Meta: Fandom Changes
Mar. 10th, 2024 03:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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marchmetamatterschallenge is offering prompts to inspire new meta. This is the first:How have you seen your main fandom change over time? This could be:
* change in who major contributors are or what main fests/challenges exist
* change in the style or frequent tropes that gets written
* certain events that have happened
* expectations of or common views on canon
If you don't have a main fandom, you could compare and contrast experiences in different fandoms you've been in.
I don't really have a "main" fandom. I enjoy many different canons. I like fannish culture in general, including panfandom events such as
snowflake_challenge.Positive changes I've seen over time:
* It is now common for people to write book-length or even series-length fanfics. Decades ago, it was rare to see anything beyond short story length.
* I admire the rise of hobby-editors, who used to be called first-readers and are now called betas. Used to be this was something people did only as a favor to writer-friends, but now it is a hobby in its own right and there are folks who make a habit of editing things for a bunch of different fanwriters.
* The use of "!" as a compound word maker amuses me. The format is adjective!noun, like little!Tony. Fanwriters use it to designate specific iterations or interpretations of a character. Punctuation and word formation modes are among the rarest things to change in language evolution, so when you see them, it usually marks a period of high-change like English is in now. This usually lasts only a few decades. A century from now, people will find it really hard to read things written in the 1900s.
* I honestly credit fanfic for a substantial role in the acceptance of homosexuality. All that Kirk/Spock helped change "the love that dare not speak its name" to "Aww, da KYOOT!"
Negative changes I've seen over time:
* They really all amount to the same thing, which is that mundania has colonized fandom to the point that now it's just mundania with elf ears. It's just as vicious, intolerant, cliqueish, and judgmental as the rest of the world. The quirky, easygoing, welcoming atmosphere of the past is long gone. What's left is not really worth pursuing. I still enjoy reading fanfic, but I no longer feel attracted to cons, and even the quality of online events has sunk dramatically. People used to talk about how fun and freeing fandom was and they'd finally found a place where they could be themselves. Now they talk about being driven out of a fandom because somebody decided to hate them and attack them every time they showed up. Which is what we used to come to fandom to get away from.
I don't know where all the freaks have gone, but they're not in the same places they used to be. Some folks have suggested zombie culture, which is no use to me because I don't like zombies; or goth culture, which is no use because I scare them.
I miss fandom-that-was.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-11 04:47 pm (UTC)But I do agree that there's been a sharper turn towards people being made to feel unwelcome. I've seen it in people fleeing social media sites, and you're right that fandom is no different a space than any other group in those places. There's also even more judgment along both familiar and new lines, making it difficult for anyone to feel at ease.
That's a very interesting observation about betas and the designation of character interpretations! I'm trying to remember when I first saw the ! used and I think it was on AO3 (but of course everything there came from somewhere else). Looks like that might have come around in the 2000s https://fanlore.org/wiki/!
I'm not sure I've seen the long stories frequency change. Back in the LJ (or mailing list) days most stuff did seem to be under 10,000 words but I imagine the format affected that. A lot of long fic was either very serialized or posted on websites which had no character restrictions. But from what I last heard re: AO3 content, the majority of fic remains under 3000 words. I expect a lot longer fic can exist now though because it's so much easier to post it and find it, so it's perhaps more common in more fandoms?
Thoughts
Date: 2024-03-11 11:29 pm (UTC)Perhaps not wholly welcoming, but much more so than now.
>> Plus while there was a lot of slash and some femslash and genderswapping and so on, I came along early enough that slash was still considered something shameful and there were a lot of divisions among het and slash groups.<<
Yes, but the portion of people who found it cute has grown in comparison to the portion of people who found it appalling -- and specifically, grown enough that people frequently talk about it being cute. There are lots of slash fests and other events now, and it's not considered strange, and individuals may bitch but there's not a movement to stamp out such events. I count that as progress over times when homosexuality wasn't discussed at all.
>> But I do agree that there's been a sharper turn towards people being made to feel unwelcome.<<
It's not new, but it is getting rapidly worse.
>> I've seen it in people fleeing social media sites, and you're right that fandom is no different a space than any other group in those places. There's also even more judgment along both familiar and new lines, making it difficult for anyone to feel at ease.<<
Yeah. We used to have refuges, and now there's very little of that left, other than individual blogs or websites belonging to people who remember when fandom wasn't a sharkfest.
>>Looks like that might have come around in the 2000s<<
That sounds about right.
>>I'm not sure I've seen the long stories frequency change. Back in the LJ (or mailing list) days most stuff did seem to be under 10,000 words but I imagine the format affected that.<<
I meant back in the time when fanzines and APAs were the leading carrier of fanfic. There were a few that specialized in longer works, and more that would serialize long works one at a time like Azimov's, but it was hard to find a venue for anything more than a few thousand words. Short stories go up to 7,500 but the word limits for submissions were often lower than that. Some people published chapbooks but the majority of those were original. I'm one of the rare few who did have longer works chapbooked, but I think those were all demifiction rather than fiction. Even the rise of big-bang events, which are now common and popular, usually starting at 10,000 words, is something from ... maybe the 2000s or so? It's an online event category and it took advantage of the medium's flexibility over paper.
>> But from what I last heard re: AO3 content, the majority of fic remains under 3000 words. <<
Well sure, the proportion still favors shorter work because it's faster and easier to create. But look at all the stuff that is over 100,000 words and there's even some over 1 million words -- a single novel or a series of longfics. They show up even in fairly new series like Wednesday, and megafandoms like Star Trek have had time to build up a lot.
>>I expect a lot longer fic can exist now though because it's so much easier to post it and find it, so it's perhaps more common in more fandoms?<<
Exactly. There's no inherent size limit online, and it doesn't cost extra to post a book. So it's easier for people to share, and that encourages more people to produce longfic since they expect they can share it easily.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-02 01:28 pm (UTC)I've also only been heavily involved in three fandoms, one of which was so small no one's heard of it, so my perspective is skewed. But maybe that also furthers my point. Everyone's experience has been wildly different.
A lot of long fic was either very serialized or posted on websites which had no character restrictions.
I forgot about the LJ character restrictions! Because yeah, I remember there being a ton of chapter fic. But it was often on ff.n or the websites. I think that's the other thing, if you mostly did fic on LJ and Ao3, that's a bit of a different experience as well.
I think tumblr also has a different kind of policing. I dabbled in a fandom on tumblr and Ao3, and it wasn't just "OMG you like this ship you're delusional", it was "you're racist if you ship this pairing". I'd be lying if I said it wasn't one of the reasons I didn't get into the fandom. (Mostly I just started losing interest in the show, but the fandom was so unwelcoming.)
(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-02 06:39 pm (UTC)This last was a key dispute because it went to the heart of what fandom and fanworks were for. I don't know if it even exists anymore but I think the het vs slash dispute has shifted to other types of -isms.
Thoughts
Date: 2025-02-03 11:04 am (UTC)Fandom is supposed to be a place to have fun. Most fanwriters have no training in how to write, and that's fine. If you want professional quality ... well, 30 years ago I'd have said go to a bookstore, but after publishers canned most of their staff, the best stuff I find nowadays is fanfic.
>>There was a lot of criticism of people who wrote prolifically and quickly but generally without a beta or without any real editing in terms of grammar or style (since sometimes they claimed to use betas but who were either not doing a good job or were being ignored).<<
Editing is a skill. First readers used to be just friends and family, or if you were lucky you knew a secretary or teacher who'd do it. But now, editing is a hobby of its own! Which is awesome.
Thoughts
Date: 2025-02-03 10:24 am (UTC)It depends on where, in person or online; where, in which fandom; but also when someone came into fandom. I've known people who were part of the campaign to keep Star Trek going, and their experiences were a wonder beyond what I knew when I came into fandom as a community, let alone what it is now. And even now, some fandoms and some venues are more welcoming while others are just vicious.
>> it wasn't just "OMG you like this ship you're delusional", it was "you're racist if you ship this pairing". <<
Yeah, that's just ghastly.
>> I'd be lying if I said it wasn't one of the reasons I didn't get into the fandom. (Mostly I just started losing interest in the show, but the fandom was so unwelcoming.) <<
It's a large and growing problem. If fandom drives away people who like the canon, because the fans are assholes, the culture will die out. And that's happening. I've seen several people lamenting the reduction in convention activity and pleading with people to attend so the cons don't disappear. But maybe folks just don't like the changes and don't feel the current offerings are worth the bother.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-11 08:34 pm (UTC)Yes, I’m afraid that is true and I find myself drifting away from the nastiness and the cliquishness most of all. I still read and write but I tend to keep away from groups. Though that’s nothing new. I never did gravitate toward groups.
There is something about the self-obsessedness of it now, too, that I don’t recognise.
Thoughts
Date: 2024-03-12 01:41 am (UTC)Same here.
>> Though that’s nothing new. I never did gravitate toward groups.<<
I've never really been a joiner. But when I first discovered fandom, I felt a sense of kinship and welcome that I had not felt from other humans. I miss that, because now there is little if any difference. Had this been my first encounter, I would've dismissed fandom as barbaric and off-putting along with the rest of society.
>> There is something about the self-obsessedness of it now, too, that I don’t recognise.<<
That's a peculiarity of contemporary times, contributed if not caused by things like cell phone cameras and social media.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-12 05:44 pm (UTC)And the use of ! is something I've always found fascinating as well. I must have first encountered it on Livejournal a good while ago, but it's interesting just how easily and how quickly one gets used to the way it works. Nothing like getting a message across effectively!
And agreed on the nature of fandom relationships, unfortunately. Some pettiness and in-fighting is always to be expected where a considerable number of people amass, but it just seems different right now. There's a lot of communication done in bad-faith and the way people talk online appears to default to that now -- they are always feeling attacked, always in defensive mode, always assuming someone else is coming at them regardless of how thoughtful and polite the other party was with their message. Of course inferring tone from written text is difficult, we all know that, but the constant and unwavering assumption that such a tone in the words others send us is negative more often than not is baffling. I don't know if its trickling into fandom spaces has to do with the fact that this behaviour came from modern social media or if the fact that many fandoms are being constructed within modern social media is responsible for it. Maybe a bit of both, probably with a bunch of other factors mixed in, but either way it's a loss, yeah.
Thoughts
Date: 2024-03-15 01:09 am (UTC)Well, book-length fiction has been around for a long time, but book-length fanfic much less so. Fanfic started out being shared on paper, in fanzines or APAs, so the size limits were pretty tight. There were occasional longer works, either serialized in fanzines or published separately as chapbooks, but it wasn't the norm.
Then electronic publication became an option, and while the early ezines stuck with short limits, people fairly soon figured out that it didn't have the kind of hard limits of paper publication. So more people began sharing medium and long fics.
My reason for favoring longfics is simple convenience. I like to use fanfic as a break between spans of working on something. With longfic, I don't have to find the next thing to read as often, I can just read it in sections.
>>It's been a while since I've seen anyone near my fandom circles rec oneshots as opposed to multichaps and I have this feeling that the latter is now considered the standard instead of the former. As someone who primarily writes shorter stories, I kind of wish there was a little more balance, honestly (but it might all be just my experience in the fandoms I've been/am currently in, of course).<<
The number favors short fics, because they are quicker and easier to write. Longfic is a serious time investment for the writer, so there aren't as many, even though it's more common now than it used to be. What you're seeing is likely reviewer bias -- a person who likes longfic will tend to rec it more often than shortfic. Me, I'll put anything I like on my annual list of best new fanfics found; I favor longfic but am willing to read shorter if it looks good, so there's typically a mix of both in my recs. Do watch for rec fests, because length-based themes are fairly common there. And drabbles (100-word stories) are extremely popular, there are whole communities for that form. Drop by
>> Some pettiness and in-fighting is always to be expected where a considerable number of people amass, but it just seems different right now. <<
There's a difference between casual bickering, serious disagreements, and people just plain picking on each other. Fans have always squabbled. But used to be, they didn't bully each other, because that's what we came to fandom to get away from.
>> There's a lot of communication done in bad-faith and the way people talk online appears to default to that now -- they are always feeling attacked, always in defensive mode, always assuming someone else is coming at them regardless of how thoughtful and polite the other party was with their message. <<
Some of that is sheer buildup of damage, and some is a cultural shift in how people handle that sort of stress. Bear in mind that people nowadays have much less social support than used to be the case, so it is harder for them to recover. And being a victim has become a lot more fashionable, so for some people it's a habit.
>>I don't know if its trickling into fandom spaces has to do with the fact that this behaviour came from modern social media or if the fact that many fandoms are being constructed within modern social media is responsible for it. Maybe a bit of both, probably with a bunch of other factors mixed in, but either way it's a loss, yeah.<<
Both, I think. Part of the shift is simply that fandom used to come primarily from the written word, then shifted so it's more TV and movie fandom now. Those subcultures have always differed, because the things that bookworms like and the things that movie fans like are often very different.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-03-19 05:56 pm (UTC)I find that an interesting perspective! Granted, I haven't read fic in about a decade or so (for many reasons, none of which I'll bore you with), but if I were to do so I think I'd just keep a bunch of tabs open with shorter stories to read through. I keep longer reads for books and even so, when I'm in between novels, I'll usually get a book of short stories and read one here and another there in those little free moments.
[hides face in shame because short stories don't come quickly or easily to her apart from maybe drabbles] LOL. Jokes aside, I'd say it's also a fandom-specific thing. Where I've been lately it seems like it's just immense multichaps everywhere, every day, with the shorter fics trying to survive in between the behemoths.
I do wonder whether sometimes people don't also feel a bit of pressure to write a certain way (or a certain length, in this case) to conform to unsaid expectations and "guarantee" they'll be read. it's not uncommon to see younger authors especially talking about getting more hits/kudos/comments/subscriptions and those tend to trickle in more when one is publishing chapters of the same thing rather than different if shorter stories.
Re: bad-faith, I think it's easy to fall into the trap and especially so when the social media we're all so immersed in for long periods of time is flooded with it, but idk, I also think it's our responsibility to take a few steps back and a few breaths before reacting to anything. Every now and again,