Soap Opera Fandom (essay)

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Title:	Soap Opera Fandom (not the title of the post)
Creator:	woahthisguy
Date(s):	Mar 25th, 2022
Medium:	Tumblr
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Question posted by woahthisguy on Tumblr in March 2022. Question generated discussion of popular culture and spread beyond soap opera fandom into other genres.

Original question

Why dont people seem to make traditional style fandoms for soap operas? Days of Our Lives has 780 fic on ao3. Its been running since *checks wikipedia* 1965. 50+ years. Surely the same base of people who enjoyed Star Trek or X Files were also watching soaps? Or maybe not?

The author later added:

is that not a FASCINATING question?? Similarly Ive never seen telenovela fandoms despite their international popularity? But many countries dramas DO have fandoms re India, Japan, Korea, etc. How? Why?

Reactions/Responses

[ltleflrt]: Soap operas are pretty much fanfiction of themselves. No fandom need to create more content.

[woahthisguy replying to ltleflrt]: This feels like a really strong component of what's happening but I still feel there would be communities specifically for things like queer shipping and crossover especially. Also nothing that occurs as a fandom trope would be out of place in a soap opera. Additionally Id think fandom inclined people watching soaps would be MORE creative because soaps dont fear messed up continuity or implausible complex plots. And what about just art in general? Certainly theres artistic people making art of soap charas and yet theres no community for that that I have seen? Not even a random, heres my fav from young and the restless. Nada. So where are these artists?

[12percentplan ]: This is interesting. I used to watch OLTL religiously with my MeeMaw in the 80s, up until I became addicted to prime time shows like Jump Stret and MacGyver. I didn't go back to soaps, which is strange because that kind of overly dramatic constant content is kind of what I crave. I guess not being too invested in any of the characters keeps me away. I need heavy doses of bromance and maybe fewer side plots. There was usually a character i hated, and the dislike of their storyline made me lose interest.

[woahthisguy replying to 12percentplan ]: YES THANK YOU OK! I wondered if soaps ever rotating cast and usually cookie cutter charas had an effect here. But like fandom loves obsessing over minor charas so idk. Im also building some theories regarding setting but I need to get myself stats for TV shows that dont have a unique setting. For example, is this why Friends doesn't have a traditional fandom but Grey's Anatomy does?

An interactive exchange covering multiple topics, including the history of Pern fandom:

[rosieblogstuff said]: I wouldn’t be too surprised if there were paper fanzines about soaps back in the day. Or newsletters at least. It’s like old Star Trek fanfiction. There were TONS of people writing that stuff before AO3, since the 60s, but alot of it will never get digitized.

[woahthisguy said]: @rosieblogstuff I agree! I just find it odd that in everything Ive read about proto-modern fandom, Ive never once heard it mentioned? And as I said in another reblog, why havent I even seen fanart, not one piece

[rosieblogstuff said]: I used to own some YahooGroups that were old fan clubs, and we had our own fanficiton archives in our groups. A lot was PDFs of old paper fanzines. When YahooGroups closed AO3 asked me if I wanted to move our stuff to AO3, but I declined. All the stories had the writers’ real names on them. I’d never even met some of the writers who predated me and I didn’t have permission to move their stuff to a public site like AO3. So we didn’t.

[woahthisguy said]: @rosieblogstuff waitwaitwait so youve been in soap fandoms??? I would certainly believe its fandom participation fizzled with digitization but its WILD to me that Ive never seen any remnants! Thank you so much for commenting!!

[rosieblogstuff said]: @woahthisguy nah not soap fandom, I was big into Anne McCaffrey’s Pern novels fandom. She was one of those authors who always gets mentions in the history of lawsuits over fanfic becasue she went through some phases of throwing tantrums when fans & sending cease & desist letters to fangroups who broke her rules (which included writing fanfics ABOUT her characters… you could only wrote OCs) or any public Pern fanfics at all.

[woahthisguy said]: @rosieblogstuff yes! Ive heard of Pern fandom and its struggles! Wow. Thank you again for sharing like if you have any other fun info or want to talk about your experiences more I AM ALL EARS

A nod to Supernatural fandom:

[woahthisguy]: Love that this post is moving through Supernatural circles because its WILD that Jackles came from a soap and spn is a wildly huge fandom so if soap fandom existed, I feel like I should have been less than 7 degrees of separation from it when I was a spn fan. This is literally the basis of why Im asking this question.