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10/11/2003: belated Fannish Friday Five
I wanted to do that Favorite Fannish Moments list, that Anna S., Lucy, Kat Allison, and probably others did, but it turns out I'm too scatter-brained to really come up with such a list. I was trying to recall what my favorite moments in my favorite fandoms were, and somehow my mind turned blank. Even though when I read other people's lists I usually go "yeah, that was cool!" and recall the scenes.
Anyway, after staring at my more or less blank input field for a while I decided to kill time by answering the Fannish Friday Five from yesterday instead:
1) Do you have any rare fandoms/pairings? If so, what are they?
Most of my fandoms are rather mainstream if not outright large, and I tend to like the canon or main slash couples more often than not, though I will read unusual pairings as well. If I like a show or pairing and there isn't a fandom for it I'm puzzled. For example Jeremiah seems to be a rather rare fandom, and that surprised me. As soon as I watched the show (btw season 2 just started so now would be an ideal time for you to check it out) I expected there would be a lot of Jeremiah/Kurdy slash and Jeremiah fiction, but it doesn't even have a category on fanfiction.net. I tried to figure out the reasons for this in a column I started for the fanfic symposium, but I got stuck two thirds into my musings, because I really don't know, and it turned into a kind of Jeremiah pimping column instead of an examination why there's so little Jeremiah fanfic (which maybe I ought to post anyway to celebrate the second season start). That it airs on Showtime can't be the only thing responsible, I mean US QAF does too, right? And that has a decent-sized (large?) fandom.
Another pairing I really like (and would like to see fanfic for) that for some mysterious reason seems to be rare as well is Spider-Man/Daredevil. Again, I have no idea why there isn't more slash for two good-looking guys who are friends in canon, and have tons of trouble in their love lives that would make it very possible to slash them without dissing their canon girlfriends in character-assassinating ways.
But most of my fandoms are anything but rare: LOTR, Sentinel, X-Files, Due South, Babylon 5, Roswell, Smallville, Andromeda, Batverse (though it would be cool if in the "popularity distribution" inside Batman (fanfic) fandom between comics, cartoons, and movies, the comics were more prominent, as I'm not into the movies or the cartoons)...
2) What is your favorite fandom to pimp? Why?
As seen above I like pimping Jeremiah, because it's a good show, and more people should watch and talk about it (and write fanfic). Otherwise I currently like pimping Batman comics, because it's my most recent fannish love, the characters are complex, often deliciously dysfunctional, and though the writing quality of the comics varies, there is a lot of great stuff. And pimping comics as a medium is very familiar to me, as I have been a visible comic fan for a long time, and usually had to explain why I liked them. (BTW, wearing comic t-shirts also really seems to encourage random people to talk to you, either with a "oh you also like..." or a "what's that picture on your t-shirt?") But I don't much "pimp" as such. I mean, I might hope that I catch someone's interest when I rec comics in my blog or talk about shows, and if there is an opening in a discussion to go on (and on and on) about why my fandom is great I'll use that, but I don't tend to push my fandoms that much. At least I don't think I do.
3) Do you remember to send feedback to authors of stories you recommend? Why or why not?
I send feedback and rec stories for different reasons, so the two aren't all that connected for me.
4) What attracts you to a character? Looks? Voice? Snarkiness? What?
I never analyzed it, but I'm fairly sure it isn't voice, snarkiness or looks. If with "attraction" the question means which characters end up to be my favorites, I often like heroes (as long as they are complex and interesting) more than sidekicks, the only real exception to that is Andromeda with Harper (though at this point I wonder whether anyone in that fandom still likes Dylan, the "hero" of the show). Of course sometimes there isn't really a "hero-sidekick" dynamic anyway, and I often like supporting characters which are neither (like Oz in BtVS). In Batman comics my favorite is arguably Nightwing (okay, he once was a "sidekick," but isn't anymore), though I really like Batman and Oracle as well, in the LOTR trilogy my favorite has always been Aragorn, other favorites of mine are John Crichton, Fox Mulder, Jim Ellison, Death (from the Endless)... though If I had to choose one favorite character it would be Donald Duck (the Carl Barks version), because he's deeply flawed, has bad luck, but doesn't stop trying, and I think he's the one fictional character with whom I identify the most. I'm not much into his looks though. I mean he cleans up fairly well in a tux, but there's the whole Duck thing... so the characters to whom I am attracted to would be a whole different set, and not usually the characters I like most as characters or identify with. That set would have a whole lot more female characters for a start. *grin*
5) How do you get a new fandom? Someone pimps you in? You watch the show? You're desperate for fic? What?
I don't get into a fandom through fic. I don't like to read fanfiction if I don't know the source at all, not even when I know that I really like an author. Usually what starts my interest is that I see other people talking about the source itself, it intrigues me, and then I check it out. That's mostly because nowadays I usually see people talking about shows online way before I could stumble across the shows on tv here, and with comics I like to have some idea that I'll probably like something before I order it. In case of The Sentinel, Due South and The X-Files I actually watched the shows before coming into fandom. But I've never been monogamous with my fandoms, even during the height of my TS obsession I also read a lot of XF and some DS fanfic (and of course I never stopped collecting comics). What makes me really fall hard for a source, that final step to really getting a new fandom that from then on will occupy quite a lot of my thoughts in idle and not so idle moments, instead of just some moderate interest, i.e. the common "I like the show and will read fanfic sometimes," I haven't yet fully figured out, probably some deeply disturbing psychological issues or something I'm better off not knowing anyway. Generally it doesn't take much to get me to try a show, the only times it needs "pimping" before I cave is in cases where I am convinced that something isn't really my thing. Like with Batman comics, because I held a belief for many, many years that I don't really like superhero comics. Turns out I didn't know my tastes as well as I thought.
