Conservation of Expectations, or: auto-adjustment of reading standards in different fandoms

[cimorene]

I was reading in a het fandom located primarily at fanfiction.net for a couple of days last week and I started thinking again about something I've thought about before.

After reading consistently in just one fandom for a while, we start to adjust our expectations to the body of work. In a large, highly active media fandom, we may reject out-of-hand a story which is exactly as well-written as another story that might, being one of the best-written in a smaller fandom, become one of our favorites.

As we read, we automatically map what we've read (a bell curve?) and adjust our reading habits accordingly. I don't mean to suggest this is an irrational behavior, or one that we're unaware of. It's totally expected and rational. It's just that sometimes, this automatic Conservation of Expectations (can anyone give me a better name for it?) leads to my overall standards getting a bit lost in the noise to the extent that I actually have difficulty comparing a particular story outside its own fandom, as illustrated by this bit of conversation from a 2007 post called profound truths about the healing cock:

cimorene: It's funny how when you're reading a bunch of stories in a row, something that's really weird can seem not that weird, and then when you come back to it later you're like: "Summary: Blair goes undercover in a mental hospital as a gay teenager with nothing else wrong with him and is nearly raped and killed by an evil ex-con orderly under orders from the evil hospital director, and Jim goes berserk and turns into a caveman without the power of speech and pulverises the orderly, and then they have soul-bonding sex."
waxjism: And next thing you know, you're like, "Did I print that out?"^[1]
cimorene: See, I was looking back through my del.icio.us, and my notes on one of the Pros stories were... "Prose rather elegant but suffers from Bodie having epileptic fits and a history of childhood sexual abuse."
waxjism: But you were like, "It's still totally readable!"

It's interesting how that works. I mean, in the situation referenced in that conversation, I didn't even think there was anything ludicrous about the obvious crack element in that story (i.e. non-canonical epilepsy + history of childhood sexual abuse in the background of a story) until I reread the bookmark years later, because the overall level of crack in the fandom in question was apparently high enough that my brain didn't classify that as cracky. (Is Pros really that cracky? Or maybe I failed to notice the crack because I was focused on something else - the prose being "rather elegant" or the lack of clichés which I was tired of?)

1. She totally did. We have it bound around here somewhere.

Comments

[lotesse]

I'm not sure if I should be amused or horrified by the fact that I could mentally identify that Sentinel story by that summary alone. Oh dear.

[torachan]

I think Pros is that cracky. I mean, you posted all those summaries about the baby ballerina and elves and all that. It's especially cracky when you look at pictures of the guys and they both look rather thuggish and not fragile ballerina elves at all.

[vass]

You have described my teenage years. Somehow I missed that particular Sentinel story.

[cimorene]

I think almost everyone in the fandom's probably read it. I mean, Wax actually printed it out! And I've read it several times by accident (and only remembered how crack it was when I got to that part)!

[cimorene]

ELVES. Oh yes. See, my memory's skewed even now!

[cimorene]

LOL! I'm not sure if your luck was good or bad there.

[mmeg]

That is an excellent description of a phenomenon that has always bothered me. Particularly when I get nostalgic and decide to reread my favorite authors from old fandoms and then realize that I can no longer enjoy them.

[cimorene]

Well, when you're talking about old fandoms, a lot of other factors come into play. Most of them were among the big media fandoms of their day, but there's been a lot of cultural and artistic drift since then and different themes and styles are in fashion, as well as a much larger body of writers being around to drive the standard up.

[mmeg]

Oh, I meant old for me, which is to say 2004-2006 or so. Perhaps I should have said "prior fandoms."

[cimorene]

Hah, oh! Did you get into fandom in 2004? Of course, I suppose there has been a wee bit of fanon cultural drift since then, but nothing you could easily measure of course. (For example, I'm pretty sure that was before sex pollen and aliens made them do it were popularized beyond fandoms with "Star-" in their names by the explosion of SGA.)

[cimorene]

But: really? If you got your list of top five authors from the year 2006, would you be unable to enjoy their work now? That seems very strange to me! The only way I could imagine that being true of me would be if I'd so completely lost interest in the fandom that I couldn't keep paying attention. But I don't think I could say anything against the writers. Unless you mean that it's your taste that has changed so radically that the things you like now, you wouldn't have liked then, and vice versa?

[mmeg]

I actually think it's mostly that my standards have gotten higher. I got into Sports Night fandom in 2001 or so, and those fics have for the most part held up remarkably well. I definitely spent a lot of 2002-03 reading epic Whedonverse curtainfic, which I have not tried to revisit (and honestly wouldn't know where to find since that was pre-LJ for me).

In 2003 or so I got into popslash, and that's where the cycle begins more or less. I get into a new fandom, get excited, and read everything there is to read. Several years later, when the fandom is much bigger, I go back to revisit those stories and discover that at least half of them are terribly characterized/are in first or second person/lack paragraph breaks/meander on for 10,000 words without anything of note actually happening/contain weeping cocks/etc. This holds true for popslash, HP, SGA, bandom, and any number of smaller fandoms. A few of the stories I read early on are still great and a lot of them are not.

I'm not sure if my willingness to read objectively crappy fic is inversely proportional to my cumulative time in fandom or to the size of the fandom I'm reading in, but I suspect it might be some combination of the two.

[cimorene]

Yes, it sounds to me like your standards go up the longer you spend in a fandom. If you say the pattern has been repeated all the way through bandom, which was only a few years ago, it seems unlikely that it's your absolute standards changing over time. That is a plausible explanation too, because most people go through a period of greater enthusiasm when they get into a new fandom. And the greater one's enthusiasm, the easier it is to ignore bad writing.

Even though my standards don't change within a single fandom like you've described, it's definitely still true that enthusiasm can make up for writing quality to a certain extent. Otherwise, various old&rare fandoms that I want to read in would be essentially unreadable (ie: VERY small) if I didn't adjust my standards down, like Labyrinth and Drumknott/Vetinari.

Even if I looked around and suddenly noticed the things I'd been reading were crappy, I wouldn't quite have your reaction since I deliberately read these crappy things. But I do find that my enthusiasm will wane and I'll eventually get tired of reading only badfic, even if I knowingly started reading an all-badfic fandom (perfect example: SPN Sam/Gabriel. There's maybe 3½ well-written stories for the pairing, of which 2 are crack and none have any relationship with canon. I followed everything being written in the pairing for several months and read all of the badfic quite happily, deriving plenty of enjoyment from it, but at some point the all-badfic, all-the-time diet just lost its appeal and I had to stop).

[tears_of_nienna]

I love that I know exactly what Pros story you mean just from that line. It was one of the very first stories I read once I got into the fandom, so despite the non-canon epilepsy, etc. it holds a special place in my fangirl heart.

I don't know if Pros is especially cracky, but it does seem to attract some AUs that, in another fandom, I might not have started reading. Undercover as trapeze artists? Sure! A haunted novelist and a computer repairman? Yay! A soldier and a prostitute in Pompeii? Yes, please!

[windupbasilisk]

Labyrinth is pretty much the first thing that came to mind when I read this post. It's a little depressing that over there "good" means "obeys basic grammar; does not make my feminism cry bitter tears."

[cimorene]

I think the number and wtf-ness of the crack AUs in the Pros definitely qualify it as extraordinarily cracky. You don't find that kind of dedication to sparkle motion in most modern fandoms. Even the AU-happy ones tend to be things like greengrocers and baristas and lawyers and pilots and teachers.

[cimorene]

LOL, yes, or even "Almost always uses correct punctuation/grammar, and is funny". XD

[hollyberries]

This is the reason that it's so hard to go back to certain fandoms - I've been absolutely spoiled by the recent popular media fandoms I've been reading and the older, more obscure fic just look... odd.

[afullmargin]

I am in mostly small fandoms and find that I am willing to overlook some things simply because there isn't much to go on. For example, one of my favorite stories in the Hot Fuzz fandom has some major grammatical issues that in a big fandom (We'll say Star Trek since it is one of the largest that I follow) would make me immediately hit the back button regardless of other good.

I tend to hold larger fandoms to a much higher standard because there is so much of it out there and just based on simple numbers they are more likely to have a larger base of "good" writers. However, I have found that certain small fandoms draw a huge amount of moderate to good (to outright fantastic) writers that almost seems to be a of a higher percentage than the large fandoms.

Of course, as with everything else in fandom, ymmv.

(Here via metafandom on LJ btw, had to comment. This thought fascinates me!)

[cimorene]

One person in a small fandom is a larger percentage than one person in a large fandom, so it's relatively easy for the balance of fandom to change on the basis of just one or a handful of writers. Three very good writers wouldn't make a drop in the ocean of a more mainstream media fandom, but in a modest fandom they might be 10% of the writers or more and could be responsible for 75% of the stories, for example.

The small, good fandom is an attractive ideal, then, but unfortunately it's one that's easily spoiled. All you need is an uptick in popularity, and the percentage of goodfic takes a nosedive again. Statistically, most of the new writers joining won't be as good. Even if the overall quantity of good fic can only go up, the percentage going down can be frustrating from a reader's point of view since it requires that you look much harder for the things you'll want to read!

[afullmargin]

So very agreed! I have to admit, I've been in small fandoms so long now that I just get completely lost in the huge fandoms that I really only end up reading what I happen to stumble on by writers I know from other fandoms or things that have been recced. In small fandoms I have the chance to at least skim pretty much everything.

The really odd part about writing in a small fandom, this is me personally mind you YMMV, is that I feel a greater pressure to be good - simply because if I do post something that isn't up to either my usual quality (in a fandom I'm established in) or the community's established standard it sticks out like a sore thumb. I think in a lot of ways this effect may create a situation where small fandoms would actually have a higher percentage of good writing regardless of the "ability" of the writers therein as they try harder, use a beta, edit more frequently, or what have you. Hmm... just a thought. Hah.