Why is SGA fandom so segregated?

[trinityofone]

lavvyan! I got your package! Thank you so much, it's gorgeous. (To curious parties: it's a piece of papyrus with the Ancient Egyptian calendar on it.) Actually, the tube it came in is gorgeous, too. But I really want to try to get it framed. And this Treed Murray poster, which I keep saying I should treat myself to. (Hey, I have a new apartment and a new office to decorate here!) There has to be a cheap frame shop in existence somewhere...right?

I am incredibly, incredibly tired today. I was exhausted yesterday, and couldn't even make it through The Daily Show before I crashed. This is bad. I thought I was adjusting to my new work schedule, but I guess I'm not. Is there any way to train yourself to need less sleep?

One thing that has almost kept me energized has been the response to the SGA Bulwer-Lytton Contest. There are so many awesome and hysterical entries, it's going to be killer to choose. So I think I'll pick my--15? Is that how many entries an LJ poll allows?--my 15 or so favorites and let people vote on the Grand Prize Winner. Unless anybody has wild objections, I'll put that up tomorrow.

Like I said, the response has been incredible, and I've seen some new names (by which I mean: people I don't know, even by association, not "people who don't usually comment here"), which is always cool. But--and please correct me if I'm wrong--I still seem to be attracting mostly McKay/Sheppard people, or at least mostly slash people. Which in general makes sense, because hey, I write McKay/Sheppard, I talk about McKay/Sheppard, most of my friends are into McKay/Sheppard. As far as I'm concerned, McKay/Sheppard is for yay.

BUT. I like other pairings, too (my other fandom interest could possibly be described as McKay/women), and I think at least a little cross-pairing pollination is to be encouraged. My last fandom was BtVS/AtS, and it was wild, man. I mean, I started out a Spuffy shipper (Shut up! Their love was pure snarky and hot! At least before it became canon, anyway) but I liked the slash a lot (Buffydom was where I really grew to be comfortable with slash) and I wrote and read some of pretty much everything. It was all mixed.

Why is SGA so much more segregated? I mean, I don't think this is entirely a bad thing--I don't want my flist flooded with Sheppard/Weir stories, and I doubt the Sheppard/Weir shippers want a gazillion McKay/Sheppard stories on their friends pages, either. But is it just me, or is it extremely hard to organize activities that include all sides of fandom? Take reel_sga. The response to that has been great...but as pairings go, not very diverse. In terms of my personal reading habits, that's fine, but I had kind of hoped that there'd be more pairings represented. And maybe there still will be. That would be cool.

(Speaking of one nice bit of pairing diversity, I really loved this reel_sga entry: McKay/Ford art by deani_bean. It's the tie thing. That's awesome, and that transcends OTP-loyalty [and I say this as someone who is mockably OTPish at times]. Which is cool, no?)

Anyway, the Bulwer-Lytton thing is different, because of course it is not pairing-centric: it's mostly about mocking style and usage, although certain tropes have been fun to mock, too. It's about bad writing, but it's also about amusing and clever writing, and seeing what you can do in the space of a sentence. That's something everybody can appreciate, right?

So I guess what I'm wondering is, where are the het shippers? (Again, please correct me if they're around and I've just been too dumb to notice.) And I just don't mean, why aren't they here, responding to this--what is here is awesome, and I'm not like, demanding more people participate, omg. I just mean, I've been in this fandom for almost a year now--how have we managed not to interact at all? Of course, part of this may be me--I'm certainly not trolling john_elizabeth, because why would I want to? So I'm also not saying, "Sheppard/Weir peeps! Why aren't you over at mckay_sheppard? We've got a hot tub, come hang out!" Because seriously, why would they want to? But the fact that there's little-to-no crossover is just astonishing to me.

Maybe it's just that we have a situation that's more like X-Files fandom than Buffydom. Back in the old days, I was rabid about MSR, and I just didn't go anywhere near the slash. (Or Scully/Skinner, or whatever else there was.) I can't remember very well, but I think I was actively afraid of those unfamiliar corners of the net, and that included any of the projects "those people" may have been involved in. Of course, I think this may have had MUCH more to do with the fact that I was 14 than with my shipping preferences, but could there possibly be some connection? What I'd like to know is, do most people on the het end of fandom see even a name associated with slash and immediately go, "Avoid! Avoid! Avoid!"? Which, I hasten to say, would be totally their right. But I realize, I don't even know anyone over there that I could ask.

I'm not saying that there needs to be some sort of cross-ship dialogue, because I think those things tend to end in angry glaring at best. Possibly, just ignoring each other is the best way to avoid conflict, and I'm all for avoiding conflict. I'm just surprised there isn't some sort of neutral zone, some shaded area at the center of the Giant Venn Diagram of Fandom Life. Why do you think that is?

Comments

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

It's my experience that most fandoms are like this, actually; I think Jossverse shows may be the exception, because his characters don't just hover around each other for nine years, they actually *go for it*-- Willow dated Oz, Tara, and Kennedy, and had secred makeouts with Xander, who dated Cordy (who thought Angel was hot) and Anya, and Anya did Spike, who did Buffy, who also did Parker and Riley, who Xander was kind of gay for...

If they'd stayed static, with Willow mooning over Xander, who mooned over Buffy, who mooned over Angel, for SEVEN YEARS, I bet BTVS fandom would be just as codified as most other fandoms are. You'd have your Willow/Xander shippers vs. Xander/Buffy shippers vs. Buffy/Angel shippers and that would be *it*, you know?

[cereta.livejournal.com]

What she said. I think SGA is actually more representative of fandom as a whole, or at least of my experience with it. The cross-pollination in particular of slash and het is relatively new, I think.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that's an interesting point there, too. Why do you think there are more fans who (publicly) like both slash and het now than there used to be? Because even I vaguely remember a time when the term "slasher" seemed to mean someone who only liked slash. I consider myself a slasher, definitely--I'm sure everyone who reads this journal is shocked!--but I still really love het, too. Is that more common than it used to be? Are we actually blending?

[tahariel.livejournal.com]

I've always found that whenever I wanted to read fic for a het pairing, I couldn't find anything I was willing to read. I will admit to being incredibly picky about writing quality, but I never seem to even stumble across the good het fics. I'm sure they're out there, I just seem to find proportionately more good slash than het.

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

I would guess it's for the same reason we now have much more and much more casual multi-fandomness. LJ promotes sharing ideas, and removes you from the glorious, hothouse isolation of the mailing list.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Hmm, okay. I mean, my experience is fairly limited--three big fandoms and a few reeeeeeeally small ones--so I might be wrong in thinking that SGA is the exception and not the rule. In fact, I think you're right that a far more unconventional show like BtVS or AtS would be more likely to spawn the more unconventional fandom.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

And also, my perception of SGA is that even the people who seem very devoted to their OTP will sometimes step outside their comfort zone, even if it's only to write a Their OTP/Someone Else threesome-- the other week harriet_spy and I were trying to think of well-known John/Rodney authors who had *never* written gen, or any other pairing, and the only person we could come up with was resonant8.

(Which is funny to me, because in Due South where for YEARS it seemed like people never wrote anything but their one OTP *ever*, Res was part of the first group of people who started being all bifictional-- Ray/Ray and Turnbull/Kowalski and Ray/Ray/Thatcher and all kinds of stuff.)

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

This is true! Speaking as a no-TP'er, I find there are lots of lovely stories in unusual pairings to read.

And, interestingly, due South is undergoing a renaissance of other-pairing-ism - particularly F/K/V but also other stuff.

Not that this comment is an excuse to use my experimental hair icon, or anything.

[corinna-5.livejournal.com]

Also what she said. The Jossverse had its share of "I only read X/I never read X" types, particularly after Spuffy became canon.