lukeskywalkersdepressionsnuggie:

something that i think about a lot and that really stresses me out is archiving fandom like

over time fandoms go through so many distinct phases, and use such particular language and phrases, and have so many trends and reactive movements, and just this huge behind the scenes unique culture where so much is created. Not just fic and fan art, but the whole fan culture of a particular fandom moment. Like the popular ships, and crack theories, and specific jokes and memes that get passed around. 

I know the fanlore wiki has a lot of this stuff for older and bigger fandoms, but i still get stressed because i don’t want anything to be forgotten. Like i don’t want all the wild harry potter crack theories to be lost, of les mis fandom memes, or the legendary a;tla ship wars (even the bad parts of fandom should be preserved for people to learn from, because this same shit inevitably repeats itself). And in addition to wanting to preserve current fandom cultures or ones from the recent past, i also love learning about the culture of much older, established fandoms like star wars and stark trek! Like the fact that skysolo was a thing back when the OT was coming out and that george lucas hated it so much that he did everything in his power to shut it down. That’s such an important part of the sw fandom culture! Or how fan perception of characters evolves and changes over time, like with the ewoks.

i think part of what makes it so hard is that even though fandom these days mostly takes place on the internet, it still has many of the same drawbacks and flaws that things considered “oral tradition” might. Like things are rarely published in an official sense; tropes, theories, and jokes are often collaboratively created; information is shared in the form of text posts and on message boards. It’s even harder with older fandom material that comes mostly from zines and early-internet message boards that are unfortunately often lost or deactivated. 

hopefully there are starting to be more people out there who actually document these things. I actually had a class just this past semester where we briefly studied harry potter fandom trends and there were actual scholarly articles that cited fics on ao3. But yeah i spend way too much time on the fanlore wiki and way too much time thinking about this but fandoms are an important cultural element that should be documented and archived for future generations