The SGA Project 2006, aka Flavor of the Year

The SGA Project 2006, aka Flavor of the Year (title on Icarus's website) or "The SGA Project, a.k.a., "Flavor Of The Year."" (title on Icarus's LiveJournal) is a meta essay by Icarus posted in 2007 that discusses SGA fandom and fanfiction for the year 2006. 
==The Comments==
There are three pages of meaty comments on the LiveJournal post. 
* page one; archive link page one
* page two; archive link page two
* page three; archive link page three
==The Essay==
The essay, which was written when various parts of Season 2 and Season 3 of SGA aired (depending on your country of viewing), had the stated goal to: 
 
The appendix at the end of the post contains a more detailed disclaimer as to the focus of the essay:
The methodology section explains that the fanfic listed is chosen as examples of trends or responses to canon and that the choices are based on popularity defined by numbers of reviews (comment counts in most cases) and appearance on rec lists.
There is a brief synopsis of the section of Season 2 that aired in 2006 that includes the canon highlights that the fic examples refer back to. The part of Season 3 that aired in that year in Canada is not included.
The bulk of the essay is a discussion of how canon has influenced fandom and fans in what they write and how they react to fanfiction. The essay identifies tropes or themes in fanfic and gauges the decline or rise in interest in the various categories and posits reasons for fans latching on to or moving away from certain tropes. For example:
The essay also discussed the way fans dealt with DADT, wrote Genderswap or Genderfuck, the controversy over Take Clothes Off As Directed and the fondness of SGA fans for multimedia works. 
The remainder is a recs list of over 50 stories, almost all written in 2006, and a list of other recs lists. 
The essay provides a snapshot of one view of SGA fandom in its earlier days.
== Sections==
* "Methodology"
* "Acknowledgements"
* "Canon Synopsis, Let Us Take You Back"
* "Affect of Canon on Fanfiction"
* "Affect of Pop Culture on Fanon"
* "Taking the Military Seriously"
* "Effect of Current Events on Fandom, or Stargate's Usual Delight in Politics"
* "The Natural Growth of a New Fandom. The Joys of Minor Characters"
* "That Kiss," and its Affect on Slash"
* "A New Slashy Interest in John Sheppard"
* "Fanon's Affect on Fanon, or, When in Doubt, Make it Up"
* "Oh, Cool, A Direct Conversation between Fanfics"
* "A Silly Fandom Taking Itself More Seriously, This Time With Crossgender"
* "Multimedia. Yes, It's a Buzzword, but it's Also True"
* "The Backbone of the Stargate Atlantis Fanfiction"
* "The Lure of the Meme That Ate Fandom"
* "The Recs"
==Immediate Reaction==
liviapenn comments to clarify the focus of the portion of fandom the essay covers, "As it stands, this is not "a taste of 2006 Stargate fandom," it's a taste of 2006 Stargate fandom (1) with a tight focus on slash stories, (2) within the subset of slash, a tight focus on John/Rodney stories, and (3) when not actually explicitly John/Rodney, a tight focus on John and/or Rodney as the main characters in the story. " She also identifies several trends from her perspective and mentions that she saw, "A lot more BDSM and kinkfic just in general, as well as stories including elements of D/s or kink in otherwise "typical" First Time or established relationship stories".Liviapenn's comment to the Livejournal post, accessed April 8, 2011
cathexys initiates a discussion with Icarus in comments that covers the difficulty of linking particular stories to specific inspirations.Thread beginning with Cathexys comment about context arguments, accessed April 8, 2011
==References==
Category:Fanfiction Meta
Category:Stargate Atlantis Meta
Category:2006 Meta