Fanlore
This is your reminder that Fanlore exists. It’s a wiki of fandom history run by OTW, which is the parent organization of AO3.
Here are some examples of important tumblr posts that have pages to chronicle the discussion:
- The Three Generations of Fanfic
- History of Slash (2018 essay)
- I don’t understand how anyone can take AO3 for granted
- I searched my name at Fanlore this week
That last one is too meta not to link to! :D
Anyway, these wiki entries can give you an idea of what documentation of a tumblr post and its responses might look like. We’ll never document every single little thing, and we wouldn’t want to, but we can make a record of major conversations and schools of thought so that fans who come after us know how people were feeling on tumblr back in the day.
- Fanlore uses the same wiki markup as Wikipedia et al.
- Fanlore has a “Plural Point of View” policy: treat it like oral history where you want to document all sides of a controversy rather than Wikipedia’s attempt at ‘One Universal Truth’. (But feel free to correct factual errors.)
- Fanlore is about any fandom history, so minute details of canon don’t belong on there, but minute details of meta, fanworks exchanges, any zine ever, any significant online fic, tropes in fanworks, etc. do.
Since tumblr is getting harder and harder to search, even aside from deletions, now is a great time to document important tumblr posts on Fanlore or add information from tumblr posts to existing articles.
Right now, Fanlore is an amazing resource on pre-internet “Media Fandom”, old print zines, the LJ era, and a lot of slash fandom history.
But it’s only as good and varied as its editors.
In my experience, it could use a lot of help in the realm of anime/manga fandom, including BL fandom, fandom not in English and/or outside of the English-speaking world, fandom on places like Quizilla or Wattpad, femslash fandom, etc. If your area of fandom is not represented, it’s only because the current editors don’t know enough!
You are welcome! We need you!
If you know how wikis work, you’re all set to edit Fanlore. If you’ve never used a wiki, we can help you figure it out.