author_by_night (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
author_by_night) wrote2024-01-20 10:40 am
author_by_night) wrote2024-01-20 10:40 am
Snowflake: Ask A Longtime Fandomer (Public Post)
I had trouble thinking of five things for the Snowflake prompt, and I've settled on Five Fannish Things I saw online to respond to. I basically just punched "fanfic" and "fandom" into AskReddit.
I tried to balance negative/positive discussion points. Fandom has a lot of ugly. It also has a lot of good.
*Blushes* The Baby-Sitter's Club. It was a small forum, and IIRC we were all preteens who'd outgrown the series, but still wanted to talk about the books and write fic for them. Claudia/Stacey was pretty popular.
But I was always playing games and telling stories based on things I loved. BSC was just the first time I realized there was a name for it.
What was a fandom you missed out on?
This is actually my own question, because I thought of it while scrolling. I really wish I hadn't seen Firefly so late in the game. I loved Firefly when I finally watched it, but by the time I did, most of my LJ flist was into SuperWhoLock or not into any fandoms at all anymore. The only active forum for Firefly I found was very critical of the show, they basically hated everyone except for Mal. I settled for userpics after a while. Part of the problem is that I was boycotting fanfiction.net because censorship, and I had trouble finding fic on LJ, even though I'm sure there was still fanfic being written.
Ao3 was probably a better bet, but I used LJ for most of my fandom needs at that point. Which is another regret; in the case of Firefly, I think Ao3 was still new, so there might not have been much there anyway. But I kind of just left fanfiction.net and stuck with fic archives on fan websites and LJ, so once those stopped being a thing, that was that. :/
Going back to Firefly, I will say I now like OFMD better, even if it has also been unceremoniously canceled. Also, I think I feel the same way about season 2 that I feel about Serenity.
Really interested in hearing your thoughts!
I tried to balance negative/positive discussion points. Fandom has a lot of ugly. It also has a lot of good.
What book looks like a fanfic?
I think they mean "reads as a fanfic", and I would say Red, White and Royal Blue. There are even rumors that it's based ON a fanfic. This is a compliment, by the way. I love that book. The characters are great, the romance is great, and I wish I lived in an America where Ellen Claremont was President.
I think they mean "reads as a fanfic", and I would say Red, White and Royal Blue. There are even rumors that it's based ON a fanfic. This is a compliment, by the way. I love that book. The characters are great, the romance is great, and I wish I lived in an America where Ellen Claremont was President.
What's the worst fandom experience that you've had personally?
I found out a bunch of fandom "friends" hated me once While a lot of not nice things were said by people, one of the things that stung the most was a friend saying that he dreaded talking to me on MSN. I never made him message me. He could have taken me off his contacts, could have said he was busy, could have done... anything but have long conversations with me that he apparently hated.
I found out a bunch of fandom "friends" hated me once While a lot of not nice things were said by people, one of the things that stung the most was a friend saying that he dreaded talking to me on MSN. I never made him message me. He could have taken me off his contacts, could have said he was busy, could have done... anything but have long conversations with me that he apparently hated.
What fandom do you regret being a part of?
I regret being in the Twilight hatedom. I still have my criticisms of the books, but I think the hatedom took it way too far at times, and while I pulled away when it did, I still think I was a little too biting at times. I remember making a snarky comment about Twilight fans to a librarian, and she looked hurt. I felt pretty bad. I also had a friend who was a little offended by my remarks.
Something else that bugs, and I realize this is an extreme example, is that a woman defended the books on YouTube and got meme'd bad online for it. Her tantrums were meme'd, and she was fat shamed. Videos were made about her. This was mostly YouTube, being what it was at the time, but she got made fun of outside of YouTube too.
Again, I know most Twilight critics weren't fat shaming YouTubers, I'm just saying this was the worst of it that I saw.
I regret being in the Twilight hatedom. I still have my criticisms of the books, but I think the hatedom took it way too far at times, and while I pulled away when it did, I still think I was a little too biting at times. I remember making a snarky comment about Twilight fans to a librarian, and she looked hurt. I felt pretty bad. I also had a friend who was a little offended by my remarks.
Something else that bugs, and I realize this is an extreme example, is that a woman defended the books on YouTube and got meme'd bad online for it. Her tantrums were meme'd, and she was fat shamed. Videos were made about her. This was mostly YouTube, being what it was at the time, but she got made fun of outside of YouTube too.
Again, I know most Twilight critics weren't fat shaming YouTubers, I'm just saying this was the worst of it that I saw.
What was one of your earliest fandoms you were a part of?
*Blushes* The Baby-Sitter's Club. It was a small forum, and IIRC we were all preteens who'd outgrown the series, but still wanted to talk about the books and write fic for them. Claudia/Stacey was pretty popular.
But I was always playing games and telling stories based on things I loved. BSC was just the first time I realized there was a name for it.
What was a fandom you missed out on?
This is actually my own question, because I thought of it while scrolling. I really wish I hadn't seen Firefly so late in the game. I loved Firefly when I finally watched it, but by the time I did, most of my LJ flist was into SuperWhoLock or not into any fandoms at all anymore. The only active forum for Firefly I found was very critical of the show, they basically hated everyone except for Mal. I settled for userpics after a while. Part of the problem is that I was boycotting fanfiction.net because censorship, and I had trouble finding fic on LJ, even though I'm sure there was still fanfic being written.
Ao3 was probably a better bet, but I used LJ for most of my fandom needs at that point. Which is another regret; in the case of Firefly, I think Ao3 was still new, so there might not have been much there anyway. But I kind of just left fanfiction.net and stuck with fic archives on fan websites and LJ, so once those stopped being a thing, that was that. :/
Going back to Firefly, I will say I now like OFMD better, even if it has also been unceremoniously canceled. Also, I think I feel the same way about season 2 that I feel about Serenity.
Really interested in hearing your thoughts!
no subject
That's really awful! There's a lot of things I prefer about earlier versions of internet fandom, but one thing I don't miss is the cruelty and drama. I think a lot of it was down to people being a lot younger, and people still not really sure how to be a community/friends in online spaces, and the combination of those two things led to a lot of confusion and nastiness. But really, that's an explanation rather than an excuse, and I'm sorry you experienced that.
I agree with you about Twilight, and I think in some ways the level of hate it attracted (and the way some people's entire online life seemed to be hate-reading Twilight and posting about what was wrong with it in exhaustive detail) was the precursor to a lot of the toxicity we see in fandom today, especially the idea that 'problematic' fictional content causes real-world harm, and that fans of said 'problematic' content are bad people who themselves contribute to this real-world harm. At this point, I understand disliking a work of fiction, a character, a ship, a trope or whatever — and not wanting to read/watch such things, or writing a negative review of works in which they appear is entirely justifiable, but I think attacking other fans who do enjoy those things is completely unacceptable. Or devoting the bulk of one's fannish output to complaining about the existence of such things (or complaining that the 'harmful' ships, 'problematic' tropes etc are more popular than the tropes and ships you like), which I also see a lot — why not devote energy instead to engaging with things you enjoy and reccing them to other people?
no subject
Oh, for sure! I think that was exactly the problem here, for everyone. There were a few things I left out precisely because while at the time they upset me, now I can see where the whole thing was a very nuanced situation. Honestly, even the guy - I can see how maybe he felt that because we shared fandom mutuals, he had to respond to my MSN messages, but at the same time didn't really want to talk to me... so he said something mean in what was only ever meant to be a private conversation instead.
So yeah, while it was a very upsetting experience, I do see how there was nuance, even with him.