fanthropology: WTF Wednesday

Sailor Mac (

sailormac) wrote in

fanthropology,
@ 2008-04-30 07:11:00

WTF Wednesday
Once again, it's Wednesday. That means it's time for us to ask those strange, odd, weird questions that don't quite merit a top-level post, and perhaps answer a few.

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	blackjackrocket 2008-04-30 11:31 am UTC (link)
	Why is it that canon characters can get away with wearing all manner of bizarre outfits and still be battle-ready, but RP or other original characters in the same setting as those outragiously costumed ones are held to a more realistic standard, lest they be thought of as "overpowered"? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	spiletta42 2008-04-30 02:02 pm UTC (link)
	Probably the same reason a Star Trek fic of mine was viciously flamed as unrealistic until someone pointed out that the unrealistic bit was actually canon and that the rest of my fic was set up to explain the scene on the show. Fandom holds fanworks to a higher standard than it does the source material. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	blackjackrocket 2008-05-01 12:46 am UTC (link)
	Oh my, what was the unrealistic part and how did you explain it? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

spiletta42
2008-05-01 02:49 am UTC (link)

In the Star Trek Voyager episode Good Shepherd, they used dark matter in baffling ways. I spent an entire summer creating a plausible theory of dark matter that accounted for the events in the episode and used current theory accurately. It was a huge struggle. All of the research didn't end up in the fic, or it would have been deadly dull, but I think I managed it pretty well, especially since I majored in literature, not cosmology.

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	blackjackrocket 2008-05-01 05:06 am UTC (link)
	That sounds awesome. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	lots42 2008-04-30 02:26 pm UTC (link)
	The rule of cool? (Reply to this)(Parent)

kitsunenomiko
2008-04-30 11:36 am UTC (link)

Got this in mind when watching Avatar the Last Airbender -

There's a super-deformed style short called "School Time Shipping" (focusing on some of the male characters trying to ask Katara to go with them to a dance). Even though this is a parody, the main demographic is 6 - 11 (I know it reaches others, but let's go with this for now) and I'm wondering what that says about the fandom practice of 'shipping. ^^;
I'm not exactly coherent right now, I hope that made sense ^^;

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girl_curve
2008-05-01 09:43 pm UTC (link)

Apparently the creators didn't know about shipping until they decided to Google their own creation and found the two sides, "Kataang" and "Zutara", duking it out on the battlefield of an internet forum (or five million). So they took the concept of shipping and ran with it. They've even constructed a trailer for the last half of the third season with ship tease in it. They're just messing with the heads of the 11+ female viewing demographic, because it's hilarious how much people invest in their ships.

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	joane 2008-04-30 03:10 pm UTC (link)
	Every once in a while I get songs from the musical Miss Saigon stuck in my head, and I can't help wondering about the what-happens-after. Is there any decent fanfic dealing with Tam growing up in the US? I've done a few random searches and not found anything much. (Reply to this)(Thread)

spiletta42
2008-05-01 02:58 am UTC (link)

One of the first fanfics I ever encountered in my life was for Miss Saigon, and I forgot all about it until this exact moment. I didn't even know the term fanfic at the time. This was before The X-Files and before the Internet, back in the dark ages when people had to leave their basements for more than just to fetch amazon boxes out of the mail.

Someone in my high school drama club had written it, and I don't remember much of it at all, or have a clue where to find it. But based on that, I'd assume the fandom exists. Maybe try the RENT and Cats fans, and see if they can steer you in the right direction?

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	joane 2008-05-01 11:20 am UTC (link)
	There's Cats fanfic/fandom out there? ... What am I saying? [facepalm] Of course there is. There is everything on the interwebs. Thanks! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	spiletta42 2008-05-01 12:15 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, I've encountered Cats fandom so I know it's out there. If I wasn't lazy, I'd help you look for it. But alas. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	franzeska 2008-05-02 02:40 pm UTC (link)
	What little I've seen of Cats fanfic is an extreme case of rule 34. (Yes, of course it exists.) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	RecentChangesCamp 2008 partly_bouncy 2008-04-30 04:05 pm UTC (link)
	Is anyone else planning to attend RecentChangesCamp 2008? It is a wiki related conference but given the number of wikis in fandom and how important some are, I was curious if any of those folks were showing up. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	Re: RecentChangesCamp 2008 sidewinder 2008-04-30 04:09 pm UTC (link)
	You know I so, so wish I was going to be there! :( sadface (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: RecentChangesCamp 2008 partly_bouncy 2008-04-30 04:24 pm UTC (link)
	I wish there was some one else from Fan History or PoliceWiki attending. :( (Reply to this)(Parent)

	tikatu 2008-04-30 05:33 pm UTC (link)
	Has anyone noticed that fanfiction.net is stripping the names of other sites out of Private Messages? Not just the links, but the names without any suffixes. I noticed this when I PMed an author about a case of plagiarism and she told me that the site I'd mentioned (FanLib) hadn't come through. And the sites she'd mentioned to me (DeviantArt was one) came to me as blanks. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	spiletta42 2008-05-01 02:52 am UTC (link)
	Really? That site is just asking for a massive exodus. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	linear_flower 2008-05-01 01:44 am UTC (link)
	How come it seems like the things that would have an amazing fandom don't? Like, my favorite movie is Zoolander. How can a movie about male models not have even an inkling of a fandom? (The slash potential is so there. They're male models.) Not on LJ, not on FF.net, not even picked in Yuletide. What gives? Edited at 2008-05-01 01:45 am UTC (Reply to this)(Thread)

	undersea 2008-05-01 07:06 am UTC (link)
	That's one of the most depressing things about the world. :( I get so excited when I watch a movie sometimes purely because I'm ready to go home and find some slash for it, and then there IS NONE. It makes me want to cry, especially with the movies that are just begging for slash to be written about them. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	linear_flower 2008-05-01 07:38 am UTC (link)
	It makes me want to cry, especially with the movies that are just begging for slash to be written about them. I know! D: (Reply to this)(Parent)

	thirdblindmouse 2008-05-01 08:39 pm UTC (link)
	I keep looking for the Night Watch fandom, especially for some femslash/genderfuck squee after Day Watch, but if there is such a fandom, it must only exist in Russian. Which is silly, because fandom should have pounced on it so hard. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	franzeska 2008-05-02 02:51 pm UTC (link)
	Especially considering that the author is pretty pro-fanfic compared to most in the US, UK, etc. I suppose it must be because the movies were kind of incoherent and the books weren't quite popular enough, but I think it's weird too. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

thirdblindmouse
2008-05-02 05:02 pm UTC (link)

I thought the movies were coherent (at least, I could follow what was happening and why, if that's what you meant).

I suspect the insufficient popularity of the books would be a problem. Fandom doesn't generally pay much attention to movies unless they already are fans of an associated book or television series. Two hours is very little time in which to inspire loyalty and adoration.

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franzeska
2008-05-02 05:52 pm UTC (link)

Hmm... I found the first movie a bit confusing and would have found the second one hugely so if I hadn't read the books in the meantime. I've had a number of different people (including my Russian teacher!) complain that they had no idea what was going on in either one. I don't think they're impossible to follow, but I also don't think they'll necessarily grab people who aren't book fans. I remember wondering what was up with Kostya in the first movie (when he's standing in the doorway making you-killed-my-puppy faces at Anton). He ended up being my favorite character in the books, but I didn't find myself caring that much about what happened to him in the films.

That's an interesting claim about movies. I was thinking "What about LotR?!", but that's way too long to count. Are there any 2-hour movies that have inspired huge fandoms? I thought there were, but now I can't think of any, so maybe you're right.

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thirdblindmouse
2008-05-02 06:51 pm UTC (link)

I haven't read the books. (I don't speak a word of Russian. In fact, part of my obsession with the movies is adoration of the subtitles. I suppose that sort of thing doesn't inspire the same fascination in everyone, though.) The second movie was a bit more confusing than the first. There seemed to be more universe mechanics involved than could be quickly explained on film. The first film was very good at quickly laying down the rules (on an as-needed basis) and not giving us too many plot threads to follow. Day Watch I'll need to see a second time to fully understand (the ending = WTF?).

As for the LotR movies, who knows if they'd be this big were it not for the book fandom? All the fans who came after the movie were joining a fandom, not creating one.

The only two truly movie-inspired fandoms I can think of off the top of my head are Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean. Those are both trilogies, but didn't one or both of those have a fan following after only the first film?

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franzeska
2008-05-02 07:35 pm UTC (link)

The books are great! You should totally read them.

PotC definitely had a huge following after just one movie. LotR was already a large fandom in the general sense, but it seemed like the fanfic-producing type fandom was relatively small and focused on totally different things/characters from the post-movie explosion. Though maybe someone who's more into that fandom than I am would disagree...

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thirdblindmouse
2008-05-02 08:49 pm UTC (link)

Oh, the LotR fandom changed considerably with the influx of movie fen, but the new fanfic-writing crowd weren't building a fandom from the ground up. They moved in with the already established fanfic-writing Tolkienites and just started renovating and expanding until soon there was this huge McMansion where once there was this quiet little cottage on a relatively quiet street. Geekspace tends to attract further geekery of any kind.

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