rodo | Living Two Lives – A Story of Bilingual Fan-dom

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Living Two Lives – A Story of Bilingual Fan-dom

The topic of this post is one that has been on my mind for years, and this certainly isn’t the first attempt to write it all down. This post is about my very subjective experience in fandom, which, I believe, is not quite normal. I suppose all of you who are multifannish know at least to some degree what I am talking about, because essentially, I am talking about being in two fandoms at once. But while most people experience two fandoms as two different things they’re interested in, for me, it is the same thing, in two languages.

So I suppose this is where I should introduce myself: I am a German and German is my first language. I didn’t really start learning English until I was ten (so I am not really bilingual). I started writing fanfiction when I was seven. I discovered fandom when I started reading the AnimaniA when I was fourteen. I doubt more than a few of you ever touched that magazine, but I loved it. Buying the new issue was more fun than Christmas. I discovered online fandom when I was nineteen, googling Harry Potter and finding Animexx. A few months later, somebody posted the translation of this really great Harry Potter fanfic (or so I thought at the time – it was the Draco Trilogy), and I started reading it in English.

That was five years ago, and since then, I spent time in English and in German fandom. Many people would, I think, think it enlightening to be able to participate in discussions in two languages. And to a degree, it is. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to change it, because now that I know what the English fandom is like, I really wouldn’t want to leave. In fact, if I had to choose, I would chose the English and not the German one. But: Being a bilingual fan certainly has its disadvantages. I am living in two places at once, I have to be two different persons at times, and that does not feel nice at all.

The English fandom, for example, has meta. Lots of it. They even have a name for it. But while the topic is certainly not unknown in German fandom (as a look at ff.de’s pages on columns and essays shows, which occasionally includes discussions on slash and writing tips), the name is only used by those who are part of the English fandom as well (see: ff.de’s forum). I love meta. I certainly miss meta when I am in German fandom, especially the sort that people really thought about. And the really intellectual meta. I sometimes feel as if the German fandom is unable to follow me when I start talking in that direction (and I know that is a shitty thing to say, but that’s how I feel).

Another problem with German meta discussions is the different background. I learned to deal with meta-y things via

metafandom, which I suppose is true for most of us who haven’t been in fandom long enough to remember a time when there was no

metafandom. And following

metafandom established a background we use when we talk, a background that is missing in discussion with the German fandom altogether.

I feel the same when it comes to various other fandom related communities, especially

fanficrants and

fandom_wank, both of which shaped the mind of the English fandom enough to establish phrases like “thoughts on yaoi”. Mocking other fans is considered horrible in most of the German fandom. The only community with that specific purpose was deleted a while ago. It was a sporking community on LJ called

loesch_dich and I don’t quite remember why the mods deleted it, but I do remember that I thought it a pity and unnecessary. And I loved the sporking of BlackBolt's “novels”. Big scandals like those around Cassandra Claire and MsScribe couldn’t happen in German fandom. Even the mention of gugi28’s bad behaviour and her accusing unsuspecting new fans of plagiarism when all they did was invent an OC who was slightly similar to hers was deleted (and I forgot to take screencaps), despite being neutral and totally unwanky (at least compared to what ends up on

fandom_wank). I know of no place where German fandom can be properly criticized, apart from English fandom, that is. And I think

fandom_wank and similar communities are good for a fandom, because on the one hand they serve as an outlet for all the negative feelings, and on the other they establish some sort of rules for community interaction. German fandom needs a place where young fans can learn not to tell others that liking slash/incest stories is OMG SO SICK and that wanky behaviour should be avoided.

German fandom also needs to learn that comments aren’t everything. I know, English fandom has its own fair share of comment whoring and stories that are held hostage. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the fact that in discussions with German authors, I am often told that a good reader writes a comment, because the author has to be paid for a story. The story is seen as a service to the fans that has to be paid for, not as something the author does because s/he likes it or as something the author does as a thank you. There is a hierarchy in fandom, and it places the reader on the bottom. Readers who don’t review are bad readers; I sometimes even get the feeling that they are considered worse than the people who don’t read the story at all. There even is a word for readers like that: “Schwarzleser”. It’s a term that has its origin in the term “Schwarzfahrer” (literally black passenger – meaning someone who takes a train or bus without paying) and “Leser”, the German word for reader. I don’t think the English fandom has developed a term for that yet.

Another thing the German fandom lacks, at least in my opinion, is the presence on journaling platforms. The English fandom on LJ and its clones is enormous. The German part, at least as I remember it, is tiny. I know quite a few people are from Germany, but they don’t participate in anything German. Their journal entries are in English, so that they can communicate with their English speaking friends. After a while, many start writing fanfic in English as well. I am one of those people who really like journaling platforms, because they allow me more freedom than most archives (my main issues with them is generally linked to the fact that I am not free to do as I like), and I generally like reading other peoples’ journals and the flist makes it so much easier to find all the new fic you’re interested in than combing through all the pages of an archive. I like the sense of community as well.

There are, of course, things the German fandom has that the English fandom doesn’t. For one, it allows me to use my dearly beloved first language. Something that I rather like about the German fandom on principle, despite not finding much use for it myself, is the amount of translated fic. Some people aren’t talented when it comes to writing their own stories, some of them lack the ideas, but quite a few of these people can still use their talent to translate stories. I only know of a handful of stories that are translated into English, often by the German authors themselves, but there are a lot of fanfictions in German archives that are translations. Ff.de has threads in which people ask for help translating a certain phrase, threads in which the merits and difficulties of translations are discussed and even those in which potential readers ask other people to translate a fic for them.

And of course there is Animexx, which I don’t like for a lot of reasons (too strict, too focussed on anime and manga), which is an archive maintained by a non-profit organisation that hosts fanfiction, dōjinshi, fanart, cosplay, fic contests and a myriad of other things. It was founded in 2000. Sound familiar? Well, at least that’s what I thought when I first heard of the OTW’s archive. I sincerely hope that the OTW’s archive won’t develop the way Animexx did in terms of focus on visual art and policy, but in terms of functionality, I think Animexx is rather more than English archive users are used to. At least as far as I know. (You can check out the very reduced English version here.) So to me, at least, the idea of the OTW was not a new one. A good one, yes (I’m a volunteer, after all), but not a radically new one.

A difference between the two fandoms, the way I see it, is the fact that a lot of the English fandom culture seems to be based on the traditions of media fandom, while the German fandom seems to be more focussed on anime/manga fandom. That might just be my impression because I started out on Animexx, but I still get that impression when I’m on ff.de now, despite the main fandoms being Harry Potter and Twilight.

Now all this means one thing for me: I am two people. When I am my English fandom person, I can’t talk to anybody about what happened to yaoi.de without having to start with a lengthy explanation on the German laws for the protection of minors. (The end result is this: adult fanfiction on German websites can only be accessed during the night and/or after you sent the maintainers your identification card number so that they verify that you’re an adult. And for God's sake, don't ever call it porn.) I can’t talk about racefail with Germans. I have to separate knowledge and behaviour in my head so that I don’t accidentally think English fandom hates readers. I can’t use the same platforms. I have to watch out for spoilers (both ways – we got the final Pushing Daisies episodes last month). I have to keep track of air dates and publication details. I have to remember that musings on translating fic should be written in German rather than in English. But nobody will read it anyway there since it’s meta and Germans don’t read meta. The latest post on

fandom_wank? Nobody’s read it and the fandom isn’t big in German anyway. A “yes, but” would probably not be the best way to react to the enthusiasm for the idea behind the OTW because the people I’m talking to have never even heard of Animexx.

The two fandoms are not entirely separated, though. I do meet quite a few Germans on

fanficrants, and many people on my flist are Germans (writing in English, but they will at least heard of some of the things I’m talking about) and there are a number of people in German fandom who are in English fandom as well. But the topics that are discussed are often separate. While the English fandom talked about racefail, ff.de was told to delete the fanfictions for a certain book series by the author’s lawyers. Something that hasn’t happened in German fandom before, at least to my knowledge. While people in the German fandom argued about the new rating system on ff.de, English fandom squeed about Dreamwidth. And I do both, but almost never with the same people or in the same space.

Dreamwidth will make it harder for me to have one place for both of my personas. The Archive of Our Own and the OTW might make it easier, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to have just one fan personality.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I got here via a link from

frogspace, and just wanted to say:

>>I started reading the AnimaniA when I was fourteen. I doubt more than a few of you ever touched that magazine, but I loved it.

I started to read it when I was eighteen, and I loved it, too. It changed my life.^^

Of course the old AnimaniA was superior. *nods* It just wasn't the same after #40.

I think the AnimaniA was at least partly responsible for some manga/anime being published in Germany. Without their article about Weiß Kreuz I would have never become a fan of that series. (other examples: Basara and Angel Sanctuary)

Yeah, after #40 I followed the old staff to the MangaScene.^^;

I also remember the good ol' times when you could buy every new volume of all in Germany published Mangas with a student's pocket money.^^

Yeah, after #40 I followed the old staff to the MangaScene.^^;

Me too.

And my brother liked manga back then as well, so despite not having much pocket money, we could buy every new volume and the old ones.

Nowadays I can't even keep track of the few series I'm still reading.

heh, I never really bought AnimaniA (too expensive and all), but when I did I was incredibly bothered by all the spelling and grammar mistakes. There is no genitive apostrophe in German gah. >:( maybe that was already the 'new guard' edition, I don't know...

I didn't really care about grammar back then, but the articles used to be a) long, b) detailed and full of geeky in-jokes and c) written in to include the opinion of the writer. Sometimes the articles were really funny and full of irony, sarcasm and wit, and I loved that.

Same here. I even remember standing in the Fantasy Shop and explaining to my boyfriend why we were not going to buy the same magazine anymore.

(And then buying a bulk of 8 manga without cringing over the feeling of suddenly being poor. Oh, the nostalgia.)

Oy, how could I miss this post??? Thanks to

frogspace I did still find it, phew. This is super-fascinating, and the thing is -- I'm fascinated by how similar our Sozialisation (see! another beautiful word without a decent translation ;P) is -- I totally would understand you if you talked about yaoi.de/animexx (I got on both around 2001, and every now and then I realize of deeply I am still influenced by that -- e.g. in arguing definitions or naming conventions with English fen!), even though I branched off into English fandom exclusively around...phew, 2004 2005 or so?

And it strikes me, and fascinates me, how there are these seemingly somewhat discrete traditions in German fandom -- apart from individual developments, I mean. Pre-yaoi-crowd maybe? Closer to old-school slash.

frogspace, for example, seems to be from that crowd, even though that is of course grossly simplified -- she does write about having submitted a boy x boy story one time, after all. (I commented to her entry here).

(Don't worry, almost nobody on my flist was interested in this entry.)

umm ... "socialisation"?

Yes, 2004/2005 was also the time when I largely left German fandom as a reader (I do still read in German sometimes, but it's really hard to find decent stories without rec-lists). Didn't Animexx used to have a rec function? I could have sword it did, but I can't find it anymore.

The pre-yaoi(oh how I hate that term, it's shounen-ai, goddammit)-crowd also seems to be rooted in a pre-internet culture. Maybe they are old-school media fen while most of the German internet fandom is at least influenced by anime/manga fandom? I know I had to work quite hard on overcoming the naming conventions where the name before the / was the seme, and I still can't read some characters as ukes. (And I use seme/uke quite frequently.)

I also think most of the old school media fen migrated to LJ (unlike the rest of German fandom), but I can't say that I met many of them in archives or forums.

*swirls cape* yeah, but now I am part of your f-list! Ha-haaa! ...;P

(socialisation? really? Somneone once told me it ws not quite the same, but maybe they were lying! hah.)

I actually asked

frogspace about that, because I just...don't know anything about the development of German media fandom (as opposed to German yaoi fandom. Sorry. It's shorter ^^;) Oh, yeah, the use of 'shounen ai' in itself is a German peculiarity -- most international fandoms now use BL. (ONE day I need to finish writing that Fanlore article on the usage of 'yaoi'!)

*points to last line* I used to use the Japanese smilies exclusively until a few years back -- I abandoned the habit once I'd been thoroughly absorbed by English media-fandom. Heh.

I suppose because I'm a reader, not a writer, leaving my native language behind was easier. But speaking of which, I talked to

xavie a while back, about what we really loved about the

ficathon_de challenge -- rediscovering to write fannishly in your own language. She's never been in yaoi fandom, as far as I know. It's just, most people are just... *better at it*. And like you, I dislike the idea of seeing German as inferior -- it's just that there's hasn't been all that much ground covered, so sure it's harder to write, say, sex scenes in German at first. *shrugs*

Open up yet another strand, this time German people assimilated into English media-fandom re-discovering their own language, and trying to find an audience? I'm not sure if there are enough re-patriates for this to succeed...but I'd sure like to try.

I think this idea of giving native (=Germans socialised into) media fans a place to pool their writing, and through this, hey, maybe pool the scattered audiences -- this is what I would LOVE to see to come out of the OTW Archive translation. There is certainly enough infrastructure in place for native yaoi fen. Though, of course, I'd argue that our infrastructure is better ;P

(My committee is trying to badger coders into writing a 'translation of...' feature into the Archive that links back to the original story and vice versa. That would be so.fucking.awesome.)

edited to fix code

Edited 2009-05-03 13:55 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, the use of 'shounen ai' in itself is a German peculiarity -- most international fandoms now use BL.

Still, I don't like it. Even though the Japanese now use BL themselves. And yes, it definitely is peculiar to German fandom (And I thought about editing the fanlore article about ten times already as well.)

But speaking of which, I talked to xavie a while back, about what we really loved about the ficathon_de challenge -- rediscovering to write fannishly in your own language.

Me too, but since they're on LJ and I'm not a big porn writer (no matter the language), I generally miss out on the fun. I did participate in the Wünsche Wochen last Christmas, though.

And I agree, certain things like sex scenes seem harder to write in German. I think it's because on the one hand we lack a certain emotional distance to words like "Schwanz" and on the other most of us are simply so much more used to reading English smut.

Open up yet another strand, this time German people assimilated into English media-fandom re-discovering their own language, and trying to find an audience? I'm not sure if there are enough re-patriates for this to succeed...but I'd sure like to try.

I'm not even sure how many actually left German fandom and how many are sort of ... split. I'm always in favour of German goodfic. And something I would really like is a Yuletide-like fic exchange in German, but I wouldn't know the first thing about how to start and promote something like that.

(My committee is trying to badger coders into writing a 'translation of...' feature into the Archive that links back to the original story and vice versa. That would be so.fucking.awesome.)

OMG that would be super doubleplus awesome! Like on the OTW website with "this content is also available in German/English/Swahili". And what committee are you talking about now *iz confused*?

Go and edit that article!!! Chances are that I, uh, wrote/started it, and I suck :> it'd be awesome if you did!

I chatted about that with

lenija when I met her, about the porn theme being exhausted for now. But really, what about teaming up with the people doing

ficathon_de, suggesting that kind of challenge? I know it's hard to establish something like that on one's own, so why not synergize and use existing ressources? Might be worth looking into, though I know

lenija really deosn't have much time atm.

I'm not even sure how many actually left German fandom and how many are sort of ... split.

...There seem to be quite a few who 'left' (or rather, just drifted out of German fandom, into the beautiful plenty of English-speaking fandom.) Just my very subjective impression, though, from randomly talking to people here and there.

OMG that would be super doubleplus awesome! Like on the OTW website with "this content is also available in German/English/Swahili". And what committee are you talking about now *iz confused*?

Translation committee, sorry!

hl is our brand-new member, btw :> she brought it up again in our meeting yesterday. And it's so good to hear so much support for the feature request, it makes it a lot easier for us to argue for it to coders if we can show how excited people are!

Go and edit that article!!! Chances are that I, uh, wrote/started it, and I suck :>

So do I. And I've wanted to edit the Boldthrough article for ages as well because it basically doesn't exist, but I feel insecure about writing in English. If I didn't, I would edit like crazy.

But really, what about teaming up with the people doing ficathon_de, suggesting that kind of challenge? I know it's hard to establish something like that on one's own, so why not synergize and use existing ressources?

I don't know them well enough and I am kind of shy. I mean, I do know

lenija, but I haven't talked to

khana in over two years and I don't know the third one at all. I know I liked the Wünsche Wochen a lot, but that was rather short notice and not really as organised (and would haven been more fun on DW with the higher character limit).

...There seem to be quite a few who 'left' (or rather, just drifted out of German fandom, into the beautiful plenty of English-speaking fandom.) Just my very subjective impression, though, from randomly talking to people here and there.

I think a survey would probably be interesting. I know I sometimes meet people on ff.de or LJ who are active in both fandoms, but I have no idea how many are active in what way in which fandom.

she brought it up again in our meeting yesterday. And it's so good to hear so much support for the feature request, it makes it a lot easier for us to argue for it to coders if we can show how excited people are!

I didn't miss a meeting again, did I? And I think most translation volunteers would be excited. All we would need to celebrate this is a challenge to translate fic.

Oooh interesting idea! A survey linked from metafandom and German language comms would probably even get some responses. Which language do you use for participating in fandom? what do you mainly use for writing fic? meta? etc. (of course, it'd have to be in both English and German ;P)

Maybe also like, 'where did you start out at' (i.e. yaoi-based, media fandom, science fiction fandom, other...)

also, no, no worries, I mean our weekly committee meeting -- this is independent from the individual language team work :)

Aw man, you are such an awesome font of suggestions! Promote this feature by a translation challenge!!! * &hearts madly*

...we'd need to wait for the archive to go into open beta for that, though ^^;

And French, Japanese, Spanish, Italian and whatever other language you can fit in.

...we'd need to wait for the archive to go into open beta for that, though ^^;

Yup, and it might work best if author's volunteered their work so that the translators don't have to work up the nerve and ask, that has always been my problem.

oh, we're absolutely up for stuff other than porn at

ficathon_de, and would be happy for topic ideas and stuff. (I'm still all for a fluff challenge, but haven't managed to convince anyone else, yet...)

lenija is still busy with finishing uni and all that, but

peaches and me shoudl be available for cooperation. :)

that said, what you wrote about the double-fandom ness seems familiar. I read MangaSzene rather than Animania (it was probably just later...), discovered fandom via animexx, and then delved into the depths of originalbishounen.de, as yaoi.de was for anime/manga at that point and I was never really into the fandom aspects of any manga/anime.

by now, i hardly read any german fanfics, unless they turn up on my flist, or someone recs them. I haven't really written fic in a while, but even though i usually loved writing in German, and did so often enough in the Potter-fandom, I don't think it's something I'll keep up now that I'm in a largely english-speaking fandom. (bandom) Plus, hearing all the interviews in english, the one or two times I tried writing a bit in German with the characters just wouldn't work. The dialogue was all wrong...

Hmm, I'll work on a concept (if I don't forget it again, that is).

I don't think it's something I'll keep up now that I'm in a largely english-speaking fandom. (bandom) Plus, hearing all the interviews in english, the one or two times I tried writing a bit in German with the characters just wouldn't work. The dialogue was all wrong...

I understand that. Seriously, I do. Writing the Pushing Daisies fanfic for Wünsche Wochen was hard enough because while I had watched the German dub, I had just finished re-watching the first season in English and that was confusing. And the Merlin fic I'm working on is in English, because I had a hard time thinking it in German.

It's just so strange, because I never really had a problem with writing Potter in German, or Tamora Pierce-fic. Okay, so I started out reading the German translations of both, but it's still strange that I could adapt when it was written dialogue, and apparently can't when it's dialogue I heard, and the characters have distinct voices. And it is a bit annoying, because I do like writing in German...

If you come up with several concept or something, we can just make a poll again. By now we know quite well how to organize these things without too much work for us, so I think we'd manage fine, once we have ideas again. Just, the last one had so few people actually writing that we lack a bit of motivation to come up with another challenge...

I can switch languages sometimes and sometimes I can't. It's weird.

The last challenge was porn, wasn't it? And I hardly ever spend time on LJ and maybe

lenija forgot to advertise properly (I know she forgot to tell me about your Christmas drabble thing until it was too late).

I also liked the fic exchange aspect of Wünsche Wochen a lot, because I got something in return. And the wishes were all over the place, fandom- and topic-wise. You could write porn if you liked, or fluff.

yes, the last one was porn, in celebration of the first oen, which was also porn, exactly a year before. inbetween, we had the KINK vs GEN battle (ecause readers couldn't decide what they rather wanted. not that everything was really kinks or really just gen. most was somewhere inbetween, really.), then we had the christmas exchange thing, which was fun, but probably had not quite enough participants. and you're right, wishes are usually quite diverse, fandom-wise.
we probably should think about advertising outside of lj and the comms where everyone knows that it's coming up, anyway. will see about that next time.

(the christmas drabble thing had way too many participants as it is, without advertising all over the place. a few more won't matter, but as long as I don't figure out how to script something that does the sorting of wisher and writer for me, I don't think I can manage many more people...)

we probably should think about advertising outside of lj and the comms where everyone knows that it's coming up, anyway. will see about that next time.

Definitely. The ff.de forums might be a good choice, if they allow such a thing, and I don't know about Animexx, haven't been there in ages.

I'm available for cooperation, too! If I don't fail the exam, and I don't intend to, I will have finished uni in two weeks, so...
I'm also all for starting something bigger at ficathon_de. How about we meet in a chat in two weeks and exchange ideas? (I mean we, the three community mods, and everyone here in this discussion who wants to contribute ideas?)

Sounds like a plan.

Good luck, btw, in case you submerge yourself in your studies from now on.

And it's so good to hear so much support for the feature request, it makes it a lot easier for us to argue for it to coders if we can show how excited people are!
Please! Another voice adding to the request for the
Ever since I knew there was a translating team I've been hoping someone had thought of that.

Thanks for letting me know! :)

(deleted comment)

Sure, I would assume they're still active, but -- seriously, how would I know?

I wonder if someone would be up for writing a Short Histors of German Media Fandom (lol) for Fanlore (in German, in English, doesn't matter...I could always translate it.) But, while I am somewhat in love with this idea, I am currently in no position to run around and solicit help/writers, heh (I have procrastinated on settung y'all up as transaltors at the archive as it is...*cough*) Maybe another time...and then I shall use the ressources you linked :3

(deleted comment)

I lost count how many times I went "wait! That person is a native German speaker?", really. *g*

(deleted comment)

Okay, maybe I ought to....podfic it and hand it in at

amplificathon

*is amazed about her beautifully dastardly plan*

the only flaw being, of course, that I'd need your consent. It was a good plan while it lasted, though! ;P

Hi! (Here from

lian)

I clicked, very interested in reading this, because I'm Argentinian and, like you, am not truly bilingual. I only did a very short stunt on Spanish fandom, (turns out that misspellings in Spanish bother me much much more!) but lately I've friends that are more in it, so I was curious about what did it mean for the fan to be in the two different fandoms.

All I can think of, now, is that 99% of the stuff you say I could take out 'German fandom' and put in 'Jane Austen Fandom' and it would hold true. Seriously, though it's in English, the fannish culture is completely different from the rest of fandom, and the issues are very similar to those you described!

(turns out that misspellings in Spanish bother me much much more!)

Funnily enough, they bothered me more in English because when I started out I never knew if a word was misspelled or simply a totally different word that I didn't know yet.

All I can think of, now, is that 99% of the stuff you say I could take out 'German fandom' and put in 'Jane Austen Fandom' and it would hold true. Seriously, though it's in English, the fannish culture is completely different from the rest of fandom, and the issues are very similar to those you described!

... Now you've got me wondering about the German Jane Austen Fandom (yes, it exists, there even is an archive, as I found out a few weeks ago).

... Now you've got me wondering about the German Jane Austen Fandom (yes, it exists, there even is an archive, as I found out a few weeks ago).

Yes, I know! There are some people in the English JA fandom that come from the German JA fandom. :D

The world is a very small place indeed.

Mexican here :D -- and how true all

rodo says here is, that even if I know you're an Spanish speaking fan as I am, I prefer to post this in English.

Spanish fandom is too difficult for me to deal for many reasons:

a) people doesn't seem to know what 'In Character' is, either because they are too young and/or inexperienced when it comes to writing and most of their works would be categorized as bad!fic if they were to be post in the English-spoken fandom; or the series/programs (I'm talking media here) are dubbed rather than having subtitles attached, and voice actors/scrip translators modify what the original characters said, adding local jokes and such.

b) the Spanish language (at least the Mexican, which is the one I know) has its own version of netspeak, very phonetically sounding -- lots of 'k' instead of 'c' and 'q' for example -- and many fans use it while writing and commenting. I don't think of it as 'misspelling' because they do it on purpose; which makes it even more cringe-worthy.

c) related to the previous point: the problem that sometimes arises with the use of American/British/Australian English? Well, there are far many more variants of the Spanish language -- or at least that seems to me. Spain, Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, Bolivia, Perú, Cuba ... each one of them has its own variant of the same language.

d) fandom in Spanish speaking countries caters to anime and manga, or at least it seems like that from my perspective. Furthermore, these are fandoms that you usually don't find in English sites, which makes the net a very frustrating place.

e) there are not enough Spanish speaking people in the fandom corner of the net I like, which is where the fic and meta are. This makes the possibility of finding a nice net place where to stay for a while really, really difficult.

Well, there are far many more variants of the Spanish language -- or at least that seems to me.

Having learned (and subsequently forgotten - I don't remember anything beyond "me gusta") at least half the regional Spanish language terms for methods of transportation - Word. It's even worse than German, and I think a lot of English speakers would be amazed at the amount of local variety in the comparatively tiny German speaking world.

dubbed rather than having subtitles attached, and voice actors/scrip translators modify what the original characters said, adding local jokes and such.

I actually like that, if it's done in an interesting way (some German dubs are famous and popular because of it). And a fanfic written for that version could still be IC - for the dubbed version, that is. And English anime fandoms tend to have this problem too. Raito or Light? ;-)

The problem with dubbed series is that they are not always dubbed once, but three or more times -- Spain', Cuba and Argentinean's Spanish are remarkably different to the rest of Latin America (and between themselves), in their grammatical forms. Where the verbs are in a phrase or how the verbs are written (their endings), for example, vary vastly.

So if the local dubbing is locally spiced, you end with many different canons. How a character refers to others, how respectful they are/are not tends to be very different in English and in Spanish. Oh, and in anime, at least we don't see all the slaughtering the USA networks usually air -- most changes from the original animes are on the characters' names, not in their relationships/preferences :).

The English language isn't really big on distinguishing between levels of politeness (oh the joy it brings to translate an English website ...). So it's sometimes really weird to listen to the dubs sometimes (the Doctor Who dub comes to mind). And don't even get me started on Japanese politeness. Translating that is a pain.

The net speak in Spanish really really bugs me, you're right. I had forgotten about it, but it was one of the things that really put me off.

Reading in Spanish is also complicated for what you say... I'm used to reading Spanish from Spain (our translations are always in that one) but other Spanish variants--not Argentinian--are a little jarring to read in fiction. Not that I can't understand them--but it never sounds right. I can probably train myself to get over it--I think I should.

I think despite not liking the idea of it... that it's partly because English is prestigious.

When I start to think: But writing fiction in English is easier! It sounds cooler! The grammar is simpler and more flexible! They have more vocabulary! I have to stop and start to consider if somehow some sort of propaganda has not gotten into me, seriously.

And about writing in English to other Spanish speakers, you don't say! It's my first instinct still. Now that my co-writer is Spanish I'm getting more used to chatting and so on in Spanish, and I'm actually liking it, which surprises me a fair bit. I think that at first writing/chatting in English was really kinda fun all the time, no matter what was actually being said, and now its charm has wore out for me.

(All that, and we're writing our fanfiction in English. Go figure.)

About fandom specifically, I remember a fair bit (though obviously smaller) of HP fandom, if that is your thing. I could dig out links (or better, ask around!) if you want.

Also, Spanish formating is different, in books and sometimes in fanfics. I find it weird! :P

No no -- Spanish is way more cool. English is dry. *waves little Spanish is best flag*.

I tell to myself that replying in English to a fellow Spanish speaker is justified when others readers could find what I'm saying interesting, and they most possibly would only understand English. Also, writing in a language this journal's owner surely wouldn't get would be rude.

Right? :P

Also, yes I am in HP, links are welcome. I am mostly a Snape fangirl because he's awesome :DDD

And in Spanish I am/was mostly in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Las Tortugas Ninja) and Captain Tsubasa (Supercampeones).

I was at my parents' and missed this post - too bad, I would have loved to enter the discussion.

I came into fandom a bit later than you, and started to read manga only a few years ago, so I've never been on animexx or yaoi.de. At some point I left fanfiktion.de, too, because I don't agree with some of their policies (some of which might just be German policies, I notice) but didn't feel there was the right atmosphere to discuss any of my concerns. The only place where I'm still in German speaking fandom is livejournal, where many people have finally started to write their fic in English.
But still many experiences you describe sound familiar to me, especially the feeling of being split into several personas. It helps to be able to tie this to the two different communities -- the way you just can't discuss certain questions with one group or the other, because you would need to add pages and pages of links and footnotes, and even of anyone would read what you linked to, they still wouldn't know what it's like to be part of that discourse (racefail09, for example, or Jugendschutz on the other side), even if you're only marginally involved.

For me, there's also still a large language barrier. I don't trust my English skill enough to participate in complex discussions. The problem is, if I can't (or won't) discuss the English speaking fandom's meta problems with English speaking fen, there's no one left I can discuss them with.

There should be more posts like this one. I think it's important that we talk about our different backgrounds in order to... well, help sharpen everyone's perception. Show that diversity is not theoretical.

(Und nun hab ich schon wieder große Furcht, mich schlecht ausgedrückt zu haben, weil mir auf englisch die Genauigkeit fehlt, die ich für meine Definitionen und Fußnoten brauche.)

Du bist sooo ein Dussel! Das war doch total perfekt! o_O;

anyway. :) maybe

ficathon_de should do a podfic challenge, you know? Or maybe just ask people to go over to

amplificathon -- a cooperation?

(see

general_jinjur commente here about her not knowing how to 'getting the word out'.)

edited -- Jesus, I fail at closing tags today!!!

Edited 2009-05-03 14:44 (UTC)

Hey, kannst auch ruhig auf Deutsch antworten. Im InsaneJournal habe ich mit

mllesatine und

anotherslashfan auch auf Deutsch geredet. Ich wollte ja auch noch eine deutsche Variante des Posts schreiben, aber da fiel es mir dann irgendwie schwer, mich auf Deutsch auszudrücken. *seufz*

For me, there's also still a large language barrier. I don't trust my English skill enough to participate in complex discussions.

I know the feeling. I sometimes stuff my foot in my mouth because I have the same problems in English that I do in German (I like to forget words or parts of sentences) on top of the inability to say certain things as precise in English as I would in German (God, I love the Konjunktiv).

General discussions I can follow most of the time, but sometimes meta is so academic that I just know I'm missing some of the background and that part of that background has to do with language.

There should be more posts like this one. I think it's important that we talk about our different backgrounds in order to... well, help sharpen everyone's perception. Show that diversity is not theoretical.

I think I discussed that with someone a while back. We all tend to assume that the other persons in fandom have similar backgrounds and most of the time that might be true, but sometimes it just isn't, and it shows. In discussions on race, for example, Germans have a totally different background because for us, it's not black people, it's mainly the Turkish immigrants (and it used to be people from Southern Europe and Eastern Europe, all of which are caucasian), and the fact that they bring a foreign culture into our country, which is at the center of the non-fandom discussion.

In discussions on race, for example, Germans have a totally different background

Absolutely. The two discourses interlink, but it only works if you're aware that there are two discourses. Actually I've been wanting to write a post about this, I've already written bits of it in my mind. Let's see if I ever get it done, or if someone else will.

Oh, and re: entering the discussion in German - I didn't want to, because I think I need to jump over that imaginary barrier in my mind, and because I think a discussion like this one shouldn't exclude people who don't speak German. But thanks anyway! :)

Edited 2009-05-03 15:07 (UTC)

Meta is great! I hope you do get it done. As I mentioned at the beginning I've attempted to write this post more than once as well (and in the end, it became quite long).

And this way, the non-English speaking people will be excluded. It's a vicious circle.

(deleted comment)

heh, yeah, you reminded my why I was so opposed to fanfiktion.de right from its inception and never even considered getting on there. Fanlib of the day, back then (though, yeah, bad comparison, but it does convey the kind of absolute distaste I had for the whole venture.) But that was probably just absorbed from the crowd I hung around, more cautious and critical, maybe.

Fanfiction Paradis is still online, but not very active.

And yes, the infamous blog post (link to a meta post where it was linked in the comments.) ... I think

lenija even wrote a comment on it, and most of us weren't impressed.

he grabbed at least fanfictionland.com, as well. I got the mail (and like a good little author, went and registered and uploaded...), and i was only on that one and animexx.

when he started a blog

Jep, that was where I decided that I wasn't interested to enter into a discussion with him and his fans, ever. He insulted everyone who seemed to be against him, cuddled his fanboys and fangirls and ignored balanced arguments. I'm not having that kind of "discussion" as long as I can avoid it.

I didn't knew that (well, how could I, seeing that I'm a newby who started in autumn 2004 and never went beyond animexx till at least a year later, when LöschDich lured me to lj). I didn't knew that, but it doesn't surprise me. Whenever I had something to do with the high and mighty maintainers of ff.de, they ignored me or told me in no uncertain terms that my requests (like getting a better category search which also includes het and gen) were not important enough to even get on their to-do list, although it wasn't just me asking for it.

Here from

lian! This was so interesting to me – I'm Austrian, but I think I found fandom early enough (X-Files when it was just transitioning from usenet to mailing lists) that there just wasn't much of a German fandom to get involved with online. (Fic-writing fandom, that is; there were fansites.) So it's always been English-speaking fandom for me, and I'm glad for it.

I've tried looking into German fandom a couple of times, but I always end up feeling seriously uncomfortable, happy to return to the modes of communication I'm used to – as you said, many of the meta institutions (fw, metafandom) are missing, and I think that's the reason German fandom has retained a certain ... naïveté that I find frustrating.

Gah, I don't want to be offensive and I'd happily be corrected on this point. But I think because German fandom appears to be so strongly rooted in anime/yaoi fandom, there's a tendency to simplify the characters, stick more closely to the idea of tops and bottoms, bash/ignore the female characters, etc. And that's why I got so fed up with yaoi fandoms in the first place. Not saying there's not a lot of bad slash out there, just that I'm not sure I've ever read a German fic I really loved.

I think in the end German fandom just doesn't offer me anything that interests me. I generally dislike reading/watching anything in translation because meaning always gets lost, so I really don't see the point of doing it in fandom. I like the vastness and diversity and cleverness of international fandom. Conversely, I like being accessible to as many people as possible. The one thing I do regret is that I don't get to hone my writing skills in my own language nearly as much as I do in English, but that's just ... nowhere near enough to draw me away from international fandom.

(Also, wow, "Schwarzleser," seriously?)

many of the meta institutions (fw, metafandom) are missing, and I think that's the reason German fandom has retained a certain ... naïveté that I find frustrating.

Yes, it's rather ... headdesk-inducing. I just can't help it. I love the German language, and I like writing in German, even though I sometimes to try to write in English as well.

I actually had a flatmate once who read only one fic in German because the translation into English wasn't finished yet and the remaining chapters were only available in German. So there do seem to be good fanfics out there, they're just hard to find (no rec-lists).

I think it's interesting that you refer to English fandom as "international". It is international, at least partly, but I wouldn't call it truly international because it is definitely dominated by American media and fen (and British media and fen, to a certain extent). I just don't feel comfortable calling it "international" because of that. Sure, it's on its way of becoming more international (I wholeheartedly support

lilithilien's Alles Was Zählt project), but for that we need more translations – of fic and media (and meta and everything else I forgot to mention so far).

(Also, wow, "Schwarzleser," seriously?)

Yes, seriously. It's a big topic on the ff.de forums.

I think it's interesting that you refer to English fandom as "international".

I was actually dithering on that when I wrote the comment, because yeah, it's definitely dominated by English-language media and fen. But then I thought about my flist, which is all over the place – Iceland to Singapore – and I didn't want to discount that. But I agree, it's not truly international.

What's the Alles Was Zählt project?

My flist is, ironically, mostly German, but we don't actually talk in German with each other most of the time. It's weird. I also get the feeling that the international people tend to gravitate to each other in English fandom, but that's just my impression.

The Eskimo Kiss Project, so that English language fen can watch German soap operas! She writes English fanfic as well.

It's true! I've made friends with Germans even through the anonymity of a fest. Similar sensibilities, maybe. And yeah, I still tend to use English when I talk to them in comments – there are so many fandom-specific words that don't translate well. (I'm aware that not using the language doesn't exactly help with that.)

(Incidentally, a similar thing happens outside of fandom as well – I've been studying in the UK for three years and I get along with English people just fine, but all but one of my close friends are Finnish, Swiss, Czech, and so on. It's partly shared continental ideas and partly just being different from the majority together.)

And EKP: That's very neat! (Would be even better if I was into soaps more. :3) Oddly enough, I've never really thought about this, but I'm pretty sure I'd write in German if the canon I was working with was German.

(hier via frogspace, lian und sabeth, der Artikel kommt herum. ;))

(Also, wow, "Schwarzleser," seriously?)

Yes, seriously. It's a big topic on the ff.de forums.

Just wanted to express my WTF moment I had when I read this. I clearly have fallen out of German fandom for a long time already; when I was there "Schwarzleser" was not known and people whining for comments were frowned upon.

What I liked on German speaking fandom (because it's also in Austria and in Switzerland) was the sense of closeness it provided. I have met several RL friends through my times at yaoi.de. The geographical and cultural closeness was always a welcome difference to international fandoms.

*nods* yeah, German fandom just -- isn't my crowd anymore? I love reading

rodo's posts about current German fandom, because I have no clue whatsoever, having left it so long ago. The insularity
*does* have the tendency to produce the effects you describe, yes, so I'd snobbishly claim that I've 'grown out of it'. *g*

But speaking about fic: what I would love love love is what we have here in LJ-based fandom *and do it in German*. Take what we already know and do in English, that awareness and sophistication, and try it in German.

Obviously, and ironically, I value accessibility above everything else, or else I wouldn't keep my journal almost entirely in Eglish. (I respect

rodo a lot for trying to balance both languages.)

But I still strongly believe there is value in -- repatriating? Re-discovering your own language? There just might be a bigger audience than one might think -- even independent of the 'traditional' German yaoi crowd, I mean. Though the dividing lines may be a lot thinner than one may think (*points at our hostess*)

And yeah, Schwarzleser just makes me...boggle. That's pretty much the most stupid concept ever, sorry.

Hm. I am in firm agreement re: importance of re-discovering your own language. And I do like your idea of bringing together the German speaking LJ-based fans. I have no idea how you'd reach out to them, though, because I guess the whole point of this is that they wouldn't be in any of the German fandom communities. I know I'm not.

But I also just realised, and I think this may be the crux of the problem, that there aren't many media fandoms where it would make more sense (i.e. in some way improve the story/'verse) to write in German rather than in English. I mean. What's the point of making characters in a castle in Scotland or characters roadtripping through the USA speak German? You're just losing part of their personality that way. So I'm not sure what the draw would be for people who are perfectly comfortable writing/reading in English. (Because I don't think that "using German for the sake of using German" is enough of a motivation for most people to lose 99% of their readership.)

that there aren't many media fandoms where it would make more sense (i.e. in some way improve the story/'verse) to write in German rather than in English.

Hah, that is a good point, of course. But, the thing is, I have the feeling that sometimes it's more writing English for the sake of writing English -- which I can more than relate to, hello, audience!*

But sometimes I think, well, I'd like to see your hand at German, because I find your English too awkward, you know? So I'm definitely not lobbying for everyone to start writing German, just for a little more ...variety? courage? There's an overwhelming pressure to write exclusively in English, and my point is, hey, that's not your only option, dear writer! Because I'd wager most people are perfectly capable of writing in their native language :)

*(my friend

xavie writes femslash. There isn't even that large an audience in English-speaking fandom!)

(deleted comment)

I'm sorry to go completely OT here, but there was a German soap opera version of Lost? What?

(deleted comment)

O_O

Okay, I totally missed that one as well.

Yeah, and on the other hand, I even understand wanting to improve your English...but there is a certain...fetishization? That I'm uncomfortable with. But I'm sure I'm just unknowingly re-iterating someone's position in one of the bygone fights :D

But what about fandoms that have German characters or might possibly take place in Germany? (From Eroica With Love, for example.) And then there's source material that was originally written in German (Karl May, Cornelia Funke, just like there are German language TV shows and films - I actually once stumbled upon an Australian fan of the TV series Kommissar Rex) and TV shows or films that only became popular because of the idiosyncratic dub (Die Zwei).

I also think that a lot of people would like to just try it. Just because. I doubt many people write for rare pairing challenges or Yuletide because they want to do something that they'd do anyway.

Good points all. I keep thinking about writing something for Die Unendliche Geschichte and I don't think I could do that in any language other than German. Also Krabat! (Also Astrid Lindgren – Ronja Räubertocher, Die Brüder Löwenherz – just because I'm so familiar with them in German.) It'd be, like, rare-fandom squared, but it does sound like fun.

I still don't know how you'd promote it, though. Through the grapevine, since most German-speaking people do seem to have a few more German-speaking people on their flists?

P.S. I'm totally nitpicking and making things more complicated here, but please to be including the Austrians and Swiss people. Kommissar Rex is totally ours. :P

Krabat! It's amazing how much I love that book. I was 17 when I first read it!

I still don't know how you'd promote it, though.

Yes, that's always a problem. *sigh*

P.S. I'm totally nitpicking and making things more complicated here, but please to be including the Austrians and Swiss people. Kommissar Rex is totally ours. :P

Which is why I said "German language" or in German, except for the first sentence, where I simply forgot (my bad). I study German as a foreign language (well, theoretically) and my profs and teachers are very strict about the whole DACHL-thing. (And lets not forget about the German speaking minorities elsewhere!)

I think I read it for the first time in school when I was 13 or so? But I just re-read it last year (and watched the movie, too) and god, yeah, I love it so. (Now I keep thinking of more German-language movies that I want to see fic for, haha. Have you seen Napola? Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken?)

I didn't mean to jump on you about the Germany thing! I'm just so tired of people not realising that speaking German != being German. (Not you, I mean, just in general.)

Have you seen Napola? Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken?

Oh God yes! These film have so much slash potential! I think I even read meta somewhere about Napola being slashy.

I didn't mean to jump on you about the Germany thing! I'm just so tired of people not realising that speaking German != being German.

I totally get it. I jump at people for that. But sadly, I do forget sometimes.

It'd be, like, rare-fandom squared, but it does sound like fun.

I'd read those! Although if you write porn I might do a "My CHILDHOOD!" (which I am usually safe from because there isn't much fic for those books...)

Also, I think you may have hit on the reason I have such trouble reading and writing fanfic in German - because I keep trying to do it for my English fandoms and it just feels *wrong*.

Oh god no. No porn for those, I don't think. :D;; (Though I have to admit I read a Brothers Lionheart one once that was so lyrical and lovely it only felt a little wrong. That was in English, though.)

And yeah, same here! I can't believe I never realised that before.

P.P.S.: Was this post on metafandom? Should it be, perhaps?

It's linked on their delicious. I'm kind of scared.

Oh Kommissar Rex! I'm Australian, and shows like Kommissar Rex (or Inspector Rex, as it's called here) and 'Bronski and Bernstein'(which I think is German) has a certain level of popularity here, as we only have a couple of television free to air stations.

Mostly Australian television is dominated by American and British programming, but we have one station which mostly airs non-english speaking programs with sub-titles.

we have one station which mostly airs non-english speaking programs with sub-titles.

I think that's very cool. Most of the German TV programs are produced in Germany or America (and we get more and more British programs too). I think there are a handful of soap operas from France and Spanish speaking countries, but that's about it. And we can forget about the subtitles. Germans need dubs, no matter how shitty the quality of them is.

And of course there's anime as well. Why do I always forget about them?

LOL~ I remember how infuriating it was to find that many cinemas only have German dubbed films~

and I think that's the reason German fandom has retained a certain ... naïveté that I find frustrating.

Ha, excellently put! And … I have nothing more to add except that I share your impression about the yaoi/anime connection (though I did get into German fandom via AnimaniA and yaoi.de and especially yaoi.de has always been a point of reference for me, so I'm certainly not the best cartographer of German fannish communities).

Another thing that bothers me - about myself, mostly - is that I cannot get over my DO NOT WANT reaction when I read German fanfiction; I start translating things into English in my head as I'm reading along and I don't know what it is and it drives me up the wall sometimes. /ramble

Do you read stories and watch series of any kind in German at all? I think that caused some other people here to develop the Do Not Want reaction. They're just no used to it. I think I feel like that when I try to talk about gardening or cooking with English language people. It doesn't feel wrong per se but rather alien because I am not used to talk about these topics with anyone but Germans.

Excellent post! There are similarities between your experiences and what I have felt in Spanish fandom, although it does sound like you have more a foot in both spaces than I do. I started out in English fandom in the 90s and could not find another media based native Spanish speaker for a long time.

I don't think there was much going on in German fanfiction fandom in the 90s either (I could be wrong, that's

frogspace's speciality), so a lot of early fen seem to have defaulted to English more easily than the "newbies" of the 2000s.

*waves* I think German fandom is really peculiar in that it's just big enough to support its own branch, and develop its own traditions. But still, I keep wondering, how much do we not see? In the end, I believe we are always talking about not finding fellow language speakers *in our own, chosen traditions*. (as

frogspace pointed out* -- fandom does not equal fanfiction!)

*(it's in German, I'm just linking for attribution)

I started around... '99 and anime fanfiction fandom was quite consolidated.
Oh, the glory days of the Checa sisters. Julian Soullard and so many pioneers that none of my LJ friends knows. XD

this is really interesting, and a lot to think about. thank you for posting it.

this is not meant to invalidate your statement at all, since i think the phenomena (from what you say) is on a completely different scale, but i believe english language fandom does hate the reader slightly more than you say - it's just much, much less explicit. but because it's not explicit, it's harder to refute. reading/viewing fanworks is a fanwork itself, separate from leaving feedback, i think. it's largely invisible, which makes it hard to value, and when it is quantified (in pageviews or statistics) that visibility often becomes a negative element, i.e. "hundreds of you jerks read my story and only thirty left comments! you are bad people!" but reading *is* work. it takes time, which has a value. and leaving feedback is a skill that not all of us have (i don't, for one, though i do try, largely out of guilt). i think there's a lot of internalized (and sometimes stated - i know i've stated it) self-loathing in non-commenters that's actually encouraged by english-language media fandom. i think the marginalization of readers who do not create tangible fanworks (even those who do leave feedback) is one of the places that the utopian idea of the fandom stumbles, and does so badly.

anyway. you are making me think! thank you!

you just inspired me to make a 'reader -- and proud of it!' icon. Maybe with 'writer' crossed out or something.

I think I'm valuable as a non-fic-producing reader-only fan. Period. And I can't tell you how mad it makes me every time I hear a non-writer fan (say,

cathexys!) state that they are still feeling less valuable as a fan because of their different form of engagement. I mean, just. SO.ANGRY.

That's almost like claiming that women have to produce babies to be uh, valuable *as women*.

(yes, I fail at comparisons, but I feel safe going out on a totally sketchy limb here :DD)

Of course reader-only fen are valuable. What would the fic writers do without the readers? And we all know that there are never enough readers.

I discussed this with someone on

fanficrants, and she argued that from an economical point of view, readers are the most valuable commodity in fandom, because everyone wants more of them.

Hah, but what if the readers are invisible? They'd argue that they might just as well not exist. Though, you know, I think authors ought to screw their heads back on and just install stat counters, really, if their self-esteem and motivation hinges on it (it's not as if I can't sympathize with low self-esteem, really.)
But I laughed and laughed at the f_w post a while back about the 'I hate you, non-commenters, and I will guilt-trip into commenting now by...deleting my journal!eleventy!".

Always classy.

(speaking of which, will there be one in the Archive? Now I'm curious...)

Stat counters are great. Sure, not every hit is a reader, but a hit generally means that at least someone was interested in what you wrote.

And the reader might be invisible to the writer, but maybe s/he posts a rec in her journal or tells a friend. Every reader is valuable.

Erm... if you've gone and made this icon, could you share it?

I'm sorry, I didn't manage any real icon-making this week since I failed to re-install my Photoshop, so I only cobbled together the above in my auxiliary program (Paint.NET). I'll keep trying, though -- I still have a couple of ideas (don't fail me, Photoshop!!)

Do feel free to grab it, but please keep the attribution of the base :)

Snagged it. Thanks~! Will credit properly if I use it anywhere~

anyway. you are making me think! thank you!

Do I sense a future meta post here?

Because I would love to read your opinion on it. I know my experience isn't universal (part of the idea behind this post was to tell other people that their experience isn't, so ...) and it's probably different for everyone in every fandom. And this:

but i believe english language fandom does hate the reader slightly more than you say - it's just much, much less explicit. but because it's not explicit, it's harder to refute.

might be true as well and I am just not subtle enough to pick up on it.

but reading *is* work. it takes time, which has a value. and leaving feedback is a skill that not all of us have

I totally agree with you here. Especially reading with the intention of reviewing/commenting/writing feedback is work because I, at least, have to concentrate more. I also read more carefully and sometimes re-read passages and make notes.

And while I am perfectly able to give concrit, I am very much unable to do it without making the writer feel bad. I have no idea why, but I just can't really convey enthusiasm online (and offline, which is why my brother stopped asking for my opinion on things he drew or designed).

"leaving feedback is a skill that not all of us have"
This is such an oft-neglected truth!

I understand that comments may be the only reward on-line fanwork producers get. But writing feedback is a form of writing too no matter how short the feedback is, and it's not easy for readers, especially those like me who aren't good enough to become a writer or metacritic.

Sometimes I wish there could be a thank you button for us inarticulate fans. Other times I just want to scream we are people too. Honestly, published writers may not get half as much feedback than fan writers do.

But they get money instead. That makes everything so much better. *nods*

Yeah, that is very true. One of my early experiences in English language Sentinel fandom was a list discussion about the general direction fanfic in that fandom had taken. Mind, not even the more contentious specific fanfic criticism (over which that fandom eventually splintered after some drawn out wars), just general comments like "I don't like it if fanfic does XY". I got actually flamed (offlist as the list itself allowed fanfic discussion but not flames) for expressing an opinion with a response that told me I should either write different fanfic myself or shut up (I think the phrase was "put up or shut up") because such "negativity" would only discourage the writers who were actually contributing to fandom. I definitely didn't feel welcome as a reader there...

Interesting thoughts!

I only ever spent about 5 seconds poking my head into German fandom and for some reason it makes my skin all itchy. I can't put a finger on it (oh, well, let's be honest, I prefer reading English to German, although I cannot explain why), but it just feels kinda wrong.

I think it's part of me hating contemporary German dubbing of TV shows (*shudders*) and I am mostly in TV fandoms.

That said, I don't mean to say that English fandom is better than German fandom, I don't know enough of the German one to form an educated decision. Maybe at some point I will poke my head in again, if I ever get sick of English.

I think it's part of me hating contemporary German dubbing of TV shows (*shudders*) and I am mostly in TV fandoms.

That might be it. And I suppose you don't watch German TV shows, right? And I do admit, some dubs are horrible. The old Rainer Brandt ones, however ...

That said, I don't mean to say that English fandom is better than German fandom, I don't know enough of the German one to form an educated decision.

I didn't think so. Some people just prefer English fandom or media and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I just love writing in German and I long for German goodfic (which I unfortunately can't find. *sigh*).

And I suppose you don't watch German TV shows, right?
I used to, but since I don't live in Germany any more and I am very much used to the british/american way of doing shows I find it hard to get into them nowadays. I know there are probably good ones out there, it's just not my thing.

I agree, some old dubbings of shows are really well done and I still don't mind watching them in German. For example ST TNG or Remington Steele.

I just love writing in German
I used to love writing/reading in German and sometimes I fear that all the English exposure has taken away my ability to enjoy my own mother tongue. Which is a bit sad, really. But then again, sometimes I do get the urge to read/write in German and I find it's not hard at all.

I used to love writing/reading in German and sometimes I fear that all the English exposure has taken away my ability to enjoy my own mother tongue.

I know the feeling. I read most of the books that I read for fun in English, except for the odd book that was translated from Turkish, French, Dutch or Japanese (unless I buy the English version of the Japanese books as well). A good part of my not-for-fun-books is in English as well.

As a result, I often think in (grammatically probably less than correct) English, despite living in Germany and using German for most day to day stuff. But when it comes to writing, it's sort of mixed. And I often have to look up the German equivalent of an English word.

I definitely think in English most of the time now. And being a German teacher, I sometimes find myself having a complete brain-freeze when trying to think of a word in either language. You know, the kind of block where you can't think of the word in either language. lol

When I write I still have to look up the odd English word now and then, though, so I think my German isn't that far gone... ;)

The funny thing is, that I still sometimes use German sentence structure in English writing and I am starting to use English sentence structure in German speaking.

Confusion all over the place!! *gg*

And sometimes a German sentence structure in English seems so wrong, but it's correct! I've even seen (wrongly applied) English sentence structure in German written by people who don't actually know much English. It's the dubs, I think.

Und ihr habt nicht zufällig Plätze für Unterrichtspraktika mit Sichtstunden wo du unterrichtest, oder? (Fragen schadet ja nichts, und irgendwann muss ich mein blödes Unterrichtspraktikum in DaF ja machen.)

Plätze für Unterrichtspraktika mit Sichtstunden
Ich frag mal, morgen. Heute ist Feiertag. Kann aber nichts garantieren. :)

Hi,

hab mal angefragt, leider können sie in der näheren Zukunft keine Praktikanten nehmen. Zu viele trainees. Sorry.

Wenn du magst kann ich dir ein paar Namen von Schulen geben wo ich schon gewesen bin, da kannst du mal per email anfragen. Wäre das was?
Wenn ja, gib mir deine email und ich schicke dir ein paar links. :)

Trotzdem danke, dass du gefragt hast.

Sorry, Adressen würden mir nichts bringen, weil ich es nicht gebacken kriege, die Leute anzuschreiben (hat was mit meinen Phobien zu tun).

Kann ich verstehen. Mir gehts so mit telefonieren. Grausig! :/

Ich habe damals mein erstes Praktikum in England über einen Prof an der Uni gekriegt, der Kontakte hierher hatte. Vielleicht ist das eine Möglichkeit für dich? Ich weiss ja nicht ob du wen in der Anglistik kennst, das wäre die beste Anlaufstelle...

Nope, ich kenne niemanden, und beim Praktikumsbüro kriege ich auch nur eine Liste mit Adressen in die Hand gedrückt, bei denen schon irgendwann mal jemand war. An meiner Uni hilft mir da leider niemand weiter. Glaub mir, ich hab's schon versucht.

That sucks. :(

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See, the German fandom I know is either on forums/archives talking German or on LJ and DW speaking English. And I remember the "heated discussions". I don't want to repeat them. If anything, I would want to work on changing the things people don't like about German fandom.

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I'm talking about those people who read and write German in German exclusively, to make it easy. But you're right, defining really isn't easy.

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Well, I've heard a lot of people say that this and that just can't be written in German because it sounds bad (sex scenes, for example), or that one should never ever read/watch the translated version of something (because the English language is superior, yes, even if you don't speak English well enough).

And, you know, German fanfiction sucks on principle, German reviewers are idiots. I'm talking about those people.

If people don't like to read in German at all, that's just fine. They might be missing out on something, but that's their choice (I'm certainly missing out on stuff in Japanese fandom). They can still interact with others in German, and they generally don't treat German fanfiction, meta, reviews or fandom interaction in general as inferior.

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For me, there's a difference between not liking German fiction and thinking (good) fiction can't be written in German. *shrug*

wait, but I was under the assumption that we had, already, decided on delineating two different traditions -- and I have the feeling

wihluta is probably talking about the yaoi -- okay, shonen ai ! - based one.

I think it really is highly problematic to be talking of 'German fandom' without any qualifier, unless it's crystal clear which context one's talking about.

I know. I gathered as much. In my head, the two are very neatly seperated most of the time. Im trying to seperate them, but at the moment it just gives me a headache.

headaches are no good. probably best if we stopped for a while :)

Nah, I got some caffeine and it'll hopefully help. My brain just isn't equipped for a

metafandom-sized amount of comments.

...and you got metafandom-level comments *before* metafandom linked. Oh my.

(but it *is* so much more interesting than the 1000th DW meta post! yeah, I'm a heretic *g*)

Yes, normally seven comments (including my replies) on one of my posts is good and now I have *goes to check* 153! (including replies) And they're all so interesting and long and well thought out too!

I'm sorry if I came over as rude. I wasn't trying to start a flamewar or trying to imply that one is better than the other. It's definitely not. It's down to people's preferences. I think fandom is a place people should enjoy and not fight about.

Just to clarify:
What I meant by "German fandom" is stories written in German and discussions about shows being in German. Which for me somehow didn't fit, which is why I didn't stay with it. It was mainly HP and SG1 related things, which I consume in English, so that was probably why.

Don't worry, the flamewars look different. ;-)

And I think part of the confusion is that "German fandom" is a term with different definitions. My definition is similar to yours.

frogspace and

bettina come from an entirely different tradition, hence the confusion.

(btw, your comment was #100. I'm baffled.)

Found this entry though

frogspace and it's really interesting!

I was never really in the German fandom. At least not the part that exclusively wrote and read fanfiction in German. Mostly, because it seemed very yaoi/manga heavy, which wasn't my thing at all.

On the other hand, I found "international" fandom through many, many German speaking fans. Most of us were into media fandoms and since media fandom back then (mid-90s) was pretty much just available in English that's what we used as well.

Of course there were people, who wrote in German, but most of the stories seemed weird to me. Not because of the German language, but I knew the source in English and then there was a German story about it and it all sounded so wrong. I had the same problem the one time I wrote a Buffy story in German. I just didn't know what vocabulary to use, because I'd never seen Buffy in German.

I still consider it German fandom, though, we are all German speakers, but we just interact with everyone else in English. If that makes sense.

I still consider it German fandom, though, we are all German speakers, but we just interact with everyone else in English. If that makes sense.

It does.

frogspace uses the same definition, but my definition of German fandom is the one used in those circles you didn't frequent (and it's not quite as anime/manga heavy anymore, not since Harry Potter came along). And that means people who consume/produce/discuss in German (not exclusively, but that is the definition used in the German fandom circles I am used to), while English fandom is a fandom in which fans consume/produce/discuss in English. Not exclusively either, but ...

I had the same problem the one time I wrote a Buffy story in German. I just didn't know what vocabulary to use, because I'd never seen Buffy in German.

That's a problem, especially in fantasy fandoms. I haven't read the seventh HP book in German yet, but I'm writing a fanfic set afterwards and I want to use the German terms, not the English ones. I rely on research and my betas. Curiously enough, some German HP fans resolutely refuse to use the German translation of any name or specific term.

I think I made up my German translation of "sonic lipstick" for my Sarah Jane Adventures/James Bond crossover ficlet and I know I translated the dialogue for my Heroes ficlet. There was no official translation everyone was used to, which made it easier, if you can believe it.

And that means people who consume/produce/discuss in German (not exclusively, but that is the definition used in the German fandom circles I am used to), while English fandom is a fandom in which fans consume/produce/discuss in English. Not exclusively either, but ...

I get that.

And I don't know how other German speakers feel about that, but just because the main language is English, doesn't make it any less of a German fandom. We are German speakers in media fandom. Our mailinglist is called "Querstrich," the language used there is German (although, the list is quite dead). The archive is called GSSU, which stands for German Speaking Slashers United. The stories are in English and in German.

The only difference is, I guess, that on the whole we seem invisible. We interact with the rest of media fandom in English. We consume/produce/discuss in English (most of the time anyway). *shrugs*

Curiously enough, some German HP fans resolutely refuse to use the German translation of any name or specific term.

That's interesting. Even when they only know the German translation? Or do most of them know the original version?

As much as people (including me) bitch about the Synchronisation of TV shows/movies or book translations, I realize it's quite hard to actually do it. There are some concepts that you can't easily translate, things that only make sense when you know the background, etc.

The only difference is, I guess, that on the whole we seem invisible.

I guess you are ;-).

Even when they only know the German translation? Or do most of them know the original version?

Once a German HP fan discovers the original version s/he seems to think it's far superior. I actually don't think that the translation sucks and I'm in a minority.

As much as people (including me) bitch about the Synchronisation of TV shows/movies or book translations, I realize it's quite hard to actually do it.

That it is. I realise most fantasy translations are less than optimal and that some dubs are *cough* lets not start on that, it's a) really hard to translate something properly, b) translators are underpayed and c) people who don't speak English/other language well enough want to watch/read the story too.

I guess you are ;-).

Heh. And sorry if I sounded a bit defensive earlier.

c) people who don't speak English/other language well enough want to watch/read the story too.

That's true. And I do have to say that there are shows that I actually prefer watching in German. XF for some reason. Or ER. :-)

I tried watching Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves in English because of Alan Rickman. Never. Again. Rickman was great, but Costner and his American accent *shudder*.

Also some shows like CSI because the scientific terms are more transparent in German. And some other shows (Pushing Daisies, Life on Mars) I actually watch in both languages.

I tried watching Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves in English because of Alan Rickman. Never. Again. Rickman was great, but Costner and his American accent *shudder*.

Hah. There are certainly shows/movies where I wish we could have a mix of the German dubbing and the original version. Like for instance

Highlander

. I love Methos and his real voice, but I hate Duncan McLeod's real voice, I much prefer his German voice. *g*

Also,

Bill und Ted's verrückte Reise durch die Zeit

is a thousand times better in German!

Wow, as I read the comments, German and Spanish fandom look more and more alike. For us, HP was a turning point too. I remember when SLam Dunk writers, for example, started to write Draco/Harry.

And word on the vocabulary issue.

Very interesting post. I can relate to a lot of this, having spent time in both English and Japanese-language fandom. It's really frustrating sometimes trying to bridge the cultural gap, especially when both sides tend to make value judgements about the other (i.e. much of Japanese fandom views foreign fans as rude, intrusive art thieves, whereas it often seems like a large part of English fandom [not my neck of the woods, but slash/Western media fandom, meta-writing fans, acafen, etc] regard Japanese fandom as unsophisticated, juvenile, uncaring about characterization, etc.) which they would realize are patently untrue if they were only able to read each others' languages. I can't count the number of times I've heard "Oh, but Japanese fandom doesn't write fanfic, do they?" from English-speaking fans, gah. It seems like German-language fandom is more off the radar for most English-fandom readers -- or at least it always has been for me, since I sadly don't know any German -- so it's interesting to hear about these sorts of cultural differences.

I actually found Japanese fanfic once (and was too lazy to read through it, I should, would be good for my abysmal Japanese skills). Do you have any links (and no, I'm totally not asking because I once thought I might want to write my thesis about Japanese fanwork culture)?

And the way I understood it, fanfic is just called doujinshi as well, or am I confusing something?

I also think that the language barrier between German and English isn't as high as the one between English/German and Japanese. I know I think Japanese is way more complicated than English, mainly because English is kind of like the dialect spoken where I grew up. But on the other hand, there are very few German source materials that people write English fic for. I linked to the Eskimo Kiss Project in reply to one of

sabeth's posts, which is basically the fansubbing of a German soap, and that's a really rare thing to happen in English fandom.

Doujinshi can refer to fanfic if it's in the form of a printed work, but primarily it refers to the printed matter/comic/fanzine itself -- like, on Japanese sites you'll often see a list of printed doujinshi the the site maintainer has put out, and it might be described as, say, "Doujinshi containing fanfic and several pages of manga" or somesuch. In Japanese, fanfic is mostly referred to as 小説 (shousetsu, usually translated as 'novels', although many are the length of what we'd think of in English as a short story). You sometimes also see it called ノベル, SS (whether that's short for shousetsu or the English 'short story' I've never been sure XD;), 短編／長編 (for short stories/long stories respectively), 二次創作 (niji sousaku or 'secondary works' -- this can refer to manga/fanart/etc. as well as fic), and probably a couple other terms I'm forgetting... Occasionally the English 'fanfiction' is also bandied about as ファンフィクション or ファンフィック, though Japanese fandom seems to understand the term as a synonym of 'niji sousaku' rather than referring exclusively to stories/writing. JP fandom also has some categories of fic like ドリーム小説 that don't really have equivalents in English fandom.

Just as an example, here's one fic site I enjoy; she primarily writes CrossKomui, a fairly rare pairing of the D.Gray-man fandom.

Personally, I find German much more unfathomable than Japanese, but then I've spent over a decade of my life studying the latter while barely knowing anything about the former. 8D; I don't think Japanese is nearly as difficult as many people make it out to be, but it does seem like that perceived difficulty contributes to the barrier between English and Japanese fandom. Of course, again it doesn't help that each side has some bad prejudices and misconceptions about the other side either. I think many Japanese fans are happy not to have many non-Japanese participating in their online activities, because art theft by English-speaking fandom is so prevalent and is such an affront to Japanese fandom's idea of proper etiquette -- everybody lives in fear of having their stuff stolen, it seems.

♥

I think the term 二次創作 is really interesting, because the emphasis is not on the "fan" but on them being derived from something else.

And yes, Japanese is nowhere near as difficult as people make it out to be, but I had shitty teachers and then they thought that two years at university would be enough to let us read Mishima! (Seriously, Akutagawa in old fashioned Japanese was easier than Mishima's ramblings about culture.) Plus: I'm still thoroughly unable to write or speak Japanese and I tend to miss the subject of the sentence. Kanji are the easiest part of Japanese (it's when they don't use kanji when it's getting complicated).

I think many Japanese fans are happy not to have many non-Japanese participating in their online activities, because art theft by English-speaking fandom is so prevalent and is such an affront to Japanese fandom's idea of proper etiquette

That always makes me wonder how English fans would react of it would happen to them. I know I was a bit put out when someone copied one of my poems and posted it in a forum (found it while googling my name), and I think most people would prefer being asked before someone uses their stuff.

I know what you mean... the hypocrisy of it drives me mad. English-speaking fandom gets up in arms at any accusation of fanfic plagiarism, but 99% of art-theft is handwaved as 'oh, but they only borrowed it because they like it so much, they don't mean anything malicious'. Whether they meant to hurt feelings or not, I think a lot of fans don't realize just how hugely hurtful such an act is under the mores of Japanese fandom. From their point of view it makes foreign fandom look pretty crass -- not only do we borrow images from the original work to decorate our sites and blogs, we don't respect the creator's absolute right to control who sees her work and where it's posted. I think part of it, maybe, is that English-speaking fans aren't aware of just how much emphasis Japanese fandom places on privacy and secrecy. English fans talk about their pairings in public even outside conventions, post their porn fic to public spaces where lots of people can read it, and generally celebrate a culture of openness. Whereas Japanese fans often do their best to hide that they're fans at all, let alone yaoi writers/artists; they post their stories and art to personal sites where they control everything about how it's presented and who can access it; they go to great lengths to keep from being indexed in search engines; and far from posting porn in public, many will make you hunt around for secret hidden links or even make you personally email them for a password before you can look at their more sexual work (which in many cases won't even go beyond some mild nudity and kissing). Not to say that English-speaking fans don't worry about their privacy, because obviously we do, but I think Japanese fandom's obsession with flying under the radar and not letting the 'mainstream' know of its existence is several orders of magnitude beyond what most English fans are prepared to understand.

Hey, a lot of English language artists are rather peculiar about who uses their art for what as well.

Whether they meant to hurt feelings or not, I think a lot of fans don't realize just how hugely hurtful such an act is under the mores of Japanese fandom.

I don't think they even consider that, to be honest. I think most people's thoughts just go "Hey, cool picture ... hmm, person is a Japanese, they won't notice what I did anyway *snatch*". After all, the language barrier is also a kind of protection for the English speaking fans in this case. Who are the Japanese supposed to complain to anyway? And in what language?

I think English fans prefer to protect their privacy by using pseuds and favouring non-personal websites that don't have their names attached to them. I don't know how Japanese fans handle it (I just assumed they used pseuds as well).

It's the same bizarre etiquette disconnect that causes people to have no trouble to use images they "found" on the internet (whether photos, art, textures whatever) without any attribution, but if something like two sentences are copied and adapted for a punch line when it is text, it counts as "plagiarism". It drives me mad in comic fandom that so many people do icons from comic sources and don't even list the original artist, when there is no way to tell who did the work or to find it in the masses of comics.

I tried to track down artists from things I've seen in icons and the icon users didn't even know. The only one credited was the person who cropped the icon, and going back to them, they told me they "found" the image via google.

I've had people actually assume plenty of time that my icons come from somewhere, rather than being drawn by me, because they are so used to see art just taken, whereas I thought it was obvious they were using my drawings, what with me not crediting anyone else!

It's the same bizarre etiquette disconnect that causes people to have no trouble to use images they "found" on the internet (whether photos, art, textures whatever) without any attribution, but if something like two sentences are copied and adapted for a punch line when it is text, it counts as "plagiarism".

Maybe it's because (1) texts are much easier to track down on the internet so more authors/original posters make noise about the copying/adapting, which in turn heightens people's sensitivity towards it, (2) there are more text producers than image producers in the English fandom – majority rules, so to speak, and (3) commercial images from the TV or films companies or the media are customarily appropriated without crediting whereas published books/texts are often quoted with proper crediting so it’s not just a fandom disconnect between texts and images really.

I don't think it's fandom specific either, that's why I said "people" rather than "fans". I mean, it is extremely rare to see say a LOLcat that says where the cat photo came from, and I bet not all of the pet photos used for LOLcats were released into the public domain. So it's ubiquitous.

It's still seriously annoying me, mostly because it is so hard to track down the original artist when you like something and want to see more of their stuff, but nobody bothered to credit them.

Agreed! I often wonder where people's icons came from and their icon pages rarely say. (Though I don't usually ask, so maybe more people know than cite, but still.)

I had no idea you'd drawn your icons. They're awesome! I really appreciate it when people have distinctive icons because I can never remember anyone's online handle for more than five seconds, and I find it endlessly confusing when like five people on my flist use different versions of the same screenshot from some show I've never seen. *cough*parasol!KayliefromFirefly*cough*

Yeah, I also identify people with icons, and obviously I'm very fond of consistent and recognizable ones myself. I find them especially useful in journal and comment page styles that put poster names in unexpected places or away from the icon.

I had no idea you'd drawn your icons.

Heh, hearing this kind of thing, I always wonder where people who have seen a couple of my icons think I could possible get them from, if I wasn't drawing them myself to match my fandoms and moods.

I don't think I'd ever thought about it, to tell the truth. A lot of people do have about 400 icons from a single web comic (not drawn by them), so it's not out of the question that they could be from something, but looking at your icon page now, I see what you mean. (I mainly remember the WTF type ones, not the fandom-specific ones, probably because of where I've read your comments.)

My favorite was this one site that had a teeny weeny sentence at the bottom of the page saying something like "add the romanization of the characters in blah blah part of the page to the end of the URL to see the naughty stuff".

Sorry for the double comment, but while I'm at it, here's another site you might find more interesting -- I've never read it so I don't know what's inside exactly, but this author has a Harry Potter section on her site, and she also seems to know some English.

I hesitate to provide a ton of links here because of the aforementioned art-stealing problem -- not that I think anyone here would be so crass, but still, a lot of Japanese fans hate to see their sites linked around on English websites at all.

Thanks.

I understand it if you don't want to hurt your Japanese fandom friends. How to the art thieves find the art anyway? Google?

It varies, I think -- probably the majority of Japanese fansites take measures to avoid getting listed on normal search engines, but a few slip through the cracks here and there, and art thieves might find them that way. Also, most fandoms of any decent size have fandom-specific search engines where participants will list their sites so people inside the fandom can find each other. Once you've managed to find one of these for a given fandom, you're pretty much set, so I imagine many people looking for art use them as well.

"Oh, but Japanese fandom doesn't write fanfic, do they?"

LOL~ And I often hear "westerners can't draw". Honestly I only rec manips to my Chinese friends now.

But foreign fans are rude, intrusive art thieves! (O ho ho ho ho!)

Kidding! Kidding! But I have seen some really obviously unacceptable behavior from English-speaking fans who would never have taken without permission if they'd been dealing with an English-speaking fanartist. I mean, some fans do think it's ok to take any art from anywhere without permission, and I do understand that, but I find it interesting (and bad) that many English-speaking fans appear to treat English-speaking fanartists one way and professional manga artists and Japanese fanartists another.

I know exactly what you mean. For me, the difference is also huge—I know a bazillion people in the Brazilian fandom IRL, and have had to deal with wank aftermath (oh, we have wank! Probably more so, comparatively, than in the international fandom) in person. Which, um, awkward! But yeah. Discussions are never the same, and the only Brazilian fandomers who have any idea of what's going on in the international fandom are those who take part in it.

This gap always shocked me in HP book aftermaths—the things people discussed were so insanely different! There's not much meta-fandom discussion here (that I'm aware of). There are essays on writing, characters and stuff, but I've never seen people discussing the fandom itself, which is something I've grown to adore in the international fandom.

To be honest, I chose to distance myself from the Brazilian fandom and focus on the international one for precisely this reason. I still follow the main events, and several people, but the lack of... oh, I don't know, you can't quite call someone out for using Godwin's, and everyone's either indifferent to wank or takes it way too seriously. Many of us may hate

fandom_wank, but the fact is that it's places like that and

metafandom that helped shape the HP fandom into what it is today—and without them, it would be a far more difficult place for everyone.

Well, at least calling someone out for using Godwin's definitely isn't a problem in German fandom.

(oh, we have wank! Probably more so, comparatively, than in the international fandom)

I think the international fandom (even though I don't like the term, because it's still dominated by American and British discourses) is not that wanky precisely because the wanking culture is controlled by

metafandom (Where you can't be too wanky and have to back up your indignation with arguments),

fandom_wank (where you're mocked for behaving like an idiot) and

fanficrants (where you have to follow certain conventions when you blow of some steam).

It's really difficult for me to gauge the reactions of German fen in a discussion because they don't necessarily follow the same rules I do.

...good point. I doubt people would use Godwin's as lightly in the German fandom as they do elsewhere, though—no?

Re: 'international fandom,' I use the term loosely, more out of habit than anything. Most people I know in the Brazilian fandom who are moderately fluent in English participate in the international fandom in some way or the other, and we've all known people from all over in these communities—but yes, you're right, there are far more American/Canadian/British/Australian fans than anywhere else (unsurprising, considering they don't really have an 'exclusive,' language-restricted fandom corner of their own).

Oh, but they really are very wanky! The Harry Potter fandom has evolved in the past few years, and there's not much new canon for people to complain about (or as many new fans to review the same discussions over and over again), so the wank may not be quite as widespread nowadays as it was in, say, 2001, or even 2005, but there's still wank.

(See, the wank-mocking/-moderating culture may be controlled by those communities. Nevertheless, there are still a bazillion fan communities outside of the LJ/JF sphere of influence where the decrease of sheer wank volume—which used to be so massive that following posts at

hp_cornfield used to be kind of impossible—can probably be credited more to fandom maturity and time than to anything else.)

In the Brazilian fandom, a lot of the wank is based on cult of personality, BNFs' feuds, ship tension, that sort of thing. I'd like to think fandom, in general, has grown past this kind of issue *grins* ...And then, of course, there are all those HP wank posts on the very first page of

fandom_wank to prove me wrong. Oh, fandom.

(posting this comment at DW so that your comments are in one place)

Finally someone is writing about the experience of a bilingual fan! :) As a bilingual fan myself (English & Chinese), I just want to say I can’t agree with you more on many of your points.

I love the abundance of meta in the English fandoms. Except for Gundam, I haven’t seen much meta on the source books/media in the Chinese fandoms. There are rants on BL/yaoi, cracks about fanfic tropes or being a fangirl but in-depth analyses of the source materials or fic writing genres/trends are hard to find.

And yes, I think the on-line platforms are an important factor for the different landscapes of the English fandom and fandoms of other language communities. Despite its flaws, LJ is really conducive to meta and discussions. Its comment threads make discussions easy to follow and the friending and community features help people of different fandoms mix. The Chinese fandoms I’ve come across are also rather too balkanized to have places for criticism of fandom or fanworks as there isn’t a Chinese version of LJ where people of different fandoms may mix, and personal blogs/site and single-fandom/pairing sites/discussion boards seem to predominate. Of course there are the comic markets which are held several times a year. But if all you do there is buying and selling doujinshi and you only talk to the people you already know, that can’t generate that much meta discussion, can it?

Straddling across the two fandoms, I too felt I had developed a sort of split personality because the two fandoms have norms that require me to behave quite differently, e.g. the strong divide between Sam/Dean and Dean/Sam fans in the Chinese fandom means that I have to walk on eggshells when talking about them and double-check who’s top and who’s bottom in every fic I translate and, as you’ve mentioned, the English fandoms do have a very obvious hierarchy with lurkers seen as freeloaders (whereas doujinshi writers/artists don’t really expect any responses apart from sales).

Besides the difficulty in switching between the norms, simply keeping up with both communities is not an easy task either, especially when fandom migration in manga/anime can be so fast. After Harry Potter and LOTR (which were the two great convergence points of the Chinese fandoms and the English fandoms), it has become increasingly difficult to stay in both worlds as they migrate to different directions. I feel compelled to follow the migration on the Chinese side because of my RL friends but I also enjoy the online English fandoms so much I follow them to the TV shows too. The compartmentalization was driving me crazy. After finally finding some Chinese-language fandoms of US TV shows on-line, I feel a little bit less schizophrenic but as media fandom is such a minority in the Chinese community I feel compelled to participate more actively than in English fandoms where it’s possible to sit back and just listen in. This brought me face to face to the cultural differences between the two communities which I’d only observed as a bystander, because, without artistic talent or the confidence to write TV/Real Person-based fanfics, the only ways I can contribute are to participate in discussions and to translate.

Re: translations, I envy your German fandom for having meta on translation issues. While the Chinese fandoms are phenomenal in fan-translating and fan-subbing (the last Harry Potter books translated within weeks of publication and anime episodes often hard-subbed within one or two hours of airing in Japan), not many fans are willing to comment on the fan translations (as opposed to commercial ones) probably because of no one want to endanger the supply lines.

And I suspect the ratio of English to German fan translation vs the other way round may be quite similar to that of the commercial stuffs like TV shows and novels – after all, how often do you see a German show subbed or dubbed in English, fan or otherwise (Verbotenen Liebe excepting)?

after all, how often do you see a German show subbed or dubbed in English, fan or otherwise (Verbotenen Liebe excepting)?

I mentioned Alles Was Zählt (another gay soap opera) above and there seems to be an Australian TV channel that airs subbed German shows. I suspect the ratio is even worse for Chinese media. I only know of a couple of subbed C-Dramas.

Besides the difficulty in switching between the norms, simply keeping up with both communities is not an easy task either, especially when fandom migration in manga/anime can be so fast.

I don't know, I've been pretty resistant when it comes to that. Which is why I actually wrote German fanfic about canons that weren't translated yet, and since most popular American shows are aired here sooner or later, I can actually count on people at least having heard of what I'm talking about.

As far as I know, there are C-Dramas but they are confined to shows with teen appeal, and they are targeted at the Chinese diaspora and Southeast Asian countries instead of the mainstream anglo-american public. (And C-Drama fandoms are often inseparable from J-Drama and K-Drama fandoms. You'd be surprised how much engsubbing of J- or K-drama or anime may be done by Chinese speakers.)

In contrast, every US drama and quite a lot of the comedies (even America's Next Top Model) have fansubs. Heroes even have several fansubbing groups, some offering downloaders the options to have English only, Chinese only or both English and Chinese subtitles on the screen.

As for the anime fandom migration... I've resisted being sucked into Reborn (which is no mean feat considering that the vast majority of the doujinshi available at the events last couple of years are Reborn). But I've been sort of manipulated into Axis Power Hetalia because my RL friends kept talking about it, showed me cute doujinshi and then ask me to give them a crash course on European History which they have apparently slept through for three years of their high school.

How rapid is fandom migration amongst Chinese fans? And what is the fandom demographic like? I keep thinking that they must be younger, but perhaps I'm wrong about this? Amongst English fans participating in fandom, it seems largely skewed towards female fans from pre-teens through to older women, with a predominance of people in their teens through mid-forties.

I'm more in touch with the offline doujinshi world than the online fandom. I see that there are still fanfics being written for Harry Potter and Prince of Tennis on 鮮網 so perhaps the online fandom is less fickle. But in the offline fandom, the fans are always chasing what's currently hit in Japan. Hence it was Hetalia all way in the recent events, and Reborn in the previous 2 years more or less.

Wow, this is all really cool to me. lol. I sort of knew it existed, and I sort of poked around the Chinese Naruto fandom for a bit a few years back, but that was about it, really. ^^v

Also, I just realised that you transferred to dreamwidth from LJ, but you're in Hong Kong... isn't LJ blocked in all of China? Or is Hong Kong an exception?

Hong Kong and Macao are "Special Administrative Regions"; we have our own government and do not abide by the "Golden Shield" (Great Firewall). Conservatives in both governments would certainly like to increase censorship online (PROTECT THE CHILDREN!11!11), but thus far, we are pretty open.

That said, many netizens in the Mainland know how to get around the Shield should they wish to, using programs such as TOR, proxies, etc.

Hi~ Never thought I'd meet someone from HK here ;)

Oh cool, I didn't realise how different Hong Kong was run vs the rest of Mainland China. =P I, myself, am affected by the Great Firewall, but I'm in Beijing.

Yes, that's why foreigners travelling from the Mainland to HK, Macao, or Taiwan need a separate visa, and why Mainlanders travelling to those places need a special travel permit. ;)

I'd really suggest investing some time in downloading TOR if you're there, as it's safe and reliable for anonymous and unimpeded surfing. (I also know the developers, so I'm constantly giving them props~)

Erm... Hong Kong is more or less a separate political entity. Not that we are political at all. Well, we do have freedom of speech, although it's often encroached on in insidious ways, like the pandering of the commercial media to the Chinese government, exacerbated by the lack of an independent public TV station like the BBC to balance it.

It's not just LJ they block. A Chinese-language SPN site I frequent is also blocked. But Chinese fans are ingenious with computers, it seems, as they just use proxies to access them. BTW, Ultrasurf (the software I used to access those US-only web sites, such Heroes episode commentaries) is also invented by Chinese.

... Being exiled from Spanish fandom, my experience really mirrors yours! The non-LJ based thing, for example. And media fandom in Spanish is new, fandom started with Saint Seiya, not with Star Trek.
Currently, my flist is mostly hispa-fans who are only the anglofandom because... well, Spanish fandom sucks. Many of them actually started in anglofandom, unlike me.
However, ther might be difference because Spanish fandom is probably much more multi-national than German fandom. [ie., Spanish fandom = Spanish speaking fandom]
And I really , really want the Archive of Our Own to take off in non-English fandoms too. I mean, FF.net did, so...

I think both the Spanish and the German fandom have so much in common because they are both "Western" and fairly large. And the multinationality of German fandom is often disregarded because most people think German = Germany, which is where most of us come from, but there's Austrians, Swiss, Belgian, Italian and Danish people too. Of course, still not as multi-national as Spanish, but not as mono-cultural as would be expected either.

Sorry, that was me, and I forgot to add something as well:

And I really , really want the Archive of Our Own to take off in non-English fandoms too. I mean, FF.net did, so...

Yeah, me too, espeically because we actually try to make the archive multi-lingual, unlike ff.net, which is quite a problem for a few people who don't feel comfortable when the buttons are all in English.

The only way I'm in German language fandom is offline comic fandom (conventions and collecting and such) and that seems really quite similar to English mainstream comic fandom (rather than comic fanfic fandom I mean, that is like media fandom). And that is of course an entirely different aspect of fandom, and also mostly guys.

When I joined online fandom in 1997/98 it seemed to be all in English so I went there, and to me it seemed more that it was international fandom that I joined, with English as lingua franca. There were certainly plenty other Germans around, and people from other European countries too. Which was quite useful in the early days for me for tape trading, back when I wanted to get my hands on the original sources before there was high speed internet. It's much easier to get stuff sent from other Germans, or from the Netherlands, Denmark or Finland than from the US. So when I traded tapes it was with other Europeans I met in English language fandom.

I jsut never looked for fandom in German, because the English language community worked well enough for me. And doing fandom in two languages at the same time just seems a lot of hassle. I was never too worried about having to use English. Not only did mine become better over time, but also some native speakers' ability to write coherently is so bad that I'd have to try really hard to achieve that level of incomprehensible, second language or not. And it's not like writing in German is any easier. Punctuation hates me (or I punctuation, I guess) no matter the language.

Also, if the community you mean is heavy on the Japanese sources that explains why I never really ran into it. I despise manga style with a burning passion when it comes to comics, so I never go near that part of fandom in any language.

some native speakers' ability to write coherently is so bad that I'd have to try really hard to achieve that level of incomprehensible, second language or not.

Honestly, the stuff that sometimes ends up on

fanficrants and that gets blamed on ESL speakers? I don't think most of us could even dream of writing like that.

Also, if the community you mean is heavy on the Japanese sources that explains why I never really ran into it.

Not as much anymore. Harry Potter became quite popular, as did Twilight and there are definitely some popular TV shows now. But the German Harry Potter fandom as I know it was heavily influenced by anime and manga fanfiction and fanart. That doesn't mean that there aren't any people who keep to the media fandom traditions in German, but I think they're a minority.

It's interesting that the German Harry Potter fandom is also heavily influenced by anime and manga. Is it because it's more or less the only non-Japanese source text that's got a sizeable fandom in Japan?

No, it's just that a lot of German anime/manga fans thought it would be cool to write stories for HP as well. I have no idea why, that was before my time in fandom.

Wow, you know, I never actually bothered looking up fandom in Dutch, because a) I was quite happy with the English-language fandom and b) I didn't think there'd be many people in it. German has WAY more speakers than Dutch, so while Dutch does get its own place in the drop down menu on fanfiction.net, I don't know and don't expect there's a big Dutch-language fandom presence on the internet. Still, if there is, I can certainly imagine there's a difference between the two fandoms.

I think Dutch people are way better at learning and using foreign languages than Germans are, at least that was my impression when I was there.

I also assume the large number of German native speakers (who don't speak proper English) is a reason why the seperate fandom could develop at all.

This is really interesting! (Also, hi, are you

doro_chan from FFR?) I'm one of the deserters - my native language is German, but I'm pretty much bilingual (learned English when I was five) and have never participated in German-speaking fandom. I occasionally poked my nose in, but, as one of the above comments put it, it made me feel all itchy. D: It actually really upsets me sometimes, re: the not being able to read or write in my own language issue... I think I've developed a sensitivity to my culture and loss thereof via living in the US as a kid and my doing all my internet-going in English really irks me. On the other hand, itchy. :(

*seufz*

Yes, I changed my username about a year and a half ago when I wasn't active on LJ anymore and didn't want to bother.

kazaera, I presume?

It actually really upsets me sometimes, re: the not being able to read or write in my own language issue...

I think that feeling is part of the reason why I still keep trying. Not the only one, but I feel that way because I read almost exclusively in English despite loving well written German so much. It's a bit like losing part of yourself, and I don't want to lose that part.

huh. and here i was, talking to you and wondering if i should know your username from somewhere and coming up completely blank. *g*
hi.

Yes, I moved to InsaneJournal and other people didn't, and I had wanted to change my user name for ages by then but couldn't think of anything good. In the end, I ditched the _chan and switched the syllables. ^_^

I'm here via

metafandom, and I have to say that I am extremely intrigued that German fandom has people actually going out and translating English fanfiction. It makes me wonder why people don't translate German/French/Spanish/Chinese etc. fanfiction into English, but I think it could largely be because most participants in English fandom are monolingual, while participants in German fandom might be bilingual or at least have a decent grasp of both English and German.

I find it amazing and also intriguing, and should you decide to write on your musings about translating fics, I would be interested because I'm also interested in translation!

I think the simple reason why more fics are translated into German than into English is that the translators are generally German native speakers who don't feel competent enough to translate stories into English. And most English native speakers with good German don't really bother because there's enough goodfic in English anyway.

I don't know all that much about translation, really. I would have to put some serious work into that.

Ah, good points all. I'm sure it also has to do with the fact that English fandom is a lot larger than German fandom, so most English fans have more than enough to keep up with in their fandom without needing to dig through the same fandom in another language. Or perhaps they don't realise that there might be an HP/LotR/BSG etc. fandom in whatever other language?

Cannot say for German fandom, but from what I've seen from the early days of Russian online fandom the main reason for translating probably was that the fandom had still been very young and thus not strong enough to immediately start producing something of its own. By translating other's work fans were kind of learning the rules of the game, so to speak. Now, about 10+ years later the percent of fanfiction written originally in Russian has increased compared to the one of translated works.

When I was still reading extensively in the HP fandom, I remember Juxian Tang doing some translation into English (a quick search on Google shows that Juxian has translated some of his/her works from Russian into English. From his/her web site, it seems he/she has translated another author’s fics into English too.) I believe there have been some Japanese Harry Potter doujinshi (comics only I think) translated into English too.

I know some authors who translate their own stories into English. But the English -> German translation is mostly done by people who didn't write the English stories. And I think it's much more common than the German -> English translations too.

I think that's what intrigues me about this the most! That people love other stories so much that they translate them so that other people can enjoy them too!

Translation of fan works may be often than you thought. Just google 同人 and 翻譯, you'll see what I mean(I assume you read Chinese?). And many Chinese sites don't show up in Google.

^^ You assume correctly!

I think it's also that when I was in fandom, my Chinese wasn't good enough to read fanworks, and now that it is, I've mostly fallen out of fandom, but mostly bounce around reading fan meta, because I find it really interesting. I assume that baidu will probably get me more hits for 同人 and 翻译? What are the large Chinese fandoms and where do Chinese fans congregate? Is there meta in Chinese fandoms?

I believe translating and subbing was one of the major activities of the American anime fandom when it started out and I guess Japanese fan art is still being translated into English. So the rather one-way traffic of translation from English to most non-English languages other than Japanese is a kind of supply and demand relationship.

My view is that it's not just that English-language fandom is huge and it's not just that it's full of monolingual people but also that you have to read pretty widely to find fic you'd actually want to bother translating. (I mean, there's a ton of stuff in English that I liked but would never spend that kind of time on.) The only time I've ever tried translating fic was when someone specifically asked for my help translating hers.

Some people in German fandom actually specialise in translation. Which is cool, because some people don't have the ideas or the talent to write a story of their own, but they might still be awesome translators.

If you're doing this not as an extra activity but as your only fanactivity, your approach might be slightly different.

That's really neat.

This is fascinating, thank you for sharing it. And I share some of your frustration, because I have never been able to find a bilingual fannish space to talk in Hindi about Bollywood etc.

I'm German, too, and I'm utterly fascinated because my fandom experience is very different. It might be because I do different fandoms each language - I did HP in German since I felt the German HP fandom was big enough to be fun (and since there was a good translation around! I don't think I'd do HP in German if the translation of HP was too crappy to be read). I do Battlestar Galactica and Dollhouse in English since there's no German BSG fandom to speak of.

I wanted to do meta mostly in German because it's the language to do it in. I talk writing meta a lot, and I frankly write better stories in German than in English, and I'd feel very strange if I'd talk writing in English while messing up the occasional proposition. So, I wrote meta in German (all linked in my ff.net profile (http://www.fanfiction.net/u/718986/Trovia)). I didn't even enter the forums on ff.net (they didn't really exist then) and still, it worked out fine. I got a lot of feedback, and I had a lot of good discussions. I still get emails on that, and I still go on discussing, no matter I'm not in that fandom anymore. I also got an invite to a private message board at some point, where I also happily participated in writing and talking fandom meta for years. This board had been established because other people had felt there wasn't enough meta around. (it turned out to be full of homophobes, so I won't link it).

Since there's an English BSG fandom but not a German one, I occasionally translate to bring the squee to Germany (because somebody should!). I've never felt a need to talk translating in German. German is not the language that I feel I have to improve. I have, however, talked translating in English because the fellow translaters on my flist don't care either way, the people on my flist who learn German in school can provide a different POV on it, and it makes the writers of the original fic really happy (here's the LJ tag (http://trovia.livejournal.com/tag/translating+fic), if you'd like to come over). You describe doing it just the other way around.

I guess I don't regard fandom as something that happens upon me. It's something I make myself. If I miss something, I create it. As a consequence, I don't miss it so much when I really can't talk about something for a lack of background information (say, racefail). So, for me it was fascinating to read about this very different take on it. Thanks. :)

Trovia

Hmm, ff.de does have 44 BSG stories, and I do watch the series occasionally. You definitely would have a bigger audience than the one fan who writes fanfic about old Dustin Hoffman films ;-)

I guess I don't regard fandom as something that happens upon me. It's something I make myself. If I miss something, I create it.

That's my approach too (I do write meta in German as well), but one person can only do so much. I'd love to know how you manage not to split yourself in two like I am.

(it turned out to be full of homophobes, so I won't link it)

Urgh. Not fun (but I'm curious anyway). What you describe also seems to be a fandom experience colored by personal websites and private boards, which I guess is hard to get into if you are shy and don't know any of the people involved. That's something I don't know much at all, in both English and German fandom. LJ is quite open (and DW too, it's not that hard to get an invite), and there's a lot of linking going on. Same with open forums like those on Animexx and ff.de. I think I prefer the relative openness and interconnectivity, which is why I never really got active on the more private websites.

Hmm, ff.de does have 44 BSG stories, and I do watch the series occasionally.

Hee. Five of those stories are mine or translations of mine. The rest isn't about my characters of choice. :-/

But, good thing I'm not into Dustin Hoffman. LOL.

It makes sense what you said about our experience being different because we frequent very different places. When I started writing fanfic, I didn't really interact with people (beyond answering reviews) for a long time. I even stumbled upon that invite by coincidence. There never was a lot of public interaction.

Urgh. Not fun (but I'm curious anyway).

Nice place. Great writers. Easy to overlook that they felt offended by my being a lesbian. Eventually, I was told that I had no right to fight for more gay rights. After the line of "You should just be glad that nobody is throwing stones at you people anymore", I decided I had other places to be. ;) Seriously. Theoretically, I know that Germany should be a more open and tolerant place than, say, the States. It's certainly true for my real life experience. But my fandom experience says otherwise. English fandom -> lots of LGTB, lots of tolerance. German fandom -> lots of morons. Or maybe, I'm just more provocative in German. ;)

Anyway. Sorry for the rant.

Yup, I actually met the Dustin Hoffman fan IRL a week ago and she keeps writing the stories just because. Readership isn't everything to her.

Anyway. Sorry for the rant.

Don't worry. Even my mother is more tactful than that and she's a very religious 61-year-old.

English fandom is very self-concious about being a female dominated space and there's lots of thoughts about feminism and LGBT rights. It's getting better in the parts of German fandom that I'm in, but there are still a lot of male writers who like to mansplain, for example.

Males? Oh, the males I've met were all darling. It's the happy housewives who pose the real threat. ;)

The only happy housewives I know are happy slash writers are well, so they're generally not much of a problem. I run into men more often who find slash and the fact that people write it so much disturbing. *shrug*

btw, interested in a DW code?

Somebody above mentioned AWZ, I'm kinda on the other side of it, I'm predominantly in the Verbotene Liebe fandom. It's actually a very odd situation.

Verbotene Liebe is a soap opera and it currently has both a cute guy gay storyline and a lesbian triangle storyline. Both the gay story and the lesbian story are subtitled on youtube. So it can get pretty fascinating that the German fans (who usually watch the entire 25 minutes show) and the non-German fans (who often know/understand the show only by these slices they get on youtube) often have very different perspectives.

For example, currently the gay storyline is in a bit of a storyline lull and the international fans take it a lot harder because this storyline is really their ony accesspoint while the German fans are often much more positive and zen because if there is no story or scene with the couple in an episode they knew why because they have seen the rest of the show.

The interesting thing to me is that at the moment the gay storyline part of the fandom is much more English than German (and especially was so in the beginning) and so the infrastructure is mostly English at this point. (the current situation is that the main message board is English but has a very active German All-In-One thread). Compared to that the lesbian storyline fandom at the moment is much more German focused (probably because the story is currently slow so there is again a bigger reward for people who watch the entire show while it's harder to follow for people who don't get the whole picture). There are some allowances made for English infrastructure (the board is in German but offers rarely used English subforums which were created recently).

One thing I found interesting is that in lesbian forums, the English side is so underdeveloped that the English speaking fans rather than talking amongst themselves hang out in the Spoiler or Episode Diskussion threads of the Germans and either post their thoughts in broken German or in English and repeatedly ask for clarification if they didn't understand something properly.

It might actualy slowly be happening in the gay couple part of the fandom too because at the moment with less storyline the German thread becomes almost more active than the general English area of the board and I know some people lurk just to see the pictures and try to follow the discussion. Sometimes they too like in the lesbian board post in there in English (especially Dutch fans who can read the German of the rest of the thread but don't feel secure enough to write it themselves).

Languagewise, I know when the storyline first took off a lot of people started learning German just because they liked the storyline/show so much and there were a lot of questions about German grammar. I know of at least some English/American fans who are at least fluent enough that they can grasp roughly what is going on even without subtitles and some do try to watch the entire episodes (and there is often a lot of pleading to subtitle entire episodes, but nobody is that loyal ;)). Ficwise I have gotten a few requests mostly for short phrases or terms of endearments people want to strew into the story.

Fictionwise so far all the lesbian fic has been written in German, none in English except one of the German authors translating some of her stories. Meanwhile most of the gay couple fic is written in English, though there has been more German fic recently. But I have made the experience that the German fans are very reluctant to cross post their stories to the General archive (even though it has a German skin available so at least part of the links are in German) even when asked directly whether they wouldn't like to join.

My experience in the AWZ fandom is not that deep, but from what I can tell the German community is actually larger than the English livejournal based one but the two parts rarely interact with each other and both of their own communities and archives. :/

Another thing the German fandom lacks, at least in my opinion, is the presence on journaling platforms. The English fandom on LJ and its clones is enormous. The German part, at least as I remember it, is tiny. I know quite a few people are from Germany, but they don’t participate in anything German. Their journal entries are in English, so that they can communicate with their English speaking friends. After a while, many start writing fanfic in English as well. I am one of those people who really like journaling platforms, because they allow me more freedom than most archives (my main issues with them is generally linked to the fact that I am not free to do as I like), and I generally like reading other peoples’ journals and the flist makes it so much easier to find all the new fic you’re interested in than combing through all the pages of an archive. I like the sense of community as well.

This is an intensely fascinating point and it would be very interesting to see if there was a German only (or rather German in infrastructure, buttons etc) journalling system.

There even is a word for readers like that: “Schwarzleser”. It’s a term that has its origin in the term “Schwarzfahrer” (literally black passenger – meaning someone who takes a train or bus without paying) and “Leser”, the German word for reader. I don’t think the English fandom has developed a term for that yet.

Well, there is "lurker" but it seems a lot more affectionate term and people seem to have sympathy for lurker behavior in the English/livejournal fandom.

I too am somebody who does their journal in English only. Actually, for a long time I used to hide my nationality/real mother tongue because I guess part of me was afraid that my opinions woudn't be taken seriously if people found out that I wasn't watching the episodes in real time with them. That my voice didn't count because I could never contribute to American viewership.

It was actually a huge eyeopener when I realized that a lot of famous authors or metawriters were actually "secret Germans/German-speakers". (I'm Austrian btw) Ok maybe not secret, but so that you didn't know immediately because everbody seems almost flawlessly good in English when they write (at least from my own ESL reader perspective).

I have to say I have never looked for German fandom unless the source material was German and I knew it was unlikely that it would have spread out into English fandom (Verbotene Liebe, Karl May).

I'd like to say that I prefer seeking out the fandom/fanfic in whatever language is the original one but then again, my Hindi movies fandom is mostly English (though I do have a German board there as well) and I assume the same would be if I ever sought out a Japanese/Chinese/Korean fandom.

I have had some interesting discussions with non-German speakers about their insecurities in writing for VL when they don't "hear" the original dialog and only work from the translations. It was actually quite fascinating (though probably because I was never really into any of the Anime or Dorama fandoms, so those kind of problems were actually quite new to me).

I don't know much about soap operas in general (I think I stopped watching Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten when I was 14 and that was it), so it's really interesting to see what English fandom makes of German source material that I don't even know.

And from what I gather, it's mainly slashers that are interested in the subbing of German soaps, which is probably why the other parts are left out. I don't even know how that works, because the characters all interact with each other and I'm wondering how the English fans deal with missing part of the information.

This is an intensely fascinating point and it would be very interesting to see if there was a German only (or rather German in infrastructure, buttons etc) journalling system.

I know some fic writers maintain blogs on blogger.de, but I don't know how suited it is to develop a fannish infrastructure. And I also know a lot of German fans who don't speak English feel intimidated by the English buttons and rules texts of some platforms that I frequent.

Well, there is "lurker" but it seems a lot more affectionate term and people seem to have sympathy for lurker behavior in the English/livejournal fandom.

A lurker is also someone who only reads discussions etc. (and I've seen the term used mostly in relation to discussions, for some reason), while "Schwarzleser" is very specific and only refers to the reading of stories. And you're right, I think there's more sympathy for the shy lurker behaviour in English fandom than there is for the "rude" Schwarzleser.

It usually depends on the decision of the translator (who is usually a German native speaker with a good grasp on English) what to include and what not. When a storyline is a main storyline it usually is not that hard to decide which parts are essential to the story and what parts aren't.

When something is unclear the English fans usually ask (like: Why does character X not live in that appartment anymore? Did characters Y and Z break up?), either at the boards or in the youtube comments and other fans answer the questions for them. Some of the international fans are very curious about the entire soap/the rest of the characters while others couldn't care less about anybody outside the couple and their core supporting characters.

As for why those parts in particular, well, I think it's a supply/demand thing. Het romance is fairly easy to find in English if you crave it, from RomComs to soap operas to your Grey's Anatomy and stuff like that. Same sex romances and particularly well done same sex romances are very rare, particularly since the end of Queer As Folk. VL has been doing straight up romantic same sex stories since the late 90s. While English soap operas are only slowly coming around them and there are still a lot of starter hurdles (just ask All My Children's Bianca).

Personally, I can only reccomend the VL stories, they exist both subtitled and not subtitled, cut together to make a straight up story as opposed to a long sprawled out soap opera structure. Just youtube Christian and Olli or Carla and Hanna (or Carla Susanne or Carla Stella or Carla Anke or Tom Ulli or Tom Ulli Olli or Nina Erika and those are just the VL ones and they don't include the storylines of Gero from the late 1990).

I think AWZ has more viewers that watch the the whole soap mostly because RTL offers up the entire show for free streaming into all countries while ARD so far doesn't (though rumouredly they plan to start this summer to offer it). Also, ARD so far has turned a blind eye to people posting only certain storylines on youtube, but people who have put up entire episodes have always been kicked.

Thanks a lot~! I didn't know about AWZ or how to get it before reading your post as I actually got to know VL through English gay sites instead of fannish channels. (Er... sorry for being off topic...)

(Here from metafandom)

As a 'bilingual' fan myself(as in I started learning English at about the same age as you did) I found this really interesting. Lately I've considering getting into Finnish fandom, but my experiences have been pretty similar to yours. On the one hand I want more Finnish fannish friends(it would be really nice to have someone you could meet up with and talk about fandom to in RL every now and then!), but on the other hand Finnish fandom culture frustrates me. (And as I belong to a Swedish-speaking linguistic/cultural minority, I often feel like an outsider in the first place.)

I often get the feeling that Finnish fandom is behind English-speaking fandom in many aspects. Like there's a few years delay before things reach the Finnish forums. And it only gets worse when so many Finns are participating only in the English speaking part of fandom.

I hadn't really considered this before...

I always feel a bit weird communicating exclusively in English with people whose mother tongue is the same as either of mine, ie Finnish or Swedish. It feels...awkward somehow.

Yes, it is weird to talk in a foreign language with people who speak your native language, especially if you've met them IRL and talked to them in German. I never know which language I should use to reply to their posts because there's so much to consider. For example: Would the part of their flist that doesn't speak German be interested in this discussion? And would someone not understand what we're talking about when we talk in English? It's confusing as hell.

I often get the feeling that Finnish fandom is behind English-speaking fandom in many aspects.

I used to get that feeling as well, but it doesn't really seem to be that way, because there are certain parts where German fandom isn't behind at all, while sometimes it is.

(And as I belong to a Swedish-speaking linguistic/cultural minority, I often feel like an outsider in the first place.)

Maybe you could try Swedish fandom? I know some people in German fandom are not from one of the German speaking countries but rather from Italy or Belgium, where there's a German speaking minority.

And it only gets worse when so many Finns are participating only in the English speaking part of fandom.

I hadn't really considered this before...

People in German fandom have, and there have been wanks about what language to use and what language is better for which fic and so on. I think the last one was a while ago, and I'm not really trying to rehash all the arguments made here, but it caused quite a bit of fuss that after a while, some Germans leave for the greener pastures of English fandom while some are left behind (It was not unlike the current LJ/DW discussions, actually).

Maybe you could try Swedish fandom? I know some people in German fandom are not from one of the German speaking countries but rather from Italy or Belgium, where there's a German speaking minority.

That'd be just weird for me, Swedish Swedish and Finnish Swedish are pretty different, especially when it comes to slang *g* I don't want to bore you with Finnish history but many Finland Swedes(me included) also have a very strong identity of being Swedish-speaking Finns, not Swedish.

Maybe I should just give Finnish fandom a chance, I'm sure the weirdness would pass after a while.

It was not unlike the current LJ/DW discussions, actually

Anything can be compared to LJ/DW *g*

History doesn't bore me. (I looked it up on Wikipedia and Google, so no need to explain.)

Anything can be compared to LJ/DW *g*

Not anything. Just every fannish migration ever.

I have also met a lot of Finnish people in fandom :) I think it might be because German countries and Skandinavian countries teach English very early in school and at least in Germany a lot of popular culture such as pop music is in English too. So it's easy to become fluent enough in English that you learn to "pass" for American and can talk on the same level to English speaking fans. And some even post English fic without native speakers being able to tell that an ESL person wrote it (or at least they praise it anyway).

It wouldn't be the same if an English speaking fan tried to partake in a German language fandom because few countries teach German and even the people who did take German classes, it just isn't taught as aggressively as English is taught in our countries.

Ages ago I made a meta post about people writing fic outside of their own language and I also brought up the theory that maybe sometimes it's actually easier to write on certain subject such as porn in your non-native language. Because even though let's say "Fotze" might not be more dirty than "cunt" or "Schwanz" more dirty than "cock" to us the English words do not feel as dirty because we never learned them in the same "dirty" context that we learned our mother tongue words. So we use them like any other type of learned vocabulary rather than it having an emotional/historical meaning for us.

Two of the things I noticed when translating fics from English to Chinese is that balls are rarely depicted in Chinese sex scenes and talking dirty is terribly difficult to translate into Chinese sexily.

Oh yes, agreed with all that you wrote here.

I was a part of the German-speaking X-Files fandom for a few years (reading, writing and translating), I think from 2002-2005 and while it was in parts lovely and I met many nice people it was really very different from the way I now participate in fandom. There was, for example, a divide between those that read fanfics in English and those that didn't. Fandom was way smaller and thus you didn't have any real disagreements - you would constantly run into those people afterwards.

And yes, the fanfic quality was also worse. The fanfic themes were much less diverse and since many of the older German fans dabbled in the English-speaking fandom the quality just couldn't be as high as in the Emglish-speaking fandoms, where you meet people from all age-ranges, some with more than dozen years of writing/discussion experience.

I wouldn't say that German fanfic generally has a lower quality. For one, I think it depends on the fandom (don't know much about XF). And on the age of the writers and how prevalent beta-reading is. I also often only find interesting English fanfic via reclists nowadays, which is a problem because I don't know of any German reclists that would help me find good German fic.

And I think I'm even more picky when it comes to German fic. Not so much when it comes to the story, it's the style I'm really concious about, and many writers just hate it when a beta tells them that their style could be better.

I haven't read many English anime fanfics (just a couple of FMA ones). I'd like to know, though, how the English and German anime and manga fanfics differ.

I actually had problems reading English manga/anime fanfics, even though I have no idea why exactly. I know I tried with Weiß Kreuz and Saiyuki I can't say that I got the impression that the English fanfiction was of a better quality.

Not to mention that it was sometimes really awful what the Weiß Kreuz fans did to Schuldig (and his German).

Would it make you feel better that the original anime doesn't do German very well either...?

I own the original anime as a sub. I know. Japanese animes with German are always ... well, let's just say that I wouldn't be able to understand a word without the subtitles (I'm looking at you, NGE).

At least they managed to use the ß. There's this one Gackt booklet where they use a B instead. "WeiB" and "BuBe" are German words, just not the ones they were going for.

I think it's because we pretty much have to as we're a small country surrounded by bigger countries like France, Germany and the UK.

And of course German tv is all about dubbing foreign shows rather than subtitling them like the Dutch, which I think also helps a lot in learning a language. While the Dutch do dub some things, it's usually cartoons like Pokemon, where kids watch who can't quite read well/quickly enough to follow it.

Here from

metafandom. I'm English, so I came into the English speaking fandom first. And some of the my friends who don't have English as a first language have commented when seeing the canon (TV show or books) translated that the translation can be completely rubbish at times.

SO I don't know whether that has an effect on fandomers who don't speak English as a first language or whether it just emphasises it.

Plus if I thought my written German was up to it, I'd try to participate but my grammar fails! :)

Yes, sometimes the translations are completely rubbish. And sometimes they're not, but watching/reading the original is always so much better (believe me, there are some Germans who will tell you that every translation sucks and that you should only read/watch the original version). I've even seen people tell others to read the English version despite the fact that these people would have only been able to read the book with a dictionary and much time on their hands. Which most people won't do just for fun.

Not to mention the fact that spoilerphobes could never be part of English fandom unless they watched/read the English source because it often takes years until something is aired/published in Germany as well (if it is at all).

I know it's a problem for some people as well to watch something in one language and to write a fanfic in the other. I don't usually have much of a problem with that as long as I can research the German terms for canon specific words like "Extendable Ears" or if there's no translation my readers are familiar with and I can be creative.

(It's nice to hear native English speakers here as well, I think you're the second who commented.)

Well watching the original can be considered a bit of a leftover from the amine/manga fandom where there's still infighting about whether can be a proper fan and still watch the subs.

I think there's a lot more people writing in their native tongues in the football slash communities. I know my friend ran a German archive at one point! But as you say, people will be a lot more familiar with the technical terms in sports fandoms than traditional fandoms. Especially when you have jokes that make sense in English (e.g. Diagon Alley or Nocturne Alley) but won't necessarily translate well.

But anime are still watched subbed. I think it's rather universal that being able to consume a product in its original version is some kind of status symbol in fandom.

I think focussing on the terms is kind of silly. The little jokes don't matter much to me (I actually rather like the German "Winkelgasse" and prefer "Juxzauberstäbe" to "fake wands"). If the story and the feeling of the story are properly transported from one language to another, I'm happy. Those two things are more important than the single terms.

And sometimes the translator actually inserts jokes were there weren't any in the original version while some others are left out. We had an excellent example of such a translation in a course on pharaseology in German and foreign languages once.

(Here via

metafandom)

Thanks for sharing your thoughts - I can relate, to a certain extent, as I have been involved in online fandom since '99/2000, but while I started off in Italian communities (mailing lists, message boards, monofandon fic archives), I later gradually migrated into English speaking fandom (mainly the lj-based one) and almost totally abandoned the Italian one.

So in all honesty, I can't tell whether things have changed since, but Italian fandom as I knew it was much more fic-centered, with less emphasis on the meta, and I can't think of any panfandom community à la Livejournal. Sure there are multifandom fic archives, but they are more akin to the ff.net model (and get sporked consequently, although sporking/snarking is less tolerated than in the English fandom from what I see).

In a nutshell, I've preferred to stick with the English speaking fandom because it offered a more varied experience. At the same time, though, it still isn't my whole experience; in the English fandom I'm better known as a fanartist, while in the Italian one most of my feedback comes from fanfic. Which I don't write in English as a general rule because, while I can cut myself some slack so long as journaling goes, I just don't feel that I master the language enough to write ~prose~ in it.

All in all, I guess there will always be a bit of "split personality" issues going on when you're active in bilingual fandoms - not to mention bicultural: there are likely to be references and jokes that are either lost on you or on the English speaking majority because of your different cultural backgrounds. Minor things, yeah, but that still set non English speakers apart at least a little bit.

lenija already mentioned the bicultural aspect that comes to play in discussions on race, for example, because the German discourse on racism is very different from the American one. I generally try my best to learn everything I can about the American/British aspects, but it gets really tricky when I try to explain the discourse I'm used to because I either can't explain them very well or the person I'm talking to isn't recognising that I'm talking about a different discourse/culture at all.

I also think it's really interesting that I've had tons of comments (it's a bit overwhelming, really) from people all over the world here, and that all our experiences are somehow similar (funnily enough, it's other Germans who disagree the most). I'm kind of curious how English native speaker view this discussion, but so far, only two spoke up.

And that subject line is just about it for my high school German, lo those many decades ago. :-)

Just a few random comments, probably nothing all that relevant to the discussion . . . I am always all admiration at fans who manage so beautifully to make their fan activity work in a language that is not native to them. More power to you.

I know there has been fandom in Germany for a long time, as I used to have a German "Star Trek" fanzine even back in the 70s. And I have a good friend in Germany who has been in fandom since the 80s, so we discuss German fandom from time to time.

But at least you guys have had a fandom presence over there. My Turkish friend (who actually married into the Air Force and has lived in the U.S. for decades) only extremely recently was made aware of an archive of fan fiction in Turkish. She is astounded to, at long last, read fan fiction in her native tongue.

Frankly, it's the whole dubbing thing that would be the dealbreaker for me. I won't watch dubbed movies when I go to the show, only subtitled ones. And when my friends and I watch anime, we won't watch anything that has been dubbed. You lose half the flavor of the show or movie that way. I know my German friend intensely dislikes trying to watch fandom favorite shows that are dubbed by German tv. Thank god for DVDs.

And it's interesting that you are talking about the "German discourse on racism," as I have recently been discussing this with my German friend. She's a teacher, and I sent her a DVD of a documentary-type series that was done her a couple of years ago, called "Black.White." In this series they made up a white family to look black and a black family to look white. So she's been watching this series with her students and generating much interesting discussion. And they invited a member of what I think is the only black family in their town to watch with them and take part in the discussion. One thing she mentioned to me recently is that one of her fellow teachers insists that her students can use only the phrase "heavily pigmented" when referring to black people, and that to use anything else would be racist.

That is *not* a phrase that would go over well in the United States, to be sure.

ksl

Actually some shows only got popular in Germany because of the dubbing. The Persuaders! for example, and I think the same person was responsible for Hogan's Heroes and M*A*S*H as well. I prefer subtitles myself, but sometimes I just can't stand the original voices/accents/dialoge (I mentioned Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves above). DVDs really are a blessing anyway, because it often leaves us a choice.

And I'm really afraid of trying to discuss racism in Germany in detail because I've been dogpiled on once and since then, I'm really afraid of talking about the topic out in the open. (Why yes, I'm paranoid. I'm not taking my meds at the moment, so ...)

Yeah, I know what you mean re: race (and Racefail) - I guess that, no matter how globalized the world is right now, the race issues are still different depending on each nation's history/background. To make a personal example - I'm 27 and from kindergarten to the end of high school I never had a classmate of a different race or nationality. My brother is 8 years younger than me and he grew up with a small percentage (like 3-4 on a 20 people class) of either North African or Ex Yugoslavian kids in his class. Last year, when I tended after kidergarten kids for my civilian service, half of them came from immigrant families. So yeah, races and nationalities are mixed, but it's not really comparable to societies where different ethnic groups have lived together for a couple of centuries or more, or where immigration came from ex colonies. There are a lot of different scenarios and while some problematics are common, each one of them has their peculiarities, too.

Heh, sorry for the tl;dr, but I hear you :) I love to listen and learn from what happens on the other side of the pond, and it has often been an eye opener even on the race issues we have over here, but I'm not going to say it's a template you can apply worldwide. It's a bit like when you read the English Wikipedia and you find that note that says (more or less) "this article needs to be checked again because it's too focused on the U.S. and might not represent a world wide view of the subject" ;)

Germany isn't used to dealing with immigration either, and I think that's a big part of the problem. Back in the 60s when the first guest workers came, everybody still expected them to just go home again.

Well, it didn't quite happen like that.

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Living Two Lives – A Story of Bilingual Fan-dom

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