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

[independence1776]

That hostility is far beyond anything I expected to hear. Yes, in that case, definitely being more open to other things is a necessity!

[mozaikmage]

I think single-fandom forums have been replaced by fandom-specific Discord servers in terms of their function in the fandom ecosystem, actually! They serve as spaces where internet users with nothing in common but their fandom get together to discuss their interest in even more specific fandoms.
Although Discord servers have their own differences and downfalls compared to forums: Private instead of publicly perusable by lurkers, the whole over/under 18 nsfw channel Stuff, linkrot when the Tumblr and Twitter posts people share in them get deleted or their URLs changed, 2000 character limit for messages, etc etc, there is no expectation for a Discord server to be pan-fandom. I've even seen servers dedicated to single rare ships in the sports anime fandoms I'm in.

[thewickling]

I enjoy Discord servers but for some reason I can't put my finger on getting involved in a Discord server feels like a lot more effort than getting involved in a forum. Maybe a part of it is that there's a little less anonymity unless you're willing to make different Discord accounts.

Discord I also think is bad as a platform for sharing fic. You could post fic directly to Discord but that's ephermal so a lot of people end up sharing links to gdocs or screencaps and that's not really accessible.

I do think Discord ends up as a good place to find community if you're willing to put yourself out there and really get involved.

[thewickling]

I was thinking of battlespaces when I said this actually. Because that forum does have a lot of fic but it's more male and not ship fic orientated. It exists as a part of a separate fannish ecosystem.

[thewickling]

the attitude that there is no point to posting on those archives because AO3 exists.

That's so odd. Posting on a small forum has its own pros and cons. The only benefit posting only to AO3 has is that the potential for more views is higher. I honestly think a lot of people would be happier on smaller forums than on the AO3 if they were still fairly active.

[mistressofmuses]

Maybe I'm mistaken on plot bunnies being "outdated", ha. Someone else asked the same the other day. I feel like I haven't seen anyone use the term in a long time, but maybe it's just me!

But yes, I am SO glad not to have to write or read "YAOI. BOYS KISSING. DON'T LIKE, DON'T READ. NO FLAMES!!!" on disclaimers anymore hahaha

[pauraque]

Fanlore has some great material on early fandom and I'm so glad it's there, especially the quotes and links to primary sources. It's really eye-opening to see how much the culture and language of fandom has changed over time. I've seen some letters published in zines that I could barely decipher, between lacking context, missing in-jokes, and just not being familiar with the subcultural "dialect". (Fans from the zine era would probably be equally lost trying to read Tumblr posts.) We're going to need a whole discipline of fandom philology pretty soon. :)

[independence1776]

It's basically that because AO3 exists, nothing else needs to. It's not an attitude I understand either, but my fandom home is a Tolkien-only archive. So I'm not exactly unbiased when it comes to small sites that actually have a community.

[sabcatt]

I think it's slightly more complex than a simple "we have ao3, so we don't need anything else" attitude. I really think there's a combination of factors at work that are making AO3 the "home base" of fic fandom rn.

First of all, running your own archive is hard. (I can't say how hard, I've never done it, but I can only presume it takes significantly more time and effort than using one someone else has already set up.) In the Olden Times, because there were no alternatives if you wanted to have a place to post fic (or discuss your fandom, or whatever), people had to put in the effort to (learn how to run, and then) run their own fansites, forums and archives. However, these days, because there are so many (well, I say so many, I really mean like... four, hah) social media sites that are, if not welcoming to fandom, at least not exactly hostile, there's no longer such a necessity/incentive for people to run their own sites to engage in fannish activity.

Also, the development of major websites towards ease of use (social media's endless search for New Users makes them very "pick-up-and-play", unlike the Wild West days of the Old Net where "engagement" wasn't the sole goal) means that many people who are used to the "new" net have never had to learn HTML and CSS, let along stuff like java, javascript and SQL. (I personally only know HTML and some CSS, I'd be totally lost trying to create and code an archive.)

There's also been a massive influx of people into fandom who have simply... never experienced dedicated archives and forums. The initial post reflects on the fact that many people in fandom at current aren't really aware of "fandom history":

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.

But fandom history, such as it is, doesn't just include the details of website purges and the Citrus Scale, but also the very fact that there were (and, in some cases, still are) thriving communities (on a significantly smaller scale than the current social media free-for-all) on smaller websites (such as dedicated fandom forums and archives) or within larger websites that allowed for smaller communities to develop (such as LiveJournal and its successors, and then going back even further, GeoCities). People simply aren't aware that these communities existed, so it's not all that surprising that they're not conceiving of them being possible alternatives to our current social media-centric setup (which, as Pi reflected on in "modern social media sucks for fandom", has a loooooot of pitfalls and downsides).

Sorry for the essay, haha, (and especially sorry if it comes across as a lecture—I am very much with you on the appreciation of small sites, just adding my analysis of why they've fallen out of fashion,) but I think that simplifying the lack of smaller sites and communities down to "people are content with AO3" misses a lot of historical context of the development of both AO3 and fandom in general, especially over the last 10 years. People are (demonstrably, if you pay attention to all the yelling) not content with the way things currently are—it's just that many of them don't currently have models of alternatives so they're attempting to reinvent the wheel, without (if you'll excuse me belaboring this metaphor) even knowing what a chisel is.

[independence1776]

So… I'm a Fandom Old. My first fic on ff.net is months away from being old enough to vote in American elections. I know all of what you said; I've discussed it in other places.

I'm an active member of Tolkien fandom and I was talking specifically about the attitude in Tumblr Silmarillion fandom that the Silmarillion Writers' Guild (which has been around since 2005 and its owner and mods just switched archive software to Drupal to make sure it stays viable) is not valuable because it's not AO3. I might be misremembering this, but that is more or less what someone told the owner of SWG, that since AO3 exists everyone should be using it instead of smaller archives. This was not a case of someone needing or wanting to build something and not knowing how, but someone refusing to use something that already exists simply because it wasn't AO3. And they weren't the only person I saw with that attitude.

[catgang]

Discord servers as I have experienced them are just big groupchats. I'm not the most familiar with the forum style of internetting, being a bit young to have really gotten any before social media took over, but everything feels much more fast paced on Discord. Even with notifs off there's this kind of demand for your attention - like everyone is talking at you that's hard to shake. For me that's why they feel like so much effort compared to (for example) this comment thread where I can peruse at my leisure.

[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.

[dreamkist]

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

[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?

[petra]

They've reinvented the wheel with Do Not Want, I think, but that feels different than a squick.

[scrawnytreedemon]

Yeah, absolutely. It's like everything has to be this grand, moral statement that reflects on *exactly* who you are as a person and how you act...

It's tiring.

[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

[xmarksthespotwhereistand]

That things have to be for everyone really hurts small archives or forums from springing up.
Reading this has been so revelatory to me, i've been thinking about it for days. I find myself having fallen into the same trap, wanting to preserve fannish culture and yearning for fannish communities and forgetting the specifics of tgese cultures and communities. I can't add anything, just thank you.

[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 ^^

[pikkugen]

For me, a DNW is usually situation-specific, like "I'd prefer to have Fluffy Comfort Fic for this specific fanfic exchange, DNW angst or HURT/comfort" whereas a squick WILL make me stop reading the moment I realize it's coming.

[petra]

That makes sense. Thanks for the examples!

[thewickling]

Yes that's it! Because Discord has more of a chat format even if you can divide up channels - it always feels like I am entering in the middle of a conversation.

Discord is very chronologically sensitive. I don't feel weird replying to a dreamwidth post a week later but if there was a topic on Discord I wanted to talk about - I would feel like the conversation was over already

[kentucka]

I wouldn't know all the reasons people have for not "crossposting" fic anymore (another term I haven't heard in a while), but I know mine would be
- having a single place where I'd need to update a WIP or a re-edit
- collecting views/kudos/comments in a single place

Back in LJ days - and I still see this on tumblr - we'd post in a comm and just link to the one master post on the personal/writer journal. Crossposting spreads the word and actually increases chance of views; it's sad if people just assume the community of a forum completely overlaps with the users going through the AO3 tag.

[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.

[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!"