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.)
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carisma_sensei
no subject
Date: 2009-05-03 02:03 pm (UTC)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.)