#fanfiction history

[theficlistpodcast]

In case you weren't at New York Comic Con...settle in, class, for today's lecture - An Abridged (Unhinged) History of Fan-Fiction, with your esteemed panel of "experts", The Fic List crew and Professor Alpha herself, @icaruspendragon!

Click here to follow along with our slideshow

We had such an amazing time and are so thankful to everyone who attended our panel! You made our first time at NYCC an experience we'll never forget! ❤❤❤

#fanfiction history #fanfiction #fanfic #fandom #fandom history #fandom culture #nycc #nycc 2023 #new york comic con #youtube #the fic list #fic list fam

[infestedguest]

On a whim I went on a quest to find out how many crossover crackfics of Fallout New Vegas and Friends (1994) exist, and was devastated to come up completely empty handed. Are you seriously telling me that in the 13 years both pieces of media have been in the public consciousness nobody wrote a crossover crackfic?

#the untapped comedic potential… #yes I checked FFN #yes I checked LiveJournal #I even checked w*ttp*d which is insane because I hate that site #I also even checked quotev’s fanfic section which is basically w*ttp*d but smaller and with a slightly less abysmal user interface #I refuse to believe that not a single one was ever written this is the exact type of wacky bs 2012 crackfic thrived on #maybe a few existed but were lost to the purges #anna talking about stuff #fallout #fallout new vegas #new vegas #fnv #benny fnv #benny gecko #friends 1994 #chandler bing #fanfic history #fanfiction history #fanfic #fanfiction #fanfic meta #fanfiction meta #crack fic #crackfic

[talkinfanfic]

I'VE FINALLY MADE IT, MA!!

Some great citizen of fandom has created a Fanlore page for Talkin' Fanfic!! AND for my prestigious and prolific cohort, @fanficmaverickpodcast !!

Talkin' Fanfic - Fanlore

The Fanfic Maverick Podcast - Fanlore

Thank you, whoever you are!!! (If this is YOU let me know, I would love to thank you!)

#fanfiction #talkin' fanfic #fanfiction podcast #fannish podcast #the fanfic maverick podcast #fanfiction history #fanfic #fanlore #fandom history #ao3 #otw

[fan-studies-historian]

"A Fragment out of Time" by Diane Marchant

First ever Slash Smut Fanfiction published. It can be found in the Fanzine "Grup" issue 3 1975.

Source:

#sources #fragment out of time #fandom history #star trek #spirk #kirk/spock #slash #smut #fanfiction #fanfiction history #slash fanfiction #shipping

[sapphia]

Speaking of copying and plagarising and all that good stuff, how do we feel about the copying and distributing of fan content as a preservation method?

Fanfiction is an old enough medium that we've seen huge losses of content only preserved through site caches and saved stories, which is a true loss to fandom history. This is the reason why I've left up the vast majority of my fanfics, despite no longer being able to take pride in the skill of my writing from a time so very long ago: it's a little timecapsule into not just my own history but fandom and fanfiction history. Fanfiction is absolutely all about trends and in-things, be that the content it's writing about or fanfiction concept trends, and one day we're absolutely going to want to remember that people were writing these sorts of stories en-masse.

Although there are already many author's whose work we've likely lost because they've self-deleted or removed for censorship over the past 30 years (literally, that's how old ff.net is), we've yet to see the biggest total-time-capsule loss that could happen to fanfiction history--the mass-deletion or wipe of ff.net content from the post-fanfic boom (such as if the site is ever killed or if the administrators do another largescale purge as with the M+ bans and subsequent porn crackdowns). Some stories have been preserved through reposting by the authors, and some have been saved by fans who downloaded them to archive or for their own personal offline use.

Not all of these have been reposted--some day in the future there will be a lot of work put in to trying to trace down and preserve many of the pillarstone fics of the fanfiction communities from these times. And it's crazy to think that some of my fics, with their modest reviews and low hitcounts, are a part of this history, whether it's because someone out there someday will desperately what to reread a crackfic about a naruto character reading other characters bedtime stories, or because I was one of the many people writing harry potter fanfiction tropes that grew and evolved and developed into other things that we are still seeing in modern fanfiction today.

And even further into the future--how do we feel about reposting AO3 and other fanfiction works now? Sure, AO3 seems safe at present, but it won't always be, and many of the authors from its early years have orphaned, or worse, deleted, their immensely-popular stories.

When does copying and plagarising and reposting works without permission move into archiving? There are many fanfictions from the 2000s we will never recover because no one would have ever dreamt to copy them and put them anywhere else without the author's permission. That's a horrible thing to do to an author! But you simply cannot rely on an author to preserve their own work if you are wanting to ensure it will be available for any purpose in the future, be that research or discussion or consumption or any other reason. The author may not be alive. They may not be aware anything is happening to their story at all. They may be the writer of My Immortal and turn out to be a horrible person who deleted everything and likely would have deleted her base fic too had she had access to the account to do it.

When do we take works out of the hands of authors and say: This. This is important enough for us to save, whether you want it or not?

When does plagarism become preservation?

#hbomberguy #plagarism #fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction history #fandom history

[starjones-on-ao3]

Smut fic in the early 2000 : "You belong to me, little one".

Smut fic in the 2020s : "Can I touch you there?" and "Is this still okay?"

We've come a long way. Young women of today actually make consent and check-ins part of their fantasies, part of their perfect man's ethic in bed.

I didn't even know what consent was back then and I suspect many others like me just went along with whatever a man did to them in bed unless it was something that was an absolute no-no.

#fanfiction history #fanfic writing #fanfiction writer #smut fanfiction #ao3 writer #Ao3 #consent #millenials #gen z #gen x #Millenials vs gen z #gen x vs millenials #gen x vs gen z

[loz-tearsofahomo]

Does anyone in the marauders fandom know what the first jegulus fanfic published on a site is? I've recently been looking for it but I can't find anything that DEFINITELY predates 2005. On ao3 there is a republished fanfic that says that the original was written in 2004 but I can't find any evidence of one from around that time! The author of the fic written in 2005 references themselves in the context of Jegulus as a True Colours shipper and I'm wondering if literally anyone from around that time remembers a niche Regulus/James community (particularly on fanfic.net?) identifying with that. I'm thinking it may have existed, but much of fanfic.net history was caught in the crossfire of the 2002 and 2012 purges.

Just wondering because of my interest in fandom history!

#marauders #hp #jegulus #fanfiction history #marauders era #marauders fanfiction #jegulus fanfiction #starchaser #harry potter

[ffn-archivists-corner]

The situation of fanfiction.net

(Still Work in Progress)

So, if anyone has been around these few past days, new posts about the shaky situation of ffnet (or its outright imminent collapse) has been doing the rounds of Tumblr.

It’s easy in situation like this, while dealing with the threats of something loved (or at least, an important part of our fandoms history), to start panicking.

It’s also true that there are millions of stories on ffnet (without even considering the ones on fictionpress), or try to organize something ahead of time may be the best solution.

In this post, I’ll try to recap what we know so that we can all be aware of the time we had and what we might want to do.

(NOTE: I try to tag whoever mentioned it, but finding each people in the long list of comments it’s a bit difficult; if you want to be mentioned, just let me know where you said it and I will update this post as soon as I can!)

Updated on date 2022/09/21

even if with hiccups, the site IS STILL WORKING (more or less) people manage to post/update their fics or receive reviews/email from the site (even if there are also the people who said the emails have stopped coming in the last months). It’s also true, though, that in the last months there have been cases of days-long delay in this (the one of the last few days is the one which sparked this new fear for the site collapse). I am not personally on ffnet (I may have check 2-3 fics in the last five years there), but I read posts here or around the web about this;

as has already been pointed out by a few, the domain seems registered until September 2028 (link, link). I am not an expert on this, so I don’t know if a website could collapse due to negligence before its domain could expire or not;

as @cuentaprovisional mentioned, new fandoms have been added in the last months. It may mean that there’s still someone lurking around (but it may best if someone who knows about these things could add their two cents);

it seems (need source though), that there has been cases of fic removed for breaking the TOS in the last year. If true, it may imply that there’s still someone lurking around;

on both sites homepage, it seems like there have been recent updates from Twitter. As a matter of fact, they’re misleading in their timestamps. If you click anyone of them, you’ll see that on Twitter they’re date back to January 2021 or even before. And that the last message there date back to September 2021. Even if there’s still some mods out there, it’s still troubling that they have gone radio silence since then;

a volunteer of OpenDoors (can’t find anymore the person who said this) mentioned that it may be difficult if not outright impossible for them to do something about it, both due to the sheer mole of fanfics and the fact that a request should be sent by the owners of the site;

UPDATE: as linked by @tante-bete and @haruka89​ (and maybe someone else?) there are repack of ffnet (and I think of fictionpress too?) saved on archive.org (link, link). The good news it’s that they could really be helpful in reducing the work that needs to be done, the bad news is that they seem to be quite unwieldy due to their dimensions. There are people looking into it.

That said, as @ferenofnopewood explained perfectly in their post:

“There is no FF.net lead mission to archive or save it. There is no "I hope FF.net's staff contacts AO3 so the fic can be archived." If we want it saved, it is up to US to do it, and the time to do it is NOW.

Even if you literally go in there and pick a fic at random, EVERYTHING HELPS. Small fandoms, large fandoms, fandoms you're sure somebody else has already covered - doesn't matter. Do it anyway.

Please help. This isn't a huge and co-ordinated effort. There's no phone tree. If you are reading this, I am begging you personally to help. Even if you only archive ten things - THAT HELPS!”

In this vein, I decided to create this sideblog, so that we can try to coordinate and help each other to backup and save the history of fandoms hidden in there. You’re free to download and save whatever fic you love or want, but if you decide to help backup a whole fandom (or a huge part of it), let me know and I will add you in the sections in the sidebar.

P.S. If you think I need to add something or clarify something better, just let me know and I make the necessary changes as soon as I can.

#ffnet #ffn #ffn.net #fanfiction.net #fanfiction history

[womgi]

Naruto is weird in many ways. Especially in terms of worldbuilding. speaking as someone who was into fanfiction from the 2000s, there was so much that changed in the elements of Naruto that people writing fanfiction were constantly having to change their frameworks, or have to put the rather ignoble looking tag of "non canon compliant" at some point. I have sat through so many author notes talking about "the manga/anime did this, so as of volume/chapter, my story is officially an AU". And there was a lot of it. And that's not talking about the shitload of retconning that Kishimoto just loves. Story stuck? Retcon. Need to escalate? Retcon. Anything at all? Retcon.

Remember when the Kyuubi was a demon? As in a full blown mythological demon rather than what it ended up as? Fanfiction went all in on playing with mythology. The whole Inari business, the Fox summoning contracts, the constant and surprisingly persistent use of "kit" as the pronoun of choice from inmate to warden...all of that was fairly ubiquitous. And back then naruto fanfics were much more imaginative too. The worst villain was Orochimaru, that terrifying amoral mad scientist who was willing to let the world burn for his immortality. He got nerfed.

Or Naruto's father? We all thought he was some guy named Arashi, because of that one panel with the name Arashi Kazama in the Toad summoning scroll. The Fourth Hokage was called that name for a long time, enough to have tons of fanfiction about it at a time when naruto being the Fourth Hokage's son was just a fan theory.

I will always find the idea that we all "knew" Tobi was Obito long before the official announcement funny.

The early speculation about what the other villages were like were rather interesting as well. I mean, consider what we learn about other villages from a manga release timeline. We hear about kiri through Zabuza and his posse. Kirigakure became this villainous, murderous place. We see Suna through the chuunin exams and they're basically this weak village which get owned. Hell, their Kage gets taken out by a random missing nin and they don't even realize! Grass is represented by a team that basically exists to give Orochimaru fleshsuits to infiltrate the Chunin exams with. Ame, they're assholes - like, Hanzo probably hadn't even been conceptualized as a character yet, so they are at this point one-dimensional assholes who exist to get beaten up by the Konoha troupe. We learn about Kumo through Neji's tragic backstory. And we learn that Kumo is a bunch of backstabbing honorless villains. And this shaped how the fans saw the other villages.

Like take Kumo. By the end, Kumo was basically Ninja USA. Militarized, aggressive, and expansionist. Outside of that they also had a lot of Black people, which is an interesting choice for a japanese ninja universe, if a welcome one. That kumo did not exist when Neji's backstory was being belted out to all and sundry. That was a much later invention when Kishimoto got baked(or whatever he does when he gets writers block). Yet, by the end, they seem to be Kishimoto's go to for ninja awesome. Oh, the other villages have badass characters? Hey, look at Kumo! They have lasers! and the stuff of original ninja Jesus! That do cool shit! and their leader is so badass he cuts off his hand without looking at explosions! Lots of Kumo wank in the fanfiction. Or maybe it's just where my searches led.

Or take Oto, sound village. I remember a time when Sound village being a Konoha copy because of Orochimaru being a Konoha missing nin was a thing. They had the whole village with tower in the middle and everything. Sadly, canon has forever robbed us of the classic scene of Orochimaru drowning under paperwork. Why Kishimoto why?

And remember when Itachi was a terrifying villain instead of a tragic hero? I remember reading fics that made Itachi a terrifying force of nature, a sadistic mofo that made satan look like a putz. And then Kishimoto was like "nah" and everyone was suddenly "I heart Itachi! UwU!" or something.

Akatsuki as a whole has gone through a wild ride. When Itachi showed up, there was so much speculation about what they were gonna use the jinchuuriki for. Tailed beast WMDs were fun reads, if terrifying to imagine. Zetsu was a grass nin. Deidara ended up Naruto's brother in so many fics. So many fics that are now forgotten because Akatsuki got a canon backstory.

It's kind of funny how the further we went along the Naruto timeline, the more restrictive fanfiction became. We all became collectively chained by canon. Plots became more streamlined, and frankly dull. The imagination just disappeared. It felt like every second fic was basically "Naruto has a bloodline" and after some very energetic academy time and wave mission the story disappears into the abyss of dead fanfics. I'm just saying, if fanfics rose up from the grave, kancolle style, because of grudges against their authors, we'd have a shitload of underdeveloped Narutos with all sorts of weird bloodlines.

Hell, until Dreaming of Sunshine came along, Self Inserts were just about done. Imagine that for a second. That the most self indulgent type of fanfiction ever, the one everyone at least imagines writing, was an endangered species! And DoS was one of the more canon restricted fics ever, carefully plotting out canon while having long introspective monologues. It was a wild time.

The crossovers and smut are a different topic entirely. I've not forgotten those, but not really something a random Tumblr post can touch reasonably well.

We have Boruto now, love it or hate it. And personally I hate it, though I don't begrudge those who don't. My personal issues stem from how they did the original characters dirty. In a Doylist sense, I understand why, considering that if the older generation was the terrifyingly competent bunch they had become, then Boruto would by necessity end up as slice of life with chakra. But the way they completely twisted their characterisation was just sad. That scene where those rookie nine jump in like chumps and get stomped in between frames? Who wrote that shit? And why?

And worst of all, Shino has a toaster of all things for a mask!

In the OG naruto series, the older generation then was shown as impressive people of their own. There was respect there. Anyone remember the Allied Moms? The younger generation had come up to the fore because they had grown into splendid shinobi, children who had grown to surpass their parents, not because their parents had become nerfed. Why does Boruto need to make the characters we love incompetent to make the new generation look better? But I digress

Naruto now is a different beast. It's had time to settle in, mature as a series. The sequel has made things different, but the fanfiction still exists online, showing a side of the fandom that saw it evolve. In the forgotten depths of the interweb are splendid stories of the past, prose written by dedicated and talented fans who crafted amazing tales. Who remembers those days? Who remembers those fics? Do we? Do their authors?

I'll still read Naruto fanfiction. It's a good chunk of my life I've invested there. Call it sunk cost fallacy if you must. But some part of me misses a different era, when Naruto was the frontier, and everyday was a new fanfic, a new adventure.

#naruto #naruto fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfiction history #random rant #nostalgia

[trinscabbage]

THE I AM GROOT FIC ISNT MOST KUDOS’ED ANYMORE???

A FUCKING HARRY POTTER FIC TOOK IT OVER.

do ur fucking part and kudos the rightful owner of first place

#harry potter #i am groot fic #ao3 #archive of our own #most liked fic #hp #groot #i am groot #fanfic #fanfiction #fanfiction history #poll #my post #posts that have 10k to me #tumblr history #hp fanfic

[theficlistpodcast]

Featuring the extraordinary @icaruspendragon! Full panel below! Enjoy!

#fanfiction history #fandom history #fanfiction #fanfic #fic #fandom #fandom culture #nycc #nycc 2023 #the fic list #tiktok #another queue bites the dust #Youtube

[infestedguest]

You know what? Lost fanfiction counts as lost media. I don’t care if you think it’s stupid and unimportant, somebody took the time to write a story (with zero monetary incentive) which they clearly cared about, and it’s very likely that at least a few other people did as well. All art is worth preserving, even if it doesn’t have any value to you personally.

#this isn’t about works voluntarily deleted by the author that’s an entirely different conversation #this is specifically about works lost to the purges or because the websites they were hosted on no longer exist #like in the late 90s - early 00s there was no main website for hosting fics there were a bajillion little ones #and nowhere near all of those websites are accessible today and a lot of them weren’t archived somewhere else before their sites went down #seriously #fanfic #fanfiction #fanfic meta #fanfiction meta #fanfic history #fanfiction history #lost media #anna talking about stuff

[stardust2003]

A History of Oasis Fanfiction

I'm calling this "A History" rather than "The History" because this is from my point of view. I know I could've done more research on this topic and dug way deeper into it than I have but decided not to. So, I'll be sharing a history of Oasis Fanfiction as it pertains to my history with it but hopefully others in the fandom can still relate to it.

I've been a fan of Oasis since 2005. Long story short, I fell in love with the Beatles in 1999/2000 followed by Jet in 2004 followed by Oasis in 2005. There were other bands elsewhere in that mix but Jet and Oasis have always been the most important ones to me after the Beatles. To me, they both sound like a modern day Beatles in their own unique ways.

Despite being a fan for so long, I didn't discover the Oasis Fanfiction Community until 2015 on the day after I saw Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds in concert. Still buzzing after the show, I googled Oasis fanfiction which led me to the Tumblr page of @heresthestorymorningglory. Their story, "The Girl In The Dirty Shirt" blew me away for so many reasons with the biggest one being how they included real life events into it. Up until then, the fanfiction I read in other fandoms was fluffy and maybe included some real life stuff but not in the way this author did.

In addition to Tumblr, the author also had a Wattpad account. I'd never heard of Wattpad before but decided to join it after it prompted me to do so while looking at Oasis fanfiction on there. This led me to so many other great authors (like @Katy15307) who wrote so many great stories and inspired me to write my own.

I never thought I'd write my own story because I didn't think I'd be able to write something as good as the stories I was reading. But in November of 2015, I finally mustered up the courage to write and post "To Light A Bitter Fuse" and haven't looked back since. It's been a fun journey so far and I've met a lot of wonderful people over the years because of it.

That brings me to my next topic: the Oasis Fanfiction Community. If you've read my author's notes on Wattpad (I leave them out of my posts on Archive of Our Own), you know I talk about this a lot. But it's a subject that always strikes me and makes me wonder.

The Oasis Fanfiction Era from about 2015 to 2017 at least on Wattpad seemed like a pretty active time period. I'm sure this included the couple years before it as my two favorite stories by my two favorite authors were first started in 2013 and 2014, respectively (I believe). I met a lot of great people back then who not only provided lovely support on my stories but became my friends as we gushed about our shared love of Oasis amongst other things.

Sadly, it seems like a lot of people have come and gone since then. I could make a whole list of people who I really wish I could reconnect with. It always makes me wonder what happened to them when all of a sudden they just stopped reading, writing, commenting, voting/giving kudos, etc. Did they leave the fandom and move on to another one? Did life get in the way and they just don't have time for writing and reading fanfiction anymore?

When I first discovered "The Girl In The Dirty Shirt" it was so entertaining to follow the author's Tumblr for their almost weekly updates as well as their Q and A videos and general interactions with their fans. But eventually that came to an end also which was sad to see happen.

I know we all have lives outside of writing and reading fanfiction. So, I can understand if someone gives it up because of this. It's just so sad to see people go and not get a chance to say goodbye.

This post from @coolcassie really says a lot: https://coolcassie.tumblr.com/post/188829997432

There are still Oasis fanfiction readers and writers out there though. Some old, some new which gives me hope this fandom is gonna live forever (see what I did there?). And maybe this post will bring people out of the woodwork long enough to at least say, "Hey! How's it going? I've really missed talking to you!"

To anyone reading this, thank you for being a friend. Not only if you've read and enjoyed any of my stories (and thank you so much if you have!) but also for indulging in our shared love of the Gallagher Brothers with me amongst other things!

#liam gallagher #noel gallagher #original female character #oasis band #noel gallagher's high flying birds #beady eye #fanfiction #fanfiction history #fanfiction community

[talkinfanfic]

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/811/the-one-place-i-cant-go/act-three-2

This American Life’s recent segment on fanfiction!

Tamsyn Muir is featured, a published Sci-if fantasy author of “Gideon the Ninth” and the Locked Tomb series.

Here, she laments how becoming published essentially locked her out of interacting with the community that fist fostered her art and voice— fanfiction writers!!

#fanfiction #talkin' fanfic #fanfiction podcast #this american life #fanfiction history #tamsyn muir #gideon the ninth

[snowviolettwhite]

Does anyone else miss the loads of fandom fanfiction kinkmemes that were on livejournal and dreamwidth?

#fandom culture #fandom #fandom history #fanfiction history #fanfiction culture

[lockea]

So thinking about that one post talking about AO3 and how important ephemera is to Historians (Ea-Nasir's hate mail) got me thinking about two reasons fanfiction preservation is important beyond just fanfiction preservation being important.

The first is the glimpse into people's lives that are offered by Author's Notes. Author's Notes (ANs) are written at or near the time of the chapter publication and offer a glimpse into the feelings and experiences of that person at that moment.

In a recent update I read, the author announced they had just passed the Bar to be a lawyer. Rereading an older fanfiction the author mentioned their joy at the birth of their nephew. Shortly after Trump's election in 2016 I read a fic where the author noted they began writing this, quit political, fic to cope with the stressful new reality of the president of the US. My very first fanfiction was posted to FF.Net in Jan 2002 and was written as a direct response to the feelings I felt when my father returned home from his first deployment following 9/11.

Anne Frank is not a historically significant person because of any real influence she had on the global sphere during her life. She's a historically significant person because she was an avid diarist during a historically significant period of history who told a story future generations needed to hear.

The second reason preserving fanfiction is important is because fanfiction is an excellent litmus test for the prevailing beliefs and social mores of the Fandom community at the time. Fanfiction is overwhelmingly made up of female, queer, BIPOC, and other marginalized voices. Mainstream media has always been slower to adapt to the social mores that fanfiction authors embrace, but even we have our history.

Remember when having two characters of the same sex kiss conferred an adult rating on a work of fanfiction? That was once a thing, ya'll.

Consider the Open Doors project Boys in Chains. It was a slash centric slave fic focused archive that ran in the early naughts. I happen to like Power Exchange fic (which is an expansive category that includes slave fic) so I read BIC when it ran and recently reread some fic on AO3. Boy Howdy have we changed. We were extremely permissive of May-December relationships in slash back in 2004, for quite a few reasons I could spend a whole post on alone, but suffice to say our relationship with slash changed and we became less permissive of these types of relationships.

Again, because I track the tag, I'm aware of when the "Slavery" tag dropped out of AO3's top 100 tags (around 2018 iirc) because we as a community no longer engage with those topics with the same attitudes we had in the past. Given some of the ways it was engaged with in the past, this is not necessarily a negative, as we've also become more sensitive to things like the very real pain these topics can cause our communities of color. Given the BLM movement and the recognition of Juneteenth (the end of Slavery in the US) as a national holiday, the falling out of this tag nicely correlates with these events in our history.

LGBTQ+ themes emerge first in fanfiction and then are adopted by the mainstream. We saw this with slash and gay, lesbian, and bisexual relationships. We are currently seeing it with transgender and asexual characters now, with the character studies and experiences found in fanfiction slowly finding their way to mainstream media.

Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the parent non profit that runs AO3 also runs an academic journal, Transformative Works and Cultures, where much of this type of history is being analyzed and preserved for future use. The Fanlore wiki, another OTW project, also works to document Fandom history that is not necessarily fanwork. Things like the amazing Ms.Scribe drama, for example.

Anyway, now that I've rambled long enough you probably stopped reading, here is the TL;DR Fanfiction preservation matters because it is an insight into the community around it at various times in history and reveals our relationship with and in opposition to mainstream culture at that time.

#archive of our own #organization for transformative works #ao3 #otw #fanfiction history #lockea rambles #long post #cw slavery