like Morgana, I'm talking about the metric shitload of J2 fic that one encounters in the course of being a fan of SPN fic, and trying to understand why people seem to be under the impression that J2 belongs in SPN fandom, rather than being a fandom of its own.
Yes. This. I remain convinced that the SPN and J2 fics need to separated. Out of curiosity I just looked at the summaries for the last 10 Big Bangs posted:
1) Jensen shares his totally awesome loft in Los Angeles with two male strippers, Chad and Jared, and spends his days high out of his mind when he's not fucking guys for money. Everything is perfect until his pimp hooks him up with Tom, a diplomat's son who smuggles drugs out of Colombia for fun... 2) Jared is a college freshman, trying to make enough money working part time at Starbucks. Jared is in a relationship with Sandy when he is introduced to gay-for-pay porn by a house mate and, desperate for money, decides to try it. His first partner is college senior Jensen who has been paying his tuition by doing porn...3) It's been two years since Supernatural finished, and both Jared and Jensen's careers and their realtionship are riding high. But a tragedy in Jared's family destroy's their world. Jared can't deal with the pain, so he absorbs himself in a life of drugs and alcohol. Jensen's at his wits end, and one night, Jared does something that could destroy their relationship for good... 4) Life as a marine mammal trainer at SeaWorld San Antonio is going pretty well for Jared Padalecki. When an injured dolphin arrives at the park and soon becomes the top attraction under Jared's care and guidance, no one, least of all his trainer, expects the dolphin to turn out to be a prince of the ocean named Jensen... 5) There are ten rules about interoffice dating and Jared Padalecki pretty much fails at all of them. It happens like this: Jared works in a cubicle. Jensen is the oblivious engineer.
6) Jensen Ackles has gone through many of life's transitions, from Detective, To Sidekick, back to an average Jo Detective again. But when someone begins to Copy Cat a serial killer that was put behind bars eight years earlier he'll have to take up the mask of a vigilante once again... 7) Jensen Ackles was the first journalist in fifty years to be jailed for refusing to name his source. A year later he's out of jail and has to deal with a murder case, a new intern called Jared... 8) It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jared in possession of his heterosexuality will immediately switch teams upon enrollment in college and first contact with Jensen Ackles. 9) Jensen Ackles' only love, as long as he can remember, has been archaeology. He's notorious for quick, efficient digs and no one outside of his team of diggers and lab rats really knows much about him. Then he meets Jared Padalecki, a grad student... 10) Jared is starting his new life, leaving behind a cheating fiancée and an un-supportive family. Does his new home have more to offer than unique neighbors and a bowling team?...
One of these at least mentions Supernatural. But these various AU's and their characters have no characters, plot points, or themes in common with Supernatural. I fail to see why the J2 fiction shouldn't be a separate entity from the SPN fics.
I fail to see why the J2 fiction shouldn't be a separate entity from the SPN fics.
At a guess--because the people who have worked hard for years organizing and running the newsletters, challenges, and comms don't feel the same way, and well, they are the ones who have worked hard for years organizing and running the newsletters, challenges, and comms.
...so, having just gone to find one of the stories described above (shut up) (no, not the dolphin one) (look, fine, the Broke Straight Boys doing gay porn for cash one. Shut up) it turns out that one cannot read it. Because it's not available after all - she'd done a find & replace on the names, and it's getting published.
...which, you know - a lot of (RPS) AUs
do
ping me as being basically Original Fic with the actors' pictures on the front cover. Which seems to me rather a different exercise from 'straight' (RPS) fic? But then I've not read enough AUs or thought about them enough to be very clear on this.
In truth, I rather tend to suppose that [insert title of popular novel sequence published by well-known fanfic writer under her own name] happened as a result of her
Master and Commander
fic, since she's written some cracktastic AUs for that fandom, and her published work seems likely to have derived from that, yes?
...God, I must start trying to write things I can get published.
At a guess--because the people who have worked hard for years organizing and running the newsletters, challenges, and comms don't feel the same way, and well, they are the ones who have worked hard for years organizing and running the newsletters, challenges, and comms.
Well yes. That is why this whole discussion began with me venting here, in a general fanfiction thread where I sometimes come across people with similar opinions, and not with me barging into a thread on lj and bitching that they absolutely positively must change things now! Now! NOW!
...yeah, um, I'm pretty positive I didn't say that.
You didn't say that, Morgana said that. I folded my response into the one post.
In S1, from what SA would know being in it at the time, and what I dimly recall from other friends who were in it, when it was small, it made logistical sense for it to be grouped in one newsletter.
At that point we didn't have a newsletter. It was maybe twenty or thirty people going "It's like a Gilmore Girls/Dark Angel crossover! And they're from Texas! Yes!" I kind of miss those days.
Either way, from my perspective they've been just about inextricably linked from the beginning, and just as Supernatural fandom changed enough that I don't enjoy being there anymore, so too has the RPF fandom shifted into something I don't really recognize from its origins. But I doubt they're ever going to get split up.
That is why this whole discussion began with me venting here, in a general fanfiction thread where I sometimes come across people with similar opinions, and not with me barging into a thread on lj and bitching that they absolutely positively must change things now! Now!
Oh, totally understandable. It's just that, well, some of us have run newsletters or challenges in the past and/or are longtime fannish friends of some of the people running them now, which get us on the defensive side when structural change is mentioned as a desire.
The new gen-focus community just posted a huge list of Sam recs, btw. (I think they got something like 67 submissions?) It's looking like a good way to find stories I haven't seen before, and I give it a thumbs up to anyone looking for SPN to read. Well, gen SPN. Which is something like 95% of the SPN I read.
Which gen-focus community, Plei?
spngenlove, with possibly some combination of underscores I'm not recalling at the moment.
I like how spngenlove is grouping recs by genre and/or theme (e.g. "post-series Sam-centric").
