#26 — Vanek! with a Jurco
Jul. 12th, 2016 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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dekedangle_rpfanonThis is the twenty-sixth post of Deke Dangle RPF Anon, a community for all your ice hockey anon meme needs.
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THE RULES
1. Mods retain the right to delete, freeze, and/or screen threads and comments.
2. Meme rules do not require warnings.
3. Respect flock. Do not repost or share information from private tumblrs, locked twitter accounts, flocked LJ posts, etc.
4. No linking fans to their real life identities.
5. No looks bashing or body shaming. This applies to players and people associated with those players and their clubs, as well as fellow fans.
6. No embedded music.
7. No embedded images.
8. No spamming the meme, whether through repeated comments or other means.
9. No discussing trolling, individual trolls, or their efforts.
Meme rules do not require spoiler cuts. However, this layout does allow for them. Any of the following tags will create a spoiler cut when closed: <div cut>, <span cut>, <font cut>, <font color="white">
If you have any questions or concerns, please direct them to The Mod Post.
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Next post opens at 5,000 comments.
Re: World Cup of Hockey
From: (Anonymous)But I'm also superrrrrrrr giddy/excited for said exhibition games today which are probably going to be ridiculous because they all forgot how to hockey over the summer.
Re: Random Hockey Stuff
From: (Anonymous)this tattoo artist must be stopped.
Re: Random Hockey Stuff
From: (Anonymous)Lions are kind of passe, but at least the tattoo placement is interesting. Not another tattoo on the top of the deltoid. (Unlike some boring people one could mention: https://www.instagram.com/p/BJOeJmZDUlB/)
Re: Writing Thread
From: (Anonymous)Re: Fandom Venting
From: (Anonymous)I'm also not sure that the existence of big pairings necessarily lead to a sense of community across hockey fandom as a whole. The popularity of K/T or S/G is pretty irrelevant to people who wrote for different teams in the first place. And people write for the pairings they love, even though it might be only five other people into the pairing.
Within say the Pens fans it may be harder now to find someone who shares the same pairing, but it really doesn't change anything for people who never wrote Pens anyway.
Re: Fandom Venting
From: (Anonymous)Re: Fandom Venting
From: (Anonymous)I think you're right that there were always people on the periphery and more likely to feel alienated than included by the juggernaut pairings, but I don't think I agree that big pairings don't lead to a sense of community. I think your observations would be right if fans tended to be segmented into groups that all share one team and read and write fic about that team and those players, but that's never been the case. A lot of fic writers who've written for a large variety of pairings have also written S/G and K/T, and a lot of people who aren't Pens or Hawks fans or who would never write those pairings themselves have read that fic nonetheless and formed fandom connections that way and have common reference to certain "big name" authors and fic. So yes, the general existence of juggernaut pairings does mean a random fan is more likely to find someone who likes the same pairings, especially because people don't choose pairings in a vacuum, they often become interested in pairings because someone else in fandom is interested, too. (Just not a particular person who doesn't care for any of those juggernaut pairings.) I think activity around juggernauts also creates a lot of general fandom growth (not just Pens and Hawks fans -- plenty of people discovered fandom that way and moved on to other teams and pairings), while activity around many rarer pairings is less likely to do that.
It's the nature of a community that some are included and some are excluded, so for people who never had anything to do with the juggernauts, I wouldn't be surprised if many feel like not much has changed. But even as someone who made a lot of effort to avoid one of those juggernaut pairings, I never felt its popularity was "irrelevant" to my fandom experience because it was everywhere, I couldn't block or mute everyone who talked about them because I would be blocking nearly everyone who wrote the fic and pairings that I was interested in. I do think there are tangible effects of the juggernauts' declining popularity that go just beyond Hawks fans and Pens fans. Or maybe I'm just mistaking causes and effects.
I do agree that juggernauts and variety aren't a zero sum game. I think some of that perception probably comes from the feeling that someone writing a pairing you aren't interested in could be expending that effort to write a pairing you like instead (see: attitudes towards oflights).
Re: Fandom Venting
From: (Anonymous)Oh geez, I'm sorry this became an essay, I hope it doesn't seem like I'm trying to be argumentative or Vehemently Disagree with you, your comment just sparked a lot of thoughts, is all. I'm not trying to declare the death of fandom because people don't write my pairing anymore, just trying to capture why I feel that something about this fandom has changed, not necessarily for the worse imo.)
Re: Fandom Venting
From: (Anonymous)Re: Fandom Venting
From: (Anonymous)Re: Fandom Venting
From: (Anonymous)So there are many people who do have shared experience of specific works or authors but does it make a difference if K/T or S/G continues to be produced? That I'm not so sure about. I'm not really into twitter so perhaps that reduces the impact on me.
I think it'll be interesting to see if it is a shift in focus, and a new juggernaut pairing will emerge. Or if there will be a greater number of different smaller ships. I'm not sure if it's just a decline of juggernaut pairings or if it's a result of the rift in the fandom which is impacting the sense of community. There do seem to have been more team specific exchanges for example this year, but it is difficult to determine cause and effect.
I think there will be some occasions when you wish someone would write the pairing of your heart rather than a different pairing.
Re: Fandom Venting
From: (Anonymous)That makes sense! But I think you're maybe using the word "community" differently from how I am, and it's possible that I used it differently from how others others meant it? I feel like there was more of a sense of community when the juggernauts were more popular, and that people were not as loosely dispersed. But I didn't necessarily "feel community" as something that I had. I understood the a-airt-rt as saying (amongst other things) that fandom felt more cohesive before and feels more spread out into smaller groups now, and I agree and in a lot of ways find that more pleasant to deal with.
I know a lot of people got into non-juggernaut teams and pairings and stayed attached to those pairings even though they came into fandom through juggernaut fic, but I suspect that that also happens less often when the juggernaut activity declines. But I think maybe I conflated fandom size/growth with the idea that there's a sense of fandom community.
Re: Trope talk- Fluff
From: (Anonymous)What do people like or dislike? Does it work best for you as one theme in a fic or do you prefer a nice wallow in it?
Re: Fandom Venting
From: (Anonymous)That's a good point about how people engage in fandom. It would be a really different experience for someone whose fandom participation also included twitter and tumblr, versus someone who might just read and write fic for particular players they care about. I guess I was thinking more of the former than the latter.
My theory is that fewer people will be drawn in by non-juggernaut teams and players in the first place than the amount of people drawn in by juggernauts who then move on to those other teams/pairings. But that's only my perception. Like you, I'm curious to see what happens next. And that's a good point about cause and effect -- it's easy to see, for example, why something like the Kane allegations would fragment the sense of "community" and contribute to the decline of K/T as a juggernaut pairing.
Oh, I agree, and I've felt that way about my favorite pairings too! I just thought it might be one thing subconsciously influencing conflating wanting the juggernauts to decline with wanting more variety of pairings.
Re: World Cup of Hockey
From: (Anonymous)To the surprise of absolutely no one, McDavid is the captain for Team North America. Couturier and Ekblad as alternates.
I'm surprised Saad didn't get a letter tho.
Re: World Cup of Hockey
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From: (Anonymous)You're not the only one:
https://twitter.com/MarkLazerus/status/774020103411208192