Here Is The News

[tielan]

Link to casting Spoilers for Season Three/Four. It's a link to a post that links to the post with the spoilers, because the second link might give away the spoiler itself.

Did that make sense? If it didn't, don't click!

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Anonymous character love meme: Teyla, Carson, Lorne, and Zelenka.

*smooches the less-loved characters*

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I hate feeling like I'm the only one who's active in an area of fandom. I mean, I surely can't be the only one - in fact, I know I'm not - the others all just hang out elsewhere (knowing my innate ability to piss people off, probably somewhere far, far away from me) - I just feel like I am.

Lord. I'm just out on a limb. Again.

It would be nice to give fandom the kick. All of it. Shake the dust off my shoes and walk out of it, never to look back.

Unfortunately, the characters would only follow me with their stories. As long as I watched the show, or as long as people I chatted with watched the show, the characters would turn up and...hover.

And to top it all off, the crackerrific plotbunnies are coming for me again.

*gets out the shotgun to pick them off*

Yanno, frustrated and trigger-happy is probably better than flat and lifeless, but only because it forces me to write.

Comments

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I hate feeling like I'm the only one who's active in an area of fandom.

I know that feeling and it sucks. I was sort of active in truly obscure corners of some fandoms. Where it counted as a victory to find even just one person who saw the same thing and who you could talk stuff with.

I think it must be almost more frustrating to be a fan of something that is *on the verge* rather than truly unpopular or obscure. When you *know* there are people out there who like it, people who could potentially contribute or people who are a potential audience. It can be incredibly frustrating when it shouldn't be.

[tielan]

That may be part of the problem: that 99% of the people in this are 'potential'.

Nobody's active - and those that are get more love, squee, and fangushes in other areas of fandom, so that's where they end up.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

I know. Really makes you want to scream sometimes.

I think what makes it harder is that sometimes you feel like bad behavior is rewarded. You read all the drama of some fandoms and you wonder if *I* pulled up a stink and created a wank, would people pay more attention? If I pulled some weird loyality card and ranted about it would that generate more traffic (I like to call it the Britney/Christina phenomenon. If you have two things and both are nice and act really pleasant to each other, people go and ignore both. If people stylize it to a choice and act like people have to pick a side, people follow like sheep and start discussing the pros and cons even though it's *a topic they don't even care about*)

But in the end (aside from it being wanky) I always figure I wouldn't want anybody to do the same to me and so it's not worth it.

But it does leave a bitter taste in your mouth when you wonder if people would stay more/interact more if it was a drama thing, rather than just interacting for the love of the thing itself. Love of the thing vs love for the drama/short attention span.

And then I feel crappy for acting like I judge people for their attention span or level of dedication (not that mine is anything to write home about).

In the end, the solution is *always* that those things have to come naturally. You can't force people to love/write what you want. All you can do is love/write yourself and seek out&support anybody who loves/writes as well. Or the alternative, get all your needs/love from the canon and focus on that.

[and naturally the "you" in this post is really all "me"]

[tielan]

Well, given how little my favourite character's been in canon, getting any love from the canon is impossible and the situation only gets compounded from the fans who go for the pretty, the self-insertable, and the Mary Sue-able.

And mostly I wonder if I'm the one creating the drama around here. Since at least two reasonably active people in my areas of fandom aren't talking to me, another seems to have banninated me from her journal, and I don't know how many people won't read my stuff because I hold opinions they disagree with (from what I can tell, it's mostly in regards to differentiating between what the characters of the show would canonically find unacceptable/taboo, compared to what fans find unacceptable/taboo, although I'm pretty sure there are a couple of disputes over OTP, ship, and preferred characters in there) I can't help think that the common denominator seems to be me.

Which isn't good at all.

But yeah, I keep going; it's just extremely frustrating to honestly feel like I'm the only one in this section that's doing anything towards promoting it - and moreover that I'm boycotted for it when I try.

[thelana.livejournal.com]

*shrug*

I wish I could help. But I'm thechronically most unaware person in the universe. So that's a situation I identify with a lot. People just stop talking to you and you wonder "Is it something I did and I'm not aware of it?", "Have they just moved on to another fandom and maybe even feel uncomfortable?". "Is it something different altogether, like real life?".

I do have people that I just don't gell with. Where it's not something they did or something I did or based on any sort of event, it's just that the personalities don't work together. But at least with those cases it's from the start (and I'm lucky that I have never experienced that with a person who directly loved what I loved).

It's depressive to me when people who should love the same thing aren't talking to each other. I usually call it my inner fandom communist. It just hurts me for example, when two fans decide to make two websites on the same topic instead of working together to make *one*. Why split your audience? [yes I realize that there are tons of interpersonal issues and that in real life it's probably better and healthier and more practical to have your own list/website; I know it's immature to have this whole "can't we all just get alooooooong" reaction, but I can't help having it]

It also sucks when you feel like everybody has painted themselves into some sort of corner and now nobody can break out (and at best you can hope for a neutral person to come in and maybe mix things up a bit; but if nobody steps up venturing to be that new blood; again it's stuck on you). Which is stupid. Why should fandom be like that? I hate that.

Of course there are always times when it is especially hard, like hiatus time when there is no new canon to draw from (and it sucks when group X seems to have it easier to keep on pumping without canon than group Y for some reason).