Regarding all the AO3 bashing...
Oct. 20th, 2016 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenayI've been seeing bits and bobs floating past on Twitter over the last few days about a wankery situation happening on Tumblr around AO3 (and the existence of "olds" in fandom, heh). It's...a little rage inducing.
If you want to get some good discussion and a bit of background, this post bycereta has some fantastic discussion in the comments about all the issues. From what I can gather we have:
1) Horror at olds in fandom. ie. those of us over thirty. Just...yeah.
2) Fury that AO3 won't let people report fics and get them deleted for abuse/homophobia/whatever. I.e. AO3 will not let them censor content of fics. And by abuse, they mean anything with non con/rape. Fics where canonically gay characters are in mixed-gender pairings. Fics with underage content, which they often define in...interesting ways. They'd be horrified by the Buffy/Giles fic of my youth, that's all I'll say.
3) Some of those young fans apparently thinking Strikethrough was a good thing, because it got the ball rolling on kicking out abusive fic.
I'll wait for you to all stop face palming and hitting your heads on desks.
*muzac plays*
*ticky clock appears*
*refreshments are distributed*
So.
AO3 was built in response to Strikethrough, as a place where fic couldn't be censored in that way. It was built as a place where fandom could own the servers and we weren't beholden to the whims of advertisers and private site owners. Where fics couldn't be deleted at the behest of one person, or one company, because something in it wasn't to their taste. Where the rule "don't like, don't read" would reign supreme.
(One of the specific things I've seen on some of the Tumblr posts is a complaint that "don't like, don't read" might be great for the olds, but waarghbl it's not good enough for me! It exists! It hurts my soul! I might read it despite the warnings and tags and that's not fair! *sigh*)
As long as appropriate warnings (or "choose not to warn") are used--and violating that can get a fic reported and the abuse team will take action--then AO3 won't censor. They won't censor for bad grammar and spelling, no matter how much we wish they would, and they definitely won't make anyone take down their Derek/Stiles fic, or their Ianto/Gwen fic, or their sex pollen non-con Doctor/Missy fic. It was set up that way, because today's "icky non-con, ban it!" fic is tomorrow's "omg teh gays, make it go away!" fic.
Us olds remember the old days. The days when you had to label all slash--even when it was just hand-holding--as NC17 and plaster it with warnings. The days when only certain archives accepted slash at all, and you could get your FFN account or LJ suspended if someone objected to your boy kissing fics, so everything was locked down under f-lock or posted to the adult slash-friendly archives with a thousand warning pop-ups. The days when RPF was never to be spoken of because almost no archive accepted it. The days when we all danced around carefully because at any moment, our favourite fics could be deleted and never seen again if a site advertiser threatened to withdraw funding.
Trust me, that was not a good time. Everyone freaked out about Strikethrough because it was the start of a slippery slope. Nothing deleted was illegal, even though it wasn't to many people's taste, and it was only matter of time before they came after the less problematic stuff.
I may not like what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it (or read/write/art it) to the death.
I think there's a multi-layered problem. Fandom has splintered since the Strikethrough days, and we've all wandered off to different places. Back when I entered fandom, we all lived on the same mailing lists and LJs. Us babies (I was a mere twenty...which wasn't that young, actually) and the "olds" together. We all inhabited the same spaces and the newbies to fandom learned about the old ways, the old history, from the more experienced fandom people. And the newbies opened the eyes of the older fans to some things, too, which caused ructions but enabled us all to learn and change.
Current fandom has splintered and seems to have broken into generational buckets. The youngest part of fandom is on Tumblr and Snapchat. The older part of fandom is on Tumblr a bit, but not much, and many of us have stepped a long way back from it because we're made so unwelcome. We're still here on LJ, DW, Twitter, and Imzy, where the youngs aren't so much. Due to those divides, there isn't that interaction and mutual learning, so the younger fanfolk don't know the history. They don't know why AO3 exists and why we're so passionate about not censoring it. They've never had to creep around on the edges of fandom because they were slashers, or RPF-ers, or wrote explicit fics after FFN banned them.
The divide is also contributing to the feeling that anyone over thirty shouldn't be fannish anymore, and I suspect that's part of the AO3 wankery. There aren't many people from that very young end of the fandom involved with the OTW or AO3, so it feels like the olds run it. We created it, we fundraised for it, we continue to work on it and we're old, by their standards. We should have shuffled off to our graveyards or our adult lives or something.
Except we haven't, because when we were the fandom babies, there were all these fans older than us who were still active and we learned we'll never be too old for fandom. With the divide getting so sharp between the youngest and everyone else, they're not getting that part of the fannish experience, either. They can't imagine being thirty (or forty, or fifty), never mind being that age and still being in fandom.
You've also got the problem that Tumblr-style activism is very different from what we were doing five or ten years ago. It's all about protecting young eyes not just from the content, but from knowing the content is even there. About removing it so it doesn't need to be thought of. For them, "don't like, don't read" isn't enough. They don't want anyone to read it or see it or write it.
When AO3 was first being set up, there were huge arguments over whether warnings should be mandatory. A lot of people are still annoyed that major warnings are mandatory and that their only option, if they don't like warnings and have warnable content in the work, is to use a tag that's basically a buyer beware notice. The kids screaming about AO3's refusal to remove works because they don't like the content would hate a version of AO3 without those warnings.
Hint: it's what fanfic was like for most of us and it's why we still hold to the "don't like, don't read" principle. Hell, AO3 makes that one doable now! I haven't read surprise!rape in years because I don't read anything with "choose not to warn" on. The existence of fic that contains stuff I don't like does not harm me because I don't have to read it. The existence of stuff that's triggery for some people doesn't harm them as long as warnings are used, because they don't have to read it. Having warnings and tags enables people to avoid those fics and even filter them out of searches so they don't have to see them. It's the beauty of AO3.
In the end, the people screaming on Tumblr about AO3 unfairly refusing to censor its content aren't going to get anywhere (hopefully). The worst they can do is refuse to donate to the OTW and boycott the archive. I doubt they donate anyway, and boycotting seems like a "cutting off their noses to spite their faces" move, although I imagine a few will. I doubt that a few dozen people boycotting will change AO3s policy, though. AO3 isn't in danger, but the shouting on Tumblr is alternately rage-inducing, face-palm worthy, and ridiculous, because it's so unnecessary.
If they get really mad, though, they could go away and set up an archive of their own. One where they own the servers and get like-minded fans to help them run and fund the project. Hmm, I wonder what they could call it...
If you want to get some good discussion and a bit of background, this post by
cereta has some fantastic discussion in the comments about all the issues. From what I can gather we have:1) Horror at olds in fandom. ie. those of us over thirty. Just...yeah.
2) Fury that AO3 won't let people report fics and get them deleted for abuse/homophobia/whatever. I.e. AO3 will not let them censor content of fics. And by abuse, they mean anything with non con/rape. Fics where canonically gay characters are in mixed-gender pairings. Fics with underage content, which they often define in...interesting ways. They'd be horrified by the Buffy/Giles fic of my youth, that's all I'll say.
3) Some of those young fans apparently thinking Strikethrough was a good thing, because it got the ball rolling on kicking out abusive fic.
I'll wait for you to all stop face palming and hitting your heads on desks.
*muzac plays*
*ticky clock appears*
*refreshments are distributed*
So.
AO3 was built in response to Strikethrough, as a place where fic couldn't be censored in that way. It was built as a place where fandom could own the servers and we weren't beholden to the whims of advertisers and private site owners. Where fics couldn't be deleted at the behest of one person, or one company, because something in it wasn't to their taste. Where the rule "don't like, don't read" would reign supreme.
(One of the specific things I've seen on some of the Tumblr posts is a complaint that "don't like, don't read" might be great for the olds, but waarghbl it's not good enough for me! It exists! It hurts my soul! I might read it despite the warnings and tags and that's not fair! *sigh*)
As long as appropriate warnings (or "choose not to warn") are used--and violating that can get a fic reported and the abuse team will take action--then AO3 won't censor. They won't censor for bad grammar and spelling, no matter how much we wish they would, and they definitely won't make anyone take down their Derek/Stiles fic, or their Ianto/Gwen fic, or their sex pollen non-con Doctor/Missy fic. It was set up that way, because today's "icky non-con, ban it!" fic is tomorrow's "omg teh gays, make it go away!" fic.
Us olds remember the old days. The days when you had to label all slash--even when it was just hand-holding--as NC17 and plaster it with warnings. The days when only certain archives accepted slash at all, and you could get your FFN account or LJ suspended if someone objected to your boy kissing fics, so everything was locked down under f-lock or posted to the adult slash-friendly archives with a thousand warning pop-ups. The days when RPF was never to be spoken of because almost no archive accepted it. The days when we all danced around carefully because at any moment, our favourite fics could be deleted and never seen again if a site advertiser threatened to withdraw funding.
Trust me, that was not a good time. Everyone freaked out about Strikethrough because it was the start of a slippery slope. Nothing deleted was illegal, even though it wasn't to many people's taste, and it was only matter of time before they came after the less problematic stuff.
I may not like what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it (or read/write/art it) to the death.
I think there's a multi-layered problem. Fandom has splintered since the Strikethrough days, and we've all wandered off to different places. Back when I entered fandom, we all lived on the same mailing lists and LJs. Us babies (I was a mere twenty...which wasn't that young, actually) and the "olds" together. We all inhabited the same spaces and the newbies to fandom learned about the old ways, the old history, from the more experienced fandom people. And the newbies opened the eyes of the older fans to some things, too, which caused ructions but enabled us all to learn and change.
Current fandom has splintered and seems to have broken into generational buckets. The youngest part of fandom is on Tumblr and Snapchat. The older part of fandom is on Tumblr a bit, but not much, and many of us have stepped a long way back from it because we're made so unwelcome. We're still here on LJ, DW, Twitter, and Imzy, where the youngs aren't so much. Due to those divides, there isn't that interaction and mutual learning, so the younger fanfolk don't know the history. They don't know why AO3 exists and why we're so passionate about not censoring it. They've never had to creep around on the edges of fandom because they were slashers, or RPF-ers, or wrote explicit fics after FFN banned them.
The divide is also contributing to the feeling that anyone over thirty shouldn't be fannish anymore, and I suspect that's part of the AO3 wankery. There aren't many people from that very young end of the fandom involved with the OTW or AO3, so it feels like the olds run it. We created it, we fundraised for it, we continue to work on it and we're old, by their standards. We should have shuffled off to our graveyards or our adult lives or something.
Except we haven't, because when we were the fandom babies, there were all these fans older than us who were still active and we learned we'll never be too old for fandom. With the divide getting so sharp between the youngest and everyone else, they're not getting that part of the fannish experience, either. They can't imagine being thirty (or forty, or fifty), never mind being that age and still being in fandom.
You've also got the problem that Tumblr-style activism is very different from what we were doing five or ten years ago. It's all about protecting young eyes not just from the content, but from knowing the content is even there. About removing it so it doesn't need to be thought of. For them, "don't like, don't read" isn't enough. They don't want anyone to read it or see it or write it.
When AO3 was first being set up, there were huge arguments over whether warnings should be mandatory. A lot of people are still annoyed that major warnings are mandatory and that their only option, if they don't like warnings and have warnable content in the work, is to use a tag that's basically a buyer beware notice. The kids screaming about AO3's refusal to remove works because they don't like the content would hate a version of AO3 without those warnings.
Hint: it's what fanfic was like for most of us and it's why we still hold to the "don't like, don't read" principle. Hell, AO3 makes that one doable now! I haven't read surprise!rape in years because I don't read anything with "choose not to warn" on. The existence of fic that contains stuff I don't like does not harm me because I don't have to read it. The existence of stuff that's triggery for some people doesn't harm them as long as warnings are used, because they don't have to read it. Having warnings and tags enables people to avoid those fics and even filter them out of searches so they don't have to see them. It's the beauty of AO3.
In the end, the people screaming on Tumblr about AO3 unfairly refusing to censor its content aren't going to get anywhere (hopefully). The worst they can do is refuse to donate to the OTW and boycott the archive. I doubt they donate anyway, and boycotting seems like a "cutting off their noses to spite their faces" move, although I imagine a few will. I doubt that a few dozen people boycotting will change AO3s policy, though. AO3 isn't in danger, but the shouting on Tumblr is alternately rage-inducing, face-palm worthy, and ridiculous, because it's so unnecessary.
If they get really mad, though, they could go away and set up an archive of their own. One where they own the servers and get like-minded fans to help them run and fund the project. Hmm, I wonder what they could call it...
More of the Story
Date: 2016-10-20 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-20 10:31 pm (UTC)Re: More of the Story
Date: 2016-10-21 12:34 am (UTC)For an explanation of Strikethrough, their article is here: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Strikethrough . It includes links to a ton of the posts that were written about it at the time (I remember reading the posts by liviapenn and Steardess at the time in particular - posts like that were the only way to find out what was happening pre-Twitter) and also links to many post-event analysis dicussions. Those blog posts give a good flavour of what fandom was like at the time with regard to fic and archiving and all the discussions around it.
Fanlore also has the post that germinated the AO3, by astolat, stored and discussed here: http://fanlore.org/wiki/An_Archive_Of_One%27s_Own_(post_by_astolat)
And then they've collated links to discussions and planning sessions from AO3's earliest days here: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Beginnings_of_OTW:_2007-08_Comments
All of those articles are going to send you on a huge rabbit hole of reading, but I promise, it's worth it to know our history and what all the deeper issues are around AO3 and fanwork archives.
Fanlore is actually just a brilliant place to poke around and read, because there is a lot of history behind most things in fandom.
If you want to do a bit of poking around at things not related to AO3 and Strikethrough and so on, I've got a couple of suggestions to start.
This three-part essage on fandom 1994-2000-ish (http://arduinna.dreamwidth.org/41600.html) gives a fantastic and entertaining quick ride through a lot of the earliest parts of online fandom. It reminded me of so many parts I'd forgotten and includes a lot of the flavour and feel of fandom, as well as the facts. The comments on each part of the essay are also gold for the extra details and reminiscences.
I found online fandom in early 1999, so I missed some of that and had to learn it from stories older friends told.
My earliest days in my very first fandom (back when I was a wee sprout of twenty) were spend on The Bronze, the official Buffy Posting Board: http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Bronze . It was a fantastic place - a linear message board (no threads! Everything one huge page!) that refreshed every four hours and had a wonderful culture of fun and stories and discussion. Older members would take us babies under their wing and make sure we knew how to be safe online and how not to be arseholes, while encouraging us to discuss with all the fervour and passion you can image. The Fanlore article on The Bronze is sadly sparse, so if you want me to wax reminiscent some more, poke me and I can probably write a huge epic post all about that :-D
At that time, most of the fannish discussion (if you weren't in Buffy or were on the fic side of it) was on mail lists (http://fanlore.org/wiki/Mailing_List). They were what came after newsgroups--I didn't get Internet until 1998, so I didn't get into the newsgroup thing--and there were hundreds of them. You'd get lists for a show, for a pairing, for particular fanfic authors...imagine getting all the meta and comments from somewhere like Tumblr or LJ delivered to your inbox every day, sometimes in hundreds of emails a day. That was mailing lists. In the really big mega-fandoms, you'd get a lot of specific mailing lists, but in small fandoms, everyone--shipper, slasher, gen--would be on the same list talking about the show and the fic and everything else you could imagine.
My second fandom was Stargate, and it was pretty much entirely mailing list based at first, until LiveJournal started to become the big thing. It was also a fandom that straddled the odd space where old school zine fandom and new online fandom met. A lot of the fic was on archives (the slash was all on Area 52 http://fanlore.org/wiki/Area_52), but you also had a few people producing paper zines. I still have a few! You found out about zines if you were in the right mailing list and then you mailed cheques or postal orders and eventually got your thick parcel of a zine (and hoped nobody opened your post if it was, for example, the special slave fic Jack/Daniel anthology, oh god).
And for a random example of the true silliness we used to get up to in online fic, I present Penguin fic in Stargate Atlantis: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Penguins#Penguins_in_Stargate_Atlantis . I remember being on LJ as those fics were posted and the phenomonen took off. I can also remember almost choking from laughing so hard!
Feel free to comment here and ask about anything specific you'd like to know, and be prepared to lose a few evenings just poking around Fanlore and following links out to other places. One of the reasons I rec it is because it gives links for further reading, so if you want to read people's own words about something, you usually can.
And I just remembered, there's also this: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Category:Chronology - links to pages with the timelines of all sorts of aspects of fandom! Timelines of fandoms, history of slash...in other words, another rabbit hole of links to fall down :-)
no subject
Date: 2016-10-21 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-21 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-21 03:07 am (UTC)The only thing that taking E-rated fic of ff.net did was make people label them "M." It made the same content exist without a warning. Which was extremely frustrating if you were looking for smut, and an absolute minefield if you were trying to avoid it.
Or back in the listserve days where it seemed like 3/4s of fic didn't have summaries, let alone warnings. Caveat lector indeed!
I have a long list of AO3 gripes, but how they handle warnings isn't one of them.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-21 07:23 am (UTC)Re: More of the Story
Date: 2016-10-21 02:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-21 06:05 pm (UTC)And doesn't that sound familiar? That's the sound of our parents, wanting to ban violent cartoons and video games, wanting to ban YA fiction that has any faint whiff of gayness in it, wanting (basically) to ban anything which caused them to clutch their precious pearls. These Tumblr-activists are effectively recreating the censorship their grandparents wanted.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-22 01:20 am (UTC)There's also the fact that the kids of our little crowd of gamers and fans seem to *like* hanging with us, in addition to their same-age friends, and we'd go to Katsucon and things as a multigenerational group. So I haven't been exposed to this sort of nastiness previously. (And I miss my grown daughter terribly - she's off at grad school on the other coast.)
I feel sorry that the young people in question don't get along with the older ones in their lives, but attempting to mess with AO3 after all the time and money spent to create it makes me furious.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-22 12:28 pm (UTC)This made me snort.
Yes, yes, this, all of this. I understand that this discourse is wider than fandom at the moment, but I feel like in some ways we Olds maybe should come up with better ways to transmit our history and the whys and the wherefores to this generation of fandom that's up in arms about more censorship on AO3—because even if mainstream political discourse is firmly headed this way, fandom has this approach for very specific and worthwhile reasons, even as it strives to be as inclusive as possible.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-22 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-23 12:41 am (UTC)There are some loud voices in the "AO3 is a cesspit!" camp, and many of them are young-ish, but I see a lot of other young people who disagree with them. They're not as noticeable because they don't trumpet their ages as a way of winning arguments, but I hear from lots of them any time I counter stupid discourse with a dose of history and reality. They're not any happier with their peers attacking people than we are.
The big shift I see is towards a situation where slash is seen as the hegemonic goliath to many a ranty poster's David. AO3 stats posts always get lots of concern trolling about how Fandom Hates Women because ___ % of fanfiction is m/m. You didn't see that in the past because 1. fic archives mostly weren't set up to make pairing category info so easy to get and 2. slash was blatantly a second class citizen on FFN and the like and more prominent on overtly slash-focused spaces in the past, so there was less potential for that "Slash is taking over the default fandom space" feeling. On the other hand, I'm told that early Vividcons had the same whining, only for a numerical analysis to show that slash wasn't any more common than other things--it was just the first time it was treated equally instead of being in a slash-only vidshow or relegated to the late night Not For Children slot.
Re: More of the Story
Date: 2016-10-24 06:46 pm (UTC)After I posted, I realised how long that response had got and had a "what did I do to this poor person!" moment, so thanks for letting me know it was okay. Fanlore is very Wikipedia like, which was one of the reasons I tried to throw a few specific things in to give you a starting point. I find that once I've got a starting point, I end up on a link following spree that takes me to all sorts of places. It's just a matter of finding somewhere to start!
no subject
Date: 2016-10-24 06:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-24 06:50 pm (UTC)Absolutely! AO3 is not perfect by any means, but warnings are something they got right and they make "don't like, don't read" possible.
Or back in the listserve days where it seemed like 3/4s of fic didn't have summaries, let alone warnings.
I wasn't around during listserv days, but even after that, a lot of fic just had a title, author and rating and nothing more. Some archives hated having more. Many archives were collations of fic that had been on listservs. I remember trying to browse a Star Trek archive that was just all the text file fic from one of the newsgroups and it really was a "click and hope" thing.
You couldn't avoid things, but you also couldn't find the things you wanted. Want to read more about a specific character! Hahahahahaha!
no subject
Date: 2016-10-24 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-24 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-24 07:04 pm (UTC)It's sad because I suspect it's not the majority of the younger set, but it's a really loud set that's saying some very silly things and getting everyone's backs up.
I feel sorry that the young people in question don't get along with the older ones in their lives, but attempting to mess with AO3 after all the time and money spent to create it makes me furious.
*nods* They won't succeed, but the fact that there's a vocal minority out there screaming about their inability to change some of the fundamental parts of the archive we all worked hard to finance and create is...frustrating.
In Twilight Zone, Children Protect YOU
Date: 2016-10-24 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-24 07:15 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure there are a lot of youngsters in our midst, quietly doing their thing without announcing their age, because there always have been. I'm sure we all know people who were in fandom and reading fic and age fourteen and pretending to be older to stay in the grown-up areas! Except right now, we've also got the groups of youngsters forging off on their own and declaring fandom is their's and we all need to find our own thing...and that inhibits communication.
I don't know what the solution is. I'm sure I would have yelled a lot if someone had told me twenty years ago I needed to know all the history of fandom before I could participate. But at the same time, I absorbed all of that just by lurking around and being a part of it and learning when I made a mistake. So it makes me think this big separation between the different parts of fandom is partially to blame, and I don't know how to resolve that. How can we start communicating with groups who think we're too old and need to get out?
no subject
Date: 2016-10-24 07:16 pm (UTC)Re: In Twilight Zone, Children Protect YOU
Date: 2016-10-24 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-24 11:07 pm (UTC)Racefail spawned many things, and not all of them were good :-/
I see a lot of other young people who disagree with them. They're not as noticeable because they don't trumpet their ages as a way of winning arguments, but I hear from lots of them any time I counter stupid discourse with a dose of history and reality.
This actually makes me really hopeful for the future of fandom. We've always had the young (and very young) contingent in fandom, quietly not mentioning their age and becoming a part of the community. Reading those Tumblr post from the vocal set was depressing, but if they're a really loud minority? I feel less depressed.
Although I still face palm so much at them.
AO3 stats posts always get lots of concern trolling about how Fandom Hates Women because ___ % of fanfiction is m/m. You didn't see that in the past because...
The quantity of slash on AO3 can make it look like fandom is only about the boys and that slash is the juggernaut, but as you say, it's more than it's been less visible before. When much of it was in its own archives, or hidden in archives where pairing info was hard to find, then it was easy to ignore and pretend it was just a tiny fringe group. When it's on an archive with everything else, treated like everything else, with easily accessible stats? It does look like it's suddenly become this huge *thing* that's consuming fandom.
It's more easily accessible. It's more easily findable. More people know about it, so they read and write it more. It's right there with everything else, so people who might have been leary of poking at adult websites ten years ago can now cheerfully read and write it just like any other pairing.
I don't think it's a sign that Fandom Hates Women--that's definitely concern trolling. And it seems to be designed to make women feel guilty for not living up to an ideal we can't hope to meet. One of the things I've noticed is that when a source has multiple women doing interesting things and having relationships with each other (platonic or otherwise), the fic for that show/book/movie skews more towards the f/f slash and gen friendship. Fandom doesn't hate women, but we do get fed up with being told that we must write about the Strong Female Character (TM) we've been given, who has no relationship with anyone except the men on the show and doesn't get nuanced layers because she's got to fit the SFC ticky boxes. I sometimes wonder whether m/m slash would be as prevalent if we'd always had as many women in our media as there are men.
(I may be bitter about the "accept our token woman and love her!" mentality this part of the debate generates *sigh*)
I also wonder how much influence the early days of AO3's creation influenced the mix of fic. From what I dimly remember, it got a lot of traction early in the slash community because some of the founders were from the slash community. If there had been a lone slasher and the rest had been het shippers and gen people, maybe it wouldn't have got that traction (I would not want to live in that AU). But then again, making AO3 a safe place to post without worrying about your slash pairing breaking the rules might also have played a big part. If you primarily wrote low rating het ships, posting on FFN was fine! If that wasn't your bag...AO3 coming along was like finding a safe haven at last and you embraced it.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-25 06:57 am (UTC)That's part of why I roll my eyes so hard at some of the faux activism: I like plenty of the things they think I should like, but I get them outside of fic. Fic just doesn't reflect the sum total of my media interests or even my creative output. I know the concern trolls like to bring up people who mostly read fic and don't consume much other media, but I think that's a rare experience unless you're looking at a single month/week/phase. Most of us have a complicated relationship with media and turn to a variety of sources to get a variety of types of needs met.
I mean, I 100% agree that canons with lots of women lead to female-centric gen and f/f fic. The whole reason "fandom" appears to have Too Much Slash to a lot of people is that they (and I) are attracted to canons with hoyay that attract other fans of m/m. We aren't consuming the media that the f/f-focused parts of fandom care about--or at least not in large quantities and not in a way where we pay attention to those fan communities. Birds of a feather and all that.
Yes, AO3's demographics very closely reflect who founded it and who was on their flists as it was starting. Plus Open Doors will import anything, but a lot of what it has imported has been old slash archives. And like you say, there's less incentive to switch to AO3 if you're a het or gen writer on FFN. (Some of the big het fandoms also have their own space. Twilight has a ton of single-fandom archives.)
I do think that Tumblr has less of a Kids These Days problem than it seems. Some of the most vicious dogmaticness I've seen there is from people who took the worst messages of Racefail and ran with them, not from teens who've never heard of LJ. It's obvious when you see a pleasant fandom history post (without too much "Offa my lawn" stuff from the old people): half of tumblr is always reblogging the shit out of those posts with gleeful messages about how grandma dressed up as a dancing penis before they were even born and Star Trek fandom is the best. The key is to find posts that didn't primarily circulate in douchebag anti circles. Tumblr being Tumblr, sometimes it's impossible to get at the contentful reblogs if you don't find the post right away though. Argh.
This, for example, has a ton of responses from people who got into fandom via Quizilla in addition to a very considerable showing of Olds on tumblr: https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_three_generations_of_fanfic
Or this thing I posted last summer that got a tiny amount of pushback and a ton of "Amen!" from all sorts of people: http://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/147307380999/ao3-is-for-all-kinds-of-fanfic
The responses on those posts are just as representative of Tumblr as the dreadful scaremongering in the name of getting rid of all of the Shiro ships in Voltron fandom or magnusbene taking out their mental illness on everyone else.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-27 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-27 12:34 pm (UTC)That's a really good point and not one I'd considered before. I look for very different things in my m/m slash from what I want in my f/f slash. If I think about it that way, getting more female characters (and more interesting...) might increase the variety of what people read and ship, but it's probably not going to make individual people change their patterns. It woull probably just bring in people who hadn't previously been shipping and ficcing.
Most of us have a complicated relationship with media and turn to a variety of sources to get a variety of types of needs met.
Very, very true. And even for the people who's only reading is fic, they do it for specific reasons: because published novels don't fit their needs or because they need triggers and warnings novels don't provide. It's rare that a fan only consumes one form of media and the fic for that source to the exclusion of everything else.
Plus Open Doors will import anything, but a lot of what it has imported has been old slash archives.
I remember there being a lot more single-owner slash-only archives than other types of archives, so it makes sense that Open Doors is getting a lot of those. And that will inflate the quantity of m/m slash on the archive, particularly if fandoms with big het and gen bases still have thriving archives with archivist teams who haven't burned out.
Some of the most vicious dogmaticness I've seen there is from people who took the worst messages of Racefail and ran with them, not from teens who've never heard of LJ
As I said, even if Racefail did have a few positive outcomes, it changed the way fandom discourse happens and not in a good way a lot of the time :-(
Tumblr being Tumblr, sometimes it's impossible to get at the contentful reblogs if you don't find the post right away though. Argh.
This is the big reason I stepped back from Tumblr. I just don't have enough time to sift through and find those awesome blogs, and what was coming across my dash was filled with a lot of screaming about antis that made my head hurt. Knowing there are awesome younger fans out there--and lots of them--makes me feel much more hopeful about fandom's future :-)
no subject
Date: 2016-10-27 12:55 pm (UTC)