Femslash - Readers, Writers and LJ
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Femslash - Readers, Writers and LJ |
| Creator: | trancer21 |
| Date(s): | August 7th, 2006 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | Fanfiction, Femslash |
| External Links: | Meta: Femslash - Readers, Writers and LJ, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Community, Identity, and Femslash is an essay by trancer21, posted in response to an ealier meta by viciouswishes on identity within the femslash community.
Essay
viciouswishes has this post on her LJ community, identity and femslash. While I'm still thinking about my answer, it did get me thinking about femslash in regards to readers versus writers. While typing up my post, I came up with some numbers - LJ groups in comparison to similar Yahoo Groups mailing lists:A Bunch of Numbers That May or May Not Mean Anything
LJ Femslash Communities:
buffyfaith - 267
sg_femslash - 55 members
sam_and_janet - 82 members
stargate_women - 159 members
birdsofprey_fic - 35 members
alex_liv_lovers - 405 members
sara_sofia - 87 members
Similar or Companion Yahoo Groups:
Faith Rocks (Buffy) - 1245 members
Carter and Fraiser Group (Stargate SG-1) - 800 members
Ladies of the Stars (Genre Femslash) - 892 members.
OliviaAlex (SVU) - 822 members.
Birds of Prey Slash Fic - 1578 members.
AlexLivShippers (companion list to alex_liv_lovers) - 445 members.
SaraSofia (companion list to sara_sofia (CSI: Vegas) - 424 members.
Admittedly, this isn‘t *every* femslash group out there and I’m also not sure if the numbers are the same for gen and/or boyslash groups nor am I completely sure what these numbers mean. But, it does seem to show that femslash fans *aren’t* really migrating over to Livejournal. (Also note, I didn’t go anywhere *near* the Xena, or ‘The L Word’ fandoms for numbers. Although, it did make my heart go pitter-pat to see that Xena still does have a rather large fandom presence, albeit on niche lists as opposed to gen fandom).
While there are new femslash fandoms being created specifically on Livejournal. It leaves me scratching my head as to why the numbers are so anemic compared to their mailing list companions.
Is this a case of more writer’s moving over to LJ as opposed to readers? Is it necessarily a ‘bad thing’ that there isn't the same explosion of fandom on LJ as compared to gen/het/boyslash? Should we, as a community, compare ourselves or try to be like those communities?
My general opinion is that those moving to LJ are more multifandom, while those using mailing lists and message boards are more One True Pairing/Show specific and don’t necessarily need Livejournal to fulfill their fandom needs. And, I must admit, as someone who’s still on a number of mailing lists, it’s a lot easier to follow the activity in all these different groups through my email than it is with Live Journal’s ‘Friends List’.
My other opinion is that Livejournal skews younger, where as those on mailing lists and message boards are a bit older. Which probably goes hand in hand with the LJ stats that the majority of LJ users are between the ages of 18 and 22.
Which brings me to the question ‘how do you build/grow a femslash community?’.
Comparatively speaking, femslash will always be smaller in comparison to gen, het and boyslash fandoms. But I think the biggest obstacle and easiest solution to creating a larger femslash community is one and the same thing - feedback. Admittedly, I’m also part of the problem in that I don’t give back *nearly* as much feedback as I should. Sure, I’d say authors write for the pleasure of writing but unlike books (which has sales numbers) or websites which give out hits, a fan fic author has no gauge to show how many people are reading fic other than feedback. So it always perplexes and saddens me when I’m on a list with 1000 plus members seeing fic getting only a handful of responses. And leaves me wondering just what it would take to get readers to send more feedback. ‘Cuz, really, do you think writers of non-femslash material wouldn’t think twice about writing femslash if authors were getting tons of feedback?
*Note - when I say 'authors should get more feedback' this isn't some subversive attempt for *me* to get more feedback. I mean, sure, it's a great ego-stroke, but ya'll stroke me just fine. Heh.