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

[neth-dugan.livejournal.com]

Ya know, oddly, I started out in this fandom as a John/Weir shipper. Didn't last for long at all, but it's how I started out. Then I got sucked into McShep and have lovingly stayed there since.

Don't have a giant aversion to Sparky stuff, other than it's name which gives me a great desire to go out and shoot the closest 13-year-old with a Zat. And they complain about McShep!

But yeah, I know what you mean about the segregation. I don't know what it's like on the Het side of things, if all their pairings are very kept apart, but it doesn't seem to be like that on the slash side. Yes McShep is the main pairing, yes even a lot of non-McShepers write McShep. My friend, cassiejamie is one such author. But we also read other stuff. There's the McKay/Sheppard/Becket OT3 which is fairly big and bridges the gap. And there doesn't seem to be a giant aversion to things like Rodney/Zelenka, or John/Ronon or even Rodney/Ronon. Or Rodney/Carson, or John/Carson or... so on.

So basically, the main devide seems to be between slash and het. Which seems to be a fairly common thing in most fandoms. The thing that might make it stand out more in this one though, is that the main Slash OTP is bigger than the main het OTP.

Went to Pegasus One in Februry. Everywhere I went, slashers. Most of 'em McSheppers. Didn't come across a single John/Elizabeth shipper, or not one who admited it anyway. Tons of people wearing these John/Rodney shirts they bought in the dealers room (including me, yay!). You couldn't swing a cat around and not come across some one who wasn't at least friendly towards it.

So, because of that, it's probably more noticable. In most fandoms, slash is on the outside, or edging up towards the main pairing. Though, big time slash OTP is becoming more common these days.

Take The Sentinal for example - the het scene in that fandom was almost non existant. There were a few who paired Blair with that Australian cop but almost everyone who wasn't a Genner was Jim/Blair. My other two main examples would be Star Wars with Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan and Highlander with Methos/Duncan. Though, I'm not really in those fandoms.



So, yeah, the only reason the segregation apears so odd is probably because it's the slash pairing that's the biggest, and also as some one else pointed out - the sheer numbers.



Though on a seperate but related note. In SG-1 I'm a SJer. Loyal, totaly SJer. But, oddly, I like a good Daniel/Jack fic now and then. Dangerbunny has some good ones. Maybe I just like slash too much these days.