tishaturk | Question: fannish migration

I'm working on a section about how vidwatchers decide what vids to watch, including things like "I will watch any vid made by X" (which is true for me of... gosh, an awful lot of vidders, honestly, which I guess is what happens to those of us who are fans of vidding and vidders as well as specific shows).

This has led me off on what may turn out to be a total tangent about what for lack of a better term I'm calling fannish migration, meaning migration from one show to another--not necessarily vid-specific. I'm thinking of something like, for example, the movement of a fair number of fic writers from Due South to SGA. (And I gather there was some overlap with Sentinel there, too, though that was enough before my time that I couldn't articulate a timeline.)

What other examples can you think of? Either general examples, or specific writers or vidders that you've moved from show to show with?

They might be direct or indirect; my sense is that Due South --> SGA was fairly direct in that a lot of people were still writing DS well after the 1999 finale and then jumped on SGA when it appeared in 2004 (but I was not in either of those fandoms, so my perceptions may not be accurate!). Buffy --> Firefly is another one. But I wonder about other, less obvious connections. I feel like I saw a lot of names I recognized from Buffy in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles fandom, but maybe that's just because those were the people I was already hanging out with, fannishly speaking?

I should probably admit that this inquiry is also motivated by thinking to myself, when confronted by the periodic appearance of Teen Wolf on my Tumblr dash, "Where did all these people come from?"

Crossposts: http://tishaturk.livejournal.com/14180.html

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From:

cofax7

IMO, a lot of people jumped to SGA because it was a pretty show with two white male leads that began just as LOTR and the first wave of popslash was beginning to fade. There was a natural crossover audience from SG-1, but a huge influx of people who didn't know the Gateverse and who came in from other fandoms. Which is why there's so much more crack!AU in SGA than there ever was in SG-1: that's a relic of popslash and LotRPS, more than from the traditional sff-based genre fandoms.

That, and Shalott & Resonant both jumped full-on into SGA, and they brought a lot of people with them.

That's my argument, anyway...

From:

musesfool

I believe Smallville->SGA was another path many people took.

From:

tishaturk

I had completely forgotten about Smallville! But that does make sense.

From:

everbright

That's how Oftenimprudent/rageprofrock/Pru got to SGA. The Slash Report just did an episode on SGA, it might help with your section on fan migration, if you're going to use SGA as an example.

From:

tishaturk

I hadn't even thought of LotR and popslash -- I didn't know anyone heavily involved in either fandom -- but I see how that timing makes sense, and your point about crack!AUs is really interesting. I really hope someone who knows more about fic than I do is writing about the ways in which fic tropes and genres jump from fandom to fandom; I see some of it now in the way Teen Wolf's popularity has prompted a wave of werewolf AUs in various other fandoms.

Resonant is one of the people I associate with Due South fic (and I know she was also writing HP at the time); your observation that she and Shalott "brought a lot of people with them" is exactly the sort of thing I was thinking of. Shalott had been writing all sorts of things since Sentinel -- HP, Smallville, X-Men, Buffy, Master & Commander -- and I know she'd written and vidded SG1 as well, so it doesn't surprise me that a lot of people would have followed her to SGA.

From:

cathexys

I think at least three things are happening in fannish migrations: one is temporal, the fannish vacuum, i.e., the moment after a show or when a show disappoints, and suddenly you have large groups looking for something else, a moment where excitement tapers off and the output of fanworks slows down; at that point the timing of a new show is important, and if it has something to recommend it (themes, actors, director), all the better. Then there's the theme factor. I keep on returning to scholar/warrior pairings (Sentinel, SG1, SGA, PoI, XMFC to a degree, even Teen Wolf if you want to twist it, and many more). I recognize writers I love in other similar fandoms focusing on the same pairings. Likewise, I love antagonistic pairings, so that I know Ces and I rarely ever see eye to eye, bc she loves the buddy vibe, which I rarely veer toward. So the folks who slash Harry/Draco and the ones who like Harry/Ron, for example... Finally, there's the single author figure. i'll never write the essay about interfandom fights post Astolat's Transcendental in SGA but...yes :) I can still tell pretty much every first story I've read in a given fandom that pulled me in. They are threshold stories, and if the story is appealing to different tastes and gets circulated widely enough, esp with a fannish vacuum...voila, fannish migration.

(And that doesn't fully answer your question, but I think that's how we get these trends, popslash > bandom > OD...all appealing to the RP music fandom puppy pile/ DS > SGA > PoI, both force of personality and fannish vacuum with a side order of characterization semblance, etc

From:

princessofgeeks

Was Transcendental a huge draw for people to get into SGA? I wasn't reading in that fandom at the time; I missed all that.

From:

cathexys

I'd argue there were two quite distinct fan groups, one coming out of SG1, who started watching from the beginning, and then in January or February Transcendental was released and a lot of folks read it and started watching or started watching to read it (eh...me :). And the two groups conflicted a lot over characterization--the former had a much more McKay!woobie focus whereas the latter didn't. Also, their stiles often different, with the former group more old!skool slash I'd argue and the latter doing a lot of popslashy underwriting (even if they didn't come out of popslash, I think that's where it kind of hit its pinnacle). <- My example is always early and later torch. Compare XF's Ghosts and Lovers with her SGA writing. I love both, but...the former is much more luscious/purple/longer compared to the latter....

Much meta was written. (Here's one for example from that time, though Julad was actually writing Mcay/Zelenka): http://julad.livejournal.com/71396.html,

Oh man, the good ole days of LJ meta.... :D

From:

princessofgeeks

Did Shalott's current co-writers follow her? Or did just a whole bunch of people read that story and follow her? Was she in popslash just before SGA?

I started rereading it, and her McKay in that story is indeed very heroic. She wrote a bit of SG1 but I don't think it was her primary fandom at all.

I agree that BNFs can certainly set the tone for fanon and for certain characterizations. I've seen this most clearly in the wide variety of characterizations of Daniel in SG1.

But this is drifting off topic; with apologies to our hostess.....:)

I wish you WOULD write that article, LOL.

From:

cathexys

I think it was other writers and readers...and it created a critical mass (and infrastructure such as sga_flashfic etc).

I can't write that essay...I think I've told you before about my theory of the fannish Heisenberg principle: you cannot simultaneously have the inside track and share it in public. One or the other :D

Sorry, Tisha :D

From:

princessofgeeks

tnx!

From:

tishaturk

No apologies necessary! It's fascinating reading for me! (And wow, I hope someone is writing all of this up for Fanlore if it's not already there -- I need to poke around Fanlore to see if it IS there, but I made the post precisely because I wasn't sure where to begin.)

From:

frogspace.livejournal.com

I need to poke around Fanlore to see if it IS there, but I made the post precisely because I wasn't sure where to begin.

There is a Timeline of Slashed Sources (http://fanlore.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Slashed_Sources), The Fandom That Ate Fandom (http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Fandom_That_Ate_Fandom) and the Chronology Category (http://fanlore.org/wiki/Category:Chronology). There is also the Author Pages (http://fanlore.org/wiki/Category:Author_Pages) category that has a lot of information in the screencaps and on the pages about who wrote what when.

From:

tishaturk

Yeah, timing is clearly one of the keys. I wonder, actually, whether and to what extent that might be changing now that there are so MANY fandoms? The post-show or post-disappointment vacuum still exists, obviously, but it seems like a) some of them would be smaller, both because the fandoms were smaller to begin with and because at least some polyfannish people can just sort of settle harder into their other fandoms, and b) and there are a lot more places for people to go! But that's just speculation on my part.

One of the intriguing things about the thematic element, for me, is precisely that it's *not* necessarily temporal; there's, what, a five-year gap between Due South and SGA? And yet a LOT of Due South people reconvened in SGA, regardless of what they'd been doing in the interim, because that buddy dynamic was still appealing. (And that continues on, too, to shows like H50. Actually, it would be interesting to look at which SGA people went to H50 and which to PoI -- heh.) Or a bunch of old X-Philes glomming onto Life and then Haven -- which have much smaller fandoms, obviously, it's not as if ALL of XF fandom showed up, but there's definitely a thread that runs through there that has to do with what the shows themselves are doing.

To me the most interesting thing is the *interaction* between what the shows are doing and what individual authors/vidders are doing WITH them -- so, as you say, people follow an author to a new fandom not just because they like her writing but because they like the dynamic that she gravitates towards -- the whole "if you like X you'll probably like Y" thing.

From:

cathexys

as klia pointed out below, for every seeming pattern there are so many exceptions...and since we aren't quantitative folks... :D

But I agree that the fandom vacuum is not there in the same ways any more, plus, it feels like more people are multfannish.

And you are totally right that writers are of course also fans following their own tropes and bringing those who like these tropes along, so the author/theme thing is really hard to separate...

And I think all of these are reasons why I'm always fascinated by migration but never feel like I can ever do it real justice :D

From:

rivkat

Smallville --> Supernatural also seemed to happen, at least in my circle.

From:

oracne

I think there was also some X-Files to Smallville, as well. Am I remembering right?

From:

rivkat

That sounds right--Jane Mortimer and Te come to mind.

From:

cesperanza

I'd say XF and Highlander to SV to SPN. Highlander was a key antagonist fandom like XF's Mulder/Krycek and SV, which is why I was in none!

The buddyslash thing goes Star Trek--> Pros or Starsky/Hutch - > DS/Sentinel/SG1 -- > SG. IMO.

From:

rivkat

Just remember that XF was not primarily a slash fandom! MSR was closer to the buddy side. If you look at the movement of someone like Yahtzee, there's XF --> Buffy --> XMFC (with a bunch in the middle).

From:

cesperanza

Right, absolutely - that's why I specified M/K!

From:

cathexys

I'm not sure you saw but I gave a shoutout to your eternal buddy slashy soul above :D

And yes, just like Harry/Ron!=Harry/Draco, so MSR!=Mulder/Krycek (I jut wanna use my Krycek icon as much as I can :)

Now I'm wondering, when and where slashers go bifictional...I know mine are Buffy/Angel, Rogue/Wolverine, and Alec/Max. The middle was was clearly Seperis-induced, but the other came from canon...so I wonder if it's lack of a good slash pair, really loving the woman (like Donna or Donna or Donna....)

From:

oracne

Ah-hah! A pattern! I like that a lot.

Blake's 7 might be an exception - I knew a lot of Pros fans in Blake's 7, though its primary slash fandom was antagonist (Blake/Avon). However, there were also a fair number of Wiseguy fans in B7, which I would consider antagonist slash. I think many B7 folks went to SG1 afterwards because of the "space adventure" feel (I didn't - I read XF and HL). B7, though, was a much smaller, fringe fandom by the time online archives were getting going. Exception that proves the rule?

From:

tishaturk

I was saying upthread that, in light of both buddyslash and scholar/warrior, it would be really interesting to look at which folks from SGA went to H50 and which to PoI. :D

From:

klia

Some of us went to both, and were into both SGA and SG1.

From:

tishaturk

Names! Names are helpful! Thank you! :D

From:

cathexys

Definitely, though SV went through a lot of exoduses (exodi?). The very first gen of writers didn't often stick around post-season 1 and definitely not post season 2.

I'd see a lot of very different themes later on--and SV is a wonderful fandom to look at themes. Anyone remember late S1 evil!Clark dystopias? (You didn't write one, did you? But I know there were at least three long influential ones at about the same time...)

Then again, that brings up my entire theory of how later fandom generations (or those sticking around) become more epic and more domestic. Seriously, go into recent fic in SV and XF and the assbabies are hard to avoid (not that they weren't always there :) I always wonder if the dynamic HAS to change because all the early ways o get them together are gone or if there's a fannish butterfly syndrome going on that those that stick with a canon defy....

And as I'm avoiding work and rambling about, none o this helps with vids per se. I'm not sure vidding fandoms really work exactly the same way... (I know I loved certain fandoms for their show and vids but not for fic...SCC and BSG come to mind)

From:

laurashapiro

Very much so!

From:

oracne

A bit further back, there was a big migration of writers from Highlander: the Series to The Sentinel. Earlier than that, I recall a fair number of Blake's 7 fans went to Stargate: SG1, but it wasn't as huge a migration as the HL to Sentinel one. More recently, there seems to have been a Harry Potter to Sherlock migration, at least in the bits of the fandom I have observed - HP is so huge that I can't generalize.

From:

princessofgeeks

I ran into a bunch of people who all wrote The Sentinel, Due South, and SG1, or two of the three. As I moved through those fandoms there were a lot of familiar names. Although I went through them not in real time and out of chronological order.

And strangely, very few of those people were the people I knew from Lotrips. I agree with cofax that some of the Lotrips people went to SGA if they left Lotrips.

Not a few of the Lotrips people I knew later got interested in SPN, FWIW.

From:

oyceter

I'm curious if there was any X-Files fannish crossover with Buffy? I know several people who were fans of both, but I have no idea if it's just an individual thing or if there was some sort of migration.

From:

rivkat

I would say definitely yes on the het side.

From:

laurashapiro

I think it may be much easier to track migrations of slashers, particularly people who strongly self-identify as slashers, than more general migration patterns. It's fairly easy to see why those DS people went to SGA, for instance, and why they then proceeded to Sherlock and The Avengers. f/f slashers, though fewer in number, probably have even easier migratory patterns to follow since so few shows give them what they're looking for.

It's less easy to see why someone like me went from DS to Buffy to Farscape to West Wing & Sports Night to KABOOM ALL THE FANDOMS.

Shorter me: I am not helpful. (:

From:

ghost_lingering

Yes, this is what I was thinking: the easier to track/most discussed migrations are from large (slash) fandom to large (slash) fandom.

From:

ghost_lingering

So you get a phone response. Sorry for the inevitable autocorrect errors & punctuation fail.

Large fandom to small(er) migrations:

dS to slings & arrows twitch city wilby wonderful

BtVS to tscc, Wonderfalls, pushing daisies, (with xfiles influence) Fringe

Large to large:

Not in teen wolf but I think there are inception & cwrps/spn fans in there

From my own past Harry potter to anime/manga. Which lead, for my friends to jpop, (I dropped out for that) which lead to jdramas and other Asian dramas when I caught the train again. Which leads me to believe that some migrations we miss because they skip a fandom generation.

Small to small:

For me, kdramas. I think there are also femslash migrations in small fandom circles that aren't mentioned all that often. Think that shows w/awesome ladies, characters of color, diversity in sexuality (or the promise/tease/hope of these things) tend to attract the same groups of fans at least for the initial checking out period. (Thinking here of tscc middleman early fringe community parks and rec good wife elementary wire Friday night lights etc).

Aaaaand I think I have recreated the bulk of the eaten comment. Sans commas and cap letters. Errrr.

From:

oracne

HP to anime/manga made me remember, if I'm remembering right, that there were a bunch of Highlander folks who got into Gundam Wing for a while there. Anybody else remember that? I didn't read GW, a friend did, so am not sure.

From:

jetpack_monkey

I long ago dropped out of fandom-as-fandom and I don't obsessively track much of anything anymore, but my migrations in the past looked like this:

Buffy/Angel -> Alias -> Veronica Mars
Buffy/Angel -> Doctor Who

The first migration happened because I was easing out of Buffy fandom and I had a Netflix subscription and decided to check out Alias with a friend.

Well, that's how discovering happened. The fannish migration happened because it was remarkably easy to find fanworks in a similar vein and, yeah, some of my favorite writers were doing Alias fic as well (like Yahtzee). Both Buffy and Alias feature hyper-competent, emotionally vulnerable, female Chosen Ones (although Syd's Chosen One status involved her being a living MacGuffin), surrounded by people who were both friends and professional support. There are plenty of differences as well, but those were huge hooks for me at the time (and probably still are).

Veronica Mars was again, female lead, surrounded by a group that blurred the lines between friends, family, and colleagues. Oddly, despite my constant yelling that I only liked shows with a sci-fi or fantasy element, this one stuck... for two seasons. And again, I followed some of my favorite Buffy writers over to this new shiny show.

I know a couple of people who went Buffy -> Alias -> Veronica Mars -> Supernatural (or who skipped one of the interceding steps). I liked Supernatural well enough and followed it through its first five seasons, but I wouldn't consider myself of the fandom.

Doctor Who happened because all of my Buffy friends discovered it at roughly the same time and we all just went crazy for it and for a little while, it was like back when we were all Buffy fans together, although the fannish diaspora started rearing its head soon after and the group joy did stay cohesive for long. With the exception of the people within my established group of friends, I don't think I really followed anyone from Buffy to Doctor Who. I tended to discover all new writers, usually people who'd been doing the Doctor Who thing long before Christopher Eccleston pulled on the leather jacket.

I didn't really get into vidding until the twilight years of being in show-specific fandoms. I tend to follow vidders who work I really like, who I know very well, or where the premise of the vid intrigues me and I want to see it pulled off. I very rarely go looking for vids in a particular fandom (except Mass Effect recently).

From:

klia

I have to say, I haven't seen the kind of clearly-defined migration patterns over the past 20 or so years that have been detailed here. Like, I went from B7 to WG to XF to HL to SG1 & SGA to SPN to PoI (with detours through a bunch of other fandoms along the way), but I know a lot of people who veered through Pros and TS, or SV and popslash, and never got into WG, XF, or HL at all. And some of those relationships are antagonistic, and some are buddy-buddy, so I don't really see a throughline in that regard, either.

To me, a lot seemed to depend on fanworks. In the olden days, people generally went from being fans of the source to consuming and/or making fanworks. Then that shifted, sometimes because sources were hard to obtain, depending on where you lived, but, IMO, more often because fans followed their favorite fanworks' creators.

As you already mentioned, when BNFs or popular writers (like Shallot) jump to new fandoms, they can have an enormous impact (sometimes inadvertently creating some deeply unpleasant drama, like what happened in the early days of SGA). I see that far more often now, and it doesn't seem to matter what the new fandom is (Adam Lambert :D), or how other fans have already depicted the relationships (like, some of us into PoI are horrified by chibi Finch and Reese, or seeing them written as woobies, and others squee over that stuff).

I know the bottom line is that you're looking for patterns, and as always, I think whatever patterns exist are kind of hard to define, and explain.

Edited (tense) Date: 2013-07-26 06:13 pm (UTC)

From:

everbright

Speaking of tropes traveling from fandom to fandom, the whole Knotting thing started in Supernatural, then spread. Again, I got this from one of the trope episodes of Slash Report.

In general, there hasn't really been a Canon that Ate Fandom since SGA. SGA pulled in people from all over hell and gone, and the output was enormous. You could maybe make an argument for Avengers, but a lot of the old school wrote-HP-and-SGA fans seem to be ducking out. SGA is just sort of a special case, so you should keep that in mind when you're talking about fandom migration.

From:

blackrook

*here via Sentinel newsletter*

Another small observation - several prolific gen writers had moved from Magnificent Seven fandom to SGA about 2004-2006.