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Fannish Spaces
With poorly drawn diagrams.
Abstract things often have a spatial element for me. For example, the months of the year go around in a circle, clockwise. But I never see the whole circle at once, only the month I'm thinking about and the ones on either side.
Or this: when I first got onto LJ, it was unfamiliar and so in my mental monitor, it occupied the bottom right corner. Now that it's a comfortable place for me, it's moved to the upper left.
I was talking with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
laurashapiro about LJ and mailing lists and how fandom is different depending where you are and I started to think about how each of them feels to me, spatially, and how it's a metaphor for their function. (This seemed a lot more brilliant then -- I think it was the rum. But I press on regardless!)
I should probably be dealing with Usenet too, but I only ever hung out on alt.tv.x-files.creative. So I will simply say that being on a newsgroup feels to me like being outdoors and move on.
Mailing Lists
A mailing list, to me, is a sphere. A bubble. A discrete entity. Content flows into it, but doesn't flow out -- it's all in there and it doesn't mix with all the other mailing list bubbles. I go from bubble to bubble, depending on what fandoms and subjects I feel interested in. Even if I don't read my email, it still flows into the bubble and waits there for me to sift through it.
A mailing list is, essentially, topic driven. I want to read Legolas/Gimli fanfic and chat, I go to Axe and Bow. I want to discuss making vids, I go to Vidder. I don't post in those groups about the TV shows I watched on Monday night or what I did while I was waiting to read OotP. I stick with the mandate of the list.
I choose the topics, not the other people on the list. So you find quite a range of opinion, despite the fact that we're all interested in the same thing. Discussion can be quite lively, even flamy at times.
Mailing lists are about what you're interested in.
LiveJournal
On LiveJournal, I am at the centre and everything revolves around me. My friends list is like a ring that encircles me. Every person I add makes the ring a little larger. Communities are another ring. The content falls from above and passes through me and my rings. It's transient, it's ephemeral.
LJ is people driven. It's true that I add people because of what they usually write about, but very few people stick to only one topic. So I read about what interests the people on my list, not about what only interests me. Sure, I skip right over those posts about the OC and Smallville. But I read about the movies they're watching and the other shows and sometimes I get whole new fandoms that way. I get opinions and thoughts that I wouldn't see on mailing lists.
But I also don't get all the posts on the subjects I'm interested in. I don't get all the HP fic or all the Stargate discussion. I don't think I'm really connected to LotR fandom on LJ at all. When the RotK trailer dropped, nobody was posting on my flist about it, so I went out to friendsfriends to see if I could find any commentary there. It's not very efficient. Fandom is, to me, what I'm reading.
It's also narcissistic. I post about whatever interests me, me, me! The Fandom of Hal's Brain. But everybody else gets to do the same. It's like when people first started putting up personal homepages. We all can shine like little stars in our own LJ solar systems, surrounded by a cloud of other people, connecting out to the edges of the known universe.
Discussion on LJ has a different tenor than on lists. Because I choose the people that you read, rather than the topics, I'm more likely to be of the same opinion as they are, and, when I'm not, I feel more of a desire to be conciliatory, out of a sense of personal connection. That's not to say that there's not dissension, but even that tends to have more of a personal tone.
LJ is about who you know.
Which Is Better
Eh. I think they're both great. Not like that sucky Usenet. *g*
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Seriously, you really nailed it, b/c while I agree with darkkitten that it's annoying, I also completely love how such interlinkage introduces me to new (or not so new) people... Sometimes you'll come across someone you remember from fandoms long ago; other times there'll be someone who just seems to say exactly the things you're thinking...I find it very exciting and simply love the way it expands fandom as a whole, the way it introduces inter-fannishness, and, for me personally, it allows me to theorize slash beyond the limited boundaries of the fandoms I've encountered.
I like the way you ascribe credibility, b/c that's exactly what I do...I see someone post in another journal, I like the post, I check them out, I see whether they're interesting, who's in their circle of friends, I might check out their writing... <--that makes me realize something, though...is lj actually negative for the writers? Or rather, is it giving more visibility to people like me who don't write? Is it shiftings dynamics ever so slightly? [I really don't know, b/c I've never been fannish before lj and I've never been a writer...I'm seriously asking!]
Finally, I like the way you point out how the same discussion looks very different depending on whose journal it occurs. Everyone's flist is slightly different and people will have different things to say but also different styles of interaction....hmmmm...very interesting!!!
[I still feel like there's so much more to say...like we barely scratched the surface]
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I also completely love how such interlinkage introduces me to new (or not so new) people... Sometimes you'll come across someone you remember from fandoms long ago; other times there'll be someone who just seems to say exactly the things you're thinking...I find it very exciting
Me too, although I find the randomness of it rather strange. In a mailing list you have a menu of posts in front of you to pick from, and with limited time you can skim and select which to read based on what you think is in there. (Hence the continual ML kerfuffling over failure to change the subject when the subject changes...)
What's over the next hill in the world of LJ is not terribly visible from any one point where you may be standing. Makes for wonderful wandering full of twists, turns and surprises. But rotten systematic searching. (Y'all can whap me now for my control complex and for being so hierarchical!)
As prillalar says, it's people-based linkage, not topic based. She summed up what I agree is LJ's biggest deficit perfectly - in cathexys' journal! And now, since I want to reference it, I'm bringing that comment back over here. I really like it that complaining about failing to connect discussions resulted in connecting them! Pretty cool.
and you know, I have no idea how I should even have phrased that bit. Prillalar, this is your journal, am I addressing you? Should I have said "you"? Or should I be mindful of an audience and use your name and "she" so other readers know who I'm talking about? Should I address cathexys, whose post I am directly replying to? And is anyone reading this anymore who isn't getting email notifications? Aiieeeee.
Prillalar writes:
What we're missing is an easy way on LJ to monitor ongoing discussions, beyond thinking, "I should remember to find that post once I get home and look at it again". Some sort of temporary bookmarking system would be good, especially if we could make it public. Then I could see what discussions my friends are following.
You got it in one there I think. Discussion-tracking would preserve good discussions and give people more time to respond.
I miss the somewhat related ability to "bump" an old thread to the top of the list in an ML, when it seems time for more consideration of that issue.
cathexys adds:
is lj actually negative for the writers? Or rather, is it giving more visibility to people like me who don't write?
I think it does in some ways, due to the simple factor of time. Writers write! And when they're writing, they aren't posting. Writers also beta and send feedback, much of which takes place via email. All of those activities mean they're not LJ-posting. However, due to the private connections, there may be a lot of LJ activity when they do post. Those who chat or IM with their LJ friends are maybe a wash overall; they have additional connections from talking to other LJ-ers, but again aren't LJ posting when they are chatting or IM-ing. This phenomenon also holds for mailing lists, but LJ seems to amplify it due to all the interconnections.
And now I should go and not-post! *grins*
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I'm positively gleeful over how intensely meta this discussion has become. It's metameta. "Can we truly study LJ if we're using LJ to do it?"
and you know, I have no idea how I should even have phrased that bit. Prillalar, this is your journal, am I addressing you? Should I have said "you"? Or should I be mindful of an audience and use your name and "she" so other readers know who I'm talking about? Should I address cathexys, whose post I am directly replying to? And is anyone reading this anymore who isn't getting email notifications? Aiieeeee.
See, maybe we need an LJ Etiquette Handbook. I think that you're addressing the person to whose post you're responding, but if you want to address the general public, that's fine too.
It would be funny if everyone had to address me in all their comments. *g* Like in parliament: "Ms Speaker..."
cathexys:
is lj actually negative for the writers? Or rather, is it giving more visibility to people like me who don't write?
darkkitten1:
I think it does in some ways, due to the simple factor of time. Writers write! And when they're writing, they aren't posting. Writers also beta and send feedback, much of which takes place via email. All of those activities mean they're not LJ-posting. However, due to the private connections, there may be a lot of LJ activity when they do post.
The converse is also true -- LJ may cause writers to write less fic, since they're spending more time posting in LJ. I know I've struggled with that.
But, frankly, one of the reasons I got onto LJ in the first place was that I felt people would lose sight of me as an author if I weren't here. To that end, LJ is a way of saying: "I'm here! I still exist! Look at me!" (That sounds like I'm a yappy little dog. *g*) Posting in LJ, both fic and blather, has widened the audience for my writing, certainly. And it's helped me to become more involved in the community, which I love.
There's a bunch more I want to say about that, but I already did that back in March, so I'll just link: Fandom, High School, and Mozart
The short version is that if people have time to read 3 fics and they have to choose from 6 that are available, they'll go for people that they know first. So, I think LJ is valuable to writers in that way.
But now it is 11 PM and sleep would also be valuable.
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That's really at the center of it, isn't it? While the fic are what drives the community, the thing that I'm taking away from it most is the connections I've made, the people who've send me stuff to cheer me up, picked up the phone to call, the group of (mostly) women who are smart and articulate and political and are so much more like the person I am inside than anyone else around me is....
And (as I said somewhere :-), the multifannishness increases which is a very good thing. One fandom's big fish may be another's unknown, but LJ brings you together with other people on top of (in spite of?) their fic...you may never want to read someone's fandom, but you still can find her thoughts fascinating and you do share the fannishness, which already sets you aside from the large majority.
We're so eager to segregate (how dare you hang out with H/D folks of Severus makes your heart go faster :-) that we tend to forget that taking all of us together we're still a very small set :-) <-- even including the het and gen folks...
And before this'll deteriorate in a "can't we all just get along" speech, I'll check out your link.
PS: Another corollary of your 3 fics thing is, of course, that if you have an hour and you can read 3 fic or post in lj and answer comments, I'm more and more doing the latter...
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Hey, I guess one can "bump" like in a mailing list after all, by doing the linking thing.
Great post back there in March! It does take work to become known, and what an interesting point the blog guy (name escapes me) made about high school popularity taking a ton of work which geeks find intensely boring and not worth the time. Your post also makes a lot of points similar to the "potlatch" article posted on virgule some while ago, as
I've spent a good proportion of my fannish time as one of a group of small-audience focused fan readers/writers, where people in a clump of ten or twelve or so like-minded souls were writing primarily for the other people in that group. The stories would be posted to public archives, and everyone answered their feedback from outside the group, but all the time and effort and cross-beta-ing and canon/slash discussion was happening in the relatively closed small-group interaction. It is a way of limiting the effort put in; kind of the geeky lunch table option of fandom. But the wonders of LJ have tempted me out of my nice safe corner these days!
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But I did want to respond to this:
I think it does in some ways, due to the simple factor of time. Writers write! And when they're writing, they aren't posting. Writers also beta and send feedback, much of which takes place via email. All of those activities mean they're not LJ-posting.
I look at this in exactly the opposite way.
I post to LJ when I "should" be be writing. I write big rambles on characterization or whatever topic, and some of 'em are longer than stories I'm working on. And then I have to answer the comments - I *want* to answer all the comments, I *want* to have that discussion, or I wouldn't have started it and left the comment feature on.
But then I feel like I'm not getting my fic writing done.
So I think LJ sucks time from writing in a huge way that MLs never did (I didn't write fic when I was highly active on Usenet. LJ reminds me a lot of Usenet - it has many of newsgroups' best features, to my mind - mainly the untrammelled nature of it and the ability to bring lurkers out of hiding for really interesting discussions, which rarely happens on MLs, ime).
I mean, I can spend an evening with one of my WsIP open and never type a word because I'm hitting refresh on my flist, responding to comments, making comments, etc. (and getting really fucking irritated when LJ doesn't work).
I also think about how reading a writer's LJ impacts on one's reading of her fiction. I like to think I have the ability to separate out the writer from the fiction, but it does have influence, and sometimes I wonder if that's not a good thing.
But again, that's for when my head isn't quite so muzzy.
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Yes, yes, yes.
and I should be working on all kinds of other things right now!
Both are true, I think. Just a matter of time balance. LJ conversation is frighteningly addicting.
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Yes, it is. We needs it, precious...
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Yeah, this is what's really buzzing in my head right now -- it might be interesting to experiment by starting the same discussion in two different journals and see what happens.
The other day someone linked to one of my threads and said I was "hosting a discussion". It made me feel like I had a salon where people would come over and be smart in my space and all I had to do was faciliate by asking some questions. Then I could benefit from everyone else's hard thinking.
is lj actually negative for the writers? Or rather, is it giving more visibility to people like me who don't write? Is it shiftings dynamics ever so slightly? [I really don't know, b/c I've never been fannish before lj and I've never been a writer...I'm seriously asking!]
Do you mean that the writer's writing is devalued somewhat because the non-writers are also writing, even though it's not fic? If the dynamics are shifting, I think it's a good thing. I've had fans who after a while started writing their own fic and I loved the way that our relationship changed as they gained confidence.
I think that the kind of communication and more personal knowledge that LJ fosters helps to de-mystify writers and I think that's good. Fandom is all about community, really, and anything that helps us to relate better is good.
Hmm, this is a little vague, possibly. Sorry!
(Oh, and I've friended you. It's a No Obligation friending, so don't fret about adding me back unless it is your Heart's Desire. *g*)
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No, not vague at all! I've said it before, but I don't think I'd be talking to anyone (heck, made it 4 years with not even a handful of LOC's) if it weren't for LJ. Somehow lurking in different writers' LJ's I felt I got to know them, who they were friends with, what else interested them beyond the particular fandom...I remember my first letters sounding pretty schizophrenic, b/c I knew that person and they didn't know me *g* But seriously, years on ml's never gave me that feeling of intimacy (however false it may be)...
As for the shifting dynamics between various fans...on some level, I guess it has always been the case that various fannish things added onto some form of fan capital (fannish potlatch anyone?), but a lot, I think, may have been going on in 'hidden' space (emails, IM, ...) While that's still the case and still possible, lj seems to initially put everyone on the same level... But then so did ml's...if you had sth smart to say on prospect, it didn't quite matter whether you were a famous writer or not, did it?...so why would I never have dreamed of posting there and just write away in my lj and on virgule???
Maybe it really *is* a personal preference thing. This spring I met a group of Enterprise writers whose entire subgroup (entire fandom?) despised lj and was perfectly happy to continue on ml.
LOL about your salon...when you're getting email notifications and people have started off on a tangent in your post, it sometimes does feel like that...and if they didn't know each other before, you just made a connection there for them, didn't you :-)