fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5083 ]

Or, the hallmarks of a BNF and how to become one

Were you ever a BNF? When did you know you were one? What makes a BNF? How did you feel about the status? Please feel free to share any anecdotes about your time as a BNF (or BNF adjacent person) and your fall or fade from the status.

Also accepted are observations regarding fandom behavior and the ascendancy of a BNF.

I witnessed the rise and fall of my tiny fandom's BNF. I was on the outside but knew enough of the inner circle that I was regularly regaled with blow by blow accounts of teh drama.

Here's how it went.

This BNF's rise to status was paved with a talent for writing lively and engaging fic, and having ample time to write and interact in fandom spaces. Bit of a cliche, but she was a rich childless housewife with few RL worries and ample time for hobbies.

She quickly became the main voice of the fandom, four or five of the other very talented writers flocking around her and forming a little clique, a little following of yes-men. Once she started getting all of her feedback from her clique her writing quickly went down hill.

Add to that her and her clique were loud and obnoxious in fandom spaces and it quickly escalated to people they didn't like being bullied out of the fandom.

Luckily, there were lots of people not interested in being involved in this wank fest so we upped sticks and moved to a new community. With no drama to feed off, her interest slowly waned and eventually she drifted away.

It's been years, but I think I can reasonably claim that I was a BNF in a medium-sized fandom. This was back in fanfiction.net days, a dead giveaway that it's ancient history!

When did you know you were one?

When I started garnering lots of hits, alerts and reviews, including regular readers who were waiting for my twice a month chapter updates and reviewing each chapter. I also landed on a lot of favorites lists and rec lists, got some fanart of my fics, etc.

What makes a BNF?

I suppose it's when the majority of people in fandom know your name/fic(s), or that your name/fic(s) get recced to people regularly as one of the must-read fics in a fandom.

How did you feel about the status?

It was cool and fun. There wasn't a ton of wank in this fandom, so that helped. Most people were nice, and I made a lot of friends - and I'm still friends with people I met during this time. I'll be honest... it's what I was aiming for when I began writing fic. I'd read some of the more well known fics and enjoyed them, then went looking for more and found a lot of mediocre to just plain bad stories and thought that I could do better. And I did. That's not because I'm amazing writer, it's because FFnet in those days had a LOT of garbage.

Please feel free to share any anecdotes about your time as a BNF (or BNF adjacent person) and your fall or fade from the status.

I faded. Life got too busy, I had some health issues going on and couldn't keep up with my regular writing schedule. I left a big WIP unfinished, which I feel guilty about. But people still seem to read and enjoy my ancient fics, so that's a nice feeling. I have no regrets, it was fun, despite a few whackjobs.

I'll be vague on the specifics, but I'll say this... my fandom covered a wide age range. I knew people personally who were 13 years old up to people in their 50s. And it wasn't the pre-teens and teenagers causing the problems, it was the 40+ women who were bored and lonely and had zero social skills or boundaries.

This is more BNF adjacent, I guess... the most well known BNF who is probably still the most well known today even though she's been out of fandom for 10+ years was a neurotic grad student who people ADORED because they mostly didn't see the neurotic side of her. But she was a nutty control freak who couldn't handle differences of opinion on ANYTHING, fandom related or not, trivial or not. Like, you could say you prefer cake to pie and she'd go full apeshit on your ass with a long essay telling you why you were wrong, with citations.

I loved her fics. But after a certain point, I just couldn't read them because I knew all that creativity came from a bitch.

Holly Black, Cassandra Clare or Naomi Novik???

Nope. Not THAT well known, and she was (AFAIK) never famous or infamous for her bitchery, which she kept on the down low. But she definitely thought her shit didn't stink.

Ah shucks.

This makes me think of ...arrgh. Someone in the Buffy fandom, Spike/Xander shipper, who had a website and mail list...? And wrote this *hugely* long S/X fic where Spike was kidnapped by the Initiative and tortured a lot a finds Xander. He's mute and the recovery is tortuously slow, and in the end they do some kind of weird time-travel to their ancient Scottish ancestors....?

I just cannot remember the name of the author/site (a lot of purple and black). But she was very rigid in her opinions and kicked me out of the group because 'someone' had told her I had 'badmouthed' her 'behind her back' (i had said in a public comm that her fic was really long....).

I was never a BNF for any of my fandoms and I can't remember any BNFs for fic or fanart. Maybe they just didn't have that big of an impact in the corners of fandom where I hung out.

I know the BNFs in my doll fandom, though I guess they're a combination of BNF and influencer. They're BNFs because they take beautiful photos, have tons of followers, get products to review before everyone else, and get to work directly with the doll companies (usually taking photos for catalog spreads and things like that). They work very hard to get their photos just right (including sewing clothes, building sets, and driving out to various locations for the perfect shot) and, as far as I know, most of them are really nice to their followers and post content meant to engage with them. I think their BNF status is well-deserved. Their photos tend to have a magical quality to them that always makes me smile.

I kind of assume I was one for awhile because in this one fandom (medium? semi-large? definitely not the largest or smallest I've been in by far), every time someone asked for recs, my name came up and a bunch of other people would be like "YES READ THEM THEY ARE SO GOOD". I just kind of watched it happen and was glad that people were enjoying the stuff I was enjoying writing, and I tried to contribute to the fandom in other ways (archiving and whatnot) because I was appreciative of their appreciation and wanted to help the fandom out.

Honestly it got weird fast though. I don't want to make myself out to be any sort of big deal, because honestly I did not think of myself as any big deal, but a few people started acting jealous, and when there were rec threads, they would be like "oh everyone always recs [person], I'm so sick of them, check out these others instead", and once I dared to out myself on a story I wrote anonymously and someone yelled at me for being a glory hog, and then people started complaining about me allegedly trying to get more attention for myself by taking part in fandom-wide projects and so on. Admittedly it was probably not that many people, but I guess I'm a snowflake and just couldn't deal with even a handful of them thinking I was like that.

So I quit working on anything but my own fic in that fandom, have only posted stuff anonymously since, and from all appearances, disappeared.

This is why I always post here anonymously even though I have an active DW account - honestly ever posting anything under my own handle or drawing attention to anything I do makes me really uncomfortable now. I don't want fans of my name, I want my work to be appreciated only if it's genuinely good on its own merits, and I don't mind if the appreciation never includes the name of the author.

You're not a snowflake imo, that's shitty behaviour.

Admittedly it probably was, but I have always felt like I deserved it. I'm really socially awkward in real life, and I probably wasn't expressing myself in the right ways and therefore coming off as really egotistical or something, like I needed to be taken down a peg.

Although honestly I'm sure I hated myself, and still do, more than anyone else already so it really was pretty unnecessary. :D

I've never cared about being BNF or other BNF beyond creators of stuff like fan art/fics (if anything, I usually find more often than not the fics tend to be more disappointing - but it could be the hype making me expect more than there is when approaching said fics).

I was one because I use to draw fan art for a niche femslash pairing that somehow got popular and people would refer to my works a lot - but I also didn't keep up with whatever was currently going on in fandoms so dramas would come and go - where during those periods of drama some people reached out to try and ask my opinion on them, but not get a response well after it's over. Not that I was ignoring them, but I usually only check online stuff ever few days and most of it I spend either posting, downloading fics to read offline or catching up on youtube.

Folks do seem a lot more obsessed with BNF in recent years tho.

(CWA)

Okay, so I was the BNF in a very tiny pairing fandom back in the early aughts? When I really knew I was the BNF was I had friends who went to cons and they'd ask cosplayers who were in that fandom's costumes about me and they'd know my name. "Oh, yeah, I've read her stories. What is she like really?"

My joke was I needed stickers.

By this point, I was writing most the fic, I ran the OTP LJ community, did the yearly awards, and about the only thing I hadn't done was write the OTP's shipping manifesto. People knew what day I was posting and gave me good comments about "oh it's today and I had to come check today for your story."

I burnt out eventually. I felt I was carrying the fandom. So, I kind of stepped back and stopped posting. Fortunately, I wasn't involved in any heavy wank or scandals.

It shaped how I interact online definitely. I try not to put out any opinions I wouldn't share with my grandmother. Or stand behind. If I'm wrong, I apologize and try to do better. Always finish your stories before posting. I still fall for the "I don't want a serious answer even though I'm asking the question" thing though. Too much of a "mama bear."

Now, I do plan to take most the world building I did for that fandom and put it into my solar punk story. If people figure it out, which I doubt, I can go "yes, you caught me. Want a cookie?" But it was over a decade ago now. So, I doubt anyone is going to really care much.

There's two types of BNFs - soeone who produces popular content and someone who's social and shares quality content.
My RL friend and roommate has been a BNF in several fandoms. I don't have many friends and we've been in the same fandoms a few times so we're fairly close. Being in the same fandoms've been awesome.

How did you feel about the status?
I think she enjoyed the feeling of achievement and fandom drama. She also made a few RL friends, some of which she met and still talks to.

She's truly interested in others. For example she sent some money to her fandom friend who got cought in a warzone. She also talks to people via messangers about non fandom related matters. Skype, etc. She spends a lot of time on her hobbies to the extent of ignoring her RL obligations. She strives to improve he fan works.

Why did she stop being a BNF?
She difted away to new fandoms.

I entertained an idea of becoming a BNF myself a few times. However my writing sucks, and I don't mean fics. Witing in general and expressing myself. Also it's too time consuming.

I was a kind of BNF in the Buffy fandom and a bit in the Supernatural fandom ages ago. I didn't really think I was, but people told me I was, and I got rec'ed a lot. Basically, for me, it meant i got a lot of hits and comments on my LJ posts, and people wanted to know my opinions about fic and whatnot, and could always spark a lot of discussion and comments in a meta post.

It was fun because I loved the interaction and conversation, loved having discussions about canon and fanon and such, loved having the writers that *i* admired actually read my stuff.

My writing drive, sadly, slowed way way way down, and almost stopped while I struggled to finish a huge J2 fic, and by the time I was finally done with that (and moving into the Captain America fandom), my 'status' was pretty much back to background person.

I'm a semi BNF in my ship, which is weird? People message me all the time talking about how I was their introduction to the fandom or how my headcanon posts shaped their early fandoming, or other things like that. This one person keeps messaging me any time I reblog anything of hers (and I do a lot because her stuff is amazing and frankly way better than anything I've ever done) because I guess I was the first thing she read in the fandom and helped introduce her to writing. Honestly only thing I care about is that I'm happy my writing makes people happy.

I think I mostly became I BNF because I was one of the first big proponents for a non-abusive take on the OTP. The big fic for the pairing at the time was a very abusive take on it, and while that was my first introduction to the ship, I quickly realized that this was not how I saw them at all. The main big reason being that I didn't feel like my favorite character would stay in an abusive relationship because he's an utter arrogant narcissist who wouldn't put up with being abused. Anyway, I started posting headcanons about this character and the ship and then wrote fics of my own. And my stuff just took off.

The ship has really taken off since then, and I'm not as big a deal as I once was (in large part because I don't post nearly as much as I used to). But people still know me in the fandom.

I was a BNF at a small forum dedicated to a really popular celebrity a very long time ago.

I realized I was a BNF when new members would comment in threads my friends and I would be active in and tell us that they miss out on the fun when we all are online together and even tell us straight up that they want to be part of our friend circle.
Also, when it came to my fics, I knew some of my fics had higher engagement/readership than most other fics. I'd also get DMs from fans of my fics requesting for all sorts of things in regards to the fanfics I wrote (can I do a certain ship? can I do a Gangster AU? if I need an OC can I create the OC in their likeness?).
Oh and also a big indicator was when the fandom would begin to pick up lingo/jokes that my friend group and I created or used a lot. Most times it would grow organically. We didn't do those things in anticipation of it blowing up and being a hit with the rest of the fandom. We would mess around and try to make each other laugh and next thing we know "wait for see" is the fandom's new slogan.
And there were a lot of haters. There was a period where someone would come along and try to gatekeep on us or someone would try to stir up drama with, "I don't care if I get attacked for this because Lord knows y'all are always 'right' but..." and it would be a dig at us or a bad faith argument against a topic/opinion we were having. The chips tended to fall in my friend group's favor as to "who won the fight".
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Honestly, I tended to play down my status. At the time, I felt like my fellow BNFs were the real "stars" of the fandom, but looking back, I don't believe that to be true anymore. Some of the BNFs were just more into actually building up their rep as "Number 1 BNF" while some of us didn't want it to affect our enjoyment so we just kind of rolled with it all.

The fandom began to lose popularity and a lot of my friends there found new fandoms to join. I stuck around and became a mod, but once I became a mod I knew I wasn't a BNF anymore. It's like being a popular kid at a school and you eventually become the teacher.

Never thought of myself as having been a BNF even though I've been in fandom for decades. I'm mercurial, won't commit to shit if I'm not getting paid for it and don't like more than a few people. There was a time when I actively tried to as I had a squish on this BNF but in retrospect that burnt me out. Thankfully I never looked back. Honestly, interacting online has almost always sucked and I enjoy fandom now because I don't have more than 10 followers in my locked.

Sometimes I think about putting things out there, because I enjoy creating on my free time and hyperfocus to the point of being unable to shut up about my fandoms but... People, bro. Ew.

The closest I may have been to being "popular"... I was kind of well-known for my writings on this one thing, meaning I talked to the popular people regularly but, even so, sticking to my opinions, tastes and thoughts made me more of a niche-inside-a-niche content creator than anything. I'd stick to "gossiping" with a few friends instead of trying to mix and mingle. And I honestly wouldn't have it any other way, because, damn. That was a shitty fandom full of men and I was a young female cosplayer. All in all, a great experience, though, because it made me realize that a) being e-popular at the price of your own opinions and well-being isn't worth it, b) people can be creepy even if you only know them online, c) you have every right of not wanting to talk to men, especially those that are going to think they are right no matter what and d) the best content creators aren't always the most acknowledged. So I don't think I was a BNF but I was popular enough to learn these, which was... great.

[ SECRET POST #5083 ]

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