I am working on the Han/Luke Fanlore page and am looking for some of the early fanfic that was published. So far the earliest seems to be Theresa K’s “The Promise” which appeared in 1993 in Dyad 12. Any other ones from before1995?
comments
x-posted to morgandawn | comment there
Anonymous commenting enabled or use OpenID to log in to comment.
In my post about my Star Wars stories, I did mention that some of my stories contain Han/Luke (you kids call it Skysolo, that’s adorable), but I didn’t feel the need to put “homosexuality” in the list of warnings along with language and drug use and violence.
The reason I point this out is because back when I wrote most of my Han/Luke stuff, ca. 2004-2006, a slash warning would have been pretty much necessary to avoid hate mail.
We would almost always put a warning on stories where two dudes got it on when posting a story, and it wasn’t a trigger warning, in case someone had a traumatic experience, and it wasn’t like a “if you don’t like this particular ship don’t read this” warning.
IT WAS BECAUSE TEN YEARS AGO SOMEONE JUST BEING GAY OR DOING A GAY THING IN A FICTIONAL STORY WAS ENOUGH TO MAKE PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET TELL YOU YOU WERE DISGUSTING AND THEY HATED YOU AND THEY WISH THEY’D NEVER CLICKED ON YOUR WORK.
It didn’t keep us from writing it, but we understood the warnings and disclaimers to be part of the packaging.
I know we’ve come a long way in ten years, but I just wanted to tell you twenty-year-olds that when I was your age, I had to warn people about gayness in advance, or I was a bad person.
Your generation doesn’t need that. You guys are amazing. Thanks for building on what I did when I was your age and making it so much stronger.
I weirdly love that there are crotchety fandom elders around who say shit like “in my day, (insert fandom term) meant this specifically, but now you kids just use it to mean any old thing.”
It seriously gives fandom such a sense of heritage and family, like yes grandma, tell me more about how you had to write fic uphill both ways in the snow when you were my age.
Say what you will about problematic tropes and elements in fandom today but we’ve come a really long way since I first started participating in it.
It’s been almost ten years since I first started reading fic (yikes). I was mostly on fanfiction.net, but also a small slew of fandom-specific sites for Harry Potter, Buffy, and, later, Psych. I got into slash probably about a year after I started reading fan fiction, first being weirded out by it (in my defense, I was fourteen and it was the mid-2000s), then intrigued, then reading it almost exclusively (until I came to terms with my love of ladies when I was nineteen, but that’s a different story).
Back then, slash was treated one of two ways.
Either it didn’t exist, because the sites didn’t allow it. Those sites (always fandom specific in my experience) had mods looking through all fic before it could be posted. You could gain trusted status after a while and be allowed to post without someone looking through your stuff first, but I don’t know how long that took. I broke too many rules to ever get there.
Or you warned for it. On fanfiction.net, this was done in the author’s note or the summary, but some sites had it on a list of content warnings you had to check if applied. Otherwise, your story wouldn’t get posted.
And all of this was treated as preference. Not wanting same-sex relationships in stories on your site was just like not wanting crossovers, or (more problematically) smut, incest, or underage. It was reasonable to be grossed out by slash and it was expected that you would get flames for posting it.
(I have no idea how femslash was treated at the time because I never sought it out. I did write some Buffy/Dru and Buffy/Faith fics at age fifteen though, but they got shamefully deleted before I ever posted them).
Idk where I’m going with this. I guess I’m just grateful things have changed. And obviously my experience is nothing like that of even older fans. I remember talking with some women in their 40s and 50s back when I was into Star Trek and also on LJ, and back when they first entered fandom through zines, stories involving slash almost always included some form of “it’s not all men, it’s just you”.
I’ve seen on my dash some people commenting that ‘well, yeah, the show gave us permission to have our fan fiction, but we didn’t need it.’
You’re right. They can’t stop you from thinking creative thoughts inspired by your show and your ship. They can’t stop you from writing them down or drawing them and sharing them with your friends. Even if the Copyright Fascists seize power and take everything off the Internet with even the slightest potential to infringe, you still have pencils and paper. You can go back to ye olde school fanzine, where someone collects, copies, and distributes fanworks and there’s not a lot they can do to stop it. (My first contact with fan fiction was just like that - a fanzine for Pern that a friend’s roommate submitted to.)
So, yeah, permission to ship? Eh. Maybe not so big a deal, from your perspective. But really, with my old lady hat on, it was huge.
The show ACKNOWLEDGED THE EXISTENCE OF AT LEAST TWO AND POSSIBLY THREE SLASH SHIPS. And the show welcomed them. This is new. This is big. Slash used to be the dirty little secret of fandom. This absolutely would not have happened back in the day. This probably wouldn’t have happened ten years ago. It might not have happened five years ago. Even if TPTB of a particular property was aware of fanfiction (not a given) and approved of it (even less likely) there was still this attitude about slash: ‘why do you have to make them gay? can we pretend this doesn’t exist and hope it goes away? or at least shove it over into a corner and make it clear that it’s icky?’, often even from other fans who were writing gen or M/F fic.
For TPTB of a TV show to be okay with slash - that’s new.
For TPTB of a show to ACKNOWLEDGE IN THE SHOW FOR THE WHOLE WORLD TO SEE that 'yes, we know fans - not the crazy ones, the well-adjusted ones - are writing stories featuring our characters as M/M couples and we value it as an expression of your love for the show’? I think I need the fainting couch.
I missed this - when did TPTB confirm Destiel in season 10?
I’m not sure if people today realize how deeply weird some of the older fandoms were in the pre- and early-internet days.
Take, for example, the Pern fandom. There were rules for writing fanfic in this fandom, very strict rules, laid down by The Great Anne Herself, and woe be unto you if you dared break any of them. I’m not sure I remember all of them, but these are the ones I do remember:
Thou Shalt Not Use Anne’s Characters, Ever. OCs only. Which…fanfic, I know. Like I said, the weird was strong in this one.
Thou Shalt Not Use Certain Specific Locations on the planet. Ever. Those were Anne’s Exclusive Playgrounds.
Stories taking place during the same time periods as any of the books? Right Out. A hundred years before or after is totally fine.
Pern dragons come in different colors. There were strict rules about what gender/sexuality combos could be pair with which colors of dragon. The dragons knew what people’s sexualities were, because gay pheromones.
Seriously gay pheromones I will never be over this
Thou Shalt Not Get Creative with The Colors of One’s Dragons. Book colors ONLY. Except that one book color, that’s right out too.
Do Not With The Porn, despite rapey mating flights being canon
There were more, relating to how characters could be named and other such things. And this was SERIOUS BUSINESS, I knew dozens of people who were hit with C&Ds from her lawyers because they made fanart or broke the Sacred Fanfic (??) Rules. I have no idea how many lawyers she had, but they were extremely busy people.
(And THANK ALL THE DEITIES that my terrible Pern fanfic was restricted to paper ‘zines and unlikely to ever again see the light of day…)
over on twitter, Bessyboo wants to know whether her hilariously awesome 2011 pony porn podfic was the first official drunk podfic. Can anyone think of something posted earlier?
I use and enjoy Tumblr, but here’s the best explanation I’ve ever seen of the invaluable thing fandom always previously had, but lost when it shifted here.
One other perk of LJ and DW: If the post you’re reading has anon comments enabled (mine do!), you don’t need to have an account in order to interact. Just jump in.
“In Tumblr, you follow people, not conversations. If I’m following A and B, I will never know that person E has shown up unless A and B find it worthy of a reblog. Neither will C or D. If F replies to A or B, E will never know about it, because the chain of replies has branched, and E isn’t on the same branch as F. C and D are still out in the cold.
It is hypothetically possible that A and B are reblogging all replies, but it isn’t likely. I want to be able to have a conversation in which new people can participate, and in which people hanging on the pool can see the whole thing. I don’t want a conversation whose continuation is entirely up to the choices of the person who started it.
You may say “Well, use another platform”, but the point is that the new platform where many fandoms have moved lacks, by design, a feature provided by all fandom platforms before it provided. Each of the previous platforms valued extended, branching conversations. Tumblr prevents them. I used to make new friends by entering into existing conversations. I can’t do that now, unless the initiators of the conversation follow me back. I can’t easily tell one of my friends “Look, there’s an interesting conversation about X going on”, because following just one conversation between two or three people isn’t practical given Tumblr’s insistence that I individually follow each person, and its inability to say “I want to see what Jane and Joan say about X” instead of “I want to see everything Jane and Joan posted during the period they were also talking about X”.
I’m not sure if people today realize how deeply weird some of the older fandoms were in the pre- and early-internet days.
Take, for example, the Pern fandom. There were rules for writing fanfic in this fandom, very strict rules, laid down by The Great Anne Herself, and woe be unto you if you dared break any of them. I’m not sure I remember all of them, but these are the ones I do remember:
Thou Shalt Not Use Anne’s Characters, Ever. OCs only. Which…fanfic, I know. Like I said, the weird was strong in this one.
Thou Shalt Not Use Certain Specific Locations on the planet. Ever. Those were Anne’s Exclusive Playgrounds.
Stories taking place during the same time periods as any of the books? Right Out. A hundred years before or after is totally fine.
Pern dragons come in different colors. There were strict rules about what gender/sexuality combos could be pair with which colors of dragon. The dragons knew what people’s sexualities were, because gay pheromones.
Seriously gay pheromones I will never be over this
Thou Shalt Not Get Creative with The Colors of One’s Dragons. Book colors ONLY. Except that one book color, that’s right out too.
Do Not With The Porn, despite rapey mating flights being canon
There were more, relating to how characters could be named and other such things. And this was SERIOUS BUSINESS, I knew dozens of people who were hit with C&Ds from her lawyers because they made fanart or broke the Sacred Fanfic (??) Rules. I have no idea how many lawyers she had, but they were extremely busy people.
(And THANK ALL THE DEITIES that my terrible Pern fanfic was restricted to paper ‘zines and unlikely to ever again see the light of day…)
There’s always a lot of talk about feedback in fandom - how important feedback is as a driving force behind creativity, how much feedback people should leave, what kind of feedback is appropriate - and it made me wonder; how exactly did fic authors and fanartists get notes on their work before email or the internet existed?
As it turns out, via a letter of comment or LoC*:
The above is the example of a formalized LoC, but many were informal: fans wrote letters to the publishers and editors of their favorite zines, which were in turn passed on to the creators of the work in question or were published in the next round of the zine (often in the back). There were debates about how to pronounce LoC much like our own ongoing gif debate:
“The letters were called LoCs, letters of comment, and few have ever agreed on how to pronounce the term. Some say “loke,” others, “lahk”; and some even speak out the letters, “el-oh- see”. (A situation very similar to the current controversy over how to say “.gif”. Is it gif as in “gift” or jif after the peanut butter? I’ve heard both sides claim that the inventor supports their interpretation.)” (from here)
And of course there were questions about what purpose it served, if any, to publish negative letters of comment. The discussion around negative feedback is still with us to this day.
(Some LoC related humor by Arthur Thompson.)
Sometimes the zine publisher would forward the addresses of fans who wrote LoC’s (with permission) to the fanfic writer or fanartist so they could begin a correspondence.
If anyone who was active during this period of fannish history would like to add something to this post, I’d be very happy!
* All information, quotations and images taken from Fanlore.
I think what struck me when I starting reading the older zines and letterzines was how familiar the “good/bad feedback” arguments were. My favorite series of “LOC/review” discussions took place in a Starsky & Hutch letterzine from the 1980s. Several members wrote in complaining that critical discussions of stories would drive away new authors. Interestingly, for some fans, critique in an LOC was often considered more acceptable than writing a critical public “review” . But since some zines published LOCs, the line between the two blurred.
From 1982: “Judging from some of the comments in the last few issues of the l/zine, I’m not the only one who’s upset by the unnecessarily unkind and cruel reviews. I know everybody’s entitled to their opinions, but isn’t that what LoC’s are for? As opposed to reviews?… For God’s sake, reviewers, lighten up! …..[These harsh reviews] will discourage new writers… They’ll just opt to keep their stories to themselves. Even if they love and enjoy writing – as a hobby – they would not enjoy it any more if they did go to the expense and trouble of publishing only to have their work torn apart by shrill, thoughtless reviews. New writers should be so sensitive, you say, so easily discouraged? Face it, reviewers, whether you think they should be or not, I’m sure lots of them are. There’s probably a lot of fine stories out there that’ll never see the light of day, because the authors have been so intimidated by reviewers who could have just as easily stated their opinions in a much kinder and more constructive way.“
I’ve been reading some articles about the fandom exodus from Livejournal (for some reason), and thinking about Tumblr. I mean, obviously, it’s fun to be apocalyptic and try to guess when our current abode will bite it.
But, the only thing I found is that one website is way to small sample to draw any conclusions from. I was thinking about MySpace, but I realized that it’s just too different - you could match MySpace with Facebook, but not with Tumblr.
That said, if you wanted to believe that Tumbr is essentially following the same trajectory as Livejournal, this is what I would say:
There are basically four big strikes in Livejournal history that could be mapped to Tumblr incidents:
Strikethrough and Boldthrough (May 2007)
Livejournal being sold to SUP (December 2007)
DDOS attacks (March-October 2011)
removal of subject lines in comments (November 2011)
Number 1 is unlikely to happen on Tumblr. Usually it is framed as a conflict of misunderstanding - fan creators being labeled as child pornography and their blogs shut down. Nowadays, fandom is widely recognized as a money-making machine (and thus much more tolerated). And since tumblr culture is pretty strongly against lolicon/shotacon and its western equivalents, this wouldn’t cause such a stir. (Also of note: most of the “steamier” fandom activities (like kinkmemes) still happen on livejournal or dreamwidth. #notthatdead
Number 2, on the other hand, is obvious. *waves to Yahoo* (That was on May 2013, for the record.)
Number 3 might be key difference. In the few months when Livejournal was unreliable, fans were “weaned” from it. IMHO, it would have taken much longer for fandom to move without this.
Number 4 might be, arguably, mapped to bluespace (November 2014) and the recent removal of replies (November 2015). Neither of these changes hit fandom activities specifically. At one point there was a panic around alleged removal of tag pages, but as of today, /tagged/ still works, so that was either a hoax, or A/B testing (or furious backpedalling).
More relevant bits of info:
Dreamwidth, one of several Livejournal clones at that time, went to beta in April 2009.
Tumblr was created in April 2007.
Twitter was created in July 2006.
What that means is, throughout the demise of Livejournal, one of its successors was created soon after the first hit, and the two others already existed.
Tl;dr - nobody knows shit. Tumblr might be on the downward slope. It might not. If it is, it will take at least a year, but might as long as four. And the next fandom haven might already exist (and it probably isn’t a Tumblr clone).
In 1990, a cassette tape was put together with filk songs written by and for computer users (still something of a rarity at the time). 20+ years the song called “Mr. Compatibility” still rings true - the only thing that has changed are the names of the tech.
“Would you put this system together for me some I ordered by mail and parts I got free. The pieces all work, except two or three. Please, Mr. Compatibility. …..
Put all this together - take an hour or two; hide those ugly cables, and when you are thru write up a contract saying you’d guarantee it’ll all work forever, or you’d fix it for free.”
Here’s a media Fanzine Friday by request from @meeedeee
I’ve always been fascinated by Spock/Sherlock connections so I went digging for some early examples.
The Holmsian Federation #1 from 1978 is the first of eight issues of a Sherlock/Spock zine that crossed over with other fandoms as well.
The FANTASTIC cover art is by Gayle F (click through link is NSFW).
All eight issues of this zine came to Special Collections as part of the Fan Culture Preservation Project in collaboration with the Organization for Transformative Works. @transformativeworks
“Here’s a very lovely little production, a definite one-of-a-kind journal that was nothing but fun for its readership. As the name implies, this journal featured Sherlock Holmes/Star Trek crossover fan fiction. Beautiful covers, a nice variety of stories that took some imagination to come up with, the occasional non-Trek Holmes crossover (Dr. Who, H.P. Lovecraft, the Invisible Man, Dracula …). The Holmesian Federation was one of those publications that was definitely taken from us too early – a sort of James Dean of fanzines – as Holmes and Star Trek hadn’t even begun to cross over. I’d have loved to have seen where it would have gone once Mr. Data and Spock’s Star Trek VI well-known quote, “An ancestor of mine …” had entered the mix.
“
And yes, if you are in Iowa, stop by the Special Collections and read a copy.
A little over a year ago, fan friend Stacy Doyle passed away. Her partner Liz asked us to help find a home for her fanzine and fanvid collection. One Sunday in Feb, a few of us* gathered together to catalogue, box and shipp her fanzine collection.
“"What can I say about Stacy … she was generous of her time, friendly, loving, and a born caregiver. She was at her happiest when she was helping someone. It didn’t matter if the help was big or small. Helping you figure out your new phone, computer or getting your VCR/DVD to talk to your TV or helping you decorate for Halloween or Christmas or helping you move.
Once she discovered fandom she was in 7th heaven, as they say. She found she wasn’t the only one into Star Trek, Starsky and Hutch, Man from U.N.C.L.E, and so forth that was just the beginning of her fanish pursuits. She convinced her Mom to drive her to conventions in Sacramento, yes, she had to be driven, as she didn’t have her drivers license yet. Once she got it and that freedom it garnered her, she was able to go to local conventions by herself. As she went to more and more conventions she discovered costumes, zines, and vids!…”
*A huge thank you to Mishie, franzeska and xlorp for doing the hard work in getting the collection to TAMU.
comments
x-posted to morgandawn | comment there
Anonymous commenting enabled or use OpenID to log in to comment.
While 50 Shades of Grey was based on Twilight, it was also inspired by several other fan fic stories. One of the stories, “The Submissive” has also been published as erotic trilogy.
In other words, there are more transformative works
in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in any philosophy.
You were there for those reasons uncounted, Through all trials by me you did stand. I was difficult, silent, and stubborn, And I wish I could now reach your hand.
I am glad you respect my decision Although there was no decision to me There were none left but old friends and children And I could not let their deaths weigh on me.
I am hurt by your tears but I see they must fall. I cannot take your sorrow away. But grieve not for my loss, For the choice was my own, And we must all face death in our own way.
So farewell, my t’hy’la, my captain, Though I shall never be far from your side. I will remember and cherish the friendship That I always found there in your eyes.
Lots of fannish filk to be found on one of Julia Ecklar’s early cassette tapes: Pern, Star Trek, Escape from New York, Sword of Shannara etc
This is called “God Lives On Terra”
Lyrics
I was born in Inverness on the second day of spring,
But my soul yearned to sail the stars, my heart did long to sing.
So when I made my sixteenth year I signed my life away
And flew out from this world to which with joy I come today.
Now somewhere in Eighth Sector there's a world called Hellendiv
Where long ago the spacefolk did decide the gods did live.
And, aye, that world is heavenly, but Heaven it not be,
For my God made my heart and made the land most dear to me.
For God lives on Terra,
In her lands of evergreen.
Her silken skies over velvet vales
The most lovely I have seen.
And when I watch a sunset
Fade from red to royal blue,
I know God lives on Terra.
She's His own dream come true.
I've seen the sun on Rakkis, and I've felt her golden sands,
On Wrigley's I once won a bet, and I've held a queen's fair hand,
And I've made love in the summer snows of a Rigel mountain cap,
And seen the Universe unfold on Pern from dragonback.
Yes, I've seen this whole grand galaxy, and I thank the Lord for that.
I thank God for the chance to go, and the chance to now come back.
And I thank the Lord that I was born in the cradle of mankind.
I love the God who made this world whose beauty outlives time.
For God lives on Terra,
In the hearts and souls of man.
Why search the stars for lost Eden's shores
When He made her right at hand?
The beauties of her blueness
Always moves my heart to tears,
For God so loved Terra
That He chose to live right here.
Yes, God lives on Terra.
He lives and loves right here.
I’m laughing so much rn. So I’m reading through this fanlore article about one of the fanzines (fan magazines where fanfic and meta was written before the internet) that existed during the 70′s-80s and there’s this one part that got me:
“…Lucas himself had let it be known that he did not like X-rated material; specifically he did not like gay stories, and he would personally hang the first person to write or print a gay SW story.“
comments
comments
