Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Uncommonly Organized?

In a different thread, Arawn pondered:

I thought that was an interesting question. *I* think we're uncomonly organized but I haven't got that much to compare us to I know other fandoms have websites for fanfic and awards.

Is there something inherently law-and-orderish about L&C fans that make us crave neatness? Or did we just happen to become infected with perfectionistic types at an impressionable stage of the fandom's development...? Is this related to the fact that we're a grammar-obsessed pedantic bunch of people? Or do lots of fan groups have passionate discussions about apostophes?

Discuss amongst yourselves...

PJ

It's a scary world out there. :p

I've seen the other side, and it's chaos.

Seriously, I have mere minutes before I dash out the door, but one of the many things that keeps me roped into this community is the organization, which is quite funny considering the disaster my residence is usually in. I can't even sleep on my bed tonight until I clear it off and put some things in appropriate places.

Granted this is only one of three fandoms I've been involved in, but the uncommonly organized thought sends me straight to the organization of the Archive.

Later, (and maybe a few more thoughts later)
Jen
*who personally loves the grammar conversations here*

I haven't seen much of other fandoms (only been involved in two more, and in one of them not majorly), but I do think we're uncommonly organized. There are some reasons I can attribute it to:

• We're a relatively small fandom, only a few thousand members in total.
• We are a fandom that attracts more grown up/mature people. Have you seen fandoms for video games? Eek. (Now, I have nothing against video games, I enjoy them, in fact, but you can imagine how much immaturity they attract.)

I bet there are more, but I can't come up with them now. All I can say is, I'm more than happy things are as they are over here. They make the FoLCdom a beautiful place to be

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

P.S.: I should also mention the fact that there's pretty much a unity of opinions over here. No different ships, no ambiguity about things... it helps keep everything in one place.

I haven't been involved in other fandoms, but I too have always had the impression that we are uncommonly organized. Maybe it is because most of the fans are adults, and maybe also that most of us are women. No offense to all our great guys, of course, but women do tend to be more, well, anal - and I mean that in the most complimentary of ways!

Fanfic for all fandoms that I've ever seen has been dominated by women.

Definitely more organized than other fandoms! I'd say that maybe that has something to do with all the perfectionistic women in this fandom. And I'd say some of our guys are perfectionistic, too.

Well thank you Pam for bringing it up.

I't kind of funny because my earlier accidental brushes with fanfic made me categorize it as poorly written sexual fantasy.
Then I watched the LCTNAOS-series and was caught with the characters and that strange mixture of goofiness and drama. I actually got interested in the superman character, because for the first time he made sense to me. I did a search and hit this place almost immediately. Tried a couple of 5-6 season stories and was hooked.

So I was kind of curious if there were more of this writing that was just out there. Yet what I managed to find suggests that LCfanfic is the exception(or perhaps I haven't given other fanfic the same opportunity to convince me )


I suppose small fandoms are easier to organize, yet when I look for other off the road fandoms it seems nothing like this.(granted I haven't been looking that hard) and I'm not sure LC really is so small checking fanfiction.net for tv-series, it's definitely in the upper half. Even if it's a big jump to Friend, Stargate and Power Rangers.

Also wouldn't popular fanfic make it even more likely to be well organized due to greater demand and greater difficulty finding what you want?


So I understand, yet the most fanfic heavy genre is SF, which I would imagine have greater male fanbase, isn't that strange?

I don't think it's the nature of the fans, but of the fandom itself, that makes the difference here.

I've participated in two other fandoms myself--Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Harry Potter--and the organization for the various fansites and fanfic sites was nice, but nowhere NEAR as organized as the LC Fanfic Archive. Plus, there were more of them than I could possibly count in a lifetime.

Here, there's this board, and Zoomway's board, plus the Archive, Annesplace, and a few other sites that you can get to through redboots.net, and there are a couple of other listings too--VERY organized.

Not to mention, it seems that every LC fanfic writer worth their salt (with a few exceptions, of course) knows that they can post their fic here and at the Archive. And if they have their own site, then their work is usually duplicated either at the Archive or at Annesplace, right? So, keeping track of their sites is easier.

In other fandoms, there are hundreds--possibly thousands--of fan and fanfic websites and message boards--it's very difficult to organize that many, especially when only a few of the authors post consistently to any one site or board.

Also, in the other two fandoms I've been in, there were different sites depending on which "'ship" you supported--that doesn't seem true in FoLC-dom. Either you're an FoLC, or you're not. Makes it MUCH easier to organize things when people aren't fighting over their favorite romantic pairings.

Plus, the show was about writers--GOOD writers-- so, I think that kind of rubs off on the fans, making us want to be good, better-organized writers ourselves.

And maybe, subconsciously in our love of L&C, we're all trying to spite the complete discombobulation of the Superman comic fandom and its oh-so-confusing mish-mash of discontinuity between eras, and even within the post-Crisis era. (Or, those who have actually read the comics, that is--I haven't, but I read Zoomway's summaries, and the Wikipedia description of the event, and WOWZA, THAT'S CONFUSING!)

I can only strengthen the opinion, that the LnC fandom wins hands down against everything I've experienced so far.

Sure, there's dozens of dedicated archive sites and forums in other fandoms too, but it's much less organized. LnC seems to be reduced to two message boards and two archive sites which overlap somewhat (or is there more I've never heard about?). Elsewhere exists much more competition and dispersion and that's something nobody needs.

The fandoms I've seen so far often use free services/communities like small message boards, blogs, yahoo-groups, archives like fanfiction.net or archives on free-webspace. All of that makes it difficult for writers to advertise their work or keep readers interested.

That is actually another important fact about what all of you have created here. It seems like this fandom has existed for many years and despite the demise of the show itself it's still going strong! The end of a show has more often than not led to a fading creativity and interest in readers as well as writers - a dying community as I've experienced before.

Arawn brought up a point that created another question for me. L&C is not really a small fandom when it comes to fanfic. But is that more BECAUSE of the organization? Would the interest still be there if the archives, Zoomway's site, annesplace and these boards weren't this organized? Between the 4 major sites, does this encourage others to write?

I know the one story I wrote I probably never would have except I saw so much good stuff out there and all the encouragement, I thought I'd give it a go!

As to other fandoms, while I've read some really good stories, I was turned off reading stories due to the poor grammar, spelling, etc. If people don't care enough to make sure the story is as correct as possible, I don't really want to "waste" my time reading it--some just don't understand the benefits of a good beta editor! (I get pulled out of stories (fanfic or published) way too easily on stupid spelling or grammar errors.)

So, kudos to everyone who has helped organize this fandom. The message boards, the archives, the awards, etc, I think, have help keep the show alive for all these years!

Julie
-now if I could only figure out how these boards came about when it used to only be Zoomway's boards you'd go to check on fanfics in process. I'm sure I heard why as I was around when it started; RL unfortunately pulled me out of it for awhile, but it's nice to be back!

Well, I think one of the reasons for it is possibly that there's only really one 'ship' here. If you're into writing pairings in Lois and Clark, you write Lois with Clark. In many other fandoms, even if a particular pairing is established as canon people tend to like to explore other pairings, and that can lead to different message boards/websites/livejournal communities for the different pairings.

I'm very much into the Doctor Who fandom now, but I only really participate in Doctor/Rose and Rose/Jack communities. Maybe when the new companion comes along I'll shift over into communities focusing on her too - I don't know. But there are ten versions of the Doctor in total, and dozens of companions, so very many different ship possibilities - and also space for those fans who don't like relationships at all in their enjoyment of the fandom.

And ship wars, as anyone who's hung around the Harry Potter fandom will know, is one very good reason to keep a fandom split into different strands!


Julie said:
Oh, well, that's one of those kind of long stories that really makes very little sense to anyone who wasn't actually there at the time - and, to be honest, looking back now it makes not much more sense to those who were! But, seriously, as in any fandom people have disagreements and end up agreeing to differ, which is more or less what happened, and, to be honest, there was right and wrong - and plain stupidity! - on all sides. Ancient history now, all the same.


Wendy

That's sort of what I was trying to say. All of us here agree that Lois should be with Clark. And for those few stories in the archives where one or both of them is paired with someone else, it's either set in the Alt-verse, set far in the future of L&C when Lois is dead or something, or it's pretty much understood that the author was just trying out a story idea (i.e. with Clark/Mayson, Clark/Lana, and Lois/Dan fics) and that they also like the L/C pairing much more than the other pairing they've written about.

In other fandoms, those particular stories that were written about other ships would not be allowed on certain sites. Here, all L&C fics are allowed, and there is no ship war, because none of the authors--by writing a non-L/C-pairing fic--are even hinting that the alternate pairings they've written are what they think should really be.

So, we have a pretty cohesive fandom, all in all.

So what you are saying is that fanfic gets disorganized over this ship thing? And the rather formalistic way LCfanfic is perceived is what keeps this place so tight?

Funny, I thought basically reading the same story over and over is a little weird. And that fandom’s with greater variety of the basic canon would keep up the interest in a greater degree.
Still, I wouldn’t a few enterprising souls attempt to keep all the different ships in different folders but under the same roof, for general convenience if nothing else?


I think there is much truth in that. If you are the one shining star author in a fandom, you will probably get satisfied rather quickly, especially if the fan base doesn’t seem to share your interest in excellence.
The writing in Folcdom seems to be perceived as a challenge. Many new boarders start with praise for the quality of the writing and then launch into something that certainly doesn’t look like the first fanfic they ever written.

Perhaps it’s not the show and the character itself that drives them but the will to flex their writing muscles.

I tried to check out Remington Steele fanfic, a show that has many similarities with LCtnaos, witty dialogue, excellent plots, humour, drama, romance, a main couple that has great chemistry, the man of mystery and the struggling career woman, there seems to be only one possible ship, yet there isn’t something like this(as far as I know). Why is that?

I've always thought this was strange too. But I think the reason why there is so much contribution is how SF does tend to be heavy on the action and not so much on the B-plot. I think fanfiction as a whole works to sort of balance that out, so you'll see much more of an interest in developing B-plots than in shiny A-plots like the original series do. That's not to say there aren't fabulous A-plots around, just that they aren't the centerpiece most of the time.

Excellent point Alcyone that makes great sense. Still mustn't the ladies be interested in the show in the first place?

I recall several boarders saying that they dismissed this show first because they really werent into superheroes in tights?

Well, this lady wasn't particularly focused on the relationship thing and was fairly uninterested in the action stuff. It was the sum of all its parts which attracted me to the show and to fanfic based on the show - ie, witty, clever dialogue, a hero with internal struggles, a rich cast of interesting characters, a good-looking male lead, a modern-day setting that was unusually realistic for this type of show, and so on. Yes, I cared about the relationship between Lois and Clark, particularly with the added complication of Superman thrown into the mix, but that wasn't the main reason I watched the show. I think I'm atypical, though.

Of course, an alternative explanation for the apparent organisation of the fandom could be this: L&C fans just aren't that interested in setting up their own fan websites. They see a handful of websites which meet all, or at least most, of their needs and don't see the point of adding any more. They're happy to go along with what's already set up.

Yvonne

I wasn't saying that women are not interested in the original or not interested in things that go boom (tm). Speaking from personal experience I always look for the possibility of some complexity in terms of interpersonal relationships primarily. That doesn't necessarily mean that the characters need to hook up in the series or have a particular relationship--just that there needs to be that spark of something between people, not just glitzy effects and explosions (although I'm cool with that, I just don't think it's enough). And by the way, that doesn't mean I only like shippy shows/movies, just that what catches my eye the most tends not be a show with wooden characters and glam effects. I don't know though, if this has anything to do with organization, what I was speaking to was the whole fanfiction phenomena and how it ties to SF. I always thought fanfiction as a version of series where an author can push a "what if." The biggest "what if"s tend to be gaps and the biggest gaps in Sci Fi and most action genres tend to generally be in the exploration of interpersonal relationships.

Honestly, I think some of it has to do with the timing of the original show. Back in the 80s, almost no one was on the Internet, so any "fan" activities would be pretty rare. Sci-fi shows like Star Trek had an active fandom, as did Dr. Who and Blake's 7 (my personal fave) but they were the exception not the rule.

L&C was timed very well, I think -- by then there was a growing awareness of the net, and the LOISCLA mailing list started up pretty early -- during first season, I think. At any rate, by the time I got involved in late second season, there was an active net fandom. (I was on CompuServe, mostly because of Babylon 5, but the forum I was on had a section for L&C that I could dive right into.) The show's producers were already scared of Zoomway

The biggest organizing influence was probably the archive -- Lauren took the fanfic mailing list that had been run by Rhen, and created a web version. I don't know whose idea it was to create GEs and insist on some sort of writing standards (KathyB?), but I think that's had a big influence on us.

Then as the web evolved, we did, too. We started with mailing lists, then Zoomway created the first message boards. IRC channels morphed a few times. There was a big dust-up circa 2002 -- well, more a series of little dust-ups which just intensified every time. That resulted in a lot of ill-feeling, so we decided that instead of staying together and irritating each other, some of us should strike out to new territory, which is where this board came in.

Anyway... I may have had a point in there that got lost... how disorganized of me!

PJ

The thing with different ships is that people - believe it or not - fight about it. "Oh, how can you ship X with Y? Don't you know she belongs to Z?"

People don't want to read ships they don't support; they don't even want to see fic/debate/discussion/commentary on ships they don't support. So it's easier all round to have websites and boards and communities for different ships, because it lessens the possiblity of ship wars.

Yes, it's very petty and very silly, but it's a fact of life in many other fandoms, as I'm finding out. (Not from taking part; from hearing about it!


Wendy

Personally, I'm a bigger supporter of the Cutty Sark, the Titanic and the Mayflower. They're all wonderful ships.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Yvonne