a very quick signal boost

[seventhe]

I've been meaning to post this for a while, and I wasn't around a computer much this weekend and didn't want to post it from my phone - I wanted to at least think about the words a little bit.

I use AO3; I like AO3, I like it a lot. I have friends who are on the OTW Board, who are involved in Tag Wrangling, who do other things I only vaguely know and understand. So I'm not really involved here - only peripherally.

But... that's kind of the problem (as I say in my comment), because I don't know much about AO3 or the OTW, and they really only appear in my personal fandom circle as "Here's a place you can post that has fixed most structural problems other sites have." They're not present, they're not visible, they're not welcoming. There's no community on AO3, and community is a big part of fandom.

And that sucks.

But it wouldn't be half as bad if I didn't keep hearing faint strains of, but we want you! We want to expand to tiny fandoms, to video games and anime, to non-Western fandoms; we want to involve you. But they don't, and they haven't, and it isn't like Final Fantasy fandom is dead, I compile ff_press once a week, I run ff_exchange; it sure isn't dead and it keeps getting revived every time Squeenix wants another $30 from my wallet.

But they say this, and do nothing; and then other things happen that really make me feel strange and unwelcome.

I know my Circle/FList is full of non-Western media fans: Final Fantasy fans, Chrono Trigger fans, other video game fans; anime fans, Sailor Moon and Cowboy Bebop and I don't even know what else fans; even JPop and KPop and other things that just aren't represented at all on the AO3, that don't see it anywhere in their fandoms, in their daily fannish functioning. We aren't there. A lot of us got mad/hurt/upset at Yuletide this year, too. And we still aren't there. And if you look at their latest poll... we still aren't there.

And so to you guys, I'd like to invite some conversation. You're welcome to do it in this entry if you're more comfortable with me - I'll pass it on to the relevant post. But you're also welcome to do it in a more appropriate place if you can please (a) remember to keep this person's fannish and Board identities separate, as they desire; and (b) are respectful to someone who put a lot of thought, time, and work into compiling a really interesting, informative, helpful, and - you know what - downright painful entry.

I offer up here, for perusal, The OTW Server Poll and Fannish Diversity.

Thoughts welcome, and thank you to the Board member who took the time to put this public, transparent, honest document together.

Comments

Re: Hmm.

[amberswansong.livejournal.com]

With all due respect, one of the central organizing ideas of the OTW is that fan-created works are legitimate and should be taken as seriously as "original" art forms are, so saying "these people are taking fandom way too seriously" comes across as a little disingenuous. The argument includes the idea that fandom should be a legitimate place to play, because people have been writing fanfiction for as long as people have been writing (ex: Milton's great poem Paradise Lost is nothing more or less than bible fanfic), and the concept of "intellectual property" and ideas belonging to corporations rather than the communities that inspired them is extremely new, historically speaking.

Additionally, while Star Trek was the first big fandom, and it's certainly filled with its infighting and age-old wars and Fans Behaving Badly - but so is any big fandom. The idea that I Should Be Taken Seriously Because of My Advanced Degree isn't rooted in ST fandom, it's rooted in academia. OTW's focus on Western fandom and fannish "legitimacy," IMHO, has much more to do with the white upper-class academic approach to a problem, rather than a bias for any Trek. A bunch of academics got together to solve what they perceived as a problem with the acceptability of fanworks, the execution of existing fanwork archive sites, etc, and they... wrote papers. And talked. And they did a bunch of work to create The Perfect Fanfic Archive, and stood back and went, "Look what we made!" And they told all their friends - who were also largely white, upper/middle class, educated, and - probably most importantly - older.

J-fandoms are largely skewed toward the young, probably as a combination of the fact that it's (at least perceived as being) "cartoon" based, sold at comic book stores, and with mostly young protagonists. It's hard to be an adult J-fan IRL - every time I walk into the comic book store when they're having an anime showing, I feel either like a giant creeper or like I should be yelling at everyone to get off my lawn. Plus, I'm 35, I'm not interested in shows where the protagonist is in high school. You can stand around the water cooler at the office and have a serious conversation about Lost; not so much about Naruto. In the same way that I'm not interested in a protagonist in high school, the 16-year-old J-fan isn't interested in shows where the protagonist is a 40-year-old divorced guy, or whatever. (Obviously there are exceptions, but this is how the demographic skews.)

Re: Hmm.

[amberswansong.livejournal.com]

...and then LJ ate the other half of my comment. *facepalm*

Short version: a) Academics don't know how to advertise. b) Random fans can't find the AO3, because of point a (I googled "fanfic" in December and it wasn't on the first three pages of results) and c) if they find it, they don't join, because you need an invitation and you're not going to get comments anyway, so why bother?

There was more, and it was AWESOME. I promise.

Re: Hmm.

[salarta.livejournal.com]

c) if they find it, they don't join, because you need an invitation and you're not going to get comments anyway, so why bother?

Also as I said in a different comment, AO3 comes off as if by default certain types of fics aren't accepted or desired there even with good spelling and grammar, creative sentence structure, etc.

Re: Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

Now this is an interesting point you bring up. I'm also in the 30-something fan group, and I used to moderate at a comic site that was mostly fan-driven by the 12-18-year-old group. In part the younger audience is what makes up the bulk of internet fandom today, if just because the younger audience is more internet-saavy (and has more time to be internet-saavy) than the older audience.

When I think of it this way, I can understand the OTW group having this sort of bias against the "younger" fan genres - the "Narutards" as I like to affectionately - OK, that was sarcastic - call them. I can tell from my own experience that a lot of these younger genres with younger themes and younger authors leads to the creation of sub-par works, if just for the simple fact that diversity, reality and life experience are lacking in what are basically an even split between romance and action stories coming out of those genres.

Not to say that there isn't a serious fanbase hidden within those groups too. I mean, I just have to point at myself here for that, haha! But then the question becomes, how do you siphon off the fandom elite, without sounding elitist? I don't think you can.

As an aside, I love learning, and I don't think the term ELITE is a derogatory one at all, in fact, I think of it as a compliment. But elitISM is a different beast entirely. I hate basing the legitimacy of things off of values such as higher education and the degrees associated with it. Perhaps this is just rub off from the tendency of politicians to demand that their PhDs be recognized to make them the more valid, intelligent candidate than the opposition, when in actuality the best politicians I have seen are usually the ones lacking the titles. For me, it seems a bit elitist to mention the boards' degrees of education in their writeups - what does that have to do with the price of rice in China?

As for taking fandom as a serious genre... see reply to Salarta about that for more detail, but I sometimes wonder if it really is a good idea to do that - especially in the case of women, I think it siphons off talent from the pool of original authors out there.

Thanks for the reply!

Re: Hmm.

[xerne.livejournal.com]

it seems a bit elitist to mention the boards' degrees of education in their writeups - what does that have to do with the price of rice in China?

If you're trying to get an "academic journal" off the ground, though, you really should be citing your qualifications to be editing an academic journal. And the academic journal aspect is not one that gets a lot of press in fandom circles, but it is there.

Re: Hmm.

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

Well, and that's part of the 'problem' with ff.net too, isn't it -- it's The Pit, it's known for being flooded with crap, etc etc derogatory phrase here. Trust me, I have seen lots of crap. It's a really strange line; how do you rate quality and put value on a good derivatory/transformative work, when obviously not all of them are quality? :/

Re: Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

But this one is easy! You improve the quality of education children in the US specifically receive. It is a double whammy. One, they learn how to spell, grammar and formulate plots properly, and two, they have less time to do things like watch TV and play video games, hence, lesser rabid fandom.

WIN WIN

Re: Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

Also don't forget the oruboros problem. Bad fanfiction creates bad fanfiction. See> TWILIGHT

Re: Hmm.

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

DON'T MAKE FUN OF MY EDWARD/EDWARD LOVE

Re: Hmm.

[rosencrantz.livejournal.com]

OMG THAT'S RIGHT I ALMOST FORGOT ABOUT THAT EPIC FIC I WANTED TO DO ABOUT EDWARD BECOMING THE FIRST SPOONY VAMPRIC MORMON BARD IN THE HISTORY OF FINAL FANTASY. SO WAS THAT YOUR BIRTHDAY REQUEST?