I saw this tweet while on extra priv yesterday and it made me think about how much we have forgotten (because it’s easier or because it’s been deleted) about what fandoms have always been about.
I used to call it presentism when people were like “oh man, fandom used to be [nice/non-judgemental/cool with everything people shipped], but that’s not the correct word for that.
What we’re seeing isn’t people layering modern ideals or languages onto the past, but rather pretending that the past was perfect to begin with.
But to start, @noctuababy is VERY correct that modern fic discourse – and modern fandom as a whole – does treat fic writers separate from fans in a way that doesn’t make sense. Because they don’t treat these writers as fellow fans or as celebrities you’re unfortunately parasocial about. Instead, fic and therefore fic authors are a product – ranging from something addictive (like a drug where you get the shakes if you can’t get it when you want it) to a book/pop culture made professionally – that can be consumed, dissected, or complained about in public without care for the fact that authors are amongst them.
I very firmly believe that simply saying things about tropes and themes in fandom should be allowed. Talking about fics and fandom should not be written off, every time, as harmful. Especially when it comes to criticism as people across fandom spaces insist on trying to legitimize fan fiction and lift it up to the same levels as ~traditional literature~. If you want people to take fan fiction as seriously as they do any other form of media or pop culture mover and shaker…
- You shouldn’t actually want that because it puts way too much pressure on folks who are truly just doing it for love of game
- You should be prepared for people to… take fan fiction seriously. It’s like the folks who want video games to be taken seriously and then violently abuse folks who do just that.
However, what many of these fans are doing isn’t… even criticism?
It’s stuff like memes around things they dislike in fanworks, leaving ratings in bookmarks (which, unlike comments, function more like reviews for novelists as something they should not be looking at), or just complaining in a way that makes authors feel like they should stop writing in fandom. (And, as we saw with whatever is still happening in the Heated Rivalry fandom, they do stop writing.)
All things that have existed in fandom spaces for ages… and things that have made fic writers feel bad enough to delete their WIPs.
I think the difference here is that a lot of the fans complaining do not understand that the people who write fic in their fandoms will likely see it. They don’t understand it up until the point that a writer gets snippy or deletes their work. There is an entitlement to the Text, to fanon, that almost seems surprised by any backlash even if the backlash is just “hey, don’t say that/that’s so mean”.
And again, it feels like fans – and here, specifically fan writers – are being reduced to “content creators” in a way that dehumanizes them and literally removes them from the fandom ecosystem even as their works circulate. It treats fan fiction writers – who are fans as much as they are writers – as the author infringing on fandom spaces and going where they don’t “belong”.
One of my friends, even told me about an instance where a fic reader was surprised that they, a fic writer, was on Tumblr.
Tumblr?
The place a lot of writers fled to once LJ became inhospitable?
That Tumblr?
And a lot of this happens because younger fans don’t have the relationships in fandom that they did have before. Even though they can often see writers on the same platforms they use, they don’t know or talk to the people writing fic in their fandom the way we did fifteen or more years ago.
Yes, it’s an age thing.
In my experience, a lot of this does trend younger. As Adrie and I have discussed at length on Pages and Prejudice, a lot of “bad” fandom behavior trends young. The way it’s always trended young. When you see an adult in their late 20s and up acting up in fandom, it’s partially because they learned these bad behaviors when a tadpole in fandom and never had a reason to get out of it.
But it almost always starts when these folks are young.
Younger fans – who range from 16-24 in my experience – are kind of struggling to make friends in fandom especially if the potential friend in fandom isn’t 100% vetted beforehand. They are too anxious to reach out to potential friends because of their concerns that said friend could come back to bite them in the end.
They’re also… just anxious.
So where in 2008/2009, I reached out to me-ya-ri the literal moment that I could because she was one of my favorite fan fiction writers in the Smallville fandom… that doesn’t seem to occur to the younger adults in fandom. You can reach out. You can speak to an adultier adult – provided that you are over eighteen – about their fic. You can befriend people who like the things that you do.
But they don’t.
Which is how, whenever AO3 goes down, you get hundreds of people across Twitter and r/AO3 losing their minds because they don’t have any way to read fic or communicate about fic to the authors. It’s how you get Discord servers – not the ones that some author BNFs make – where hundreds of people at the most can be reading a fic… but never think to comment on AO3 or even on Twitter to gas the author up. It’s how you get people declaring themselves to be traumatized over coming across an “abandoned” WIP.
In modern fandom, the fan writer delivers the product and that’s it.
I guess… most people don’t pal around with their plug, huh?
Except, these plugs are people too.
They’re fans too.
And it is frustrating as a fic writer to see people engage with your fic but not engage with you. Or to engage in dehumanizing ways – demanding updates, shitting on fic with screenshots, being demanding and entitled about what they’ve read or didn’t read.
But none of this is new to fandom or exclusive to modern fandom. Back in the day, people were making fun of fic and fic writers in ways that probably continue to traumatize writers to this day. There were entire communities dedicated to roasting stories that utilized the “Weeping cock” trope. People were mean on purpose and they knew you were right there next to them. People dissected tropes and trends in fandom with a scalpel and they did not care if you wrote or liked the thing they were tearing apart.
But years ago, I stopped writing Roy Harper/Dick Grayson the literal second I saw someone bitching about the fact that I was “clogging up the tags” with my fic, knowing full well that I’d be in the tags as a writer. It ruined the experience of writing for a ship I, at the time, really loved. I would have people talk about my fics in my tags in ways that were either outright unkind or that could’ve been lovely comments sent to me. I do still think of the time I deleted my fic tumblr and had to see people going “oh why did [handle] delete” after years of never even suggesting that they saw, much less read and liked, my fics.
Even now, it sucks to see people in my main fandom occasionally vaguepost about “who ships [rarepair I am the only one writing and commissioning art for since 2023]”. It feels bad. The only difference is that I’m over a decade older and, as the only person currently writing this ship, far less likely think that I can step aside for other fans to tackle the ship.
Fandom has and hasn’t changed a lot over the past twenty years.
But… people being mean to fic writers or treating them as word slot machines pumping out the good stuff or ignoring that they exist until the fic waters dry up… isn’t actually a new thing.
What’s new is people actually seeming to think that fic writers are creating for fandoms they’re not in.
What’s new is the language around it that treats us like YouTubers or influencers, giving us both an outsized level of assumed power and privilege while treating us like shit if we ever suggest wanting better or different treatment (or just some dang comments!!) in fandom.
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