Fandom Primer Musing

From @somanywips:

I hate that planned obsolescence is starting to reach fandoms. I hate that fandoms are starting to die after two, three years, I hate that whenever you stop getting content that means the fandom will die and be gone.

That post inspired some more musing on whether I should bother with putting together any fandom primers for some tv shows that aired in autumn 2022 or spring 2023. While I'm aware that meta and various fannish activity are not solely about loving a source material, I'm deeply ambivalent about putting forward fannish effort like this when I'm more 'Eh' about these shows than anything.

Tags from @ao3commentoftheday on a separate post than above:

#I think a lot about the changes in fandom #and this one feels intricately tied to the nature of streaming #binge watching a show means getting it all at once #with no time between episodes for the theories #the camaraderie #the post-ep fics #the speculation #without the breathing space that we used to have #we're all just running full tilt #headfirst and headlong from one fandom to the next #and we miss out on the slow meandering contemplation we used to have #and the opportunities for community are so much smaller #when the cracks between episodes are the length of the credits

Again, the above quote and these tags aren't in relation to one another, but I can't help but feel like they're sitting next to each other in my brain. The last time I tried my hand at making a fandom primer, there was a small but extant fandom for the show on Reddit, and I wasn't just explaining characters or making sure character and relationship tags were spelled correctly for Tag Wranglers to canonize. I could gesture, however vaguely, towards a community for someone to actually interact with, so it wouldn't feel like they were a fandom of one.


Original Pillowfort post can be found here.