Report: McShep Mailing List

The McShep Mailing List

The subject matter of the McShep Mailing List is the relationship between Rodney McKay and John Sheppard in the Stargate:Atlantis television series, a spin-off in the Stargate franchise. This list is focussed on writing stories about two characters and their perceived homoerotic relationship in a relatively new television series at the edge of fandom. It’s a subset of a subset of a subset (Fandom – Fanfic – Slash – Stargate:Atlantis). This distinctly flavours the nature of the interactions in the mailing list.

It’s very friendly and welcoming with lots of varied interactions. Although there are over 700 members, there are two or three regular posters who guide the conversation in the group with about fifteen or so other posters during my two week observation period. A variety of material is posted to the list including fics (stories), challenges (where people give a story idea for other people to write), random discussion topics and questions about canon (or what actually happened on the television show). There weren’t any fic searches (or requests to find a particular story which someone wants to re-read) at this stage of development of its fandom is pretty reasonable.

This list is successful because of its welcoming nature. People participate in the random discussions and give feedback on the stories as they are sent. It sticks to non-controversial topics and its obscurity and specificity helps to focus on the common interest of the members.