#fandom old

[spirkme915]

so i was visiting my aunt a few weeks back and we got on the subject of star trek (as it's one of the few commonalities we share anymore).

i asked her about what it was like when twok came out and *that* ending and the look on her face was sheer devastation. then she said,

“you probably don’t remember this, but your uncle and i got married the day ‘search for spock’ came out. we cut the reception short and took the entire wedding party to the theatre- well, MORE than just the wedding party. it became this big group of people that all bailed on the reception because we had to know if spock was going to be okay.”

yes, she went to sfs in her wedding dress.

[nostalgia-tblr]

[the-bar-sinister]

I keep seeing that post about how modern developers making difficult and obtuse retro games without tutorials are "forgetting that video games used to come with manuals."

Ya'll.

Yes. Video games used to come with manuals.

And our parents and older siblings fucking threw the manuals and the boxes out.

By the time most of us got our hands on The Legend of Zelda: The Adventures of Link, the manual that explained anything had been in the landfill for a year.

I promise promise promise you that the people making these games didn't "only discover them on emulator."

These games were obscure and mysterious to us because as children we had to figure out what was going on by trial and error.

[iamstartraveller776]

Feel free to ignore, but you mentioned that the fandom landscape has changed drastically from twenty years ago, and I’m curious what that means for you. I’ve seen lots of posts on the topic, but am interested in your experience if you want to share.

I absolutely can share!

Twenty years ago, I found fandom through bulletin boards or message boards (depending on what you called them). Trekbbs was my first one, and it's still standing. High speed internet was relatively new, and it was easy to keep up with "threads." Whenever you logged in, it would take you to where you left off with any given thread so you could catch up. (Discord does this...kinda, but Discord moves at warp speed where BBS's moved at impulse power.) It was easier to stay connected, to get to know people. Also, the boards were (and are) heavily moderated. Trolls were banned, and folks who got too heated under the collar were usually temporarily banned until tempers cooled. So it was generally a safe environment.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the vast majority of the boards were grown-up only. That's not to say that minors didn't sneak through, but they were on their best behavior lest they get found out and kicked off the board.

And from the boards, we learned where to find fanfic. Back then, even though FFN existed, fic was primarily archived on private sites. There were no such thing as likes and kudos back then. It was fandom etiquette (at least for my corner of the Trek fandom) to leave a comment/review if you read a fic (and be nice about it!). It was the era of Kink Tomato (your kink is not my kink and that's okay) and don't like don't read and simply fun. We had challenges, did round robins—where someone would write a chapter of a fic, then another author would write the next, and so forth.

Even when I made the switch to posting more on FFN, it was pretty normal to send a message to someone to thank them for favorite-ing your story even if they didn't comment. And often they would message back, telling you what they enjoyed. I have some friendships born from this! It was normal. Writers weren't called "needy" and "self-absorbed" for hoping for more interaction with their readers. We were all in this together.

I also did yahoo groups for a time, and had a fantastic time with my friends in an email chain.

LiveJournal was kind of the peak of fandom, IMO. I think it was the first "public" website, rather than something privately owned, where we could build communities (private or public) as well as have our own pages (private or public). Some of the best fandom events happened on that site. But LiveJournal ended up imploding. (Cyber attacks then the new owners started wiping out entire communities without warning for violating the new terms of service. It was horrible.)

So we all moved to Tumblr. (And we were slowly moving to AO3. Some also moved to the site formerly called Twitter.)

Tumblr was pretty awesome back then. Because fandom people took the same community with them when they came. We didn't have replies back then, but dagnabit we screenshot tags or reblogged comments and posted them with replies. It was easier to follow tags and even some fandoms created blogs that were archives for fics. (Myself included.) The downside was, and continues to be, lack of moderation. Not that I think fandom should be gatekept, but it isn't as easy-going when you do have to worry about putting up with trolls as a rule rather than the exception.

Alas, life happened and I had to step away for a few years. When I came back...it's so much quieter. Significantly less interaction. Less comments on fics. There's just...less connection in general. People tend to flit in and out of fandom more often. And on top of that, there is the odd movement that fanworks shouldn't contain anything that would make a reader/viewer uncomfortable or is unrelatable to the general masses. As a fanworks creator, there have been times I felt more like a monkey dancing for a demanding audience rather than a squee-ing fan sharing things with fellow sqee-ing fans. I seriously questioned for a long time whether I would bother anymore.

(This also doesn't mention how streaming and binge-watching series rather than weekly releases have affected fandom. It's different when you get one episode a week for an entire season of 20-24 episodes than when a streamer releases the entire 8-10 episode series at once.)

A part of this is me, too. I don't have nearly as much time to invest in fandom as I used to. I can't be too critical of the changes in fandom, but it is different.

And so I hang onto a few of the friends I've found (like you!) and continue to find here and there. I write whatever I want and delete rude comments. I always reply to the others. And I keep plugging on!

Thank you for asking! And thank you for being part of what I love about being on Tumblr even after all these changes! (Sorry I got a bit verbose!)

[notasapleasure]

The greatest treasure in the Star Wars collection I finally have the space to unpack and store properly isn't my beloved giant Wedge and Biggs figures, nor is it my Ewan MacGregor autograph, nor even is it my precious MicroMachines set for Heir to the Empire. No, it is far and away the folder full of early '00s print-offs from Aaron Allston's website:

This is like....you can pinpoint the exact moment she discovered fandom!! You can see how floppy the paper was from the ink when I printed out the pictures :')

Yup, Aaron said 'Star Wars canon is whatever you want it to be'. He also changed Hobbie's hair colour though, so maybe he just had a thing about Hobbie.

He also hosted a bunch of fanart, which was my first exposure to the genre and which I utterly ADORED. Here are some by Jenny Kauer and Sixten because they include my blorbo Janson:

[frillyfacefins]

I do not curate my tumblr account. I‘ve never done that. I just fill it with funny or interesting or pretty things I find like I‘m a magpie with the world‘s biggest nest.

[blazeeblake]

Having lived through that one show with that one ship that ended in super-hell, rebar heartache, watching everything go down with the emergency response show is both 'I can't stop scrolling' levels of interesting to me, and super, eerily familiar. Obviously, it's not a one to one, shot for shot redux; in fact, I feel like the trifecta of a network change, an actor who seems very respectful and mindful of people seeking responsible media representation, and the actually canonization of a bi-coded character's bisexuality are pretty uncharted waters that I find surreal in the best of ways (though not too surreal; this show has always had some good rep I can get behind). But, the fallout of all of this unprecedented stuff is just about what I came to expect back in the day. The infighting, the clashes between opposing ships that can have valid points AND get taken too far (on either side); the very valid and intense hope that longstanding, built-in narratives pay off after way too many (largely network-imposed) obstacles, right alongside the very valid fear that nothing will pay off because when has it ever? It feels like deja-vu all over again and honestly I hope some tide changes so that stops being true, because I have seen things get sad and nasty in other instances and I don't want that for people just trying to chill out with some fiction. This is probably going to sound (more?) annoying, but I don't necessarily have a horse in this race. I know what I want to happen, both for my own gratification and for reasons that have more to do with narrative satisfaction, but I'm not gonna jump at anyone who doesn't agree or see what I see. I'm just a funky lil college dropout who knows her tropes, and has probably never used a semi-colon properly in her life. I also feel like I kind of fall into the camp of doing my damnedest to shove down my hyper-fixated hopes because man have I been burned in the past. My best, largely unasked for advice is to tag your stuff accordingly, hide/block the things that dampen the enjoyment, and hopefully have a good time on this current rollercoaster. I didn't like how the last big shipping thing I cared about ended, but what a ride it was.

[niennanir]

There was, in my experience, two solid ways to find a zine in 1985. This was the year Back to the Future, Enemy Mine, and Coocoon all came out. Star Trek returned to prime time two years later. It was a seismic shift in which sci-fi went from being for dorks to being cool. It was a hell of a time to be alive. It was also when I first started publishing fanfic.

The first most effective way to find a zine to subscribe to was to flip to the back of your StarLog magazine. Anyone who was into Sci-Fi or fantasy subscribed to StarLog. Wild stuff went on in the back of StarLog because this was where the classifieds were.

If you are younger than 20 you might not know what a Classified Ad is. Back in the dark times, before the internet, the way you got information out to the world was to mail a couple of lines of text, about the length of a short Tweet, to your favorite newspaper or magazine along with a very reasonable ad fee. The editorial staff would then put your classified ad in the classified section where there were hundreds of other tiny ads. The ads could be for anything from a car for sale to someone looking for a date.

But in StarLog the ads were usually one of two things: Sci-fi Conventions and Zines. You would also see a lot of ads labeled 'fan club' these were targeted at a younger audience, but apart from the lack of racy art and erotica they were, essentially, just Zines. both fan clubs and Zines were cheap to subscribe to. You would take 4 envelopes, put a stamp and your mailing address on each of them then put them in another envelope with a dollar bill and mail that to the Zine address. If you had aspirations of being a published fan fiction writer you would mail your manuscript to the zine as well. You may or may not make it into the Zine. I was 13 so I did not get into a lot of Zines this way.

The second way to find Zines was to get on your bike and ride down to the comic shop, or maybe the video rental store (Not Blockbuster usually) and check the public bulletin board. You might find ads for Zines stuck to the board, or you might even find the zines themselves. Our local comics shop had a Zine of the month, you could come in, pull the Zine off the bulletin board, read it while sitting on the crappy couch in the back corner and then stick it back to the board when you were done. I got into a lot more of these Zines.

I started writing fanfic when I was still very young, 10 or 11 I think, I didn't know at the time that it had a name, I was writing because it was important to who I was then. I suppose I began publishing because the classified ad said "Do you have Star Trek Stories you'd like to share?" and I did and they asked nicely so I sent them.

I have no idea what my readership might have been, I don't know if they enjoyed my stories, or if they even finished them, I can presume that the editors who chose to publish my work must have liked it. Or maybe they were just desperate for something to put in the Zine, I don't really know. The type of validation we have now wasn't achievable then so no one thought of it.

But it was a fun adventure all the same.

[aqueenofthestars]

While I’m not much of a meta writing person (though I love reading it), I just think it’s so interesting that something that I’m hearing again and again is how much Our Flag Means Death has resonated with “fandom olds” and are bringing people (like me) back to tumblr and fan fiction writing (and art and MVs etc) for the first time in years and I think it is! So! Interesting!

Something others have definitely discussed already that I won’t really touch on here is the fact that the writers didn’t queer bait us and that the seemingly subtextual romance was indeed TEXTUAL romance and I know that’s certainly part of it!

But I also wonder it has something to do with the ages of the main leads? As a thirty something, I’m still at the point where I love YA and adult fiction both, but I’ve started to deeply appreciate media focused on people in their thirties and forties and beyond. I think because of that deep-rooted, media-fueled idea that life stops after you’re twenty and as someone who’s no longer in my twenties, there is a specific joy I get from seeing people my age and older having adventures, discovering new things about themselves, falling in love, all of it. I just wonder if others resonate with this feeling and if this is partially why this show has gripped me (and so many others) so viciously (in a good way) by the throat.

[mollyringle]

We Fandom Olds (well, Fandom Middle-Ageds) were making Aragorn/Legolas remarks back in 2002, and it just does my heart so much good to know that the next generation is carrying the torch forward.

[xiaq]

Me, talking to a younger coworker (just graduated college) today.

Them: Hey! I saw you recently published a book and I bought it last night. I'm really enjoying it so far. When I looked at the reviews on Amazon some people mentioned it was fanfiction first--I love that. Was it a hockey RPF or like an alternate universe situation of a non-hockey fandom?

Me:

I, uh. It was Check Please! fic. Like, the comic?

Them: Oh, I think I've heard of that, but I haven't read it.

Me: You said you enjoyed Heartstopper, right? Similar vibe. I can send you a link, if you want.

Them: That'd be great. I'm more into bandom RPF and like, Supernatural for a while but not so much now, you know? So definitely open to finding new fandoms.

Me:

Cool cool cool.

So apparently the youth are out here just talking about their fandom interests at the metaphorical work water-cooler which is very neat but also very weird for someone who was introduced to fandom in world where everyone was anonymous and people you worked with might use your fandom presence as blackmail. Like, I thought I was lackadaisical considering I post my face and my real name. This is a whole different level of insouciance.

[the-bar-sinister]

✨ You belong in fandom no matter how old you are.

✨ You belong in fandom no matter what you do or don't ship.

✨ You belong in fandom no matter what characters you like or don't like.

Don’t let anyone tell you you don’t belong in fandom!

[msilverstar]

What's a 'fandom old?'

It's a person who's been in fandom a long time, generally has has been through some Ship Wars (though not necessarily on a side). Someone in their twenties could be a fandom old: I fell into fandom when I was 43 and people were incredibly nice to me as a newbie. So it was a bit of a surprise when I wasn't new any more.

In general, Fanlore.org is the place to go for vocabulary, it's amazing!

[grissomesque]

My husband just asked me in front of People what "otp" means, and my brain fully short-circuited until he clarified, "my phone wants to delete otps after 24 hours?" and honestly I was still confused for a full 4 or 5 seconds after that, because I live too much of my life in the shadows.

[catgirl-catboy]

I kind of miss the old days where almost all authors despised their fandoms, because we were (gasp!) writing FANFICTION or (mimes throwing up) shipping a QUEER SHIP.

Nowadays it feels like the author is the cool kid that sits at our lunch table that everyone is trying to impress. Nah, fuck that. Bring me back to the time when authors and fans had mutual disdain for each other. It was a far healthier outlook for fans to have, and added to the culture.

[greywolfheirs]

Wow being an spn fan in 2012 at the height of superwholock really fucked me up, huh? Just heard Heat of the Moment for the first time in years and started having war flashbacks

We need therapists or smth this is untenable