August 2015

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Show Notes: Fansplaining Episode 3: What’s The Deal With Wattpad?

fansplaining:

These notes go along with this episode (transcript on its way)!

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Attention EU Star Trek fans!

Earlier I blogged about US sources where you could buy used fanzines. There are other, more cost effective resources available to fans wanting to read early Star Trek fan fiction. The KS Press has maintained a Fanzine Lending Library for decades. The EU branch has just published a list of its holdings and info on how to borrow zines. They have both gen and slash fanzines for loan.

From the EU announcement

“Fanzine Lending Libraries work by snail mail. They are thus the fannish equivalent to handwritten postcards, typewriters, vinyl records, vintage fashion, and craft-beer. Very hipster, very retro, if you will. As offline and analogue as it gets. You can look up the K/S Library’s catalogue in every issue of The K/S Press which is nowadays sent out to its subscribers by email. If you are not a subscriber, contact the editor (catalenamara at yahoo dot com) and sign up. You can also look which Star Trek and K/S goodness the European branch has to offer right here in this very Dreamwidth entry under the cut.”

The US branch does not have a catalog online, but there are instructions on how to contact them in the EU post.

Zine shown above: Nome #9

Fan Artist: Caren Parnes

(links go to Fanlore, the fan run non-profit wiki about media fandom)

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Are Doing the Internets Wrong?

izzybeth:

3liza:

one of my favorite things about facebook is that it has successfully recreated the state of the internet circa 1995, when there were two distinct classes of internet users: those on AOL, and everyone else.  those on AOL (now Facebook) believed firmly that AOL “was the internet” and used the terms interchangeably. everyone else was exasperated by this, but also grateful that grammy and pep-pep couldn’t escape the confines of AOL News frontpage, AIM, AOL chatrooms, and the spam-infested @aol.com email servers.

so many of my acquaintances over the age of about 35, give or take, even people I have known for years and in some cases was, or am, relatively close to, regularly ask me “what i;m doing” and “where i am” because it is inconceivable that anyone see internet that isnt curated by the Facebook entity.  that even storied, experienced tech industry people have been suckered into occupying a walled garden with everyone’s racist uncles is an astonishing thing to contemplate in this year of our lord 2014AD.

A year later, and this simply becomes more relevant.

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lierdumoa:

So transferring miriamheddy’s old works has put me in a nostalgic mood. I started re-reading sabershadowkat’s old BtVS, and then I started reading sabershadowkat’s old One Piece, and then I decided to hunt down my 2 fav One Piece fanfic that I read way back in 2004.

This was the era where themed fanfic archives were a thing. Some were ship specific. Some were fandom specific. Some were kink specific. Sometimes people just created archives to gather all their favorite fic in one place, manually recruiting authors off of other fiction archives, fan forums, web searches, etc.

The upside of that is a lot of the good fic from that era was crossposted to 6 different archives, one or two of which are still live on the web even now in the year of our lord 2015.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the two fic I mentioned are:

“Tea and Sympathy” and “The Sleep of Reason,” both by ando-meio-desligado (devosama on LJ).

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startedwellthatsentence:

jhameia:

kiriamaya:

donotlookatthedogpark:

thetrekkiehasthephonebox:

theoncomingcapaldi:

Things were so much simpler before women started stealing all of my favorite things from me. I don’t care what anyone says. Women aren’t and will never be true fans of Doctor Who, Star Trek or any of that. You jumped in because you wanted attention. You became “fans” because suddenly liking sci-fi shows and fantasy became popular. You only want guys to drool over you because you’re girls who “like” geeky stuff. Kindly go jump in a lake and die.

A woman organized the letter-writing campaign to NBC to save Star Trek when it was on the verge of being cancelled after the first season, and thus enabled the show to continue on for three seasons allowing it to go into syndication and gain the following it did in reruns.

A woman organized the first ever Star Trek convention, and convinced NASA to donate a truckload full of stuff for said convention thus starting the tradition of Star Trek conventions featuring space for modern science.

A woman greenlit Star Trek while acting at the head of a major studio, and consistently fought pressure to cancel the show. This same woman was the person who greenlit Mission Impossible and was the first woman to head a major studio.

A woman wrote many of the most famous TOS episodes, and went on to write on to write episodes of The Animated Series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine.

Learn your history.

You think women stole your favorite things? If it weren’t for women, those things wouldn’t even exist, but you probably don’t even know the names of the women who made that possible.

So much for “infinite diversity in infinite combinations”…

Who is the fake now?

i’m just laughing so hard right now bc it’s hitting me that there are geek guys who think that women would actually pretend to like this stuff to cater to guys. like it never really occurred to me the depths of how absolutely fucking stupid that idea is.  ”we appear to have common interests but you still don’t like me so that must mean we don’t actually have common interests and you are not a real fan”. oh my god i just can’t right now. i want to feel offended by the fact that there is an idiot out there trying to tell me what i can and cannot like but i’m just too busy laughing.

Also, a lot of the current fandom terminology we take for granted originated in the Star Trek fandom, specifically Star Trek fanfic. And who were the major driving force behind Star Trek fanfic? Women.

Earliest spec fic texts in the English-speaking Western world were written by Thomas More (Utopia), Lady Margaret Cavendish (the Blazing World), and Mary Shelley (Frankenstein). Note that there are two women among those names.

I am so sick of these Fake Geek Guys who don’t even understand the history of the fandom they claim to want to protect.

A WOMAN WAS THE FIRST PRODUCER OF DOCTOR WHO.

A WOMAN CREATED THE THEME TUNE FOR DOCTOR WHO.

Are you fucking kidding me? So we can create your favorite things, but it’s impossible for us to be fans of them?

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star trek and fandom history

fannishtalk:

For those interested in Star Trek or fandom history, I saw a link for a website that has some of the old issues of the print zine Contact in pdf form.  These contain are some of the oldest Kirk/Spock slash stories in the fandom, including what is considered the first “reaction” story (The Rack), a story written about what Kirk&Spock would have dealt with if they were thought to be lovers, in response to what some other fans were saying about Kirk/Spock slash (this in Contact 4, btw).   And if it’s some of the first Kirk/Spock stories, then these are also among the very first slash stories written for public consumption and sent out in fanzine (when the postal service acted as the internet, and kudos were much harder to give).

I haven’t had a chance to read any of it - but this is fandom history!  And it’s exciting to see that it’s not been lost, that stories written before most of us were even born can still be read and appreciated.  I’m looking forward to seeing the actual beginning of certain fan fic tropes, and noticing the differences in what people focused on then compared to now.  Basically, this is a treasure trove of fannish and Star Trek history - how cool is that?!

The zines were published and edited by two sisters: Nancy Kippax and Bev Volker. Their families are the ones who scanned and have put up the zines, along with many of their wonderful memories. You can also read Nancy Kippax’s memories on Fanlore, the fan run wiki.

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lierdumoa:

I don’t know how I feel about the fact that google knew exactly which story I was talking about without me even trying.

BEHOLD.

X-FILES’ SEMINAL BADFIC MASTERPIECE. 

THE STORY THAT CONCIEVED THE INCONCIEVABLE. 

THE PREGNANT GRANDFATHER OF THE OMEGAVERSE. 


              ♥️life   from     the         asshhhesssss♥️

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30 years of media fandom vidding history. This year’s project: backing it up slowly to an external hard drive. Not shown: 4 boxes of songvids on VHS and Betamax videotape. Also not shown: owner’s crazed eyes and weirdly unsettling and unfocused smile.

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the three generations of fanfic:

madmaudlingoes:

ledamemangociana:

heymarauders:

livejournal, fanfiction.net and ao3
which one were you?

I HAVE LITERALLY LIVED THROUGH ALL OF THEM WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT SAY ABOUT ME

Oh bb there is so much more to it than that.

First there were zines, lovingly mimeographed and stapled by our fandom foreparents, and those who remain to us from the Zine Age are powerful and wise.

Then there was Usenet, where formatting went to die. You know not the strength it takes to read 60k fics entirely in Courier New, or the pleasure of a really artistic looking section break marker composed of ASCII characters.

Then there was the Great Schism, as fandoms spread far and wide across the Web, and basic HTML was the whole of the law. Many of us lied our way into private “18+” listservs, and roamed the webrings, lamps aloft, in search of one virtuous author (or at least somebody else who shipped the thing).

From this dark age rose FF.net, that pit of voles from whose bourn many a hungry reader has returned, starved for citrus and heartsick from the cutesy author notes.

And FF.net begat Livejournal, which allowed easy archiving, threaded comments, flocked posts and invite-only communities. And it was Livejournal, in its death throes, that begat AO3, which once seemed like only a utopian vision and now bestrides the world like a Colossus.

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On The Difficulties of Sharing Fanvids in the Late 1990s

From Fanlore, the fan run wiki about media fandom

In June 1999, fans discussed their difficulties of downloading [a] 7MB [fan vid] file in alt.tv.xena-subtext:[1]

“There is a wonderful Xena music video at http://www.tedraimi.com/ Eventhough the website is by a Ted Raimi fan, the video is strictly Xena and Gabrielle. It’s called "Angel” for the Sarah McClachlan song from City of Angels. It’s really beautiful! Go check it out you won’t be disappointed.“

"I went to the site and downloaded the music video. It took over 45 min. using a 56k modem. Then RealAudio started up and attempted to play the vid. but it was so broken up and garbled that I stopped the playing. Now when I select that file on RealAudio (6.0.3) it starts to buffer and gets about 18 seconds into it before it fails with a "net congestion” message. Is there a way to download and save the video so you can play  it all at once or does it have to be “live” every time?“

"I think that if you right-click the link instead of left-click, you will get the opportunity to "save link as…” (or whatever your  non-Netscape version of that is), and then you can d/l it to your hard drive. You can then open the file with Real Player.

“I downloaded it using the method decribed below with no problem – except that it took over 40 minutes to download, but I can live with that. It was worth it.”

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Dear Diary....(”All Xena is good Xena)

On my quest to record more of the history of Xena fan vids, I came across this May 1999 vid page. It reads:

“A 20 second fan fiction video promo. (1.1MB).  Made with Adobe After    Effects and Premiere.As always, the video was done in Real Video.Full Version - zipped    (1.1MB)

 Requirements:  I have been able to play this on 133Mhz    with at least 2MB of video ram, but I recommend at least a 266Mhz system with more video ram.”  

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mattfog:

“where did this weird trope even come from?”

well, statistically speaking, probably star trek

If you search on Fanlore, odds are Star Trek was involved somehow.

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VCR Vidding - How Was It Done?

I have posted three related handouts about VCR vidding. These handouts were written  in the late 1990s and early 2000s and assume a general knowledge of VCRs, many of which fans no longer have access to. Note that VCR vidding instructions were often specific to the make and model of the VCR depending on what type of editing features it had.

Here is an excerpt from one handout written by Stacy Doyle (she passed away last year and I am posting these handouts with the permission of her partner).

  “How To Do Music Videos” by Stacy Doyle
What you need:
1)  two VCR’s
2)  a tape deck or cd
3)  RCA connecter cables (gold tipped would be nice-not required tho)
4)  Source video tapes (you can make a music video with only a few tapes)
     [All the visuals in “I’m The Only One” were from “I Love You Rosie Malone”]

5)  Source audio tape/cd - the song you want
6)  Stopwatch (you can use a digital watch w/seconds, but it’s harder)
7)  Binder (or “lined”) paper
8)  VHS tape - HiFi or preimum grade

“luxuries to do music videos”  in order of importance…
VCR with a flying erase head [you lose the red/blue streaks]
VCR with “video dub” or “audio dub” (or both) [video -allows you to record
the visuals on the same tape as the audio track - easier playback to make
sure the words and the visuals fit.  audio -allows you to put the audio on
the tape that the visuals have been recorded.  Either of them allow you to
use the original visuals as the master tape.  Every generation of video tape
from the original recording brings the visual and audio quality down.. closer
to the original the better]
VCR with good “pause” strobe or solorization (not on VCR w/flying erase head)
[allows you to use special effects to liven up a video.. or a good pause
allows you to end a video on a specific frame - a smile, a look or whatever]

 Ok… now you have the music.  
1)  Write down all the words to the song on binder paper, skipping two lines
on the page for every line of the song.

2)  Time out the song with the stopwatch how many seconds is each line (i’ve
been told that I don’t have to do this, but I always have).

3)  Write the visuals you want to use on the line under the song line…
indicate which tape it’s on (helpful when you use something like ‘standing in
Dobey’s office as the cue)

4)  Cue up the first three or four scenes (assuming they are on different
tapes)

5)  Start at the beginning and put your first two or three visuals down and
go back and play the music with the visuals (turn the sound off on the tv and
listen to the music thru headphones…  Make sure the visuals line up the way
you want them too.. You will find that there is a 'lag time’ from the point
you unpause the VCR to the time it starts to record the imput.  Every machine
has it - you just have to figure out how long it is and release the pause
button accordingly…

6)  Repeat the process as long as it takes to put all the scenes together.

  Before I start a video, I have listened to the music for (probably) about
3 hours - trying to figure out the visuals, memorizing the tempo, listening
to the words and generally working out how I want the finished video to look.
My first video took 17 hours to do.  I did “I’m The Only One” over a two day
peroid and it took less than 4 hours…  I am a perfectionist and I want what
I want.

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liposcelidae:

I have started the process of editing Fanlore articles about Patrick Kane and Kane/Toews fandom to include the rape investigation and subsequent fandom fallout.

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Patrick_Kane

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Patrick_Kane/Jonathan_Toews

Fanlore is a wiki and I very much hope that other users will help expand and improve the coverage of this topic.  But, if there might be people in hockey RPF who have suggestions/comments but don’t feel comfortable editing the wiki themselves, please start a conversation with me! I want to do a good job representing and documenting our fandom and this awful turn of events.

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purpleshinyriv:

“Ryven” was a Myst/Riven fan age made in 1998. It was a series of rendered images stitched together with HTML. Some bits even seem to have used animated gifs for moving pieces of machinery!

It’s long-vanished (I think Geocities removed it due to inactivity even before Yahoo killed Geocities off). BUT, you can still see many of the images from it thanks to the magic of the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20030402103738/http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/3210/riven.htm . The “about” and “making of” pages are pretty great too!

It’s crude-looking by today’s standards, but for 1998 those graphics are pretty sharp–and they were just made and put together by one person in their spare time. I remember being really impressed and inspired when I stumbled across it the first time–it felt like being able to make and explore and share your own ages was tantalizingly close to reality.

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the three generations of fanfic:

cupidsbower:

madmaudlingoes:

ledamemangociana:

heymarauders:

livejournal, fanfiction.net and ao3
which one were you?

I HAVE LITERALLY LIVED THROUGH ALL OF THEM WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT SAY ABOUT ME

Oh bb there is so much more to it than that.

First there were zines, lovingly mimeographed and stapled by our fandom foreparents, and those who remain to us from the Zine Age are powerful and wise.

Then there was Usenet, where formatting went to die. You know not the strength it takes to read 60k fics entirely in Courier New, or the pleasure of a really artistic looking section break marker composed of ASCII characters.

Then there was the Great Schism, as fandoms spread far and wide across the Web, and basic HTML was the whole of the law. Many of us lied our way into private “18+” listservs, and roamed the webrings, lamps aloft, in search of one virtuous author (or at least somebody else who shipped the thing).

From this dark age rose FF.net, that pit of voles from whose bourn many a hungry reader has returned, starved for citrus and heartsick from the cutesy author notes.

And FF.net begat Livejournal, which allowed easy archiving, threaded comments, flocked posts and invite-only communities. And it was Livejournal, in its death throes, that begat AO3, which once seemed like only a utopian vision and now bestrides the world like a Colossus.

Ah, fanzines. I still have a soft spot for them.

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Fandom History Resources

comtessedebussy:

At Destielcon, I was on a panel on The Evolution of Fan Fiction (which quickly turned into a panel on simply The Evolution of Fandom) with the wonderful Dori (@obsessionisaperfume), and I was asked by a few audience members afterwards to give them some resources to read more about fandom history, the study of fanfiction, and the like. I promised to make a post, and here, finally, it is, starting with general sources and then getting specific about fandoms. 

General Sources

Textual Poachers - Henry Jenkins 
If you read one book about fandom, this should be the book. Written back in 1992, it was one of the first books to really take fandom (including fan fiction, slash fiction, fanzines, and the like) seriously, to analyze it in a completely respectful way, and to come up with a lot of terminology to talk about how fandom functions. Jenkins talks about how being a fan tends to be looked down upon (and the way that these criticisms are gendered), studies the way that fans combine knowledge gleaned from many episodes put together to create “metatexts” of the show they love, and devotes a chapter to slash, where he very eloquently theorizes the way that women write slash fiction to, in many ways, undermine patriarchal, heterosexual norms of gender, gender roles, and sexuality. Basically, everything you’ve ever heard or suspected about fandom, you can probably find here, said eloquently by Jenkins. 

Henry Jenkins’ Blog
If Textual Poachers isn’t enough for you, then Jenkins also has a blog, where he posts about fandom all the time. He even has a post about Supernatural. 

Fic: How Fan Fiction is Taking Over the World - Anne Jamison
This is an excellent introduction to the history of fan fiction for the lay reader. Jamison’s a college professor who studies fan fic for a living, and she gives a history of it starting in the middle ages and proceeding to the modern day, including talking about how various forms of media (the internet, television, etc…) have influenced the way fan fic is written and the way communities form around it. Also, she interviews a lot of authors and other people who were around in fandom for a long time. 

Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet - ed. Kristina Busse
This is like the 21st century version of Textual Poachers: it talks about fandom, the nature of slash, the way that fic is created, gender, masculinity, romance, performativity, all that stuff - but takes into account internet communities and emerging forms of communication and media. This essay collection has all the big names in fandom studies right now.

Organization for Transformative Works’ Journal 
Use AO3? It’s hosted by the Organization for Transformative Works, which also published a journal that studies fandom and fan fiction (called transformative work) in all its incarnation. They even published an issue dedicated to Supernatural back in 2008(?) and all their essays are accessible online, for free, on their search-able website. Search Supernatural and you’ll get loads of hits.

Fanlore
This is the wiki hosted by the Organization for Transformative Works, and if you’re ever in doubt about a piece of fandom history, check there instead. They have extensive pages on most slash ships, the history of slash, shipping, fanzines, etc….and a lot of art and media files. They have the very first slash fic ever written up there.  

As If - Michael Saler
This book is ostensibly about the change in the way in which the imagination was perceived in the 19th century, but really it’s more about the way that ficitonal worlds started to be perceived as “virtual realities” that could be communally inhabited in the 19th century, and the first “worlds” that were examples of this: Sherlock Holmes, Tolkien, and Lovecraft. An absolutely fascinating read. 

Book Series, Publishers, Etc

Popular Culture and Philosophy: These books can be hit or miss, but a lot contain insteresting essays about TV shows and books with accessible philosophy.

SmartPop: I absolutely love SmartPop. They published the above book on Fic, a Supernatural collection of essays called In the Hunt (reviewed below), Star Wars on Trial (a book of debates about issues in Star Trek like sexism, racism, the extended universe, etc..)  and books of essays on pretty much ever TV show ever. They are written to be really accessible, yet still contain really interesting insights into a lot of shows. A lot of the essays have humor and are written tongue in cheek and they don’t just focus on shows; they focus on fandom as well. 

McFarland - They’re a more academic publisher, but they do occasionally put out books about stuff like popular culture and specific TV shows. Check out their website for various titles. 

Intellect Press- They have a “Fan Phenomena” series where they dedicate a book to the “fan phenomenon”/fandom of a lot of shows, books, and fandoms, including Supernatural, Buffy, Sherlock Holmes, Twilight (blech) and a lot of other things. 

Star Trek fandom
Star Trek was kind of the “original” media fandom - the first “real” fandom around a TV show. It was also the fandom that created slash fiction - i.e. if you’re crying over that male pairing, it’s thanks to Kirk and Spock and how very not platonic they were. 

Star Trek Lives!
Written sometime in the 1970s by three of the big names in the Star Trek fandom, this talks about the organizing of the very first Star Trek convention, the making of the show, a visit to the set when the last episode was being filmed, and Star Trek fandom back in the 60s and 70s, when media fandom was just getting started.

Get a Life! - William Shatner
Note: the title is ironic. William Shatner puts together an amazing book after going undercover at conventions (literally) for a year, talking to fans, figuring out why they love the show and are so passionate about it, and writing a book about fandom. This is one of the most respectful and interesting books on fandom I’ve ever read. 

Supernatural 

In the Hunt
Part of the aforementioned SmartPop series up there, it was published right after season 3, and yet despite being published so early in the series has SO MANY great insights into the show, its themes, like family, good and evil, etc….there’s also an article about fan fiction, and an essay that predicts (at the end of SEASON 3) that Sam is basically Lucifer incarnate (which is pretty close to reality imo). 

Supernatural Issue of Transformative Works and Cultures
See above for my description of the Journal for Transformative Works. This issue is dedicated especially to SPN.

Fangasm! 
I”m sure you guys have heard about this book and its companion. It’s written by two SPN fan ladies who are also academics, who write about the difficulty of navigating the line between fandom and academia, and give a really interesting insight into the show. They also go to a lot of cons and blog about it. 

Sherlock Holmes Fandom
With Sherlock Holmes, there is a LOT of history - more than a hundred years, so I really can’t even begin to give a good list of sources. Obviously check out Saler’s “As If” (above) for an overview, and message me if you are interested in a particular area of Sherlock Holmes fandom, because there is just SO MUCH content. 

Names in Fan/Fandom Studies
These are the people doing absolutely spectacular work in the field right now. If you want to know more about fandom history, fan fiction, fandom, and the academic study of it all, just read everything these people have ever written. A lot of them have contributed essays to various journals or essay collections; these aren’t always accessible for free/in the public domain. If you search for these people and explore their bibliography through academia.edu or other sources and find an article of theirs that strikes your fancy, I likely have it saved on my computer so just shoot me an ask! 

This is just to get you started. If you want a very long bibliography of, like, every book on fandom studies and media ever written, check out the bibliography here (this is where I got started). If you need very specific sources, feel free to message me, as I can likely direct you in the right direction or give you suggestions, because it’s honestly impossible to include everything here. There’s a lot of fandoms I missed and a lot of titles I didn’t include, because it can get overwhelming. 

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do I have this right, historically?

dashakay:

In my head I’ve been dividing X-Files fandom into roughly 3 periods:

Wave 1: First-Run Episodes, Usenet Newsgroups, and Gossamer Era
1993-2003 

Wave 2: IWTB Revival and Livejournal Era
2008-2011

Wave 3: Series Revival and Tumblr Era
2015-

My reckoning of eras doesn’t mean that nothing happened between 2003 and 2008 and 2011 and 2015, but, in my opinion, the fandom considerably slowed during those years.

What do you think? Am I off in my dates?

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downtoagincourt:

seperis DID YOU SEE, I AM AN EMOTION

#dta #has its own page #I added to your page #but then someone wonderful named #Mrs Potato Head#(?!?) #came along and made it a separate page #it’s a small thing I guess #to some people #but not to us #a3 #my creys #my PEELINGS #I AM AN EMOTION

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itisnotaphase:

There was a time when sharing music with your besties was not as simple as sending a link to a vid or attaching an MP3 file or posting it online. We still got it done, though. BECAUSE FANDOM ALWAYS WINS.

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crimsonfirebolt:

today i learned: 

During Pon Farr, Vulcan P— moves in CIRCULAR MOTION? 

A vULCAN ASDF HAS DOUBLE RIDGES? 

blooms LIKE AN ORCHID???

and other stuff the fandom made up

some things I read from fanlore today.