it's nothing like a question that can be answered in one word

Environments are in read-only for mass updates. I wish I could explain what that actually is, because it's deceivingly nothing like what those words mean according to the dictionary, but I really can't. I know it's a mass, and it's an update, and while yes, it is, no, it's really not. And it sucks.

However, this rare morning, it gives me a short, brilliant moment to surf friendsfriends.

Sarah T on the lower numbers of John/Ronon in SGA.

Actually, I've kind of vaguely wondered about that, but--the thing is, my first fandom was Star Trek and I came out of that physically incapable of not having a header (though sometimes I break conditioning and remove it) and a taste for random internet drama. I also came out of it unable to believe Kirk was heterosexual and it would still be a year before I stared blankly at my first slash OTP (Pyro/Iceman, in case you were curious).

(Sidenote: I was on there watching or posting actively 1999 -2001--wow. Just. Yeah. This is why flamewars rarely scare me and why I don't often participate; I know some fandoms have been far wankier for far longer and with greater populations and drama, but I'm not sure any fandom post-usenet can hit that same deeply terrifying intensity where there were no prisoners taken and occasionally you realized the ground was being sown with salt. Deeply awesome. Even when you had no idea what Treksmut university was and kept freaking out every time your inbox pinged.)

Right. Moving on. The OTP even in Voyager was Kirk/Spock. I mean, that's an exaggeration, but not much of one. ASCEM(L) was like, KS Central. And I know this because I didnt' read slash and contextually knew at the time the plotlines to three of the winning GO stories.

Now, my question--are there any fandoms who have had more than one major pairing of the same type at the same time? As in, more than one major slash and more than one major het?

Since Trek, I've never been involved in a fandom that did, so I'm curious. And I'm not sure my memories of Trek are accurate, as this was 1999/2000 and I spent about half that time going, oh my God this is the best thing in the world! And um, writing Paris/Seven post-Paris/Torres breakup porn. Because I didn't like Seven and that's how I deal with dislike. It felt like Janeway/Chakotay and Paris/Torres had similiarly strong followings, though J/C was a bit older and larger, and Chakotay/Paris and Paris/Kim seemed relatively even (in retrospect, the locked archives actually skew it even more; I never even *knew* about some of them before Smallville).

I'd ask what everyone thinks influences a pairing to be written, but the answers will be, invariably:
a.) Lots of feedback! OR Feedback doesn't matter! Etc. Etc. Etc.
b.) BNFs! OR BNFs turn me off pairings! Etc. Etc. Etc.
c.) Big Pairings are sheep! OR Rare pairing are boring! Etc. Etc. Wait, didn't we do this recently?
d.) Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. (insert here)

I always wondered if it was just a moment of fannish--unity, if you will, like when a mob forms. Like, remember when you went to cheer at a football game and suddenly in the third quarter and while you've never been the perkiest cheerleader and kinda quiet, you're suddenly filled with bloodlust and helping to lead the crowd in screaming BEAT THE WATERPIGS and lost your voice for a day? (They were hippos. Yes, we got in some much trouble for that one. So very much worth it.) (My algebra teacher was louder than all of us together, though.)(I don't miss being a cheerleader. I do, however, miss controlling crowds with five inches of thigh and some belled shoes. Seriously. I still marvel at that.)

Yes, I'm going to be this incoherent all day; I had no sleep. Also trying to get my John/Ronon recs together, since I kind of think I should feedback the authors and then give the fic their own page.

Comments

random tangental thoughts

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

1) there was a fandom with 2 competeing slash pairings: due south. You ever hear of the ray wars?

2) My personal thoughts on the lack of John/Ronon are all centered around Rodney. Rodney is a pretty main guy in the fandom, and if he bugs the hell out of you, you're not going to be happy here. Hence, my personal opinion on why so many early John/Ronon adopters moved onto to SPN, leaving a much, much, much smaller cadre of John/Ronon people behind

3) OT4 seems to have become the big way that we include John/Ronon and Rodney in the fandom. IMO, we have a much stronger OT4 presence than other fandoms that I have participated in in the past. So it incorporates: John/Rodney, John/Teyla, Rodney/Teyla, John/Ronon, Rodney/Ronon, and Ronon/Teyla as possible readers. Still a small number of stories, I know, but more than I would expect coming in blind.

Re: random tangental thoughts

[seperis.livejournal.com]

1.) Only a few thousand times. And the scandal of Ray/Ray. *g* But I always like to hear it again.

2.) I'm still here. *shrugs* Though Rodney bothers me a lot less in canon than the fandom of Rodney.

3.) True. I'm trying to think of any other fandom that had that kind fo dynamic. I'm almost sure there is one, but I'll need to think more.

Re: random tangental thoughts

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

The other thing that I'm tweaking on is the need for a story that 'breaks open' the fandom. Harry/Snape was a small fandom that could not compete with Harry/Draco until a) the movie came out with Allen Rickman and b) the tea series started being published. Immeadiately, huge numbers of people just fell into the fandom. I reember the weekend the Harry/Snape list formed, and how we went from 30 members to hundreds nearly overnight (okay, it was 3 days). Same sort of thing happened with Neville/Draco breaking open once "Lust over Pendle" was published.

John/Ronon hasn't had that big story that sets up the fandom yet. And now I am wondering why.

Re: random tangental thoughts

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Maybe lack of number of people to do it? HP has a massive enough fanbase that sheer numbers could pull it off, but in a smaller fandom--hmm.

Re: random tangental thoughts

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Actually, I wonder if canon is pretty much giving us everything we want in the John/Ronon releationship, except for the sex. We have fond smiles, hugging (Ronon hauls John around in a way no one else is allowed to touch him), orders, and blowing shit up. And Ronon was the guy who just...stood up and went to earth with John because he knew John needed him. What more do we want to see in their relationship that we aren't being given right now?

I'm thinking about how a lot of existing fans talked about how they didn't need to write fan fic in buffy because the show was already giving them what they wanted. Then around season 4, we suddenly have Buffy slash fandom take off, centered on the Spike/Angel pairing. That's the season that canon suddenly stopped providing everything for those slash fans, so they had to write it themselves.

So Hmm. What else of a PG-13 rating would you like to see between them?

Re: random tangental thoughts

[eleveninches.livejournal.com]

IAWC. I like John/Ronon, but I hardly ever read fic for the pairing because I have yet to read a fic that makes me as happy as canon does.

Re: random tangental thoughts

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

For me, if Ronon picks John up and hauls him around, that's pretty much the money shot of the episode. I love it, and I have not yet found the fan fic equivelent of how I feel seeing that. I'm also a little perplexed at what could happen in canon that would make me feel compelled to write John/Ronon, but I think it might be something major like a type of betrayal that wasn't resolved in the ep or something big like that. If I'm going to write a 'John needs a hug' scene, I'm more likely to do that with Rodney, even though it is canon that Ronon would give him that hug, even if John didn't consent.

Re: random tangental thoughts

[eleveninches.livejournal.com]

Exactly! And it would make me sad if John and Ronon fought, whereas when John and Rodney fight it's exciting.

Now I have to go watch the end of Midway again. Mmmmm.

Re: random tangental thoughts

[beck-liz.livejournal.com]

b) the tea series started being published

That's certainly what did it for me - I followed the writer from another fandom, and had never read or seen anything HP prior to those stories. I'm not sure I'd ever even heard of Harry Potter before. So I came into HP fandom in a bit of a weird way, and although I love Alan Rickman, he actually has very little to do with why I like Snape.

I do like your idea below about the episodes giving us a lot of what people want from John/Ronon. Kind of like people not writing as much fanfic for plot-heavy shows like BSG; it's harder to write for stuff that's mostly already there.

Re: random tangental thoughts

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

It's hard to say as the tea series and the first movie are so intertwined, but I do think that the story had serious impact in creating erstwhile welcome mat for the pairing. I think that the first bigger stories about a relationship shape the tone of the fandom, and bring in other, similar stories. So if the first ones are all about the banter, then banter fans join, etc.

Hmmm.

Re: random tangental thoughts

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

Seeing all the other bi-pairing fandoms that people have brought up just warms my heart, as most of them are as crazily antagonistic as Ray V/Ray K in due south. (Due South found a fascinating method of adaptation either in Ray/Ray stories which eliminate Fraiser or in the smaller grouping of OT3)

Re: random tangental thoughts

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*g* Fandom by definition is insane. For some reason, it's one of those things that make me ridiculously happy.

Re: random tangental thoughts

[x-pixel-x.livejournal.com]

I do wonder if that particular resolution of conflict is rare?
I remember the first time I read a Ray/Ray fic and felt so...scandalized "but, but, but....*squeak!*" At which point I promptly found some lovely OT3 fic and went on my merry way.
I can't think of any but I really try to avoid heavy ship-war type fandoms so I'm not the best example. Maybe there are a few X-Files S/K fics? I do remember some M/S/K stuff floating about, but I don't know that it every really fixed anything in the way dS did it.

Re: random tangental thoughts

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

If I look back at Blake's 7, there were 3 main pairings:

Blake/Avon (Blake left the show 1/2 way through the series)
Avon/Villa (Basically an RPS pairing, which had canon throughout the series an after.)
Avon/Tarrent (Blake's replacement on the show)

There were no threesome stories for the B7 fandom, and there wasn't a lot of Blake/Villa or Blake Tarrent either. So to me, the accomodation in new in the historical sense, but it may be the prefered method of solving the problem once the ray wars reached an accord. At that point, we had a model for how the fandom could survive, and that spread out into other fandoms as well.

Hmmm. I don't know if that works as well in reality as it does in my head.

Re: random tangental thoughts

[sholio]

IMO, we have a much stronger OT4 presence than other fandoms that I have participated in in the past.

I've noticed that too. I've been through fandoms that had relatively common threesome pairings, but none I can think of that had an established OT4 the way this one does. Even SG-1, though admittedly I wasn't reading much pairing fic at the time I was in the fandom -- but from my recollections, and from peeking in from the outside now that I'm in SGA fandom, it doesn't seem like the SG-1 team gets OT4'd the way the SGA team does.

Re: random tangental thoughts

[wickedwords.livejournal.com]

SG-1 was really late to the party for OT4 stories, and I'm not sure why. I didn't play there enough to even have theories about it. But there are a lot of OT4 stories that I love in SGA, and this whole conversation has made me want to go back and read some of them.

Re: random tangental thoughts

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

I've been through fandoms that had relatively common threesome pairings, but none I can think of that had an established OT4 the way this one does.

One of the things about OT4 is that it's not a standard relationship model, so most people don't even consider it as a possibility--unless you're used to writing about polyamory, or are polyamorous yourself.