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salmonthestoryteller · 7 years

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Fandom, Fanfiction and the Good Old Days

Or:

The Journey of a Fanfic Writing, Fandom Old School Fujoshi Lesbian

…who kinda wishes modern fandom would learn to get along…

When I first got involved with fanfiction, which was actually even farther back then my first posted fic on the Pit of Voles (Which was already well before it became known as such), we didn’t have tags. We didn’t even really have ratings at first. We didn’t mark things “mxm rated:m soandsointhealley” or whatever.

We were a smaller group and had our own words and labels. We marked our fics “Slash/Femslash” or “Yaoi/Yuri” if it included it, and didn’t mark at all if there was Het. We labeled it “Lime/Lemon/Full of citrus-y goodness/PWP” if there was sex, and nothing at all if there wasn’t. Unless it was super fluffy. Then it was “WAFF”. I don’t even remember warning for violence, character death, or kinks. Fanfiction was a bit “read at your own risk.”

There was a distinct “don’t like it, don’t read it” belief among us, and trolls who sent flames of the “I hate this couple/kink/fandom - you are a sick person for writing this” variety tended to get their asses banned.

This was both back in the days of yahoo groups, fanfiction mailing lists, and even farther back to Telix and Bulletin boards. For the young ones out there, let me take a moment to explain.

First, fandom was not invented by the world wide web. It existed long before that. Through conventions, fanzines, and computer bulletin boards. Yes, before the world wide web, fans still used computers to connect. As opposed to typing in websites, we connected to our boards through phone numbers.

Boards tended to be fandom specific. Sometimes Genre. Sci-Fi (And we called it Sci-Fi back then none of this “true fans call it Science Fiction” stuff) boards, Fantasy boards, Horror boards, Anime boards, etc. You had a handle you logged in with to post, then you logged off, hung up the call, and dialed up the next board to geek out on a different subject. (And Telemarketers were eeevil. Because they called your phone, broke your connection and your post was lost and you had to retype the whole thing. And did they ever call on a post you typed up in 30 seconds? No, they always called on the ones it took you 20 minutes to type, gdi.)

The only old handle I remember at this point was Echo on a board that was Battlestar Galactica fandom named, but general science fiction and fantasy fandom based. And I only remember because I named myself after my favorite Greek Myth.

Anime especially this was a big deal for. This was my teenage years, so even most fans of regular science fiction and fantasy believed all anime=pr0n.

I discovered anime when my mother rented out a room to a fellow geek friend of my eldest sister. He had some magazines with pieces of Area 88, which I was fascinated by. Then he loaned out a copy of Ranma ½ to us and I fell down the rabbit hole and never climbed back out.

Anime and manga was very hard to come by. Seriously, guys, you don’t even know. We had PO boxes we exchanged recorded vhs through with fellow fans cuz aside from conventions or travelling to Japan, it was not available to buy. I had one copy of Tenchi Muyo’s first episode I got at a convention and nothing else for years. Though one fellow fan hit me up with a recorded vhs of official Tenchi MVs and the VA concert, which still remains one of my fandom treasures.

We also transcribed episodes for each other. That was how I got into and followed numerous series back in my teenage years. Transcribes.

Gosh, I feel old typing all this. Like some little old bitty yelling “Get off my grass!”

I don’t think I got into Yaoi/slash until after the www. Well, no, not exactly true. I remember peeking at the folded inserts in the RightStuf Catalogs and dreaming of buying Fake and Kizuna, but never daring to explore my interest until after the www when Mailing Lists and Yahoo groups was a thing. I remember when Fake was first sold at bookstores, sneaking over on my lunch break at work to buy each book as it came out, and hiding them in my purse the rest of the day. (I was lucky I didn’t work for a company that did bag checks back then.) They were kept in a shoe box under my bed and away from my roommate’s prying eyes.

Cuz while anime fans were slowly gaining acceptance, slash and yaoi fans were still the black sheep of the family. We may have claimed the Fujoshi title for our own over the years, but never forget it was very much an insult when first invented. I still know plenty of anime fans that look down at us.

I am kinda mad at some of my fellow lgbt folks who are bashing the yaoi/slash/yuri/femslash fandoms. The first yuri I ever read was pretty obviously some straight guy’s lesbian fantasy, but I didn’t go around screaming about wrecking my dreams of societal norms or what-not. Hell, I was just glad there was anything out there at all for someone coming into her own as a lesbian to read.

Many of the best known lgbt films and movies were made long after my sixteen year old self realized she wasn’t going boy crazy like her school friends, and those films were hard to come by in early years as well. So instead I got involved in slash/femslash/yaoi/yuri fanfiction and bought yaoi manga, and bitorrented yuri manga - cuz it was even harder to come by. And, yah, some of it sucked. Some of it was weird. But you can say the same for any genre, and especially any fanfiction of any genre, out there. I will never apologize for my love of these fandoms.

“Don’t like it, don’t read it.”

I mean, hate a specific show/book/etc all you want. Rant about it, in fact, I am good for it. I know I have. (You do not want to give me permission to say anything at all about Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey. Or the food served in the Hunger Game Series, cuz I kinda like the series but omg, the food is so off basis for… NM. Geez, see what happens when you get me going?)

What you do not do is come onto a post someone made about loving something and proceed to flame it and call it names and the poster names and generally be an all around Troll.

And yes, the modern fans could stand to learn a lesson or two about not arguing back with you people. As we used to say:

“Don’t feed the trolls.”

Another favorite:

“Flames will be used to keep me warm at night.”

But is it really so hard to click that back button instead?

And, yes, I am aware a few of my fellow Fujoshis can be obnoxious and also need to learn to not troll. But basing your opinion of us on one internet troll is like the old “Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Gaming/Anime/etc” Geeks are all losers who live in their parents basements trope. (As if these weren’t expensive hobbies in need of seriously hard earned cash to maintain!)

But really, rinse and repeat:

“Don’t feed the trolls.”

Can’t we all just get along?

#fandom #fanfiction #oldschool #fujoshi #rant #yaoi #yuri #slash #femslash #anime #manga #scifi #fantasy #geekdom #can't we all just get along?#salmon rants #salmonrants #fudanshi

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