Where does fandom start and where will it start tomorrow? (Snowflake Challenge #2, Fannish Fifty)

[aquietjune]

snowflake_challenge #2: In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story.

Also my first entry to this year's Fannish Fifty on goals_on_dw.

I wasn't feeling particularly eager to discuss my fannish beginnings at first--having been a child in the 90s, there is only so much I can say about afternoon children programming on TV including anime and later, through a very rugged dial-up connection, my search for those very same anime on the Internet, finding hard-to-navigate seiyuu databases (still a mystery to me), fansites full of images that I could download and print, and finally, discovering fan fiction and fan art. For me that anime was Slayers (coincidentally, just like my current fave, an anime adapted from a light novel series), but with the same or another title that could represent the experience of many of my peers.

Not that responding to this question required originality at all--I get that in truth, there is as much to find in the things we have in common than the things in which we are different, in this community--but then again, what do I have to say?

Then yesterday, while I was thinking about glossing over it, focusing on my return to fandom, maybe, I happened to read this interesting article about fanfiction getting consumed more and more like any other piece of media, and less like the expression of a specific context of a specific subculture, that of fandom linked by the always insightful The Rec Center.

I recommend to go check it, but in general, what sparked my interest was the hypothesis that this is happening because while fanfic gained more visibility in modern culture (and less of a stigma? I'm not sure about that) it is also more easily accessible and searchable (through the AO3 tagging system, for example) than it was before, when we had to rely heavily on community (bullettin boards / forums, livejournal) to get to those precious stories (posted not just on fanfic archives--often static websites with a lot of behind-the-scenes work from beginner webmasters, but also other livejournals, personal blogs, etc.).

While this makes finding the stories we are looking for much easier, it also detaches them from their origin, the discussions among fans, discussions that are often not even searchable or traceable as they're hidden behind social media walls or worse yet, Discord servers, and the same happens for the discussions fanfic generates among readers, creating a disconnect (and a deep sense of loneliness) between readers and fan writers.

I'm definitely one lamenting not so much "lack of engagement" (horrible "content creation culture" term) but the lack of community around a fandom. Sure, Reddit is searchable, but it's Reddit. Discord you can probably find access to, but only for a limited time--once the server is gone, all the history of the fandom is lost. In the middle of these experiences, there's the one I had when I came back to fandom during COVID: anitwit (and in my case, aottwit, as in Attack on Titan Twitter) at the time was very active and generous with conversations that easily led to fanworks; as a lurker first, I was inspired by those conversations to open a word editor and start writing again, and later, as an active participant, I inspired more ideas and fanworks--the one I'm the most proud of, this beautiful fanart of Reiner getting a pug. See already the downside: I need to give you a Pinterest link for it (was the artist mikibagels even okay with being saved forever there?), the link to the tweet doesn't work, and the history of the whole conversation cannot be easily found, it at all.

Even ignoring the mess that the "Bird App of Hell" (now no longer a bird app but something much worse) is and was, and the twisted dynamics that turned headcanons from charismatic, 24/7-active account with larger social media following into "basically canon" (excluding then what did not fit into that headcanon), the problems with shadowbanning for artists, the fan writers having to run promotional campaigns with commissioned fanarts to get traction on the platform all in the name of being read... there is a problem here. There is no permanence; no access to those conversations to those who will come after.

Admittedly this is something that has been boggling me for some time, the whole debacle about the loss of old web in favor of corporate-run platforms that feed on user generated content, and before I lose myself into a rant about Web 2.0 (in 2025!), I'd rather stop it here and close the post with a few questions--for you who are reading, and for me in the next year, to try to answer:

1. Is this an actual problem? Kids go on Discord these days and learn about things and create and discuss fanworks and canon like we did on other platform. Fandom is still accessible.

2. But authors--not necessarily older authors, but authors who do not participate to fandom being active on every Discord servers of the fandom they write for--feel disconnected from their readers.
   
   (I was lucky enough to be invited by the readers of my fic to join the discussion on Discord. The funny thing was, I was already on that Discord, and I didn't even notice that discussion happening, and I would have completely ignored it if it wasn't for the courageous reader who invited me!)

3. Then again, fandom started for us, but how will fandom start for those coming after us, especially once we (a very general we, assume we're talking about small and/or mostly inactive fandoms) are gone?

4. But is fanfic really findable at all? Yesterday I woke up with the urge of finding a very specific kind of fic for a very large, popular, and cursed fandom which I Will Not Name. AO3 tagging system is great and all, but certain things are difficult to express, and after three attempts at three different points of my day, I gave up. (Will I write the fic myself? No, because the fandom is cursed and I do not want to participate actively in it. I think you can guess which fandom it is.)

5. Of course, I should have asked around. True, I do not participate in that fandom and DO NOT WANT TO, but I could have asked for recs somewhere, anonymously, even.

6. Every time I open the threads for specific recs on r/Fanfiction, however, I find that barely anybody responds.

7. AO3 recs, collections? Sure, but the tagging system did not help me, how could I find that in bookmarks?
   
   Recs for the Cursed Fandom aside, however:

8. Is there something we can do to create permanent histories of fandoms online?

9. Should I consider, for example, hosting discussions for the coming season of The Apothecary Diaries here, or on Tumblr? So that it will... persist? So that everybody can access it, even if they're just a casual fan, or not yet a fan?
   
   (Dreamwidth is great but the hellish landscape of social media makes things that were once a safeguard, a danger to some--eg, not everybody will feel okay at leaving their IP addresses on random communities where that data can be read by unknown mods, even though we're all collectively okay at having our very sensible data harvested by large platforms at any time. Is there a way to turn that off?)

10. What else would work in your opinion, and what would you like to do?

That's it for now. Thanks for reading such a long post and for being willing to consider these issues!

Comments

[vendettadays]

Thank you for sharing this thoughtful post and linking the article. The longer I've been in fandom, the more I do think about "permanence" of fanworks and communities in fandom, even though I don't have any answers of my own. Your post was a very insightful read and got me thinking about those very questions you posed.

[aquietjune]

Thank you so much for reading and for hosting this challenge!

[hellomei]

Popping in from Snowflake to say this really resonated with me. Something I've noticed from 90s~00s fandom is that more often than not, I saw fans on mailing lists asking for their fic to NOT be distributed and shared outside the protected circle of the mailing list, and I assume most people respected that and saved it only in their personal archives/inboxes if they wanted to. People who are only familiar Corporate/Consumerist Web Fandom probably would find this strange or unheard of, since the current culture presupposes fic authors and fanartists wanting everyone to see their work, wanting numbers/visibility/traction, etc, and readers/viewers feel more like consumers who can do what they like with what they feel is now theirs. Your point about authors feeling disconnected from their readers made me think about this (although my thought is somewhat of a tangent). It's hard to trust people with your work when you don't know if they'll respect it or your permissions.

Many things you wrote about are concerns I've had about fandom too (and the avoidance of big, cursed fandoms is real), so it's nice to see them laid out and worded so well!

[aquietjune]

Thank you, I'm glad this resonated. What you say about mailing lists and limited circles is interesting because this is another aspect that has been co-opted by corporate web - the explosion in hype (and investment) of Substack last year shows how the new trend of newsletters is recognized as a tool to mimick personal connection, and the mean of communication is now exploited completely; at the same time, on our end, maybe there is something similar with Patreon / Ko-fi, although with fandom is always tricky because of rights; I think a new round of putting fanworks behind "walls" (or better, let's say "secret circles") is also a possibility, but if we're using again these platforms things may not go well. Yet, I wish there was a way to feel less disconnected.

[gingicat]

It's a very interesting thought. There's a lot of fannish history that's been lost over time - Google archived a lot of Usenet but it's very difficult to go back and find my posts from college. Similarly, IRC discussions, convention program books, fanzines, and so forth may be lost forever. Less-popular books go out of print while problematic authors seem to hang on forever.

I'm glad so many people are participating in this challenge. At least we get glimpses.

[aquietjune]

There are always components that get lost, but some of these things can be found again in some ways; what I feel with Discord servers is that some fandoms only live there, so once the fandom has lost a wide appeal, every part of its history may be lost, which somehow seems less egregious with a fandom scattered among different platforms. There is also to say that fandom is much bigger now, with many more canons getting very hyped maybe for just one season, or one month, or overnight; you can't keep track of everything, even human memories will fail at that.

[mekare]

>> Is there something we can do to create permanent histories of fandoms online?

This is something I‘ve been grappling with for a couple of years. I used to rant about Discord shutting away so much fruitful fandom discussion and recs, but I‘ve since joined and am enjoying the semi-privacy. Still, you are right. Once a server is gone,*everything* will be lost.

Re making fandom history accessible, for my small fandom I try to post things (recs, discussion questions, prompts) to communities which are accessible without having a Dreamwith account. Still, if you don‘t know Dreamwidth exists, like I‘m guessing a lot of younger people don‘t know, you will not find those resources.
And I guess the OTW Fanlore project is one attempt of making at least a summarised version of a fandom‘s history accessible. Still, since it depends on volunteers, that history will be spotty, biased or simply not there.

[aquietjune]

I used to rant about Discord shutting away so much fruitful fandom discussion and recs, but I‘ve since joined and am enjoying the semi-privacy.

It depends a lot on the server. When you're invited to a limited-access server the semi-privacy makes sense; with a public server everything can be read by anyone at any time (and without a trace) and lost in half a second, which is... something.

communities which are accessible without having a Dreamwith account.

Meaning communities that accept anonymous posting? (I'm trying to understand also to make an attempt myself).

Still, if you don‘t know Dreamwidth exists, like I‘m guessing a lot of younger people don‘t know, you will not find those resources.

It's very difficult for me to say whether we are just a dream of the past (no pun intended) or if there will be a new wave of younger people. In the end, it's good that it's a "niche" platform (it would fall into all the other problems if it wasn't).

Thank you for the comment!

[sisterdivinium]

Hello! I'm here from Snowflake and I hope you don't mind the huge answer that follows. Your post just struck close to home, haha :)

That was a great read at Fansplaining, thank you for the link. It's always a little soothing to see that one's concerns are also addressed by other people because even if we can't provide any immediate practical solutions at least there's less of a sense of loneliness to smelling something fishy in the air... And I guess that already takes us back to the loneliness of doing fandom today, at least when compared to certain practices of a few years ago.

I'd say there's a difference between accessibility and availability. One could hypothetically join (access) a Discord server for one's fandom, yes, but that doesn't mean whatever one is searching for is readily available when it's likely to be buried down under piles and piles of messages (as you report not even noticing some users talking about your story), not to mention the possibility of a server disappearing out of the blue. Sure, lots of old LJ journals were purged as the years went by but pages and discussions and stories have been archived in a way that Discord interactions simply cannot be (or who will copy and paste thousands of messages without much of an hierarchy and post them as a PDF once the server is gone? Who would even dare do that without caring for the privacy of the participants? Who would, in the case of caring, look over hundreds, thousands of conversation pages to remove the too-personal commentary and leave only the fannish? It's just not feasible).

The migration from more open fandom spaces to ones that are closed-off is... Not the best choice, imo. The article mentions lurking and I think lurking is a big aspect to fandom. Lurking is what teaches us the codes in a given community or even whether or not we actually want to join it -- and no actual lurking can be done on Discord. Not only must one join off the bat and add their username to an ever-growing list instead of remaining anonymous, one must also "trust" that such a space is what one desires to share in. We could look over a Livejournal comm and pass on it if its members were too snarky for our taste, for instance; we can't really observe how a given Discord server behaves beforehand. I, for one, don't like going into anything without knowing what I'm getting myself into so as easy as joining some fandom Discord is, just by clicking a link, I vehemently refuse to do so and likely "miss out" on whatever might be happening within. Maybe more people are reading and enjoying my rarepair fics! I'll never know.

So to answer question 1, I do think it's a problem. You can be in fandom and have conversations and whatnot, but the whole structure of how that happens is different. Maybe some find that it's better and perhaps it is -- for them. For me and for a handful of people out there, real-time messaging in some hidden server really is not what we have in mind when we talk about building fandom community (as opposed to more intimate friendships -- that is when I take it to Discord, one-on-one).

Point 6 is interesting because I've noticed that about r/Fanfiction too and... There are a great many advantages to multifandom spaces but, as with anything, it has its downsides and this illustrates one of them. It's one thing to ask for, I don't know, a Xena fic rec in a multifandom space; it's another entirely to go somewhere built for/by Xena fans and ask there, especially when it's a more specific type of story. One thing LJ offered which I haven't encountered since its demise is precisely that: active, flourishing fandom-specific communities. Things are fragmented nowadays, scattered in different platforms and even on people's personal pages (be that X, Bluesky, Tumblr, what have you) as they don't really have much of a focus on anything anymore. It's not being multifannish that's the problem (not at all!!) but just a seeming total lack of direction, jumping off into the next bandwagon all the time because, oh, look, a new show and then another and another as they get cancelled after one season and the poor, shy, nascent fandoms attached to them die alongside canon. If we're talking permanence, we also have to remember a lot of contemporary canon is just as impermanent as the fandoms they could potentially inspire but don't due to corporate greed axing them too early.

(This is getting long, my apologies again, but your post sparked a lot of Thoughts which have been brimming for a good while now. I think a lot of us who have been here for some time end up thinking about this whether we want to or not...)

The closest to "permanent fandom histories" I can think of is Fanlore but then of course, as another user mentioned above, it depends a lot on the people who contribute to it and their own perspective on their respective fandoms. I know I have ships that are mentioned on their main fandom page but which have no page of their own because they're not popular (or because they're "problematic", lol) or because nobody who was involved with them wrote of them over there (I suppose I could do it myself but we only have so many hours in a day) or who knows why. Still, far from perfect as it is, it's still very useful all in all. I love going to the Livejournal entry and reading over the links to Meta/Additional reading, also because there's a lot of stuff that is still relevant today despite having been discussed over twenty years ago.

Discussing a season of something with others seems a lot more comfortable on Dreamwidth than Tumblr to me, both as a way to carve out a special place for that where everyone can see everyone's comments and as a way to better try preserving whatever gets talked about. If IP logging is an issue, the owner of the account can always turn it off in their settings if they feel so inclined (I do).

To finish this off and get out of your hair at last, I don't know if anything can work as long as it's an individual effort. I successfully hosted an event for a very recent fandom on DW last year but sadly didn't retain any of those people over here -- it would take their cooperation and interest to change things around and choose websites a little more appropriate for fandom dealings than whatever they're using at the moment. What I would like to do, in my dream world, is to convince them all to give DW a chance (or forums! I miss forums) because the structure lends itself better to the sort of community creation as well as the preservation of what that community can create, but alas... I do keep trying to mention DW at every turn and using it as much as I can compared to, say, Tumblr. I suppose Sisyphus must imagine himself happy, too... :)

[aquietjune]

On the contrary, I appreciated your comment a lot! The distinction you make, between accessibility and availability, is a great point. And yes, Discord servers can be backupped, but it can only be done by admins afaik; the work you mention, expunging personal/sensitive details to just save the fannish, is also on point -- this is not something that can work. Chats are easy to use and great for person-to-person communications but they cannot be the core of a history.

One thing LJ offered which I haven't encountered since its demise is precisely that: active, flourishing fandom-specific communities. Things are fragmented nowadays, scattered in different platforms and even on people's personal pages (be that X, Bluesky, Tumblr, what have you) as they don't really have much of a focus on anything anymore. It's not being multifannish that's the problem (not at all!!) but just a seeming total lack of direction, jumping off into the next bandwagon all the time because, oh, look, a new show and then another and another as they get cancelled after one season and the poor, shy, nascent fandoms attached to them die alongside canon.

All of this. And consider that the "jumping off into the next bandwagon" is often done because 1. we buy into the power dynamics of social media, and 2. we are somehow forced to buy into it even if we know it's not good because of where we stay, e.g. fanartists want their art not just to be seen, but they don't want to be buried (missing from the timelines of their subscribers even). If they want to stay visible, they need to be consistent in output and also on trend. Fan writers: ideally on AO3 we are not subjected to algorithms, but oh, if it doesn't show how quickly engagement decreases once their canon is no longer the hyped one (e.g. the series is now off air). It's easy to think "I'll just write for a newly popular fandom so that I can get a (false) sense of community." (Also you easily lose fandom friends once you or they jump etc. etc. -- nowadays that's a given) I see that at the moment the best way to find resources and people for a fandom is Reddit.

I love going to the Livejournal entry and reading over the links to Meta/Additional reading, also because there's a lot of stuff that is still relevant today despite having been discussed over twenty years ago.

Great resource, thank you!

Discussing a season of something with others seems a lot more comfortable on Dreamwidth than Tumblr to me

I agree completely on this; I mentioned Tumblr because people are there (to reblog etc.); it would be useful to link it there, I think. Also, thank you for mentioning the setting for disabling IP logging.

I successfully hosted an event for a very recent fandom on DW last year but sadly didn't retain any of those people over here -- it would take their cooperation and interest to change things around and choose websites a little more appropriate for fandom dealings than whatever they're using at the moment

It's great that you managed a full event, still! Good work. As I say at every new wave of "let's abandon Twitter" -- yeah, it'll happen if you manage to migrate whole communities, and you manage to migrate whole communities only if you bring all the other things they have on Twitter onto the next platform. That, or the other platform must have something that motivates you all the way. (E.g. I use facebook for just one hobby, a hobby that couldn't been done without the interaction with all those others who are also on facebook for that very reason). I see people using Bluesky with joy but I don't remember to go there very often, although I'm sure there are better, more relaxed conversations over things (but maybe... not exactly the one I'm looking for?).

Thank you again for the input!

[sushiflop]

"Is there something we can do to create permanent histories of fandoms online?"

This is an interesting question, and I think attempts have been made to do this through wikis and whatnot, but I also believe that fundamentally the answer is no because nothing online can truly be something I consider permanent. Websites can collapse or get bought out from under users at any time (looks at cursed no longer a bird website). The most established online edifices are only quasipermanent at best. It might be a long time before the collapse, but it will come...

Which is deeply disheartening to think as I have a lot of my life chronicled on Dreamwidth, and Livejournal before that. But that's kind of a case in point: I moved to Dreamwidth because Livejournal effectively, if not literally, collapsed when it was bought out.

[aquietjune]

Without doubt there is nothing "100% permanent" online, just like there's no way to guarantee 100% security (in online communication and other computer endeavours). Looking at a finer granularity however, there's still a difference between a community on DW and a Discord server, because the latter is a chat and can be deleted in a second leaving no trace (contrary to the community that cna be archived, etc. etc.) It may also be the coming of more fast-paced times in online communication, sure -- more people, more ephemeral content replacing more thought-out pieces (e.g. a rant in a IG story vs. a blog post). I don't know how things will change, or how we will find a good solution to make most of it work, but one thing is sure: a lot of things we still know not because Geocities never fell, but because those who were there and lost it tried to preserve parts of it, and the "lessons learned" also through other means (wayback machine etc.) -- with hidden, untraceable and unsearchable communities screenshots are taken only when drama happens, and there should be a better way to make this work. T_T

[vriddy]

Very thoughtful post. I am grappling with a lot of these issues as well. I share fic to connect with other fans, but if people talk in reply but not to me, what do I want to do? I do not have an answer but I had also spotted that article in the_rec_center_feed and plan to spend some time with it later :)

I'm also torn about Discord... I think many people appreciate the privacy after years of living enthusiasm in public and becoming the character of the week or fighting off trolls on Twitter. On the other hand, I also struggle with not being able to lurk (or find!) these places, you need to already know someone or end up on huge servers that are difficult to follow... but in general I find the "real time" conversation format doesn't suit me well as I can't be online all the time or whatever timezone the conversation is happening.

We've done anime episode discussions on anime_manga before :) (Edit: Ah! I'm still catching up on my reading page, I see you're on top of that :D) As much as I'm happy to see Dreamwidth activity though, if you already have a community around it on Tumblr, it's always more fun with people you know. IP logging can be disabled at journal/comm level though that's up to the owner. I'm not delighted that it's enabled by default either. Apothecary Diaries is a series that's been recommended to me several times, I must catch up! :)