yea

"For mature audiences" not as in "legally allowed to see a boob" but "can see a fictional character do a bad thing and not immediately go on a crusade against the author"

screaming @ this screenshot bc op of it was talking about… HANNIBAL NBC!!! why does the cannibalism heavy gore emotional manipulation abuse show’s fanfic reflect that i wonder hmm

the funniest thing is that you know they didn’t actually go looking for content they would like because there’s literally a tag for people like them

a tag that’s up there in the hall of fame along with

so oooo many people in so many fandoms are holding themselves back from the art they want to create because they fear The Discourse and it's the most depressing thing ever like PLEASE stop clipping your own wings and create whatever art you want to. whyyy do we have to live in a panopticon it's so frustrating just make whatever!! be free!!!!!!

Stumbled upon this random ship (in a fandom im not active in myself) that has like 150 works on ao3 which are all from just two people gifting each other fics about this pairing back and forth and theyve been doing it for 3 years... i think thats true love probably

ok question tho

ive actually fucking tried to google this but i cant find an answer, all i get are fics

where does the whole “five times _____ and one time ____” fic title thing come from??

is it a reference to something? or is it just a fanfiction thing?

It comes from Basingstoke, a writer from the Due South and Smallville fandoms. 

I know she’s on Dreamwidth. I don’t know if she has an AO3 or not. 

There might have been one or two REALLY early examples of that story form (like 1980s early), but she invented it as we know it. 

ETA: As a matter of fact, here’s the first Five Things story ever: http://archiveofourown.org/works/9519

I just found the Fanlore article, and it looks like while Basingstoke invented the format, Strangecreature, a Torchwood writer, might be one of the first to have used “five times and one time.” But the original prompt was Basingstoke’s. And it’s definitely fanfiction only in origin.

I love it when conversations about this come around again!  How cool is it that I know people in fannish history! (and how uncool is it that I never know it was Bas who invented this until recently – where was I, under a rock?)

tee hee. It wasn’t on purpose! I did the first Five Things and then people have been riffing on it for the past decade. It’s neat. 

It’s SUPER neat. I love fandom.

This is a slow fandom zone

None of that "Oh no they bomb-dropped all the episodes in a week 1 month ago, I'm late!" "The tag hasn't been active all week is the fandom dead?" "I only got a hundred shares the first hour no one cares about my art"

Slow down

Take a deep breath and slow down

Fandom is YOU. And me and everyone. If we doodle stick figures for a show that ended 30 years ago we aren't "late" or "doing too little", we're playing dolls in our own time and having fun with works of art that mean a lot to us

You can literally watch and engage with something that aired in 2004 as if it aired yesterday

If the tag hasn't been active for 14 months guess what? If YOU post there, it isn't dead. Literally you can talk about anything you want whenever you want there is no weird law against watching things that people aren't actively talk about

Let's be deranged about stories together

as a subtitler im incredibly biased as i say this but. shoutout to forms of fan labor other than fanart and fanfiction. fanart and fanfiction are awesome, don't take this as a dig at those, but i have a big appreciation for fans who provide closed captioning/subtitles/translations of works out of love n passion; fans who recap and explain aspects of the original work; fucking SPEEDRUNNERS, holy shit, shoutout to speedrunners and challenge runners in video game communities. lots of things that fall outside the scope of what comes to mind when people think of fanart/fan labor are integral parts of a healthy fan ecosystem

i guess basically i just feel a whole lot of love for people who work to find out and share everything they can about the thing they love and make the thing they love more accessible. people who take the time to add captions/descriptive audio to an auditory/visual work, record an audio version of a written work, adapt a work into a different language, explain the historical cultural context in which a work exists, rip and publish the files of a work, and uncover and share details that are easy to miss. everyone who, in their way, is saying "i love this thing so much. i want to know everything about it, and i want everyone to be able to participate."

Shit like the Great Purges and the Strikethrough of Livejournal eventually led to fans banding together to create A03, which I would have absolutely KILLED for when I was 15.

Back up ao3 was created by fans?

It’s…right on the main page. 

I love this because I will bet you that persefv has read that bit we are all so inundated with hyperbole and advertising that says that the consumer is somehow in charge of whatever product they are shilling that we all just assumed this was another sales tactic.

But we’re not even… selling anything…  *quiet sobs*

No ads. No subscriptions. No data selling.

We are the definition of “what it says on the tin.”

Is there any way to spread this info? 

THE OTW WAS CREATED BY FANS SO WE’D HAVE AN ARCHIVE THAT WASN’T SUBJECT TO CORPORATE REVIEW. 

Nonprofit, so that nobody could ever say, “this isn’t making enough money; it’s getting shut down.” (See: Geocities, Quizilla, Figment, G+.) With lawyers involved and a firm awareness of the legalities of fanfic, so nobody would decide “we’ve gotten a nasty letter from a megacorporation with lawyers, so we’re hiding because we can’t afford to face a lawsuit. (Jedi Hurtaholics, Trevizo’s Millennium site.) With teams, so that an argument between co-mods didn’t result in the destruction of a whole archive. (Gryffindor Tower, Detention.)

AO3 IS OUR SITE.

It is by fans, for fans. Fans do all the coding. All the legal paperwork. All the abuse/tos violation complaints. Fans make all the choices about policies. Fans decide how to run the fundraisers. Fans write the blog posts. All the volunteer staff are fans; all the people who train them are fans. Fans wrangle all the tags. 

(And the other OTW projects, too. Fans manage the entries at Fanlore. Fans run the Open Doors project. Fans publish Transformative Works and Cultures.)

EVERYONE WORKING FOR THE OTW LOVES FANDOM. Wants it to survive. Wants it to be awesome for everyone.

(Knows that it can’t be awesome for everyone; some approaches to fandom just clash hard. But they strive to minimize those clashes as much as possible, because they love fandom.) 

AO3 is not some company that decided, “we’ll make a site for fanfic and then…” I don’t know what people are thinking is the reason. Money? Data harvesting? Tax shelter? Amusement and pity?

Nope; AO3 was fans saying, “Livejournal sucks; we’re tired of this fucked-up ‘rebuild every three years’ garbage; WE NEED TO OWN THE DAMN SERVERS.”

That’s the “of our own” part of the name. OTW isn’t a “them” running the site “for us.” It’s “us” making places for “us” to share what we love with others of “us.” 

I know the genie is out of the bottle and you can't go back but dear GOD I hate the mainstreamification of fandom so much

I do NOT want authors or showrunners or actors to acknowledge us or talk about fanfic or fanart or fan theories! I do NOT want people asking questions of the canon creators and getting them answered (make up your own answers, like god intended!) I do NOT want companies making jokey advertisements aimed toward fandom!

I know that fandom was never entirely underground but like... I miss that fourth wall existing, you know?

i think some of you dont like narratives or stories or characters i think you just like fanfiction tropes

protagonists can and will be sexist, racist, insensitive, cruel, stupid, etc, especially towards the beginning of a story. these are called character flaws and they are a surprise tool that will lead to narrative fulfillment later

I saw an unrelated post on here a couple days ago about why it seems people have become so puritanical these days. Essentially due to this whole generation of young adults who really have just spent so much time with zero privacy and constant surveillance, people basically self police to an extreme degree (really short/bad summary lol) and I think a similar trend is happening with people's comprehension of media. I always see post about how bad media literacy is these days, but I don't think it's that. It's not that people have just become rapidly dumber.

I think people just always feel so invaded/attacked/SEEN that they are losing the ability to enjoy things without constantly feeling defensive. You can't like a story with problematic themes because you think everyone is watching you and you don't want those people to think your problematic. You need to make it as clear as possible that you are not committing Thought Crimes when you consume a story with negative themes.

This is why you see very earnest takes like "enjoying ____ is bad because [character] does bad things". I really don't think these people (or all of them at least) are just stupid, I think it's just years of built up defense to constantly being Observed.

I saw a tiktok the other day that perfectly encapsulates what I'm trying to get at here. Someone was like "I want to read Lolita but I don't want people in public to see me/think I'm weird". And like yeah. There are people who misunderstand or fetishize that book. But it's also a very thoughtful literary classic that you aren't weird for wanting to read. People just don't want to let themselves "get caught" consuming media with anything remotely problematic portrayed in it because they think observers take it as a reflection of their beliefs.

I know "60s housewives who invented slash fanfiction" has taken on a life of its own as a phrase, but Kirk/Spock didn't really exist until the 70s and THOSE WOMEN HAD JOBS. They were teachers and librarians and bookkeepers and scientists and they damn well spent their own money going to conventions, printing zines, buying fanart and making fandom happen. Put some respect on their names.

Salute to our troops (70s careerwomen who put their hard-earned dollars into homemade gay erotica)

It was women with secretarial jobs doing a lot of the heavy lifting, if memory serves correctly.

They had training in type setting, could churn things out quickly, knew how to organise mailing lists, and had easy access to Expensive High Tech like photocopiers.

Boss make a dollar, she makes a dime. That's why she's printing Kirk X Spock zines on company time.

Not people saying “Fandom has always been like this” in that vent post I made. No. It hasn’t always been like this. Fandom has NEVER been like this until recently and if you were in fandom pre-tumblr purge, pre-twitter, pre-netflix boom, pre-tiktok….then you would fucking know it was nothing like this.

We still had the drive to create. We still sold prints and charms and made zines…but it was never like this.

The introduction of streaming, binge shows that drop all at once, tiktok and vine RIP i still love u vine but you were the beginning of a particularly ugly era) creating this bite sized, quick paced ‘content’ era of creation and it bled out into fucking everything else.

Fandoms didn’t die down when the show ended or the season was over. You didn’t mass unfollow artist, writers or moots just because they changed fandoms. There wasn’t this need to please the algorithm in order for your posts to get seen by people and enjoyed.

Fandoms used to last YEARS. Star Trek is literally the oldest running fandom out there and you got people in there that could care less about the new stuff and still have been happily prancing through their fucking fifty year old fandom today. Hell, even SPN after all it’s fuckups and shitshows has a dedicated fanbase STILL creating tons of art and fic.

There is no patience anymore. No calm feeling of taking in fandom and friends at a pace that which doesn’t make you stressed and is still fun.

Do I blame fandom for this? Of course not, but people are complacent with it and start changing their vocab to accommodate and end up making the situation so deep it cant be fixed.

We call Art & Fic Content now, completely stripping the value of what it is to a level of consumerism instead of personal entertainment & community bonding.

Let OP talk, they’re absolutely right.

it’s wild to me how there is literally ZERO correlation between what a piece of media is like and what its fanworks are like. 2014 captain america fans were out there writing poetry and full-on academic papers inside of their fics. sonic the hedgehog and my little pony fandoms are both famous for drawing fetishes you’ve never even heard of. les miserables fans spent most of their energy on college aus. there is literally no consistency or observable pattern and it’s incredible

#my theory is that fanworks reflect what people found missing in the canon#so like. sonic and mlp. obviously#les miz want les amis to be happy and alive and goofing around#and uh. mcu fans want the mcu to be well-written (via dicaeopolis)