Thinking about the spn newsletter

[thuviaptarth]

[ETA 4/3 9:59pm: I've heavily edited this post to separate out the general discussion of fandom and fantasy space from a specific question of the SPN newsletter; it was thoughtless of me to associate the two.

[This post is public because I did want to get the opinions of fans not on my flist. However, it is not a request itself, and it is not directed at the maintainers of the spn newsletter, although I'm aware some of them may stumble across it; I am trying to figure out if a request is a good idea. A day later I'm inclining towards "not a good idea," but I dislike deleting posts; it feels like trying to cover up your mistakes, and I'd rather acknowledge having made them and move on.]

I've been wondering if it might help settle some nerves in Supernatural fandom for the newsletter to re-arrange the template to list gen stories before Sam/Dean.

I like this idea entirely apart from the recurrent arguments about the role of incest in fiction because it accords with my personal notions of categorization -- you do the gen, which is a subset of stories distinguished by its lack of or failure to focus on pairings, and then you do all the stories that belong to the category of pairing fic, broken down by significant pairings. It seems to me that this makes it easier for non-Wincest readers to cut off their reading when they reach the end of the category, instead of having to skip past the Sam/Dean (unless of course they're also looking for het or other), has a neutral effect on the subset of Sam/Dean slashers who also like gen (which seem to me to be a large percentage of fandom), and offers only a mild inconvenience to the Sam/Dean slashers who do not like gen, as they tend to be indifferent to gen rather than disturbed by it.

There's a lot of "seems" in there because I haven't done any kind of rigorous analysis of this (my life is sadly empty of pie charts), and because I haven't yet gone through the newsletter info/memories to see if this idea has already been proposed, discussed, and rejected. I don't want to re-hash old arguments, and I don't want to express this as a demand or an entitlement; I think the newsletter is a great fandom resource, put together by people who are doing great work for the fandom infrastructure, and I get a lot of good out of it as it is.

But I thought I'd throw it out there as a proposal and see what you guys think and whether you know of any previous fandom history affecting it that I might not be aware of.

[ETA 4/3: Other issues moved to a separate post.]

I'm going to be offline for most of today traveling and celebrating Passover, so I will probably not be able to respond to comments quickly.

Comments

Part 1: Perception

[thuviaptarth.livejournal.com]

I'm going to combine my response to your two comments; let me know if I've missed something or if I've conflated issues you see as separate. I think you hit on the exact benefit (and limitation) of putting gen first in

I tend to think that may be a perceptual issue influenced by strong feelings, which is really just a symptom of the underlying problem: many fans just flat don't like incest fiction, and would like to make the fact of its existence easier to bear while they play in this fandom. Though I appreciate your point, and think the change would certainly be better for some on that level, I'm just...not convinced that any changes for appearances' sake are the answer. I'm not sure there's an answer at all.

Have you ever taken one of those project management seminars where the group leader asks you whether it's more important to do the work or to make sure other people know you're doing the work? I tend to be with the techies and, well, the mildly socially inept who vote "Do the work!" and don't want to bother with all this interpersonal communication shit. But I've spent enough time in the workplace to know, however grudgingly, that, in fact, if work gets done and no one knows it's being done, it will be discounted and there were will be more problems later on. So yes, I do think this would be a cosmetic change largely directed at changing perceptions. No, I don't think it would eliminate all wank (or even all incest wank) from SPN fandom forever. (I wish.) I do think it would reduce some of the wank and some of the ill feeling for some people, although I know of no way to measure this -- which is one reason why I wanted to get other opinions and takes.

"Changing perceptions" is vague, of course: Whose perceptions? Of what? This weekend a lot of people I consider valuable members of fandom stated that (a) they feel like they're being made unwelcome in SPN because they dislike Wincest; (b) that they feel that Wincest is the fandom default, so it's assumed they support it if they don't specify otherwise; and (c) if they do specify otherwise, even as a personal statement in their LJ space, they feel it is taken as an attack on Wincest writers and readers. There's a lot of "feel" and "think" there because this is largely about perception. So that leads me to the following questions:

(1) Is some of this perception caused by the default newsletter listing?

(2) If it is, and can be changed by the default listing, who would be hurt by the change?

(3) [somewhat but not entirely separate from the above] Is asking for a change allowable?

(4) Is asking for a change feasible?

I think that the answer to 1 is yes. That is the impression I get when I read the newsletter, anyway, and it seems to me that that is what's behind some of the non-Wincest fans who've said they'd prefer to see gen listed first, since no one is suggesting the elimination of incest listings entirely.

Your positing that someone might want to put Sam/Dean last goes to (2) Who would be hurt by a change? And I think it's a reasonable question. I would not request or support a request to put the Sam/Dean pairing last because it is clearly the pairing sought out by a plurality of fandom and it does not make sense to me to make the newsletter more inconvenient for 40% of fandom to assuage the sensibilities of whatever percentage of gen readers dislike Wincest. Given the overlap between Wincest and gen readers and writers (I read both, and I know you write both, and I personally have gotten comments on gen or het stories from writers I believe write primarily or exclusively Wincest), it is my impression that the majority of Wincest writers won't care if gen goes first and Sam/Dean goes second, because they review both listings. But maybe this impression is wrong. It's one thing I wanted to get feedback on before deciding whether to make a nuisance of myself to the newsletter maintainers. (Which -- given that this is LJ -- maybe was futile and they feel bound to read all this anyway. I personally don't feel anyone is bound to bother even with a "Thanks for your suggestion; we'll continue as we were" unless they're contacted.)