January talking meme: my longest-running fandom

[lokifan]

slashedsilver asked “Which fandom of yours has lasted the longest? What draws you to it? What has changed about it over time?”

Potter’s definitely lasted the longest; it was the fandom I initially found and got into, and I’m still here… fuck, nearly eight years on. Aside from the obvious - I’ve met so many great people here, so I stay even though I read vastly less fic than I used to - I stay because it’s big and active, there’s always something else cool going on; because it’s stayed with journaling platforms, which are my favourite way to fandom; because there are a lot of cool, varied characters with different relationships, which is really great for a multishipper like me; because I like the world, and I like reading and writing fantasy. I also think it’s partly because the source has such a mix and meld of genres that it really lends itself to massive variety in the genre and style of its fic. Slapstick comedy and dark dystopia both have a way in, an element of canon to sort of hook themselves onto. Whereas with something like Avengers or White Collar, the tone of the source material means that the genres that feel right to me are much more limited.

How has it changed over time? IN SO MANY WAYS. I have a feeling much of HP is becoming more multishipper or multifandom or both, probably because we have fewer new fans and it tends to be the way people go as they spend more time in fandom generally. And Tumblr, probably because it takes a lot less effort to reblog than to post or comment, seems to breed multifannish people - people self-identify in bios and profiles and even LJ friending memes as fannish about way more stuff than I remember being typical. There are fewer epic-length fics and waaaaaay less meta. But the three biggies as far as I’m concerned (although I know I’ll think of something else the second I post) are



There were certainly fests when I joined fandom, but as far as I remember they basically happened in December. We got excited for them, there was this massive rush of fic, and everyone got back to just writing and posting as and when. Birthday fics I think have become less common, probably partly as a result of the fest culture. It is just…. so different. The constant fests, the daily OMG SO MANY DEADLINES post from at least one member of my flist. I joined fandom after HBP came out, but I think the Three Year Summer (ie the gap between GoF and OotP) really encouraged writing enormous epics and loads of novel-lengths, and they have almost disappeared as far as I can tell.

FYI: I wish there were fewer fests, but I also really like them - especially the niche ones that create a bunch of threesome/kinky/unpopular-character/etc fics at once. Sometimes they’re just what you need; hp_getlucky started posting the week my grandmother died in 2010, and having a source of fic with a generally perky slant that didn’t involve interacting with my flist (ie feeling obliged to comment) was a lifesaver. So this bit - and the next - are not value judgements! They are just what I’ve observed of the changes from my corner.



FYI: this is the way more rambly and uncertain and less HP-specific segment.

When I joined HP fandom, it was all about LJ. FF.net (aka the Pit of Voles) had waaaay more visitors as far as I can tell by the stats, but my corner was all about LJ, with archives to keep the fic - fandom-specific archives, or pairing-specific ones, or ones that were invite-only. General archives, not so much a thing. And it was much more common, as far as I remember, for writers or artists to have their own websites for their content. That, of course, has masssively shifted.

LJ has splintered, with people heading for DW and IJ to different degrees - Strikethrough and such have made people much less trusting of LJ, and some of it’s just passing of time. But it’s Tumblr and AO3 that have been the massive change I’ve seen, the next stage of fandom. (“Next stage” not in a myth-of-progress, value-judgement way - I muuuuch prefer journaling sites - but, you know. Mailing lists and yahoo groups had their benefits too.)

It’s interesting, because work on AO3 began in part because of Strikethrough and other events that jarred fandom, I think - I mean, it’s in the name. We can’t trust LJ or other sites where we host our content to have our back in the face of advertisers or the Warriors for Innocence - we need an archive of our own. Very separate from the rise of Tumblr, which - and I am probably vastly wrong, I’d love info from someone with a clearer idea of Tumblr’s early days - seems to have begun as a Hipster Youf hangout and become more and more fandomy in part just because it’s a hugely popular site with North American teenagers and their parents don’t use it, which makes it a natural habitat for fandom.

Not that fandom is inherently teenagerish, more that teenagers are inherently fannish. Vast generalisation, but the passion and the free time and the capacity for obsession, not to mention how valuable that burst of creativity and like-minded people and people unlike those in your immediate environment is at that age.

So yeah. But I really think Tumblr couldn’t have become the dominant fandom platform so solidly or so fast without AO3 - Tumblr is a TERRIBLE platform for reading text, especially a lot of it. I don’t know if AO3 would have become so huge so fast without Tumblr, either. Certainly the new Tumblr-heavy fandoms got really into AO3 a lot faster than HP’s LJ fandom adopted it, although cause and effect’s murky there. Way after my other fandoms used AO3 as standard, I saw the HP portion of my flist mentioning sadly that it was a shame AO3 hadn’t really taken off yet.

But it undeniably has now. I think the lack of a dedicated Steve/Tony archive (at least one that shows up on the first page of Google results) is really telling - they’re the biggest pairing for the huge fandom of the moment, but they don’t have their own separate archive. We have the AO3.

HP is a lot quieter and a lost festier than it was, but I think the shift in platforms has really changed the atmosphere in itself. There is far less commenting, of course, but it’s also… my sense of this constant massive party going on on LJ has really faded. Though it’s hard to tell how much that’s about me and how much it’s objective - it’s so hard to tell what’s going on beyond your own small bubble of fannishness, and I am such a big person for text that the shift to Tumblr and its point-making-via-gifs is probably way bigger to my brain than to the world at large. But it does make a real difference to how we communicate and therefore what we say - the medium is the message, yeah?

and

It’s harder to see the wanks in fandoms you’re not part of these days, both because so much of the wank happens on Tumblr and because of the passing of fandom_wank. (How much do I miss it? SO MUCH. It was hilarious and the posts were usually well-done and it let me check for any really big blow-ups I might have missed before a con. It’s now ten years old and functionally dead.) But still, when I joined fandom, Harry Potter was the massive, crazy fandom. Now that’s partly a function of being the biggest fandom by far, but not entirely. HP had the vicious ship wars (Harmonians versus OHWF, etc) and the biggest BNFs (easy way to test how long someone’s been in fandom: “do you remember Cassie Clare?” - I don’t, but when I arrived it was still creating enough of a hangover that I knew most of the details) and the really crazy shit - Snapewives, Ms Scribe, thanfiction - that belonged to us.

I am really glad the horrible ship wars are relegated to memory - God knows the Buffy fans are still duking it out over who owns Buffy Summers’ vagina - and it’s hard to say I miss the potential for crazy wank given the number of people who were really horribly hurt by some of this stuff. There are fandoms I still avoid because of their reputation for crazy (Supernatural) even where I do actually watch the canon (Doctor Who). I have resisted the urge to snap back at the Loki fans on Tumblr saying horrible and uncanonical things about my boo Thor. Wank is actually really kind of awful; I’ve been part of a minor one once, and it made me cry. Although that was with flisters I already knew.

Still. bad_penny is a great read, and certainly within H/D… God knows we still have wank, although it always totally goes past without me noticing because I don’t have enough gossipy H/D friends any more, but there is definitely an element of Cult of Nice these days. The pressure against anything negative in comments to fic or recs for fic is the most obvious example. I don’t know; I don’t think the people who want things to stay all-positive and all-upbeat have bad motives or anything, but I don’t think the pressure against things like disagreeing with people openly does much besides increase the amount of disagreeing behind people’s backs, which so easily slides into bitching. Take it from a gossip :)

Idk. I’m far from decided on my opinion here. I just feel like it’s hard to make a case against being nice, but that’s precisely why we lose the benefits of the interwebs free-for-all.

Comments

[kabal42]

Whereas with something like Avengers or White Collar - and there you go and name my two active fandoms :) (Ok, White Collar is very new for me, but still!) But I agree that AO3 and tumblr are a parallel development - one wouldn't be as big (for fandom) without the other. Incidentally, there IS a Steve/Tony archive, but, uh, I've never looked at it *G* But we link to it from the comm (LJ and DW - sort of tumblr too) that I co-admin.

I miss journals being the main fandom place, though. I really do.