And Now, An Actual Post - On Fandom Feedback Trends

[said_scarlett]

Because I do have things to talk about today! Purely fandom things, but still.

It's always interesting comparing fandoms. At the moment, I mainly write for Death Note and Silent Hill. (And HBC, but I'm not counting that here, because I don't interact with strangers in that fandom, and I've stopped posting my FMA work to comms so it doesn't count either.) And I always end up comparing and contrasting my experiences with other fandom fellows between the two.

Mainly, fic feedback. With Death Note I tend to get a lot of feedback, and mainly the standard stuff. A couple of lines of generic feedback. Which I do not knock, not at all. Any feedback is good feedback, as far as I'm concerned. Every so often I get a great review with details and specifics and some con crit, and that's awesome. But that's pretty much it. The general 'hey, great fic!' followed by 'thanks, glad you enjoyed!' or something similar. This, in my experience, is generally how it goes.

Now I've only written a handful of SH fics, but I'm already blown away by the level of feedback that I've seen and received in this fandom. My own fics get long, detailed, specific reviews. Other people's fics get long, detailed, specific reviews. I have yet to see a fic - on sh_het or sh_femslash at least - that wasn't answered with a thoughtful, in depth critique.

This boggles me. I'm not used to this at all. I'm not used to routinely getting into long conversations in comments on fics. And now I start wondering... are there other fandoms like this? Is it common in video game fandoms? I've only written video game fic for Xenogears, which is essentially a dead fandom, so I have no experience here. Or is it simply because these two communities are relatively small, close knit groups?

I'm rather used to fandom being a big giant sandbox where the kids kind of have their little groups, and hang with their friends, but interact politely if distantly with the majority and share their toys with a sort of quiet, almost impersonal demeanor. I'm not used to the sandbox being full of kids who get along and play together and end up hand in hand building a sand castle together after sharing the toy firetruck.

I don't know if I had a point, other than 'wow I like this fandom'. Especially since I'd avoided it for so long due to scary stories about nothing but Pyramid Head running off with and falling in love with a steady stream of painful Mary Sues.

In conclusion: awesome feedback is awesome, SH fandom is full of cool people, and I think I'm going to be happy here.

(Oh, and does anyone know where I can get a SH moodtheme?)

Comments

[burningvigor.livejournal.com]

Hmm, it might be a video game fandom thing. I remember when I used to write more for the Metal Gear Solid fandom, people tended to give longer reviews. And looking at the one KH fic (http://buster-sword.livejournal.com/17795.html) that I wrote that got a lot of reviews, there are a good amount of detailed comments. So it could be! :3

[theladyfeylene.livejournal.com]

I'm very inexperienced with video game fandoms - lols, I only hang out in old PS and SNES RPG fandoms - so it's interesting to hear other game fandoms have a similar trend. I may have to do a bit more investigating on this.

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

Is the fandom smallish?

I tend to get in depth fic reviews like that and then have comments turn int character debates and such in the (original) Battlestar Galactica fandom, which isn't a video game.

It might also be a matter of . . maturity maybe?
I'm more comfortable leaivng more detailed crits if I know I'm not gonna get drama from it. I can leave crits in BSG that I'd never leave in Harry Potter 0.o

[theladyfeylene.livejournal.com]

The fandom itself is large, but the little corners I hang out in are on the smaller side.

I'm definitely the same way, as far as leaving crit. If it's a drama prone or large fandom, I'm a lot less likely to leave anything that could possibly be construed as criticism, even if it's friendly con crit that's surrounded by compliments. :/

[theangstmonkey.livejournal.com]

There are a few fandoms that I find you can have really in dept conversations, and SH is totally one of them. When I really heavily got into 4 (because of Walter ♥) I went looking for fic and art and... well everything... I think the SH fandom has that possibility because of the themes of the game, but I mean, you don't really have to get that in dept while you are playing. Like, you could just play straight through and just see it as a scary, creepy game, or you could search out information on the cult and actually learn how fucked up the people were. So the fandom is like that too, you got the people who only want to see it at its surface level and then you got the people who want to get into the deeper themes and meanings behind what is happening.

I think that's kind of why there's the debate over 4. There are the people who just see it and think that it doesn't really have the town in it, or the flashlight, or a lot of the things that made the previous ones so awesome, and there are the people who look at that game and see the history of the cult being more developed (including factions, which isn't something we saw before) as well as the idea of more than one 'god' that they worship and, I mean, who can really seriously play through the tower prision and not go "holy fuck, that's messed up".

There's people like that in every fandom, you just really got to look for the ones who seriously consider what's happening, instead of just the teeny fans who squeal about "omg how hot!". I mean, that's my experience also with say something like the Gundam Wing fandom, which has everything from the Mary-Sue self-insert fics (goddess help me I wrote one of those for this fandom) and flame wars over which pilot "belongs" to which fan to really detailed discussion about the politics behind the series and the psychological impact that those boys go through.

I'm glad that you found this in the SH fandom. Your stuff is too good to just get a "This is so hot!" to it. By the way, I did read your SH stuff but I don't want to just reply with a "Omg! You are awesome!" because there is A LOT to say about what you've written... I'm just too lazy or silly right now to formulate a good response... XP

[theladyfeylene.livejournal.com]

I've wondered if it's the themes, but I've been in other (non-game) fandoms where you get similar themes and depth, and run into mostly the usual no-involved fannish response and whatnot. I pretty much stick to two little communities and a couple of forums, where it's predominantly the heavy in depth discussion.

The people who dismiss it and treat it like a non-SH game piss me off. It's my favorite. I'm not ashamed to say that. No, it's not as directly connected to the rest of the series as the others, but... it's definitely still Silent Hill. And there are those little tidbits of info that link back to the Cult. We learn a hell of a lot about the mythos of Silent Hill itself, and a lot of people just sort of ignore that or claim 'it doesn't count'. And I don't feel like it was just tacked on. I thought it flowed well within the story. And it also pisses me off when people trot out the 'but it's not in SH! The characters have no connection to SH!'. Did they miss the fact that Henry used to regularly summer vacation there?

The Panopticon Prison is one of the things I always bring out in argument for this being a fucked up, terrifying game. That and the fact that the whole premise of the game is basically invading a person's safe haven. In a lot of ways, I think it's the most terrifying scenario of all the games.

I AM GLAD I FOUND IT, TOO! I can debate and pick through symbolism and metaphors for ages, and I love working with it/seeing it worked with in fic. And this fills my fix for that. Aw, thank you! I'm kind of surprised at how I just jumped in head first to this fandom, but once I started writing I just kept getting more and more ideas!