Life is like a banquet....
Dec. 16th, 2012 07:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morgandawnWhen I entered fandom* in the early 1990s, it was still very much like a private club. You had to know someone to participate. There were no online communities (except a few like the Virgule slash mailing list and they wouldn't allow advertising, only word of mouth personal recommendations). There were a few public online communities like Usenet and of course there were still local and in person conventions along with paper snail mailed fanzines. But slash fandom in particular was run on a secret handshake, "nudge nudge wink wink you know what I mean" basis and you didn't discuss slash on Usenet lest you deal with the Wrath of the "OMG They'd Never Do That!!!" fans.
This was particularly true in my (then) two main slash fandoms, Pros and Starsky and Hutch which for years struggled with the fears (and realities) of external exposure and harassment. Add to that the typical tensions between the old guard fans who felt they should approve of who should have access to fandom and what methods fandom could use to share and communicate with, it was no surprise that when the technology arrived that allowed fans to bypass the gatekeepers, more and more of us began to communicate directly with one another and formed our own communities.
But many of us didn't grok this at first. I remember long emails to Virgule on how we had to mentor new fans in "our ways" and how newcomers had to understand that the Internet was not a place for fans to talk about slash, let alone post slash fiction. Netfan was, for a few years, not a descriptive term. I remember when a fan began posting fanzine publisher info (with permission) on a password protected website, there was outrage and fury and the inevitable phone tree game with factual distortions and wild accusations. A year later when another fan did the same thing, there was bit less frothing. And the next year, even less. And when another slash mailing list began openly advertising and allowing anyone to join who sent an age statement, while there were still grumbles, it began clear that the era of one to one mentoring and personalized entry into fandom was over.
Fast forward 20+ years and fandom has changed beyond recognition - at least in its scope and breadth and the openness of slash and the type of fic we write and enjoy (10 years ago we couldn't even talk about liking noncon (or rape fic as we called it). Simon and Simon incest slash was just for the those other perverts). Today, I rarely see posts complaining about how articles about slash in journals or magazines is a threat and a danger to the community and how we must make certain that no one among us talks to outsiders lest we be discovered. But some communities still seem to see their ponds as The Pond and their fannish norms as The Norms. And while I personally 'grok' this because I too came into fandom in the era of the Private Club, I also love the fact that fandom has grown to be so huge, so pervasive, so all encompassing and so messy and scary and 'out there' that we cannot be chasing after each other to enforce our vision of What Fandom Must Be. Apart from the impracticality of it, it means that for (this fan), I now have a smörgåsbord of fandom fun and creativity and communities to chose from. It is the Age of the Fandom Buffet and like Auntie Mame said, this fan has no plans to starve herself to death.
That being said, be kind to this decades old fan when, from time to time, I feel uncomfortable with the visibility of it all.
*Fandom here means Western media fandom. It means other things to a whole lot of other people. And that alone makes me happy.
This was particularly true in my (then) two main slash fandoms, Pros and Starsky and Hutch which for years struggled with the fears (and realities) of external exposure and harassment. Add to that the typical tensions between the old guard fans who felt they should approve of who should have access to fandom and what methods fandom could use to share and communicate with, it was no surprise that when the technology arrived that allowed fans to bypass the gatekeepers, more and more of us began to communicate directly with one another and formed our own communities.
But many of us didn't grok this at first. I remember long emails to Virgule on how we had to mentor new fans in "our ways" and how newcomers had to understand that the Internet was not a place for fans to talk about slash, let alone post slash fiction. Netfan was, for a few years, not a descriptive term. I remember when a fan began posting fanzine publisher info (with permission) on a password protected website, there was outrage and fury and the inevitable phone tree game with factual distortions and wild accusations. A year later when another fan did the same thing, there was bit less frothing. And the next year, even less. And when another slash mailing list began openly advertising and allowing anyone to join who sent an age statement, while there were still grumbles, it began clear that the era of one to one mentoring and personalized entry into fandom was over.
Fast forward 20+ years and fandom has changed beyond recognition - at least in its scope and breadth and the openness of slash and the type of fic we write and enjoy (10 years ago we couldn't even talk about liking noncon (or rape fic as we called it). Simon and Simon incest slash was just for the those other perverts). Today, I rarely see posts complaining about how articles about slash in journals or magazines is a threat and a danger to the community and how we must make certain that no one among us talks to outsiders lest we be discovered. But some communities still seem to see their ponds as The Pond and their fannish norms as The Norms. And while I personally 'grok' this because I too came into fandom in the era of the Private Club, I also love the fact that fandom has grown to be so huge, so pervasive, so all encompassing and so messy and scary and 'out there' that we cannot be chasing after each other to enforce our vision of What Fandom Must Be. Apart from the impracticality of it, it means that for (this fan), I now have a smörgåsbord of fandom fun and creativity and communities to chose from. It is the Age of the Fandom Buffet and like Auntie Mame said, this fan has no plans to starve herself to death.
That being said, be kind to this decades old fan when, from time to time, I feel uncomfortable with the visibility of it all.
*Fandom here means Western media fandom. It means other things to a whole lot of other people. And that alone makes me happy.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 05:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 06:13 pm (UTC)And while it's not slash, I think 50 Shades of Crap gave the world another reason to look askance at fans/fandom, and make a lot of unfounded assumptions (except that, yes, crappy writers are abundant in fandom).
Do I Need A Bigger Boat?
Date: 2012-12-16 07:14 pm (UTC)Personal visibility is another matter. I’ve been contacting print fanzine editors, publishers, authors and artists directly for another archiving project (non-OTW related) and what has surprised me was how many of the older zine era fans are comfortable with their names being publically linked to their fannish activities. Likewise, a UK fanzine publisher who is posting PDFs of her Star Trek zines says that her contributors are either fine or indifferent (when she can find them). One theory is that as many of these older fans become familiar with Facebook they’re becoming more comfortable with the visibility of the Net. Also, we’re finding that much of the fanzine info and real life names had already been published online by the fans themselves. And last, some slash writers are surprised that we’d be worrying about this. As one publisher said: “Even in the 70s slash was controversial. If you really wanted to protect your identity, most of us knew we had to use a pseud. And many of us did.” I had assumed, coming from my slash zine background that the pre-Internet community as a whole still feared both personal and fandom visibility but that is not turning out to be the case. Which made me go "bwuh?"
I guess what I am saying is that what I thought was "The Way It Was And The Way It Shall Always Be For Fandom" is not quite 100% accurate. There is a lot more diversity of opinion out there and I think we (by we I mean most of the people who read my blog) we tend to be biased towards Western print media fandom. We often fail to take into account other fandoms like manga and yaoi and gaming and RPG and sci-fi readers and.....
And we're back to that big scary and deep ocean. I mean have you looked at it lately? It's fucking wide and goes on and on. And there must be sharks out there. Right?
Re: Do I Need A Bigger Boat?
Date: 2012-12-16 10:34 pm (UTC)I remember quite vividly the anxiety expressed when I was planning to publish my article on vidding--this was back in 2006, so before much, if any, academic work had been done on the subject at all. All the vids described in the article are composites or variants of existing works. The only in-community link in the first iteration of the piece was to the VVC site. Some of the folks then expressing concern went on to be OTW leading lights.
Still, I am sympathetic to people who don't want to be test cases for changes in social mores. Sometimes the first person to stick their head up from the bunker gets it shot off, even if the battle ends shortly thereafter. The contempt I feel for certain jerks who outed me on journalfen--and towards the journalfen mods who were old-school fans themselves and should have known better, but who were too driven by personal dislike to act like grownups and enforce their own damn rules--persists. People of certain ambitions are still not immune to harm by outing, even in 2012.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 06:40 pm (UTC)Like
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 07:26 pm (UTC)The desire to control the flow of information and man the gates as to who can be let in (or out) seems to be very basic human need. No one wants strangers standing outside their window oogling them It is just not practical today. And while I still want to curl up in my nest, I canna' stop the tide of fandom. Nor do I really want to.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 07:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-16 08:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-17 06:17 pm (UTC)Global WarmingInternet Fandom is real. And it doesn't care whether I acknowledge it or not. And that is both liberating and scary.(no subject)
Date: 2012-12-18 11:02 pm (UTC)