Fandom meta, but then I got distracted by shiny

[petronia]

New entry in order to get the subject matter off the five-month-old thread: of course the good mood lasted exactly as long as it took me to actually pull a few SenRu fics and be forcibly reminded of how angsty that pairing gets in Cfen. XD;; But it made for an odd experience on the metro home today, when I was thinking about the parochialism of Western anime fandom. Definition of a BNF, say. Of course Wfen is smallish as fandoms are measured, we all know this, but surely by the most basic metric of "fan name size" - relative visibility - a ficcer who has a following on lj shouldn't really count as a BNF even in Western animanga fandom? Because Hojo Akira, now there's a BNF. Or Prin (P-Rhythm), who was mentioned in the comment thread of sesame_seed's last entry, which was what set the train of thought off in the first place. I mean, with the popular djkas we're talking less BNF than one-woman secondary industry. ^^; I've seen so many pirated scans, translations, summaries and whatnot of Prin's dj over the years that I have false memories of actually holding them in my hands and reading them, which--

And then the trail of thought derailed completely, as I realised this was not a false memory and I do in fact own one of them. >_< Man, if you ever wanted proof that my brain is shot... Even more alarmingly, I don't remember where it's gotten to. My guess is somewhere in the back of T's closet, along with the Schwarz dj it occurs to me I also own but can't find. I swear this is exactly why I don't buy the damned things.

(On the bright side, I did rediscover the existence of that SD dj anthology I bought in Book-Off last year for $1. XD;; Vintage fandoms are like vintage bands sometimes.)

Comments

[quixotic-sense.livejournal.com]

Re: Western fandom: It's the incestuous networking effect, I think. A lot of people in it are multifannish in nature -- Who, us? Ignore the latest Shiny Thing? -- and LJ is conducive to encouraging one into following a person on one's flist into other fandoms. And what with the near-paranoia over badfics (it's not going to eat you, people), readers do tend to stick with writers they know from other fandoms. Recs get posted on LJ. Other LJers find out about this fabulous writer. Recs get posted again. Name becomes a meme becomes a BNF. Writer moves to another fandom, which s/he may share with other people on his/her flist. Same thing happens.

Sometimes it's easy to forget just how small we really are. Mind you, Western fandom(s) is about all I've ever known. Online, at least. Though if serabut ever finishes that Malaysian AU of Pirates of the Caribbean, that may change. XD

[eightfold.livejournal.com]

See, I don't even think of DJka as BNFs; they're like, serious businesswomen damnit.

Really, it's that from what I've seen of Jfandom (small, as my Japanese is piss), there's just not - okay, there's the status and heirarchy, it's just not the same kind that's affored to western BNFs. Wfen who're serious about their BNFs - and I guess I'm thinking about non-animanga fandoms here, mostly - are basically constructing hagiographies, whereas in Jfandom it just seems like the same kind of organizational hierarchies that exist in the broader society, extended onto fandom. I don't know; probably my weird perception that it's more 'organic' somehow is because I'm a total cultural outsider.

... also, you know, are Jfandoms "animanga" fandoms? Do they have the same conception of it that we do? It seems like they wouldn't, but...

[ayabai.livejournal.com]

/me comments too much in your journal, as your recent stats things shows XD XD XD
nnnn, i dunno, i tend to see things like BNFs as being a thing of the past XD let me explain! there were definitely BNFs in X-files fandom (what were they called? Bitter Old Fic Queens? i'm sure there was more than one crowd/secret society of BNFs running around in THAT boiling pot of a fandom. i was in one of them, only i was the only nonBNF there. XD;;) and there were BNFs in potter fandom, i think; i wouldn't touch that fandom with a 10ft pole and i still managed to hear about certain fans. now, animanga fandoms are completely different because they roll around and change and every season there's a new spat of shows/manga that gain popularity, so animanga fandoms are less of fandoms and more of... well, fads. >__>;; i don't know much about western animanga fandom; i tend to keep up/roll around with japanese fandom more just because, well, it's immediate access to whatever i may be watching/reading since i'm not living in japan right now, i don't even READ the various series i follow in english, jfen are much more polite, and if there's wank, at least it's polite, very private, passive aggressive wank that doesn't create blackholes of idiocy.
now, as you pointed out, djka don't count as BNFs. probably because the doujinshi industry is the incredibly strange meeting ground between fandom and canon. no, really! :O especially since almost all mangaka start off as djka. so popular djka don't count as BNFs. they're just people who we're probably going to hear of doing their own manga series in a few years. *g*
but i dunno, i still think BNFs were kinda a thing of... i guess the late 90s? :D;;; because while i've seen the TERM 'bnf' come up a lot (someone had to explain it to me, too =___=;;) i haven't actually heard of any since i stopped following xf fandom. ._.; or maybe it's just that i stopped paying attention :D;;
i've also heard of the term BNA (big name artist) but i think that only applies to artists who went pro, like jo chen. so, well, same thing as that whole doujika thing. XD i think people kick up too much dust about BNF stuffs; we're all just fans, you know, we should have fun and not bring wanky politics or popularity contests into it all XD
also, shiny: you need to read the latest king of bandit jing series. in all seriousness i picked up the latest volume because the cover was shiny. i soon learned that the storyline and characters have a similar metaphorical shininess. *____*

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Actually I think Jfandoms are animanga fandoms the way we conceive of it. More people from all walks of life read manga over there, yeah, but actually being in fandom is just as geeky and non-normative. If not more so in certain ways; NA comic book geekdom isn't quite as automatically associated with hentaihood as "otaku" is. ^^;

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I don't disagree about the extension of organizational hierarchy bit, but I don't know why you think it's more organic than the Western version of things? Rather, why isn't Western fangirl hagiographizing just an extension of the usual Western fascination with building up/tearing down celebrity (or whatever other aspect of Western society one might associate it with)?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't deny that there are solid social-dynamic reasons for lj ficcers to gather a following. XD I was more wondering aloud why djka aren't considered BNFs in Wfandom, given that they're, well, Fans with Bigger Names even over here. (Going by the comment thread below, it appears that would be because Wfandom finds it normative to pay ridiculous prices for doujinshi, so djka are considered more creator than fan. ^^;)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Serious businesswomen: except that (always with the few exceptions I can rattle off) they're mostly not. Wfen is accustomed to paying ridiculous inflated prices for doujinshi, but they sell at cost-recouping prices in Japan. And, well, they think of themselves as fans first. The discourse is fan discourse. The distribution model even for the biggest-name djka depends entirely on volunteerism. And so forth.

(Apparently it'd kill me to, like, put all this in one comment reply.)

[quixotic-sense.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's really because of the business transaction factor -- well, not because of the high prices paid for dj anyway. There does tend to be this conceptual divide between "fan" and "creator", based on the perception that Fen Shouldn't Make Any Money Off Their Hobbies. With the paranoia over copyright laws and OMG TPTB CRACKDOWN in Wfandom, it's understandable why most people in Wfandom would be more comfortable thinking about djka as creators in their own right rather than a BNF in the same sense that a fanfic writer is in his/her fandom.

(Apropos of nothing: Wfandom fancomics are so staid in comparison. *mourns*)

[eightfold.livejournal.com]

What, me, reply in a timely fashion?

What I mean is, our conception of "animanga" is pretty essentially orientalist/exoticist, you know? It's Japanese animation OMG, specifically through a Western lens. Whereas in Japan, it seems, you mostly have fans of shounen or shoujo or a particular series or certain things, but not really of the stuff as a whole, a monolithic cultural output.

Just like how comic fen over here generally aren't fans of Western Comics as a whole, you know? (Or, when they are, it's because their awareness of the media as a specific cultural product has been raised because of manga, really...)

That make sense? It's not a matter of how nerdy the fans are, as how much they see it all as one thing.

[eightfold.livejournal.com]

... wow. I can't believe I hadn't noticed that.

You're right.

Well, okay, there's always the fact that our celebrity culture seems a lot more artificial than the Jfen social heirarchy because it's so manufactured and so divorced from actual power. Uh. That made sense in my head.