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

[tielan]

Er. Hey. I'm late to this discussion (as usual).

Honestly? I came to SGA from SG-1 where there was a strong, clear het element (Sam/Jack, whether a fan liked it or not) and, for the most part, the het side of fandom was quite clearly defined, even if the slash side of fandom was bigger.

For the most part, there was open war between the het and slash sections of SG-1, partly because of the fiasco with Daniel's leaving in S5, and partly because the PTB bias of SG1 was so strongly in favour of Sam/Jack, while the PTB are openly playing the field in SGA.

As such, most het fen who've come across from SGA - largely Shep/Weir fans now - are still very exclusively "one ship and no others unless it compliments it". So Shep/McKay is totally a no-no for most fans, and, by and large, slash is looked down upon by most hardcore het fans.

My personal thing about SGA and fandom is mostly that I'm a fan of both the least-favourite character in fandom (Teyla) as well as the least-favourite pairing in fandom (Shep/Teyla) - most other characters are neutral, most other pairings are neutral. So I find that segregates me off to one side from the get-go. Bigotry is alive and well in fandom in the form of assumption of intelligence or personal value based on what pairing one likes - anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something!

I guess one reason that there's no neutral zone (although I'd label the sga_newsletter and sga_flashfic as the closest zones to 'neutral', even if they have a strong Shep/McKay angle - the whole fandom has a strong Shep/McKay angle) is because SGA is so pairing-pregnant.

My perception of SGA and SGA fandom is that pairing is so pervasive, so inextricable from the way we see the characters - even in their general interaction with each other (not necessarily relationship oriented) - that any discourse or discussion of something as innocuous as an episode of the show turns into a squeefest over who said what to whom and which characters' comments or actions can be interpreted with maximum innuendo.

What I'm trying to say (with more words than I need to) is that even a generic discussion about Atlantis stuff is pairing-oriented. And, as you noted above, pairing-oriented discussions rarely go well.

I guess I, personally, have an interesting range of people on my flist and on the sub-flist that I view. Few of them like the pairings or characters that I prefer, but they're interesting people, which is why I read their LJs. Some do irritate me more than others, I tend to skip their posts and their fic.

Why didn't I join in with the Bulwer-Lytton contest? Hm. I could think of tawdry, dreadful, purple-prose, run-on sentences with bad similes and dodgy metaphors, but I was at work at the time. Hence, there was no chance to post them.

Then there's the issue that the longer you wait with a meme like that, the less likely people are to actually read it, and the more 'set' in a particular style and direction it becomes.

I did suggest an 'SGA Bulwer Lytton Ficathon' though: get an opening line, write a fic!

[sweetvalleyslut.livejournal.com]

Aww. You think that Teyla's the least-liked character in fandom? I know that she gets quite a bit of hate from the Sheppard/Weir people, and I run into a lot of complaints about her on TWOP (she's overly sexualized, she's boring, yadda yadda), but I feel like she gets a fair amount of love in the slash/het community, by which I mean, people who like both.

Maybe it's just my own personal bias, since I adore Teyla, and a lot of my favorite SGA stories are ones that involve her (including a couple of yours, BTW). I wish more people would write her, and write her well, but I think the situation is improving.

[tielan]

I run into a lot of complaints about her on TWOP (she's overly sexualized, she's boring, yadda yadda)

Yeah, those seem to be the main complaints. "Pointless" and "alien babe" seems to be all anyone really gives a shit about in Teyla's case.

I have noticed that things are changing a little - although I suspect that the fondness by slashers will last only as long as Shep never takes an overt interest in her and she never takes an interest back.

You did go check out the teylafen
Teylaficathon entries? There were a variety of stories and a lot of them were utterly brilliant.

[sweetvalleyslut.livejournal.com]

I haven't had a chance to go through them all yet, but I surely shall.