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

[saeva.livejournal.com]

But on LJ it's... misogynistic. If you're going to blame something for a divide like this, I think that's where the hat lies. The "ew, girl bits!" reaction you get from -- mostly Rodney/John shippers -- certain slashers in, well, I can only guess response to a threatening of their OTP in both fandom (Sheppard/Weir) and canon (both men being much interested in women in canon).

Now, not all of them are like that. That'd be a ridiculous generalization, just like saying all people who are into het are homophobic. However, it's a big enough minority to make multishipping -- like both slash and het -- very unfun for people like myself. Especially since the McShep crowd does tend to get hostile when you point out canon interest in women (which, to me, just says "Hey, bisexual! That works!")

- Andrea.

[saeva.livejournal.com]

"The lack of good, strong, well-written female characters, not only in SGA but on SG1 too, might be a reason for the "misogynistic" attitude."

Frankly, and I'm not going to sugarcoat here, the fact that many people cannot find strong female characters in the writing of SGA says far more about them than it does about the show. Because the show, at least the one I'm watching, has strong, complex female characters who make incredibly significant decisions with lasting consequences. They, especially the decisions of Weir and Emmagan, run throughout the thread of the show arc and the development of such controls everything that comes after it.

What they don't have is more "filler" and "exposition" time that Sheppard (filler) and McKay (exposition) do, so when they are onscreen it's significant to what had happened, is going to, and usually what will be happening in many episodes.

Take either the Genii arc or the Wraith-genetics arc, one of which hinges on the decisions and character development of Weir and the other of which hinges entirely on Emmagan. These are two arcs which have had the most important set of reprecussions, especially in setting up the upcoming season. Neither Sheppard or McKay have equivalent development or arcs.

Nor do we know as much about either of the men's backgrounds as we do the women, thus far, nor have we seen as much development in terms of personality and the effects that Pegasus and the expedition has wrought on them (with the possible exception of isolated incidents of Rodney having breakdowns).

So, tell me again how SGA doesn't have strong, well-developed, interesting female characters?

- Andrea.