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morgandawnFandom usually jumps into technologies, uses them, and then acts surprised when we realize that we have no clue what we're doing or how the use of the new tech has changed an aspect of our fandom culture. Right now a few authors are posting notices that you need permission to link to their fanworks in "public spaces". Or that they'd prefer their readers comment on their fic where it was originally posted. Each author gets to unilaterally define what is public with the expectation that every reader will follow because that is part of the "social contract". So for today Goodreads = public and is not a place to list or review fanfic. Tumblr is OK (for now) because it is not seen as a "public" space.*
It used to be easier to know what to expect of other fans but the moment we went online, the fannish social contract was voided due to sheer size and complexity of online interactions. Add the fact that new platforms and new ways of interacting keep coming out every 20 minutes and you have a hot conceptual mess filled with poorly understood expectations.
I know that when we went online in the 1990s few of us had any idea that fans would be publicly posting their porn fanfic** to open access websites (no. stop. think of the children!), displaying their explicit art where anyone could see (blush), and tweeting their love of RPS and knotting fic (OMGWTFBB!). By those standards, we have all breached the original fannish social contract of keeping fandom a "safe space" simply by interacting with one another in public and online. And I suspect that 20 years down the road, we will again struggle to recognize "fandom" as it continues to be reshaped by technology.
So I would rather see us practice mindfulness and awareness that the tools and platforms we use change us and our culture instead of snapping at one another because we've changed and that we no longer know what to expect from one another.
Because to be honest, I have no clue any more. And I'd be wary of anyone who claims otherwise.
*Keep in mind that most fans don't bother to turn off Google indexing on their tumblr blogs (or their LJ...or their DW..or their twitter or their.....). And even if they do, every time someone else reblogs your content, if *their blog* is searchable by Google it will still be "public".
**A few of us did have in inkling but we all kept it quiet because we did not want to scare our fellow fans with our crazy visions of the future filled with flying fans sporting jetpack keyboards and tinhats.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:12 pm (UTC)In your metaphor of going into someone's home and taking things, you are creating AO3 and Tumblr as personal protected spaces. I know I've made that argument for LJ before, when most of us did spider and index block and conversations on here were quite separate from the non fannish world so to speak. But can we still make that argument? Are the GR readers actually strangers or are they merely other fans employing another interface? And, for that matter, are we actually having a private party here when we frequently cross retumblr back and forth with TPTB?
I fully understand and agree that exposing non accessible information in public places is wrong. I actually even agree that hard to find connections published in searchable in easily accessible places is wrong (i.e., if someone lists their hometown in a random LJ post that doesn't mean it should be put on their GR page). I also agree that images are a different issue, especially when they are fully reproduced and not credited.
But the outrage that I hear in the various posts and see in your comment here suggests that there are distinct communities (fans and GR readers) and that fans exist in a contained space from which GR readers "take things." Leaving aside the entire who is taking what (and again, I'm hugely sympathetic to the argument that taking material from published copyrighted texts and transforming them is not the same as taking material from within your own community and doing the same) , can we really demand that readers not comment on stories, that they can't write reviews?
I know I get very frustrated when people read my (published nonfiction) work out of context. In fact, I've gotten quite annoyed at GR reviews before. But that can't and shouldn't keep that reader from reading my book from the wrong perspective so to speak. I firmly believe that fanfic should be read within its own context and that it can lose much if not most of its meaning when taking out of that context. But "that context" may be as specific as the inside jokes on Tumblr while it's being written. It may be the fannish mood at the moment after a given episode. Different readers, different fans have all kinds of contextual clues that are not always the same and may be quite different from the author's. And yes, lacking those contexts readers may misjudge the works severely. But who gets harmed by that? Someone misread your story and posts it on a platform for other readers. What is the actual harm?
As for the Amazon connection, definitely true. Not sure what that'd mean for anyone still posting on LJ. And who owns Tumblr? Being on DW and AO3 is a moral decision for me, true. But I think fandom has long used commercial platforms just like it has been used by them, and I wouldn't begrudge any community their use of platform (and i'm not sure Amazon truly benefits from fanfic reviews)
Sorry TLDR...I'm trying to sort my kneejerk reactions, because I'm actually very invested in the community created works and the context driven readings and yet I'm amazed why the vehemence of the reactions.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 04:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 04:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 05:05 am (UTC)I don't mind giving my thoughts, but please keep in mind that they're only my thoughts on why GR doesn't seem like part of "fandom" to me and why it's different to tumbr and other established fandom spaces. I don't speak for anyone else in fandom. Also I am not trying to "determine what interfaces are and are not fandom." I won't argue with you that there are fans on goodreads, but there is a certain fandom etiquette that's been understood since I joined fandom (ah, the old Gundam Wing egroups days) and most of the folks on GR are not just ignoring that, they don't even know or care that it exists. In fact one librarian was openly hostile about it. So there is definitely culture clash going on, but I don't think it's entirely restricted to or caused by the platform. I think it might even be an inevitable part of the mainstreaming of fandom and this is just the latest iteration.
First I am not really sure this is actually an expansion of fandom. On GR, there's no podfic. There's no meta. There's no vidding or pic spams or even much squee. Heck, from looking at the Goodreads TOS I don't think rpf would be allowed on the site. How about Swordspoint fanfic? Or Outlander fanfic? GR is a select, small slice of fandom being extracted for the purpose of critiquing. Can you imagine if jesswave or Elsa Rolle had suddenly started reviewing fanfic? Or Publishers Weekly or Kirkus? NYT? To me that's the same idea taken to an extreme. I don't like it on a big scale. I don't like it on a small scale. (I do not like green eggs and ham!) Goodreads is about promotion, and that's pretty antithetical to fandom, IMO. Tumblr still falls under sharing with friends to me. You have to search out people with commonalities who post things you like to follow on your dash. I personally feel like I know the people on my tumblr much better than my goodreads friends, yet I've been on goodreads probably three times as long. They're strangers, even the people I interact with on a daily basis.
Second of all, the idea that authors (and maybe artists?) should be forced to have a profile on goodreads to control how their work is presented-- could you imagine if all authors were suddenly forced to get fanfic.net accounts? Or a Dreamwidth acct, or tumblr account, deviantart? IMO, it's kind of ridiculous and the sort of thing that makes fandom people shut down, not embrace it with open arms. Fanfic writers being forced to invest time to police and maintain a profile on a site designed to criticize them? And GR prides itself on not removing database entries ever, for any reason. That's pretty absolute. I may not like people pulling their fanfic down to publish it, or because they're afraid of people finding out about it, or even because they've moved on from fandom, but I would never dispute their right to do it. Yet if Felisblanco succeeds in publishing her book, there's already a fanfic entry on goodreads for it that she shouldn't ever be able to get removed? It should be up there forever to compare with the book's reviews? Is that fair? Doesn't seem right to me. So it's not even principally the reviews that I object to, it's the cataloging and permanent nature of the data. Authors should have control over that without being forced to have a presence on the platform. And it should be opt in, not opt out. (Can authors see where hits on their AO3 fanfic are coming from? Perhaps this shouldn't have come as such a shock? I don't know.) Even AO3 gives them the choice to orphan their works.
Finally, I'm not sure how fandom being googleable relates to this. You have to actively enter something to search for in google. It's active participation. I don't know anyone who browses Google. In goodreads you can just browse tags and lists and reviews, look at what your friends are reading, or wander around and stumble across fanfic with no determining action being taken on your part. Everything is interlinked. They promote reading lists on your GR home page unsolicited and suggest related books and you can't opt out of that, afaik. Goodreads is designed to promote things and reach the widest possible audience. Fandom is not. It's about sharing your work with your intimates and maybe their intimates. Word of mouth, if you will, controlled by the creator, not blast determined by the site coding and an algorithm of hit counters and ratings.
My stealing metaphor... I'm not arguing anything about tumblr. I don't like tumblr as a fandom platform either, so you won't hear me defending it. It's a bit of an echo chamber and you can get a really skewed perspective of what fandom is like just from choosing your dash. But I would argue that AO3 is a protected space. People can lock their fics and disable downloads and remove it from searches, make it private. I've seen at least two comments over on GR where people have said they'll read fanfic, but they don't consider themselves a part of fandom and they'd never browse AO3. They only read the fanfic because of their friends' reviews showing up in their feeds. So no, I don't consider those people a part of fandom. They don't want to be a part of fandom. But I acknowledge that there also are fans being born on GR. There was one girl who was really apologetic for her part in adding fanfic entries and she understood the creator's POV when it was explained to her. But right now there's no happy medium, and until there is, I fall on the side of more anonymity is better, control should be in the hands of the creators, and don't assume that everyone wants to be promoted and publicized all across the web.
I do think that your experience with published nonfiction is fundamentally different from fanfic however. I assume you had editors, marketing, a target demographic, the goal was perhaps to make money? You published knowing that it would be reviewed and criticized and judged. I don't think fandom creators have that same mindset, nor should they. They put their works out there for different reasons. Gift economy and all that.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 05:31 am (UTC)Lots to chew on here, but please let fan authors know they can get the entries for their fan stories removed. Not only the page removed, but it will reach into Goodread readers' accounts and delete their reviews, their comments, their discussions, ratings and remove the story from their 'to read" lists. That is an unusual amount of "removal" - think of Google removing something from its search engine and then going to your website, tumblr account, blog and email accounts to delete the info there as well. So far around 20% of the Sterek fanfic has been removed - other fandoms are ranging from 2-8% and I expect the numbers to climb. The process is not hard and it will take a day or two. The Goodread Librarians are working hard so please tell the authors to be polite and patient.
There are some good instructions for authors on tumblr - I cannot put my hand on them.
edited to add: here is the contact link to ask Goodreads for removal https://www.goodreads.com/about/contact_us
A GR Librarian explains more here (see comment 59) https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2120086-fanfiction-deletion?page=2#comment_111042714
if there is one more "signal boost", please reblog this info so that fan authors know they have options.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 07:19 am (UTC)If it comes around my social media, I surely will. I don't think I have that much influence, but others reading here probably do.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 07:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 06:24 am (UTC)I found something interesting
In some of the fanfic reviews, readers are leaving...proto-fan-mixes? They link to music that they think fits the story https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/981921945?book_show_action=true
And there are picspams (there are better ones than these examples but it is late) https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/161583784?book_show_action=true https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/363613748?book_show_action=true https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21943305-smile-for-the-camera
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 07:00 am (UTC)And wow! You found rpf too! I'm impressed.
And also people have been using gifs in their book reviews to emphasize their reactions for a couple years now. I would guess that is a bit of tumblr culture carrying over? The MySpace generation growing up? I don't care for it. I like words about words, but they're easy enough to ignore.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 06:12 pm (UTC)http://fanlore.org/wiki/%22Crossing_the_Line:_%27Netfans%27_and_%27Printfans%27%22 (sorry I don't have a clickable link)
An excerpt (you really should read the entire essay)
"For me, the point, the heart of fandom is discussion, conversation, and analysis. ..... The heart of a convention like Escapade is not the dealers' room, important as it may be.... it is the panel discussions.
The heart of fandom -- that is, of what *I love* about fandom -- is discussion and analysis. And not just of shows and characters, which analysis is often done through the mechanism and metaphor of stories as well as through explicit discussion, but of fandom itself. Panels on the history of slash are perennially popular. ..... The advent of the net has spurred intense discussion of what makes a fan a fan, and how fans relate to one another and to fandom as an idea.
It's very difficult, perhaps impossible, to do this kind of meta-analysis through stories alone. .... I can't think of any net stories that I would categorize as doing this kind of thing, though. (Which doesn't mean they don't exist, of course; it means I haven't heard of them.) And if net fans are indeed concerned with stories just as product, then they aren't interested in joining analytical discussions, in brainstorming with others, in both *doing* and *reflecting on* fandom."
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-19 02:29 am (UTC)I mean, I've never produced anything BUT meta (and when I came into fandom that always felt like I wasn't a good enough fan because I didn't write stories...)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-19 03:07 am (UTC)I very much hear you on the author pages. That's not a great construct for fic, and I very much understand why writers are unhappy about that. Otoh, I do feel there are various levels of disingenuousness by many fans who do not lock and hide their fic and who regard recs and links and bookmarks other places as a good thing yet here they suddenly want to maintain authorly control. (Likewise, I was slightly bemused by the strong claims of community creation, which I incidentally agree singles out fanfic, at the same time as authors claimed their ownership over their words...)
Anyway, yes, the author pages are a bad thing, but I'm not sure how the suggested related books are fundamentally different from the way many if not most fans use bookmarking sites searching by tags or follow tags on Tumblr. It's not just your friends who suggest and rec and criticize--it's anyone who tags (behold the don't tag the hate battles).
As for my own experience--I wasn't trying to compare fiction and nonfiction, as published text with a work of love (though I'd argue that our book was a labor of fannish love and we are not making any money either :)--but yes, my awareness in readership was there. What i was trying to get at was that the review was NOT necessarily the assumed readership. But by putting something out there I can't control who'll read it. Just like a fan who puts something publicly online can't control who reads it.
I'm not sure how Morgandawn used to feel--I used to be a huge proponent of maintaining closed spaces and keeping fandom away from mundanes, the press, anyone who didn't actively search it out and knew our history...and I think over the last years, I realized both practically that fandom is ever growing and fannish activities have mainstreamed to be point of clear distinction of in and out becoming near meaningless, and theoretically that that is not a bad thing. It feels like a loss to me emotionally, but the barrier to entry into fandom has become lower again and again and that's a good thing. It means our demographics are changing the more mainstream we are, and that's not a bad thing!
Anyway, sorry to preach...I very much hear you on the author page, but everything else, to me, seems like one group of fans demanding that other fans follow their rules. And that can't (and really probably shouldn't) ever work. It didn't work when fans started going online, when lotrips and popslash fans started mainstreaming rpf and HP fans underage. It didn't work when various waves of fans broke the fourth wall and when wholesale copying became the norm on Tumblr rather than linking. (Heck, I remember when fans asked to link and that clearly didn't/couldn't work on the Internet).
Hey, we do agree about Tumblr :) A lot!!!
to answer cathexys question about how I used to feel about fandom visibility
Date: 2014-12-19 03:38 am (UTC)oh and you were forbidden to mention the mailing list online
As list admin, I had to police these policies and as you can imagine it quickly became tedious and then futile as fandom overran us and stampeded online.
Bur for decades I, like most fans, felt we should be playing in "fandom only safe spaces."
Which is why I found LJ so terrifying - you were not just talking about fandom issues - everyone was blogging about their cats, their kids, their SO, their bunions...TMI in the open.
And I still felt we were protected by what I call "herd immunity" (or the "great school of fish in the sea protects the individual fish" - it was not privacy per se, but obscurity we relied upon.
But even obscurity is being eroded more and more with content aggregators linking our identities and activities and selling the info (or offering it up for free for ad revenue). I posted today about a fan who outed themselves to me via their LinkedIn account and that is only one of the many social media outlets.
So my attitude has shifted away from trying to police fandom, to trying to get fandom to recognize the shape of things that are, to trying to get fans to use the limited privacy tools that we have as best as we can, and to stop snapping at each other for something none of us can control.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-19 06:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 06:51 am (UTC)1) Tumblr's password-protect option seems very much like a matter of "meh, you and your five friends can use this for your cooking club if you want," not like LJ/DW community setups. Tumblr's screwball dashboard and endless stream of NEW STUFF SHINY ALL THE TIME means locked things don't work well as a normal part of the tumblr social venue.
2) Yahoo owns tumblr; they bought it a couple of years ago. Much drama and fretting at the time about whether they were going to lock down all the NSFW content. So far, they haven't, but they have been increasing the amount of advertising and doing other "tweaks" to the user experience without regard to user communities or preferences.