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On top-down fannish engagement
Jul. 25th, 2012 12:50 pmI swear that this is the last post I'm going to make on this subject, but I think I've worked out what it is about Homestuck's failings as a social fandom that bothers me so badly.
The problem is not that there's no one to talk to. I've been late to more than one fandom, and been pretty content wandering about abandoned fic archives reading everything I could and boring my friends list with my three-years-late flail.
The problem is that there's discussion going on, interesting and lively and highly visible discussion, but it's inaccessible. There's nothing wrong with a BNF-heavy fandom, BNF blogs can be really excellent sites of discussion and engagement and ideas. But not on Tumblr. Tumblr assumes that the goal is not mutual communication, but celebrity - many people hearing your voice and seeing your art, without you hearing anything from them that isn't related to you. So the only ways to speak to somebody are:
1) the Ask box, which you are expected to use to ask the cool and interesting opinions of the person you're talking to, not to express your own opinions
2) private messaging, which is explicitly called "fan mail", just to drive home that even though mutual communication is possible, it's not the point
3) commenting on posts, which is set up so that the only way for the poster to respond to a comment is to make a whole new post for it, again driving home that the point is not a conversation but feedback on your awesomeness
4) reblogging with commentary, which is understood to be a method of creating dialogue only secondarily, and at the original poster's discretion - there's no feeling that it's the polite thing to do to engage with the commentary on reblogs of your text posts. A lot of the time you probably don't even see it.
So because so much of Homestuck fandom has actually been born on Tumblr, rather than migrating there from LJ, fannish engagement is fundamentally constructed to be top-down, or centre-out. It's not that you can't engage with fandom ideas, it's that only the people immediately around you will hear. You can't affect the conversation. It's controlled - not deliberately, but controlled all the same - by people in the centre. Even writing fic doesn't feel like a contribution that affects fandom, with no conversation around it.
I feel, basically, as though I've been relegated to being a consumer of my own fandom. Like sitting on a couch with a small group of friends, chatting as we watch pop culture commentary on TV about something we love. I can talk about what they're saying with the person next to me, but that's about it.
(I know it's not quite as clear-cut as that, and that there's more than one hub of conversation, and that probably more gregarious people than me, or people more comfortable with the dynamic of Asks maybe, can manage to work this system to connect with the fandom in a meaningful way. But it's definitely a simile that works for me.)
The things I love to pieces about Homestuck fandom, the things that make it the best fandom I have ever been in, are that I adore the canon like nothing; that unlike the only other fandoms where I've loved the canon this much (due South and Hikaru no Go), it's also exactly the kind to inspire me to write the kind of stories I'm best at; that both canon and fic are full of girls; that it's also the most multi-shippy place I've ever been; and that people create the most AMAZING fanworks, I am constantly in awe of the fic and art and videos and everything else that fans of this webcomic create.
The thing that makes Homestuck the worst fandom I have ever been in is that, despite having written 6 Homestuck stories, having spent eight months reading and being excited about it, having talked about it everywhere I have a platform, having written meta, speculation, reaction to updates, having participated in a major fest, having recced fic, having engaged in every single way I know how ...
... I don't actually feel as though I'm in it.
_____________
Anyway, the conclusion I'm coming to is that, I guess, I can't actually do this anymore. I'm not going to stop loving the webcomic, and I'm not going to stop reading Homestuck fic at least fairly regularly, but I have to either pull back quite a bit from Fandom altogether for a while, or I have to branch out so that Homestuck isn't my only fandom.
So hey. Uh.
Avengers is cool, right?
The problem is not that there's no one to talk to. I've been late to more than one fandom, and been pretty content wandering about abandoned fic archives reading everything I could and boring my friends list with my three-years-late flail.
The problem is that there's discussion going on, interesting and lively and highly visible discussion, but it's inaccessible. There's nothing wrong with a BNF-heavy fandom, BNF blogs can be really excellent sites of discussion and engagement and ideas. But not on Tumblr. Tumblr assumes that the goal is not mutual communication, but celebrity - many people hearing your voice and seeing your art, without you hearing anything from them that isn't related to you. So the only ways to speak to somebody are:
1) the Ask box, which you are expected to use to ask the cool and interesting opinions of the person you're talking to, not to express your own opinions
2) private messaging, which is explicitly called "fan mail", just to drive home that even though mutual communication is possible, it's not the point
3) commenting on posts, which is set up so that the only way for the poster to respond to a comment is to make a whole new post for it, again driving home that the point is not a conversation but feedback on your awesomeness
4) reblogging with commentary, which is understood to be a method of creating dialogue only secondarily, and at the original poster's discretion - there's no feeling that it's the polite thing to do to engage with the commentary on reblogs of your text posts. A lot of the time you probably don't even see it.
So because so much of Homestuck fandom has actually been born on Tumblr, rather than migrating there from LJ, fannish engagement is fundamentally constructed to be top-down, or centre-out. It's not that you can't engage with fandom ideas, it's that only the people immediately around you will hear. You can't affect the conversation. It's controlled - not deliberately, but controlled all the same - by people in the centre. Even writing fic doesn't feel like a contribution that affects fandom, with no conversation around it.
I feel, basically, as though I've been relegated to being a consumer of my own fandom. Like sitting on a couch with a small group of friends, chatting as we watch pop culture commentary on TV about something we love. I can talk about what they're saying with the person next to me, but that's about it.
(I know it's not quite as clear-cut as that, and that there's more than one hub of conversation, and that probably more gregarious people than me, or people more comfortable with the dynamic of Asks maybe, can manage to work this system to connect with the fandom in a meaningful way. But it's definitely a simile that works for me.)
The things I love to pieces about Homestuck fandom, the things that make it the best fandom I have ever been in, are that I adore the canon like nothing; that unlike the only other fandoms where I've loved the canon this much (due South and Hikaru no Go), it's also exactly the kind to inspire me to write the kind of stories I'm best at; that both canon and fic are full of girls; that it's also the most multi-shippy place I've ever been; and that people create the most AMAZING fanworks, I am constantly in awe of the fic and art and videos and everything else that fans of this webcomic create.
The thing that makes Homestuck the worst fandom I have ever been in is that, despite having written 6 Homestuck stories, having spent eight months reading and being excited about it, having talked about it everywhere I have a platform, having written meta, speculation, reaction to updates, having participated in a major fest, having recced fic, having engaged in every single way I know how ...
... I don't actually feel as though I'm in it.
_____________
Anyway, the conclusion I'm coming to is that, I guess, I can't actually do this anymore. I'm not going to stop loving the webcomic, and I'm not going to stop reading Homestuck fic at least fairly regularly, but I have to either pull back quite a bit from Fandom altogether for a while, or I have to branch out so that Homestuck isn't my only fandom.
So hey. Uh.
Avengers is cool, right?
