On one of the message boards, one of the posters wrote:

Hell, bring it up. Just another long-standing example of how it’s becoming less and less fun being in Daria fandom. There’s the occasional fanfic, but aside from a burst of posts over the past couple of weeks. ... This was supposed to be about having fun.

Combine that with Martin Pollard’s decision to no longer update Outpost Daria, and the question in the header comes to mind: Is Daria fandom less “fun” than it used to be?

The approach of a sophist might be: Define fun. Such an approach doesn’t go anywhere, as “fun” is an essential idea, one that can only be defined by words that already mean close to the same thing as “fun”: “enjoyable,” “pleasurable,” “amusing.” I suppose the question we’re asking is really a question made up of other questions:

1: Are the people as nice as they used to be?
2: Are the stories better?
3: Is the discussion more interesting?
4: Does the general atmosphere promote pleasantness?
(And is “pleasantness” a real word?)

So let’s take these one at a time:

1: Are the people as nice as they used to be? I chuckle at that one. Frankly, I’ve never known the people in Daria fandom to be particularly nice at all. That’s not particularly a problem. Some people just like to argue, and some people take great pleasure in being assholes.

I mean, face it. Our object of worship is a cynical, sarcastic teenage girl who pretty much rejects any concept of “niceness.” You might get a “Hi” out of Daria if you seem particularly smart, and don’t say anything that could be construed as stupid.

That might be a big problem in Daria fandom — it attracts people who are drawn to its anti-social character, people who are themselves anti-social, or people who see themselves in real life as being opposed to some outer authority.

I remember when Daria fandom used to be much nastier than it is today. There was a lot of “clueless newbie” abuse and the Masters of Fandom had formed very tight cliques — and they weren’t averse to making the “argument from authority,” either. What was the worst part of it all is that most of those same people patted themselves on their back about how much nicer and kinder they were than other real-life people! (Despite, of course, bragging about how sarcastic they were during some real-life situation or another.)

Face it — today, Daria fandom is a quantum leap nicer. The administrators at PPMB generally make an effort to be nice to people — no matter how new, how clueless, or how obnoxious those people might be. The more egregious offenders have left of their own accord (and in some rare cases, been driven out). People who wouldn’t have been tolerated for three message-board posts in the old fandom are encouraged in the new one. (Sometimes, sadly encouraged.)

If you have a beef with one particular überfan, well, that might not make your experience pleasant. Generally, however, I claim that Daria fandom is a nicer place than it used to be.

2: Are the stories better? The stories are better, definitely. I think, however, that we’re seeing a general movement away from fan-fiction writing, and that is not better.

I’m to blame for part of this. In the old days, people would just submit any old turd to fanfiction.net, stuff that was barely spell-checked, much less beta-read. There was a whole lot of fanfic out there. A whole lot of it wasn’t good, but there was a freedom of expression not seen in today’s fandom, a willingness to throw any old crap out there and see if it sticks.

After a while, however, I’ve noticed (and contributed to) a decreased tolerance for bad fan fiction. It’s not as if there’s an army of CINCGREENs out there saying, “Boy, that story you just wrote was a frozen shitsicle.” Rather, the old fandom was more of a Special Olympics — “Everyone gets a prize for bad fanfic!” You could write anything and get ten people praising you for how great it was. (Then again, I’m sure people were just glad to see fanfic of any kind.)

Today, I’ve seen some fanfic not get any comments at all, either at PPMB or at fanfiction.net. Were those stories bad? I don’t know, but there’s no ego-boosting going on. This has good consequences, but it also has bad consequences.

Frankly, people want to be recognized for their work, else they wouldn’t write fan fiction at all. There has to be some way to say, “I acknowledge your work, and I’m glad you wrote it — I just don’t think it’s as good as it could be.” (But try posting that, and see what reception you get.)

Furthermore, people like E.A. Smith and The Bug Guy and The Angst Guy might have also had an inadvertently detrimental effect on fan fiction. The Angst Guy, for example, ruthlessly edits his work and always has it beta-read. He brings his skills as a professional writer to the task, and the quality of his work clearly shows.

The results are works that are so polished that they might intimidate a beginning writer. “I’m not going to be able to write something as good as ‘Darkness’ or the ‘Love’s Labours Trilogy,’ so why should I try?”

I don’t know how to solve this problem. I don’t know if there’s any solution. Maybe I simply ought to do as Kara Wild once suggested, and start reviewing fan fiction again, so at least the fandom will be talking about fan fiction as opposed to talking about other scattered interests. (Of the six forums on PPMB, only two are devoted to fanac.)

3: Is the discussion more interesting? I think the discussion is more or less the same. It’s worse in some ways, better in others.

I’ll explain. If you’ve been kicking around fandom as long as I have, it seems that everything has been “talked out.” Everything has been debated to death. “Where is Lawndale?” “Are Daria and Jane gay?” “Why did Daria kiss Tom?”

All of this stuff has been asked and answered and asked and answered, to the point where some of the more obsessive fans (i.e., most of us) feel that the “text” of Daria has been examined to the nth degree. Most fans have already formed strong opinions on certain canon matters, and it would take a very persuasive argument to budge us from those positions.

On the other hand, side discussion is more interesting because I think the people are, well, smarter now than they were in the past. The people who were in fandom in 1999 are eight years wiser and just a little bit smarter.

Furthermore, the fans that moved in afterwards were real intellectuals, and not just poseurs — the newcomers were people well-versed in medicine, or politics, or philosophy, or the arts. You couldn’t just get away with flimsy arguments on certain topics, because there was someone who could quote chapter and verse at you. When reading these arguments, one did not get the sense one was being lectured to. Rather, one could “learn something new every day.”

So is the discussion more interesting now than it was in 1998? That depends. What do you want to talk about?

4: Does the general atmosphere promote pleasantness? Note that this is a different question than “Are the people nice?” You can have nice people in a bad atmosphere. People make up part of the atmosphere, but not all of it.

For some reason, I want to say, “No, it really doesn’t.” It’s simply an initial impression. There’s nothing truly vibrant out there in Dariadom.

I believe one of the reasons is that we have downgraded Daria fan art to a subgenre. Fan art is tucked away more than it is out in the open. There’s an absence of an aesthetic. The format of the PPMB is dull gray. The format of the SFMB is blue-on-black eye-strain-o-vision.

I don’t have a really good answer to question 4. Maybe you do.

Labels: Essays, Fandom