fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4111 ]

[ SECRET POST #4111 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4111 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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06. [SPOILERS for Avengers Infinity War]

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07. [WARNING for incest]

[Crimson Peak]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #588.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Especially interested in responses from people who have been in it 20+ years, but everyone is welcome.

We seem to slowly be losing the principle of YKINMK and it's sad.

Yeah, it's like some people can no longer differentiate between fiction and reality.

Yeah, this. :/

Right? This was pretty much the golden rule when I was in fandom but it seems to be a thing of the past now. Instead we have people who are so eager to police everyone else's kinks for problematic behavior or unhealthy ships that they're forgetting there's a difference between fantasy and real life.

RIP

This. Also, the disappearance of the understanding that YKINMKATO goes both ways.

Increasingly, I feel like I've been time-warped back to the late 90s, where asshats routinely went on crusades against kinks they didn't like such as noncon, underage, incest, domestic discipline, femsub, etc. And it was common for people to get websites TOSed for having content they didn't like.

I really appreciate AO3's policies on not deleting fictional content.

It's a pendulum. We're at the prudish extreme right now, but kink will come back around.

considerably, though in ways people might find subtle unless they've been in fandom more than 10 years.

10 years ago was 2007. I was still required by fandom ettiquette to put a "warning" for anything involving homosexual anything (including boys kissing) on the header of all fic. granted, in 07 that was starting to be phased out, people were starting to really be of the "really? don't we ALL write and read slash? how is this still controversial?" attitude but many writers, especially posting on LJ, still warned for it just in case. because LJ had recently suffered Strikethrough so a lot of people were still leery.

we also almost never warned for rape, incest, or triggers. warnings were for angst and character death and that's about it.

I went to a lot of cons in that era and 07 was really the explosion of anime conventions and anime-in-the-mainstream. since then all the licensing/dubbing companies except Funi and Viz have gone out of business, about half of the cons that started up between 05-09 have failed and vanished, and the word "cosplay" has been coopted by internet fandom at large to mean all costumes at all conventions and not just anime costumes at anime conventions.

My local con is actually growing every year. They've started renting out two buildings instead of one now because they literally couldn't contain everything in the one anymore. So things are looking good con wise where I am anyway.

Re: Has fandom changed much in the past 10 years?

(Anonymous) - 2018-04-06 23:44 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Has fandom changed much in the past 10 years?

(Anonymous) - 2018-04-07 00:08 (UTC) - Expand

10 years ago was 2007. I was still required by fandom ettiquette to put a "warning" for anything involving homosexual anything (including boys kissing) on the header of all fic. granted, in 07 that was starting to be phased out, people were starting to really be of the "really? don't we ALL write and read slash? how is this still controversial?" attitude but many writers, especially posting on LJ, still warned for it just in case.

It's interesting that this was also the era that people remember as an awesome golden age of permissiveness and freedom

Re: Has fandom changed much in the past 10 years?

(Anonymous) - 2018-04-07 00:04 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Has fandom changed much in the past 10 years?

(Anonymous) - 2018-04-07 14:17 (UTC) - Expand

ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2018-04-07 01:00 (UTC) - Expand

Re: ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2018-04-07 01:56 (UTC) - Expand

I think there is way less meta discussion. Or if there is discussion, I don't know where to find it.

Yeah, I’ve seen individual people post meta to tumblr, but there’s less coherant response than there might be on a messageboard or livejournal community because the discussion gets scattered between different people’s reblogs. I think meta maybe isn’t as rewarding to post because of that.

Re: Has fandom changed much in the past 10 years?

(Anonymous) - 2018-04-07 00:30 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Has fandom changed much in the past 10 years?

(Anonymous) - 2018-04-07 15:44 (UTC) - Expand

Yes, it used to not be so focused on morality and issues, and I had a lot more fun. It seems like now everything is critiqued through a lens of oppression and victimhood.

+1000

It didn't feel as though what people liked was such a litmus test of their moral character. Now, it feels like everything is either Approved or Unapproved, and it sucks all the joy and fun out of everything.

Jesus fuck i miss house fandom especially when the show was still goode SO MUCH

I'd say I've been in fandom for close to 20 years, though with the caveat that the first couple of years were viewed from the perspective of a child.

There are loads more people in fandom now. Not every kid my age even had a dial-up connection; now everyone has a smartphone. Fannish things are just a lot more mainstream too, so that also ups the accessibility. When it felt more like an exclusive club, people were more... permissive, or at least faked it to fit in. There weren't as many people posting things online, so anything you posted went. With more people coming in, they bring their biases, expectations of norms... people seem both more naive and easily shocked, but now it's fine to be judgmental.

I could have written this myself. I first came to online fandom in 1998 when I was 15. Communities were so much smaller and like you say, felt more exclusive. My fandom was also male dominated, so being female made me stand out more. I don't think that's the case anymore. We didn't really do shocking in our community though (fanfic was primarily gen, very little art).

I can only claim 19 years of fannish involvement, since 1998 was when I went off to college and gained hot-and-cold-running internet and could go to cons under my own steam...

I feel there were still more personal websites for fandom stuff 10 years ago. People used archives and social media, but would also point you yo their site.

The bit mentioned above about "cosplay" evolving from "anime costuming" to "all fandom/con/hobby costuming" is definitely a thing I've noticed. It now gets applied to original costuming and historical costume and so on, not just re-creating stuff from movies and tv.

I think fandom becoming more mainstream has brought a lot of people into fandom, and made people be more open about their fanishness. It's also a lot easier to get stuff - media, fanworks, and merch. A lot of this is due to the internet, but consider that you can buy a Doctor Who poster at Target while you are there to buy toilet paper. THIS IS NOT THE WORLD I GREW UP IN HOLY SHIT!

This goes back a bit more than 10 years I guess:

The advent of digital media and what basically amounts to things never going out of print has been a big change. Who needs to record a show off the air and lovingly archive all those hand-labeled VHS tapes? My DVR catches things with a lot less effort on my part than when I had
to program the VCR each time, and when I've watched the thing, I can delete it with the certainty that if I really, desperately want to see it again, I can always find it for purchase, streaming, or library loan. Media is always available and not a precious treasure that needs to be hoarded. Plus, DVDs take up less space and digital copies take up no space. The catalogue of what's available is also more broad. Anime! Obscure old movie serials! TV shows from the 70s!

This goes back more like 15-20 years:

Something I remember from my 80s-90s childhood and teen years going to cons with my parents is that there weren't a lot of other kids or teens at those cons. People once spoke of the "graying of Fandom." Early in college, in the late 90s, I was on a message board where there were maybe 2 other college-age folks and one teen.

Round about 2000, that seemed to change and suddenly there were kids and teens everywhere! I think it was a combination of 1) Fandom becoming more mainstream in general, 2) growing internet access, allowing young people to more easily participate in fandom without money, transportation, and parental chaperones, and 3) Harry Potter.

cosplay-mentioning anon above suddenly realized I'm at 18 years in fandom so I'm not such a spring chicken either. DAMN. thanks for the reminder.

The graying of fandom is one of my niche interests as far as observing fandom from the outside. You're right that there's tons more young people, and even ten years ago there were. The graying tends to more refer to the gatekeepers of fandom - the old scifi lit crowd that thinks it runs Worldcon and that's the only con to con. Gatekeepers can frankly shove it, the new blood is doing some amazing things and I'm glad I'm still here for the ride.

Re: Has fandom changed much in the past 10 years?

(Anonymous) - 2018-04-07 01:11 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Has fandom changed much in the past 10 years?

(Anonymous) - 2018-04-07 03:05 (UTC) - Expand

I remember it used to be really important to hide my power level outside of fannish spaces or risk being harrassed for being a nerd or geek. Now people seem to embrace their fannish side more and that's really freaking cool. I'm glad people don't have to hide thst part of themselves. On the other hand, there seems to be a push towards morality in fandom. It's nice that people tag for triggers now because I remember reading fic back in the day that only warned for OCs and slash and I ran into things that really didn't jive with me, but people trying to police what people write and draw is not cool. I'm not even sure when that started since I fell out of fandom for a while. I really miss message boards too. All the ones I used to frequent are dead.

I've been in fandom since the late 90s, so I'm definitely in the 20+ years bracket.

I would say in a lot of ways fandom has changed way more in the past 10 years than it did the decade before that (the forums/fansites to LJ decade).

Obvious changes:
-More people have access to the internet, so more people are in fandom in general.
-Fandom happens on Tumblr mostly vs LJ or dedicated fansites.
-Much more direct interaction between fan communities and creators (things like Twitter, creator-run blogs, etc. are pretty normal nowadays.)
-Very few fandom aggregators anymore (such as fic rec lists, fansite link lists, etc.)
-The greater number of people in fandom and the overall ease of using platforms like Tumblr has encouraged a much higher standard of fanart and a slightly lower standard of fanfic.

Fandom skews much MUCH younger now than it did during the LJ days, and especially compared to the 90s. In the 90s I knew very few people who were younger than their mid-20s. Most of the active people in my fandoms were 30+, and many were original Trekkies or other fanzine-era fans. By 2007 that had shifted a lot, but my fandoms were still primarily adults with some older teens. I was in my mid-20s and young compared to most of my online friends.

Of course in the 90s and 00s you'd see some children or younger teens, but fandom generally didn't cater to them.

Fandom "purity" culture is definitely a much bigger thing now than it ever was. Back in the old days people always warned for slash (and often stuff like character death or non-con or underage), but I don't think I ever saw anyone clutching their pearls over stuff like Reylo. It was pretty much an 'anything goes' 'ykinmk' mindset back then, where tagging your fic as a dark!fic would cover whatever twisted stuff you threw in there.

In the 90s warnings were even more different, because fic was almost entirely hosted at private archives or found in mailing lists. It was pretty common to get a brief summary and potentially no warnings at all. Often authors wouldn't even tag the main pairing, or else the main pairing would be the ONLY thing they tagged so you just had to sort of guess what you were clicking on based on the title. Disclaimers were a really big deal, too, both on individual fics and on entire websites. I know they eventually became a bit of a joke (Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or the show 'cuz if I did there'd be way more K/S smoochies! XD) but they were super duper important back when creators would sent out cease and desist orders and shit like that.

Re: Has fandom changed much in the past 10 years?

(Anonymous) - 2018-04-07 01:57 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Has fandom changed much in the past 10 years?

(Anonymous) - 2018-04-07 02:26 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Has fandom changed much in the past 10 years?

soldatsasha - 2018-04-07 03:17 (UTC) - Expand

Been involved for 15ish years; seen quite a decline in the ... activity levels? ... of kinkmemes / promp fests / etc. Used to be there were just daily floods of new and awesome fic. Not sure whether I'm just now in less active fandoms genreally, or whether I'm now pickier about what I read and thus THINK there's less awesome stuff going on, or... miss the days when I was spoiled for choice.

Also, back then I had way fewer commitments in real life and thus also WROTE a fuckton more. :( miss being creative.

Too much moral posturing nowadays as well as a creepily puritan obsession with punishing people over "problematic" things to the point of unpersoning, in my opinion.

when you have people who no longer care if some fan died, and in fact are cheering it on because they shipped a "bad ship" there's definitely something seriously wrong.

Re: Has fandom changed much in the past 10 years?

(Anonymous) - 2018-04-07 14:39 (UTC) - Expand

Fandom was a lot less mainstream ten years ago, there's that; I'd like to say that it was older, but maybe it just felt like that when I was in my twenties. Since it has moved on to more mainstream social media, I think a lot of the community feeling of it has disappeared. Back then, you had to actively seek it out, it didn't accidentally show up in your feed or in any google image search.

Very rarely did people use their RL identities in fandom.

The merge between fandom and social justice was only just beginning. By 2008, you would find wank about LGBT+ issues and stuff, but it was mostly limited to specific comms. If fandom at large was going on about it, it would mostly be about specific pairings, not "representation" or whatever. I think people back then were a lot more interested in their pairings becoming canon. There were less moral judgments; you weren't a bad person for shipping the wrong thing, you were dumb and clearly deluded about canon.

Genderswap was far more common than trans fic. "Headcanon" as such didn't really exist, and thinking that a character was gay or bi was about as adventurous as it got. I think it was around 2006-7 that The Big Asexual Awakening happened, and there was a short-lived trend of writing characters being ace. With one of today's secrets in mind, "nonbinary" was not a thing back then, and if a character broke the gender mold without identifying as trans, there would not be wank about which pronoun to use. No-one would insist that Kino was "they" when the original show aired.

"Wank" was universally understood. Icons were the big graphic thing, rather than gifs. Art theft was a big issue. You were judged for posting fic to FFN, rather than LJ. Dub vs. sub was a Thing in anime fandoms.

Edited 2018-04-07 19:57 (UTC)

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