#fandom

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[sugar-petals]

if you ever feel awkward leaving a long ao3 comment getting no reply remember that at this point receiving any feedback at all will leave most authors too stunned to speak

[knebellindemann]

[thisliminalspacedaydreams]

Fanfic is a free hobby.

It's one of the last few things we can have as a society that's free. You can engage, for free. People give you things (art, stories, etc), for free.

Don't buy into the consummerism just because it's everywhere else.

You don't have to consume everything you interact with. You don't have to use things, just because they exist.

You're allowed (still, for now), to have things that are enjoyable for free.

Do you realise how insane the world is? We don't have many places where we can just be, for free anymore, but ao3 is. Did you notice we don't have ads in ao3? We don't have pop ups? Where ELSE do we not have that?

Where else can you just go and not have to wait for a commercial to be over or for ads to be on the sidelines?

I don't think the younger people understand, but the whole of internet used to be like this. YouTubers would do Youtube for free, just because. You couldn't monetise your internet presence before.

Ao3 is like a little preserved corner of the internet where the old internet used to be, and it's being attacked by people who do not understand that free things are allowed to exist without judgment.

Please don't ruin this for us.

Some of us need it.

[henry-fox-biggest-stan]

Worst pain

[bebx]

[shyjusticewarrior]

At some point "fanfic can be as good as professional writing" became "fanfic should be as good as professional writing" and that's caused major damage to fandom spaces.

[fanonical]

when we take over the world we will nationalise fanfic. we will all be posting to fanfiction.gov

[copperbadge]

Tomorrow I will have been in fandom for thirty years.

I can mark the anniversary very precisely because I know the name of the first fanfic I ever read, which is fortunately archived online along with the date it was posted, the same day I read it. I don't believe Usenet exists anymore and I've been here too long to believe that nothing ever disappears off the internet, so I know that archives are truly a gift to history.

I posted my first fanfic not that long after. It wasn't well-written but reading it today I can see that the narrative was sound. People said they liked it, which was kind given how extremely bad my grammar was. I was an awkward teenager with undiagnosed ADHD and praise was rare for me, but when I wrote fanfic someone always said something kind about it. Eventually a few of them took me under their wing and explained things like "where quotation marks go" and "paragraph breaks". Commas, I fear, are a lost cause even today, but they tried, bless them.

I thought about doing something big to commemorate the anniversary, but I couldn't really think what I might do and the world right now is pretty exhausting. I'm forty five and I'm tired. But imagine how much more exhausting the world would be without fandom -- how much emptier my life would be without my friends, this community, the writing I do, the art and beauty fandom exposes me to. So for now I'm just meditating on that a bit -- the richness of the experience, the gifts I've been fortunate to receive, the lessons I've been fortunate (if sometimes reluctant) to learn.

In another thirty years I'll be seventy five, if I live so long. Thirty years ago we didn't in any meaningful sense have digital cameras, let alone cellphones or smartphones, social media, streaming television, GPS. I did a report on the science of cloning for my high school biology class (on the suggestion of a fellow fan) a year before Dolly was cloned. I wrote my first fanfic using a computer running Windows version 3.1. I wrote it in Notepad, still a constant companion.

I hope I live to seventy five. As tired as I am, I'm looking forward to seeing where the next thirty years will take us.

I hope Notepad will still be there.

[sketching-shark]

Most blessed type of fandom experience tbh

[mewo777]

i will not be constrained by made up societal rules like “drawing in the lines”

also hopefully the quality doesnt getting destroyed and this stays readable

[nice1cream]

I really really wonder how ppl live without hyperfixations.

I look at my mom, finishing reading her third book this month. She said she enjoyed it.

"That's it?" I think "You enjoyed it? And you don't imagine scenes from it late at night? You're not frustrated with the characters' stupid choices? You don't want to talk to other people about how much you loved that one plot twist? It didn't change you as a person?"

people who don't experience hyperfixation don't know what it feels like to hyperfixate so much on something that it becomes not only your subject of obsession but also your source of happiness and literally the main reason why you still keep going; literal source of strength and life.

shoutout to my favorite fictional characters, favorite people, favorite ships, favorite movies, favorite tv shows, fanfics and archive of our own

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

being God’s favorite is sleep through the entirety of archive of our own’s downtime and wake up to the site up and running normally again

[the-bar-sinister]

Fandom is not and should not be divided into "providers" and "consumers". We are a community.

[decemberwinter]

“why do you ship them? I thought the ship wasn’t canon?” bro we’re talking about fictional characters, who don’t actually exist in real life, from a media that focuses solely on fictional events that are not real either. so what if these two made-up characters didn’t kiss in their source material? they have lots of nasty gay sex on archive of our own and thousands of novel length slow burn enemies to lovers fics written about them. the fanon content at this point far exceeds the whole canonical franchise. the problem isn’t “it’s not canon” the problem is that you don’t allow yourself to let go of canon and enjoy the wonder of fan contents that are just as good / valid