Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 1: The Importance of Fanifestos

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is a new meta entry for marchmetamatterschallenge 2025. See my tracking post here.

Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 1: The Importance of Fanifestos
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 2a: What Is a Fanifesto? intro & canon guide
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 2b: What Is a Fanifesto? cast list & character study
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 2c: What Is a Fanifesto? ship manifesto & milieu study
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 2d: What Is a Fanifesto? plot analysis & crossovers
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 2e: What Is a Fanifesto? trope manifesto & format guide
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 2f: What Is a Fanifesto? personal manifesto & others
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 3: Benefits of Fanifestos
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 4: Drawbacks of Fanifestos
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 5a: Contents of a Fanifesto statement to tropes
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 5b: fanon to other aspects
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 6: How to Write a Fanifesto
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 7a: Where to Find Fanifestos location types & communities
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 7b: fanifestos A-E
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 7c: fanifestos F-I
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 7d: fanifestos J-R
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 7e: fanifestos S-Z
Meta: "Why We Need Fanifestos" Part 8: My Fanifestos


"Why We Need Fanifestos"


Part 1: The Importance of Fanifestos

Fandom is all about loving what we love, and sharing that love with our fellow fans. As fandom grew beyond local circles of friends, people began to reach out in search of others who shared their particular interests. They also sought to recruit new fans into their favorite canons. Thus emerged the fanifesto -- also known as a fan manifesto, ship manifesto, canon guide, primer, or various other terms -- as a concise set of information and opinions providing an entry to a given ship or a whole canon.


For years, fanifestos provided a backbone of recruitment and a go-to place to search for new canons to love. Fans wrote these for many of their beloved canons and ships. Whenever a new canon came out, people raced to be the first to post a fanifesto and some fanwork. This was partly due to excitement, but also because the earliest ones tended to get the most attention as people would cite them in making their own fanifestos and rec lists. The early bird got the eyeballs. Furthermore, as fans created and collated materials about their favorite canons, some of these collections evolved into the fandom databases and wikis of today, which place tons of information at your fingertips.

Over time, fandom got bigger and bigger, but less connected. More and more canons emerged -- more than anyone could consume, even in their favorite genres, unless they had really niche tastes. So people gradually got less invested in finding new fans for their canons or even finding new canons to enjoy themselves. Also, new venues emerged, and fans began to use different ways of finding canons and sharing fanworks. Due to these and other factors, interest in fanifestos also waned. As fewer people wrote them, it got harder to find them, and thus, harder to figure out how to get involved with a new canon. This has created some frustrating issues as the culture scattered even more.

At this time, many people feel disconnected and lonely. They don't know how to find the others who will share their particular interests. This is especially true for fans of rare pairings, those who have other uncommon tastes such as asexual relationships, or who otherwise feel lost in a culture that largely wants different things than they do. They may miss the sense of community that used to permeate fandom when it was smaller and more intimate. Many fans also feel overwhelmed by the constant deluge of things demanding their attention. The signal-to-noise ratio is an increasing problem across entertainment today, as well as other walks of life. People struggle to find things they like that are relevant to their interests.

Fanifestos can help with that. We need them more than ever. Especially, we need good ways to share them and help people find them. This way, when you create one or want to browse some in search of new canons, you'll know some places to look. In particular, there should be several places in case one crashes, which is common online. This is where crossposting becomes really helpful, so for instance a fanifesto might appear here on Dreamwidth (perhaps on the creator's blog and one or more fannish or meta communities) but also on an independent fansite dedicated to its particular canon and on the creator's personal website. See "The Manifesto Manifesto" by Geoff McDonald for more on their importance.


Things You Can Do

* Join Dreamwidth communities that feature or include fanifestos. Options include communal_creators, fem_thoughts, meta_warehouse, month_of_meta (May), notfic, shes_awesome, shipmanifestos, starwars_meta, and tv_talk. allbingo accepts meta including fanifestos as fills for its monthly fests on rotating themes. snowflake_challenge often features a challenge to write a manifesto for your favorite canon or character; these tend to be short but make a good starting point.

* Ask for recommendations of fanifestos for your favorite canons or new ones. Your audience probably knows some that you don't, and it's a fun activity for marchmetamatterschallenge.

* Collect a list of favorite fanifestos to share on your blog or other venue, and to keep so you can recommend them to friends as needed. Crosspost it to relevant fandom or meta communities.

* Archive fanifestos! We have lost so many over the years. Save them on Wayback, Ghost, Archive.Today, or other online platforms. Save them to your hard drive. Print them out and put them in a binder.

* If you host a venue, feature fanifestos. In a Dreamwidth community, make a tag for them and post a call for recommendations. Any fansite for a particular canon should have a prominent link to one or more fanifestos so that new users can quickly find a starting point; a "Start Here" page is very helpful. On an author site or other personal venue, also make a page with fanifestos you have written or loved. Some folks like to make that part of their Masterlist(s) so each canon would have a page or link for its fanifesto(s).

* Watch for events when lots of people are active or that feature a specific theme. Here on Dreamwidth, some possibilities include snowflake_challenge (January), marchmetamatterschallenge (March), and Three Weeks for Dreamwidth (April 25-May 15). Posting about fanifestos then will gain more attention.

* Create fanifestos. The more, the merrier! Talk about what you love about your favorite fandoms and explain why new folks should love them too. Boost the signal for your favorite fanworks and creators. Then crosspost widely so more people can see what you've made and fall in love with your fandom.

Fanifestos inspired by this post:

"The DioPucci Manifesto" by stardust_rifle

* Race to finish first! Revive the custom of watching a new movie or television pilot, reading a new book, or consuming other canon content and then immediately writing a fanifesto with your first impressions and/or creating a quick fanwork. Better yet, find or create a group of people interested in doing that together, because then you can spread the workload. Often people would make the initial fanifesto with a description of canon and characters, interesting motifs, and some ideas for fanworks. Then a few days or weeks later, they would hunt for fanworks and create a list of the best ones for new fans to explore. bethefirst encourages people to create fanworks for canons that don't have any yet.

Comments

[stardust_rifle]

I have been successfully persusaded (once I recover from this goddamn stomach bug i’ll write a manifesto for my rarepair that shouldn’t be a rarepair)

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith]

You have validated my vocation for the day! :D 3q3q3q!!!

When you write it, please link it here so that I can promote it.

Re: Yay!

[stardust_rifle]

*passes out* SHE'S DONE! (https://stardust-rifle.dreamwidth.org/662646.html) (I excised rambles about penetration symbolism, Whitesnakes's Still of the Night, and going line by line through every scene they have together)

Re: Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith]

You did a great job with that. I have linked it from my fanifesto fanifesto as a work inspired by mine, and boosted the signal on my blog.

[siliconshaman]

I've always regarded fanifestos canon guides and so on as akin to user manuals and documentation for tech... not something you'd set out to read for fun, but essential if you want to know how it all goes together and a life saver to consult when needed.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Huh ... it never occurred to me that people might read them purely for practicality rather than entertainment with a practical purpose. I mean, part of my gauge for how good it is, and thus whether I should look up the canon, is how amusing I find the fanifesto.

Re: Thoughts

[siliconshaman]

Oh entertainment is a part of it, same as technical manuals if they're done right... but it's not even the main purpose really.

[labelleizzy]

I went looking for the DCU version of Memory Alpha (the star trek wiki)

Because I was LOVING a fic about Superboy, Connor Kent. And WOW that kid has BEEN THROUGH IT.

So many universe swaps!!! 😳😬😳

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm glad that people built up references for that kind of stuff.

I agree about the traumatic past. I saw a trailer for a new Superman movie and the screencap image made me think, "Wow, that superhero looks like a refugee ... oh wait, he actually IS a refugee." I mean once you blow up a planet, every Kryptonian is pretty much fucked in the head.

[malymin]

I genuinely miss fanifestos so much. It feels like part of the reason new small fandoms (and even some big fandoms) fail to have "staying power" as cult classics after ending lately is linked to how modern social media dis-incentivizes talking about things that aren't already popular.

Meta-writing in general seems to have gone downhill in fandom at large, really. I feel like even on a single website, like tumblr, meta-writing culture was more active in 2013 than it is now, in 2025. Part of that seems to be part of a general bitter disillusionment with fandom, fiction, and being unironically enthusiastic about things in general on there, but...

I think another issue is that fandom used to be much better at curating stuff - canon information, fanworks (including fic recs and meta recs) - than it generally is now. Or at least, it feels like to me. But my memory is so poor I don't feel like I can trust my own recollection. What do you think?

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I genuinely miss fanifestos so much. <<

Me too. That's why I'm writing this guide. If you boost the signal, maybe that will help inspire more people to write new ones.

>> It feels like part of the reason new small fandoms (and even some big fandoms) fail to have "staying power" as cult classics after ending lately is linked to how modern social media dis-incentivizes talking about things that aren't already popular.<<

I agree that part of the problem is the unwise design of social media. But part is the choices that people make about which platforms they use and what they put there. Anyone can make a fanifesto and put it on their blog or other website.

I think that part of that problem comes from the fact that fandom has gotten much less cohesive as it's gotten bigger. There are so many people in it now that few folks feel inclined to do anything aimed at recruiting. But recruiting is more than drawing people into fandom at large, it's a crucial part of establishing and maintaining individual fandoms. Anyone can love a canon, but creating a fandom for a canon requires that fans network with other people who love the same thing to build a community with conversations and fanfics and all the other goodies.

>> Meta-writing in general seems to have gone downhill in fandom at large, really. <<

I have observe the same decline.

>> I feel like even on a single website, like tumblr, meta-writing culture was more active in 2013 than it is now, in 2025.<<

That's possible, although I'm not on Tumblr so I can't confirm it there. Certainly that was true on Dreamwidth and LiveJournal. Many people feel that the rise of short-form platforms like Twitter and Instagram largely killed the interest in longer-form platforms such as blogging. It's just faster and easier to use the short-forms. But then we don't get as much fanfic and meta, which is really sad.

>> Part of that seems to be part of a general bitter disillusionment with fandom, fiction, and being unironically enthusiastic about things in general on there, but... <<

Also true. But if you don't like the way things are, it's up to you to ditch whatever isn't working for you and try to create something else. So some of us are working on that.

>> I think another issue is that fandom used to be much better at curating stuff - canon information, fanworks (including fic recs and meta recs) - than it generally is now. Or at least, it feels like to me. But my memory is so poor I don't feel like I can trust my own recollection. What do you think? <<

Partially true.

There are fewer independent fansites, which is a crying shame because we need those. The vast majority of fanworks are now on just a few hubsites. The hubsites are convenient while they work but there have been multiple collapses, outages, rule changes, etc. that wiped out or locked up vast swaths of material. I don't like putting all the eggs in one basket. Plus you're all stuck with whatever curating / organizing methodology the hubsites use, which may not suit all fans or fandoms.

There is less effort to find and collate lists of "important works" which is vital to forming a cohesive fandom and helping new fans get into it. There is less meta, especially fanifestos, aimed at attracting and retaining new fans of a canon.

But there's one big gain and it's awesome: fanwikis. There are several frameworks for this that allow people to create a fanwiki for a canon. Some have issues, but the concept is super useful. There people can collate all the meta about characters, performers, ships, canon history, episodes / volumes, plot twists, etc. It's a tremendous reference for folks who want to make fanworks. I used the Addams Family one heavily while creating my fanifestos for Wednesday.

Re: Thoughts

[malymin]

I really desperately want to be able to write one for some of my own interests, but lately I've been feeling too drained for even fun projects like fanfic and meta, and it makes me feel guilty... u_u

Networking really has gotten weaker in fandom culture, I think. Pretty much all the most... industrious? Fan cultures I've seen know the importance of project and community organizers, but things like Warrior Cats' MAP community or the Petz Community' annual Advent and Easter events require both people who know how to organize, and people willing to dedicate time and energy to those projects. You bring up fanwikis being a good thing in the modern era, but most fanwikis I've seen for my fandoms are vestigal in terms of what kind of information they contain - one gets the sense that nobody is passionate enough to set goals for what kind of information is missing, or seek out obscure information (unused game content, Japan-exclusive content for Japanese media, etc) to post on there. It doesn't help that the most dominant wiki hoster, "fandom.com", has a user interface that seems to be actively hostile to clean presentation of information. I think part of why old fansites have often been so thorough in terms of obscure and trivia information is because a fansite run by one person or a small dedicated group can't just have the webmaster shrug and go "well, someone else will fill out this information" - they know they have to do it.