Cri de coeur
Jan. 18th, 2025 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arcanetrivia posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fictional_fansWhat do you do if you're alone in a fandom? If you can't seem contribute anything that is of actual value to others? If nothing you have to say is ever good enough to provoke genuine spontaneous enthusiastic responses; if you get either nothing at all or maybe forced polite ones at best? If the stuff you’re interested in isn't what most other people, the "real" people, are interested in? If the people who are maybe the closest to your own interests are in a little circle of their own friends that they've been in for a decade or more and they apparently don't ever look at anything made by people outside of it, or if they do, they leave no evidence?
(NB I'm not suggesting I should somehow be let inside that friendship itself. But that feeling of "foregone conclusion that you will never even be considered because you weren't already around at a time when you barely even knew the thing existed"... where the alternative is "yes, they have looked, but it was all so worthless to them they decided to say nothing at all"... well. Unfortunately in this fandom an important part of having "cred" is having become a fan either back in the 1990s when it was new, or if you weren't born yet, then at least when you were a child yourself -- that is, the length of the tenure is important; and I only got into it in late 2021 when I was already in my 40s.)
I know the answer is "git gud; if you were worth paying attention to, people would pay attention to you" but being alone especially when nominally the idea of a fandom is "hey let’s all play together" is seriously just one of the worst feelings ever. "No one wants to play with you." Although normally I would say that in my current fandom "let's all play together" is actually not the underlying assumption and it's way more a meritocracy than I have ever experienced before in other fandoms, but as I wrote this last night, before my eyes I was seeing unfold on Discord a thing of "hang on I've written something pretty much just like this? Why is this good, people saying 'OMG LMAO THIS IS PERFECT', but when I wrote it, it wasn't?"
The fact that this has happened to me more than once means the common factor, and thus the problem, is me; but how do you keep living with the only things you can offer never being good enough, with never acquiring that "man, that was awesome!" back and forth feedback loop that keeps things going?
(NB I'm not suggesting I should somehow be let inside that friendship itself. But that feeling of "foregone conclusion that you will never even be considered because you weren't already around at a time when you barely even knew the thing existed"... where the alternative is "yes, they have looked, but it was all so worthless to them they decided to say nothing at all"... well. Unfortunately in this fandom an important part of having "cred" is having become a fan either back in the 1990s when it was new, or if you weren't born yet, then at least when you were a child yourself -- that is, the length of the tenure is important; and I only got into it in late 2021 when I was already in my 40s.)
I know the answer is "git gud; if you were worth paying attention to, people would pay attention to you" but being alone especially when nominally the idea of a fandom is "hey let’s all play together" is seriously just one of the worst feelings ever. "No one wants to play with you." Although normally I would say that in my current fandom "let's all play together" is actually not the underlying assumption and it's way more a meritocracy than I have ever experienced before in other fandoms, but as I wrote this last night, before my eyes I was seeing unfold on Discord a thing of "hang on I've written something pretty much just like this? Why is this good, people saying 'OMG LMAO THIS IS PERFECT', but when I wrote it, it wasn't?"
The fact that this has happened to me more than once means the common factor, and thus the problem, is me; but how do you keep living with the only things you can offer never being good enough, with never acquiring that "man, that was awesome!" back and forth feedback loop that keeps things going?
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Date: 2025-01-18 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-18 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-18 07:02 pm (UTC)I'm in nothing but miniature to small fandoms these days, with one now verging on medium sized, but even within the medium one, I'm into the rarest of rare pairs, so my potential readership is negligible. I've swayed a couple of people over to one or two of those rare pairs, but when posting something, getting comments is still like getting blood out of a stone and really only happens if I gift fic to someone specific. Even when I write more popular pairings, I don't seem to vibe with the majority. It's deeply frustrating, but there's also no solution I can see.
The sense of all-embracing community seems to have largely gone out of fandom too. Literally, sometimes. I set up a community here and, around the same time, a Discord channel sprang into being with more or less the same focus. I actually did a poll at the time and asked whether a community here is actually wanted in light of that, and I got a lot of, "Oh yes, the more the merrier!" responses. So I set it up, because I find Discord a pain to use. Well, I gather the Discord channel is a jumping, happening party place. My community is dead. The only way a post happens there is if I make one, and if there's one or two comments, it's a busy post. It's not set up to be mod posts only, and I keep pointing out that anyone can post. I have a chronic illness and don't have the energy to make a dozen posts a day.
I don't know what the solution is when one is clearly not a clique and/or high energy and/or mainstream person, but if you want to vent about any of this at any time, feel free to message me.
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Date: 2025-01-19 06:05 am (UTC)Yeah, the fact that this fandom is tiny is definitely a factor. In a big fandom it would be possible to say "have you tried a different community/forum/Discord server/whatever" and see if you could find some different people. Here my options are extremely limited. Don't fit the bill, well, there's nowhere else to go. :-/
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Date: 2025-01-18 07:13 pm (UTC)That said, I have no idea how to navigate Discord and strongly prefer internet forums or fan communities like DW/LJ. On AO3, I found it easiest to connect with others by leaving consistent feedback or making the occasional fanart for works I found particularly inspiring. Then I "simply" clung to those people who seemed interesting, chatty, and/or insightful enough. I know that some people have checked me out because they liked a particular comment of mine. In general, I've gotten the most fervent feedback for some of my stupidest, low-effort works on Tumblr, while some of the things I truly put my heart and soul into still have zero comments after a decade of being online. But that's life! (Those were still the times when health didn't stop me from commenting or producing work.)
Honestly, I don't have any helpful advice as I've had a lot of luck with my fandoms and never participated in one where "cred" mattered much. The entire notion seems ridiculous and exhausting.
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Date: 2025-01-18 07:34 pm (UTC)I used the exact same strategy (not that I would have called it a strategy back then, it was way more going with my gut instincts) and it did work in some cases.
What also helped a lot is taking part in exchanges, at least for smaller fandoms.
>> I've had a lot of luck with my fandoms and never participated in one where "cred" mattered much. The entire notion seems ridiculous and exhausting.
THIS
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Date: 2025-01-19 06:07 am (UTC)I try! I even try to comment on fics and things that don't actually excite me that much just to be supportive. (Operative word being "try"; sometimes I'm not even feeling the kudos. But it's aspirational.) It's just that there's never any answering enthusiasm.
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Date: 2025-01-18 07:28 pm (UTC)It's a very sad experience, but every time I think I should stop drawing/writting (or posting online), I remember the joy I feel everytime I find decade-old fansites for fandoms I like or simply 2015 shitposts from Tumblr I didn't see back then. Or how I keep using a guide someone wrrote on their website in 2001 for a PSX game.
I don't think any of these people thought "Yeah, someone 15 years in the future will enjoy these" when posting their drawings on a FC2 blog, a handful of these even complained on how alone they were in the fandom as well. And yet, they made me happy.
What I want to say is that even if the experience right now is isolating, there's at least someone out there who enjoy your creations. They might be here but too shy to speak up, or they might not appear until years and years in the future. But they're still here and you can bring them joy as well, so for that I think it's worth it. I find solace in that.
On the Discord people... In all honestly, they probably say that because that person is a friend of theirs. You're much more inclined to (or even feel oblied to) say nice things or comment on your friends' works than someone you don't know well. Fandom can be clique-y.
On a similar note, the other day I saw a happy experience. Someone in a discord I'm in was commenting on how nice a fic they were reading was & turns out the author of it was on that group as well. They said their words made their day because on AO3 no one commented on any chapter, they thought it was useless to continue writting until now.
So the posibility that others are saying good things about your work behind your back is also there. I have a small website and while I barely receive any emails/comments, I have stumbled twice with people saying how cool it was on their own spaces (but they never told me anyhting), so it happens more often than you think :')
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Date: 2025-01-18 08:25 pm (UTC)That is *so* true! I once got lovely feedback for a fic I'd written almost a decade ago. It was such a weird experience because, back then, I assumed I had grown and gotten "better than that stupid, flowery prose thing I did at that time". Only made me realize that my work had touched a person enough to pay me a sincere compliment and that I should maybe re-examine the disrespectful way I looked at some of my old art.
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Date: 2025-01-19 06:09 am (UTC)No, it was someone new to the server who didn't have prior connections to any of the existing members that I'm aware of. In fact there's irony in the fact that I'm the one who passed them the invite code when they posted on Tumblr that they were interested in servers on the topic.
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Date: 2025-01-18 07:36 pm (UTC)Similarly time is a factor. I know I read many more things than I comment on, which is why I am very glad we now have like or kudos buttons in most places. I do not always have things to say, and sometimes I also have no time to read and what time I do have gets apportioned in other places. It can be hard to get added to other people's priorities.
What's worse, to my mind, is that "mindless scrolling" is now a thing that it wasn't 10+ years ago and so people had more time for "mindful scrolling" where they'd actually engage.
In short, although your example seems very specific I think there are similar feelings a lot of times by a lot of people for different situations.
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Date: 2025-01-18 07:50 pm (UTC)Oh this, definitely, especially if/when the majority of the fandom is adults with full lives. I need to ration my fandom time, but I made a rule for myself to always comment as often as I can during that allotted time.
>> I remember always being surprised when people would say, for example, that they didn't want to be the first person to comment on something.
OMG really???
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Date: 2025-01-19 06:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-18 07:46 pm (UTC)When I joined a fandom for a TV show from the 90s around 2018 (probably?) it was small enough by then that each new member was greeted with enthusiasm (and people still discover it now and then). I have no idea if the fandom was as nice in its heyday (though I’ve heard about ships wars, so I’m glad I wasn’t part of it then).
Still, it‘s still a small fandom (used to be huge) and my experience so far has been that smaller fandoms are a lot easier to make friends in.
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Date: 2025-01-19 06:19 am (UTC)Uhhhhh Harry Potter is not really that good of a choice these days 😅 And anyway it's kind of dead or dying even if one wished to disregard its controversial status.
This fandom that I'm struggling in is an extremely small fandom - that's part of the problem, really, because it means there's no other sandboxes within it I can try to go to. There's <10 people writing fic that I know of. One of the major writers is in that circle of friends who never seem to look outside themselves... like, if she's ever read anything I've ever written, she's given absolutely no indication of it, not so much as a kudos, or a response of any kind the one time I dashed off a short comment fic on a post of hers. And then there's another little group whose favorite character I can't really get into so there's this kind of wall in between us.
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Date: 2025-01-18 11:00 pm (UTC)I've been there. It made me leave fandom entirely. Sorry, I know this isn't helpful.
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Date: 2025-01-19 06:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2025-01-18 11:17 pm (UTC)(I dislike "git gud" as a piece of advice to anyone. It's a sneer more than anything, it seems.)
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Date: 2025-01-19 02:50 am (UTC)I've been in fandom since, oh, roughly 1998-2000 or so, depending on how we're defining it. As a brand-new fan, I read and loved so many fics from authors who had been around a long time before me; some of them probably didn't even care about those fics, some of them weren't in that fandom anymore at all, but I was there and enjoying what they'd written all the same. No matter what it meant to them right then, it meant something to me, and I was so glad to find it.
So when it comes to my own writing, I consider a similarly wide field. The effort of creating something and putting it out into the world is a love letter to everyone who shares this silly, weird, emotional attachment to character/ship/setting, for as long as it exists! The person who will love my fic might not even be in the fandom yet. They might not even be able to read yet. I want them to be able to find it, and to feel the love I'm feeling, even if I've moved on to something else by that point. It's the most magical thing about fandom, to me - that people make, and share, just because they love something too much to enjoy it quietly on their own. ♥
Maybe there's a bit of compromise, self-knowledge, or something along those lines involved for me, too? I don't know what to call it, but I recognise that I don't make efforts to 'promote' or 'advertise' my fic at all. I'm aware that I could probably gain more readers by doing "marketing" stuff... but I don't find that fun and therefore choose not to do it, knowing it likely reduces my hitcount. Just tagging things is hard enough for me; running a one-man promotional tour sounds too much like work to me! :D
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Date: 2025-01-19 06:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2025-01-19 09:27 am (UTC)If your goal is to get positive comments on your work more often, rather than to connect with a particular group of people, then maybe try to disseminate your work more widely (look for your fandom on multiple sites) and/or find popular events that your work fits into (e.g. Yuletide is an event with a small fandom focus that a lot of people participate in.)
If you want to join a specific group of fans, don't just post your work there but also engage in the general conversation. Comment on other people's work and posts. Ask questions — people like to talk about themselves and explain why they like what they like. Express opinions and ask others what they think. Organize an event if that's something the group does, or volunteer to help with an event. If they're into some aspect of the fandom you're not, then be curious, ask what is great about that aspect and investigate it in an open-minded way, maybe you would come to see it the same way.
Those things don't always work. But you'll learn something every time you try.
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Date: 2025-01-20 08:21 pm (UTC)My goal is to feel like I have a place in the fandom and that my presence and contributions are valued. By "contributions" everyone in this thread seems to have assumed "fanfic", and that is part of it, but I also mean things like posting links to people's fanart or making other posts or comments, which I do much more often (writing is an incredible struggle for me and takes forever). Heck I've got almost 60,000 messages in that Discord server over the past 2 years and 8 months. I just feel so alone and unsupported and like other people are talking past me while barely tolerating me because we don't share interests and preferences and I wind up sticking out as weird, so they would rather I stopped bugging them. Which makes it all the more frustrating to see someone new walk in and immediately get support for doing what are, as far as I can tell, some of the same things I've done... but there seems to be something different about me that they get it and I don't.
I do comment on the few fics that get posted on AO3. (Well, generally speaking; I mean there are some that are kinda squicky for me and I don't want to like... lie... and say that I liked something when I didn't, but ykwim. Sometimes I have kudos'd something I didn't really like just because I know if it were me, I'd want to at least get that little bit of support.) I try to interact on Tumblr, which doesn't have tons of activity (only about 750 people follow the fandom tag and it's quite likely many of those are just dead accounts) but generally I only get like a couple of notes. One of the major artists/writers that is active there I think doesn't even follow the tag, the thing I was saying about apparently not looking at stuff outside her own circle of friends (or else she's specifically ignoring me personally, which would be worse; but I have no way of knowing that because she hasn't actually blocked me or anything).
The fandom is nowhere near large enough to support events. It is Yuletide-eligible (in fact has less than 200 complete fics on AO3) and was nominated in either 2022 or 2023 iirc, but either no one requested it, no one offered it, or both, because no fic manifested. (I can't nominate it myself because it's bad form to do so and then not sign up, and I can't fulfill the writing obligations, so I can't sign up.)
It doesn't exist here on Dreamwidth. It existed somewhat on Twitter and does a little on Bluesky, but you really need to either make fangames or be an artist to succeed there, and I am neither (fanfic is near the bottom of the pile in what formats are valued in this fandom). Instagram of course is image-oriented so I have nothing to post there, and you can comment on art but Meta has made things so blasted impossible to find there (you can't just scroll through a tag in reverse chrono order anymore) that it's pretty much useless to try to find new fanart or whatever. I have dug through Deviantart and commented on art there but it's not really a "community" that interacts among itself; there used to be some groups dedicated to the fandom but they're all dead (probably mainly as people have left Deviantart as a platform). There is a section of the fandom that has a dedicated website with a forum, but that's very much the "celebratory" arm of it who doesn't really do transformative fandom, and where it's even more important to have been a fan for long enough if you want to "count". I've got an account there but I've never posted and I can tell I don't fit in there even more than the Tumblr/Discord/AO3 area.
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Date: 2025-01-19 01:00 pm (UTC)When I think back on my LJ days I gave a lot of fics a chance and just read them when they were posted. Nowadays I'm very much guided by the tagging system. If people tag in a way that I find flippant or too meta (when they comment on the characters or their own feelings writing those characters) I usually don't bother. I personally think that "the less tags, the better".
Do you like what other people in your small fandom write?
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Date: 2025-01-19 09:11 pm (UTC)Number of kudos is more correlated with age than quality!
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Date: 2025-01-19 05:47 pm (UTC)Part of what I'd love this community to be is a way to find fandom community with people who might not share any specific fandoms with. That kind of thing can be a lifeline in periods when people aren't finding anyone in their fandoms (or are kind of between fandoms). But that's a different mode of interaction than just talking about your faves all the time too.
I think a lot of people get focused on fandom as being about reading fic and getting compliments on fic when the core of fandom isn't about "producing content" it's just about being friends with people. Posting fic but not having any friends can be super lonely even if you do get kudos and bookmarks and "I like this" on your fic. You can make friends through fic comments, but it's not the only way, and people can tell the difference between comments that are about reaching out in a friendly way to start a conversation and comments that are about just grimly doing your duty, too, even if they don't realize that's what they're doing.
I'll also add that if you get a chance to do any focused synchronous socializing - voicechats or in-person meetups or online cons or anything like that - even for people who are super awkward about socializing, it really is a shortcut to the kind of friendship building
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Date: 2025-01-20 08:37 pm (UTC)"Contributions" didn't just mean fic. I mean of course I would like it if they were generally enjoyed and got comments. But I also meant things like discussions on Discord or Tumblr or people getting enjoyment out of me posting links to fanart they might not have found on their own. (I tend to get really dug in to digging back through archives and tags as much as a platform will let me, which people who are not so obsessed are not likely to have seen all the results of; although it always stings when I post something I thought was a good find and get told "oh yeah I remember that". Like man, I was trying to bring you something new-to-you and interesting and here it was just like "seen it, there wasn't any need to post that.")
I'll also add that if you get a chance to do any focused synchronous socializing - voicechats or in-person meetups or online cons or anything like that
It's nowhere near big enough of a fandom for in-person or conventions, lol. As for voice chat, there was one person in that Discord who used to stream random games a lot and I would frequently be in those chats; but in June 2023 they suddenly stopped for reasons that are unclear to me and there hasn't been anything like that since. Nobody is interested in watching me stream anything, and I also have a timezone handicap in that I am on the west coast of the United States and so what would be a good time for me is the middle of the night for the majority of the server. (Despite being an American video game series, due to the vagaries of history and how it treated that kind of game, the most active fanbase for it is in UK/Europe; and then one other social kingpin in the server is in the Philippines, plus there are some people in Australia. So a lot of discussion tends to happen in what is the middle of the night or early morning for me, because that's midday in Europe and evening for Philippines/Oz.)
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Date: 2025-01-19 11:12 pm (UTC)empathetic hug if desired I'm not sure how to navigate the... grief that comes from this kind of situation (or for instance in my case, feeling like I was too late to the party, too late to share my own ideas with the specific people that inspired them and hopefully give back some joy in that way). Best answer I've got is to find joy in creating for something just for yourself (not to mean not sharing) and to share enthusiasm about others' works if we feel it.
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Date: 2025-01-20 01:19 am (UTC)I would venture to say that it's not so much "you" as "the pattern of fandom that you're in". Someone else observed that you are not the problem, but the problem is fandom-wide and people-deep and therefore isn't really addressed unless people are willing to address their own comfort zones and willingness to truly be inclusive. And most aren't.
To some degree, you can make your own space - as I alluded to in my linked essay - but at the same time, given the way that people are trained in internet usage these days, most people will sit and watch you like content. They will consume your content, they will say hello, but they are also not necessarily likely to become the kind of people that you back-and-forth with.
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Date: 2025-01-20 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-20 01:35 am (UTC)The fact that this has happened to me more than once means the common factor, and thus the problem, is me
I really don't think this follows. Like, I suspect that "new person wants to interact, people already in the hobbyist space seem cliquey and uninterested in interacting" is an extremely common phenomenon, not even unique to transformative-works fandom, and definitely not unique to one person. It can feel like it's specific, often, because the sample size we see is very non-representative; I can see when other people are sharing inside jokes and seeming to have fun without me, but I don't necessarily see when someone else is feeling isolated or unappreciated (unless they decide to publicly share their gripe, which not everyone is able or willing to do). And when I'm already at a low ebb, it can be easy to confirmation bias and say "oh, yeah, everyone wants to avoid me in particular because they don't like me," but the perspective I have is pretty warped.
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Date: 2025-01-20 02:17 am (UTC)I've been in fandom since 2000 and I typically switch fandoms every year or two, so I've been in a LOT of fandoms, and I agree with
Also, having fandom friends gives you a ready-made circle of people who are into the same things you're into that you can shove new canons at. (The key feature being that it has to be something you reasonably think they'd like.) I have to admit that I've gotten a loooot of mileage out of thrusting a recently acquired canon into a longtime fandom friend's face going "Look at this! It's full of [mutually appealing trope]! I'll just be over here plowing through it like nobody's business ... in case you want to talk about it ... HINT HINT." Even if you don't end up participating in the fandom together, it's still fun to have someone to watchi t and talk about it with.
I think separating the "friend" aspect from the fanwork/engagement aspect makes the lack of fanwork interaction feel less like a judgment on you. Because it really isn't! It isn't even a matter of "git gud" because you cannot "git gud" enough to make people want to read something that isn't their usual trope or is outside their usual circle of friends, if that's the way the fandom leans. Some people LOVE being fandom ambassadors and welcoming new people into fandom - but a lot of people really, really don't. Some people truly are in fandom just to chat with the same 5 people they've been friends with since high school, and some people only engage with a fandom during exchanges and ignore anything posted in it the rest of the year, and some people literally only read one specific trope written a certain way - and it's important to remember that absolutely none of these people are doing anything wrong.
I do think I'd ask how much you've been interacting with the other people in your fandom, because it takes work and energy to make new friends in a new fandom. If you actively *want* to be friends, then going through their back catalogue leaving them long, gushing comments, or seeking the places where they hang out (not private places, but like, following them on Tumblr and such, interacting with their posts and adding posts of your own to the fandom tag) might be a nice way to start. People don't know that you want to be friends if you don't show them.
I just got into a new fandom recently, and I don't know ANYONE in that fandom, so I've been going through the fic archives, gushing over and reccing the fic I like, and perusing the fandom tag on Tumblr and reblogging everything I find fun and engaging with extensive tag comments, as well as posting screencaps and such. I'm not specifically trying to get to know people, but I've already had a few people follow me back from my comments and tags to check out the rest of my fandom stuff. This is way harder in some fandoms than others. Some fandoms I've never made ANY traction in. Sometimes you can be the friendliest person in the world and the particular set of people in that fandom just aren't really feeling like making new friends, so there's nothing you can do.
But I do think that it's generally true that if you want to make friends in a new fandom, you have to be the one to be outgoing first, and you have to accept that people will be friendly back in their own way - some people will just not be interested, some people may follow you back and read your fic, and you might even be in one of those lucky fandoms that has fandom ambassadors who will go out of their way to make you feel welcome (but not a lot of fandoms are like that, so there's no point in expecting it; it's just a nice benefit when it happens).
Oh, and also look for other potential points of connection. Does your fandom appear in exchanges, where you might be able to write someone a treat? If someone's running a fest or a prompt meme, can you show up? If someone says, "Hey, I need a volunteer to help me edit the wiki," do you volunteer?
I feel like over the years and through many fandoms, the thing that's been consistent for me from fandom to fandom is that people who don't already know you aren't just going to show up and read your fic uninvited. Nobody is that brilliant. I'm sure not. You have to do the initial work of showing them that you're there - by engaging with their stuff and showing them that you're around and would like to hang out. From there, it's up to them, and it's sad and unfortunate (but not a judgment on you!) if they just don't feel like making new friends that day. Or maybe they DO want to be friends but your fic doesn't have the tropes or pairing they like to read, so you'll need to meet them halfway somehow; maybe they'd like to hang out and chat about canon in Discord.
I mean, it's hard because any human social activity is hard, and making new friends is hard, but fundamentally (to get back to the main point) I think the thing that I try to do is separate the "friend" aspect from the "will they ever comment on my fic" aspect, and furthermore separate both of those from my worth as a person, which neither of those things have anything to do with (or yours). Some fandoms do just founder. Sometimes your fic will never appeal to the people in that fandom for reasons that are beyond your control - wrong tropes, wrong style, etc - and then you have to decide if you're happy enough writing it on your own to keep going. But it's neither a judgment on you or on them if the fandom and your fic don't click, any more than it's an objective problem if you like horror movies better than romcoms. And I hope you're able to go ahead and have fun and keep your love of canon no matter what you do!
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Date: 2025-01-20 09:11 pm (UTC)Does your fandom appear in exchanges, where you might be able to write someone a treat? If someone's running a fest or a prompt meme, can you show up? If someone says, "Hey, I need a volunteer to help me edit the wiki," do you volunteer?
It's not big enough for any of these things. It was nominated for Yuletide one year but no one actually wrote anything. Well, actually there is a wiki, but it's on Fandom.com (ew) and actually it's a bit of a mystery who is even running it, because they seem to somehow be entirely separate from both the loose cluster on Tumblr/Discord/AO3 or the one dedicated forum that there is (I do have an account there, but it's a place where transformative works are not really that appreciated, "fanfic" sometimes gets used as a pejorative, and where having been a fan for long enough is even more important if you want to "count" in the populace).
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Date: 2025-01-22 10:03 pm (UTC)Many years ago, I was super into a show with a tiny fandom, so into it that I was trying to produce a fanzine (back when that was a thing). Unfortunately, the existing fandom was basically one person's ego and a clump of hangers-on who apparently got something out of listening to her stories about meeting the star, which was the only conversation that ever got more than five minutes. If there was anybody who might have wanted to engage with the show in any other way, I suspect they were very quickly put off -- myself included.
The fandom I'm giving the most attention these days is a tiny, old fandom that I got into because I liked the fans, not the show. I mean, the show's fine, I like it well enough, but it's probably not something that I'd give much fannish engagment to on its own merits. But the core fandom is a bunch of really smart, interesting people who are a lot of fun to hang out with, and they're super welcoming to newbies. I've made the beginnings of some friendships there that I hope will continue to develop, and my contributions tend to get positive responses even though I'm not into the pairing and I tend to focus on different aspects of the show than most of the other folks. Partly this has happened because I've been friendly and open-minded and willing to play along for the sake of the game, but mostly it's been because these are nice people who genuinely want to share their fun thing with new friends as well as old ones.
It sounds like part of your problem may simply be that you need to find a better fandom. Which is unhelpful, I know, because people like what they like, but there it is. Maybe there is something you're doing wrong, some vibe that you're failing to pick up on or give off... or maybe it's just that the people you're trying to connect with are insular jerks.
I say this as someone who's been in a lot of fandoms over the years, and whose stories were never the popular ones, whose posts never got many comments or inspired in-depth discussions. Whatever knack there is to making that happen, I don't got it. And I'm an intermittent lurker by nature, so it's always been an effort to make enough overtures for people to notice I'm there and have reason to care, if they choose to. It sucks when you make that effort and get nothing back for it. I've dealt with it by writing what I want to write, commenting when I'll feel better for doing so than not, and treating any further interaction I might get as a bonus. (And, tbf, these days I'm much more focused on writing original fiction than on fandom. But I do miss those heady days of shared obsession.)