olivermoss | (no subject)

* There really needs to be a podcast about the roots of fandom culture and fanfic tropes call Star Trek Sentinel Supernatural, with a special episodes on SPN's 'gifts' to the English Language

* Also Guides in The Sentinel are not pure fanon in this essay I will...

* This Friday is a Friday the 13th, so I am working on another cryptid layout for my bujo.

* That's all I got to post about. I am stressed out, so I am watching random Trek episodes instead of being productive.

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I just wish people wouldn't use the Sentinel fandom category for stories with the Sentinel/Guide trope but do not have Jim, Blair, or any other characters from TS in them. That is not a Sentinel story. That is a fic using the trope. There are tags for that (it doesn't encourage TS fans to read the stories, it just annoys them).

Sorry you're stressed.

Yeah, that's just mis-tagging. I think part of the problem is that some people don't even know it was a show. I've seen people who write Sentinel AUs be surprised when they find out it's a show. That it's been widely unavailable has created a very weird memory hole. We had a mega fandom and now it's very niche.

Seems like they aren't paying attention and just do what somebody else did. When posting a fic it's asking what fandom it's in, not what 'universe' so whether one knows it's a show or not, that category is not for that. Don't get me wrong, it's fun to have been part of a fandom that started a whole new universe that others want to write in, but still.

Yeah, it was big in the early days of the internet too (and as we know, life didn't exist back then) ;). The big place to 'hang out' was the Senad email list. We were lucky we had the online archive.

We had an online *searchable* archive which was insane for the time. We also had the most fic. If you wanted a certain type of fic, you just had to go to Sentinel fandom to get it. If you really wanted X kink or Y trope at 3 AM when all the fic finder comm denizens were asleep, just search 852.

We were definitely lucky there! It was a great archive. We had the best of all worlds really, since there were a ton of zines *and* a huge online archive.

Not to mention a wonderful cast & crew, that put out a Xmas CD, and made sure we had copies of the bloopers. I remember the birth of the fandom, when Ann Teitelbaum posted to the Virgule mailing list, "Sentinel is slashy, says star," referring to Richard Burgi's comment that Jim and Blair would probably be in the sack before long. Sorry, got a bit carried away reminescing. It was a great fandom.

I wonder if it would be possible to track down that statement!

It was a great fandom, but sometimes feels like a fever dream or like it happened in the Berenstein universe the way it all faded and people use tropes from it not knowing where they came from. And the fandom barely exists on most platforms now. I can't get access to the active FB group because I don't know enough wallet names of fans.

Somebody probably has it somewhere. Richard was always encouraging us! ;)

There's an active FB group? I only know about Fans of the Sentinel, and it's not very active.

I don't know why the show is never rerun anywhere. It's not like they have a bunch of copyrighted music hassles, as some shows do.

There is a group that has been repeatedly recced to me when I've been saying there are no active spaces anymore. But I am not connected enough to get in. It's fine, I guess it's less a TS group and more a group of people who know each other from fandom. It's just annoying to be repeatedly told that what I'm looking for is right there! "It's not hard to find, why are you having trouble with this?"

Anyway, I only knew 2 wallet names and 3 was needed.

I've been told there is some long standing legal issue where a French show is claiming TS ripped them off and that's why the DVD deal so long and why they can't get on streaming services. I don't know if it's correct, but I've been told that a bunch of times.

Huh, never heard of it, but then I've been out of touch with the fandom for a long time.
Sometimes it's a downer to me when fan groups are secretive and closed... then on the other hand I hear about things like what is being done to the OTW volunteers, and I can understand it. There's some seriously scary stuff going on on social media these days! But it is disappointing when one wants to talk about a particular show but has nowhere to do that. I love talking about all my old favs - as you can tell by the amount of replies on this convo!

That's interesting about the French show, never heard about that either.

Edited Date: 2022-05-11 01:30 am (UTC)

Yeah, I don't blame people for wanting barriers for comfort. It's just annoying to me when people act like it's easy and having connections isn't important.

It would be neat if there was more accessible fandom, especially since I've always gotten replies every time I talk Sentinel. I am just not likely to be the one who runs it. Like a Late 90s Urban Fantasy discord or comm for TS, Highlander, DS, etc would be a lot of fun.

I've thought about making communities here for some of my old favorite fandoms, just for there to be a space, even though I know there would probably be almost no activity. Maybe I will do that in a few months, after I'm done with my latest job trauma and am either settled in a new job or making the horrible 4-hour commute to work every day.

I guess history really does repeat itself. Back before the internet one needed connections to even find out about fandom. Then when everything moved online fandom was everywhere and easy to connect with. Now with all the harassment, threats, and genuine danger from crazies, I guess more fans are making safe spaces to hide in.

A 4 hour commute really is horrible, I'm sorry.

It can be fun to have a space just sometimes to collect links and references, like what I do with the

indeedsir profile page. Fanlore exists, but sometimes having a master post or 'fandom map' as I call what I make can be more casual/fun.

From what I've been told, the active Sentinel group is private due to old slash/gen divide and very old drama about that. But yeah, fandom spaces are putting up barriers again and that's mostly good. Being in a fandom discord looking at twitter and tumblr, where people can't be banned, is sometimes like sitting in a cozy tea shop with a howling thunderstorm outside.

Oh that? Still? *sigh*. S&H gen fans are nasty to slash fans to this day, and that show is from the 1970s! I'm so over that, one thing I got used to immediately with DW was none of that crap, all genres welcome on all the comms, etc. I hope that never changes.

Were you involved in TS fandom in those days? If so, maybe you remember Richard (god love the man!) doing an online Q&A thing, and when asked if Jim would have a girlfriend in the new season, answering, "I don't think Blair would like that." It was so much fun to read and imagine their little heads exploding. ;) I wish I could remember some of the other stuff he said. I'll have to dig around and see if I have *anything* I can post and preserve for fannish history.

I know someone who, at least of a few years ago, is still fighting the Ray Wars. I am currently out of touch with her, thankfully. But she would pull weird, underhanded stuff to try to show people Due South starting from the *correct* Ray.

I thought I was in fandom. But I don't remember that or any Burgi statements. I guess I was never in the right comms or mailing lists. TS fandom was everything to me for a solid few years. But I guess I was never part of the community in any way.

I half remember an article about them deliberately courting a certain female demographic. I'd love to find evidence of that. If you have any Q&A links are anything that would be amazing. I'd love evidence that the intense slashyness was deliberate. I'm a Patreon backer of Matt Baume who does deep dives into Queer TV shows and also deliberate queer coding. If I could get enough info, I could send him some. Maybe he'd never cover the show, but it would be amazing if he did.

Whoops, sorry, I totally forgot the stuff that goes on with that anti crap. Shows I'm not on those social media spaces. It's hard for me to wrap my head around since they make no sense whatsoever to me. Their arguments are convoluted and ridiculous. The old gen fans made sense - they were homophobes. Period. I have a hard time seeing them as the same thing. I really do live in my own little DW world here, and I think I like it that way.

If I find anything in my search I'll let you know. I believe the slashiness was deliberate on Richard's part. I don't really think Danny and Paul intended that, they'd expected the fan base to be young males, but having found out it was adult women, they couldn't have been more wonderful to us. I don't think they cared how we wanted to see the characters. That's just my personal impressions. Have you seen the bloopers? If not, they're on YT.

I have seen the bloopers! I should download them as some point, just to be safe.

I don't deal with antis in my specific fandoms, it's most the state of fandom in general. Some of my fandoms do have people pushing weird agendas, but mostly it's that trying to do fandom on twitter seems very unpleasant in general.

There's definitely something to be said for being into old mostly-forgotten fandoms about middle-aged characters on a less popular social media site. 😉 Everyone else is busy wanking on the hot new and/or popular things on Twitter and Tumblr. When I got back into fandom again and started here on DW, I was anxious to find out where the 'action' was. Now, I'm happy where I am!

I definitely would love for that to be a podcast.

I should also definitely learn more about The Sentinel in general. I somehow wound up with a weird blind spot regarding it and its role in fandom history, despite it sounding like something that I would have really enjoyed. (And now that I know at least a bit about it, I want to know more.)

Friday the 13th!

I wish I still had more references and articles from way back in the day.

I have strong feelings about fandom preservation, in part because there's so much stuff like that now. Knowing that excellent resources DID exist, but the host went under, or the person who'd collected them lost interest, or passed away, etc. There's so much interesting shit that's been lost! (And nowadays, so much fandom stuff feels even more ephemeral.)

It's like the Fandom Olds are always like 'it's right there!' and the only way to find 'right there' is through knowing some ancient website or knowing a bunch of keywords you'd never have though to string together before finding the thing.

A lot of it is... somewhere, but it's not in a way people can find or make sense of.

The only people who make fandom history videos tend to be people who do no research and are basically cringe-posters pretending to somehow above that.

Right?

The internet archive is great, for what it has backed up, but that's not everything. And some stuff is still accessible if you know where to look. But it means you DO have to know where to look, and in a lot of cases you also need context that may be missing. So many fandoms developed their own sort of glossary of terms, which may not always be terribly clear to someone just now finding the fandom. Other times, it's kind of that "loss of primary sources" thing - you can find existing stuff that refers to something else - a popular fic, or particular fansite, or well-known meta - that was common knowledge at the time, but has since been deleted or lost.

I really wish there was BETTER fandom history video essays out there. It's SUCH an interesting topic, to me at least, but you're 100% right. The vast majority of the videos I have seen are people who often clearly don't know what they're talking about, and all of it is filtered through a "tee hee, aren't these weirdos silly?? omg, they take this so seriously, so cringe" lens.

Also fewer and fewer people know how to navigate within websites or use search functions these days.

I'd love a good fandom pod cast. But it would have to be a passion project. There is no way to do proper research and make money. Too many hours per ep and also the lead time for each ep would displease the algorithm and you've have terrible disoverablity. Even if you didn't care about the money, the discoverability would be a huge issues.

Also super true! There are lost skills - not helped by the centralizing/corporatization of the internet - when it comes to using sites.
And even things like google just plain don't work as well as they once did, even if you know additional search tricks, because they weigh results so heavily toward what searches are common and popular.

It would absolutely have to be a passion project. I realize that's part of why there *isn't* a ton of good fandom history content, podcast or video essay. The research part is daunting. There are people who can talk a lot about the niche areas they had a lot of experience with, and that can be really cool! But in terms of something broader or episodic that can cover a multitude of different areas? There's just so MUCH out there, and so much that's remembered poorly or in conflicting ways, or has a popular interpretation that's well-known but incomplete in terms of context...
And yeah, even if it was something that someone didn't mind a lack of financial compensation for, it would be hard to find much traction for it. I think there are certainly people who would be interested, but connecting with all of them? Probably pretty difficult.

Google also weights searches heavily towards monetization. Trying to research historic hotels for a fic? Google gets hyper and spams you with links to make hotel reservations. Looking up *anything* to do with Procreate is a nightmare. Links to gadgets and courses that aren't even related to the question takes up the first few pages. Google is a mess.

Even I can't find things as easily as I used to.

Oh god, the monetization. Even once you can get past the half a page of literal ads, the results are so skewed! Every time lately where I've tried to look up how to do something computer-related it's the same type of thing - ten different sites with copy-pasted identical content-farmed information, each trying to sell you their own spammy, probable-malware-ridden tool that they promise will do the thing.
The "suggested related questions" thing is hilariously bad - even if *exactly* the question I'm looking for an answer to is one of them, implying other people are looking for the same info, the "answer" is often utterly unrelated!

I consider myself reasonably search-savvy, but yeah, there's a ton of shit that I struggle to find, because google ignores half of the terms, or substitutes things it thinks are related, even for terms in quotation marks... ugh.

I am more tech and search savvy than the average person, but it's just such a mess these days. It's so frustrating. If the relevant subreddits are dead or don't allow certain question then finding stuff gets tricky.

While I don't have a super high level of tech know-how (not a programmer or coder or such), I feel like I know more about user-end stuff than the average. Searching for info has just legitimately gotten worse.

And yeah, when you hit on a subreddit or old forum with the exact same question... on a closed thread with no solution given... that's a miserable feeling, haha.