Threshold Fandom
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| See also: | Feral Fandom, Gateway Fandom | |
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A threshold fandom is one where a large proportion of its fans have never been in a media fandom before, let alone a slash fandom, and so the fandom becomes something of a Feral Fandom. Some examples are Xena, Quantum Leap, Harry Potter, Beauty and the Beast, and plenty of others. Fans within a threshold fandom tend to be younger, are more likely to be in their first media fandom, have friends that are also in their first media fandom, and thus are more likely to be totally loyal to their current show (mono-fannish). They are more likely to be gen or het fans than slash fans (since it is relatively rare to come up with the idea of slashing characters on your own, without exposure to the idea of it first), and if they are slash fans, they probably read both gen and slash in that universe.[1] (Some fans, of course, never make it to a second show -- never become generalized media fans. There are Star Trek fans who are still just Star Trek fans, thirty-plus years later.)
Cool parts of Threshold fandoms
Threshold fandoms bring lots of new people into media fandom, and into slash fandom. They have lots of energy, because there aren't a lot of people saying, "no, don't even bother trying -- it didn't work in Star Trek fandom, so it'll never work here, either."
Not-so-cool parts
On the other hand, threshold fandoms tend to recreate the wheel, because they don't know that certain ideas or concepts have already been worked through elsewhere. For example, new Xena fans had never heard of slash fic, so they named their same-sex fiction Alt, which is short for 'alternative fiction'. Threshold fandoms tend to have a million little archives instead of one big one. In earlier times, they tended to have horrible gen vs. slash wars long after more traditional fandoms had finished them. (With the same messes happening over and over, like gen vs. slash wars, with editors of gen zines saying they won't print gen stories by people who also write slash, and fans threatening to 'out' writers by sending slash to the studio/actors in an effort to "make fans behave.")
