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

[ladycat777.livejournal.com]

I am finding this conversation *fascinating*. Especially with the comparisons to btvs/ats but for me, it comes down to a couple of things.

1. Size of cast. Jossverse has a lot of characters, in all three shows, and he has a real gift for making one-off characters people viewers become interested in (Jonathan and Chanterelle/Anne being two easy ones) and want to see in other situations. That increases the possibilities, especially because of the potential cross over or "meeting up in new york randomly" types of fic.

2. Compatibility/Age of characters -- without backwardsly dissing sga or sg-1 or any other fandom, btvs was in a lot of ways about sex -- sexual identity, sexual exploration, sexual limits. It got couched in terms of who makes a good friend instead of a boyfriend (Xander) or why the best boyfriend ever actually isn't (Riley), and many other flavors. Sex was a highly present theme in a way that is not comparable to Rodney's occasional date or Sheppard being an intergalactic ho. This is less true for AtS and FF, but if you'll notice, AtS had a lot darker sexualized stories, and FF leans a lot more towards Gen (not that there's no sex in FF! *she says quickly*). FF was the most adult of the stories, the characters already fairly established, and that shows in fanfic as much as it does on screen.

Now we look at SGA, which is pretty much all about the trippy. Sex is usually used as a gag, if it's used at all, and it features a group of people who are old enough to know that sleeping with the people you work with can have seriously bad repurcussions. They aren't teenagers who aren't ready to fuck at the drop of a hat. They're adult enough to have already done the bad-boyfriend, psycho-girlfriend, and if they're into kink, they know a lot of their limits already.

Okay. So how's that circle back to slash? I think there's more freedom between the characters of Rodney and Shep then Shep and, um, anybody else. Rodney takes himself outside the chain of command all the time, since he listens only when he wants and he doesn't govern the city. Shep and Weird do, which puts them in a position where, to me, it makes it really hard for me to see them as ever being irresponsible enough.

Not that it wouldn't be hot.

So that creates a divide. I've only read a few sparky fics, but the ones that I do always circle back to issues in how they'll be able to impartially offer each other advice, how their relationship won't effect everyone else, in ways that mcshep just ... doesn't have to deal with. Granted, we have our own anchors, but they tend to be things like DADT, which is more nebulous and less immediately dangerous to those around them. To me, that translates into McShep people being more loose and open in their fanfic, while (again, *to me*) sparky authors actually have a bigger hill to climb. That tends to create an entrenched feeling, you know?

Also, hi! I am ranty mcranty pants today, sorry!

[fairestcat]

I'm with you on the Sheppard/Weir thing. As much as I adore Elizabeth, I have a hard time reading her in most romantic relationships, because of the precarious balance of the Atlantis leadership, and I can't see her being willing to go anywhere near the risk inherent in a relationship with John, it would totally fuck up the balance of power.

I think you hit on something big here though. Usually it's the slash fandom that has more hurdles to overcome, but I think you're right, in SGA it's the big het pairing that has to work considerably harder to convince me of it's plausibilitiy and I think that might well contribute to the entrenched attitude there.

[http://users.livejournal.com/tesserae_/]

I think you're right about the SGA characters being adults in situations where the reasons not to sleep together are pretty good ones, and that Rodney's position outside the chain of command makes him easy to put into different situations. Good point...I tried to write Sheppard/ Lorne at one point, and just couldn't get John past the "no fraternization" rule. Since that is actually in peoples' best interest, unlike Don't Ask Don't Tell.

I also think that the nature of the shows themselves contribute to the differences in interaction between groups of fans. In BtVS/ ATS, there was so *much* going on in canon that people had a lot to talk about that wasn't pairing-related, and I think people got to know each other through those discussions (for good or bad!) so that they'd read fic that wasn't *their* pairing because they knew the writer. In SGA, it seems, there's a deal less meta-discussion (or it is mainly pairing-focused) so the opportunity to meet people with other interests is necessarily limited.

I think that also led people to write more fic that explored non-pairing issues in BtVS, at least for a while; SGA writers deal with enormously complex issues but a lot of it is viewed through the lens of the pairing. Which works, given that we know so little about some of them that they make good projection screens!

[ladycat777.livejournal.com]

n BtVS/ ATS, there was so *much* going on in canon that people had a lot to talk about that wasn't pairing-related, and I think people got to know each other through those discussions (for good or bad!) so that they'd read fic that wasn't *their* pairing because they knew the writer. In SGA, it seems, there's a deal less meta-discussion (or it is mainly pairing-focused) so the opportunity to meet people with other interests is necessarily limited.

Yes, yes, I totally agree. And stress that I don't think -- or think you think -- that that is something negatively reflecting on SGA. They're two entirely different shows, or even types of shows. I love SGA and occasionally they delve into some complex and heady stuff -- but Joss wrote adult soap operas and there's just no way to compare the two. Hell, I wouldn't even classify Joss as Sci-fi, not even for Firefly. He wrote humans in fantastical settings. SGA is fantastical settings populated by humans.

SGA writers deal with enormously complex issues but a lot of it is viewed through the lens of the pairing

Yeah, that, too, rings true. Jossverse shows are introspective in ways SGA isn't, so when writing Jossverse you could kind of slip and slide your way into anything (and ditto about the following writers into different pairings/styles), where with SGA fanfic tends to focus a lot on the character simply because we get so little of it during canon. Hell, we know nothing about Shep's past. Nothing. What little we know about Rodney's came from SG-1.

Er. Yes. That was a very long-winded way of saying 'right on!' :)