Living Two Lives – A Story of Bilingual Fan-dom

[rodo]

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.

Comments

[laeryn]

First, I should say that I spent the whole post nodding and saying THIS and YES, THIS because your experience is very similar to mine. I'm Spanish and I discovered fandom... three years (and a half, I think) ago. I spent most of that time in Spanish fandom. I read fics in Spanish (well, not only in Spanish, I read my very first fic in English very soon, because Spanish fandom for Buffy the Vampire Slayer barely existed when I arrived it was too late, I guess. But I wasn't in English fandom, it was just the necessity of reading some fic) and I wrote my first fics. I took part in some meta discussions, but they never really interested me (and now I know that it was because of the kind of meta we had).

A year and a half ago, more or less, I discovered Battlestar Galactica and FELL IN LOVE with the show. And there was NO FANDOM in Spanish. It sucked. Three of my friends and I made a livejournal community, and we were all on our own for months (then people started coming... our friends, before we had convinced them!). And I just couldn't stand that anymore and looked for English fandom.

I can see the problems in Spanish fandom, and it's quite similar to German fandom's problem, I think. We have no meta. Sometimes someone starts a discussion, but it's not like English fandom. They all tend to finish with wank or being forgotten too soon. There aren't interesting discussions that can mean something to you, I don't know if I'm explaining what I want to say.

Then there's the lack of fandom. There's a huge fandom for Harry Potter and Supernatural, I have to accept that, and that's ok because HP was my main fandom for years, and now SPN is one of my main fandoms, too, but apart from that, you only have anime fandoms. Naruto, mostly. Maybe Bleach or Fullmetall Alchemist. But I'm a TV fan. My fandoms include BSG, Jossverse (including Dollhouse), Fringe, Kings, Lost, Stargate, Farscape... and I can't find that in English. It's all about SPN, HP and anime/manga fandoms. And it kind of bothers me.

I guess that what I try to say it's that most of the not-English fandoms seem to have the same problem. When we discover English fandom we find meta and things we hadn't and then we star to want them and we can't have them in our fandoms because they just don't exist in our fandoms. (For instance, I can see that everyone in Spanish fandom is really independent. We're not a group, and I see that in some English fandoms and I envy them for what they have and I don't). I think that what I like about English fandom is that it offers a more varied experience.

But at the same time, you said it. It's hard to be in two fandoms. You're two people, because those two fandoms are different between them. I can talk from the SPN perspective, mostly, because it's my main fandom at the moment. And I can see huge differences between one fandom and the other. I review episodes differente with English speaker people, we talk about different aspects, we think more about them. We make up theories and discuss the moral of the characters and tons of things. And we don't do that in Spanish. Sad, but true.

I can sum it saying that I agree with you, and I don't think it'll ever change. They're different fandoms with different languages and, more important, different cultural backgrounds. Two really different ways of seeing the same thing, and it will always make us feel as if we're two people, or... I don't know. I've come to a point when I see myself as a stranger in both fandoms. I don't relate to Spanish fandom anymore (not completely, at least) but I'm not totally into English fandom (you may have noticed that I wouldn't be able to write fics in English, and there's the cultural thing and the language, 'cause no matter how much you practice English, it will never be your first language and you'll never feel as comfortable as speaking your own language). And I don't like the idea of feeling like that, but if that's the price I have to pay to be in English fandom, I'll do it, because it gives me things that Spanish fandom just CAN'T even offer.

Anyway, I think I talked too much, as usual xD Thanks for sharing your thoughts, loved the post.

[rodo]

You're on page two. There's a page two!

I really hadn't expected so many people to read and comment on this post, especially since I posted it two weeks ago. And then suddenly everybody linked to it.

And I don't like the idea of feeling like that, but if that's the price I have to pay to be in English fandom, I'll do it, because it gives me things that Spanish fandom just CAN'T even offer.

This sums my situation up very well. I can't or won't make a choice a lot of other people make eventually.

I've come to a point when I see myself as a stranger in both fandoms.

At least that gives us perspective, right? Now if only the monolingual fen would listen ... Well, sometimes they do (I ♥ the OTW).

[opengoal]

As SPN is my main fandom at the moment, I feel the same pain as you do about being on the sidelines in both fandoms. The English fandom does have more to offer and I do feel uncomfortable with some of the recurrent discussions in the Chinese fandom (SPN just seems to inspire a lot of wank everywhere). Nevertheless, in the English fandom, I'll only ever be a spectator on the stands because I don't have the linguistic or cultural background to write great fics or great meta, and I won't be the one posting news, con reports or screencaps. It's easy to become a ghost in both communities when the effort it takes to maintain your (already limited) participation level becomes too much.

ich bin hier durch metafandom gelandet :)

[ender24]

nur falls du dich wunderst.

(obwohl ich auch Germany im userprofile habe, ist meine history doch eine andere, deswegen sag ich erst mal noch nichts zu deinem Hauptthema der Zweisprachigkeit).

Aber, generell, denke ich, ist es nicht ein spezifisches dt. fannish Problem, sondern ein generelles gesellschaftliches Hinterherhinken in deutschen Landen, was die Blogsphäre und Akzeptanz von Internet/web angeht, und das spiegelt sich natürlich auch im fannischen Verhalten wieder.

Ist mir nur so mal aufgefallen, als ich kurz nachdem ich deinen entry gesehen hatte, per Perlentaucher auf diesen Link gestossen bin:
http://netzwertig.com/2009/04/30/deutschland-degeneriert-in-ein-entwicklungsland-teil-2-von-3/

Re: ich bin hier durch metafandom gelandet :)

[rodo]

Ich habe eigentlich nicht das Gefühl, dass Deutschland da total hinterherhinkt (wie in meinem Post steht, sind wir in manchen Fandom-Bereichen mMn sogar ein kleines bisschen weiter).

An meiner Uni gibt's in KMW zahlreiche Forschungsprojekte zu Blogs und in der Journalistik wird ziemlich viel über bloggen als Zukunfsmedium geredet. Außerdem machen Online-Päsenzen von den Medien zunehmen auch Gebrauch von Blogs als Quellen. Spiegel Online hatte sogar einen Artikel zum Boldthrough. Vielleicht lese ich da aber auch einfach nur die falschen Seiten.

Wie unterentwickelt die Blogosphäre hier ist oder nicht kann ich nicht beurteilen. Ich lese kaum nicht-fanbezogene Blogs, und wenn dann sind es deutsche á la Bildblog.

[franzeska]

I've definitely noticed that non English-language fandoms seem to be mostly anime/manga + HP + one or two insanely popular things like Twilight or SPN. I'd love it if translation were a bigger part of English-language fandom, actually, since it's one of my favorite hobbies, but there's so little incentive for me as a native English speaker, and particularly as a native English speaker who likes obscure fandoms, to participate in other language fandoms that I've basically never read fic I thought was worth translating. (Not that there isn't any. I'm sure there's plenty. I just haven't read widely enough to have encountered it.) Maybe if I were really fluent in something other than English...

I suspect most English speaking fans who are interested in translation end up translating manga or something. (That's fun too, but I don't really like scanlations. Despite the claims of people who make them, they always seem like direct competition with the official rights holder to me, unlike fanfic or translations of fanfic.)

The only time I'm ever really tempted to use my crappy foreign language skills in a fannish way is when I encounter the rare (very, very rare!) canon that's actually popular but not with English speakers. I buy a lot of obscure old manga, but I doubt most of it has an active fandom in Japanese, and the only thing I can even think of in Spanish that might qualify is Alatriste. (Why the heck hasn't it been properly released in the US?!)

Even then, I find that many non-English language fandoms feel quite insular to me (particularly the Japanese fandoms I've encountered). It's partly that I'm often just not very familiar with how they operate (being of a very LJ-centric mindset myself) and partly that I'm used to English language fandom, which tends to be overtly welcoming to everyone (and, of course, covertly quite unwelcoming in a vast array of ways having to do with hegemonic culture and cluelessness). And, well, it's also that other people rarely organize their fannish activities around providing me with free language lessons. (Whyever not? Don't they realize everything is about ME?! ;-D)

I've also noticed that, when it comes to slash specifically (since that's what I read most), different cultural expectations about gender and sexual identity tend to lead to rather incompatible interpretations of characters and relationships. It happens in English-language fic too, but the weepy uke thing has been particularly pronounced in Japanese fic I've read. (And since it's something I detest...)

I'm interested in what you say about the Draco Trilogy. Do you mean that it was better in translation? Or is it just that you liked it back then and have since changed your mind?

[rodo]

I'm interested in what you say about the Draco Trilogy. Do you mean that it was better in translation? Or is it just that you liked it back then and have since changed your mind?

I thought it was the best fic ever back then (I don't even like it now). And the German translation was quite good, only it was rather obvious that it was done by different people (it was a group effort) and that a beta would have been nice. German tenses work slightly different than English tenses and the translators tended to screw that one up.

It happens in English-language fic too, but the weepy uke thing has been particularly pronounced in Japanese fic I've read.

I don't like it much either, which is why I often have a problem with shounen-ai/yaoi manga. I was really surprised when I read a yaoi manga with two guys who switched and which mentioned condoms (it was still Rape Is Love, but you can't have everything).

(and, of course, covertly quite unwelcoming in a vast array of ways having to do with hegemonic culture and cluelessness)

Having just argued with people about spoilers on fanficrants ... yes. A certain plotpoint might not be a spoiler for people who grew up in an English speaking country, but I managed to avoid a lot of the spoilers mentioned. Namely It Was His Sled and Bruce Willis Is A Ghost. Not everyone in English fandom has an English cultural background, people tend to forget that. So I think it's cluelessness, mostly.

[opengoal]

It's funny that SPN seems to have a rather strong fandom presence even though its ratings have been always worrying (at least to fans).

[(Anonymous)]

This is an excellent post! My native language is English, but I read quite a bit of French fanfiction. However, I always feel like I'm on the fringes of the French fandom because of the lanugage barrier. (I've studied the language for six years, so I'm quite proficent, but nowhere near fluent. I read and write far better than I speak.) My persona, if you will, is somewhat limited in those fandoms. I really enjoy science fiction, and I haven't found as much of a presence for those types of fanfiction as I do in English. However, there's a lot more literary fanfiction, as well as a focus on anime and manga.

I'd love to hear more about your thoughts on translating fanfiction, if you have anything to say on the topic. And what are your thoughts on the creation of a fan personality? What sort of things does this personality depend on?

(Sorry for the anon post! I'm rosenskimmer on livejournal and I haven't figured out openID yet.)

[rodo]

Hey, nobody mentioned French fic yet! My French sucks (I only made it through one HP book, but I will try The Little Prince one day, I swear), so I don't really know anything about French fandom at all.

Translating fic ... that would probably be a topic for another meta post. Somebody else asked already, and so far my thoughts are a bit ... confused. No clear picture yet.

I think the context of the fan persona is very important, because it's where we determine the limits and possibilities.

(Anon posting is totally okay, otherwise I wouldn't have it enabled.)

[kouredios]

Arrived here really randomly: I was checking out who else had "translation studies" as a DW interest, found opengoal's link to this entry and here I am. I'm an American grad student in comp lit and translation studies, and I'm toying with the idea of writing about fandom and fanfiction in my dissertation, so do you mind if I save this to memories and maybe reference it at some point? Let me know what kind of citation you would or wouldn't want, if you're okay with me referencing this post.

[rodo]

Sure, put it in your memories.

I wouldn't really feel comfortable with it if you insisted on quoting me with my RL name, though. I don't know how the rules for that sort of thing are at your university, but someone wanted to quote frogspace once and insisted on a RL name.

This is also not as scientific as I probably could have managed, and a few people in the comments had a very different perspective on the whole thing. I don't know how they would feel about being quoted, though.

[rodo]

Yes, I mostly use my experience of English vs. German fandom and that is very centered on fanwork and (meta) discussions in German.

What you describe as "your" German fandom is something that I consider partly old-school fandom (pre-internet media fandom culture), something that I've never had much contact with, and partly something that I would consider somewhere inbetween "my" German and English fandoms, if I understood your explanations. Heavily influenced by the happenings in English fandom and media and still partly rooted in Germany and the German language (and a few German sources).

Somewhere above (in a reply to franzeska, I think), I came up with a theory on why the German anime and manga fandom has influenced the German fanwork (and internet?) culture so much and I would really appreciate your input on it, because your experience is so vastly different from mine.

Yes, well, my journal has always been completely in German. ;)

You're an exception there, I think. One I appreciate very much. It's refreshing.

[fibrizo]

oh ja, animania. XD habe erst bei der ausgabe 39 angefangen zu lesen und bei 43 aufgehört Oo das neue team schmeckt mir so ganz. Aber dafür gabs ja ne Weile die mangaszene. :/ immerhin.

ich habe teils schon ein paar parallelen in einigen fandoms gefunden. Als beispiel: bin ne weile im eragonfandom unterwegs gewesen. Aber egal ob auf deutsch oder englisch: man findet kaum slash (im englischen sogar häufiger, als im deutschen und mit mehr pairingvielfalt.), dafür massig OCs und immer dieselben stories. Ausnahmen eher selten. Wenn man genauer hinsieht, erkennt man mehr vielfalt, aber das liegt vorallem daran, dass das fandom im englischen viel größer ist.

ich habe auch immer das gefühl, dass alles, was in richtung meta bei einer diskussion geht, schnell nicht mehr verstanden wird. Aber auch im kritischen Sinne. Ich weiß nicht, wie's im englischen ist, aber wenn ich in einem Fandom mich kritisch zu besagtem äußere, kriege ich eher einen auf den Deckel und werde behandelt wie eine aussätzige O_O oder zumindest komme ich mir so vor. Ich habs nur einmal in einem englischen fandom (a song of ice and fire) erlebt, dass da kritik völlig okay war und auch aufgegriffen und diskutiert wurde.

In keinem meiner deutschen Fandoms ist mir das je untergekommen. Auf der anderen seite kommts da auch immer an mit wem man redet und in welcher community/forum
:/

und in manchen Fandoms habe ich gar keine Wahl, da muss ich mich nach den englischen umsehen, da es kein Deutsches gibt oder es schlicht zu klein ist.

"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."

da geb' ich dir recht. :)

[rodo]

Wenn man genauer hinsieht, erkennt man mehr vielfalt, aber das liegt vorallem daran, dass das fandom im englischen viel größer ist.

Klar, bei vielen Fanfics ist es immer einfacher, viele gute und viele mit ausgefallenen Themen zu finden. Oder eben überhaupt etwas.

ich habe auch immer das gefühl, dass alles, was in richtung meta bei einer diskussion geht, schnell nicht mehr verstanden wird. Aber auch im kritischen Sinne.

Manchmal tauchen auf metafandom Diskussionen auf, in denen man beispielsweise die Forschung über unser Hobby aufgreift und sich auch selber Gedanken über kompliziertere Themen macht. Und Kritik am Ausgansmaterial oder an Fan-Praktiken finden da einige durchaus positiv. Les einfach mal eine Weile lang metafandom, dann bekommst du ein gefühl dafür. Natürlich gibt es auch immer wieder Leute, die anderen das Kritisieren verbieten wollen, aber das ist nicht unbedingt gerne gesehen. Mir ist das am deutlichsten bei Supernatural aufgefallen, ein Fandom mit sehr vielen unglücklichen Anspielungen und Tendenzen. Deutsche Fans braucht man gar nicht erst zu fragen, was sie denn vom Frauenbild in der Serie halten, und im englischen wurde das heiß diskutiert.

Natürlich hat man da auch nicht überall eine Vergleichsmöglichkeit. Wenn es das Fandom nur auf Englisch gibt und es winzig ist, mag die Situation ähnlich sein wie im deutschen Fandom. *shrug* Irgendwo auf der ersten Seite hat hl erwähnt, dass es im englischen Jane Austen Fandom wohl ähnlich ist.

I never realized that was a German thing

[(Anonymous)]

Hi! I got linked here from a post at FFN.

I'm a German fan myself, and very much hooked up in the English fandom community, too. You know, the habits and attitudes you describe for German fandom are very much ones I share, but I never before realized that they are specific for German Fans, or German fandom. It does make sense, though. And you are right: there seems to be a decent lack of meta in German fandom - apparently, we Germans rather talk about more 'earnest' things, or nearly every German fan sooner or later enters the English fandom, and then does it there. Even the people on my f-list at live jourmnal who are German write their blogs and their meta comments in English. I even automatically start to think in English when I enter my free time, and fandom. So... *shrug*

In any case, a very enlightening article, this. Thank you for writing and sharing!

Aislynn Crowdaughter (Crowdaughter at LJ)

Thank you for

Re: I never realized that was a German thing

[rodo]

It might or might not be a German thing, and when it comes to some of the things that I described here, it's more of a trend anyway, and not at all an absolute. A lot of other people who commented here have experienced similar things, and they are not all Germans, but also from Spanish speaking countries, Italy, the Netherlands or China (and many more places). Maybe it's more related to a relatively small foreign language fandom versus a big English fandom. I don't know.

And would you mind telling me where I can find this link? My post gets linked all over the place and I am kind of curious.

[love]

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.
Actually, I think the term "leech" covers all that and more, but that's a really interesting bit of etymology there, thank you!

[love]

Whoops, forgot to say, here from metafandom.

[khana]

You know, another factor about why there's so little meta in German fandomI just thought ofis rather simple: It's, overall, a really young fandom. Regarding the age of the participants, I mean.
Sure, there are a few older people here and there, but the general age on animexx and ff.de seems to be somewhere around 15-17ish?
Older fans usually seems to discover English fandom or often just leave it behind for 'real life' altogether. Or they just loose interest in anime/mang, and leave that way...

And when you look at what the average age of lj-fandom (where the meta happens, mostly) seems to be, it's, I think, a bit higher?

So maybe it's got a bit to do with the maturity of the participants as well?

[rodo]

That might factor into that as well. And to be honest, many of the older fen I encountered on German sites, weren't all that interested in deep meta-y thoughts. Then again, I wouldn't say that old = mature either.

And maybe it's got to do with the fact that many parts of German fandom never arrived on LJ. I think blogs are far better suited for meta discussions because there you can post long, well articulated texts. That's often not possible on the forums of Animexx/ff.de for some reason, the topic has been discussed already, and that means you're not allowed to post again. And of course the comment system is better for this type of thing than posting in an archive where the discussion has to take place via PM.

[eumelkeks]

Finally had the time to read this and a few comments. Gotta love meta and its epicness. *lol*

I've never been deeply involved in German fandom. I joined a few comms and left them quickly because, as you said, there is no meta and the constructive interaction between users is shamefully limited. Once I suggested writing meta and got the response that everyone would read the English meta and consequently there was nothing new to write. Okay, why create a German comm in the first place if one assumes that everyone is involved in the English equivalent? The mind, it boggled. I did, however, meet a few pervy souls in the studivz: there is a slasher group. :D

Nowadays, I stay away from German comms, even if my German friends pimp it like cookies. I'm not even very fond of writing my thoughts down in German because I would have to spike my comments and posts with English terms anyway ('slash', 'fandom', 'interaction' etc.) Additionally, I've spent so many years writing English on the internet that it comes more natural to me that writing German. Also, there is less CRAZY FUN to be had.

Forgot to add, I am really prejudiced against German fanfiction. The few I read made me laugh and cringe and I decided to never do that again. Apologies to all German writers of fanfic who know what they're doing.

[rodo]

I write mostly in German. I hope my fics don't suck ;P

But I agree, finding decent German fics to read is not easy, especially if you're picky about writing style and most writers in German still think that a beta has no business working on the style.

All the terms you mentioned are used in German fandoms as well, by the way (well, with the exception of "interaction". there's "Interaktion").

And a friend of mine works with her German House writing group and they organise projects (at the moment a non-cracky multi-crossover) together. There apparently is CRAZY FUN to be had, if you're lucky enough to find it.

[mry]

I found this post to be really interesting - I'm Danish, but I found the Danish and the English HP fandom around the same time, so I just... dropped following the Danish one. It was... far more boring than the English one - fewer people, fewer fics, fewer ships, plus I hate seeing Fanish being butched by native writers.
So I thought it was really interesting to read about someone, who did follow both fandom-groups :)

[rodo]

I seem to be somewhat of an oddity because I managed to participate in the two fandoms for so long. Even though I'm not as active in German fandom as I used to be.

I'm more sensitive when it comes to errors and unfortunate stylistic choices when it comes to German, too. It's getting worse in English as well, though.

[riceandsalt]

I am late to the party in a very particular way, since I was only just sent here by sabeth (and I'm still unaccustomed to DW, so excuse me if I bollocks up the coding).

I also am a bilingual fan, but with a very particular distinction - I refuse to participate in German fandom. This might sound weird and somewhat snobbish, but hear me out:

When I first got into fandom (around '99/'00), German fandom was extremely limited. Yaoi.de had maybe ten to fifteen regular writers, if that, none of which are still active writers to my knowledge. Yaoi.de was still mostly open - apart from a specific Pokemon fanfic -, while the mailing list was 18+.

There still *was* a mailing list.

But my first steps in fandom were still taken on the English side of the equation - my first fanfics were in English (Ranma 1/2, incidentally, which might explain a lot about my fannish socialisation), and I came to associate fandom with the English language. When I found yaoi.de, I'd already been trolling around several large archives, and while my English left quite some to be desired on the active side of things, I could still read it well enough.

This is not to say that I entirely disregarded German fandom - I participated in the yaoi.de chat for a while, I went to one of the channel meetings and had quite some contact with a specific group of the budding German fandom, but I found that they weren't healthy for me and I wasn't healthy for them. I quit yaoi.de - both channel and site - over an issue which in retrospect seems stupid, and since I'd started participating in LJ-based fandom '02-ish, that was basically the end of my participation in German fandom. I only went back in '05, and what I found horrified me so much I never tried again.

I say "horrify", but honestly, it was closer to disgust. Both yaoi.de and Animexx in my opinion started derailing rather quickly as anime and manga became more widespread, and two issues became crucial in my renouncement of German language fandom altogether: 1) The average age and 2) spelling and formatting.

To 1) - I'm not particularly young. I started using the internet in '95, when I was just about to become a teenager. When I got into fandom, I'd already been on the internet for four years and knew nettiquette. I was 16 and smuggled myself onto an 18+ mailing list with a faked handle, terrified all the while that I would be caught (I wasn't). At that time, the vast majority of German fandom - whether anime and manga or slash - WAS over 18, often quite a chunk. I was the youngest regular on a comic channel I frequented, I was the youngest on the review site I worked for, I was the youngest SysOp on a forum I worked for - often by quite a degree. And I feel that if everyone you know is four, five, six or more years older than you you will automatically strive to "match their pace" and emulate their behaviour. If you then turn around and look at people who are your age or a couple of years younger - as German fandom started to be in '04, '05 - the alienation will be extreme. "These people are my generation? Really?" was quite a frequent thought.

And this ties into 2) as well - I'd taken part in forums, channels, mailing lists and communities with impeccable spelling and grammar for rather a while when I hit Animexx... and let's just say that the difference is rather disconcerting to say the least. It's probably just a difference in fannish socialisation, but I find myself incapable of even progressing someone's argument when their spelling, grammar or punctuation is off. Especially run-on sentences give me quite a headache, which is ironic considering my own tendencies. As such, I'm pretty much physically incapable of partipating in Animexx-based fandom - I simply cannot read and understand the forums.

And one last thing, which is probably a solitary problem on my end - English has become my major language of communication, but I "learned English in English" - monolingual. I immersed myself so much in English fandom that I cannot even argue fannish issues in German - I lack the vocabulary, since fandom is entirely English in my brain. Even if I were to try and "talk German fandom", I would probably drop back into English as soon as I hit a linguistic wall... I even chat in English with people who ARE native German speakers. And it's not even that alone - I study Japanese, and the vast majority of the literature I read for my study *is* in English... I have to prepare twice as hard for classroom discussion singularly because I have to make sticky notes with translations, not because I don't understand the text but because I'd be unable to discuss it in German - English text, English associations, English vocabulary.

As it is (and as a summary of this extremely long uncalled-for comment), I don't really feel the same way you do - I don't feel like I have two fannish homes. I have but one.

[riceandsalt]

(oh yeah, and also sorry if this seems rambling and confusing, it *is* 2am after all and I've never been known to be particularly smart about that sleep vs. typing thing)

[fibrizo]

Ich auch nicht. O_O na ja, jedem das Seine...sofern einen manche Leute einfach lassen würden. O_o

[jaaaarne]

Thank you so much for making this post, I think you've touched a very serious and important topic. Reading comments was a pleasure, too. Besides, it was a great possibility to find new people to subscribe to. :)

[rodo]

Did you read all of them? *is impressed*

Thanks to this post, my reading list is longer than it ever was on IJ, btw.

[mixies]

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.

Ditto. :)

I (also) am two people, but sometimes I feel that my native identity is fading away. On the one hand I kinda like it; on the other hand... well, not really.

Beautiful meta, mind if I add you? :)

[rodo]

The problem is, I don't think the native identity can ever fully fade and it often re-appears at inappropriate moments. At least that's how it is for me.

And no, I don't mind :)