the passing down of fandom history

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

I've got a tiktok account where I post videos about how to use AO3. It helps people who are new to the site learn how to navigate and search/filter etc. and I also get to teach people who've been around for a while some new tricks they might not otherwise know. 

Yesterday, I someone asked about the Citrus Scale, so I posted about that. Which lead to posting about the FFN purges of 2002 and 2012. Which led to posting a brief and incomplete timeline of fandom purges. 

And somewhere in there, someone left a comment that said, "Wow. I hope AO3 never purges adult content."

And that's when I realized that so many people who are either new to fandom or new to AO3 have no idea how it came to exist or why it is the way it is. 

So I guess I'll add that to my list of things to make videos about? 

Brainstorm time: what do you wish your fellow fans knew about? What are cool tags or tropes or traditions or history that you think would be interesting to share? 

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

Man, it always kind of strikes me as *wild* that so many people have no idea where AO3 came from, and why we have it.

Fandom history is such an interesting thing, but I have a hard time ever remembering all the interesting bits until someone asks a question or mentions something that jogs the thoughts.

I admit to still being fond of a lot of older fandom slang. Plot bunnies, the citrus scale, YKINMKATO ("kink tomato")...
Some of the big fandom dramas of yesteryear are interesting to look back on, though I think a lot of that has been well-documented, and isn't necessarily "educational", lol.

[ermingarden]

Agreed on some of the slang (is plot bunnies not a thing anymore?!), though I'm glad we're past the days of putting "Yaoi! Don't like, don't read!!!" in fic summaries like it's FFN in 2012.

[razia]

what do you wish your fellow fans knew about? > I wish people would click on the About page on AO3 more xD

[petra]

I would love to see more people educated on the difference between "squick" and "trigger." "Squick" is such a helpful concept.

[razia]

Seconded!

[independence1776]

Thirded!

[svgurl]

Yes, this!

[ermingarden]

Yes please! I think so much drama would be avoided if people really internalized that you don't have to justify disliking certain tropes. Like, I'm personally not a fan of a/b/o – it just doesn't float my boat – but I don't have to have a reason for that, or articulate a reason my dislike is somehow justified. I worry that there's a tendency for people to come up with criticisms of things they dislike because they feel they need a "reason" not to like them.

[pikkugen]

Indeed. I've been using squicks in my fanfic requests for a long time, and I was frankly a bit surprised when the younger generations didn't seem to get it or think it was somehow cringy? Like, why is it cringey to take into account something that your fic exchange recipient doesn't want to read?

[luckyzukky]

oh i've seen your tiktoks before i think, it's awesome you're teaching newer/younger fans how to use ao3, especially since the site is so intricate it can be a little daunting learning more about it besides the basics lol.

to answer the question: i wish more people knew about the "dead dove: do not eat" tag. i mean it seems pretty well known but i think the tag's nature of being named after an inside joke kind of makes that unclear. and it's an important tag since it basically summarizes "this is flat out what the tags say be careful" (or something along those lines lol) into a memorable phrase

[justapotatowriter]

I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of interesting stuff by not having tiktok xD.

When I think of old fandom stuff, the first thing that comes to mind is quizilla; it was my very first encounter with fan content. My memories of it are very vague, though I remember I had fun reading fics and doing quizzes for my favourite fandoms at the time; beyblade and hunterxhunter (two very similar things /j)

[thewickling]

Sometimes I think about the fact that there's no one fandom history.

When AO3 was becoming a big thing, I was asianfanfics - which apparently was born from a similar situation. That took me until this year to learn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asianfanfics . So I guess I was there for a different slice of fandom's beginning.

On that is an entirely different branch from the Archive.

I'm not sure where I am going with this but I guess ....

While knowing fandom history is great, I wish people didn't treat it like a monolith. That the branch of history the Archive exists on should be the one people know. After all even now, the Archive is only one narrow slice of fannish activity.

[lackadaisicalnereid]

I *so* agree with this. My fandom trajectory was, in rough terms: lurking on harrypotterfanfiction.com and then posting some fics, (oh and I just found out by opening the link that HPFF is shutting down - but luckily, they're importing everything to AO3 - but I digress). Then I got into One Tree Hill and spent time on some forum (I honestly don't remember where) and then we migrated to a new forum that was specifically about OTH (whoever hosted all of this, you were amazing). After that - with a bit of overlap in 2008 - I started spending tons of time on fanforum, mostly in the House fandom. I went to LJ when I joined the Vampire Diaries fandom much later.

And like, from what I remember it - fanforum was HUGE? And we all talk about LJ all the time, especially on Tumblr and Dreamwidth (I don't do Twitter, so I have no idea what goes on there)

TLDR:

So many things get lost or seem to be getting lost? In your case, you talk about fic archives that aren't AO3 and their history, and I keep thinking about how I forget about forums, which I perceived as a huge deal back in the day. I mean, I spent at least a year really actively posting on fanforum, and I myself haven't thought about it in YEARS.

Let's not forget forums <3

[wolfish_willow]

I don't have an answer yet (it is very late and I am sleepy), but I've been on AO3 for 10 years and didn't have a clue until... Last year? Maybe the year before? Why it came about either. I somehow didn't know it was created by people *who write and publish fic* until it went around, I think, through a fandom history tumblr post.

Which is all to say, I think that's a really great video idea!

[hhimring]

That particular one, about the beginning of AO3, does seem to need repeating to new audiences, especially those who call for more policing of the site's content.

I think it could also be useful to make Fanlore more widely known, although of course looking things up on there is a further step that not everyone will be likely to take, even if they know about it.

[allsortsoflicorice]

I used to find YMMV (your mileage may vary) was a useful shorthand to let other fans know I didn't expect everybody to agree with me. It feels non-combative; a good way, perhaps, to ward off drama?

[independence1776]

I think one of the things is that different areas of fandom have different cultures-- and that includes different areas of the same fandom. (I have a link to a paper presentation/blog post about that for Tolkien fandom if anyone's interested.) It's okay to take a few days to get a lay of the land before jumping in.

The second is related: how different sites are set up on an architectural level affects how cultures form there. For example, AO3 emphasizes romantic/sexual relationships; ff.net emphasizes characters and genres. So if you're a newcomer to a place (archive, Discord, forum, DW/LJ comm, etc.), just because it's set up differently than you're used to doesn't mean that's a flaw. Deliberate choices were made.

And specifically on a fandom history level: fandom existed before AO3 and Tumblr. Fandom exists elsewhere than AO3, Tumblr, and DW/LJ. Those sites did not invent fandom. It's utter arrogance to declare that Tumblr fandom invented fandom (which I saw people claim about my long-established fandom). Just because you didn't or don't know about it doesn't mean it didn't or doesn't exist. And that AO3 is not the culmination of fannish history. Not all roads actually lead there.

[hannah]

Not so much a specific thing as a general attitude: I've noticed a return to cloistering as one would have had in the mailing list days, and I'd be happy if we brought back more of a sense of fandom as a general culture beyond the single TV show or series of movies.

About a year ago, I started to hang out in a monofannish space that I quickly found out went beyond "we're here to talk about this one TV series, and maybe the spinoff sometimes" into "we don't know what Yuletide is." They legitimately hadn't heard of it. They'd never been in a space where it got talked about because they'd so effectively closed themselves off from everything that wasn't this one fandom. Not "this is a little space just for this thing as it was in the bygone days". Rather, "we're not leaving our bunker."

I get writing and reading pretty much exclusively in a single fandom. I don't get avoiding fandom as a whole. And I'd like people to find ways back to a larger sense of community. Beyond having the same handful of people all writing and beta-reading and commenting on each other's works, which leads to some unfortunate trends in the fic, fandom as a communal, common space is one of its joys, and I'm saddened they're deliberately cutting themselves off from it.

[independence1776]

Serious question, and I'm not trying to pick a fight: if they're that monofandom, why does it matter what other fandoms are doing? They're not going to be able to participate in any panfandom events requiring multiple fandoms if they only write for that one fandom. Also, the Internet is large, and so is fandom, and people can't know everything.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's a bit of an assumption that all fandom is one fandom when… it's specifically Western media slash fandom that started AO3, with Yuletide being a part of that fandom culture, and it's what a lot of people call "fandom." But it's not the default fandom. Tolkien fandom for many years was very much separated from Western media fandom and I honestly like that aspect; I think our fandom culture has suffered from being more drawn into that orbit (at the same time there are upsides to it). But Tolkien fandom is also significantly more monofandom than general fandom, so I guess I just don't understand the problem with not paying attention to things that are irrelevant.

[feast_of_regrets]

The copyright wars, and the legal history of fanworks. (US centric, I know.) It's just so common to run into younger fans who have no idea why they can't post solicitations for payment to AO3 and are genuinely angry about it.

[pauraque]

I'm glad you're making videos like that! Intergenerational loss of fandom knowledge is a problem, and not a new one. When I came to fandom in the '90s, it was in the midst of an enormous shift from being primarily in-person and paper-based (with fic being distributed in zines at conventions and through snail mail) to being primarily online. I learned a lot of that history from listening to older fans talk about their experiences in the '70s and '80s, and some of it is recorded on Fanlore now, but I'm sure there's plenty that's just lost forever because some of the older people didn't have online access or weren't interested in making the change.

Similarly, when a lot of fandom moved from LJ to Tumblr/Twitter in the 2010s, there was a gap, both because not everybody moved, and because younger people were coming directly to the "new" sites and knew nothing about the old. It feels wild to me that people who use AO3 wouldn't know the story behind how it came to be... but people currently in their twenties were children when that stuff happened. If nobody tells them, how are they supposed to know?

So I guess I wish younger fans had more of an awareness, at least on an overview level, of the trajectory of fandom history, from the rise of print zines, to the birth and popularization of slash, to fandom gaining a presence on the early internet and growing rapidly as the internet grew, and so on through LJ and the censorship incidents that led to AO3. I would love it if people had at least an idea of that history in the backs of their minds and didn't labor under the notion that fandom was invented ten years ago on Tumblr.

I also very much agree with those who pointed out that there is not one monolithic Fandom, and that the story I just summarized is largely the story of English-speaking Western fandom, and doesn't even begin to touch on the history of anime & manga fandoms, for example.

[ermingarden]

I second this, as someone in my twenties. I got interested in reading more about fandom history a few years ago after having some interactions on Tumblr with people even younger who had no idea what things were like even on, like, FFN in 2012. It got me wondering what things from older fandom I was totally ignorant of! (So, so grateful for Fanlore, lol.)

[or_midnight]

I would be interested to see a look at the way that AO3 has grown and evolved over the years, both in terms of features/functionality and in terms of it's role in fandom-at-large. I've been talking to someone recently about the very early days of AO3 and how it really differed quite a bit from the place it is now. A couple of examples:

1. it was a lot more exclusive at first just by necessity, and the people that put it together were heavy hitters in terms of, hmm, lets say professional-quality fic. I distinctly remember a phase where I knew if something was posted on AO3 it was basically guaranteed to be really, really good.

2. it functioned much more as an archive and not as a marketing tool for fic. You posted fic there because it wouldn't get purged, not because you wanted to reach the largest possible audience.

3. I think people didn't really start exclusively debuting fics there for a little while? I feel like a lot of the earliest stuff posted there was back-ups of older things that people wanted to make sure would last. (I could be wrong about this or this could just have been how it looked in whatever corner of fandom I was in at the time.)

4. were kudos and comments even original features? I honestly can't remember.

5. I also don't know if this is true or not, but I remember believing 100% that for a little while you couldn't delete a fic once you had posted it there. It was orphan or live with your mistakes forever. (I didn't get an account for a long time because of this!)

There are plenty of other ways it has evolved in terms of how people use it and what it can actually do, so I guess that's stuff that I would love to see more people learn about.

[kentucka]

I was curious too, so I looked it up: The Kudos feature was added in Dec 2010 :)

I think commenting and deleting were original features, not that I could say for sure.

and I definitely agree on 2 and 3... I remember people still crossposting on various LJ comms or forums with links to AO3 because there they didn't have to worry about the work (and all the comments) disappearing.

[dreamkist]

Virtual seasons. I've been rereading a Buffy one. I forgot how much I loved the whole concept.

[redthedragon]

Seconded! I've actually never heard of virtual seasons before, and I'm 100% sure there are other "genres" of fic that are less popular now but used to be common. I'd love to see a video touching on that sometime

[evergardenwall]

I am far from being an expert in fandom history, as I joined these spaces later in the 2010s (I am 18 years old lol) but I think if you were to cover some important events, perhaps you could cover the LiveJournal purges as well? just a thought, of course ^^

[elf]

(Here from something linked on Tumblr)

I've taken to jumping in on the Tumblr threads where people talk about fandom purges and AO3, either as "I hope AO3 doesn't go on a purging spree" or "ugh AO3... we just need to keep the pressure up and eventually they'll throw out all the Bad Fic." I do a quick note of why AO3 was made, and insist that, no, AO3 is never going to remove the "adult content" or the "problematic" content, or whatever this week's Most Evil Fic Trope is.

(And throw in a reminder that the one thing really really forbidden at AO3 is commercial advertising; do NOT put any mention of patreon or ko-fi at AO3.) (...There are people who hate this enough that they've switched to "my fic will be continued as a Google Doc with updates posted at Twitter.")

I've had fun pointing out that, if AO3 ever doesn't make its donation goals - for several years running, so there's no more cushion and they can't afford to keep going as they are - what'll happen is that everything will slow down horribly. The fics will all be there, and they'll be filtered through a single server powered by a hamster wheel and searches will take 30 seconds and fics will load at 1997 dialup speeds, but the content is not going anywhere.

(This was apparently very reassuring to some people, who were worried that increased pressure would make AO3 change its standards. I have no way to go into the history of, "here's a strikethrough link; here's fanlib info; this kind of yelling about content is literally why the archive was made.")

I'd like fans to be aware that there's a difference between "a platform made for fandom" and "a platform where fans are welcome as long as they don't get in anyone else's way." Dreamwidth is a for-profit venture - but it's built by fans with fandom needs in mind. Twitter isn't, and when fandom bothers politics, it's not politics that's going to get shoved to the side.

While I'd love people to understand "the basics of copyright law," that's a LOT. So maybe I'd prefer they learned "Intellectual Property (IP) law includes copyright, trademark, and patents, and how they work is complicated AF, and career lawyers don't agree on everything." Followed by, "DO NOT declare that your fandom hobby is illegal! Ever! I promise it's not that simple!"