand the tone of things said, and the fact that I'm writing something that the people involved in will be reading, so it's easy to take it personally.
Let me ask you, however, to read this as a record of my objective observations. Nothing is unbiased, I know that, but think of this as anthropological study of fandom, instead of assuming that I'm deliberately speaking about particular people and/or groups. This is not me being vindictive. I don't hate anyone in fandom. I love a whole bunch of you. This should have no bearing on those relationships. This is just what I see.
so, Me = anthropologist. Fandom = societal group I'm studying. This = how I see things.
Fandom has an accelerated lifespan; people move in and out of it quite rapidly, in the big scheme of things. So, in my time in the lotrips fandom, I've seen huge crowds of people come and go. After my first six months-or-so in fandom I came to realise that fandom proceeds in generations. Generations of writers, of participants. There are constantly people writing in this fandom, a huge volume of stuff is put out on the public forums; that was the case 2 years ago and that's the case now. But there seems to be waves of 'good' writers, or rather, prominent writers that stand above the immense wave of fic being put out. These are the people who are recced, the people who everyone recognises. The term 'BNF' has other connotations so I won't use it here, but you know the type of people I mean.
These people aren't constant. These aren't the same people that started when the first movie was released at the end of 2001. As mentioned above, I believe that these people come and go in generations; each generation with key figures that stand out, each generation with slightly different attitudes, or writing styles, or influences, habits, topics.
And there are people outside the generations, of course - people who have been here since the start and are still here. More often than not, however, those people, though still existent here, have moved out of the spotlight and are most likely not participating to the level they did in their generation's hey-day.
Now, what seems to have happened is that a generation of lotrips participants/writers have come along who have become the golden children of the fandom. This generation have been more prominent than the others, and they've made more changes.
What changes? The golden children have brought about a change in the hierarchical order of things in fandom. Something that could almost be described as a 'class system' has been established, the boundaries within which are difficult to cross. The line between 'goodfic' and 'badfic' is no longer something that you discover after reading a story, but something that divides groups of people up into different 'habitats', and if you exist in one, you cannot transgress into the other.
Let me use an example that you can't deny. Lets take fellow_shippers. Back in the day, there was a lot of traffic to that community. It was the lotrips posting community. Everyone posted to it. Yet the gradual (yet definite) influence of the golden generation have brought about a change; there's still a lot of traffic to f_s, but it doesn't have the 'anything-goes' credibility it used to. The 'good' writers (the golden children) no longer post there because they don't want to associate with the alleged 'badfic' that's posted there. They're not interested in offering it to the group of people that read fellow_shippers. The public writing communities have become a forum for everyone-who-isn't the golden generation, including those generations that are trying to break in.
Let me take that last point further: with the shunning of the public communities, the leading writing groups and people (the golden children) took their publication of fic elsewhere. Ie. their own blogs and webpages. This further forged the divide in the fandom, creating separate communities, not necessarily enforcing a clique mentality, but forming a group set above the rest of the fandom that was, as it contained the prominent writers of this generation, generally regarded as the Good Writers, the 'real' writers, the people worth reading.
The golden generation became the fandom in many people's psyche - not only their own, but anyone wishing to be 'in', anyone coming in, etc (and basically, it was invite-only). And it's undeniable that they are good. The problem is that it's a mentality that doesn't allow in any new good.
What's happening now is that this generation of writers, the golden generation of the fandom, is coming to the end of its natural life. Its writers have stopped writing, have moved onto different forms and fandoms, and because they have been so incredibly influential, the perception is that when they end, fandom ends. Which is an understandable belief, considering how mightily they have reigned.
Further exacerbating this problem is the fact that the changes this golden generation have caused upon fandom means that it's near-impossible for the new generation to break on in. As I mentioned above, there's the fact that this group have become perceived as the be-all and end-all of fandom, but there's also the fact that because of the class structure they have established, the readers and new writers who keep fandom alive (and always have) can't break through. There are no longer any public forums from which the publicly-accepted new generation of good authors can be taken, because there's now the attitude that anyone who posts to those forums are, by default, bad. Or not suitable for associating with the 'good writers', at any rate. The only way new 'good' writers have 'risen up the ranks' in the past 6 months or so is through connections within the golden generation already - only if one of that group celebrate them are they allowed to share that kind of status, and thus be read by the masses.
So what's happening isn't that "we've run out of stories to tell", because essentially the way generations die out is that they run out of stories to tell themselves. Everything has been done before, and I'm not just talking about fandom. It's the staple phrase for post-modernism (and what's more post-modern than fanfiction?), it's not something that just happened in this fandom so now we can close the door and it's over. Each generation of fandom exhausts themselves in terms of what they can write, and the new generation moves in and re-writes all the same stories themselves. That's the way the world works, that's the way creativity has worked for generations and generations of 'real' art and literature.
People are still writing during-production lotrips stories, just as people are still writing during-quest frodo/sam stories three years after the first movie was release, and fifty years since the book was released. People still write the faculty, star wars, star trek, the beatles for god's sake. My imagination doesn't require the spoiling it has had over the past couple of years of new canon even time I refresh my friends list.
The golden generation have lived out their natural life, they're moving on to different things, as generations in this fandom (and all other fandoms, I'm sure) have in the past. The difference is this time is that people seem to believe that they are fandom.
When fellow_shippers drops from 15 posts per day down to 15 posts per decade, then maybe I'll start thinking that fandom is over and there are obviously 'no more stories to tell'. Maybe by that stage professional writers will have realised that the 'boy goes-on-quest, comes-back-changed' story will have been exhausted.
Personally, sure it stings when these people I've been so close to for what seems like so long move onto different things, but hey, I'm still here. I've still got parts of me invested in this fandom, and I'm going to continue to invest them for as long as I'm still loving it. Move onto AUs, RPGs, Troy, Pirates, M&C, Harry Potter, anything you like. I'm going to try and dig out the new generation.
edit: in summary, fandom is made up of so. many. people. any writer would be no one without the multitudes of people reading, and the multitudes of other people writing. these people come and go. just because one, or two, or twenty of them are done with it, doesn't make it 'over'.
Firstly, I'll start with a disclaimer, because I know both that the internet is a medium that people misunderstand the tone of things said, and the fact that I'm writing something that the people involved in will be reading, so it's easy to take it personally.
Let me ask you, however, to read this as a record of my objective observations. Nothing is unbiased, I know that, but think of this as anthropological study of fandom, instead of assuming that I'm deliberately speaking about particular people and/or groups. This is not me being vindictive. I don't hate anyone in fandom. I love a whole bunch of you. This should have no bearing on those relationships. This is just what I see.
so, Me = anthropologist. Fandom = societal group I'm studying. This = how I see things.
Fandom has an accelerated lifespan; people move in and out of it quite rapidly, in the big scheme of things. So, in my time in the lotrips fandom, I've seen huge crowds of people come and go. After my first six months-or-so in fandom I came to realise that fandom proceeds in generations. Generations of writers, of participants. There are constantly people writing in this fandom, a huge volume of stuff is put out on the public forums; that was the case 2 years ago and that's the case now. But there seems to be waves of 'good' writers, or rather, prominent writers that stand above the immense wave of fic being put out. These are the people who are recced, the people who everyone recognises. The term 'BNF' has other connotations so I won't use it here, but you know the type of people I mean.
These people aren't constant. These aren't the same people that started when the first movie was released at the end of 2001. As mentioned above, I believe that these people come and go in generations; each generation with key figures that stand out, each generation with slightly different attitudes, or writing styles, or influences, habits, topics.
And there are people outside the generations, of course - people who have been here since the start and are still here. More often than not, however, those people, though still existent here, have moved out of the spotlight and are most likely not participating to the level they did in their generation's hey-day.
Now, what seems to have happened is that a generation of lotrips participants/writers have come along who have become the golden children of the fandom. This generation have been more prominent than the others, and they've made more changes.
What changes? The golden children have brought about a change in the hierarchical order of things in fandom. Something that could almost be described as a 'class system' has been established, the boundaries within which are difficult to cross. The line between 'goodfic' and 'badfic' is no longer something that you discover after reading a story, but something that divides groups of people up into different 'habitats', and if you exist in one, you cannot transgress into the other.
Let me use an example that you can't deny. Lets take fellow_shippers. Back in the day, there was a lot of traffic to that community. It was the lotrips posting community. Everyone posted to it. Yet the gradual (yet definite) influence of the golden generation have brought about a change; there's still a lot of traffic to f_s, but it doesn't have the 'anything-goes' credibility it used to. The 'good' writers (the golden children) no longer post there because they don't want to associate with the alleged 'badfic' that's posted there. They're not interested in offering it to the group of people that read fellow_shippers. The public writing communities have become a forum for everyone-who-isn't the golden generation, including those generations that are trying to break in.
Let me take that last point further: with the shunning of the public communities, the leading writing groups and people (the golden children) took their publication of fic elsewhere. Ie. their own blogs and webpages. This further forged the divide in the fandom, creating separate communities, not necessarily enforcing a clique mentality, but forming a group set above the rest of the fandom that was, as it contained the prominent writers of this generation, generally regarded as the Good Writers, the 'real' writers, the people worth reading.
The golden generation became the fandom in many people's psyche - not only their own, but anyone wishing to be 'in', anyone coming in, etc (and basically, it was invite-only). And it's undeniable that they are good. The problem is that it's a mentality that doesn't allow in any new good.
What's happening now is that this generation of writers, the golden generation of the fandom, is coming to the end of its natural life. Its writers have stopped writing, have moved onto different forms and fandoms, and because they have been so incredibly influential, the perception is that when they end, fandom ends. Which is an understandable belief, considering how mightily they have reigned.
Further exacerbating this problem is the fact that the changes this golden generation have caused upon fandom means that it's near-impossible for the new generation to break on in. As I mentioned above, there's the fact that this group have become perceived as the be-all and end-all of fandom, but there's also the fact that because of the class structure they have established, the readers and new writers who keep fandom alive (and always have) can't break through. There are no longer any public forums from which the publicly-accepted new generation of good authors can be taken, because there's now the attitude that anyone who posts to those forums are, by default, bad. Or not suitable for associating with the 'good writers', at any rate. The only way new 'good' writers have 'risen up the ranks' in the past 6 months or so is through connections within the golden generation already - only if one of that group celebrate them are they allowed to share that kind of status, and thus be read by the masses.
So what's happening isn't that "we've run out of stories to tell", because essentially the way generations die out is that they run out of stories to tell themselves. Everything has been done before, and I'm not just talking about fandom. It's the staple phrase for post-modernism (and what's more post-modern than fanfiction?), it's not something that just happened in this fandom so now we can close the door and it's over. Each generation of fandom exhausts themselves in terms of what they can write, and the new generation moves in and re-writes all the same stories themselves. That's the way the world works, that's the way creativity has worked for generations and generations of 'real' art and literature.
People are still writing during-production lotrips stories, just as people are still writing during-quest frodo/sam stories three years after the first movie was release, and fifty years since the book was released. People still write the faculty, star wars, star trek, the beatles for god's sake. My imagination doesn't require the spoiling it has had over the past couple of years of new canon even time I refresh my friends list.
The golden generation have lived out their natural life, they're moving on to different things, as generations in this fandom (and all other fandoms, I'm sure) have in the past. The difference is this time is that people seem to believe that they are fandom.
When fellow_shippers drops from 15 posts per day down to 15 posts per decade, then maybe I'll start thinking that fandom is over and there are obviously 'no more stories to tell'. Maybe by that stage professional writers will have realised that the 'boy goes-on-quest, comes-back-changed' story will have been exhausted.
Personally, sure it stings when these people I've been so close to for what seems like so long move onto different things, but hey, I'm still here. I've still got parts of me invested in this fandom, and I'm going to continue to invest them for as long as I'm still loving it. Move onto AUs, RPGs, Troy, Pirates, M&C, Harry Potter, anything you like. I'm going to try and dig out the new generation.
edit: in summary, fandom is made up of so. many. people. any writer would be no one without the multitudes of people reading, and the multitudes of other people writing. these people come and go. just because one, or two, or twenty of them are done with it, doesn't make it 'over'.
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I like this kind of debate - it's good to think about these things.
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but we need to get people into lj in the first place! you can't make new friends to post you nice stories and feedback if they're not allowed in ;)
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I agree so very much with your opinion's on the cliquey-ness, and eliteness of fandom. It's hard to get into the 'cool' group, whether a writer or a reader. There does seem to be a policy of ignoring people unless they're pimped by someone in the know. This, whilst something I find personally distressing (years of being dissed by the cool kids will do that to a person), I think is the natural way groups work. There is always going to be the group of people with more exposure, more friends, more recognition within a community. If I was going to be super-cynical, I'd say that this was because the assumption was that they were teeny-ish plebes. I think rather that it's just a large community, with the limitations on popularity, and a more difficult medium through which to present yourself.
It is, I agree, the fact that this seems to leave no room for movement or change within the group that is unfortunate. Lotrips, more than any other fandom I've seen (and I've been involved in a few, though not all on lj), seems to have a very fast turnover. People come and move on very quickly. Partially I think this is the nature of this fandom, and it not being tied to a static canon. Unlike, say, Harry Potter, which is tied to the books and films, many people involved in Lotrips are far mroe concerned with the actors than the lotr scenarios.
I'm just waiting now for the resurgence in interest in lotrips when the rotk extended edition comes out at the end of the year. I have a feeling many people will find there way back to the fandom then. However, there's also been some fantastic fic coming out lately, albeit a lot of it by lesser known authors. I don't think fandom is going anywhere. It's just changing, as it is bound to do.
And I am so in touch with looking at fandom as an anthropological study. It's so very much the oddest group dynamic that I've seen anywhere, unlike anything else. I wish I had more of an inclination towards academia, it'd be fascinating to do a proper study of.
I'm not entirely sure if that was at all relevant, but I've written it now, so I may as well post it. *loves*
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also: there's also been some fantastic fic coming out lately, albeit a lot of it by lesser known authors.
point me in its direction! *grabbing hands for the pulse*
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Off the top of my head, my favourite less-known author of the moment is
The pulse is there though!! I promise :)
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personally? if i wrote *fic* more often (and not just RPG), I'd gladly post it at F_S. I have seen the change happen, and i don't begrudge anyone their singular, individual attitude towards the comm, for example.. but if i was writing in a more classical way, nothing would stop me using/feeding the fandom-wide resources, man. *is whore*
also, despite the facts that the RL chaos has extended even to my online life, that the lack of time means i don't read as much, that when i was more calm i used all my fandom time for writing and not reading anyway... i'm still interested and open, for real. it's more a problem for me (not a bad thing, really, jsut something that makes it hard to cope sometimes) that the fandom produces *too much* than not enough. the not enough part has never been true. and there's a ton of good writers out there, for sure.
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when i first got into fandom, into all of my fandoms (heh... all three) i just read absolutely everything on offer. as time went on my tastes got more discerning, but i think i fell into the trap of only reading recs and not making up my mind for myself. sure, i know these writers and reccers are reliable, but i'm sure there's goodfic out there somewhere that they're missing, and when these people stop writing and stop reccing... well then, what's there left for me?
i don't have as much time as i used to either, but imma make sure i at least have a look at the communities etc, even if it's to reject summaries for a bit. hee.
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As for your comment about reading only recs - I've found myself doing that more and more lately, as well. It's unfortunate, because I know that I'm missing lots of good fics that simply don't get recced on my flist for whatever reason. However, I think it's a natural progression of entering a fandom. At first, you read everything you can get your hands on. It's part of the learning process, part of discerning what you like/dislike within the fandom, and it's an excellent way to learn about characterisations, pairings, etc. On the other hand, it can be very tedious to wade through the "badfic" (whatever qualifies for badfic in a particular reader's mind), and find those few gems.
I think this is especially true for Lotrips, because it's such a large fandom, and there can be an enormous difference between writers who have only seen the movies and read a couple of articles, and writers who have spent ages researching every facet of the characters they write. And, unlike most other fandoms I've been involved in, there isn't a clear delineation between the two factions (ex: in HP and LotR FPS, there tend to be communities which the movie-watchers post in, and communities which the book-readers post).
Point being, it's very easy to fall into the safety net of other people's recs when you get tired of searching out and reccing fics yourself.
I've always thought that a fic reccing community was a good idea, for the very purpose of catching those fics that would otherwise slip through the cracks (
p.s. Sorry for the terribly long ramble!
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the truth is that there is a lot of badfic out there, but undoubtedly not as much as most of us think. imma go explore
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1, I don't really write much.
2, when I do write, I sure as hell post it to fellow_shippers, even if I don't read 95% of the fics posted there. It has high crap-traffic, but so does anywhere else.
3, haven't been here since day one, but I've been here for a while, and I've always had my hands in several different fandoms and plan on continuing to do so. Unfaithful, or forward-thinking?
4, I am friends with many girls (including you), who in my mind at least are fandom to a certain degree. It's strange that people can become causes, but the popular girl in grade school is popularity, so the fandom trend makes an unfortunate sort of sense.
But going back to my point of not being particularly sure of my own footing in Lotrips, I'll say that I'm glad of it. I read whatever I want, and I like whatever I find well-written. I'm sad that a lot of my favorite writers have moved on, but it hasn't prevented me from finding some really good new stuff. So in the end, I'm not worried so much about the writing ending. I'm worried about losing pals, girls I've gotten to know through Lotrips who are moving on to other fandoms, because I'm afraid they'll cut off Lotrips and the people they knew in it like a dead limb. But that sort of thing happens all the time in life. You may never see your friends from high school again after the age of 18.
Tragique, yet true. I guess I'll just keep waving my ORALNDO OMG!!!1 flag and looking out for fun. <3
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I'm not worried so much about the writing ending. I'm worried about losing pals, girls I've gotten to know through Lotrips who are moving on to other fandoms, because I'm afraid they'll cut off Lotrips and the people they knew in it like a dead limb
having people seperate and drift off into different fandoms isn't something that i feel is a threat to my friendship with people, but i feel the difference here is that big clumps of people seem to be moving off into different areas and cementing their bonds there to the exclusion of others. that's something that isn't very nice to be left behind in the wake of, but maybe that's just normal and i'm being overly dramatic (and this is anxious!me talking here, not anthropologist!me, heh), and is more the fault of living in a different country, culture (ie. exposed to different media) and time zone more than just the new groups forming within and without of fandom.
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yeah, the fact that so many fandoms have started and just kept on going external to lotrips demonstrates so clearly that cyclical thing. liek, dude. why is lotrips any different?
FPS perspective...
LOTR FPS is definitely more static, since it's always been around, even before the movies. Of course it had its heyday right after FOTR came out and I'm glad I was a part of that. Of course, I'm in an even tinier subgenre, one toward which other FPSers are often hostile (as evidenced by being listed on the fandom hate community a few times, harhar).
I found that two major glitches happened, as far as FPS archives to make people go a little more "private." ff.net stopped allowing NC17 fics and became very slash unfriendly and that archive Nindaiwe went under. The lists were becoming odd. Whereas I always used to post on lists and got moderate amount of fb and felt friendly with the other posters, suddenly nothing was happening. And all my friends were leaving the lists. Then all it took was a few odd people to give me a bad taste in my mouth and I was done with lists and wanted to post mostly to LJ and website.
I don't know if things are quite so divided in my part of fandom. See..it's so small and frankly most of what comes out in interspecies slash really *is* bad (especially if you check out Library of Moria, shudder). I suppose I'd be considered pretty well known in the types of fics I write *shrugs* Occasionally I'm recced, I get a lot of hits on my website, and I have brought a lot of people to LJ that are on my flist. I admit to feeling a bit wary of reading people I don' t know at first and depend on someone's recs. But people don't really make recs of the types of fics I like to read. So...I dunno. Sometimes I think I'm much less prolific than I was when I first came into fandom and didn't give a crap what anyone thought of me. Because now I actually take a lot more care in my writing (unless deliberately not) and feel that people expect more of me so I expect more of myself, if that makes any sense. And I wonder if that's what happened to a lot of "old school" people, even in RPS?
Sorry -- rambled!
Re: FPS perspective...
i think the difference with lotr fps is that the 'minority groups' seem to be smaller and closer - such as the interspecies crowd - and are able to form a circle that supports itself and thus sticks around longer. i'm sure you've seen new people come into interspecies and old people bail out, but there's a bunch of you still in there... and even though some are branching off, you're still all friends. i think lj is to thank for that :)
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I thought that "fandom is dead" thing was so very ridiculous. Yeah, it's dead, if you believe that it's all about {insert name of complainant} and your clique. As far as I can see, this madness is gathering momentum every day.
So what's happening isn't that "we've run out of stories to tell", because essentially the way generations die out is that they run out of stories to tell themselves.
YEAH. That's a brilliant summation of the sitch.
it's all about the journey, man.
*loves on
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and i have a lot of respect for
everyone needs to get back down to earth and back down to fellow_shippers! heh. it is all about the art, not about the cliques.
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So I have, purely as a self-inflicted compromise, settled on ten or a dozen authors that I know will give me what I love, and I have them on my friends list or I check their ljs. There are two yahoo groups I still check regulary, whether or no and lotr seanelijah, because they are about hobbits and sean a/elijah lotrips, which is what I like the best.
this is why i can't get over it when people say the lotr fandom is small compared to other fandoms....my god, how can anyone keep up with a fandom bigger than this??? i have really wondered why people say the fandom is dead, because there's still tons of new stuff I don't have time to read and tons of authors I love who are still writing busily.
so that is my take, as a relative newcomer. LJ makes it easy to keep up with people's stuff if they choose to post fic on their ljs....I acutally prefer it to bookmarked websites because most people's websites are too pretty and full of high res art and photos for my old clunky computer and my slow dialup to manage quickly. LJ is a dream come true for me. That's why I totally appreciate fellow slashers who bother to rec. And I love it when I find new authors to appreciate.
thanks again for sharing your thoughts. this is NOT old hat to me and I love to get a sense of how the fandom evolves, because i am very new to the whole thing. I wrote my first slash about 18 months ago, so I was very late to the pary.
afterthought
not that i write for the feedback so much, but it is kind of gage of "do people want to read this..."
i amazingly have never gotten flamed, so it's not that i perceive the big communities or yahoo groups as unsafe....
what can we as writers do to encourage the fandom? go back to posting everything on fellowshippers? is it the place to use? I guess I figured because i write this relatively obscure pairing, sean a/elijah, that it's not interesting to the more general audience.
but am i unwittingly contributing to a trend that will eventually kill the goose that is laying my golden eggs?
for hobbit slash i mostly rely on west of the moon's archive...
i don't want to be cliquey or elitist. i love new authors; it's just that i find it hard to take the time to root around and find them.... looking forward to more ideas about that....
Re: afterthought
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All fandoms are always changing; that's the nature of fandom, because it's just another aspect of life. It's just so cool that we're still gathering around the fire to tell each other stories, even though the fire is electronic these days.
Thanks again.
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As far as tips to find new authors -- I read everything, and check out recs pages, and send tons of feedback in the hopes of encouraging authors. I have doubts about the wisdom of announcing oneself as a new writer when posting to communities, but it does help in my search.
Nothing very brilliant to suggest, I'm afraid. But there is good stuff being written all the time, and by new authors. I suppose there will come a day when I'm tired of LOTR, whether RPS or FPS, but right now, it's hard to imagine.
Thanks again for your post. Very encouraging.
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Thank you so much for putting this all down in words that I couldn't form. I'm unable to detach myself to be able to be coherent about it :)
This is the first fandom I've ever been is where people are like okay, I'm moving on, here's my public announcement of such, lotrips is no more. This is the first fandom I've been in where people seem unwilling to admit that the fandom will still be here, with another generation of fans, even when we're gone. I don't think I would recognize the names in X-Files fandom anymore, but I recognize X-Files Fandom's face, if that makes sense. There have always been people in eevery fandom who become the bridge from one generation to another. It's happening in Lotrips, too, but it seems much harder to get into.
Which is not to say this is the cliquiest fandom I've ever been involved in. Reboot, for example, was (still is? I know the fandom is still around but I don't know the politics of it) a REALLY cliquey fandom and it was nearly impossible to break into the core crowd. But there were still comms set up for the new generation, I know I didn't jump in on the ground floor and there were people long gone who were considered the grandfather generation. I don't know where I'm going with this. I just think it's weird to even be talking about this in terms of "death" or "reborth" or whatever. It's a fandom. It's just keeps going, no matter who's around. Any interest and poof, fandom.
Also, maybe it's the RPS factor? This is my first RPS fandom, so I don't know how it works. Unlike FPS fandoms, our "characters" go on to other things, so maybe it's natural to think we all should, too?
Rambling! I'ma stop now. Need more coffee. Just wanted to add my voice to the OMGWTFCLINGS *grins*
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vive la fandom!
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Though I have been in the fandom since the release of the first movie (moving over to LJ June of 2001 when a friend helped me discover slash), I wouldn't say I'm a member of any 'golden generation' and most definitely not a BNF; I've always received good feedback for my fics but I wouldn't say tons of recognition; ha I suppose that makes me a midlist writter. :D
Either that, or the fact I've always defied cliques--never really joined them, never really cared about them; I do my own thing in my own little way and don't particularly worry about what anybody else thinks of it. I knew I had friends who were reading my stories, and that was enough.
Like most of the first generation, I've cut way down on my writing (grr, still owe Trianne the next part of Cast In Space and still have to write the last 2 chapters of Hobbits and Men), but whatever I do write, I still post to all the open communities, because otherwise how are new readers going to find my work? I don't read much there, true, but I don't read much now anyways, period. And I've gotten quite a lot of new readers from newer generations by posting openly, so I don't understand why everyone isn't posting there.
I guess it's just me. :D
(and just to add to the discussion, I know there are others like me, first generation writers like Brenda and lotrjunkie, who also continue to post there. Are they considered golden generation? I haven't a clue. But I've always enjoyed their fics.)
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But it does make sense that writers (and readers) are going to come and go. For myself, I'm probably done with writing LOTR FPS. That's got nothing to do with how many people are still writing/reading it and how many new people are and are they writing the same thing (well of course they are and that's not a bad thing) -- just my own sense of being done for now, the well having run dry.
I've never looked at the fellow_slash LJ much, but it sounds like what's happened there is similar to the Yahoo group tolkien_slash -- at the beginning it had everything but as time went by it's grown more specialized and narrow in its focus.
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not so much focus as ... group of fans, if you know what i mean. it's not so much difference of interest or opinion that's causing all this, but just a division into different 'societal' groups. and the most dominant group has decided it's had enough, so drama ensues!
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I've been pretty disappointed in this fandom. Never been in one where I had nearly this many problems--newbies trying to run things without knowing a damn thing, people being too thin-skinned (people being nasty has been around since time immemorial), people wailing "it's over!" at a time when most fandoms have just begin, and ad infinitum.
If this fandom does die a quicker death than most, it's brought it on itself.
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thank you
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I also was kind of giggling/snarky about the some of the 'I'm leaving fandom' posts I've read recently the other day, and came up with this icon to address that issue ;)
I guess I should make another one that says "Fandom is not just YOU"
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nice to see people are fighting in the other direction, though :)
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i was reading mirabile dictu's comment, and i for one would love it if people would go back to posting their recs, or their favorite top tens or something.
question: as this is my only fandom, are other fandoms cliquish about pairings? doesn't lotr rps and fps have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to potential pairings? is that one reason for the perceived cliquishness?
hope, thanks again for everything you do. we probably don't tell you enough how much we appreciate you.
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I find your hypothesis completely fascinating. I wonder if other fandoms have fragmented in the way you are suggesting lotrips is. Maybe this is a common trend once a fandom hits a certain age/size.
I think you're right about the turn-over of people in fandoms. I've always read in a wide variety of them myself, even though I primarily write lotrips, and it's often seemed to me that my interest in lotrips was part fluke. I've always suspected that it could easily have been another of the fandoms I read that sparked my interest, but lotrips happened at just the right time. I wouldn't be surprised if other people have similar cycles of interest.
In fact, I just did a poll on the topic of which fandoms people read, and was wonderfully surprised at how diverse the fanfic interests are among those who responded. Way more fandoms were represented that I'd ever dreamt of. So obviously there's a wide pool of casual readers who could become more involved if something grabs their interest.
Thank you for the interesting post. Now I shall watch fan postings with new eyes.
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i made sure, though, that i didn't come back with the attitude you were describing up there about trying to get in with the golden children. i've seen so many newcomers who just feel the NEED to get in with these people and then they FAWN over them and it's just like... what? i have 10 people on my flist, and maybe only two of them would be considered golden children. i know of some others who could be equally labeled, and while i wouldn't MIND being friended by them, it's not for their fandom status, but because they seem to be generally amusing people. but i don't see anyone on my flist as "above" anyone else. yes, some of them may have larger friends and friends of lists than others, but that means next to nothing if you really think about it.
the way i see it, we're all people. i post to f_s. i try to read everything i can. i know what it feels like to be a new writer (i consider myself one, as a matter of fact!), so who am i to not read something simply because i don't recognize the author?
i think you've perfectly described what's going on in the fandom, and i'm just glad i came into it late enough so that the brunt of this isn't mortally wounding me (as it seems to be doing to some).
thanks for taking the time to type all this out, and sorry i've rambled on so long. :)