Fandom growth factors.

[icarus]

Wow. Merlin (the BBC series) is a really small fandom.

I'm mystified. What is it that makes a fandom huge?

Certainly the reach and popularity of the show or book. No doubt that's why the Harry Potter fandom was immense.

And I've always thought that the source material needs some holes for the fix-it fans to play in. The tight writing of Battlestar Galactica left little wiggle room for fans.

Or it could be that sense of not-quite-satisfaction. That the source is enjoyable but doesn't deliver quite enough, leaving the fans wanting more. Much more.

It could be the BNFs. Who's attracted to the show. Certain writers draw rafts of fans with them.

And then there are the reviewers. I've had conversations with LOTR book fandom writers who switched to Harry Potter because there was so much more feedback. The same happened with SGA, everyone kept saying, "Wow, the readers really review!" Writers love feedback.

Is one or more of these factors missing from Merlin? Astolat, Pru, Seperis, and other fan-drawing writers have written for it. I don't think it has a smaller viewership than SGA (but I could be wrong). Certainly it's riddled with plot holes and potential for more (though maybe it's satisfying the viewers every week anyway). I haven't really written for Merlin so I don't know about the reviewing habits of the readers. It's only been three seasons as opposed to the full six seasons of SGA, so of course there aren't as many stories. Yet SG-1 was around for ten years and it was smaller than SGA as well.

Am I missing some factors? How does a fandom groundswell happen?

Comments

IMHO

[libitina]

Merlin is a perfectly normal-sized fandom.

Harry Potter is a freakishly huge fandom.

SGA was a larger fandom than it merited on account of there not being particularly tempting competing genre things at that time. And it had a charming quirkiness that welcomed you into the world and had plenty of issues that would irritate people enough to write but not enough to leave.

Re: IMHO

[icarus]

I was complaining about my difficulty in finding good (canon) Merlin fic. I was told Merlin was a smaller fandom than SGA or HP, with less "10% doesn't suck" fic available. Personally, I think it's more that I'm picky. I'm really not fond of modern AUs in the Merlin fandom -- I like the canon universe -- and that seems to be more common.

[rike_tikki_tavi]

I'm surprised that you think Merlin is a small fandom. Granted, I'm not exactly in that fandom, but from my flist and friends' flists I'd always gotten the impression that Merlin is one of the bigger sized fandoms. Maybe SGA just felt bigger because it had the momentum of 5-6 years SG1 behind it.

[icarus]

Yeah, I got that impression too. But when I talked Merlin fans about my frustration in finding good canon-fic -- I keep getting thrown out of one highly recced after another -- I was told that Merlin was a pretty small fandom compared to, say, SGA or HP.

[rike_tikki_tavi]

Well, anything would seem small when compared to HP. :D

But Merlin has got big bangs and kink memes and a decent number of BNFs and just looking at the newsletter, it seems pretty substantial to me. I'm sorry that you don't find fic for you though. Have you tried frogspace's recs? She has a huge list and I've liked a lot of the stuff she recced. Her summaries are in German, but usually there's 1 or 2 sentences excerpts in English.

[anatsuno]

SGA and HP are the two freakily largest fandoms I know, so the comparison is unfair, imo. Merlin doesn't seem like a small fandom to me at all.

[cathepsut]

Perhaps it doesn't get as many viewers, as it's not showns as wide and far as say HP or SGA. HP is published and the moveis are shown worldwide, SGA is shown in a lot of countries. I don't think Merlin gets that much airtime outside of the UK?

[jmtorres]

This. When it airs in the US it airs days or weeks or months later than in the UK, throwing fandom momentum out of sync, and US showings are cut for time.

[icarus]

Wait -- they're cut for time? Oh, that explains some of the shitty pacing and really bad cuts.

[rheanna]

From memory, an hour-long show with ads in the US is about 38 minutes of actual show, whereas Merlin eps on the BBC run slightly longer than that, at about 45 minutes (I think - haven't watched it since season 1).

My impression is that Merlin fandom is medium-to-large (although I'm not active in it at all, so that's only a very, very loose impression). I don't think it's as big as SGA circa 2007/2008, but SGA was a behemoth back then. And Harry Potter was even bigger again - probably still is, for all I know. Merlin debuted as SGA was coming to an end, and I think that it got an initial burst of interest from SGA fen who were actively looking for a new fandom. And, of course, it helps a lot if a couple of BNFs pick a fandom up at the beginning, and Merlin had people like astolat and rageprufrock writing in it very soon after it started.

But Merlin fandom never quite went stratospheric in the way SGA had (or SPN, or the other supersized fandoms). I always thought part of the reason might have been the shorter British TV seasons and the comparative lack of new canon. OTOH, Harry Potter was immense and its canon was 7 books (and later, films) which were released years apart, so it's not as if people had new HP source every week.

[caseylane]

I only occasionally read Merlin. For me it's a couple of things. One is that the main cast doesn't have that zing or attraction that I like in my fandom. Another is that there's already a female love interest that is destined to be the wife of o e of them. I can accept the stories at face value but it doesn't allow me to totally ignore her presence.

[caseylane]

Oh, by attraction I don't mean looks but more emotionally connected with me.

[amalthia]

I think I've just been lucky to be in SGA, SPN, Harry Potter, and Smallville all of which were huge fandoms. I think it would take Merlin and Arthur having sex on screen/in canon or Gawain stealing Merlin away to drink a lot and have more sex before fandom takes another good luck at it. :)

I also think a lot of slash fans like cop shows and that's why there is so much talk going on about Hawaii 5-0.

[icarus]

I think my pickiness is a big part of it in this case.

[amalthia]

You are rather selective. :)

[icarus]

Especially for this fandom. I really like the quasi-sortof-medieval canon and everyone tells me that modern AUs are "the thing" in Merlin. I blame Pru's Drastically Redefining Protocol for that. :)

[amalthia]

I'm not a big fan of the modern AUs myself. I can appreciate the two really good ones I did read but it's not my preference. I like the ones that take place in Camelot with swords, magic, quests, and I'm okay with "what if" stories in that setting more so than the modern AUs. I do think Drastically Redefining Protocol definitely set the tone for the fandom.

[swatkat]

It's also the dissatisfaction with canon in general, I think. Fandom imprinted pretty solidly on S1 and its character dynamics, and when the show radically shifted away from that in the next two seasons, fandom took resort to modern AUs.