There is a long history of fan run conventions which, for the most part, have been successful and fun. Some of the early Star Trek conventions in the 1970s, which drew crowds of thousands, were also organized by teenagers with little or no experience in running events. And whether you are a Star Trek fan, an anime fan, a filker, a slasher, or a furry, there has been a convention made for fan by fans where you could gather and let your freak flag fly free.
So if you are thinking on putting on a fan run convention, know that you will be part of a grand “can do” tradition. And also know, you do not have to do it alone: you can reach out to these other convention organizers and ask questions. How to set up a dealer’s room? Should I offer a con suite? How do I negotiate a hotel contract? What is a room block and how can I avoid getting hit with thousands of dollars of penalties if I don’t meet the “numbers”. Should I have celebrity guests or would my event be better with just fan created programming? Is it really OK to use Klingons for security?
*Photo is the cover of the program guide for the first Star Trek convention held in 1969 at a local library in New Jersey.
**Many links go to Fanlore, the fan run wiki about fandom
Archivist Jason Scott works for the Internet Archive and runs a separate unaffiliated project, Archive Team, which is dedicated to preserving dying or endangered websites. So when Tumblr announced that it was banning all NSFW content from the site on Dec. 3, the team had a mere two weeks to save as much content as they could before the Dec. 17 ban began.
But apparently, Tumblr wasn’t happy with the Archive Team’s plans. According to a tweet from Scott, Tumblr “mass IP-banned entire swarths of @archiveteam volunteers and warrior instances” on Dec. 15, mere days before the ban.
Gather around, children. I’m about to tell you a story of ye olde fandom. (Real life fandom friends, I’m sorry. You’ve heard this story a thousand times, I know.)
Long before Disney bought Star Wars, long before the new trilogy, before even the prequels, and themselves predating the “remastered” versions of the original trilogy, Star Wars experienced it’s second renaissance in novel form. And comic book form. Skim the pages of the dozens upon dozens of Expanded Universe (”EU”) novels and you’ll find lots of foundations for the things you see on screen these days. Ben Solo, for sure, has his origins there.
But it was also a different era for the fandom. The 90′s saw the transition from fanzine culture to online fan fiction archives. The programming ability and computing power you needed to make a fan fiction archive that the authors could edit themselves did not yet exist in an accessible way. Series based archives popped up, mostly hand curated by webmasters posting .txt files of chapters and stories that they’d received from authors via email. Or usenet. Or mailinglists. I spent many of my teen years on Gossamer, the X-Files archive, and Fanfix.com, my favorite Star Wars archive. I remember haunting a Babylon 5 archive at the time, too, but it’s lost to history.
I read everything. Everything. But, by far my favorite fan fiction of all time was, and I will always remember this, “As Simple and as Complicated as All That” by Xia Sang Li. It was epic. Four novels. NOVELS. Dozens of chapters. Hundreds and hundreds of pages. It follows Luke Skywalker’s decision to finally throw caution to the wind and fall into bed, and in love, with Mara Jade. Written in the sweet spot after her character was introduced and explored, but before permission was given to the licensed authors to marry Luke off, it was an amazing indulgence. And, it was epic in scale and scope. The great plot twist in book one was that, spoiler alert, when Gaeriel Captison died, leaving Luke to look after her orphaned daughter, she didn’t tell the whole story. You see, Luke and Mara had indulged each other before, had a secret love child, and this brief period of time was erased or minimized in their memories. Slowly, the two come to realize, through their haze of lust and passion, that something is conspiring to keep them apart, and that this little girl isn’t who she seemed. Themes of family, and duty, and passion, and trauma. Force visions, original characters, and sex sex sex. It was amazing.
Epic right??? Right?? Wanna read it??
It’s impossible. The Fanfix.com archive zipped the textfiles, so the Wayback Machine hasn’t archived them. The Geocities page went down before the Geocities archive was published after its closure. And, the original author’s blog, not updated in a decade, features only a few chapters of a rewrite, an AU of her original epic.
But it’s not dead.
Starting in 1998, my teenage self printed the whole fucking epic. I did one chapter at a time. It took more than a year. I had it all saved, too, on a 3 ½ inch floppy that got destroyed. Beyond the author’s own hard drive somewhere on this green earth, I think this might be the only copy.
Every few years, when nostalgia overtakes me, I reread it, from front to back. The gender politics are very different. The interpretation of Luke, too, vastly different from modern fandom’s take. Sometimes I wish I could find the author, buy her dinner, and tell her how important her work was to me. But, that’s probably impossible. Sometimes I think about re-digitizing it and, like a different kind of pirate, putting it back into circulation. But, that’s just a wish. A whimsical dream. The notebook is at least 3 inches thick, with front to back printed pages of text. It would take… years. Certainly it took years to write. But, it was part of the floating world of fandom. And, it faded away. Stuff like this should never fade away.
Fan fic authors… I implore you. Never delete your work.
You can’t know the impact you make. You might think it not good, embarrassing, or irrelevant. It’s not. Not to someone. Not to me.
Seriously. You have no idea how many fanfics I had wanted to print and bind just so that I can keep it in my personal library to read. Some fics are so damn GOOD that they deserve to exist binded as a physical copy. Save them please!!! All fics matter to someone
PUT THAT BOOK IN A SAFE BOX OR A MUSEUM (is there a fandom museum? we should make one)
It’s not quite a museum, but there is the Fan Culture Preservation Project, which is a join venture between the OTW and the Special Collections department at the University of Iowa Libraries. It’s a place to preserve hard copies of fanworks and fandom memorabilia.
(Though it seems likely that @mizunocaitlin would like to keep a beloved fanfic.)
wait a fucking second you actually have a copy of that??? i was suggested it so many times in my early years of reading fanfiction but couls never find it
My dashboard, my entire tumblr experience as I curate it, fills me with one overwhelming thought.
It’s really quiet around here.
Seen it at LJ. Seen it at forums and websites and the mailing lists before that. Staff dug their hole too deep to climb out of. Accounts may stay but activity has already dwindled. And thus Fandom moves again.
The University of Iowa began a digitization project of early sci-fi fanzines in 2015. They rely on outreach to recruit volunteers to help them with this project (they need volunteers for transcription).
Tumblr censored their post…Tumblr’s poorly designed automated filter makes it that much harder for public institutions and universities to recruit volunteers and showcase their collections and preservation work. I have contacted the Hevelin Collection as they are the only ones who can appeal Tumblr’s ban of the 2015 post.
We are beginning with the earliest fanzines, from the 1930′s-50′s. I took the first stack upstairs last week, and began photographing them with our preservation-quality digital camera and software.
These photos are a little foggy because they were taken in the darkroom in our preservation department. Our wonderful conservators created a special cradle just for the fanzines, built to accommodate all the anomalies specific to the medium, such as old staples, weak spines, and brittle paper. Thus, we can capture preservation-quality images while keeping the physical object safe.
The digital images will be stored on the library’s server. A select group of fans will then transcribe the fanzines, making them text searchable. This way, researchers and fans alike will be able to easily search the material. More information about the transcription project will be available in the months to come.
It is truly exciting to have this massive project underway!!
My fanzine cover art was banned from Tumblr. I never received any notification (this is from 2017) but had to search through each post. I submitted an appeal and now it is back .
EDITED: I uploaded screen-caps of the original post 3 days ago. It was flagged again. I received no notice, but after scrolling back many pages I saw the flag and was allowed to use their “appeal” option and it was restored.
I heard from Tumblr…the original fanbook post will remain locked, even though (a) there is nothing wrong with the original post and (b) nothing wrong with the screen-caps in my post.
Unless the original owner submits their post to Support and requests that the ban be lifted, it will remain banned. I am not allowed to request a review of the ban as a reblogger. However, the original owner will not be proactively notified by Support and will not know that their 2 year old post has been incorrectly banned. Also, the account for this fanzine has been deactivated so there is no way to contact them.
Effectively banning the original post forever . The history of this marvelous Yuri On Ice fanbook will be lost.
Shipping: - We ship from Indonesia using Airmail or EMS - We ship internationally worldwide - Shipping fee will be calculate, once you already fill the form with your address *give us 2x24hours to reply you back:)* Payment: We Accept Bank Transfer for Indonesian and Paypal for International
Pre - Order Period: It will be close at 20Th February 2017
Misc: Once the payment had been paid, your order can;t be refund, so sorry:(
Question? Don’t hesitate to PM us or send your question to: agapexeros@gmail.com
NOTE: THIS IS AN ARCHIVAL POST. THE FANZINE IS OUT OF PRINT.
2009 - GeoCities shuts down, taking old fannish websites
2010 - FFN forums deleted
2011 - Delicious destroyed by Yahoo’s incompetence
2012 - major FFN crackdown on porn
2014 - Quizilla shuts down
2015 - Journalfen’s servers become fully robust, deleting Fandom Wank
Didn’t quizilla have purges before finally shutting down? And I know basically every vidding home hot destroyed, repeatedly taking out the entire history of vidding online.
… they deleted Fandom Wank???
Well, not specifically. Journalfen failed completely and has never come back. FW was on Journalfen, so while you can see some entries on the Wayback machine, I think (?), the long comment threads aren’t archived.
2007 - Youtube starts using its “content ID” system to identify (and block) works that include copyrighted material in their database.
2009 - Greatestjournal shuts down, taking down fandom’s biggest collection of blog-style RPGs
2012 - Megaupload shut down by FBI; some (many?) fanvid archives lost
I thought there was also some kind of purge at Deviantart, but I don’t recall the details.
I’d like to remind folks that there was literally wank last month about why do we need the OTW.
Well, this would be why: we sincerely believed in the internet values of a decade or two ago, which involved owning our own servers if we wanted to see our projects remain stable, in the long term, online.
Worth mentioning: Yahoo purchased GeoCities, and was behind the decision to shut all those sites down.
Yahoo’s incompetence destroyed Delicious.
Yahoo owns Tumblr.
1356: 50% of monks.
People just… completely forget. I was there for all of the bans on fanfiction.net. You don’t know panic until you go to log in one morning and find out a bunch of your works have been deleted, gone forever, because some asshole arbitrarily decided that they wanted to ban something.
AO3 IS IMPORTANT. IT MATTERS.
FunFact: The owner of MegaUpload was called Kim Dotcom and had his house swarmed by cops and all that in New Zealand. There was a lot of coverage on it because of the fact that it was in NZ and is currently losing against the supreme court in a bid to not get extradited back to the US
Oh yeah! The megaupload saga makes for fantastic rubbernecking. Fandom using it to store vids is only one tiny corner of what was going on. It’s just a pity that so many fair use fanworks got destroyed as a side effect of the fight against piracy.
I keep seeing responses to this post that are like “But they weren’t going after fanworks specifically”, and that’s kind of the point: we’re often vulnerable as a side effect of something else, but our works and social networks get just as destroyed as if we were being targeted.
Some of the wonderful fanzines and fanbooks I’ve seen in 2016. Some are sold out, some are still available and some are still seeking submissions. If you have a fanbook or fanzine you’d like to add, just PM me and I’ll be happy to reblog.
“No one has ever wanted us,” writes @telesilla in her 2018 meta on the Tumblr NSFW Content purge. “And by us I don’t mean fans in general, but creative Fandom, if you will.”
In “This Vagabond Fandom Life,” she describes a long history of fandom migration and complicated relationships between fans and corporate rights holders. If corporations don’t want us, where can fans find a home?
Read excerpts from her meta, as well as responses from other fans, on Fanlore.
This article is part of this week’s spotlight series on Tumblr fandom, in response to Tumblr’s NSFW content purge. Every day, we’ll be spotlighting a different piece of Tumblr fandom on Fanlore, leading up to the December 17th ban on adult content.
For more on how to become a Fanlore editor, check out our tutorials or our new visitor portal. If you have any questions, you can also reach out to us directly by using the Ask feature on our Tumblr or email us. Help preserve our history!
“This elderly couple chooses to die together in the movie rather than be separated. The husband tenderly kissing his wife before they perish is compared to the many responsible Tumblr users who set up adult side blogs (“Alt Account For Anime Tiddies”), away from their main blogs. Irrevocably tied together to the same user, they will both drown beneath Tumblr’s indiscriminate crush of icy water.
”
Do you ever just think about how much slash (and femslash) fandom has changed the last ~10 years? Expectation of canonicity have changed so immensely. This expectation just plain did not exist before Johnlock and Destiel, not as far as I remember, while nowadays you have certain slash fans harrasing creators over lack of canonicity…
It really is just those 10 years ago or so that people were still putting “m/m yaoi slash don’t like, don’t read!!!” stuff in their summaries, pre-defensive about what they were doing. My oldest slash-ish fic dates back to 2011 and I didn’t write a warning for it, but I think some people were still doing that at the time. I certainly kept seeing it in summaries on ff.net, so even if those fics may have been a bit older, they were still from within that time frame.
I remember being quite reluctant to go into actual Wolfstar at the time, despite primarily writing Marauders fic centered around Remus. I wrote post-Wolfstar (post-slash, as I apparently wrote in the summary at the time) in that 2011 fic I mentioned, but I didn’t write actual slash till some years later.
Aside from that defensiveness, that reluctance to be seen as a “deranged slash fan” that has (seemingly) largely disappeared from international fandom (I’m sure it must still exist in some national ones, see the reaction “fujoshis” garner), there is also the question of expectations when it comes to canon.
As I said, I don’t remember people ever expecting slash ships to become canon back in the day. Queerbaiting was rarer, of course, but it was happening. Subtext had certainly been happening forever, just look at Sherlock Holmes and Star Trek, two of the earliest fandoms. A lot of 90s shows had significant slash fandoms, as well, with, again, no expectation of canonicity (I mean, it was the 90s). Hell, I mean, people didn’t even expect Xena/Gabrielle canonicity, and that basically happened, to the extent that it could at the time!
But getting closer to today, Merthur was a hugely popular queerbaited ship (and actually one I shipped while the show was ongoing, so I have a bit more authority on this than the earlier stuff). It was by far the most popular ship in the fandom, and the show certainly had it’s subtext about their relationship, but no-one was expecting it to go canon at any point during the shows run (2008-2012). Or rather, maybe a few people did, but that was not part of the fannish conversation about the pairing. Similarly, X-Men: First Class made Cherik hugely popular in 2011, but canonicity wasn’t discussed - and certainly not expected!
I do think Johnlock and Destiel is where it changed. The queerbaiting for those ships was unbearingly overt. In think the fact that both those shows make direct references to a romantic relationship between the two shipped characters must have been part of what did it. People were getting convinced that, when so much had gone from subtext to outright text, their actual relationships must do at some point, too.
I believe the fact that these two shows, that were popular to the extent that they were unavoidable within fandom spaces, both had overtly queerbaited ships simoultaneously is what changed the expectations for canonicity. Because, as they kept not going there, the conversation about queerbaiting spread far and wide. People felt insulted - and rightly so!
That other shows were starting to have more canon m/m and f/f relationships probably also affected things. Slash fandom was changing from a shameful, hidden thing to a natural reaction to parts of what a story was putting forth. Of course, LGBTQ rights have come a long way in recent years, too, which has probably set a different scene for slash, as well. Expecting that a show may have a gay or bisexual character in the main cast is not unrealistic today the way it was up until Will and Grace got really popular (with SFF shows still taking a while to get there, lbr).
But the interesting thing to me is perhaps that this big focus on queerbaiting, this new thirst for canonicity (which I share, don’t get me wrong), has affected how fandom regards non-queerbaited slash and femslash ships, too. Certain slash ships with honestly not that much in the way of canoncial subtext have been expected to become canon. Slash fans of recent years have tried to bully creators into making such ships canon, then harrased them when they didn’t. And while I certainly understood it with Johlock and Destiel (as much as harrasment is always wrong), even that would have been an incomprehensible idea 10 years ago. People simply didn’t have those expectations. The fact that it’s been happening with ships that have very little in the way of subtext going on is sort of incomprehensible to me and I’m only 22.
I’m really so very glad that the shame and guilt often associated with creating and consuming slash in the past isn’t really present in modern international fandom, because it’s a sign of homophobia being less prominent and it’s healthier for all involved. And I do think we should speak out when canon tricks us then shits on us. Expecting completely normal non-canonical ships to become canon, though…? That’s weird to me. And the change in atitude is absolutely striking.
I have received around 9 asks about the PF ToS change, not including private messages in chat and tags in the discord, so here is my take on this, and I apologize for people looking for an optimistic view, because it’s grating on my nerves currently and I’m not sure I’ll be able to hide it completely.
Here a gpoy of PF:
So, as a brief reminder: ever since PF landed on tumblr promoting this anti-free haven that would save fandom from itself, we have asked one question repeatedly, dating back to 2015 on their tumblr blog: will N-SFW be allowed? And if yes, then what kind?
Here PF’s insistently vague and accommodating replies starting from 2015 and ending in 2018:
Any idea what your policy will be regarding adult/N-SFW content?
We won’t restrict adult content.
About adult content. What’s allowed when drawing N-SFW and what isn’t?
Ultimately it will be up to the poster to decide if their content is N-SFW, but I would say as a general rule to err on the side of caution. Basically, if you wouldn’t want your innocent young nephew or your boss to see it, then flag it as N-SFW. But more specifically anything that features nud1ty or explicit s3xual content should definitely be N-SFW.
What’s y'all’s policy regarding N-SFW material?
N-SFW material in general is allowed. When creating a post you can apply a ‘N-SFW’ flag to it for the convenience of other users who may wish to hide N-SFW-flagged material by default.
Going off that p0rnbot ask, what’s your stance on general n-sfw content run by actual people?
Adult content posted by real humans is totally fine. :) Just no spam
How will pillowfort handle n-sfw content? Will it be allowed?
Yes, we allow N-SFW content, we just asked that it be tagged with a ‘N-SFW’ flag (available when you’re creating your post) so that it can be filtered out for the convenience of other users who wish to screen out such content.
If I had to overanalyze their replies, I’d say that in 2018 they introduced for the first time that “in general” (bolded by me) which was like a single off-tune note in a continuous melody, causing you to startle out of the peaceful half-sleep state you were in, wondering what happened. But the melody has already gone back to normal, and you doze off again.
Then their latest before the AnnouncementTM:
In light of tumblr now no longer allowing “adult content” (like n-sfw art/pictures) will pillowfort still allow n-sfw content as long as it is properly marked? Because that decision has pretty much destroyed my already little faith in tumblr.
Yes, we plan to allow N-SFW content with very few restrictions. I don’t have any particular insight into why Tumblr is making this decision but if I had to guess, it’s because allowing N-SFW content conflicts with their need for the site to be marketable and safe for advertisers– Pillowfort on the other hand plans to derive most of its revenue from user subscriptions, meaning that we will be beholden to our actual userbase and not outside advertisers and can therefore have more leeway in what we can host.
In hindsight, maybe we should have looked more closely. “With very few restrictions”? Interesting. Especially because I’ve been receiving complaints about their incredibly vague replies about n-sfw content and their even more vague ToS for months. It’s why I put my discourse main base on DW, because based on what they had said, only fictional content was safe, and discourse (but also meta) was already a gray area. Also, “most of its revenue”? Where do you plan on taking the rest? Will it affect your ToS? Care to share your long-term plans so we know if we even want to be on this ship?
And one wonders: why wait so long before making gradually and subtly known that they would put restrictions on adult content? Good FinR on my right shoulder says “Because it’s a starting website, you silly! They need to go with trial&error to find what works best for their long-term plan once they form it. It’s obvious!” But Evil FinR on my left shoulder says “Sure, Good FinR is totally right! And the two fundraising campaigns where PF needed money on top of all the registration keys that are currently their main income for the site on top of them riding the wave of tumblr’s p-urge to draw users in with the promise of the non-censorship that tumblr has embraced are purely coincidental.” Damn, it, Evil FinR.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg, which is great.
I’m not going to address here the fact that they somehow managed to chose one of the very few domains that don’t allow s3xual and p0rnographic content, and I had to spend an entire evening shutting up a cackling Evil FinR because not reading/understanding the ToS is such a tumbrine thing to do. I wanted to give the benefit of the doubt, especially because PF made it clear they intend on switching domain soon, but then even Wired which interviewed them together with DW worded it like they legit were completely ignorant of their chosen domain’s rules. Tears down Evil FinR’s face.
I was still optimistic. What matters is not not making mistakes ever, but promptly fixing them, getting up again, learning quickly, taking responsibility, being honest.
An artist gets banned for posting l0li art. Good FinR says: “It must have been a misunderstanding, or they don’t allow n-sfw as a whole yet because of the domain issue. We need to be patient and understanding!”
So a user gets banned by a moderator for something that was not banned in the ToS (yet), and had been for the past 3 years insistently kept vague and positively worded to encourage people to give money and subscribe, and then concede that yeah, it’s fair to give them back the account because the user didn’t have a crystal ball, duh.
I’m having Writscrib’s flashbacks. I don’t want to have Writscrib’s flashbacks.
“the “gray area” cases will be up to the discretion of the moderator reviewing the content.” Yeah, I’m already trusting your mods, that’s a great precedence there.
“and even if you wanted to argue that art that explored adolescent s3xuality was fine and it’s ‘just p0rnography’ that should be censured”
Do you mean “censored”? Because censure should still be allowed because freedom of speech? Unless you have some hot takes on that too?
“s3xual depictions of characters in later stages of adolescence may broadly be considered ‘safe.’” Later stages. May. Broadly. “safe”. All to the discretion of the ImpartialTM mods. I feel in such good hands.
“The only situation we foresee penalizing the posting of this content would be a case already covered in our ToS,” Excuse me, but at least today you’re in no position of quoting your “already covered ToS” with the expectation that I will trust anything you say.
@xenoqueer wrote “Now, IIRC, Pillowfort is based in Canada” I don’t know where you took that info from, since their ToS mentions Texas and then US in general, but even assuming you’re correct and they’re operating under Canadian laws while their server is in the US, that would still not make sense because they’d still be allowing illegal content per Canada laws. Canada bans both visual and written content depicting minors s3xually, there’s no “late adolescents is fine” If it really were about Canadian law, they would have put a broader restriction. They didn’t. They went specifically for “child coded” drawings.
And I’m really really really putting an effort here in giving them the benefit of the doubt and staying pastel positive, but after FFnet, after LJ, after WS, after Tumblr, and now after writing this, I feel a bit too old for that.
Once again, until further notice, AO3 and Dreamwidth stay unbothered royals.
I was correctly reminded on the exodus discord that PF did state their long-term plan on their kickstarter. Unfortunately for them, it still highlights how vague and inconsistent they are between what they promise for publicity, and what they (plan to) deliver in the end:
Advertisement Opt-Ins: All Pillowfort users will not see advertising by default. Instead, users will have the choice to opt-in to advertising to help support the site. This means overall less ad revenue, but we believe it is important to respect our users’ experience and not force advertising on anyone.
Just a heads up: even if only a number of accounts accept to view ads (good luck with that), those ads will still have the issue of appearing on a site that allows content they don’t want to be associated with (but no problem, they’ve already made the first steps to get all cleaned up and proper). Therefore either this part of their long-term plan is absolutely useless, or it will open up the road for further policing so as to allow the influx of money they might soon need for the amount of users they have, or it will crash and burn like WS.
I’m not being negative on purpose here, but there’s little use in being hopeful and positive when you’re assessing risks in a business management. Hope for the best all you want, but prepare for the worst. And the latter demands from me that I don’t sit comfy on PF (even assuming I’d ever want to, after this).
“ I, a mere petit female-presenting-n1pples-bodied human, feel like I’m on Australian soil here. “
I let out a very unladylike snort of laughter at this.
Honestly, this is about what I expected from the fact that they kept it vague so long.
I just paid the donation to join Pillowfort cause I thought that was the site people were saying to move to...was that a mistake? Is it gonna be this new unnamed one instead? I wanna support new sites but like I don't need or want multiple blogs on different platforms and now I'm kinda overwhelmed and stressed.
It wasn’t a mistake, anon, there are still more than 20k people on PF. But you have to understand that fandom migration is not a unified and organized move; it’s messy, points at different directions and at different times, tries several websites before picking up the one that offers more, and only in the future we’ll be able to look back and say “oh yeah, the big trend moved more or less in that direction, and others followed after a bit.”
So if you don’t want to be on multiple blogs and platforms no one forces you to do so, but if you want that place where you are to also be the one that 100% will become Fandom’s next main hub, you’ll have to sit tight and wait, because right now we’re all in the dark. It’s okay, we’ll find somewhere in the end, or make something up from scratch if need be, just keep your eyes open and make the best of what you have in your hands at all times. Fandom is for love and fun even now, let’s not forget it .
This.
I know of at least two different theoretical new sites in the brainstorming/futzing around phase of development.
Lots of people are leaving for twitter-style places or realtime chat. (Mastodon, Discord, Twitter itself.)
Some of us are camping on oldschool Dreamwidth.
I too feel overwhelmed and stressed, but if people made you think PF was the for sure Next Home of Fandom, they were… overly optimistic in many different ways.
PF was a popular option people mentioned because it has the most tumblr-y features, but it always had drawbacks. Even before this latest issue, it was deeply unstable and unready to handle our level of traffic. The content policy hadn’t, previously, been clarified, which lots of us pointed to as a huge red flag. Even when the site was up and had less traffic, I found that it loaded extremely slowly for me.
When the LJ era started drawing to a close, it took years for it to be obvious that Tumblr had won over all of the other options. (And even then, not everyone came to Tumblr.)
Was namesquatting on PF worth $5? To me it would be. But if the real issue is the investment of your time, take a break from fandom blogging, read some fic on AO3, do some holiday things. Give it a few months. We’re just not going to know where “Fandom” is moving for a while.
And when we do know, that place may not be a conventional blogging platform.
Why does fandom have sch a short memory for its history?
For start, the barriers to entry are ever lower. There’s no reason for people to learn the history of a site that’s just THERE. If you don’t have to search out mail lists and vet all your fandom sources, there’s so much less incentive to learn about or understand the history of the platform you‘re using.
Secondly, fandom is largely a hobby. For some people, the meta stuff becomes the hobby. But increasingly it’s becoming some place on the internet people stumble into. Of course these people aren’t going to be interested in learning about the LJ Strikethrough, they’re just here to see characters get a happy ending/suffer/kiss/what have you.
Thirdly, and compounded by the previous two things, there isn’t really a big push to show off places like fanlore. Fandom history comes in fits and spurts when people decide to tell an engaging enough story that gets echoed through screencaps or reblogs. Fanlore and the OTW are background agents for the deep fandom nerds.
Which means that:
Peoples’ point of entry into fandom and specifically fic is increasingly erratic and unpredictable. The point of reference that older fans have is no longer the majority experience. The understanding that they might have isn’t prioritized in fandom, and the diy expertless aesthetic of fanfic helps to de-emphasize ideas of authority.
Also: AO3 has set itself up to be THE fic archive. The idea that AO3 is THE place for fic writers and readers means that the image it projects- correctly or incorrectly- is one of AO3 being an accurate image of fic-writing fandom. AO3 might have been set up as Slash’s Last Stand, but the fact that it’s grown to be THE happening place in fandom means that a lot of new fandoms are fairly represented in AO3′s statistics, so it’s COMPLETELY VALID to note and discuss the abundance of m/m stories.
Slash might have built AO3, but we’re all living here now, and paying rent, and building additional stories* so we are allowed to critique the architecture.
Does no one remember how pre-Ao3 you could be hit with a lawsuit for publishing a book review that wasn’t approved by the publishing company. Like. That’s a literal thing that happened multiple times pre-ao3. Like. You realize that Ao3 is the biggest thing standing between us and money hungry companies choking our right to talk about their stuff.
I’m salty that I saw a post talking about how being thankful for Ao3 was a cold take, but I also remember the story of someone who was buried in thousands of dollars in fine for a book review on a blog (I believe it was livejournal).
Like. Ao3 is far from perfect but I will forever be thankful that I can talk about Anne Rice’s books if I wanted to without worrying if I was gonna get my family sued for thousands of dollars (not that I would considering I hate her writing). I can only do that because of Ao3.
Ao3 came to be at the absolute perfect time in internet history, because it was right as companies and publisher began pushing back against content being spread regarding about their products, from reviews to fanfic. If it wasn’t a “qualified” critique on a newspaper or pre-approved website, you were in danger. And you know, the Anne rice case is the one I know about but how many other folk got hit by fines for fandom content or even just book or movie reviews? I was young still when the lawsuits were common, but I remember they were picking up in frequency when Ao3 hit Beta, before, coincidentally, dropping.
Y’all ever here a thing called “precedence”? Do you know what the internet would be like now, if the cases against book reviewers, movie analysis, CD remixes, and, yes, fandom content, had continued to pick up speed the way they were? I don’t, thanks to Ao3, and I’m forever thankful for Ao3 for establishing the precedence that, to this day, protects pretty much all of us in some way.
Is Ao3 perfect? No, but the internet would be a very different place without it. It was a game changer. And it helped protect more than just fandom, if indirectly. But hey, you’re salty that the user base can be racist, sexist, and homophobic? That content moderators don’t do as good a job as you think they should? Become a member of Ao3 and work to improve it. Become a moderator and work to improve it. Be the change you wanna see.
Don’t tell me not to be thankful for Ao3 and being especially grateful during purges like we’re experiencing.
Over the last few days, we’ve seen a lot of fans
worrying about the impact of Tumblr’s new Terms
of Service on fandom (and non-fandom) communities on this site. We’re concerned,
too.
While we don’t know exactly what that impact will
look like, we know that we can learn from our history by reading about similar occurrences,
such as Strikethrough
and Boldthrough and FanFiction.Net’s
NC-17 Purges. As this current situation unfolds, editors are documenting
the Tumblr NSFW
Content Purge so that we’ll have a collaborative record of these events as
well.
We’d love for you to add your perspectives,
histories, and knowledge to Fanlore. As a project of the Organization for
Transformative Works, we’re working to preserve the history of fanworks and fan
cultures by creating a living archive of fandom history that’s by and for fans –
but we can’t do it without you.
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think that’s a great idea. Make sure to use the user profile template
and check out this help page
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The first thing you have to understand is that no one wants us. No one has ever wanted us. And by us I don’t mean fans in general, but creative Fandom, if you will. Transformative fandom–writers and artists and gif makers and vidders and podcasters and podficcers and the community that supports them.
Don’t be fooled by the occasional mainstream media article that uses mostly respectful language or the academic study that talks about transgressive fannish behavior like it’s admirable. People reading those news articles laugh at us and you don’t exactly see universities creating Fandom Studies departments.
Nor do we have the buying power we like to think we do. Think about it. We wouldn’t have to transform media to suit ourselves if that media already existed. If Marvel gave a damn about Fandom money vs fandom money, they’d be the ones posting the explicit Cap/Iron Man pics. They’ll take our money, but it’s not as important as small-f fandom money because there’s nowhere near as much of it.
So that leaves ue as exactly what we are: extreme niche hobbyists. And you know what? We’re not even nice, easy, safe, niche hobbyists like knitters or…idk, curling fans. We like trangressive sex a whole lot, we tread a very fine legal line in a time when intellectual property laws are a big fucking deal, we’re hard to advertise to, and, to make things worse, we have a nasty habit of dragging our platform admins into our petty, internecine Fandom Drama.
(seriously it’s like if the dude who runs the Giants SB Nation site went running to the SB Nation admins saying that the dude who runs the Dodgers site is a pedophile just because he implied Madison Bumgarner might be a little racist.)
But Telesilla, you say. Are we really bound to your fate? Destined to spend our fannish lives like you have, migrating from one site after another, always losing people and history along the way? This is so depressing! There has to be an answer!
Well, once upon a time I thought the answer was “by fans for fans” and wow, have I been burned by that one. Our greatest triumph is routinely attacked by its own users and our best functioning social media platform doesn’t have the bells and whistles corporate sites can offer. And AO3 and Dreamwidth are the success stories. Ask me about JournalFen. (on second thought, don’t. I don’t have the energy to explain without overusing the word “robust” and talking about ice weasels.)
I’m enough of a Old Time Internet Person to still think doing it ourselves is the best answer we have, but it takes a special kind of person to dedicate themselves to serving a notoriously fractious internet community that has no money and wants you to cater to their every whim. It takes an even more special kind of person to do it long term. Fandom history shows us that those people don’t come along often. (personal history shows me that I am, alas, not one of them.)
Until they do, we’ll just lurch from corporate platform that doesn’t really want us to corporate platform that doesn’t really want us. Because that’s the bottom line–we’re an extreme niche hobby and there’s no real money to be made off us. Under late capitalism…well, I don’t want to be that Fandom Old, but really, what did we expect?
I wrote an incredibly long post on Dreamwidth about the Tumblr purges and what happens next! Here’s the first bit, which I’m quoting here as a little bit of a fannish history lesson for all you young’uns, probably it’ll get deleted, thanks Tumblr:
First: let me start off by saying that it is very probable that Tumblr will back out of this particular bad idea. They often do. The pattern of fannish archival catastrophes at the hand of corporations almost always has five stages: 1) a sale, or rumored sale, of the platform; 2) falling or nonexistent profits; 3) pressure from (pick at least one) governments, morality warriors, and/or advertisers/other corporate interests; 4) the actual fannish archival catastrophe, caused by a change in the TOS or in the enforcement of the TOS, which itself frequently comes in multiple stages; and 5) a second sale of the platform.
Strikethrough, for example, wasn’t a single terrible idea executed badly, it was at least two terrible ideas executed badly: first Strikethrough, which happened in May 2007; and then, following masses of outrage (particularly outrage from fans), some limited concessions from LJ management; followed by a second round of permanent suspensions conducted a little bit differently, a.k.a. Boldthrough, in August 2007. These tend to get lumped together in fannish memory, but I want people to remember that they were not a single event.
And those two events, themselves, are also not the whole story: Strikethrough itself followed on well over a year of rumors that LJ was changing its TOS/enforcement of its TOS, ever since LJ had been sold to SixApart in 2005, who were trying to monetize the site. Likewise, alongside those rumors, LJ’s adult content—which, unlike Tumblr, may actually have been predominately fannish, because I don’t think actual porn producers used LJ anywhere near as heavily as they use Tumblr—had been under continual attack from Christian pressure groups because it hosted material that they claimed was “harming children” [I can’t find a source on this, but I remember it very clearly—if anyone has a source, lmk in comments and I’ll link], what with all the fannish erotica with clear disclaimers on it that it was intended for adult audiences, frequently (as with pornish_pixies) posted in locked communities. There was, simultaneously, a lot of pressure being put on LiveJournal by the Russian government, because another group that heavily used LJ at the time was Russian political protestors. On top of that, there was a lot of rumor about LJ/SixApart’s advertisers getting antsy about blogs containing adult content [I can’t find a source on this either—if anyone has a source, lmk in comments and I’ll link].
So, in short, here is what happened to LJ: 1) LJ was sold to SixApart; 2) SixApart tried to monetize it; 3) SixApart got pressure from a) the Russian government, b) the Christian anti-porn police, and c) advertisers to bring its “adult content problem” under control; 4) LJ deleted a whole bunch of blogs, backed up and said “mea culpa”, and then… deleted a whole bunch of blogs; and 5) SixApart sold LJ to the Russians.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Following this pattern, here is what I suspect is going to happen to Tumblr: 1) Tumblr was sold to Yahoo (now owned by Verizon); 2) Yahoo/Verizon tried to monetize it; 3) Yahoo/Verizon got pressure from a) various governments, including Indonesia and China, b) the anti-porn/anti-sex-work/anti-shipping moral purity police, and c) the Apple Store to bring its “adult content problem” under control; 4) starting earlier this year, Tumblr deleted a whole bunch of blogs, backed up and said “mea culpa”, and then… changed its TOS and started deleting content [← we’re here right now]; and 5) Verizon will sell Tumblr to ? ? ?
It’s possible that we’ll have another couple rounds in Step 4. It’s not like 2 rounds in Step 4 is magic, or something; my point is just: Tumblr has already backed down once. You see where that gets us (fucking nowhere, that’s where). That said? The death throes are going to take a while. I was still reluctantly cross-posting to LJ in 2015; as late as 2013, LJ was still a lot of fans’ primary home. Six full years after Strikethrough!! Six! Full! Years! After they started deleting our shit, and banning our friends!!! And in that six years, all that happened was LJ’s TOS got continually and aggressively more restrictive, while the Russians were banging up all the political dissenters whose content they’d purchased into jail.
My point, here, is just that we have been here before. Exactly here. We have done this before, exactly this. Tumblr may take a while to bleed out, and they may try to triage it, but the writing is, in fact, on the wall: Tumblr will throw us off whatever cliffs they need to to try and eke out a profit for the morons in Verizon’s boardroom; and in the end, our data’s going to get deleted, or it’s going to get sold, because that is just how these things go.
So we need to figure out where we go next.
Please read/reblog/reply—I really do want people to weigh in! I’m not promising to keep tracking this on Tumblr (come to DW, the water’s fine), but I do want to hear what people have to say.
can you imagine if tumblr was around when the original star wars came out and in the two year gap between movies there were heated arguments between luke/leia shippers and han/leia shippers and all kind of vague posts and fandom wank and thousands of luke/leia fics on ao3 and people devotedly making gifsets of luke/leia with florence + the machine lyrics only for it be revealed that they were SIBLINGS like can you imagine the fallout
like i’m imagining something akin to the great ron/hermione vs harry/hermione ship war of 2011 and all the thousands of words of meta and hate blogging debates over the dancing scene in deathly hallows, like if all that had happened and people became so deeply entrenched in their points of view and then jk rowling was like “word of god is that harry and hermione are long lost twins” like IT WOULD BE INCREDIBLE
But this sort of stuff DID HAPPEN.
fandom shit WAS THERE since 1977 and onwards. Just because the technology was different doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.
There were fan clubs like The Royal Order of the Rebel Forces, started in 1977 by “Paula Truelove”. There was an official newsletter Bantha Tracks that published fan art and meta.
There was adult het and slash (Han/Luke) themed fan fiction since the early 1980s, much of which (especially the latter), had to be circulated privately bc of the uproar it caused with some of the fandom and Lucasfilm.
“Before the internet, fans kept in contact via regular mail and letterzines, which were small, cheaply produced zines that printed letters from the subscribers, often including new zine announcements, meta discussions and essays, and flame wars as well as friendly chat and news about the movies and the fan community. Some fan club groups also produced their own letterzines, some including members’ fan fiction and fan art.” Check the vintage zines out, they’re still selling on ebay
Why is Spock in knee highs? Why are they on fire? What is happening?
I imagine the fire is symbolism for Mirror Spock’s blood fever, because this looks to me to be pon farr, judging by all the jizz on the ground under them. You’ll also notice that the background is full of penis imagery—Spock’s double ridged penis, to be precise. And the boots are probably because Spock was in such a frenzy to mate that he didn’t have time to get them off.
Well thank you I didn’t even notice the ground jizz and penises everywhere
With all this talk (even if joking) about personal creator sites, I’m seriously considering setting one up, but I’m seriously going to miss the whole interacting with people thing. Any tips? How did fandom “work,” if you’ll pardon the broad question, back then?
When everything’s separate, the individual sites are archives. They’re like destination stores, not places that attract walk-in foot traffic.
Fandom has always involved socializing and interacting, but it hasn’t always been in the same place as the archive. Right now, on Tumblr, art and chitchat are mixed together. On LJ/DW fic and chitchat were mixed together. The other stuff, whether it’s vids or anything else, gets awkwardly embedded or linked to, and you go look at it directly if you’re interested. (I get way, way more views of my vids from AO3 than from Tumblr, for example. You can put a video here, but people aren’t in ‘pause to watch’ mode when they’re browsing Tumblr.)
More people had more basic tech skills, even if that’s only a super low level knowledge of html. Big social media sites are aimed at the complete tech dunce. It can be awkward, confusing, or tiring to go back. OTOH, personal sites had even more customization than the most out-there Tumblr layout.
Basically, you’ll be hanging out on Twitter or Discord or wherever and posting “Hey, I put something new up!” with a link to your art site. It’s what people do on Tumblr now for fic. Back in the day, it would have been a mailing list instead of Twitter. Human interactions are always part of it.
My test of the Python driven Tumblr Backup succeeded (I’ll blog later about a problem that stumped me for an hour).
I tested it on a small sideblog called zinedom (a project devoted to archiving zine era fanfic). I was able to take the folder and upload it to my website and it looks great. Feel free to browse and let me know if there are problems or items missing.
If you’re looking for reasons to leave, I’d like to add these ten to your thinking.
You might not be personally interested in NSFW content in your fandom - but on December 17th Tumblr’s algorithm is going to take down a lot of SFW content in error. Many of those creators have moved on and aren’t around to requests that their posts be re-assessed. Older fandoms are about to lose a huge amount of material.
Do you want to stay on a website using slash-and-burn tactics against long-established user communities? Tumblr believe they can tell most of their userbase they aren’t welcome here, then expect a family-friendly utopia to rise from the ashes. They’re going to get a nasty shock.
The site is about to hemorrhage active users. You might not post NSFW content, you might not like NSFW content - but many of your followers do. They’ll follow where it goes.
There are clear signs that Tumblr has incredibly hazy standards of what will constitute adult content. You only need to read their big announcement to know this. (’Female representing nipples’? Nudity in art is fine, but not in fan art?)
You can bet your bottom dollar that no matter how ‘adult content’ will be judged, those standards will be applied far more harshly to LGBT content. Romantic kisses happen between heterosexual pairings; gay pairings commit sex acts.
And even if the loss of adult and LGBT content is fine by you, that’s load-bearing content. Without all that monthly activity, Tumblr is going to see a shocking fall in its traffic. How long before Verizon decide it’s not worth keeping Tumblr operational at all?
If you want to spend your time and effort in building a fandom, it makes more sense to direct it into helping establish a new community with long term prospects. Why waste your time trying to keep a dying giant alive?
Learning a new site might seem like an annoyance, but so are the bugs which have plagued Tumblr for months. Those glitches are going to get worse as the site collapses.
Nazis are still perfectly welcome here. When all the fandom blogs are gone, blogs spouting hate speech are going to be much more obvious. Tumblr was known as a haven for adult content; it’s about to become known as a haven for racist content.
If Tumblr bans adult content and then collapses shortly afterwards from a mass exodus of users, other social media sites will think twice before doing this in future.
TLDR: as Tumblr experiences a nose-dive in activity, other sites will see a sudden blooming - and you can be a part of that. You can contribute to something good and growing. Some of those communities, especially in smaller fandoms, could really use your help in laying down solid foundations.
They’ll appreciate your support far more than Verizon ever will.
Dreamwidth: sophia-helix I haven’t posted much here in years, but subject to change I suppose.
AO3: sophiahelix Fic still goes here. I lock RPF, either immediately or after a couple of days, so you’ll need an account to read that.
Twitter: My fandom twitter, locked due to RPF, is sophiahelixfic, and I add back. My main twitter, where I think of “myself” as being located online these days, is sophiahelix, but it’s mostly a general personal account with a little fandom content.
The rest:
What can I even say? I’ve lived through three fandom platform migrations, but never motivated solely by a TOS change, so this is new territory for me as well.
I got into fandom fall of 1998, when online discussion was mainly hosted on Usenet or individual message boards. I started noticing references to mailing list names in fic headers, and joined a couple in 1999, which is where I met all my friendships. Mailing lists were closest to Discord, minus the subcategory channels — fandom specific, and a place where a limited number of subscribers could talk in a general forum, without being on the open internet.
My friend and I started what I think was the first multifandom mailing list not solely focused on slash, which is about when the walls between fandoms started coming down. In 2001 everyone started getting a Livejournal, and within a year the mailing list were deserted in the face of what LJ offered: individual blogs with threaded comments, and a way to subscribe and read other people’s posts on a feed, essentially curating your fandom experience. (I always think Brad Fitz of LJ doesn’t get any credit for essentially creating the RSS/feed format all social media is built in now.)
If mailing lists were like large parties or conferences, LJ was like a series of small salons you could hop between. It lasted for a long while, because when DW came online in 2009 you could cross post between and a lot of people like me didn’t make the jump. (AO3 came about shortly after, because there was a big push for fans to own the servers precisely due to this kind of bullshit.) I did finally make DW my main platform in 2011 when I couldn’t accept LJ’s shitty ownership anymore (Russia bought it basically to suppress Russian dissident blogging).
When I got a new fandom in early 2012, I headed to Tumblr. People had been migrating over there for a year or more, drawn first by image hosting and then, more emphatically, by the reblog function. Other platforms require content (post, comment, fanwork) for participation, but on Tumblr you can have an account entirely full of reblogs, and I’m guessing 95% of fannish activity on here is just that.
Given my history, I’ve always, always had reservations about the Tumblr format. I used to write meta posts like this one all the time on LJ, but quickly learned over here that reblogs can put your posts in front of readers with no context, and that discussion through chains of reblogs or short unthreaded replies is almost impossible. On the other hand, I’ve embraced the reblogging life and am so thankful for all the image/gif-makers, and I like that tags can function like mailing lists with a much broader reach. There are good things and bad things about this site, but enough of a balance I’ve stuck around for nearly 7 years.
The problem now is there’s no siren call of another platform. Twitter has its own issues, and nowhere is prepared to host the volume of image content, explicit and otherwise, that fandom is now accustomed to. AO3 still functions as a main hub, but only a tiny fraction of fans write or even comment on fic. Facebook doesn’t want us and won’t allow us to use pseudonyms, and no other growing platform (Pillowfort, Mastodon) is ready for us.
My guess is people stay unhappily put for now, and start bleeding off into Discord servers until the next thing comes along. Which is a shame, because it means back to the walled gardens of single-fandom mailing list days, and less ease of movement and permeability between fandoms. I hope people keep their usernames, because I’ve lost many people between moves. Fandom is just so big and varied now, it’s hard to conceptualize it and still harder to dream up the perfect platform for it, which is why one doesn’t exist yet. Fandom is also shaped by its platforms, though, so I have no doubt in the coming months and years it’ll take a new form I can’t even guess at now.
The sky isn’t falling, Tumblr isn’t deleting all the dirty fan art on purpose, and fandom isn’t going to leave Tumblr tomorrow.
However…
Once a site starts using bots to delete content willy-nilly, it has a serious problem and is not a safe home for fandom. In this case, the aim was to get rid of child pornography. (Actual child pornography.) The problem was already so out of control that they hit a bunch of innocent blogs by accident.
If this happened once, it’s going to happen again. It’s going to keep happening until Tumblr’s limited staff is so overstretched that they stop even a vague pretense of caring about false positives and accidental deletions of other content.
I’ve already seen several posts going around telling people to “calm down” and assuring us that Tumblr isn’t out to get us. Tumblr is not out to get us, but they’re not out to help fandom either, and you should definitely not calm down.
Make your other accounts now.
Have somewhere to go when Tumblr finishes imploding.
Two bits of advice:
-back up your stuff. make copies of your important text posts. save your media elsewhere. tumblr has a built in backup tool. use that.
-let your friends know where else to find you. fannish exodus works best when we end up the same places. (may I suggest dreamwidth?)
Last I heard dreamwidth was not a great option because it’s servers are in Russia. Many of us think of the internet as something that lives “in the cloud, up there somewhere” but much of it’s infrastructure is hosted in rooms full of servers around the world. The server’s physical locations are subject to the laws of those areas/countries.
That’s Livejournal, dude, notDreamwidth.
Dreamwidth is a similar-looking site that started off as a code fork of LJ. It is run by a tiny team in the US and is explicitly fandom-friendly. They’ve already been attacked by having people tattle to paypal and get their paypal suspended. They had to find a (more expensive for them) credit card processor that wouldn’t hold them hostage, demanding they change their content policies.
From the ‘open expression’ part of their about us page:
“We believe in sustainability, not profiteering. We want to grow our business slowly and steadily, in a way that can support the community instead of exploiting it. We don’t own you or your content – we hope that you’ll empower us to be your hands and trust us to build a community that can last.
We will remain third-party-advertising-free. We believe it’s possible to run a sustainable hosted service without resorting to third-party advertising or third-party sponsorship – and we’re committed to showing you what we’re taking in, what we’re spending, and where the money’s going.”
The problem with Dreamwidth is that it looks old-fashioned and doesn’t have all of the features fandom likes: The image hosting is minimal, and there’s no reblogging.
What it’s great for is text discussion with threaded comments (for which we use reblogs here, but for which reblogs frankly suck).
The people and policies behind the site are all great.
As someone who’s moved with fandom from BBBoards and Yahoo groups to Livejournal to Dreamwidth and AO3 and Tumblr and most recently to Pillowfort - it seems to be par of the course for sites that are NOT fandom-made to sooner or later become unfriendly or less usable to fandom.
Dreamwidth may be quiet, but it’s made by fen, and I will keep supporting it with my money and looking in now and then to see old friends. I will keep supporting AO3 that was born out of that same needs for the fandom to own the servers. I would suggest people not forget fanlore.org - it’s your fandom lore wiki, and you can create an user page for yourself to direct anyone how to find you in case one of your main non-fandom-maintained fannish-community sites goes boom (a lot of us did when LJ purges and Delicious blowout and other stuff like that happened, here’s mine with my fannish contact info - https://fanlore.org/wiki/User:Calime ).
We will no doubt be ousted from many a wide world web pasture in the future like we were in the past, but fandom network is resilient and stays around. Also, please, don’t forget your history and keep supporting the sites and organisations that fandom has made for the fandom, like AO3 and OTW, or the ones that like-minded people have created to be fandom-friendly, like Dreamwidth.
Dreamwidth is the best option for conversation/text/meta. It’s fan run/designed and while as above sharing images and the like is extremely limited and you can’t reblog, it’s very fandom friendly, and it’s easier to control your blog and who sees what.
(If you don’t like not being able to reblog, you can bookmark posts at least to your “memories” or send them to other people and show them that way, so that’s a thing?)
The irony of my original post up there!
Consider the sky officially falling. Go make a DW. It’s free. When Pillowfort is back up, go look at that. But make a Dreamwidth now!
I don’t think a lot of younger Tumblr users understand what life during the anime boom was like in 1999-2007. How accessible anime was at the time. It was fucking everywhere. It wasn’t even a niche, literally everyone was into it.
Like, Cartoon Network showed stuff like YuYu Hakusho, .hack//sign, Gundam Wing, Outlaw Star, Tenchi Muyo, and Rurouni Kenshin every weekday after school on their Toonami block.
I remember rushing home after school in second grade to watch Rurouni Kenshin. That was 7 year old me’s favorite show.
You think Pokemon is popular now? HA! In the late 90′s, it was every parent’s worst nightmare. It was on the cover of Time Magazine for fucks’s sake. EVERY kid was obsessed with it. No exceptions. At least, until Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh came around…
You could wake up on Saturday mornings and watch highly Americanized butchered versions of Shaman King, Tokyo Mew Mew (”Mew Mew Power”), and most infamously, One Piece thanks to 4kids.
An anime getting an extremely butchered Americanized dub was a very real, legitimate threat that could happen to any show.
Staying up late enough to watch Inuyasha was considered a rite of passage.
Teenage girls flocked to Barnes and Noble to read entire volumes of Fruits Basket and Fushigi Yuugi in the store without paying for them.
All of the kids cartoons tried to cash in on the craze. I’m sure everyone remembers Avatar and Teen Titans, but trust me when I say that you DON’T want to remember Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi and Kappa Mikey.
Hayao Miyazaki won an Academy Award.
Final Fantasy VII was considered the greatest video game ever made.
Some people still called it “Japanimation”.
So many fucking magazines. Off the top of my head: Animerica, Shonen Jump, Shojo Beat, Newtype USA (the best one by far), Anime Insider, Beckett Anime, and Beckett Anime For Girls (The most cringeworthy one. Of course I had every issue!)
Anime was freaking everywhere. The entire country was in its weeb phase. Some people on this website are too young to even remember this.
Teenage girls flocked to Barnes and Noble to read entire volumes of Fruits Basket and Fushigi Yuugi in the store without paying for them.
I am personally attacked
I am thirty-six years old. I graduated high school in 2000.
My siblings and I have matching Fushigi Yuugi tattoos.
I have talked to four journalists today and have agreed to write a press piece that I need to start on, but obviously it’s important that I finally sit down and post on Tumblr, too.
This is a weird feeling: I literally think that I am the world’s foremost effort on the potential impact of Tumblr banning adult content.
Here’s why: I’ve done a bunch of research about the genesis of AO3/OTW, and most recently, a large-scale study of fandom’s migration across platforms over time. I can tell you for a fact that both fanfiction.net’s and LiveJournal’s bans on adult content resulted in fans leaving those sites–and in LiveJournal’s case, essentially the death of that platform for fandom.
The image above, if you haven’t seen it before, shows fandom platform use over time, and the red line that dips drastically is LiveJournal, after “Strikethrough 2007.”
Here’s another finding from that study: That policy was the #1 reason that fans left LiveJournal. For every other platform, fans mostly left because something better came along, but nope, for LiveJournal, it was specifically because of their crackdown on “obscene” content, and what that signaled to fandom about how they were unwelcome there.
* who has shipped Spirk since that night in 1967 that Amok Time first aired * and helped storm NBC to keep TOS on the air for a 3rd season * and wrote fanfic way back in the day * and was privileged to be around for the earliest days of fandom, when Leonard used to come to your house if that’s where the fan club was meeting and sit on the sofa with you in that Spock hair cut and eat cake
All of you who are writing TOS/AOS fan fiction and creating fan art now: remember, YOU are the ones shaping the traditions of fandom. You have inherited the kingdom. Bless you for keeping it vibrant, growing, alive. In fifty years, you will be the ones who are remembered for molding it and handing it down to the future. It probably doesn’t feel like now, but you are making history.
Your current addiction to TOS and the feels you get when you contemplate the love between Jim and Spock will be with you for life. It won’t always be in the forefront; you will sometimes go years, sometimes go a decade, without Star Trek being more than a passing thought. But then something will remind you and every consuming feeling you feel right now will come rushing back, every bit as powerful and deep and strong as it is today. All there, right where you left it.
The friendships you make in fandom will be with you for life. Like all friendships, they will wax and wane as the focus of your life shifts over time, but you will always be able to pick up the thread. You will — to give you a hypothetical example — be 77 years old and discover Tumblr and get a rush of Spirk feels after a decade of not giving TOS a thought, and contact your 83-year-old fangirl friend in the nursing home, to whom you haven’t spoken in several years. You will open the conversation with, “So, Jim and Spock love each other and that just makes me so happy.” And your friend in the nursing home will sigh and say, “Yes. They do love each other. It’s such a comfort.”
That look that Jim and Spock give each other, of absolute adoration and acceptance and love? That’s real. It’s rare, but it’s real. One of my greatest joys in life is to see my son and his husband give each other looks like that. Of course I don’t know you; I don’t know your strengths and struggles or your place on the spectrum of gender or anything about your sexuality or what you look like or what your life has taught you to believe about yourself, but I do know this: YOU DESERVE TO BE LOVED AND LOOKED AT THE WAY JIM AND SPOCK LOOK AT EACH OTHER. Please don’t accept less than that in your life.
The future of our planet does not seem very hopeful at the moment. But please remember that when Gene created Star Trek, the world was in turmoil and the future seemed very bleak. Star Trek is, was, always shall be about hope. Reach for it. When TOS first aired, we hoped to see some form of a Starfleet on the horizon in our lifetimes. That vision must be passed on to you. Do it. Make the world worthy of launching the human race out into space. CREATE STARFLEET.
You are all creative and funny and amazing. Far more amazing than you know. Be kind to yourselves. Live long and prosper, kids.
Tags are in reference to my first bullet point. Meant as a kudos to your work, but feel free to untag yourself if you don’t want to be linked to my ramblings; I won’t be offended! (Also, this extends to a thousand other artists and writers out there who deserve kudos. tag at will.)
@spockslash will not be taken down until / unless tumblr takes it down.
For those of you going through this for the first time: everything will be okay. Fandom always survives stuff like this. We’re good at it.
I know there’s lots of advice posts out there. This isn’t an advice post. I’m just going to tell you why it’ll be okay.
So far, on every commercial platform fandom has called home, there has come a tipping point when we leave. There have been a few scares on Tumblr before, but I didn’t think that we’d reached the tipping point back then. I do think so now. Given the way I’ve seen fandom leave platforms before, yes, this is the real thing. It won’t happen all at once, but in waves. You can afford to wait, but start thinking about it so you’re not taken by surprise when you reach your limit.
Take note of those advice posts that are going around, and especially of the things the BNFs in your fandom are planning – people will tend to follow them in clusters, so that’s a good place to start. But even if you leave it all to the last minute in the hope it won’t happen, and then realise you need to leave after all, it will still be okay.
We are fans, and the internet has always been our playpen. We all have multiple social media accounts, many with the same handle. We can find each other again. It won’t be the same. Of course it won’t. Tumblr fandom is different from Livejournal, is different from GeoCities. But it will still be fandom, it will still be good, and you will still find people you like, including some of those currently in your fannish circle.
We have the advantage of the OTW now too – this kind of thing is exactly why we built it. It’s our safe harbour, no matter what, because we own it.
Once you decide to leave Tumblr, it won’t be as scary as you think. You’ll recognise people’s handles. You’ve probably already done this without realising it – remember the people you used to share a fandom with, but no longer do? Their handles are still seared into your brain, and you’ll always feel that pang of nostalgia when you see them again.
It’s just the same when fandom migrates.
Some people will disappear, and you never will find them again. But mostly, you will still see the same handles, having the same conversations, sharing love for the same favourites, just in new places. You will find them on Dreamwidth, Pillowfort, Instagram, Twitter, Google docs, discord, fanfic.net, Wattpad, Deviant Art, YouTube, Vimeo, and so on. Most importantly, you’ll find them on Fanlore and AO3, because they are run by the OTW and we own it.
Fans and fandom will still be here long after Tumblr is full of rolling tumblrweeds.
We’re good at this.
No matter where we end up, you will find your people again.
Fandom will go on.
It will be okay.
In the midst of all the purging panic, I was alerted to a very important issue. It was a very real possibility that @spockslash, the blog of our late fandom grandma would be lost to us forever. So I archived the blog, every post. As it was today (12/3/18).
It turns out that not all the posts made it into the WBM. I’ll send a PM to @not-freyja
Edited: I am not certain what has been backed up. These posts here all need to be backed up. Each post individually. One trick I’ve used: archive the celandar view and then, from within the wayback machine version, open up each post via right click. If the page has been saved, am archived copy will be opened. If not it will prompt you to save it,
We don’t contact anybody. If there’s one thing that all this fandom history has shown, it’s that these sites don’t listen and the fandom community on them does not recover.
The solution is to find another website to use as your new fandom home. Hopefully, this time, fandom will choose one with a sensible business model, one that is geared towards fandom and protecting its users. Both DW and PF are businesses, but they’re by and for fans and their profit model involves paid accounts covering the free ones (no advertisers to worry about).
Dreamwidth is oldschool but has stood the test of time (and yes, people have attacked them for the content they host, and they’ve stood up for it). If you want somewhere that’s more of a sure thing and/or if you post a lot of text, DW is your best bet.
Pillowfort sounds good but is in its infancy and is semi-down today from the traffic of everyone getting off of tumblr. If it succeeds, it will have some good features that Dreamwidth doesn’t. OTOH, it might not succeed.
If you want to change formats entirely, people are exploring fan art websites, more chat-oriented things like mastodon and discord, and peer-to-peer protocols that would avoid having a mainstream commercial host at all.
What will not work: petitioning tumblr.
Sorry. It has never worked before. These are gigantic corporations we’re talking about. Yahoo killed Delicious and many other fandom homes. They did not care. They’re not going to care. Verizon is even worse. Save your breath.
But hey, if you can spare some outrage, use twitter and tag Tumblr every time you come across a stupid implementation.
They may not care about us, but PR casting them in the role of incompetent buffoons that devalue stockholder value always hurts the little capitalist brains
Hey, so, obviously you've made it through fandom purges and migrations before. How do you do it? I have blogs full of content that I don't want to just have disappear, but it seems like there's just mass panic right now and everyone's going to scatter in the wind to different platforms. Was the livejournal-->tumblr transition like this? I don't want to become one of those stories like "oh, they dissapeared in X purge and never showed back up on the new site".
LJ to tumblr was more gradual in my fandom corner. LJ to IJ and DW, now those were a mad rush. I’ll warn you in advance, Anon, the moving process is going to sound laborious when I lay it out here, but as a matter of small actions over the course of years, it’s not as burdensome as it appears.
1. Trust no website. Terms of Service can change in a blink. Servers can fail. Hackers can strike. Site owners can decide ‘screw this’ and unplug the whole damn thing. Never think of any site as permanent. Five to seven years has been the lifespan of any non-fandom created site as a peak fandom hub in my experience, for exactly the kind of thing we saw at LJ, and are seeing at tumblr now. Until we own the servers, migration is fandom tradition.
2. Keep your own backups. So far as you are able, don’t delete your own files, get some external storage, keep your Dropbox active, check on your externals a couple times a year for file integrity and to add to the stash. Download reviews and discussions you like. Copy paste into docs and stash them on flashdrives for old times sake. It’s not foolproof, technology can fail, but don’t rely on the platform to keep all your copies for you.
3. Multiplatform. Even if you only tweet once a month, or visit your dreamwidth for Christmas, keep a presence at secondary and tertiary hubs. Makes it more likely other people who have scattered will run into you, and that you will run into them. Multiple platforms can also serve as backups for your content.
4. The split model of posting. Tumblr had images, writing, meta, memes and crack all in one bundle. Pillowfort might too. But until that’s fully viable, consider going back to the old-fashioned method of putting art on an art site, fics on a fic site, discussion on a discord or journal. Might feel like you’re spreading yourself thin if you’re used to tumblr’s one stop shop approach, but the immediate goal here is to save our content and find each other again. Cast the net as wide as you’re comfortable with handling. Either a fitting option will eventually turn up for fandom to gravitate towards, or you’ll find yourself comfortable in one or more of your new fandom neighborhoods.
5. Export and import features. Some sites offer them and it’s good to take advantage even before the writing goes on the wall. For backup purposes if nothing else.
6. Revisit the old haunts on occasion, if you haven’t been kicked right out. Post your ‘forwarding address’ to remind anybody still straggling around where you mainly are now, if they want to find you. (For this reason I do not recommend deleting your profile on your own. You don’t want name squatters moving in either.)
I hope this helps some. Even ‘half-packed’ as I was, I have backing up of my own to do and can only hope we’ll all be able to stay in touch with the coming distance. Good luck, everyone.
Styles of posting always change too. In the late 90s/early 00s, a lot of fic was first serialized on a mailing list and then collected in an archive. Some of it was just posted to archives in the first place.
Then LJ came along, and many people got used to the fic and the blogging being in the same place.
AO3 was primarily built by people who had used those older archives. For me and for a lot of us, splitting our fandom activities into ephemeral blogging and long-term fic storage on an archive was a natural and pleasant return to the old days.
For others, it was a horrible destruction of the fun, social nature of fic comments on LJ. I still see people wondering when we’re going to go back to “The way fandom used to be” (i.e. most fic being on journals). Never mind that AO3 comments are designed to work like LJ comments, so the same kinds of reader-to-reader conversations could happen there: it feels different, and people are nostalgic for the first fandom platform they loved.
On tumblr, we already have a split model: some people post fic here, but it’s way more common to just link to AO3. Art is consumed more quickly, so a split model for it sucks more, but it’s eminently possible.
So, on the one hand, anonymous, panic and scattering and missing the old platform are inevitable. Yes, it was pretty much the same when we left LJ. On the other hand, something new always comes along, and if you want to stay in fandom, you’ll figure it out.
Hey, so, obviously you've made it through fandom purges and migrations before. How do you do it? I have blogs full of content that I don't want to just have disappear, but it seems like there's just mass panic right now and everyone's going to scatter in the wind to different platforms. Was the livejournal-->tumblr transition like this? I don't want to become one of those stories like "oh, they dissapeared in X purge and never showed back up on the new site".
LJ to tumblr was more gradual in my fandom corner. LJ to IJ and DW, now those were a mad rush. I’ll warn you in advance, Anon, the moving process is going to sound laborious when I lay it out here, but as a matter of small actions over the course of years, it’s not as burdensome as it appears.
1. Trust no website. Terms of Service can change in a blink. Servers can fail. Hackers can strike. Site owners can decide ‘screw this’ and unplug the whole damn thing. Never think of any site as permanent. Five to seven years has been the lifespan of any non-fandom created site as a peak fandom hub in my experience, for exactly the kind of thing we saw at LJ, and are seeing at tumblr now. Until we own the servers, migration is fandom tradition.
2. Keep your own backups. So far as you are able, don’t delete your own files, get some external storage, keep your Dropbox active, check on your externals a couple times a year for file integrity and to add to the stash. Download reviews and discussions you like. Copy paste into docs and stash them on flashdrives for old times sake. It’s not foolproof, technology can fail, but don’t rely on the platform to keep all your copies for you.
3. Multiplatform. Even if you only tweet once a month, or visit your dreamwidth for Christmas, keep a presence at secondary and tertiary hubs. Makes it more likely other people who have scattered will run into you, and that you will run into them. Multiple platforms can also serve as backups for your content.
4. The split model of posting. Tumblr had images, writing, meta, memes and crack all in one bundle. Pillowfort might too. But until that’s fully viable, consider going back to the old-fashioned method of putting art on an art site, fics on a fic site, discussion on a discord or journal. Might feel like you’re spreading yourself thin if you’re used to tumblr’s one stop shop approach, but the immediate goal here is to save our content and find each other again. Cast the net as wide as you’re comfortable with handling. Either a fitting option will eventually turn up for fandom to gravitate towards, or you’ll find yourself comfortable in one or more of your new fandom neighborhoods.
5. Export and import features. Some sites offer them and it’s good to take advantage even before the writing goes on the wall. For backup purposes if nothing else.
6. Revisit the old haunts on occasion, if you haven’t been kicked right out. Post your ‘forwarding address’ to remind anybody still straggling around where you mainly are now, if they want to find you. (For this reason I do not recommend deleting your profile on your own. You don’t want name squatters moving in either.)
I hope this helps some. Even 'half-packed’ as I was, I have backing up of my own to do and can only hope we’ll all be able to stay in touch with the coming distance. Good luck, everyone.
I am way too tired for this, but here we are regardless.
Writing this because of all the Asks and messages I’ve gotten over the last few days regarding Tumblr @staff being dumbasses trying to censor everything rather than listening to people sooner about the problem and dealing with it better. Also the fact they are trying to ban “female presenting nipple” (which is sexist and transphobic AF, btw, @staff. You and I need a sit-down about this.) while not doing anything about the Nazis or White Supremacy asshats on this website.
Okay, getting off my soapbox.
SO! “Tenoko, why aren’t you freaking out more?”
Because I have already lived through this several times. And I’ve warned y’all before this would undoubtedly happen again.
First, it was on FanFiction.net. They came for the LGBT+ content, then came for all “adult content inappropriate for minors” to cover up for their homophobia and act like it wasn’t happening.
Then, it was LiveJournal for the exact same reasons: LGBT+ then all “adult content” (LGBT immediately made it ‘adult content’ regardless of rating).
Why am I not freaking out? Because I am really tired and feeling very old at the moment. “Disappointed, but not surprised.”
Also, I’m not an artist or graphic artist, so as far as who they are targetting, I am relatively safer this time around, whereas the previous two were directed at writers specifically.
No offense, but it’s oddly sort of a relief to not have to live through being the target a third time, while I am utterly sympathetic to artists and their concerns regarding a platform or followers scared about losing people they enjoy.
Let me start by saying that I am ‘Tenoko1′ across the board for this very reason. My AO3 holds all of my fics and podfics. I’m Tenoko1 on Twitter. Having lived through this twice is why I save all my favorite fics and have backup copies. My backup copies have backup copies.
I advise you do the same if you’re an artist, have copies of your works on your computer, save them on a separate server, have other copies, as well. Google Drive, Media Fire, a physical hard drive, etc.
If you are a fic writer, put all of your fics on AO3 and freaking donate to support it. This is why AO3 is so freaking important. Appreciate it.
What happens next? Well, eventually this cluster duck will calm down and we see what to make of it after the storm. Given history, another will rise up to take its place and everyone will eventually migrate there and Tumblr will die a slow death until taken over by spam, bots, and a few others because everyone has left. It’ll be the new MySpace or FFN. Pillowfort has been brought to my attention as a promising contender, but we’ll see what happens. I do not recommend DeviantArt for artists because TOS states (or did) they can sell your art to vendors and such and you may see it in HotTopic on a shirt and can’t do anything about it. You gave them permission.
Why am I not freaking out? Because we never just accept this kind of garbage for the profit of people in suits. We get indignant and angry, we create something new. It’s how AO3 came into existence.
Yes, I’m calm. Mostly because I’m just tired. All this got from me was a heavy, weary sigh of “Not this crap again”. We’ll get through it and things will be fine. But @staff is garbage and this is gonna bite them in the ass so hard they won’t have anything left to sit on.
So among all the other tags being gutted, I’m noticing all the Pillowfort posts from yesterday are being removed
Wow, really, assholes? You screw the pooch on the issue that you morons sat on for months until you became the embarrassment of the tech industry and now that your userbase is fed up, y'all hoes gonna just hide posts pumping up the competition.
Un huh. I see you 👌🙄
Cuz I look at the tag often for the @find-me-at-x blog and at one point, there was 20 new post in one hour after that announcement. There was more traffic in the tag yesterday than there had been in PF’s entire existance and now there’s a gap from about 12 hours to 6 days ago. I haven’t dug through the DW or Twitter tag, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find the same garbage going on there, too.
Riiiiiiight. Ok. That’s the way to treat people when you want them to stay.
When the site becomes a ghost town in two weeks, this is why. Not because of the harrassment campaigns, or annoying porn bots spamming comments, or even the white nationalists and TERFs who ruin people’s lives–although that certainly makes it easier to walk away and purge this account for good once I’m through backing up my posts. No, it’s the obvious lack of fucks given about this company or the users here, the ones who have reported these issues for months. No site should be told to clean up goddamn CP. Fucking Christ, do I even need to explain why? (Here’s a hint: the wrong answer is “because Apple will boot us off the store if we don’t)
And you certainly shouldn’t be punishing the 99 percent of your userbase who wasn’t engaging in this for your incompetence.
I meant my last post. Fuck Jeff D'onofrio, fuck Yahoo, double fuck Verizon and fuck the day that this site was sold to you schisters.
Yeah, it looks like I’m not showing up in tags at all, probably because I’ve been posting so much pro-DW stuff. Or it could be a bug. Tumblr is both hostile and incompetent after all.
Yahoo is a notorious repeat offender. Yahoo is the reason the “if you’re not paying money for a service, then you’re not a customer, you’re the product.” saying exists.
Here is some fully general advice: If you’re the user of a free-to-use website, and you learn that it’s being bought by a large company, then this is always, and forever, bad news. If it’s not an acquihire, then it’s something worse. You’re not a customer, you’re the product.
If we’re lucky, this will be a Livejournal-style buyout, where the site just gradually disintegrates over the course of several years. If we’re unlucky, then it’ll be a Posterous-style buyout, and Tumblr will be shut down when Yahoo goes bankrupt in six months. It is vanishingly unlikely that being owned by Yahoo will benefit Tumblr users at all.
Predictions:
More ads. Karp has a weirdly principled dislike of ads, for a guy running a free social network. Marissa Mayer is unencumbered by morals, here. If you spend a billion dollars on something, you’re gonna want a return on income.
NSFW content is probably going to be banned, or heavily restricted. (As in, “verify your age by giving us a credit card number”) Ad networks hate and fear porn, and Yahoo is going to run more ads. No other Yahoo property allows NSFW content, for precisely this reason.
They might try to restrict fan content, due to copyright/CP concerns, as Livejournal did; they might not.
Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria!
I called it, five years in advance.
The prophecy was right there and we all ignored it.
