fandom

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

themthistles:

whenever i see another tiktok girlie talking about how she wishes to have been a fangirl in 2010s i feel like a seasoned veteran overhearing a foolish youngin boasting about wanting to go to war for glory and adventure. you naive little idiot. you know nothing. you understand nothing. you weren’t there in the trenches. i have seen things, terrible things. i cannot plug in my phone charger at night without being plagued by the visions of Him

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #((this amusement not to be taken as expressing an opinion regarding the statement itself)) #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

skylerhyrule:

okiedoki-todoroki:

okiedoki-todoroki:

Everyone says that reading fanfiction is a useless pastime, but let’s not forget that I learned how to cook grilled cheese from a kiribaku fic

tumblr_inline_pnub64epqq1v1d2p0_400

OH MY GOD YOU’RE THE ONE WHO TAUGHT ME HOW TO MAKE GRILLED CHEESE

A touching reunion

Tags:

#I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #fandom #food #adorable #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

changeling-droneco asked: as youre very both old school fandom and also someone who works to preserve old fandom content, what do you think is the best way to print off and preserve fanfics? I’ve been wanting to start to move my many many many archived pdfs into actual physical copies but ive been way too intimidated to really look deep into it so I was wondering if you had a preference

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

prismatic-bell:

Okay, so.

My preference is “yes.” Yes, I want you to archive them. Yes, I want you to save them. I’ve worked to preserve 1960s teen pulp mags, for fuck’s sake, it can’t get much worse than that, and I’m grateful to have them.

With that said, pick any or all of the following options to make your physical printouts last longer:

–select acid-free paper
–bind by sewing, not stapling
–store in archival sleeves, like the ones you use for old comic books

And now, pick any or all of the following options to make my life easier as a historian (or, you know, the lives of the historians who come after me):

–include the title
–include the author’s name
–include the fandom name
–include which version of the canon, if relevant (e.g. the OG Transformers show vs the Michael Bay movies)
–include the date, or at least year, of publication
–include the summary
–include the site of origin, including the URL

All of these things are called provenance and help not only to identify a specific work, but to place it within its cultural context. As an amusing example: I recently got into James Bond, and decided to go through every fic in the main pairing tag, in chronological order. There came a point where suddenly, out of nowhere, there were like two solid pages of nothing but A/B/O, which I previously had not seen at all. I had a suspicion, so I looked it up, and sure enough–those two pages appeared within just a couple of weeks of the corresponding Supernatural episode. Having publication dates let me determine that. If I were a historian trying to piece together a long-ago puzzle instead of going “lol I live on the hellsite, I bet I know exactly where this came from,” that would be a huge datapoint. I could probably find a similar sudden explosion in other fandoms, as well–and if we’re going far enough in the future, if Supernatural were to just vanish off the face of the planet along with its entire fandom, historians could still trace that it existed and even determine some of its events based on when certain tropes begin to appear in other fandoms. And further, the fact that its tropes and major events appear in so many other fandoms would allow those historians to say “this must have been a very, very popular story.” (This isn’t just me making shit up to sound important, by the way. This is literally how we have records of a lot of things throughout antiquity and even into the Renaissance. The more copies there are of something, or the more references that are made to a thing in other things, the more likely it is for at least part of it to survive. This is literally how we know about Shakespeare’s two lost plays–he was a popular enough playwright that quartos of his plays were advertised for sale.)

Whew! Now let’s get into stuff you could do that would make me, as a historian, scream with delight if I were to open your folder full of labeled, acid-free fanfiction fifty years from now:

–write a little something about why you picked this particular fic to preserve in hard copy when doing so is bulky and time-consuming compared to the easy instant storage of the internet, yes, even if your reason is “I’m trying not to use my phone in bed because the screen keeps me awake but this story is soothing to reread”
–write a little something about who you are, even if it’s just “my name is X, my age is Y, I live in Z, I printed this out in 2022”

And last but not least:

Marginalia. Marginalia. Marginalia, my beloved. That’s when you write your thoughts in the columns on the sides, underline stuff, circle it, and so on. Having marginalia means I actually get a window into your thoughts as you read–your perspective, stuff that stuck out to you, places the story made you feel some kind of serious emotion. And yes, this goes for everything. Villain A kills Hero B and you write “YOU MOTHERFUCKER” in the margin, that tells Future Historian Me that you really loved Hero B, you were invested in seeing her succeed, and that this scene really resonated with you. One of my most treasured possessions in the fandom museum is a copy of the novelization of the Help! movie the Beatles did. This particular copy is very worn–unsurprising, it was a cheap paperback even when it was printed–but also, its original owner apparently took it to the movie theatre and

wrote notes in the margins indicating all the things happening onscreen that weren’t in the book. What does this tell me? WELL. Let’s go ahead and take a look:

1) the written ink doesn’t look any newer than the book, so I’m guessing a little when I say this was the original owner and in the theatre, but I have an actual datapoint I’m basing that on
2) based on handwriting and the main demographic of the Beatles audience at the time, this was a young woman, probably a teenager.
3) she went to see the movie more than once (some notes are in pencil, some in ink, but the handwriting is all the same)
4) she was dedicated to making sure every moment of the movie was preserved. This was an era before home video players, so once the movie left theatres, she had no guarantee of seeing it again.
5) while the book is worn, it’s not beaten all to shit. It was read a lot, but there’s no evidence it was mistreated, so it was probably a prized or at least respected possession.

What can I extrapolate from this, with the understanding that I mean “what theories can I reasonably form but not prove”? Well. She was probably a pretty big fan, since she went to see the movie at least twice and also bought the book. Maybe she wanted to keep the story after the movie was gone. Maybe she was looking for answers for some teen mag contest like “find these things in the Help! movie and win a chance to meet the Beatles.” Maybe she had a friend who wasn’t allowed to go to the movie. You know what the most tantalizing possibility is to me, although I’ll never be able to prove it and actual ethics as a historian mean I can only present it as one among many possibilities? Maybe she did it as a source reference for writing fanfiction. We don’t know. We can’t know, because I have no idea who the original owner was or if she’s even still alive and no way to trace her. But that? In terms of fandom history, that is a fucking gold mine. Pure 24-karat all through. From a strictly historical view, that’s worth more than the animation cel I’ve got in there, and I paid over a hundred bucks for that thing.

So yeah! That was a lot of words to say “just do it.” But there’s your answer!

​

changeling-droneco:

Oh this is super helpful I had never even HEARD of acid-free paper before this, and I had no idea how important things like dates and notes in the margins could be! Also gives me an excuse to practice sewing again for the first time in years if stapling isn’t the best idea. I still have plenty of my own research to do because I care deeply about a lot of these stories and I want to do them justice. I’m also just really glad there’s people like you who go “Who cares if its a shitty first attempt? I have worse and I love it immensely not just despite of it but in some ways because of it!” it really takes the edge of my anxiety about not being perfect.

​

prismatic-bell:

LAST TIME, ON “NINA BLOGS FANDOM HISTORY”:

Make me scream in glee by doing these things!

@sailorzeo can confirm she just saw me do just that, when she handed me an old book of printed fanfiction (actual quote upon her finding it: “SQUEEAK!!”). I’m looking through it right now, and when I say whatever you write, WHATEVER you write, provides provenance and context?

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This is from 1996. Today it would almost certainly be measured in total word count. But in Ye Olde Days, you had to watch how much content you were putting per part because dial-up was slow and people wanted to read their fic when they were still young; measuring in pages or K/KB (kilobytes, not thousands) was the standard.

This is literally a look at the customs of fandom before broadband or even DSL were widespread. And it’s a single handwritten page. Look at everything there! How Zeo (and the author) chose to organize it; the length compared to modern-day fic; the way it’s segmented. (Looking at the fic itself, the formatting is also way different than modern formatting. Good, but different.)

And at least in theory, via the Wayback Machine or archive.org, I could still go find this fic online, because the name of the webpage is included on the printouts.

WRITE. YOUR. PROVENANCE.

​

starsdreaming:

I’m going to add a little bit that will make historians love you even more when you write the provenance down. Add the date you downloaded the fic.

When you are sourcing online information for research papers and the like, you have to put the date you found the info, because it can change on the web page. The information on the reference page is roughly

“Author, title, journal name, volume, number, year, url, date accessed” or

“Author, title, url, date accessed” for something short

​

prismatic-bell:

Important addition.

​

moreroads:

…..i have thousands of words worth of comments that Ive left on fic. many that have been replied to and that I still have access to download also……

do….do historians want that too?

@prismatic-bell

​

prismatic-bell:

YEP.

Just the idea thrills me. Comments are a form of marginalia! They’re sharing your thoughts, but with the author this time. The fact that we can do that so instantly is unmatched in history and it absolutely changes the way people engage with the text.

Tags:

#history #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #fandom #amnesia cw? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once #P.S. this‚ the only Backup Awareness Week post that was *already* in my queue before Backup Awareness Week hit #concludes our queue of Backup Awareness Week posts #be safe out there #(P.P.S. this afternoon‚ 2023-11-10‚ I was thinking over which fics to maybe do this with while I was washing dishes) #(this dusk I saw the post again while rearranging my queue) #(and‚ I want you to know‚ an hour later a new chapter of ”Give These People a Break” came out) #(and…yeah‚ if I end up doing this I’m doing that one first) #(it is important to know that you are not alone)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

ashkaztra:

veliseraptor:

airlocksandaviaries:

2 genres of fanfiction:

1) put that guy into situations

2) take that guy OUT of situations for the love of GOD let them REST

#3) dip him in and out like an Oreo in a tall glass of sufferings milk (via @curiosity-killed)

You put the blorbo in, you take the blorbo out, you put the blorbo in and shake him all about.

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #fandom #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

etirabys:

etirabys:

I’ve been thinking, with a lot of sadness, what I need to make fandom a large part of my life again (I want to, but at this point don’t think I can). One answer is LJ/DW kinkmemes. People don’t seem to do that much these days, and in any case then and now it can only exist for big fandoms. Centrally Marvel/DC universes, which I don’t enjoy.

I miss browsing prompts, posting prompts, writing a fill for a prompt knowing that at least one person was going to be an enthusiastic reader… I thrived in that environment. Writing alone feels really sterile. I want to be an ecosystem again.

This seems like a long shot. But:

If you know of an active kinkmeme (it’s okay if it’s small, as long as it’s alive), for a fandom you think I’ll like – please let me know. Here are some of my preferences:

  • Ideally, there are a lot of writers who are good. Some fandoms are unusually and confusingly full of good writers, like The Terror. Others are relatively sparse.
  • I like dark fic where people are sad and have sex that’s at least slightly unhealthy. I’m not an obligate dead dove writer, but a fandom where such fic would break norms is not for me.
  • I prefer to read and write about characters who are at least mildly intellectual, or can be interpreted as such.

Tags:

#fandom #signal boosts #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(luminousalicorn’s reply: ”*chanting ominously* glowfic. glowfic. glowfic. glowfic”) #((she *does* make a good point)) #glowfic #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once

chooseyourmusehasmoved asked: This is probably a very silly question but how do you know which fan works are ‘worth’ saving, for lack of a better word? Like, I imagine ones that touch on real world topics or at least have a modicum of plot to them are probably better for history than whatever random anime pwp I’m reading 😅

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

prismatic-bell:

elfwreck:

roach-works:

dduane:

prismatic-bell:

The answer is yes.

Yes, they are worth saving.

Yes, all of them.

YES, INCLUDING YOUR RANDOM ANIME PWP.

Look, let me explain to you in real actual historical terms exactly why that stuff is important. I learned this when I was doing a rewrite of Lysistrata for my Directing class in college.

There’s a bit in the first act, first scene, where Lysistrata is convincing the women of Greece to pledge they won’t have sex until the war is over, where she says “we won’t act like the lioness on the cheese grater.” I looked through six different translations, aka “all the translations I could find,” and every single one used that phrase: “the lioness on the cheese grater.” Now some of these were very old, stuffy, let’s-pretend-this-isn’t-an-absurdist-comedy-about-anything-as-dirty-as-sex-after-all-it’s-Greek-and-thus-must-be-dignified kind of translations, but one of them had specifically been written to be as over-the-top shockingly vulgar as possible, and it still included that phrase. I was expecting it to be modified to whatever the modern name of that position was, but nope–still “we won’t fuck like whores and assume the position of the lioness on the cheese grater.”

And thus began an undignified six hours of me reading very dry academic papers and clicking all kinds of shady links trying to answer the question: what the fuck was the lioness on a cheese grater?

At the end of six hours I said “fuck it” and changed it to doggy style.

Because the answer is: we only know the phrase from the play and from a “menu of services” in a brothel. Ancient cheese graters looked more or less like modern ones, so there wasn’t really room for decorations of lions. We have no idea what it was. It was apparently in-demand enough to be worth a very pretty penny (or, er. A very pretty drachma, as it were), but no records outside the play and that single menu exist. There’s even the possibility it was put on the menu as a joke in reference to the play, and that it means nothing at all.

So: am I saying your random anime PWP could theoretically someday be the only remaining record of the word “bishounen” being used in Latinized form?

Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Far enough into the future that most of our records have been lost, when the world looks unimaginably different, your random-ass porn could be something historians use to say “hm. The fact that these letters made these sounds, and these kanji made these sounds, and the word here is being used in a similar way to how it’s used when written in kanji…we’re pretty sure this is evidence there was literary communication between English-speaking countries and Japan.”

Or, put another way: nobody’s ever gonna forget covid. But will they remember that slender young men with shaggy hair were considered desirable in the 2010s? That is something that will be of interest to some future historian. I assure you, people have been handwringing over the goddamn lioness on the cheese grater for over two thousand fucking years. Yes, there is a place in history for your smut.

And I will leave you with this: stripped of all pretension and the mystique granted to it by virtue of being old as balls, Lysistrata is a play whose plot is thus: “fuck this war! We, the women of Greece, are going to make ourselves as hot as fucking possible while also closing our thighs for business until the men agree to put down their weapons and stop fighting! Jesus, they won’t even send us dildos because they ‘need wood and leather for armor’–fuck that shit, seize the treasury and whip out the chastity belts, girls!” And then the entire second act is men running around wearing giant-ass fake penises, we’re talking Ron Jeremy would blush in shame here fake penises, going “let us fuck you! Please, please, pleaaaaaaase let us fuck you!” and finally agreeing to end the war so they can fuck. That’s it, that’s the play. I mean, it is wildly funny. But it’s very thin on the ground in terms of plot (and frankly has a gigantic plot hole in the form of “you’re really going to say none of these guys just said ‘fuck you’ and started boffing each other?”), and it was not written to be intellectual. It was for the Bacchanalia. It was written for a bunch of super-drunk, super-rowdy, probably-illiterate partiers who would have been walking in and out of the arena. Hardly highbrow entertainment, in other words.

…but what a loss to the world, wouldn’t it be, if all copies of it had been forever lost?

:)

i wanna remind everyone that at the time a lot of kirk/spock fic was written, in the sixties and early eventies, sodomy was illegal in most american states. kirk/spock fiction was depicting something that was obscene, immoral, and illegal. even accusing men of being homosexuals was slander, because again, sodomy was illegal, homosexuals were committing crimes, and therefore a great many industries couldn’t knowingly employ men who admitted to homosexuality or were proven to be so.

our archives of these works are incomplete, but what works that we have preserved from that time–against all contemporary consensus of its moral value!–are invaluable to the history of fandom as a whole. the fanzines and booklets preserved in odd corners and university libraries and grandma’s attic are treasures. you can analyze the way people thought at the time about love and forbidden love, the way they thought it might change in the future, the way certain fanfiction tropes and literary conventions started out way back when, the way women found each other and organized before the digital age. love, technology, cultural taboos, the past regarding the future, communication, creativity, it’s all there.

and this is a comparatively large body of work from only fifty or sixty years ago. imagine how much more precious, say, Diane Marchant’s “A Fragment Out of Time” from 1974 might be in another hundred years? how much will it tell future historians of the very real women who lived and watched TV and wrote about love to each other?

and this is fiction that depicts not just worthless smut, but reprehensible smut.

yes, fanfiction is historically significant.

yes, all of it.

My goblin self wants to save all the little paper fragments and scraps of weird smut on curling pages and stacks of folders with half-completed sketches of characters in compromising positions.

Wait. They’re… not so much paper anymore, are they.

Fine. Save the pixels. Save HTML files with names I won’t recognize next year. Save txt files with fanfic by authors whose contact info I lost in the early LJ days. Wayback the AO3 fic. Bookmark everything I ever liked even a little bit, with notes like “this is the one where blorbo has zero refractory period” or “the one where they met on a train” and like that.

Never know what I’m gonna want to reread in another five years.

…Never know what someone is going to ask about in fifteen years, “I heard there used to be a thing with soulmate words on the wrists? Has anyone seen that in Fandom X?”

I have no idea what the literary analysts of 2050 are going to think about AO3. I know that the literary analysts of 2000 were very interested in K/S zines, which were handed around under tables and you had to know someone who knew someone to even find out they existed, because, as mentioned, they were describing immoral crimes and pretending those were healthy relationships.

AO3 is not so obscure as all that. But. We don’t know what search engines will do in the future.

And a lot of people only put “the good stuff” on AO3 and we are going to LOSE all the 300-word comment fics written in the middle of a tumblr chain. We’re going to lose the “Incorrect Quotes” things. (They are fanworks! Every single one of them can be a fic at AO3! There is no “must have at least 100 words and be a proper drabble” requirement. You can have three-sentence fanworks!)

Please yes EVERYTHING IS WORTH ARCHIVING.

Culture is not limited to the stuff written in the style of professionally published novels.

faba04799f19ccdb7bf8fc4e743f4a04a8b48f45

@pharaonicwolf, your tags have passed peer review. Thank you for this notable contribution!

Tags:

#be the Marion Stokes you wish to see in the world #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #history #fandom #(also‚ Recoll synergises very well here) #(how are you going to hunt down that one soulmate words-on-wrists fic in Fandom X within your collection‚ you ask?) #(with a personal search engine‚ that’s how) #((for the *most* part if I‚ personally‚ store a fic it’s because I enjoyed it or expect to enjoy it)) #((but occasionally I’ll pull something just because it strikes me as)) #((something where later I’m going to be thinking ”what was that one thing with the thing”)) #–(((or occasionally something where I *did* later think ”what was that one thing with the thing”))) #(((and *eventually* managed to track it down on the Internet‚ but not without difficulty)))– #((so I index it in Recoll for the benefit of future-me)) #(((and I’m certainly a prolific Save Page Now user))) #amnesia cw #homophobia cw #nsfw text?