jsmn_kinkmeme | ☆ Discussion Post

I love love love this fandom and am so glad I tracked it down after the end of the series when I was like, OMG WHAT DO I DO NOW.

I love that everyone is so excited whenever there's a new prompt.

I love that people chime in and add their thoughts and ideas.

I love that everyone is so friendly and happy even when there is TRAGIC HURT and COMFORT.

I love that ALL the fic is SO SO GOOD. It is so HYSTERICALLY FUNNY and WELL-WRITTEN and SO VERY HOT I THINK MY SCREEN MIGHT BURN OUT. It is the best fic in ANY fandom I have been involved in.

I love that we all know that Childermass is up for anyone and everything, Segundus is an total slut (even if he needs a bit of encouragement sometimes), and Norrell is just, so, Norrell about EVERYTHING.

I JUST HAD TO TELL YOU ALL, *MWAH MWAH*

I would just like to second all of this.

I also love how it's become accepted that Childermass is packing. I find it kind of amusing to imagine Enzo Cilenti in a shadowy room somewhere, writing fic under a bunch of different pen names.

it all seems like normal kink-meme quality fic to me. then again i've been in fandom for what, 12 years?

i think it probably has to do with the main canon being an actual novel - in order to write well you have to actually /read/. also, this being an adult novel using a semi-historical setting, if you're the type of person to be confused by a word (*cough dialect cough*) you don't know, or if you're all about mindless action or something, then you're going to give up on both the show and book pretty fast. if you're the type of person to be easily influenced in writing style, then the fact that canon is a book is going to help that as well.

especially in the very beginning of the meme, both the prompts and the fills definitely suggest to me that most people hanging out here are/were LJ people (or like-minded people from the pre-Tumblr days of fandom anyway, i notice there's more of that kind left on FFN as well). the later parts, specifically somewhere around halfway in the first part of the meme and beyond, are looking more and more like Tumblr-fans have taken it over almost completely. these two types of fandom people are completely different from each other and how much the fandom is made of each type drastically affects the culture of the fandom as well as the fics it produces and requests for. just some food for thought...

(poster who commented on the quality of the fic, but is feeling calmer this morning)

Interesting comment, nonny - I've been in fandom for even longer than you have (don't tell anyone). I tend to dip in and out, though.

I've also noticed how the fic has changed. I'm not going to say that I necessarily enjoy it less, but there does seem to be a change from what I recognised as a very LJ-type scene (you're quite right), to there being fewer fics that acknowledge the novel canon in both style and content, and a different tone of discussion. Even so - some of the best stuff here has given me more absurd joy than any fandom I have been in.

(same poster)

We should probably remember though, that we were once the New Kids On The Fandom Block, and did things differently. Hmm, I think I started reading on some kind of mailing list group. I'm sure the fans who started that were not impressed by the LJ crowd.

these two types of fandom people are completely different from each other

I wouldn't quite put it like that! I was an LJ-er first but ended up on Tumblr because posting to LJ in the last couple of years has been the equivalent of shouting into an echo chamber, sadly. (I deeply miss the community aspect of LJ. Also, the meta. God, the meta! *Ahem*).

Anyway, as I was saying, a good number of people ended up migrating to Tumblr for their fannish fix because there was nowhere else, not necessarily for a scenic change of culture. As a result, I don't think Tumblr is so wholly, overwhelmingly different as all that! Although there is a definite tendency towards a kind of excitable "hype" and short-termness amongst younger Tumblrites, whereas LJ struck me as being a bit more "in it for the long-haul".

I haven't noticed a change in fic-style or quality in the second half of the first post. I think the same people who were filling from the start are continuing to fill. However, I have noticed a change in tone to the prompts themselves, and to comments in general, although I wouldn't like to say for sure that this is the result of a "Tumblr-people" influx. Could well be people who were simply fans of the show finally finding the meme.

some bitter "get off my lawn!" type food, sure. thanks, we can do without it! Yikes. i mean a person made a happy "I love the fandom" comment and you just had to come and take it down a peg. i know i know, you'll say you're just expressing your opinion, but why did you have to do it replying to someone who clearly just wanted a happy thread? you just HAD to come and leave this comment to make sure people who write here doubt whether their work is good enough, and act superior like your taste is better compared to people who just enjoy the fandom for what it is, faults and all.

~people who get confused by english dialect clearly don't do enough reading~ oh boy...

Then the tumblr versus LJ stuff! you're just innocently adding food for thought? be honest. you are just trying to be edgy like you have such better education/taste and create conflict. Keep it away from the rest of us and save your edgy thoughts for your f-locked LJ posts will ya? (like anyone even uses LJ anymore seriously tumblr happened get over it)

I'm not the person you replied to, but I find your comment much more negative and unnecessary than theirs was. Granted, I personally think the commenter was wrong in their beliefs that there has been a change in fic quality, and that there are clear differences between LJers and Tumblr users, but it's easy to explain why you feel differently without having a go at them.

Maybe they shouldn't have been harshing someone's squee, but as you can see above, the OP of the thread wasn't bothered by it and even agreed with some points, so it's clearly not as huge a deal for them as you're making it out to be.

Also, if you read their comment, they said that people who find dialect confusing aren't going to like the book or the show, which is probably true. As a former language teacher, I have found that it is the case (and I am sure there are studies to prove it) that people who read a lot find it easier to discern the meaning of an unfamiliar word based on the context than people who don't read. So that assertion isn't necessarily wrong either. Although I suppose the commenter could have worded the idea (or their whole comment, in fact) a bit more carefully than they did.

As this is the discussion post and not the squee post, I don't think people should be told off for posting comments that aren't 100% positive in tone. Criticism and strong opinions are often what get discussion flowing after all.

(anon you replied to)

it's so funny that when somebody behaves rudely, it's the person who says "hey, you are being rude and here's why" that gets people like you jumping on them to say in deliberately mannered polite tones "you, the one pointing out someone is being an ass, are the problem! you are having a go at them"

As this is the discussion post and not the squee post
you know very well my complaint was to do with this person choosing to reply all this stuff (bad fic on the increase, tumblr type people and fewer LJ people accounts for this, quality of prompts and fic is degenerating, snooty comment about writers being bad because they don't read enough) -in reply so someone who was just happy and happy about the fic and happy about fandom and wanted to share that. why the need to take a dump on someone else out of nowhere?

like just why reply like that? other than to make yourself seem superior, you're so much better-educated and better-read than other writers, have such superior discernment and taste, they simply have to do some service to fandom and pronounce on the decline in quality of fic, and framing it like they're more mature in some way and so that gives them the right to pour a bucket of cold water over someone just having fun and taking fandom as it comes.

this person claims to have been in fandom 12 years and they're shocked! just shocked! that fandoms go through cycles as the popularity of the canon text fluctuates? Come onnn.

their whole comment was wank-bait in reply to someone just being positive about fandom. this doesn't make people want to write better or ~read more~ (please teacher grade my fanfic and give me assigned reading so i can improve! ugh)

The fact is without tumblr there would be no fandom here, or very little, because like I said, fandom is ON tumblr nowadays. Not LJ. Whatever I just think the person was an ass looking for drama, they got it, and I'm not really sure what you get out of playing all wounded on their behalf.

I'm freezing this thread. Courteous debate in the Discussion Post is fine, but I do not have the time to moderate a heated drawn out argument, the kink meme is not the place for that. Please take it somewhere else.

Edited 2015-09-30 13:40 (UTC)

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