cimorene

i remember when i made posts like "it's amazing how everything in due south fandom is good!" and stuff, because, well, everything that came up on the noticeboard wasn't good, but it was close enough (maybe something mediocre, not actually sucky, every couple of weeks or even less often than that). and there were bad things in the archives of course, but it was still underrepresented even there. but it's been changing gradually and now it's like i take a deep breath and go "uh-oh, here we go" every time i see a new fic post. and now, as in so many other fandoms, whatever-it-is is more likely to be bad than good. of course this is partially a side-effect of the DVD-release-wave of new fans, but there's been a concurrent drop in participation from many of the people who were active a few years ago (though i guess they're still there, and perhaps they just seem even less productive in comparison to the new elevated frequency of fic).

and it's really sad, because the canon is so great, and it made me really disproportionately happy that the fandom seemed to reflect that, and just that there was a fandom i could love so unreservedly out there. now i look around fandom as a whole, and while there is plenty of good fic on the whole if you can draw from any fandom you like, there's not a single fandom i've read in that could actually come out, well, looking good in a fandom profile.

but perhaps this is really the same phenomenon that has affected the dynamic of due south--simply the growing popularity of internet fandom over the last few years. it's been happening steadily, and the quantity of good has increased along with the quantity of bad, even if not entirely proportionately. so there's more work wading through the slush pile, but you ultimately get a richer catch (on the whole--not, i think, in due south in particular), so if you have the time and energy for that then i guess you are better off.

sigh. i don't even know what to tag this post. it's not genuine meta but i don't have a "fandom rambling" tag, so. but now i go to a slasha movie night at