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!