a very quick signal boost

[seventhe]

I've been meaning to post this for a while, and I wasn't around a computer much this weekend and didn't want to post it from my phone - I wanted to at least think about the words a little bit.

I use AO3; I like AO3, I like it a lot. I have friends who are on the OTW Board, who are involved in Tag Wrangling, who do other things I only vaguely know and understand. So I'm not really involved here - only peripherally.

But... that's kind of the problem (as I say in my comment), because I don't know much about AO3 or the OTW, and they really only appear in my personal fandom circle as "Here's a place you can post that has fixed most structural problems other sites have." They're not present, they're not visible, they're not welcoming. There's no community on AO3, and community is a big part of fandom.

And that sucks.

But it wouldn't be half as bad if I didn't keep hearing faint strains of, but we want you! We want to expand to tiny fandoms, to video games and anime, to non-Western fandoms; we want to involve you. But they don't, and they haven't, and it isn't like Final Fantasy fandom is dead, I compile ff_press once a week, I run ff_exchange; it sure isn't dead and it keeps getting revived every time Squeenix wants another $30 from my wallet.

But they say this, and do nothing; and then other things happen that really make me feel strange and unwelcome.

I know my Circle/FList is full of non-Western media fans: Final Fantasy fans, Chrono Trigger fans, other video game fans; anime fans, Sailor Moon and Cowboy Bebop and I don't even know what else fans; even JPop and KPop and other things that just aren't represented at all on the AO3, that don't see it anywhere in their fandoms, in their daily fannish functioning. We aren't there. A lot of us got mad/hurt/upset at Yuletide this year, too. And we still aren't there. And if you look at their latest poll... we still aren't there.

And so to you guys, I'd like to invite some conversation. You're welcome to do it in this entry if you're more comfortable with me - I'll pass it on to the relevant post. But you're also welcome to do it in a more appropriate place if you can please (a) remember to keep this person's fannish and Board identities separate, as they desire; and (b) are respectful to someone who put a lot of thought, time, and work into compiling a really interesting, informative, helpful, and - you know what - downright painful entry.

I offer up here, for perusal, The OTW Server Poll and Fannish Diversity.

Thoughts welcome, and thank you to the Board member who took the time to put this public, transparent, honest document together.

Comments

[wallwalker]

Thank you for linking this. I found it myself a while back and shared my thoughts... if I can think of anything else to say, I will. The general consensus so far seems to be, "the OTW needs to go out and find the non-Western fans and actively invite them to join in," but very few people seem to have any idea how to suggest that the OTW do that. Which isn't meant to be insulting, because I don't have any useful suggestions on that end, either. :/

Also - because I really haven't felt comfortable admitting this anywhere else, even on my own journal unless I lock it to private - I really don't understand why the Yuletide fandom incident was as big of a deal as it was. Yes, some larger fandoms were included in the INITIAL list. They were edited out a week later. And the moderators said that this might happen, and that if it did, they would take care of it. Which they did. I remember several different fandoms being the subject of frothing rage over being included, and I don't remember any of those fandoms showing up on the final list.

I can understand being upset about the Yuletide thing as a symptom of a larger issue. It's all of the rage and hate over the event itself that I don't quite get.

[jack_of_none]

If I may interject, I think the hullabaloo about the inclusion of large anime fandoms wasn't so much that they got included, but the fact that people pointed out that using AO3 would give bizarre results for a lot of non-Western fandoms, and people didn't feel like that concern was addressed well. Bringing it up resulted in mostly radio silence from the mods and some "Well, then get people to post more fanfiction on AO3 so the numbers work out" comments, which people interpreted as shilling. Also, around the time that this was going on, some of the Yuletide old guard types made posts about how Yuletide really wasn't FOR anime/manga fans, which was sort of unrelated but just fueled the fire.

Plus, not all the big fandoms were removed. I mean, hell, Pokemon was on the list, as was Warcraft. They were never removed despite people pointing out their size.

[wallwalker]

Okay, this makes more sense now. I probably missed most of that, since I was kind of on the periphery of that whole discussion; my situation about Yuletide last year was kind of weird. (Short version: I'd made up my mind NOT to participate, then changing it at the last minute because someone I know IRL wanted to participate and asked me to join him. So I signed up, but didn't pay a lot of attention to the discussion until after the final list was done; what I saw was bits and pieces from friends.)

Thanks for the explanation; I appreciate it. :)

[franzeska]

*wanders by late*

There's also the sort of in-groups within in-groups within in-groups problem with yuletide. I've seen people citing my own post as the prime example of an old guard attitude that yuletide "isn't for anime", when it was actually a rehash of the fact that the few old guard yuletiders who are in anime/manga/etc. fandoms have been whining about how bad yuletide is for those fandoms since the beginning (and so are irritated when people bring up "new" problems and refuse to listen when we say they aren't new and--however much we may wish otherwise--aren't likely to change). But a post like that looks quite different to anybody who doesn't share that same history of years of bitching about yuletide.

[katmillia.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this!! I left my 2 cents. :)

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I was thinking of you guys in your fandoms a little bit - I know you (all) have no real *desire* to move off of LJ, but it would be nice to have an alternate place to post and share and do community stuff and find friends, especially as LJ continues to bork up occasionally. And I don't want this just to be about video games and Final Fantasy and anime -- there are a lot of other non-Western fandoms here that need to have voices. :)

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

This sounds like something I might be interested in, but you are using acronyms which are unfamiliar to me. Link me to something that explains what, exactly, AO3 and OTW are and I might open my can of fandom whup-ass!

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

LOL <3

AO3 is the Archive Of Our Own, which is the "trendy cool new place everybody is posting"... I say that with adoring sarcasm, because it's an archive which has fixed 300% of the problems you get when posting to ff.net or even LJ. Any formatting you want within reason, all kinds of tags (including user-created tags!!), multichaptered stories, easy collab functions, no word count / length limit... Really, it is a great place to post. I don't have a lot migrated over there yet but it has been a huge relief to use, as ff.net gets worse and worse and LJ keeps either finding its limitations or just crapping out.

OTW is the Organization of Transformative Works; they are the organization behind the AO3 but they also do lots of things other than the AO3.

Basically, the discussion is about fandom representation on AO3, as per the OTW. Everyone wants AO3 to be open to all fandoms, to be diverse and awesome, but so far in its history both AO3 and the OTW have shown a pretty strong bias towards Western fandoms, and have left non-Western fandoms like video games, anime, manga, and even JPop and KPop out in the cold.

There are two basic issues to be aware of: Yuletide, and the server poll. Basically, Yuletide has become synonymous with the AO3, and even I don't know if it's an "official" AO3 event or if that's because Yuletide's moderators work with the AO3. Yuletide is meant to be a 'small fandoms only' exchange, but last year, they based the definition of 'small fandoms' solely on representation in AO3's archives. Thus, things like Sailor Moon were included in the initial Yuletide fandom list due to underrepresentation on AO3, while actual small fandoms like the Vorkosigan Saga who have found a nice home on AO3 were deemed "too large". Yuletide's mod teams ended up fixing most of the problems, but it highlighted a lot of the issues about AO3, diversity, representation, and assumptions that mods and "people in charge" made about AO3's current user base.

Recently, there was a poll to name the new servers. The post I have linked to talks about how that shook down, but basically, the end results are a lot of Star Trek and no representation from non-Western anything, no names that would mean anything to a fan like me. There is some discussion about how that came up and there was some discussion about how to fix it and it is of course a very complicated issue, and I don't want to demean it by trying to explain in two lines what ira_gladkova took so long to spell out. XD But it's a pretty interesting read, even if you have nothing else to add!

And dude, I can get you an AO3 account if you want to try posting up some fic... it's really a lot nicer than ff.net, except for the total and distinct lack of comments by people other than me .___.

Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

First of all, if it is that good and you want to get me an account, I will check it out. On to the meat and potatoes, I looked a little at the post in question, then googled up the archive and took a quick look at it. My very first impression is people taking fandom way too seriously. I mean in the board of directors or whatever it is, they take the trouble to point out whether people have PhDs or not, as if to say, "and that makes this bona fide." Fanworks in general are not really a bona fide area to play with, by nature the stuff we do infringes upon intellectual property right and left. The reason it is "tolerated" is because most people, including the creators themselves, are not asshats and actually enjoy interacting with the community and seeing that people like their works. Anne McCaffery, the chick who wrote those Inteview with the Vampire novels and a couple of other people are notable exceptions, and they are not necessarily asshats just because they forbid fandom interaction with their worlds (though Anne Rice, that was her name, yeah, she is a bit of an ass). Now, why say all that. Well, this sort of "Fandom is a Real Genre and the rest of the world should take us seriously, PhD'd!!!" stems directly from one place I am thankfully not intimately familiar with: Star Trek fandom. No, seriously. This is the first place modern fandom became a unified movement, with the original Captain Kirk and Spock Star Trek, and they actually are the ones who coined the term "Mary Sue" with a short story starring an ensign with said name. And the story, I think, was even a satire about self insertion fanfictions, haha. I've had limited interactions with the Trekkie, Trekker, Trek fandom communities, and it is NASTY. Even within the Star Trek universe people infight to a ridiculous amount. Original Star Trek fans think they are better than TnG fans, and series fans think people who take the new remade Trek movie seriously are heathens, and so forth and so on. I suspect the core weird Trek foundation expanded to try and include other fandoms, but this prejudice you guys are smelling... if I guess right, it is because you are dealing with the Trek fandom which probably founded the whole deal, and that in and of itself was flawed to begin with, before even Fanfiction.net existed. On the other hand, you could try to remedy this by attacking with the Star Trek fan manga that has been made in modern times. That might open a door, hah hah. Anyway, I will go and read more, and leave some whup ass if it is called for. Thanks for the heads up!

Re: Hmm.

[salarta.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I'll admit shamefully that I have at times taken very VERY specific cases of fanfic too seriously but as a whole I consider fanfic to be something lackadaisical. I feel fanfics can get away with more because they're not officially endorsed in any way, and they're usually by random people, not big name story writers and the like. This is also why I refer to the storyline in some games as "bad fanfic quality," when they do things that seem like they should only ever be done in fanfics that have no bearing on the actual canon.

I think fanfics ARE valuable, they allow people to share thoughts and feelings in a fictional manner and see things they'd never see in the canon, but I don't think they need to be put on a pedestal as on par with the original work.

Yet I also recently had a case where someone took fanfic writing so seriously they started insulting me as a person for not writing the kind of content they want to read. They honestly went to ridiculous lengths to look for insults to make toward me for story ideas they simply don't like, which gets wrapped up into what we're talking about here because at one point he (or she) said that when writing fanfics it's my "job" to write content the majority of people want to read.


tl;dr fanfiction is SRS BSNS.

Re: Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

There's a whole argument out there - which, in my old fuddy duddy age, I am starting to believe - that fandom actually hurts the creative genre, because it siphons away people who would otherwise be able to really create something new, and sticks them in the rut of recreating something old, and never being able to graduate from it into serious authorship. Conversely, you could say, we're training a great generation of TV series writers, who are basically "fan writers" for series character creators. But by taking fandom philisophically too seriously as a real genre, you're actually shooting new, promising authors - mostly female ones at that - in the foot by stumping their future career possibilities.

I like fandom, because I know, personally, I don't have the time or financial risk assessment to devote myself to a career in creative writing. But it's an easy way out for people who do and are afraid to take that step. Traditionally, men are more willing to risk taking that step than women, so yeah. You might say fandom is a bit anti-feminist in the creative genre; we neuter our own chances with it.

TOO SERIOUS SRSLY HUH?

Re: Hmm.

[salarta.livejournal.com]

I can agree with that argument to an extent, I have an idea I want to launch for a new IP but I keep not really pursuing it. So many barriers to entry for getting something published and published right, it's easier and in some ways more enjoyable to just write fanfics.

But like you said, "fan writers" can be good if they know what they're doing. I suppose it's the lack of them at Square-Enix that leads to me being pissed off at a lot of their products over the past 8 years, because the writers they have tend to go "fuck what everyone loved about this IP" and do whatever. Especially Toriyama. He loves to ruin things he didn't make himself. I've honestly seen terribly written fanfics with more respect to Square-Enix IPs than what he shows, with the crap he pulls it astounds me he still has a job.

For the record, I'm male. :)

Re: Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

word on SqEn plots, btw. How can they spend that much money and still be so bad at what they do!

Re: Hmm.

[salarta.livejournal.com]

I think it's mostly that the majority of people running the show at Square-Enix have no interest in or respect for previously established IPs except for money to be made, hence Toriyama's antics. He's not entirely a bad writer, if I believe people on FF13, it's that he intentionally chooses to ruin things when it's an IP that he didn't personally create. Even writing FF13, he made the deliberate decision to make it sci fi and turn the summons into mechs which ruined a major theme of the series for no good reason.

That's my take, though. Supposedly, his writing would be good/decent if it was for original IPs.

Re: Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

That other post was me not logging in, BTW.

More seriously, I think the problem with SqEn games at the moment is that they aren't encouraging new talent to push in new directions, but sticking with things they think are "safe" - and therefore boring. And that is driving the new talent out to new companies. I think the biggest tell for this are all the great games that have been made by the talent SqEn has bled - Shadow Hearts and Lost Odyssey come to mind, though I know there are more. Then compare what they're making now - remakes of the early FF games, a Parasite Eve sequel that looks suspiciously like PE1, and their good sellers at the moment are Kingdom Hearts games - which they collaborate with Disney on, so they're not exactly "original" either. They even finally found a good musical replacement for Uematsu - Hamauzu - and come to think of it, he did a good job on Dirge of Cerberus, too - and that guy has already signed off from SqEn after FF13.

They just need to give new guys with radical ideas a chance. And stop bleeding the talent that they do have!

Re: Hmm.

[salarta.livejournal.com]

The "Parasite Eve sequel" you mentioned is actually absolutely nowhere near in the same hemisphere of quality as PE1. 3rd Birthday literally took everything wonderful and amazing about Parasite Eve and Aya Brea and trashed it in the most insulting way imaginable. Toriyama (scriptwriter) first and Tabata (director) second took a strong, mature, smart and appropriately sexy female protagonist and transformed her into a scared, immature, stupid, skanky-dressing (and posing, for propaganda) teenager-wannabe that just takes it when people make crude remarks about and insult her. Toriyama tried to get it excused by making her act stronger over the course of the game and then reveal it wasn't really Aya that whole time, but through advertising, propaganda and the majority of his script, he and Tabata utterly destroyed everything thing Aya Brea and Parasite Eve ever were.

Which is why I decided after 3rd Birthday's Japanese release this past winter that if they don't make a real Parasite Eve sequel next that retcons 3rd Birthday, brings back the REAL Aya and gets a lot more promotion from Square-Enix, I'm never buying anything from them again for the rest of my life. Such is my absolute disgust with the way they operate and what they did to one of the few great female protagonists to ever grace the video game medium, all because of a mix of CEOs desperately hoping lowest common denominator would sell more copies, and the creative team decided to treat the IP like a chance to make their hentai fanfic desires into canon. Also Toriyama needs to stop being such an asshole that he turns established characters into his self-inserts (Brother being a pervy incestuous cousin to Yuna in FFX-2, and Maeda being an all-out perverted creep toward Aya in 3rd Birthday).


So really it's a mix of problems. The higher-ups need to stop pressuring teams to do "what'll sell more copies" according to the marketing team's bull, and the creative teams need to give more of a damn about the IPs they're working with. Because at this point, I'd sooner pay beginning fanfic writers to make these games than the people S-E has working for them.

Re: Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

THEY RETCONNED AND TRASHED MAEDA?

THEY WILL FEEL MY WRATH

This also makes me happy to have not bought a copy of 3rd Birthday, though that much was clear for me by looking at the cover art.

But Maeda? Really? I loved him in the first game. He was so socially awkward and nerdy and adorable. And now he's a hentai otaku? ;__;

*pump gun*

Re: Hmm.

[salarta.livejournal.com]

Toriyama makes his version of Maeda pretty much go on and on about her body in this creepy way. One of the most notorious lines from Toriyama's self-insert rewrite of Maeda was a line about how he wants to taste Aya's tears.

I'm not joking.

I'm not sure what to think and expect right now. In a reasonable company that actually cares about its fans and IPs, and wants to maintain a good image, I would expect them to retcon 3rd Birthday and make a real sequel that cleans up the mess made by Toriyama and Tabata. But... this is Square-Enix. They seem to enjoy reinforcing terrible directions that they take their IPs, which makes me expect they're going to try to cement 3rd Birthday as Parasite Eve universe canon and ruin the characters further with another "sequel."

Re: Hmm.

[amberswansong.livejournal.com]

Which carries with it the assumption that something is only legitimate if you're making money at it, an assumption that drives me insane. I've been writing fanfic since 1994, and I've been told that I'm quite good at it. I write very little original fic, not because I'm "afraid" of it, but because that's just not the way my mind works. I can take other people's ideas and run with them, creating a new thing that feels incredibly like the original world, but with my own take on it. You give me a totally blank page and an empty universe, and I've got nothing. I'm good at scenes, snippets, filling in little blank spaces - I'm not any good at plot. Which means I'm an excellent fanfic writer, and I enjoy it, and I resent the idea that if I didn't write fanfic I would create something more "legitimate." (Not to mention all of the people writing paid fanfic these days - not just the spin-off novels for TV shows, but the piles of books riffing on Pride and Prejudice and the Thursday Next books and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and so on. These people are making money, are they "more" legitimate than me, because I don't sell my stuff?) In addition, there are plenty of published writers who got their start cutting their teeth in fanfic - Diane Duane, for example, started out writing the Star Trek fanfic you maligned earlier. Mercedes Lackey and a dozen or more writers of her generation wrote Darkover fanfic. Some people write fic and move on to original universes. Some people just write fanfic. Both are legitimate choices that should be respected.

Re: Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

Ah, I love a good 'net debate. Sadly I can't keep up at it because of baby duties, but I will try to make my points brief and interesting.

People like Mercedes Lackney "graduated" from fanfic to become original authors. But not many people make it over that hump, which I think is crippling. Now you could go off on all the crap that you meet in the publishing industry, too, but that is a whole other argument. In a way, self-e-publishing from places like Amazon is helping to combat that, but fanfiction is much more established, and IMO, much harder to break out of once you start, especially because you are burning up your good ideas on ideas you can't sell for a living, discouraging people from trying to make a living on those ideas at all.

I too love creating characters within existing universes because I don't have the time or want to put in the effort to create my own universes. But for the record, the "paid" fanfiction authors - otherwise known as the franchises - generally they tend to turn out horribly, particularly in movies. A whole series of Battletech and DnD novels come to mind right off the start.

I like fandom. I think it deserves a place and it's not going away, and good. But to try and establish it on the same par as original creation - whether you make money with it or not, and believe me, plenty of original authors who are quite good are not making money off of doing what they love - with fan writing just seems like effort which could be better directed elsewhere, like supporting struggling new authors.

Re: Hmm.

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

This is turning into a fascinating discussion, everyone, I am sorry I'm working and unable to contribute! XD

I really like the idea of fanwriting as legitimate. For obvious reasons - I spend a lot of time doing it and I get a lot out of it. I mean, a lot of hobbies are like that: I knit, but I don't do it to sell my knitting and make money. You sew, but (as far as I know XDD) it isn't to make a profit (although it is to save money, which is related). People garden for fun, create things for fun, and it can still be valued even if you're not redesigning a public park. Is it the loftiest of goals? Well, no, hahaha. But I can understand where they (the OTW and all) are coming from in terms of that!

I do also think there should be room for fanfiction authors to be able to develop into original work, again for personal reasons, and I think it would be more helpful if fanfiction weren't so looked down on.

I actually don't know much about Star Trek fandom so I do find all the background pretty fascinating there! I understand that it's a large established fandom and it isn't surprising that 3 Star Trek names won the server poll, based on that.

I don't know a lot about the OTW and their degrees, either, to be honest. Like I said -- I don't know a ton about them in general, and I think that's part of their problem; they seem to either think everyone knows who they are and what they do, or maybe not necessarily care about expressing it to new(-to-them) fandoms?

IN OTHER NEWS if you want an AO3 invite I will dig one up for you. I know you're not writing as much but it is a HUGE RELIEF to have somewhere to post that doesn't strip all your freaking formatting into a giant blob of no line breaks and missing quotation marks :D

Re: Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

You see what happens when I have free time? TROUBLE! And just think, I spawned now, so I'm passing these lessons on being cheeky down to the next generation. Gives you hope for the future, don't it? XD

On account ... as I wrote in my reply to your linked post, not too eager to jump into a hostile environment, even if it is not hostile intentionally. But you know, living in Germany, I had enough of "hostility through omission" rather than "actively hostile" and for me they're nearly the same thing. Or more correctly, to be unwelcoming by accident bugs me more than to be unwelcoming by intent. You can debate with, change opinions on intent. Not knowing that you are being hostile makes it harder to point out that yes, this is a problem, because people don't get it IS a problem in the first place. Hence the problem...

Anyway back on track. Technical competence goes a long way in my book. I could give them a try but don't rush on it, because I barely have time to hit my computer as it is, and when I do, usually I have to work on my paid commissions. Today was like the exception to the rule. So, if you want to get back to me with that in a week, two weeks, a month, there is no fanfire being lit under my butt to transfer my stuff to a higher quality server.

On fandom being taken seriously ... I can see your guys points, no really. I know I sound brutal and uncompromising at times, but I do appreciate the effort and skill it takes to write GOOD fanfiction and that it shoudn't be undervalued as a creative genre. But I suppose I am coming more from the point of view of the artistic community, via the internet. It is already astoundingly hard for artists to make money off of their work ... unless you are already well established, even if you are talented the majority of people think your images should be free for the taking, or that you should give them away at prices that don't allow you to sustain yourself. After all it is "just" art. Now factor into this fanart. I sympathize greatly with the creators in this case, because I know how hard it is to sell art personally. People go off and make fan works of your things, and they can be beautiful and great, but then, some people try to charge money for things YOU created, or give away copies of things you are trying to sell for free... I have even heard "but I put a copyright with your name on it!" to justify this kind of stuff. I think fandom being taken "seriously" makes it that much harder for original artists to earn money with what they do, and thereby cuts down on the number of people who try, or can succeed. We all need to eat. This argument passes over to the music industry quite often too, in the terms of MP3 sharing and stuff.

I do not NOT like fandom. But traditionally, to establish as a real genre means to be able to earn money with it, and that can just get... messy.

Wish I could be more clear here, but it is hard to be articulate on the Wii. :P

Re: Hmm.

[amberswansong.livejournal.com]

With all due respect, one of the central organizing ideas of the OTW is that fan-created works are legitimate and should be taken as seriously as "original" art forms are, so saying "these people are taking fandom way too seriously" comes across as a little disingenuous. The argument includes the idea that fandom should be a legitimate place to play, because people have been writing fanfiction for as long as people have been writing (ex: Milton's great poem Paradise Lost is nothing more or less than bible fanfic), and the concept of "intellectual property" and ideas belonging to corporations rather than the communities that inspired them is extremely new, historically speaking.

Additionally, while Star Trek was the first big fandom, and it's certainly filled with its infighting and age-old wars and Fans Behaving Badly - but so is any big fandom. The idea that I Should Be Taken Seriously Because of My Advanced Degree isn't rooted in ST fandom, it's rooted in academia. OTW's focus on Western fandom and fannish "legitimacy," IMHO, has much more to do with the white upper-class academic approach to a problem, rather than a bias for any Trek. A bunch of academics got together to solve what they perceived as a problem with the acceptability of fanworks, the execution of existing fanwork archive sites, etc, and they... wrote papers. And talked. And they did a bunch of work to create The Perfect Fanfic Archive, and stood back and went, "Look what we made!" And they told all their friends - who were also largely white, upper/middle class, educated, and - probably most importantly - older.

J-fandoms are largely skewed toward the young, probably as a combination of the fact that it's (at least perceived as being) "cartoon" based, sold at comic book stores, and with mostly young protagonists. It's hard to be an adult J-fan IRL - every time I walk into the comic book store when they're having an anime showing, I feel either like a giant creeper or like I should be yelling at everyone to get off my lawn. Plus, I'm 35, I'm not interested in shows where the protagonist is in high school. You can stand around the water cooler at the office and have a serious conversation about Lost; not so much about Naruto. In the same way that I'm not interested in a protagonist in high school, the 16-year-old J-fan isn't interested in shows where the protagonist is a 40-year-old divorced guy, or whatever. (Obviously there are exceptions, but this is how the demographic skews.)

Re: Hmm.

[amberswansong.livejournal.com]

...and then LJ ate the other half of my comment. *facepalm*

Short version: a) Academics don't know how to advertise. b) Random fans can't find the AO3, because of point a (I googled "fanfic" in December and it wasn't on the first three pages of results) and c) if they find it, they don't join, because you need an invitation and you're not going to get comments anyway, so why bother?

There was more, and it was AWESOME. I promise.

Re: Hmm.

[salarta.livejournal.com]

c) if they find it, they don't join, because you need an invitation and you're not going to get comments anyway, so why bother?

Also as I said in a different comment, AO3 comes off as if by default certain types of fics aren't accepted or desired there even with good spelling and grammar, creative sentence structure, etc.

Re: Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

Now this is an interesting point you bring up. I'm also in the 30-something fan group, and I used to moderate at a comic site that was mostly fan-driven by the 12-18-year-old group. In part the younger audience is what makes up the bulk of internet fandom today, if just because the younger audience is more internet-saavy (and has more time to be internet-saavy) than the older audience.

When I think of it this way, I can understand the OTW group having this sort of bias against the "younger" fan genres - the "Narutards" as I like to affectionately - OK, that was sarcastic - call them. I can tell from my own experience that a lot of these younger genres with younger themes and younger authors leads to the creation of sub-par works, if just for the simple fact that diversity, reality and life experience are lacking in what are basically an even split between romance and action stories coming out of those genres.

Not to say that there isn't a serious fanbase hidden within those groups too. I mean, I just have to point at myself here for that, haha! But then the question becomes, how do you siphon off the fandom elite, without sounding elitist? I don't think you can.

As an aside, I love learning, and I don't think the term ELITE is a derogatory one at all, in fact, I think of it as a compliment. But elitISM is a different beast entirely. I hate basing the legitimacy of things off of values such as higher education and the degrees associated with it. Perhaps this is just rub off from the tendency of politicians to demand that their PhDs be recognized to make them the more valid, intelligent candidate than the opposition, when in actuality the best politicians I have seen are usually the ones lacking the titles. For me, it seems a bit elitist to mention the boards' degrees of education in their writeups - what does that have to do with the price of rice in China?

As for taking fandom as a serious genre... see reply to Salarta about that for more detail, but I sometimes wonder if it really is a good idea to do that - especially in the case of women, I think it siphons off talent from the pool of original authors out there.

Thanks for the reply!

Re: Hmm.

[xerne.livejournal.com]

it seems a bit elitist to mention the boards' degrees of education in their writeups - what does that have to do with the price of rice in China?

If you're trying to get an "academic journal" off the ground, though, you really should be citing your qualifications to be editing an academic journal. And the academic journal aspect is not one that gets a lot of press in fandom circles, but it is there.

Re: Hmm.

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

Well, and that's part of the 'problem' with ff.net too, isn't it -- it's The Pit, it's known for being flooded with crap, etc etc derogatory phrase here. Trust me, I have seen lots of crap. It's a really strange line; how do you rate quality and put value on a good derivatory/transformative work, when obviously not all of them are quality? :/

Re: Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

But this one is easy! You improve the quality of education children in the US specifically receive. It is a double whammy. One, they learn how to spell, grammar and formulate plots properly, and two, they have less time to do things like watch TV and play video games, hence, lesser rabid fandom.

WIN WIN

Re: Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

Also don't forget the oruboros problem. Bad fanfiction creates bad fanfiction. See> TWILIGHT

Re: Hmm.

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

DON'T MAKE FUN OF MY EDWARD/EDWARD LOVE

Re: Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

OMG THAT'S RIGHT I ALMOST FORGOT ABOUT THAT EPIC FIC I WANTED TO DO ABOUT EDWARD BECOMING THE FIRST SPOONY VAMPRIC MORMON BARD IN THE HISTORY OF FINAL FANTASY. SO WAS THAT YOUR BIRTHDAY REQUEST?

[salarta.livejournal.com]

You know, I have yet to ever post anything to AO3 (thanks for explaining the acronyms by the way, since I had no idea), and I'm betting I never will because I'm guessing that site isn't very inclusive to NC-17 content with weird crap everywhere. :P

The few times I looked at AO3, I got the impression it's very... not intending to sound insulting in case it does, but female-driven, in that the emphasis is on emotion rather than action, whereas in that balance I'd have to say I have more action than emotion (though I do try to incorporate emotion, just not as strongly as what women tend to write). Plus in making a lot of my writing NC-17, I add unusual kinks.

I'll be reading your link on the issue though.

[xerne.livejournal.com]

Eh, I've posted porn without a problem. I don't have any reason to think they're anti-NC-17, considering they provide specific and easy ways to warn for it.

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

Actually? Um, they're really pretty pro-NC17 and kink-friendly. They provide a lot of ways to list warnings (or a blanket way to say "I'm not warning for this fic"), and they allow you to use user-created tags -- so you can label your fics and kinks whatever way you want to, that you feel best expresses this stuff. A lot of kink tags already exist, honestly, but the ability to create your own abovfe and beyond is also important.

Just out of curiosity, where did you get the idea that they weren't smut-friendly or kink-friendly? Because my observations are just the opposite.

[salarta.livejournal.com]

That's just the impression I got from looking over the sections I saw. Most of what I saw seemed like it was lower than NC-17 content, and more geared toward the fluffy friendly stuff. Maybe I just saw a bad section of it or something, the few times I went there I was looking for Final Fantasy stuff.

Most of what I remember seeing there (don't want to go to it right now as I am at work) is romance, friendship or on rare occasion crossover, and the only one I recall noticing that had any kink element was the awesome Y-R-P FF crossover (which I requested way back) that had Rosa for R. I also vaguely remember a 'xeno' tag.

The idea of making your own tags sounds cool though, since when I upload my regular fics to AFF and H-F, I end up using the 'Other' warning then listing kinks.

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

I think part of that is probably that the Final Fantasy fandoms are pretty under-represented on AO3 (see discussion above XD), because there just isn't a ton of FF fic in general there.

But when I browse other fandoms of mine (say, Criminal Minds, or something) that are pretty well represented, there is a lot of kink. And I really like the way that it is labeled and done.

[salarta.livejournal.com]

Hmm, so perhaps I should re-check it, then ask you to give me an account so I can subsequently embarrass the hell out of you by association by posting the weirdest NC-17 fics imaginable. :P

[shahrizai.livejournal.com]

This may have changed, but when the project kicked off, OTW was a bunch of college educated white chicks in Western fandom. I didn't know anybody! Plus astolat and Heidi (iirc) were heavily involved and I only know them from Yuletide and Cassie Claire wank and I just didn't feel like it was for me.

There's a prevailing theme I'm finding. I got into fandom more than 10 years ago, and most of the people I knew from that time have left Japanese fandom to go to Western fandom. It's this feeling like J-stuff isn't good anymore and when you get older and mature you need to go to Western fandom.

OTW and AO3 need to work more on not alienating J-fandom.

[salarta.livejournal.com]

It could be partly the result of Japanese creative companies sinking further and further toward the lowest common denominator. Back when we were growing up, video game and anime companies were (or at least seemed to be) putting a lot more unique care and effort into what they were making, while by contrast most western fiction was pretty uninspired.

Since then, Western media companies for video games at least have tried a lot harder to provide quality, resulting in games like Borderlands (if you like that) or Portal and Portal 2, or the new Mortal Kombat. By contrast, Japan's giving us crap like 3rd Birthday that rips out the soul of once respected series in hopes of selling on cheap and shameful gimmicks, and similarly a lot of video games and animes are falling into a trap set by going after only what they think will sell more copies of something. For example, if they think sex sells, they keep adding more boobs and sex scenes. If they think little girls sell more copies of something, they turn little girls into the focus and completely ignore viable storylines that don't involve little girls. Plus, of course, for anime there's a greater obsession with harem anime or yaoi-based stuff when we used to get great stuff like Rurouni Kenshin and Serial Experiments Lain.

There are still definitely some gems out there, to be sure. Demon's Souls is a damn fine game with amazing atmosphere, Valkyria Chronicles has many anime cliches but makes use of a war setting in fascinating ways, Bayonetta takes sex appeal and takes it into an overdrive parody that somehow becomes badass in the process, etc. It's just that all the uninspired lowest common denominator crap is burying the gems from view.

[shahrizai.livejournal.com]

I was thinking more along the lines of FF7/Gundam Wing/Ruroken/X1999 authors moving on to things like Stargate (somehow I think I'm flashing a giant neon sign at the moment), Battlestar Galactica, Harry Potter, CSI, New Who, Homestuck...the quality of the source material isn't changing greatly, it's just Heero/Duo authors are now writing BBC Holmes/Watson.

Shin Megami Tensei seems to be an anchor for a lot of the pre-2000s RPG fans right now though.

(I recently jumped into Warcraft. I'm still having trouble figuring out what's different about the fandom - if it was a JRPG, we'd be overrun by Illidan/Kael and the het shipwars between Jaina/Thrall, Jaina/Kael and Jaina/Arthas would be epic.)

[salarta.livejournal.com]

A lot of what you listed for new things authors move to is relatively recent. :P

Considering that, my guess is they moved to those shows for the same reason I don't write many FF4 fics anymore even though I love the game to pieces. The old stuff can get a little boring to work with after a while, while the new stuff sucks (I mean in general, though in my personal opinion this applies to FF4:TA too). The shows you mentioned present something new to try out and enjoy, sort of like the thrill of opening a new box of chocolates video game and exploring that new world. There's also a fair amount of uniqueness to the new stuff, clever ideas and such, whereas Japanese video games and anime are starting to slip into finding out whatever seems to be popular at the time and recycling it.

Which makes it not too surprising that more video game companies are talking about how they want to enter the FPS market after seeing the success of Call of Duty. It's making Activision a lot of money, so these companies are going to milk it until it's dry. I miss the old Japanese creative appreciation and yearning.

That's my take on the situation anyway! :)