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Obscure Slash: Pros and Cons As you know, oh best beloved, my main fandom is Voltron. Though I occasionally dabble in other fandoms I will invariably return to the VF. It is the fandom on which I cut my slasher's teeth, so to speak, and the only fandom in which I have felt comfortable enough to branch out beyond the accepted pairings; an act that has strengthened my writing skills, I'm sure. But Voltron is a very obscure fandom indeed. And whilst I do adore Voltron and the Voltron-slash community, I feel that it is my duty as a pompous ass to expound upon the pros and cons of writing for an obscure fandom. Let's start with the cons, since there are fewer of them and I've always believed in getting the bad news out of the way first. 1. The fandom is very small. Which means that the fic-pool and author-pool are also very small. While this is good for an egotist like myself since it means that there's always somebody desperate enough to read something I wrote, it also means that if you've been involved in the fandom since the very beginning there aren't really any new stories to read. Which can lead to boredom and stagnation and the abandoning of Voltron for newer, greener pastures. Corollary: Because the Voltron slash community and vying (that's the Voltron slash community mailing list) are both very small, everybody sort of knows everybody else. Well, not me so much. Because I'm a recluse at heart and I get all flustered when I have to write emails to people; but other vying members have actually met face to face and communicate with each other regularly. We've built up quite a little family of slashers here and that can be very intimidating to a new member. I imagine it's rather like trying to insinuate yourself into a new clique. 2. Voltron is an old fandom. Which means that the source material is very difficult to come by and the canon is only barely remembered and, like Keith, continually violated. Oh, no, wait, that's not a con. But all feeble attempts at joking aside, the fact that Voltron is an old anime show that (despite a small resurgence of popularity due to new comics) barely anybody remembers does make it difficult to find people who a) remember the show and want to write fanfiction and b) want to write slash fanfiction in particular. And now, the pros (see, I told you there weren't too many cons).
1. The fandom is very small. As I said above, the fandom is small and closely knit and I find that that's a wonderful thing. Somebody will respond to your fic/art and it will undoubtedly be a positive response because the people in the Voltron slash community are all very nice. It's not like writing for a larger fandom (such as Gundam Wing) where you're just one of hundreds of fic-writers; your fic doesn't languish for years, hoping that there'll be one person who finds it and reads it and sends you feedback. For someone like me, whose ego constantly needs to be stroked, this is a Good Thing.
Corollary: Because the fic-writer pool is small, it's often possible to, er, pressure a newbie into posting fic. Back in the olden days of vying, 2. Voltron is an old fandom. Which means that the writers and artists are all of a certain age and, as a result, there are very few teenagers in this particular fandom. And this means that the level of talent we have available is high. Yes, I am casting aspersions upon teenage writers but I feel vaguely justified in that I've only recently come out of my teen years and, honestly, most of my contemporaries couldn't write a decent fic if it came up and typed itself out for them. Experience, maturity and, let's face it, a decent education gives non-teen writers a certain edge. They're more likely to write a powerful emotional fic that deals with our inherent human darkness than they are to write the "La, la, la, let's all be happy and everything is bunny and thorn-less roses" fic. I couldn't be happier about this. In your more popular, more modern fandoms (like LoTR now, or Gundam Wing) or your fandoms specifically targeted at teens and pre-teens (like Ranma 1/2 or Rurouni Kenshin), you get a lot of teenage or pre-teen writers. Which means bad fic: bad spelling, bad grammar, bad plots, bad characters, bad style, and (horrors) Mary Sues. Plus, the fics all start to sound the same; either all the problems are solved and everyone is happy and it's all domestic bliss, or it's over-wrought melodrama of the worst variety where a hangnail is world-shatteringly dire. Most teens and pre-teens just don't have the education or familiarity with writing to overcome these shortcomings; it's not their fault. And they should all keep writing, because practice always makes one better; just don't expect me to read the fics. 3. We're all raging otakus. By which I mean that, as a direct result of increasingly bad memory and a total disregard for all things canonical, every one of us on vying is rabid about the distilled essence of Voltron. And while I don't quite know what that is, I do know that I'm firmly for it. So, yeah. We all (but here I'm talking only about the vying members that I know--the ones who post quite a bit) love Voltron: we love madly, deeply, insanely. Because if we don't love it, who will? Who will adopt Keith, Lance, Sven, Pidge, Hunk, Lotor, Alfor, Coran, Zarkon and the rest? Who will make sure they're not forgotten? Who will breathe life into them, turn them from single notes into a beautiful symphony? I'm sure there are more pros and cons (and it seems to me that when I started writing this ramble I had more than this in mind) but I can't seem to remember them right now. So I'm going to leave this as is and try and think of a few more. |