livejournal, fanfiction.net and ao3
which one were you?
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the three generations of fanfic:
I HAVE LITERALLY LIVED THROUGH ALL OF THEM WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT SAY ABOUT ME
Oh bb there is so much more to it than that.
First there were zines, lovingly mimeographed and stapled by our fandom foreparents, and those who remain to us from the Zine Age are powerful and wise.
Then there was Usenet, where formatting went to die. You know not the strength it takes to read 60k fics entirely in Courier New, or the pleasure of a really artistic looking section break marker composed of ASCII characters.
Then there was the Great Schism, as fandoms spread far and wide across the Web, and basic HTML was the whole of the law. Many of us lied our way into private “18+” listservs, and roamed the webrings, lamps aloft, in search of one virtuous author (or at least somebody else who shipped the thing).
From this dark age rose FF.net, that pit of voles from whose bourn many a hungry reader has returned, starved for citrus and heartsick from the cutesy author notes.
And FF.net begat Livejournal, which allowed easy archiving, threaded comments, flocked posts and invite-only communities. And it was Livejournal, in its death throes, that begat AO3, which once seemed like only a utopian vision and now bestrides the world like a Colossus.
OH MY GOD, REMEMBER WEBRINGS?
For reference, this is what she’s talking about :
In conclusion: Fanfic is important, there’s nothing wrong with writing or enjoying it and the cast and crew of Good Omens are a gift.
This is such a big thing for people in the fanfiction community. Years and years of being told that fanfiction isn’t real writing and that it’s wrong or disgusting. The message that Neil, Michael, and David send is so important for the kids in fanfic that feel ashamed or guilty about writing or reading fanfiction.
Do you READ or WRITE fanfiction?
Then I need your help for my grad dissertation!
Who I am: Emily Faulkner, MSc student at Robert Gordon University
I’m studying: The information-seeking behaviours of fanfiction communities and their applicability to libraries
Where: https://robertgordonuniversity.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/fanfiction-questionnaire
How long: About 30 mins depending on your fanfic sites
Closes: August 2nd, 2021 noon EST
Open to: adults who read and/or write fanfiction content (fan comics and podfics included)
I think the younger you are the more likely you are to be certain My Immortal was written as a joke, partially because it’s the progenitor of pretty much all modern Bad Fanfiction Tropes, so when you read it now you think “oh they were trying to use as many bad fanfic tropes as possible, it’s clearly a joke” even though those tropes exist to make fun of My Immortal. My Immortal could have been written as a parody of bad fanfiction but it made such an impact on that subculture that it’s entirely possible that it only seems like a satire because it’s the original thing being satired.
My Immortal could’ve been an intentionally bad fanfic but that’s not a given. The uncertainty comes from the fact that My Immortal was written in a pre-My Immortal world, and the only reason it seems like a parody now is because we already know about My Immortal.
The other reason is “nobody talks like this, nobody writes like this, it has to be someone making a joke” but the thing is, I was a moderator on a fanfic site when My Immortal dropped, and yes, they really really did talk like that. There is not a single line in My Immortal that would’ve been out of place in 2006.
I should say that Mary Sue parody fics had been done before - hell, the name comes from a fic from 1974 - but never, at least to my knowledge, with that level of dedication and immersion. This wasn’t just a oneshot, a little “teehee, look how silly this overpowered, ridiculously-named character is!” fic. This was 44 chapters long, each with a fairly impressive wordcount, an IRL sideplot (an argument between the author and her beta reader that caused a visible drop in spelling), and accounts on multiple websites, including Quizilla.
Like, there’s trolling and then there’s trolling, and if it was indeed a parody, it was done with a level of mastery that would be impossible to recreate now.
All the outfits of Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way
Somehow I survived doing this.I present to you a low quality fanart of the ultimate Mary Sue queen. If you haven’t read My Immortal Fanfic you can bleach your eyes here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5835837/1/My-Immortal-The-Return
Notes: If is a different day, I opted to only draw what Tara described of the outfit, if she didn’t mention her make-up or shoes I believe Ebony didn’t wear any.
Unless the fic says explicitly that it’s a different day I tried to keep some of the aspects of the last outfit that Tara didn’t change or didn’t mention. (Like her make-up or shoes).
The little icons that appear in like three of the outfits are the earrings she was wearing that chapter.
Doing this was beyond confusing but fun.
I’m so fucking happy this exists this is hilarious
My only criticism is that she should be putting up her middle finger at us
This is so funny to me?? People are so desperate to escape their families that it makes ao3 crash lmao
okay so WHAT is the good omens cream cheese fanfic because I’ve only heard other people mention it but never dare post a link to it
so i found it and,
THE BREWERY FANFIC IS WRITTEN BY THE SAME AUTHOR AS THE CREAM CHEESE FANFIC
if youre going to read them content warning for uh fucking everything including: noncon, noncon body mod, cream cheese enema, crowley is 6 inches tall and lives in a barbie house, aziraphale threatening to vore crowley,
and in the brewery one: again noncon, noncon body mod, beer enema??, male lactation, crowley is being used as lije a vat to store beer while it ages,
story by @bakingstreetsarah aka StarMaple on Ao3
>>read/bookmark on Ao3<<
Please do not repost :)
I bind fanfic and other underground writing into real books. I am a Guerilla publisher.
In a nutshell, the reasons why:
- A demonstrative statement on the validity of “fic” in general (and fanfic within that specifically) as a newborn genre of literature that has really only come into its own in the last 15-20 years.
- Disrupting preconceptions about what is valuable and worthy of being in print, much less published in a fine edition.
- An act of anti-capitalist resistance. Participation in the traditional gift economy of fandom. Most of my projects are volunteer and gifts.
- Preservation of fandom history and works for future generations. These books cannot blip out of existence by puritanical updates to a socmed terms of service. These books are acid-free, archive ready, made to survive for another century.
- Demonstration against censorship of fiction. Most of the books contain subject matter some people may find objectionable on various grounds.
- In summary, it’s a big Fuck You to power structures that silence people. Also it makes my friends so happy that they cry, so that’s nice too.
My book design is deliberately conservative because I am challenging ideas of what should be inside the book. The more a book looks like something a “real” publishing house would put out, the stronger and more subversive the statement it makes.
I am also doing a lot of research working on replicating the style of books from centuries past, and publishing historical fic set in whatever period, in an embodiment that matches. Colors, typography, even form factor as much as possible. I have done Victorian, Edwardian, Renaissance eras.
Here are some various process pics. Books pictured:
WAR, CHILDREN by Nonymos (Captain America: Stucky)
AND THEN THERE WERE TWO by NymeriaKing (Star Wars / Kylux)
BLUTRUNST by IncurableNecromantic (Over the Garden Wall)
CHOSEN MAN by Sineala (Eagle of the Ninth)
I am going to add some links here, too, for anyone whose introduction to gift economy and fannish preservation practices was this post and want to learn more. You can also search our bibliography at Zoter by keywords for any of these topics. Fandom and/as labor, guest edited by Mel Stanfill and Megan Condis, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/issue/view/16 “Fan Works and Fan Communities in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” special history issue of TWC guest edited by Nancy Reagin, Pace University, and Anne Rubenstein, York University: https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/issue/view/7 Zotero bibliography: https://www.zotero.org/groups/11806/fan_studies_bibliography/items
Fanfic writers be like……
I love how fanfic writers give AOS Kirk his canon childhood trauma (abusive family life, absentee mother, delinquency) and then add on TOS Kirk’s canon childhood trauma (Holocaust survivor) to make the Super Kirk Trauma Conga Line