Reading fandom history wikis gives me respect for those pioneering women who saw Spock and Kirk and were like: They need to kiss. We should write them kissing.
50 years on and people are still writing about space husbands. It’s wonderful.
Mediawest is one of the oldest media (TV/movie/book) conventions in the world. The event is fan run (no paid speakers or actor-guests and run by volunteers) and held in Michigan each May. They offer 4 days of panels with fandom, meta and technical tracks, an art show and a vid show. The vid show has declined over the years for a variety of reasons. Last week one attendee posted the following and asked me to spread the word:
“For those who attend MediaWest, it’s no secret the vid show is slowly sinking into oblivion. Last year, there were only a few slash vids, and even the gen vids weren’t very numerous. Sadly, the My Little Pony fandom had a better showing that most of our usual fandoms.
If you are a vidder, and would be willing to make a vid, or share a recent vid, even if you’re not attending, I would be glad to take the DVD with me and deliver it to the vid show coordinator. Even if you are attending and don’t want to mess with it, I’ll take it. :-) If you have something you’d like me to take and submit for you, e-mail me for my mailing address.
Apparently everyone is making these now, and I thought it might be a good time to remind all you lucky kids of what the Wolfstar fandom was like way back when. It was a simpler, angstier time.
DISCLAIMER: I’ve never really been a Wolfstar shipper, but I’ve been in the fandom for over fifteen years (!) and it was inescapable, so I’m willing to volunteer myself as a fandom historian in this case. Some of these squares have crossover with other ships and with fandom today, but THIS IS YOUR HISTORY.
… around? Just sort of picked up from places. I’m by no means an expert – and probably got some stuff wrong – just very absorbent.
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page is reallyreallyreally great and fun, though, and has a lot of essays and all that, and links to other things and stuff because they’re NERDS.
Basically that, really – disorganized digging, when you find something interesting find some good keywords and start searching for it. There’s a lot of great meta on Fanlore – one great one is this “How 50 Shades of Grey Happened”: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fifty_Shades_of_Grey:_The_Reddit_Origins_Essay
I’m sorry, I’m bad at this
there is a Meta Category on Fanlore that I like to browse.
to file under “the more things change in fandom, the more they stay the same”
Above is a snippet of what I believe is an editorial from a vintage Star Trek fanzine, likely from the early to mid seventies. I know, it’s awfully poor of me to not have more specific sourcing details or even additional context, but then, I wasn’t thinking of proper archival technique at the time - I was just trying to take photos I could send to a friend who was not there to flail over the treasure trove of zines another friend’s aunt had given her. Please forgive me. The next time I get a chance to visit the woman who now owns these zines (she lives nearly two states away), I will try to get better documentation.
full text as shown (which is, sadly, merely a fragment of the whole):
“…have been barred from the lot and from the offices of those who produce it. Furthermore, those who publish ST books now have a policy of specifically avoiding even soft-core [Kirk/Spock] material; those who write those kinds of stories will find it increasingly difficult to sell them.
“Of course, if it pleases an individual to believe that Kirk and Spock are lovers, it is unlikely that anything I or anyone else may say would change their mind, and it would be wront [sic] to try. A person is entitled to his/her own beliefs. However – the active dissemination of the K/S interpretation of [Star Trek] is something that Paramount would very probably view as damaging to their property – and the studio will act to protect their property. One last note: Because of the content of several recent ltters [sic] (some of it related to K/S) I have asked to have my fan mail monitored and examined by appropriate legal agencies. K/S fans are welcome to continue writing to me, of course, but unfortunately, because of the actions of a few irresponsible individuals, all correspondence on this issue will have to be included and turned over. You are welcome to share this information with any K/S fans you know.
“Sincerely, “David Gerrold
“P.S. In answer to your question about IDIC [see: the definition of IDIC on fanlore], I find it difficult to believe that IDIC includes Sado-masochism and sexual humiliation. If so, I must have missed something…
[this section seems to switch perspectives; I must assume that this is the editor or original author’s commentary now.] “Once again, Gerrold has chosen one part of the whole to focus the spotlight on. I am by no means an advocate of the more S&M-type K/S stories. Neither am I a person…”
And in case you didn’t recognize the name, you probably know David Gerrold best as the guy who wrote the OS episode The Trouble With Tribbles. So there’s that.
Fanlore has got you covered!
The whole letter: “ Dear [Ms. G] Thank you for taking the time to write and share your thoughts. I appreciate your candor. Let me be equally candid. The people who created STAR TREK neither share no endorse the belief that Kirk & Spock are gay lovers. Indeed, two of the most aggressive promulgators of this belief have been barred from the lot and from the offices of those who produce ST. Furthermore, those who publish ST books now have a policy of specifically avoiding even soft-core K/S material; those who write these kinds of stories will find it increasingly difficult to sell them.
Of course, if it pleases an individual to believe that Kirk and Spock are lovers, it is unlikely that anything I or anyone else may say would change their mind, and it would be wrong to try. A person is entitled to his/her own beliefs. However – the active dissemination of the K/S interpretation of ST is something that Paramount would very probably view as damaging to their property — and the studio will act to protect their property. One last note: Because of the content of several recent letters (some of it related to K/S) I have asked to have my fan mail monitored and examined by appropriate legal agencies. K/S fans are welcome to continue writing to me, of course, but unfortunately, because of the actions of a few irresponsible individuals, all correspondence on this issue will have to be included and turned over. You are welcome to share this information with any K/S fans you know.
Sincerely, David Gerrold
P.S. In answer to your question about IDIC, I find it difficult to believe that IDIC includes Sado-masochism and sexual humiliation. If so, I must have missed something…"
Preparing for the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek exhibition set to go up in late April. This is a print of Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan from the Papers of Nicholas Meyer, MsC 425.
Perhaps it’s my age speaking, but I’m starting to miss the way fandom used to be fifteen years ago. Mostly since back then the concepts of ‘darkfic’ and ‘don’t like, don’t read’ were properly understood and adhered to (usually). The situation with darkfics was interesting in particular, because the entire premise was that the author could write incredibly fucked-up things, with the understanding on their part that shit was indeed very messed-up and with no pretense to the contrary (what usually gets termed ‘romanticization’ these days).
Now? You’ve got to run an entire rigmarole of explaining the difference between romanticization and just straight-up exploring a horrible dynamic in writing as, you know, a writer. And even after that, you’ll probably have to deal with the whole invasive ‘explain every trauma you might’ve gone through, so strangers who otherwise don’t care if you exist can decide if they give you Permission to use writing as a coping mechanism’ mess. Fucking hell.
I’ve said it before. Learn to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Learn to tell the difference between what someone explores on the page as a writer and what that same person believes and advocates in their day-to-day life.
Truth.
Hey guys, remember squickfics? I remember squickfics.
all too well
Remember them? I still specialize in them. :D
And I love you for it.
So, full disclaimer: I only got into fanfic about 10 years ago, and have usually (though not always) avoided anything too squicky/dark during the decade since then.
But from what I saw 10 years ago, at least, it wasn’t the utopia people are describing. I dislike the current environment of moral panic/bullying with a social justice excuse as much as anyone, but I also disliked the environment where the idea of having triggers, let alone wanting warnings, was mocked. The push back against warnings involved some vicious attacks on trauma survivors. People were also MUCH more resistant to even the most polite and mild of social justice criticism (even just on your own blog not bothering anyone), and many people thought the idea of ableism existing was ridiculous. I was always worried some defensive BNF would send their minions against me for being too “whiny” about social justice.
Plus a lot of the crappy things happening now are the same old fandom crap in a different hat: finding excuses to attack people who make or ship things you don’t like or who you dislike for some other reason. People used to attack each other for being “OOC”/”not canon”/”Mary Sues” etc, and coming up with reasons why your NOTP is abusive/unhealthy is nothing new.
And when “it’s OOC” was the worst thing you could say, it was much less acceptable to do racebends/lgbt headcanons etc, and you could definitely be attacked for doing them. Or for even pushing back against whitewashing of canon POC, ATLA fandom got pretty nasty around the time of the film casting (which was around Racefail, another example of how nasty fandom could be).
Also! Parts of fandom were more open to a variety of fic, but other parts were more conservative, it was much more acceptable to flat out ban slash for example. And society outside of fandom was very unaccepting indeed.
I feel like I’m not describing this very well, sorry /o\ But I think if we want to make fandom better we have to look at the way things have changed honestly and not oversimplify the way they have both improved and gotten worse.
Seriously, all that is idealistic rose tinted glasses talking. There was no “moral panic”, you say? Yeah, unless you count people being HORRIFIED at anyone writing slash fic for things even tangentially related to a child audience!
It was so great when people were open about being “squicked” by gay people. That was soooo fun for me as a queer kid. Sooo… fun……..
“Morality” tests for reading/writing/enjoying art can be a two edged sword. One that usually cuts both ways. Deeply.
I stumbled across the weirdest... weirdness in the world & I had to come here to ask. A bunch of fanfic writers were all bashing writers who reply to comments. Is this actually the norm? Are writers who reply to comments viewed as attention seekers, and waaay more importantly, do they make their readers regret commenting in the first place? I'm just flabbergasted! A comment, short or long, detailed or just "Love", deserves a thank you at the very least in my book. Am I weirding out my readers?
I very much doubt it. I haven’t seen this discussion and can’t comment on the specifics, but I find that a very odd notion.
I know that different readers and authors have different attitudes about comments, kudos, and other feedback. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some fans out there that judge some writers as attention seeking in their responses to readers. But on the whole, I think that authors responding to reader feedback with thanks is a completely reasonable behavior – and, in fact, is usually a generous and kind gesture. Given the number of authors responding to comments on AO3, and the lack of author shaming I’ve witnessed there, my impression is that on that platform, at least, most fans agree with me. However, it’s also possible there are some contexts or platforms where author responses are not the norm, and I’m not aware of those. But I wouldn’t fret.
it’s so strange stumbling upon old livejournal communities of once-popular fandoms, that have long since been abandoned…it’s like coming upon a fandom graveyard - or more accurately, stumbling upon fandom Pompeii - these were the people who once lived in this town, these were the old well-known usernames, these are their stories - frozen in time, last updated 2008, chapter 12/?
Today I am digitizing old Dark Shadows music videos, courtesy of a friend who loaned me a copy of one of the few surviving from her garage fire.
my favorite so far is the music video that combined fan convention footage, with home video footage of the actors, with clips from the 1960s TV show. . All set to a Moody Blues song.
The next favorite one is the Barnabas Collins vid set to Alpha Ville’s “Forever Young”
why are 90% of urls attached to popular text posts deactivated? is someone picking them off, assassin style, or have these users won their freedom from this website, gladiator style
After 7 years the OTW Fannews series comes to a close but we hope you’ll keep fannish history going with fanlore_news http://bit.ly/1R9KNn4
“Keep Memories Safe!
During its seven years the Fannews series has also been about raising awareness of fannish history and the Fanlore site as a resource for recording information about fanworks and fannish histories and practices. Each Fannews post has ended by encouraging readers to add their own memories and insights in Fanlore entries, as well as linking readers to related pages on the topics within the post.Having fans represent their own activities and works on websites that aren’t owned/controlled by corporations is important, especially as fandom becomes such an appealing topic for the media and researchers.
We encourage you to subscribe to the Fanlore News twitter account. Moderator Pip Janssen sends out several tweets a week pointing people to fun and interesting entries on the site, and we hope you’ll add to them or even start your own pages to keep the site’s record of fan history going strong.”
There was a link on my stat counter saying a user came to my Tumblr via a fanlore page. It turns out that my badforthefish handle is quoted multiple times over there. Someone or several people have been doing a great job at recording the X-Files fandom history.
From Fanlore, the fan-run wiki about media fandom:
“Stationery.
Back when fans corresponded by letters, creating and using fannish stationery was a popular activity,….
Kirk/Spock stationary, artist and dates unknown. Printed on “Classic Linen 25% Cotton Fiber”
Many thanks to all the zine-era Kirk/Spock fans who have put in so much time and effort to document K/S zines on fanlore.org!
Someone is selling her zine collection and I was able to make informed choices about what I want- I searched by title on Fanlore and was able to find out which of my favorite fanartists and authors had pieces in the zines being sold, as well as the general reception of the zine in fandom at that time.
Yes, I used letters of comment written in the 1980s to decide which K/S zines I should buy in 2016.
I love K/S fandom so much, and I love the Fanlore contributors too!
Many thanks to all the zine-era Kirk/Spock fans who have put in so much time and effort to document K/S zines on fanlore.org!
Someone is selling her zine collection and I was able to make informed choices about what I want- I searched by title on Fanlore and was able to find out which of my favorite fanartists and authors had pieces in the zines being sold, as well as the general reception of the zine in fandom at that time.
Yes, I used letters of comment written in the 1980s to decide which K/S zines I should buy in 2016.
I love K/S fandom so much, and I love the Fanlore contributors too!
They mention the OTW, AO3, the Fanzine Archives in Iowa. the Sandy Hereld Memorial Fanzine Collection at TAMU. I dropped a comment about Fanlore because that is another good example of fan driven history preservation.
Agent With Style (Mysti Frank) has been a large scale fanzine seller for decades, selling her own zines and agenting for dozens of other fanzine publishers. She has had been increasingly unreliable over the years, but starting last year has gone AWOL. Her spouse (also a fan) has also not been heard from. It is most likely that health reasons or family issues are the cause of this communication breakdown.
The problem is that her website is set up to still accept Paypal payments, checks are being cashed and orders are not being fulfilled. This alert went out last week. Many of the fanzine publishers who sold their fanzines through her are now using Requiem Publications as their agents. Note that Agent With Style continues to list their fanzines on her website without their permission..
From an announcement that was sent to several fan forums/mailing lists:
“Orders placed by check likely only have recourse to Mail Fraud through the Post Office system, or stop payment if checks have not been cashed. AWS currently owes: customers their zines, publishers their sales receipts, publishers their preprinted copies back, authors and artists their trib copies, edits for future publications she said she was doing.”
One fan was able to persuade PayPal to get her money back:
“….. I contacted PayPal about not receiving a zine I ordered back in Aug. 2015 And even though it’s been over 180 days, they refunded my money. So if anyone else has had an issue, and paid thru paypal, give them a call. You’ll probably get your money back. Sounds like they know there’s been a problem with AWS.”
This loosely translates as “there is no fundamental problem with this and I have no issue with the people who enjoy it but it makes me personally deeply uncomfortable”
oh see in my day it meant fucking someone in the eye socket
Yeah, it was originally onomatopoeia for that. Then fandom repurposed it.
Today, we just say we were “triggered” and bully the shit out of whomever doesn’t share our taste. Good job, fandom. Onward and upward. >:(
For the original ask, requesting the definition of squick, please see this post.
Squick is a fun term that was often used as both a noun and a verb. Either X was one of your squicks, or X squicked you, or squicked you out, or squicked you hard.
It was often used in fic exchanges. They would ask for a list of your squicks so that the gifting author would know not to include any hint of them. It was also used in casual conversation with fandom friends, authors, artists, etc. It could be left in comments, or as a reason you just didn’t read your best fandom friend’s latest fic. “Sorry, bff, you know I love your writing, but you have X tagged at the top, and that just squicks me out.” “Hey, no worries, best reader friend! I totally get it. Give this one a pass, but I’ll send you a note when I post my next one! I promise it will be totally X-free!”
Here’s the thing though. In your example, you explain why X is your squick with Y. But the beauty of squick was that (at least in my experience) no explanation was necessary. Not only was it not necessary, it was rarely asked for. A squick is a squick, and there doesn’t have to be any rhyme or reason. In fact, why would you have a rational, bullet-pointed, well-thought-out argument as to why something squicked you out? Very often it’s a visceral reaction, and if you don’t like the thing, you’re likely not going to sit and do deep meditation on why not.
Squicks were respected by fandom. You don’t like the thing, okay, we will tag the thing appropriately, you do not have to read the thing, no judgments on either side. There was no fandom policing, only respect.
And this, I think, is super important, because fandom policing is a problem, especially when it comes to triggers. “Trigger” has become so overused, so all-encompassing, that people feel they have to defend their legitimate triggers. If X triggers you, it triggers you, and you DO NOT need to provide an explanation. But because “trigger” is so often used in place of “squick,” some people feel they have the right to “call out” those who use the word. They want explanations, they want you to tell them what that triggering concept does to you, so they can call bullshit and feel superior. You don’t have to explain either your squicks or your triggers, but using the correct word stops the fandom police from feeling as though they have the right to ask.
Bring “squick” back, people. Don’t devalue triggers, which are horrible, nasty, dangerous things.
I was talking to @kmclaude last night and they reminded me of the existence of the “Warriors for Innocence” group during Strikethrough on Livejournal, and I’m not sure if I just didn’t remember them or if I had just suppressed the memory, so I had to go look them up on fanlore.
Prepare to be amazed.
“Addressing the immoral, perverted HP Fandom! […] Now, I am restoring this group, as it has come to my attention by viewing your blogs that you support the perverted behaviours of homosexuality, incest and pedophilia. I have only selected a few of you perverts because Tumblr is a cesspool of ignorance and sin. Do you people not realize that these behaviours are sinful? We at Warriors for Innocence support morality. Not the disgusting things you come up with. Why do you people hate God? Why must you continue these behaviours? By writing fanfiction and drawing fan art of these despicable acts, you are condoning it in society. Homosexuality is a sin in the Bible, which is the literal word of God. Therefore, you must stop doing this. And don’t come with the nonsense that God does not exist. The Bible is literal proof of the existence of God. That you don’t realize that shows how much you are morally in the dark:
Here are some verses to prove that homosexuality is a sin and against God’s Law: Leviticus 18:22, (…) Leviticus 20:13, (…) 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, (…) Romans 1:26-28, (..) This thus means that supportingDrarry and Wolfstar makes you a sinner and thus you are immoral.
Same goes with pedophilia: Ephesians 6:4, (…) Mat 18:6 (…) Mar 9:42 (…) Luk 17:2 (…) This means that supporting Snape/Hermione is SINFUL AND MUST BE BANNED. Do you not realize how wrong it is to support a man and a girl being together? Have you lost any sense of morals? Then again, atheist perverts have no morality, so what stops them from committing murder? And finally, incest:Leviticus 20:11 (…) Leviticus 20:12 (…) Leviticus 20:14 (…) Leviticus 20:19-21 (…) […] This means that supporting Harry/Hermione, Weasleycest, Malfoycest etc. makes you devoid of morals and thus hate God. Yes, I know that Harry and Hermione are not technically brother and sister. But they view each other as that, and thus to support them together is an act against God, and the values that moral Christians hold dear. I wouldn’t be surprised if all Harry/Hermione shippers are atheists, that would just continue to prove that Christianity is the way forward, and any other belief is an act against God. These ship goes against God’s will and I feel it is my right as Christian and HP fan to turn fandom into a moral direction. You have been warned.”
Wow…this sounds kind of familiar. I mean, except all of the God stuff. (Then again, I don’t follow any anti blogs…have any of them invoked scripture in one of their tirades yet?)
Well, as good ol’ Ecclesiastes said, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
Fandom History. Someone posted a while ago asking about how we rewatched stuff in the olden days. And VHS was the answer. I still have this box of VHS tapes in the corner of my spare room. It’s every episode of Due South taped off of TNT’s afternoon reruns, that I kept as a collection. Plus some random tapes that have The West Wing or Buffy or the X-files episodes on them that I would use to take the week’s episode and rewatch before I made my highly insightful points on message boards.
Also the Star Wars VHS are from the early 90s. They might be from the first commercial release on VHS. My grandmother got them for me for Christmas one year. She was a difficult person but this one gift she actually really tried to get me something I would like.
[Fandom] takes the place of some of the functions of a church in a small town: A place where people come together, ostensibly to worship something. But really what’s happening is you’re forming a community. It’s less about what you’re worshiping and more about, “We have these interests in common.” Someone has a sick aunt and suddenly it’s about that, raising money to help her or sharing resources to make her life easier. That’s what it was about with The X-Files on the Internet.
I’ve never really seen any celebrity “get” fandom the way Duchovny did. A lot of people read that quote and, at the time, mistakenly read it as David saying he was like a god. But what he meant was that (as I believe he clarified elsewhere) fans didn’t need him to make an appearance. Fandom wasn’t about him. It was about us–the fans.
I want us to not forget that. When the fandom’s centre stops being the community of fans and becomes, instead, focused on–even blinded by–the glittering idol, then fandom itself becomes nothing more than idolatry–with all of us, as individuals, jockeying for a touch or a piece of that idol and stomping over each other to get it.
I’ve seen fandoms fall apart when that happens. I’ve seen fandoms become places where fans know and care more about the celebrities than we do about each other.
I know there are good reasons for fans to create personas and screen names. But this might be a good time to re-introduce ourselves to each other. And to think about how much more important that is than is meeting a famous person at the stage door.
I think it’s been kind of forgotten just how much people used to lie on the internet. Of course we still have our fabulists and our epic liars and so on, but those people are notable now. When I was a kid everyone did it, including me.
When I was about 13-14 - so in the late nineties - things like chat rooms and so on were just starting to become really popular. There was no such thing as livejournal and certainly not tumblr or facebook; nobody was posting selfies and nobody but nobody used their real name on the internet. You were just an anonymous name on a screen. In fact there was a ton of paranoia about giving out real info on the internet - predators everywhere!! You’ll get kidnapped!!
So my friends and I would go online and we would just catfish the hell out of everyone. Typically our fake identities were not all that fantastic or wild. We usually just pretended to be a college aged woman. There was one guy we spoke to regularly and my friends actually roped an uninvolved friend with an older sounding voice into calling this guy; and then they fell around laughing about how he ‘sounded like a loser’.
And you know what? I don’t even know if that guy was real. I don’t think we ever got anything from him beyond a screen name and a phone number; for all I know when they called him it was also three small girls in a coat pretending to be an adult. And I am telling you; everybody we knew did stuff like this. The internet was seen as some kind of boundary-less playground because it was all fake and had nothing to do with real life anyway.
It’s so odd because I don’t lie at all now; I may not give out certain details about myself but the person I am on the internet is the same as real life. It wouldn’t even occur to me to lie.
So I think the reason most of the really dramatic wanks - Victoria Bitters/Andy Blake, Cassie Claire, Ms.Scribe and so on - came about not long after this period. Because it was a very different era. There weren’t many internet sleuths around either, so people were way more likely to get away with making up bullshit for much longer.
My opinion on shipping historical figures (dead since the 19th century or longer) is that it’s different from shipping real or recently deceased people, but it should be done only with strong evidence and that you shouldn’t romanticise the figures or view them as only their relationship with that character. Also when it comes to creating content for historical pairings you should always tread lightly and consider the facts
Ship free or die!
I regret that I have but one ship to give to my fandom.
We must all ship together, or assuredly, we shall all ship separately.
Give me my ship or give me death.
I have not begun to ship.
Don’t ship unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.
“I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm’s way.”
