The Organization for Transformative Works is a fan advocacy group that runs Fanlore and An Archive of Our Own.  They were created on LiveJournal and most of their early and continued support continues to come from that community.  Much of that has to do with the reasons they were created: The group perceived Fanlib as a threat to fandom as a whole, and had issues with how LiveJournal treated its fans.. 

After having done a bit of an analysis of the Twilight fandom as represented by lion_lamb, I was curious to see how otw_news looked, especially when compared to lion_lamb.  How similar are they in terms of age, length of time on LiveJournal, the number of friends, the number of posts, etc. In the past, the group’s members have talked about doing advocacy on behalf of fandom to change media perceptions of fans.  The goal looked like they wanted to present their demographics as the norm.  That is what I am looking for here.

The Organization for Transformative Works’s founders and supporters were also vocally critical of LiveJournal’s commercial aspects, and discussed the need for a non-profit site that would cater to fan interests while being less susceptible to pressure from advertisers.  The actions by LiveJournal taken during StrikeThrough 2007 were one of the prime examples cited by this group to rationalize this position.  Many people talked about giving up paid accounts, not using Plus accounts, etc.  Given that history, I am curious as to the behaviors of the organization’s supporters in  the almost two and a half years since the groups founding: Are they more likely than Twilight fans to use basic accounts, less likely to give money directly to a company whose ethos runs counter to the group’s founding principles?

The methodology for gathering data for this analysis is the same as the one for for lion_lamb: A sneak peak into the composition of the Twilight fandom.  The community looked at is otw_news.  The data was gathered on November 15, 2009 and pulled from publicly available profile information for people who both watched and belonged to the community.   This means that 1,784 journals are included in the sample.  When looking at this data, you have to remember that not everyone lists factually correct information.  For this data, we assume that the obviously wrong data balances out in the end.  (People list themselves at 100 and people list themselves as 5 years old.)  This is the same methodology used for lion_lamb and we assume the error rate between the two is the same.

One of the first things to look at is age of the membership of otw_news. The chart below includes the total number of people who list themselves as having been born in that year.

The average year of birth is 1975, with a median age of 1979.5 and mode of 1984.  In terms of fandom, this is not a young group: The average member is about 35 years of age.  Even if we assume that the mode year is more representative of the group, that still places age at 25.  If we try to correct this data for error by removing 10 from each extreme of high and low years of birth, our year of birth average only increases to 1976.7, and the median and mode stay the same.  If we remove 10% of the extreme from the sample, or 30 from each side, we get an average year of birth of 1977.3 with median and mode remaining unchanged.

Assuming that our group of 11,000 Twilight fans on lion_lamb are representative of fandom on LiveJournal, the average year of birth is 1985.6, median year of birth is 1987 and the mode year of birth is 1989.    If we try to correct for error and remove the extreme 10% of the sample, fans who are claiming Edward Cullen’s birth year as their own as well as fans who claim an impossibly young age, lion_lamb has an average birth year of  1986.5 with median and mode remaining unchanged.

When we compare the membership of otw_news to fandom, Organization for Transformative Works members and supporters are on average almost ten years older than their counterparts in the rest of fandom.  If we assume that median is more representative, we are still looking at a an eight year difference.  Mode is the only one where they are close, and even that is only by three years.  In the case of fandom as a whole, the average is right out of college.  The after college life experiences are very different in terms of forming our perspectives so these three years are critical and do demographically separate the two groups.

It just cannot be said that the Organization for Transformative Works members and supporters are representative of fandom based on their ages.

The other important demographic issue for LiveJournal based fandom is location.  Some 1,111 members of otw_news list the country they live in.  6,330 members of lion_lamb list the country they live in.   Both have garbage entries for places where people obviously do not live,  places like the Romulan Neutral Zone, the Vatican City, Jesus’s home town or the North Pole.  In both sets, people listed cities or providences instead of countries.  This data was removed.  We are assuming that the members who do not list their home countries are represented proportionally by those that do.

The Organization for Transformative Works members and supporters represent 41 countries. 63% of the membership are from the United States, 11% are from the United Kingdom, 7% are from Canada, 6% from Australia, 4% from Germany and other countries all have less than 1%.   The top five countries population wise represent 91% of the organization’s total population.  The other 39 countries represent 9% of the organization’s total population.

lion_lamb represents 112 countries.  54% of their membership is from the United States, 6% from Canada, 5% from the United Kingdom, 5% from Australia, 3% from Germany, 2% from the Philippines, 2% from France, 2% from Italy, 2% from Mexico.    The top five countries represent 73% of the community’s total population.  The other countries represent 27%.

The Organization for Transformative Works over represents for Americans, with about 10% more Americans the lion_lamb.  The Organization for Transformative Works members and their supports also over represent for Brits, Canadians, Australians, Germans.  They under represent for the Philippines, France, and Mexico.  The top five countries by membership over represent by about 20%.  It cannot be said that the national representation of the Organization of Transformative Works is representative of the fan community on LiveJournal.

There are some other issues regarding how representative patterns for the Organization for Transformative Works are when compared to the whole of fandom on LiveJournal with lion_lamb being defined as fandom.

For year of registration, lion_lamb had  the median and mode of 2008 for registering. The average registration year is 2007.07 in comparison. Members of this community are updating, with a last update year average of 2008.66, mode of 2009 and median of 2009.  Compare this to otw_news, where the average registration year was 2004, with the median also being 2004 and the mode being 2003.  Members and supporters of the Organization for Transformative Works became members of LiveJournal much earlier.  Three years is a lifetime on the Internet.  This is another example of otw_news follows not being representative of fandom on LiveJournal.

otw_news members have posted an average of 858.6 times, with a mode of 492 and a mode of 1.  Compare that with lion_lamb members who have posted an average of 132.25 times, a median of 11 times and a mode of 1 time.   Again, the Organization for Transformative Works members and supporters are not representative of fandom on LiveJournal.

These patterns hold true for other variables such as number of friends where otw_news members have almost 50 more on average and almost 95 in terms of median.  It holds true for tags, memories, and virtual gifts.  In all cases, members of otws_news have much higher averages than their fandom counterparts.

All of this reaffirms the same idea: Members and supporters of the Organization for Transformative Works do not represent fandom in that they are demographically distinct from fandom on LiveJournal.  otw_news members also differ from their fandom counterparts in that they do not use LiveJournal the same way: They use LiveJournal much more actively in their personal space than the rest of fandom.

That concluded, the next issue is LiveJournal account status.  The issue of paying LiveJournal was a big one.  Around the time that Strikethrough happened, LiveJournal offered permanent accounts for sale. Some people affiliated with the later founding of an organization like OTW  advocated that people unfriend those who bought permanent accounts.  Other people openly talked about allowing their paid account status to expire as a method of expressing unhappiness with the site.  Two and a half years later, what is the status of members and supports of the Organization for Transformative Works in terms of paying for LiveJournal?

otw_news members  pay or have paid for their accounts. 36% have Paid Accounts.  Many (15%) have permanent accounts, where they paid at least $150 for this status.  A smaller percentage (18%) have plus accounts, which offer additional features in exchange for viewing additional ads. 

When compared to lion_lamb, otw_news members way over-represent in paid accounts and permanent accounts. Despite the issues of Strikethough, not all of which have been resolved, people affiliated with the Organization for Transformative Works are much more willing to pay for LiveJournal than their fandom counterparts.  Still, there is some obvious shift from the group, where people are willing to sacrifice functionality in order to view fewer ads and thus potentially give LiveJournal less income; there is an 18% difference in basic accounts from otw_news to lion_lamb.

Are the buying habits of a cross-fandom section, and their choices to expose themselves to additional ads, consistent with the attitude expressed by members and supporters during the time they lambasted LiveJournal’s beholdenment to advertisers?  It is hard to make a conclusive judgment based on the data we have available. 

… admit no mistake, do not make yourself vulnerable to others, always be on the offensive, don’t admit to character flaws or weakness. We are taught that if you do, you will suffer the consequences for years. We are taught, through example, that if you admit mistakes and are vulnerable, others will exploit these weakness for their own fannish benefit.

I’m writing this entry mostly in response to a series of tweets by Ben Parr, a writer for Mashable. Our perspectives differ because of our place online and our own experiences. I’d love to believe “@BenParr @purplepopple My philosophy has always been “let the haters come,” because I believe in what I do and prove it with my actions.” I believe in what I’m doing. I believe in it a lot. I’m committed to what I’m doing and am always looking for ways to improve. I just do not like to publicly own my faults because I just have moments when I can’t because I’ve seen what fandom haters are capable of. I don’t just don’t have the energy to deal with the ramifications of the shit that could come down the pike if some hater took issue with me.

Check out some of the shit that Cassandra Clare, Supernatural fans, Smallville fans, Blake’s 7 fans, X-Files fans and science fiction fans are capable of. Contacting employers, contacting family, threatening to kill people and talking about how they deserve to be sexually assaulted, cracking passwords, contacting webhosts to report them for alleged Terms of Service Violations, contacting a show’s producers and actors to blast them for another set of fans’s actions. Most of the most egregious behavior doesn’t get documented out of fear of both sides going after the document-er for getting the story wrong.

I want to characterize these actions as fail fandom but it isn’t. Fail fandom is generally about some one taking offensive at something some one did or said or implied. Sure, yeah, the subtext of fail fandom is often about a power play in fandom but at the onset, it generally doesn’t look that way.

A lot of this is really banal stuff. Do you ship Clark/Chloe? Well fuck you. I hate your ship with a fiery passion. You’re in my space. Let me find some ways to cause you pain. Hey! You wrote Supernatural incest fic? I hate that crap! I know what to do! You made the mistake of linking your real name and your fannish name so I’ll contact your family and let them know what you are up to online! Oh hey! You challenged my status in the Harry Potter fandom and I need my status to be higher so I can be closer to JK Rowling. Let me teach you a lesson, because I know you work in school, by letting them know what sort of material you read. It doesn’t matter that I read it too because I don’t work with kids. You like Doggett from X-Files? That’s unforgivable because MSR is the only good thing from X-Files and because you’re too stupid to get that, I’ll just do a DDoS on your network connection. I want the freedom to write sexually graphic rape because of artistic freedom. You don’t like that and hey you’re a rape victim? Awesome! Because you know how you tried to repress my artistic expression? I’m going to intentionally trigger you! Those examples are all variations of real incidents.

And then we come back to the first part of this post: Media fandom on LiveJournal (and its clones like Dreamwidth Studios)teaches us not to be vulnerable, to self criticize, to admit to our weaknesses. In some places, in some communities, you want to admit and own your weakness, your vulnerabilities and where you can improve. I’ve found that in the wiki community outside Wikipedia, this generally is the norm. On Twitter and in social media communities filled with social media professionals, it is also good to be able articulate those. Fandom differs to a degree though. In a wiki, we should all be working towards a greater good. In social media, you want to be honest with your clients, to be continually learning and you’re aware of the professional repercussions for being an asshole, and a moron that engages in personal attacks on people outside of the scope of the content. Fandom doesn’t have those considerations of greater good or professional gain.

Fandom has other considerations because, for most of us, fandom is a hobby. People have goals for fandom: Having fun, getting feedback on their stories, enjoying the porn, being fawned over for their most awesome fanvids and fanart, writing extensive meta analysis because they love to do that, to fantasize about Eli Roth getting off on your nudie pics, trying to get a professional publishing career, using their fanac as a vehicle to meet actors and producers, trying to influence the writers and directors and actors to write the book or show like they want it to be written. Some of these inherently set fans into conflict with each other. If you are in a fandom to get close to the powers that be, well only so many people can. If you are in a fandom because of a character, actor or ship, there is only so much time that those can be given; people with different preferences are going to be in conflict as they try to persuade producers to focus on their desires. For fan fiction writers and readers and vid watchers, there is only so much time in a day, only so much feedback that can be given; conflict happens in the struggle to maximize the feedback and to support our favorite artists. The greater good in fandom only seems to happen when there is something that threatens the institution around which the fandom is based like a show ending.

Because of fandom existing as a state of conflict, because LiveJournal fandom is dominated by women, people bring in the personal and unrelated. The attacker looks for vulnerabilities. They look for places where they can exploit your weakness in order to push you out of fandom, to get you to stop being in conflict with them and to further their own agenda.

That’s my takeaway from fandom. Those are the lessons I have learned. So while I think it is good to be able to articulate your weakness in social media, as a journalist, as a historian, as an entrepreneur, I have trouble with that because I cannot unlearn overnight what I spent over ten years learning and having reinforced on a daily basis. (Thanks White Collar fandom and Smallville fandom for this week’s lesson.)

I’ve been busy in the past two days being a big hockey fan, having seen the Chicago Blaze and the Rockford Ice Hogs play. The Chicago Blaze are an AAHL team. They play in Rolling Meadows. Home games cost $8. Parking is free. Food is cheap. The hockey is entertaining and the team is undefeated.

I didn’t have my normal camera so I was stuck taking pictures on my cell phone on Friday night. Those pictures can be found here at Chicago Blaze images. If you have your own images, please feel free to upload them.

On Halloween, I went the 50 miles to Rockford, Illinois to see the Rockford Ice Hogs play. I’d been to a Chicago Wolves game before and had loads of fun there. The Ice Hogs are the Chicago Blackhawks farm team and get a lot, lot of promotion on WZOK, a Rockford radio station I listen to a lot. I decided at 5:50pm to see them with a start time at 7:05. Eek. The parking was more affordable than the Wolves: $5 vs. $11. I got a ticket for $12 behind the goal on the second level. Second level seats seem a bit better (Metro Center) than they do at Wolves games. (Allstate Arena) I didn’t buy any food so I can’t really compare. It was a lot of fun. The fans at this game chanted and cheered and talked to other fans. I was amused by the cheering when the Ice Hogs scored. The cheer? “Hey, guess what? Your goalie sucks!” This chanting went on for a while. Some one also had bubbles blowing. The hockey players seemed a bit more intense, quicker to get on and off the ice than the Chicago Blaze. The hits were harder. Awesome fun. I’d go see them play again. (Though I might see the Wolves first as they have better entertainment during the game.) Oh and hey! Free wifi inside the Metro Center.

Again, no camera but had my cell phone camera. My pictures are at Rockford Ice Hogs images.

I love hockey. I love the game experience for the AAHL and the AHL. I just never want to hear how rude Chicago Cubs fans are again. Anyone who says that? They haven’t attended a hockey game, where rudeness has been ritualized and is good fun.

How are minor league teams leveraging social media?  This is my perception of that and is based on an e-mail I wrote.  It has been altered slightly to make it more a blog post.

From the teams I am familiar with, as a fan and having talked to some people involved with local teams, the emphasis when it comes to online presence is e-mail marketing.  They get people to subscribe to their announcement lists when they buy tickets online, do post game follow ups with people who attended to ask them to attend another game or survey their experience at the game.  That’s really good with soliciting feedback, and getting people who just saw a game to commit seeing another one.

When it comes to e-mail marketing, some teams are more successful than others.  Not all are as compliant as they could be in regards to US laws regarding CAN-SPAM.  One team does not make their e-mails that viewable for people who don’t view images with e-mail; their e-mail announcements to subscribers contain just one big image.

Many teams use Twitter.  The Chicago Red Stars, a local Chicago team in the women’s professional soccer league, live tweet their games.  They also @ reply to people who mention them, often mentioning deals on ticket packs.  Other teams are doing similar strategies with Twitter.  The teams with a better, comprehensive social media strategy are duplicating or promoting the content from their other online presences on Twitter: They link to YouTube, Facebook, what their players are doing in the blogosphere, encouraging people to follow players.

Teams use YouTube to brand themselves.  They have their own channels where there are interviews with players, clips from games, clips from television coverage of their team, commercials for the team, advertisements for team apparel, etc. The teams most successfully leveraging this space are ones that have detailed descriptions on their videos with keywords that will attract a wider audience.  (YouTube is the second or third largest search engine out there in terms of volume of search.)

Facebook Fan Pages are also a popular tool used by teams.  They have some content duplication with Twitter and Facebook but other content too.   They mention training camps, opportunities to meet with the team during the off season, information on player signing.  They talk about what players are doing during the off season, like playing for the national team or training/playing with other clubs.  They might give health updates.  They mention changes in the front office and other news around the league.  They link to blog posts that

Teams are still using MySpace.  (Facebook hasn’t killed it and the demographics for the site are different for both the US and Australia.  It is the 13th most popular site in Australia.)  Most of the updates that teams do are blog entries.  Some of these are press releases.  They are also using the space to upload videos and photos, sharing the same content from Facebook and YouTube.  The better teams are making sure there is some original content on each network they use.

Some minor league teams are also creating, or their fans create, a presence on LinkedIn in order to network.  The level of activity on these networks tends to be smaller.  The goal is to allow fans to network.   These groups tend to be smaller.

Those five networks, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn, tend to be where most teams place an emphasis.  It makes sense as these are the most main stream places to capitalize on the largest audience.  People on those sites, with the exception of LinkedIn, tend to expect that there will be a presence for those teams.  There are several networks that aren’t being leveraged that teams should consider and that they may not because most social media people define those places as the Internet and stop. These networks include Flickr, LiveJournal, bebo, Ning, orkut and tagged.com.  Each has advantages that an online presence can help.

The teams that are most successful in using those networks are ones there they have the same style of writing across all their networks: Professional and friendly.  Teams that are successfully using social media to attract and keep an audience that they want to convert into regular attendees to matches also brand their logos and colors consistently across the different platforms they use.  If they can’t use their own background, like the case for Facebook and LinkedIn, the accounts have their own logos showing for all posts they make and wherever else they can brand.  Teams successfully using social media are also updating regularly, even during the off season.  There is generally new content on all their networks at least once a week, if not more.  Those three things are important: Consistent writing style, consistent branding and regular updates.

On January 15, 2009, CSI had one of its highest rated episodes all season.  On that day, people published 26 new pieces of fan fiction, the most stories posted on the same day as an episode had aired. On September 25, 2008, CSI had it third lowest ratings day all season and people posted zero new stories on that date.

Fan fiction is a really popular outlet for fan expression of interest in television shows.  The stories are creative, explore plot lines in the show and, according to many fans, help market a series in a positive way.  Fans often argue that their activities mirror larger interest in a show, and that producers should pay more attention to them and cater to their fannish interests as the example provided seems to demonstrate.  Fan Fiction’s Predictive Value for Nielsen Ratings tests this fan theory and answers the question: Does the volume of fan fiction published in the period around when an episode airs correlate to Nielsen Ratings?

To answer this question, fan fiction daily posting stats were gathered for the one week period around television shows where fan fiction communities existed and Nielsen Ratings were available for that show.  The fan fiction data was compiled from six archives: FanFiction.Net, fanfiktion.de, FanWorks.Org, FicWad, SkyHawke, and Freedom of Speech Fan Fiction.  The Nielsen Ratings data included over 720 episodes representing thirty-nine shows.  Once this data was compiled, it was analyzed using Pearson’s Correlation and linear regression. 

The results confirmed what many fans already suspected: Levels of fan activity, specifically in terms of the production of fan fiction, mirrors interest specific episodes of television.  Fan fiction can be used to predict Nielsen Ratings.  The predictive value is strengthened in several cases when it is broken down by network, genre or specific television show. The best networks for predicting Nielsen Ratings are CBS, The CW, Disney, Fox and USA. Comedy, crime comedy, crime drama, medical comedy and sports drama are the best genres for predicting Nielsen Ratings.  The strongest correlations for  television shows for predicting Nielsen Ratings are Burn Notice, CSI, Eli Stone, Friday Night Lights, Gossip Girl, Grey’s Anatomy, Hannah Montana, Heroes, iCarly, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Life, Prison Break, Psych, and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles.

This information is potentially valuable to parties with a vested interest in a television show’s performance.  By analyzing content patterns around periods with high volumes of fan fiction and high Nielsen Ratings, comparing that to periods of low posting volume and lower Nielsen Ratings, producers can make changes to maintain high interest amongst fans.  Non-American television networks and advertisers can better predict how their shows will perform.  This method of analysis can help organizations save money as it is cheaper to monitor and track than other analytic tools.

A copy of Fan Fiction’s Predictive Value for Nielsen Ratings can be found at http://www.fanhistory.com/FanFicNielsen.pdf . The appendix can be found at http://www.fanhistory.com/FanFicNielsenAppendix.pdf .

I hang out a lot in AboutUs’s chatroom where I help with pro follows, creating articles and adding tags. Sometimes, I find some really cool people who are promoting their websites. Today, I found one such individual and I asked them to send me an intro about their site so I could post it to Fan History’s blog. Their site focuses around sports and I’m a huge sports nut. (I’d also like to see Fan History’s sports section improved.) This is what I got and I encourage you to check them out!

What is Sportkin – It’s the digital media platform designed to bring together individuals who share a common interest of sport.

About Sportkin:
It is our intention to unite  the Global sporting community,  Sportkin is pioneered to help all sports people in  finding other athletes of their own sporting interests and abilities, then unite, practice, and communicate together, hence perform better together. Sportkin serves many convenient functions to help athletes discover their full potential; furthermore, it brings tranquillity to ones sports lifestyle.

Key Features:

Members & Visitors:

* Find sports players*
* Find sporting Activities*

Members:

* Unite with sports people through a circle of kinship
* Communicate with members
* Create and manage* multiple sporting activities (and make it happen again within the click of a button)
* Participate in multiple sporting activities

What can Sportkin do?

Because Sportkin is consistently setting new targets and striving to achieve them, new features will be consistently introduced, it is thus the features listed below, may be less than the actual number of features on the website.
Twelve Reasons to Use Sportkin
1. Sport has no limits, so why limit yourself? There are close to 500 different types of sport on Sportkin to choose from!

2. For many of us sport is just for our spare time, and you might think it’s not necessary to join a website just to play sport, since you can easily go for a run by yourself or call a friend to go out and play. But it’s not always that easy, sometimes we need little nudge!

3. Sportkin is more than a social network, it’s a digital media platform designed to unite people with the common interest of sport. From sporting contacts to sporting activities, Sportkin has all the features you need to help you get sporty!

4. What if your friend or sports partner moves out of town one day, or is injured, or even worse, doesn’t like you any more? This could be the perfect excuse for you to stop playing sport, and you don’t want that to happen!

5. What if someone in your area is feeling depressed, lonely or left out? You could help cheer them up by playing a game of sport with them, and they may even be able to teach you something!

6. What if someone is new in your area? They might not have any friends to play sport with, and maybe you could help them find new friends – and maybe they could help you improve your game!

7. Just a few more to go! But if you want, you can join Sportkin first and come back to this page later. We’ll be here when you get back, because the only place Sportkin’s going is up! We already passed the point of no return back in 2005 when we first had the idea for this site.

8. There are also some people who might need a change of crowd, and as the saying goes: a parent is successful only when their child is successful! So why not get your parents into sport too? And remember – it’s not what your community can do for you, it’s what you can do for your community!

9. Thinking of getting into sport for the first time, or getting back into sport after a long holiday? You’ll be suprised how many others are too! Most Sportkin members arrived here after Googling “find a sports player”.

10. What if you’re a professional athlete? Don’t worry! There are other professional athletes on Sportkin too – in fact, Sportkin is for everyone, from beginners to pros. Each person’s skill level is checked against the other players they’re engaging in sporting activities with.

11. There are lots of cool and exciting features continuously being added to Sportkin, because we’re motivated by helping individuals to discover their full potential and move beyond!

12. Sportkin was designed to save you time. And best of all, Sportkin is free to join and free to use, so why not give Sportkin a try? It’s safe, secure and you have total control over your privacy!

If you have a passion for sport, and want to see world unity, then help Sportkin unite people through sport.
Add a link to your website from http://www.sportkin.com/info/resources01.php

–

P.S If you know of anyone looking to get into or back into sport, tell them to signup at sportkin. Its free to join, and free to use. Thank you

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Yesterday, I was chatting a Fan History admin about this fan fiction dictionary. It is a nice little dictionary… but it has one thing that really stands out as different from every other fan fiction dictionary I have seen: It uses f/m instead of m/f as the norm. Is this the norm in the Superman fandom? Is it specific to just this site? Is it specific to comics fandom? The whole idea seems to flip some gender understanding of how we organize things in fandom on its head. The definition list also seems to indicate that femslash is the norm for the fandom and that m/m is not dominant or normative.

I’d really love an explanation for this.

Metamobs can be hazardous to fandom. Particularly when they don’t get their facts straight before launching into attack mode.

A recent example of this? The attempted lynching of Doctor Beth which nearly turned into an entire anti-fanzine crusade in some circles.

See, Doctor Beth sells used media fanzines. She sells them on ebay. She sells a lot of them, and at rather hefty markup (but hey, have you ever tried to run an ebay store? Those fees are pretty steep. You’ve got to sell things at good prices to make any money at all doing so.) I’ve seen her in action at MediaWest: she’ll look for people unloading large collections of old ‘zines in room sales and in the dealer’s room, try to haggle them down to buy the whole lot at once at a bargain price, only to turn around and sell them on ebay.

Is that proper fannish etiquette? Well, everyone may feel differently about that. But it’s not anything illegal (leaving aside the questionable legality of fanzines as an issue for now. She’s not publishing them. She’s selling them as collectibles for specific fandoms). She’s buying what she believes to be genuine, original copies of fanzines and looking to resell them elsewhere on a market where there may be limited supply, and more demand. Not any different than running a used bookstore, is it?

Problem is, not everyone selling used ‘zines at MediaWest or elsewhere is always on the up-and-up themselves with what they’re selling. Despite rules about not allowing the sale of bootleg zines at the con, some people still do – not in large quantities, perhaps, but here and there. Someone might have borrowed and made a private copy of a hard-to-find/out-of-print ‘zine for themselves in the past. Many people print out and may even nicely bind copies of their favorite stories for their own personal reading and enjoyment. Months or years later, they may no longer want them and feel, “well, I paid for the ink and paper to print this, let me try to get a couple bucks back for it” and throw some of those home printing jobs in among their genuine ‘zines to resell. Or they may give those print-outs along with their ‘zines to a friend going to the con, to try to sell for them, and that friend may have no idea which are “real” ‘zines vs. not.

Stuff happens. However it happens. End result, Doctor Beth ends up with hundreds of genuine fanzines to resell – along with a couple “fake” or “unauthorized” ones in the batch. Not a big deal – until the author of one of those stories who never authorized its publication in a ‘zine stumbles across their story for sale on ebay.

Naturally, said fan has reason to be upset. The problem comes when the news begins to spread through the fandom blogosphere. A statement that “One of the authors on my flist discovered an ebay listing for her work printed, bound and listed as a ‘fanzine’ without her knowledge” soon becomes twisted as it is passed and reprinted, rephrased, and a mob called to action against this great injustice! Soon it becomes a cut-and-paste message stating firmly, “it looks like everything doctor_beth2000 is selling is stolen, printed and put in a cheap binder with fanart without the knowledge or permission of the writer or artist.”

But it doesn’t end at that. The enraged mob decides that they must take action on their own beyond spreading a warning: they must attack the offender directly. Report Doctor Beth to ebay for copyright violation! “And don’t stop there,” argue those who, in this internet age of fandom, have issues with the publication of fan-fiction in ‘zines sold for money, period. “Let’s report other fanzine sellers on ebay! Whether they’re the publishers themselves! It’s wrong to sell fiction for money no matter what! In fact, no one publishes fan-fiction zines anymore, so they must all be bootlegs! Get ‘em all!”

One or two people try to spread a voice of calm. Doctor Beth removes three – three out of 700! – listings, which turned out that yep, they were private copies of stories never meant to be sold or resold. People are asked to revise their statements of outrage and accusations about what Doctor Beth was doing. Many do, some don’t. Some are rather passive-aggressive about it, either only striking through their accusations or adding an “ETA” after them instead of removing them completely or making a new follow-up post to retract what they’d said earlier.

Of course, the damage is done already no matter what. Doctor Beth has been labeled a wrongdoer in fandom; the viral warning spread like rapid fire in a way that retractions of the attacks against her never will (because apologies about misinformation never are as much of a “fun” bandwagon to jump on, are they?) This isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone in fandom targeted like this, and I have no doubts it will be far from the last time, either.

Should Doctor Beth been more careful about what she’s selling? Perhaps. There are plenty of resources out there to verify the origins and authenticity of fanzines, and they should be utilized by anyone who may have reason to doubt the origins of a publication they come across. FanHistory’s Fanzine Category indexes thousands of fanzine titles by genre and fandom. There is also a useful resource list here of fandom-specific ‘zine indexes.

At the same time, though, perhaps fans can be more careful and at least try to think calmly for a moment before joining a mob attack. Make sure you’ve got the facts straight about a situation; make sure the person or persons making the accusations are being honest and are trustworthy, and not working on their own questionable agenda in leading an attack; make sure the accused has had some chance to respond and correct a situation first. Otherwise there is little to be gained except potentially aiding in the spread of misinformation and damaging another’s reputation in fandom – or fandom as a whole.

So there’s a group calling themselves the Social Equality Effort causing a bit of a kerfluffle in Star Trek fandom right now. It seems they’ve begun a campaign called “SEE Trek Love”, the main focus of which is to promote the idea of making Kirk/Spock a canon couple in the new Trek film series. They’ve got a petition going and have been promoting their efforts on various forums and messageboards throughout the fandom but with pretty mixed results so far.

Mainly, they seem to be causing a great deal of Fail by taking a cause that many do support – seeing more recognition and positive portrayal of queer/non-heterosexual relationships in the official Trek canon – and going about it in all the wrong ways. As multiple individuals have quickly pointed out, their emphasis on Kirk/Spock over the possibility of other characters and pairings (either new or already part of the film canon universe) seems to reek more of fangirl privilege and slash-fen wanting to see their OTP acknowledged officially than an effort truly geared towards promoting visibility and equality. Their posting to the newtrekslash community on LiveJournal caused considerable wank and fail in the comments, where it seemed they managed to aggravate many fans and groups including Spock/Uhura shippers and lesbians who felt they were being dismissed as “not important”. There’s even been a healthy dose of race wank in the discussion as one of the campaign supporters made dubious statements such as “if Star Trek hadn’t broken the race barrier, I might not even exist (I’m mixed, black and white)”.

All in all, this entire situation looks like it’s just going to end very badly. Which is a shame because for decades, many fans have actively tried to promote for recognition of alternative sexualities in Star Trek and done so in ways that managed to garner great support both within the larger fandom and to some extent from the actors and powers that be as well (see the Voyager Visibility Project). The Social Equality Effort instead seems to be angering too many of the fans they should be courting to get behind their cause, by putting their emphasis in the wrong place and not responding constructively to the criticisms being raised about their efforts. I wouldn’t be surprised if they become the victims of a metamob at this rate, as the voices in protest and slamming them are already rising quickly.

Well, despite my initial pessimism (as expressed in an earlier blog post here), apparently campaigning to get on the “New Moon” movie soundtrack is a big, big thing right now for numerous band and musician fandoms. With the huge success of Twilight, everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon and get their favorite artist some extra exposure. And a news article about this in the Examiner names Fiction Plane fans as “the most dedicated” in their pursuit of getting one of the band’s songs on the soundtrack.

So, color me a bit surprised! But I still wonder, will the campaigning really pay off? Now more than ever I’m curious to see what happens…

I love reality television.  This morning, I was catching up on my The Fashion Show.    The end of the episode came up and there were two contestants up for elimination.  One of the judges said all these nice things about one of the dresses that was in the bottom two.  The designer looked pleased.  Then the judges dropped a bomb shell: They accused the designer of plagiarizing another designer.  They said a lot of the audience had come to the same conclusion.  They offered photographic proof.  The judges then went to debate which contestant should be let go. Meanwhile, the other contestants discussed amongst themselves that this particular designer had talked about making knock offs before, had mentioned the designer that they were modeling this dress off and otherwise weren’t sympathetic to the alleged plagiarizing designer.

The judges discussed amongst themselves if a dress that was a creative failure was better or worse than some one who plagiarized other people’s designs.  When they reached their decision, they determined that creativity and originality was more important than the ability to make copy some one else’s design.  This was a clear case where plagiarism had consequences: The contestant did not advance because he wasn’t original.

This feels important to note because in fandom people justify plagiarism by saying there aren’t any real world consequences and who cares?  Here is a case, in the creative world, where there are consequences and people cared.  The point the judges made regarding this issue in fashion has just as much meaning in the world of fan fiction: Copying other people’s work is not a fundamentally creative act that should be rewarded.  Copying  and plagiarism should not be celebrated and should not be tolerated.

As I’ve been working on improving our Michael Jackson category here at FanHistory, one area I’ve been looking into is fanzines focused on the artist. Clearly there have been a great many of them produced through the years, and what’s listed in our Michael Jackson fanzine category so far is, I’m sure, just the tip of the iceberg.

I’ve always been personally interested in fanzines, as we are in general at FanHistory, because of the window they provide into a fandom at the time of their publication. What issues were people talking about and debating? How were people reacting to news and events in their fandom? When–or did–a fandom switch to on-line activities instead of ‘zines? Which countries produced more fanzines in a fandom than others, and what does that say about the fan base?

In music fandoms, I’m curious to see what creative activities fans were engaging in, too, as these aspects are often overlooked by mainstream fans, and those in media fandom who seem to presuppose that fan art and fan fiction began with Star Trek or Man from U.N.C.L.E. Sometimes I’ve found interesting cases of what I’d call “proto”-fan fiction in music fanzines, where fans share “dreams” or daydreams they’ve had about meeting their favorite artists, but it’s rare I’ve found out-and-out fan fiction except in dedicated music fanzines such as UMF, a Duran Duran fanzine. For instance, most of the Michael Jackson fanzines I’ve found have been fan club newsletters, and I haven’t seen any that appeared to contain Michael Jackson fanfiction.

All that said, we could really use help from people in music fandom in improving our music fanzine category. Are you a fan with a couple ‘zines sitting around? We have an easy Template you can use to upload individual ‘zine information and cover images. Have a large collection of ‘zines? Contact me, sidewinder, and I’ll let you know how you can put together a simple spreadsheet database and we can see about uploading the information to the wiki quickly and easily.

Fanzines are an important part of music fandom’s story, and I hope you’ll consider helping us preserve that history here at FH.

This morning I received an interesting email from one of the fan groups for Fiction Plane, an alt/rock-group which has been around for a number of years of which I am a moderate follower. Fiction Plane opened for The Police on the first half of their world tour in 2007-2008, perhaps not unsurprising given one of the members of the group, Joe Sumner, is Sting’s son. While that tour did manage to boost their visibility to the public, it didn’t really do much to get them on the charts or bring them widespread success, at least here in the U.S. where they maintain a loyal, but not especially large following.

Well, some fans are trying to think of creative ways to promote them, especially with a new album due out later this year. And what they’re proposing is a campaign to get a Fiction Plane song on the soundtrack for the next Twilight movie, “New Moon”. They’ve created a Facebook page for the campaign as well as having a thread about it on one of the main fan sites.

Undoubtably, the widespread phenomenon that is Twilight brought a big boost to the popularity of the bands featured on the soundtrack of the first movie. When I looked at statistics for the Twilight last.fm group earlier this year, many of the most popular artists within that fan community were those featured on the soundtrack album. That said, are the demographics for Twilight compatible really with Fiction Plane fans? I’m not sure. My experience is that FP fans tend to skew older. They’re not so much a band that appeals greatly to the teen, tween, and young adult crowd the way Twilight does. I don’t know that I would hear their music being really compatible on a soundtrack with, say Paramore. But, I could be seriously mistaken on that, so who knows.

I think, more importantly, Fiction Plane fans need to come up with a serious plan if they want to make this happen. An on-line Facebook group isn’t going to do the trick, and as the film is due this November I would have to imagine much of the negotiation for soundtrack music may already be long completed (perhaps they’d be better aiming for “Eclipse”?) Petition drives can be effective but only when well organized and focused on the proper individuals — and truly huge in volume. Big enough to get media coverage. The cynical part of me is far too convinced that getting on the soundtrack for a sure-to-be blockbuster like “New Moon” is something that takes a good deal of record company and corporate dealings and is driven by demographic studies far more than fan-driven efforts. That said, I wish them well — I just hope these fans don’t get too disappointed if they find that a grass roots campaign like this is up against huge entertainment industry hurdles.

People on unfunnybusiness, lcsbanana’s blog and elsewhere have been making comparisons between Privilege!Fail and RaceFail!09.  The tactics used by the racists and the anti-warning supporters have been scrutinized and found similar.  (Some onlookers are saddened that avowed anti-racists are attacking sexual assault survivors and their allies using the tactics they recently so heartily condemned.)  But an important comparison has not been made: how long it will take/has taken for each discussion to wind down.

I think Privilege!Fail is going to end really soon… if it hasn’t already.  Liviapenn is never going to apologize; she won’t need to.  zvi-loves-tv only needs to wait another week, maybe less, before everything returns to the status quo.  Unlike Race!Fail09, nothing will really change and the audience will be smaller and much more self-contained.

Why?  Race!Fail09 allowed a certain degree of emotional distance.  For all the rage that poured out, it was easy enough to step back and think logically.   You could be dispassionate about it.  Privilege!Fail allows no such detached intellectual analysis.  For one side, the whole issue involves emotion, deep gut-wrenching responses to the worst kinds of violation.  And if you’re on that side, you just can’t sustain the response.   It is exhausting.  For some survivors, the whole discussion is potentially triggering, making it detrimental to their mental health.   The only way to really prolong the discussion is to continually feed the rage… and really?  That’s not the sane or emotionally healthy thing to do.

So Privilege!Fail just isn’t going to last as long. The emotional stakes are far too high.

I’ve seen and dealt with a great deal of fandom drama.  When you’re an active participant in the community, it is just hard to avoid.  I sat out Race Fail 2009 because what could I say?  The extent to which I commented involved analytics relating to it.  It just did not feel like my place to speak out because I did not want to offend and I felt I could learn more by reading.

But now we have privilege wank.  Actually, it is more like Privilege!Fail.  What is the privilege in this case?  Well, according to aukestrel, being sexually assaulted and a rape victim makes one privileged.  And this then became worse when some people like zvi-likes-tv appeared to imply that being a member of that class was voluntary.

Before I get into it too much more, some back story. There were two cases of stories being posted with out warnings for rape.  In both cases, people asked the authors of those stories to post warnings because those stories were triggers for victims of sexual assault.    Both of  those authors complied but one grumbled about how she had to give in to a reader like that.  Another person took exception to that and posted a criticism of the author’s actions.  And it all went down from there with what started out as Warnings Kerfluffling before it got to the point where… well…  Let’s have some of these quotes speak for themselves:

aukestrel:
1. One could argue, however, in this discussion of victim “privilege,” that the hurt might in fact be the result of dismantling of that privilege. I’m not saying I am arguing that. But in our current culture – in which apparently this victim, and her emotional well-being, is placed above and beyond courtesy, respect, and even common sense – and to abuse other women in fandom because they do not elevate the victim or place her rights above their own – it could be argued that cyatnite is, in fact, dismantling a privilege.

2. I don’t think they want to think of those who disagree with them as “women.” They want to dehumanise and abuse them; they want to take away their “humanity” so that they can feel justified in saying things to them that they would never say to another woman in real life. (At least I hope not.) They want to abuse people for holding the “wrong” opinion, even though they can’t really articulate what the “right” opinion is, just that it’s compassionate, displays empathy and consideration, and is a recognition that we belong to something larger than ourselves. I have seldom been so dismayed at the actions of fans as I have been in this post, and I’ve been in fandom for 10 years. I do not know cyatnite (had never run across her before tonight) but I am honestly appalled and even disgusted at the personal attacks she was subjected to for simply having a differing opinion on this subject. One hopes that, should impertinence display a differing opinion with her followers in the next few weeks or months, a similar “compassionate” and “correct” response is not the outcome.

mara_snh:
1. Perhaps it’s best to note that the lack of a specific warning of the sort you and others advocate might be a good enough reason to just not read that story. How much of a hardship would that be? It would also show sensitivity to the writer who worked hard to write a story filled with surprises, and to readers who enjoy being surprised. Works both ways, you know.

5. I’m wondering if what we’re seeing here is a form of free-floating rage. It’s not uncommon for survivors of trauma to manifest this. They’ve never been able to confront their abuser and direct their anger toward him or her. They may also experience self-hatred; it may not be appropriate, but many victims of rape, especially, have been socially conditioned to accept some level of responsibility for the horrible thing that happened to them, and women carrying that awful baggage around with them might well hate themselves for it on some level. All this externalization of blame seems to me a warping of the otherwise healthy process of letting go of any sense that they brought the abuse on themselves. There’s some pretty serious pathology going on here on a community-wide scale. I wish I understood more about it, or that I had access to the therapist I can no longer afford, to get a better handle on it.

I’m just disgusted.  I’m speaking only for myself and not for Fan History or any other admins… but I’m beyond disgusted.  I’m repulsed at the total lack of sympathy and inability to take 10 seconds to prevent a segment that is too large in our community from being inadvertently harmed by the texts that our community published.    We should not lose sight of that when see members of our community supporting anti-warning for rape, underage and BDSM positions while attacking victims of sexual assault for being fragile snowflakes who shouldn’t be online.  We need to focus on the fact that many members of our community are victims of sexual assault; they’ve been violated.  In many cases, they have doubted themselves.  They aren’t trying to exploit fandom for attention.  Rather, they are trying their damnedest to go on each day surviving something of such horror that I cannot even imagine it.  It takes ten seconds of our time, if we’re writers of fan fiction, to warn for rape, non-con, BDSM and underage. (That’s all that is being asked for.  No warnings about cutting Blair’s hair.  No warnings for the color orange.  No pairing warnings.)  By spending those extra ten seconds, we are being good members of the community.

And that’s what we should strive for. If, by using this one small, quickly-made addition to our fics, we can keep from triggering someone who has been violated, why shouldn’t we do it? It just feels like the ethical thing to do.  I’d want the same from others and I’d do the same for others because fandom is a community.  In many places where we publish fan fiction, it is a wonderful community full of supportive women whom we can count on inside fandom and out.  This one small thing requires no work and helps prevent harm to large numbers of people in our community.   I fully support warnings for rape, non-con, underage and BDSM.  I hope you do too.

And if you don’t and you’re on my FList on LiveJournal on I follow you on Twitter, let me know so I can unfriend/unfollow you.

I’ve been meaning to post this for the past week but life got in the way.  On June 13, I attended a Chicago Bandits game.  I’d made a deal with a friend that I would pay for Bandits if he paid for Red Stars tickets.  I was looking for an alternative to the Chicago Cubs because well, I’d gone to five games this season and the Cubs won twice.  The games are also a bit expensive to attend.  I also wanted to support women’s professional athletics.  This team seemed to fit the bill all around.

And you know?  I had a great time.  I got my picture taken with the mascot.  The game was affordable. ($10 for our tickets.  Cheap food.  No parking fees. Not much gas spent to get to the game.)  Our seats were awesome.  The crowd was enthusiastic.  Fans had a good sense of sportsmanship that can be absent from Cubs games.  They cheered for both teams when good plays were made.  (Which was confusing as there were strange silences on occasion when people realized they had cheered too enthusiastically for the opposing team. But still?  How can you fault that sportsmanship?)  The quality of play was excellent.  There were Olympians on the field.  It was a lot of fun.  The whole experience was made of win.

So if you get the chance, check out their website and attend a game. If you don’t want to go to a game by yourself, let me know and maybe we can go together.

It’s another week and I’m in the mood for another post about what’s popular on Fan History. This edition includes our most popular traffic sources outside search, our most popular articles and our most popular keyword based searches for the week of June 7 to June 13, 2009.

Most popular articles
11,848 pages were viewed a total of 44,012 times

1. Draco/Hermione – 920 times
2. Cassandra Claire – 551 times
3. Race Fail 2009 – 423 times
4. Torchsong Chicago – 383 times
5. Sakura Lemon Fan-Fiction Archive – 323 times
6. AdultFanFiction.Net – 282 times
7. Digimon – 226 times
8. Hurt/comfort – 225 times
9. Naruto – 225 times
10. Twilight – 216 times

Coming in Number 11 is Russet Noon with 206 and FanFiction.Net with 204.

Top non-search referrers
Referring sites sent 2,620 visits via 361 sources

1. journalfen.net – blog entry about conventions is where the traffic was from – 298 visits
2. animenewsnetwork.com – 287 visits
3. chickipedia.com – 232 visits
4. community.livejournal.com – 179 visits
5. twitter.com – 83 visits
6. twilighted.net – 81 visits
7. fanfiction.net – 79 visits
8. deviantart.com – 67 visits
9. tvtropes.org – 61 visits
10. fanpop.com – 57 visits

Coming in at referer rank 77 was russet-noon.com with 4 visits.

Search key phrases
Search sent 12,029 total visits via 8,537 keywords

1. naruto wiki – 64 visits
2. adultfanfiction – 60 visits
3. galbadia hotel – 53 visits
4. restricted section – 50 visits
5. adult fanfiction – 49 visits
6. cassandra claire – 44 visits
7. emo porn – 43 visits
8. fan history – 35 visits
9. cassandra clare – 34 visits
10. gosselins without pity – 33 visits

Coming in at the 40th most popular keyword search with 17 visits was russet noon.

I was very sad to hear the news late last night that Minotaur had passed away.(Link to info.) He was a fixture at many of the slash conventions I’ve attended in the past ten years; I first met him at a ConneXions con where he hosted one of his panels on gay sex for slash writers, inspired by his ever-popular Sex Tips for Slash Writers website. I just remember the room being packed-to-overflowing, and also full of much laughter and enjoyment as was generally the case in his company.

His contributions to slash fandom will be remembered for many years, and his presence sorely missed.

…ten years ago today.

I went to see The Phantom Menace.

(OK, technically it was a midnight showing on May 19, the official release date, but you get the idea.)

I hadn’t been planning on going. At least not to a midnight show. While I was a Star Wars fan like any child of the 80s, I’m very allergic to hype, and the massive frenzy around the release of the new film had pretty much left me feeling “meh”. I’d see it when I could, but I wasn’t going to stand in line for hours or days to do so.

But it was my birthday, and I was kind of…depressed. 27 and with nothing planned, no one to spend the day with, grad school was sucking the life out of me and I seem to recall even the weather was shitty. I was running some errands and walked by the old, decrepit-but-beloved Sam Eric theater on Chestnut Street around 3-4pm that afternoon. The marquee proclaimed a midnight showing of the film that night.

“Gotta be sold out, but what the hell,” I thought, and being curious I checked if they had any tickets available. Surprisingly, they did – and no line waiting was necessary.

Score!

I went back home, nursed my morose mood for a few more hours, then went to check out the movie.

Thus began one crazy, crazy chapter in my life.

Now, I’d been involved in “fandom” for a long time by this point (music, tv, what-have-you), but not any kind of fandom in the mega-spotlight. Obscure and weird loves have always been my game, things like The A-Team. Even when I got into big fandoms like Xena, it was on the strange side of the spectrum (Joxer fandom, to be precise. Joxer slash fandom to be even more so. Oh the shame…) Small fandoms. Quiet fandoms. Manageable fandoms.

Then I saw that scene. The one near the end. Qui-Gon’s death scene. Up until that point I’d been happily reveling in just the pretty special effects and grimacing through the typical Star Wars stiff acting and cringe-worthy dialog.

But then Qui-Gon touched Obi-Wan’s face and died and ugh there was my tragic, epic love story for the ages. As Keelywolfe put it so eloquently,

“A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away, George Lucas created Star Wars. And he looked at it and saw that it was good. And all was right in the world. But then, we saw that Obi-Wan doth look upon Qui-Gon with lust, and that Mr. Lucas was not likely to include that in the next movie, so we said screw it and wrote it ourselves, even though we do not make any money off of this. And all was right with the world.”

I immediately rushed home and posted on, of all places joxerotica, virtually screaming “OMGWTFDIDYOUGUYSSEETHATISTHERESLASHYETOMGOMG!!!!” And a few others there went “OMGOMGOMG!!!!” too, and the very next day, I did a very silly thing.

I created Master and Apprentice over on dear old yahoogroups. And I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Foolish me, I thought it would be a lot like running Joxerotica, or my A-Team groups–some work but nothing too daunting. People started joining up quickly but I figured it was just an initial frenzy after the movie’s release. I set up a little archive on my simplenet web account, manually adding stories as they were posted. It was maybe a couple a day at first. Fun, short stuff–angst pieces and missing scenes, short AU’s to “fix” Qui-Gon’s death, that sort of thing. I had a co-mod from Joxerotica helping me out at first as we set up the archive/list’s basic rules. But then it started growing. And growing. And growing, until it became within a month or two The Fandom That Ate Cincinatti. Slashfen were flocking in from everywhere: Sentinel fandom, Highlander fandom, X-Files fandom. People were even bitching how Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan was “stealing” all the good writers from other fandoms!

It should be noted, too, that there was no small amount of concern about “The Wrath of Lucas” when I started the list and archive. While it may seem laughable today, at the time many fen still remembered his previous actions and stance against those who wrote and published adult–nevermind slash–fiction in the Star Wars universe. And also, there were other fen who would react strongly against those who would do so against George’s wishes, as I would learn firsthand from some of the people I would meet in this fandom such as Bev Lorenstein, who would become one of my dearest friends, and who told me what she went through in publishing Organia in 1982. That said, in my years of involvement in Star Wars fandom, I never received a cease and desist letter from Lucasfilms or had any other contact from them. So perhaps the worries were all for naught…

In any event, by the end of the summer of ‘99 I was growing concerned that my little archive just wasn’t going to cut it as a few stories a day were turning into dozens. It was reaching a critical point and I was getting worried about the stability of my archive situation, and my friend Erik came up with a solution.

He could put me up on his own webserver. Register a domain for me–sockiipress.org–and then set up a database program which, although stories would still need to be manually submitted, would make creating story index pages automated, along with allowing for search functions and other cool stuff. sockiipress.org was registered on September 30, 1999 and the archive moved there, which would be its home for the next three years or so, before the archive moved to its own URL, masterapprentice.org, some time after I had left the fandom for good.

But before I get to that part of the story…

Being involved in this fandom from its point of creation through the height of the frenzy was, as I said earlier, a crazy experience. I’d never been involved in such an active fandom before. Never found myself in the Big Name Fan spotlight (though I was no real writer of note in the fandom, just archivist, occasional artist, and “ringleader”, in effect). Was it exciting? Sure! I loved waking up every morning to a emailbox full of new stories. And there was some wonderful fiction being written by some amazing authors. Was the attention thrilling as well? Admittedly, yeah, it was. I went from being the girl into very weird things at conventions like MediaWest and Eclecticon, largely lurking on the sidelines and being ignored, to getting a round of applause at ConneXions in 2000 for the work I’d done on the mailing list and archive. It was an ego boost for certain–but then it also gave me a taste of big fandoms’ ugly side as well, and how fandom can turn on you on the drop of a dime.

First there were scuffles on allowable content. The first one came up over the topic of Chan fic. I lost my co-moderator to the mailing list over this debate and the compromise position on the subject I favored. Real person fic also was broached and lead to some heated arguments until it was banned from archiving. The fandom went through typical growing pains as different subjects and content was being explored, but then our archive was having growing pains, too. Erik’s server was not all that stable, leading to sporadic downtime and a lot of headaches on his end. He put up with a lot helping me out with the site, for someone who wasn’t even in the fandom. At one point, in 2000, he thought it would be a nice idea to burn CD copies of the archive to make available to users through the mailing list. It was welcomed as a good “backup” to the unstable site, and he charged a nominal fee to cover his materials and time — I think it was $7 or so. No one raised a single complaint the first time around with this, and I think he mailed off something like 100-200 copies of the disk.

In 2001, the server difficulties were getting worse. Erik was getting frustrated, and I, myself, was getting a little worn out from listmom and archiving duties. While at this point we had a group of 5-6 assistant archivists, it was still demanding a lot of my time, and my interest in the Qui/Obi was…drifting. By that point I had been distracted by some other Bright Shiny Fandoms — Brimstone in particular. Erik decided to do a second run of the archive disks, at $10, because he was about ready to give up trying to work out a solution for our hosting woes.

That’s when things got ugly. One morning I woke up to several outraged emails from authors who had long been absent from the fandom, demanding that their stories be removed from the archive, not included on the CD, “or else”. Later that day I found out Erik and I were being subjected to ugly accusations of profiting off people’s work, that outrageous things were being said about us all over fandom chat channels (one reason I still avoid “chat” to this day). We defended ourselves and actions while of course agreeing to remove any stories that people did not want included, but were then told, point blank, to “Fuck off” from the community and archive we’d spent all those hours, days, months, years into maintaining.

And we were both only too glad to oblige at that point.

Thankfully, two Loris were ready to help us out. “Lori” took over maintaining the archive and list. “Lorrie” offered us hosting on her own server (for both the archive and sockiipress overall). Eventually I moved to my own hosting service entirely, cutting off completely from my connections to Q/O fandom.

Except, happily enough, ties to some of the wonderful friends I made there, despite all the angst and wank and aggravation. Many of them I am still in touch with today in other fandom communities, fabulous people I will forever thank my involvement in Star Wars fandom for bringing into my life. I learned a lot from my time in the fandom, good and bad, and I definitely would not take those years back for anything. That said, I’m also quite content to be back to lurking around in small and obscure fandoms these days. The pickings might be slim, but the pleasure is rarely overwhelmed by the aggravation.

So happy anniversary, master-apprentice! Our love may have been brief and heated, but when it was good, it was oh, so good…

Sometimes, we get some interesting keyword searches on out blog that look like people need answers that we haven’t answered.  In that spirit, I’m going to address some of those.

what rating did the fans give the twilight movie and why

Ratings can best be found on Yahoo!Movies and on IMDB. Yahoo!Movies fans really liked the movie more than IMDB users. If there was a large amount of wank about the movie being awful, it never hit the radar of the people contributing to our Twilight article.

nicole p. and bonnaroo / nicole p. 104.5 / 104.5 bonnaroo contest

Looking for info on Nicole P?  And why she’s been getting votes in that contest?  That’s because we’ve been heavily plugging it in several places, including Fan History’s main page.   Go vote please.  We would really love for her to be able to go so she could report on music fandom for Fan History.

star trek fan total members

How many members are there  in the Star Trek fandom?  I can’t really answer that easily.   There are at least 5,500 fans on LiveJournal.  We can guess that there are over 3,000 on FanFiction.Net for Star Trek in its various forms.  We know there are at least 45 on InsaneJournal.  We also know there at least 43 on JournalFen.   There are probably other places to get numbers but those are the ones we have on the wiki.

the most obscure fandom ever

What is the most obscure fandom ever?  That’s almost impossible to answer.  There are a huge number of small fandoms with very few fan communities.  Some of them could be really old, with very little that got translated online.  A good example probably includes Road to Morocco.  You also can have local sports team for sports that don’t have big international audiences.  An example of that includes the Storhamar Dragons based out of Norway.  Most people probably haven’t heard of them.   So in this case, we really need the term obscure better defined.

fanfiction net – meme’s stargate

I don’t have a clue.   It might appear in our Stargate article, but skimming it?  I’m not seeing an answer.  Some one please educate me!

trace the ip address who visited my community on orkut

I’ve got nothing.  If you can put images in your profile or community, I highly suggest getting a paid account and using LJToys.  I just don’t know orkut well enough to provide better information.

anime fan art history

A history of fanart can be found on Fan History’s fanart article.  It really needs more work, and only generally touches on anime so the anime article might be a better source.

can wanking be beneficial to growth

We talked about this a lot in this blog entry about generating positive metrics.  Wanking can help provide short term traffic spikes but don’t provide long term traffic stability unless you can do that again and again and again on a consistent basis.  Depending on your content?  That may not be desirable.

So ends this edition of “From the keyword vault…”  I kind of liked writing this so I may do another edition soon.

A few days ago, I published a blog entry titled The problems FanLore faces are not unique: Learning from Fan History’s experience. In the course of editing it, we removed some bits that weren’t relevant to what we were responding to.  One bit I thought was still pretty interesting so, lo! The bit reappears here!

Fan History’s admins all been in fandom a long time, and sometimes this whole issue of doing crosstalk in an collaborative way that anyone can contribute can be intimidating.  In fandom, this just is not done.  With a piece of fan fiction, the process is solitary in creation and when the story is finished, there is no real questioning the process, questioning the organization, suggesting ways to improve the story.  It just isn’t something that is fundamental to our cultural practices.  People don’t ask “Why did you have Harry Potter doing that particular spell in that scene?  Could you use this spell instead?”  If they do that, it tends to be viewed as antagonstic, or questioning the author’s writing ability.  And on the off chance the author and their supporters do agree that something could have been done differently, most of the time the author doesn’t go back and change it.  And if they do?  The audience doesn’t generally go back and read it.  Our cultural practices from the fan community just don’t lend themselves to crosstalk as equals.

An interesting new on-line journal launched this month, Live 2.0, which focuses on the changing face of live entertainment: sports, music, theater, etc. The premier edition pointed out how, in our current technological age, so much of where entertainment consumers spend their money and how they spend their money has changed. Stewart Copeland, drummer of The Police, is interviewed in a fascinating look into how the ‘record album’ (or these days more likely the compact disc) has become so inconsequential as compared to the live concert as far as a musician earning his keep. The concert promoter now trumps the record executive. As Copeland points out,

“The idea of a concert as a catalyst for selling a CD is bass-awkward now. You make a CD and go through all that hassle and give it away, as Madonna has done her deal with not Universal, but Live Nation, and as Prince gave away his album, and as Radiohead [has done]; it’s the other way around now.

Let’s just make a record so that people will like us and come to the show.”

The future for a musician is much more in finding a niche market, for the big, big names like U2 are much fewer and far between, and marketing must embrace not just advertising in a few music papers but the internet, television, radio, and even “making sure you get your tune onto Rock Band or Guitar Hero”.

Russ Stanley, VP of Ticket Service and Client Relations for the San Francisco Giants, is also interviewed and talks about how the team has stayed on top of current trends to successfully market the team and grow ticket sales. “Embrace creative ideas” and “Think Technology” are the first two points raised, showing how simply doing things as had been done in the past no longer works.

So what does any of this have to do with fandom? Well, think about it. For a very long time, one of the long-standing models of live, in-person fan interaction and communication was the convention. Fans would travel the state, the country, even the world to meet other fans in person to discuss their favorite books, movies, television series, or simply be able to spend a few days with people who shared their interests in parts of fandom, be it slash, fur, science fiction, etc. Beyond these conventions, many of these fans had few ways of interacting beyond letter- and/or fan-zine communications, fanclubs, and other mail-based activities. Conventions have thrived for most of a century, beginning (arguably?) with Philcon in 1936, with few alterations in their models for content, marketing, attendance, and organization.

And yet, I believe few today would argue with me that the convention as modeled in the past is dying. Hotel costs have skyrocketed, and many such facilities are no longer interested in the business of renting out all of their meeting rooms at a low rate for an entire weekend to a convention when they can fit in 3 or 4 shorter events, weddings, church groups, or what-have-you over the same amount of time, get large catering contracts and other extras out of the deal. The internet has made communicating with other fans of shared interests much simpler and faster, and possible from the comfort of one’s own living room. There’s no need to trek to MediaWest every year to buy the newest fanzines to get your fan-fiction or art fix; there are more stories than anyone could possibly read in a lifetime available on-line. Convention dealers face lower profits due to the availability of much genre merchandise on-line and often at discount prices via ebay, Amazon, and other large vendors. Many smaller, local conventions find themselves suffering and dying out, or at least facing dwindling attendance numbers where only the largest events that offer wide varieties of programming seem to thrive and continue, such as DragonCon or highly commercial events such as those put on by Creation Entertainment. Cosplay and gaming may continue to give members of those fandom interests reasons to continue attending live events, but they are but two parts of a wide spectrum of fandom interests.

So perhaps it is time for fandom to look towards other models of live interactions and events, such as the BarCamp. Much more interactively generated by “users” (ie, attendees), the BarCamp breaks with the more rigid convention model, can take place in a wider variety of venues (utilizing, say, university facilities or business spaces), and looks for corporate sponsorship to cover costs instead of asking for membership fees from attendees. BarCamps embrace Web 2.0 ideas and technology to stay on top of current trends instead of lagging behind them and clinging to outdated models of interaction. Anyone can start up a BarCamp, and without the high financial burdens or risks involved in even organizing a small convention where hotel blocks must be guaranteed, meeting rooms booked, other conventions attended in order to promote your event, or even guests contracted.

This is part of why I will be very interested in seeing how Camp Fandom comes together for this year, as a fandom-specific event taking place utilizing the BarCamp model. Will other fandom camps follow, perhaps specific to certain fandoms, genres and interests, just as conventions in the past did? It will be interesting to see.

What other impacts will the “2.0″ world we live in have on fandom, and how fans consume and interact with our canon sources, be it movies, television, music, sports, etc? These are interesting questions to consider, and I’d be curious to continue this discussion and see what others think. I think we’ve already seen the “niche” market affect media fandom in the sense that we are no longer a world where only Star Trek, Star Wars, and a few other large name fandoms rule fandom-generated content. There are “niche” fandoms for virtually everything these days, and communities for sharing works about them. Even within each individual fandom, like say Harry Potter, there are communities, mailing lists, and fanworks for every sub-interest imaginable: genficcer-only, slash and het pairings of all kinds, AUs, any kink imaginable…you name it. And those involved in large-scale fandom activities such as running multi-fandom archives, conventions, etc, need to be aware of the wide variety of users that are potentially out there beyond what they might be familiar with inside of their own niche, and decide who they wish to serve: only those within their special interest, or the ever-wider world of fandom out there today.

Fan History’s sports section is pretty awful. Really awful. It is downright pitiful. And that’s really sad as I’m a huge sports nut and I know my Chicago Cubs sports fandom history fairly well. I and Fan History’s other admins have just not invested time in improving it because really, sometimes, why bother?

Sports fandom has traditionally been dominated by guys and they’ve done a lot to document the history of fans. Heck, there is a whole cottage history dedicated to documenting the thuggery that goes down in soccer (football) fandom. This academic work has traditionally been done by guys. It is really well done.

Media fandom has traditionally been dominated by women and they haven’t done much to document the history of fans. There have been a few things done here and there but most of the research focuses on the product itself. If fans are looked at, it is from perspective of how they interact with the product rather than how fans interact with each other. It is totally different from sports fandom. So women aren’t writing fandom history and aren’t writing the history of their own communities.

Of course, this could be something that isn’t a gender issue. It could be a product issue. In sports fandom that tends to be historically dominated by guys, the product and fans aren’t really separate; they share an identity. You can’t really talk about the Chicago Cubs with out talking about its fans. (And if you’re a Sox fan talking about the Cubs, you can’t do it with out slagging on us.) Sports owners encourage that and really crank out the merchandise so fans can brand themselves as fans of a team. Our culture totally supports that by having “Support your team dress day!” type days at work. My local Jewel does that when the Green Bay Packers play the Chicago Bears and employees are encouraged to support their team. Sports fandom also continues on and on. Teams generally don’t collapse/disappear over night and many have histories that are 20+ years old. They have a product you can get behind and have the time to get behind as the background for your life.

Media fandom is different. The producers frequently don’t encourage that sort of relationship with the source. In a number of cases, they treated their most loyal fans as thieves or belittled them, telling them to get a life. When we think of Harry Potter and Twilight, most people outside of fandom don’t immediately think of the canon as batshit insane because the fans are batshit are insane. Most fans aren’t flaunting their relationship with the show in a way that a whole town could relate to and have special dress days for. Media fandom’s products also lack the time lasting factor. When Sex and the City went off the air, women picked a different show to watch or found another way to identify.

So women generally aren’t writing fandom history. There are a few notable exceptions. Fan History is one but our major contributors early on came from spaces dominated by guys or from educational backgrounds where the approach more systematic, quantitative, regimented. Some of the other exceptions came out of competition with other women.

Will this pattern radically change ever? Probably not. Women might write sports fandom history (And they do. Some have found walls that their sisters in media fandom haven’t encountered because of their gender.)  but they will probably remain in the minority for a long time. Women are so closely identified with media fandom and the source code has those identity issues that I see it as a huge barrier to overcome, and that won’t ever be overcome in terms of similar participation by men in sports fandom history documenting.

First, there was AOL shutting down its member sites. Now Tripod is doing the same. TechCrunch is reporting that

“Troubled Internet company Lycos is shutting down its email service and website creation and hosting service Tripod, the company is saying via emails to users that begin with “We regret to inform you that our parent company has decided to discontinue all unprofitable activities.” Both services will be discontinued as of February 15 2009.”

A lot of sites are hosted on Tripod, especially old fannish sites. A lot of early Internet fan fiction was there back in the late 1990s. This is another one of those times when our history is at risk because a site is closing. We’re going to lose a lot.

If you have a Tripod site and you need a new home, there are a couple of places we could recommend and Fan History admins are more than willing to help you with that. If you want hosting, let us know.

See Update on the Tripod situation for an update on this situation. .

Thank you to elocinia for bringing this to my attention. I’m only an occasional visitor to CrunchyRoll and I wouldn’t have picked up on this otherwise. The site is going to have big changes.

CrunchyRoll made a deal with TV Tokyo to get subbed versions of some of their series available one hour after they air in Japan. Awesome no? Not necessarily. In order to do this, they are first removing all unlicensed anime from their site. And if you want to watch those new episodes? You need to pay to be able to watch them right away. If you don’t, you’ve got to wait a week to watch them.

The fall out could be pretty big and we’ll have to see how they handle the fall out that is sure to come from people who protest their illegal vids from being accessible like they want to.

I know there are a few fandom oriented/entertainment communities on Ning. Given fandom’s love affair with adult concepts, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if some of those communities had adult content. If that sounds like it MIGHT be your community, be aware that Ning is shutting them down mostly likely in order to continue to generate revenue through GoogleAds.

I love venn diagrams. (And data. And numbers. And other ways I can better visualize fandom.) I also love Twitter so I was ecstatic to discover TwitterVen which helps visualize what is going on Twitter using venn diagrams. I cranked it up and made the following chart with the keywords of Harry Potter, Twilight and fanfic.

Lo! Behold! Wow! Twilight sure gets a lot of mentions on Twitter. Not surprising. I’ve read a number of people on LJ fandom talk about how Twilight will one day be bigger than Harry Potter. I’ve seen enough of data to know that Twilight fandom NOW is bigger than Harry Potter fandom NOW. What seems really surprising here is that there aren’t more mentions for both terms AND fanfic. Twilight and Harry Potter are mentioned more frequently together than those either with fanfic.

We have a couple more TwitterVens. If you create your own (upload it!), let us know if you find anything interesting!

I’ve watch that video and another one by them. REALLY, REALLY FUNNY. It fits with the movie and satirizes it wonderfully. (And I pathetically still want to see the actually movie again. I’m waiting for it to come out on DVD because seeing it once was one more than I should have.) Twilight, you’re still my public awful guilty secret.

I’m an Arena Football League fan. I love watching their games on television. I love the Chicago Rush because they can win and win consistently. I love the speed of the game. I love that players play both ways. It was the football season AFTER the football season. Serious love on my part.

So it was with sad news that, according to the Chicago Tribune, the Arena Football League season for 2009 has been canceled. It looks like it was a money/economy issue. I’m not certain why they decided to do that but I have to wonder if other companies that are dependent upon discretionary entertainment related spending are going to feel the hurt. Because ouch. When you’re the most down, you need that bit of escapism. This just doesn’t seem to bode well at all.

(I want my football! Please come back in 2010! Chicago needs a winner!)

I’ve been blogging about the pending demise of MSN Groups, and some about the replacements – most specifically Multiply and Windows Live Groups. Multiply because it is the chosen replacement for MSN Groups, and Windows Live Groups since it is Microsoft’s own answer to MSN groups.

So far nothing has come close to the versatility and ease of use that MSN Groups has had.

Nothing.

No other service allowed for custom webpages, for custom logos and buttons and separated messageboards. Nothing was as easy to use as MSN Groups. Just fill out the forms and bingo! You’re good to go. The webpage interface wasn’t exactly WYSIWYG, but it was close and allowed for far more colors than Windows Live Groups allows for (in fact, WLG doesn’t give you background colors for your discussion pages, which is the only place you can use HTML. Pretty much the same for Multiply.) You could easily hide pages, rearrange pages, add new albums, use the pictures from those albums in other spots… the learning curve was as shallow or steep as you wanted it to be. It accommodated both the novice webmaster and the more experienced. It was a great starting place for fandom groups; and a lot of fandoms were represented there.

What will happen to those many fandom groups? Well, some of them will be lost forever come February because their owners just sort of abandoned them to the spammers before this point. There’s at least one Thunderbirds group I know of that falls into this category. It has a lot of interesting fanfic on it, but the owner has grown beyond it and has left it for the “lonely singles” spammers to keep it active (otherwise, it would have been deleted years ago). Some groups will migrate to Multiply, some to Geocities, some to Windows Live Groups… they’ll be scattered all over, and harder to find. The close-knit communities that had developed over the years will be broken up, never to truly be reclaimed again. A lot of interesting and unique fandom creations will disappear forever. I’ve already had that happen once to me; the thought of it happening again makes me sick.

Is there a perfect solution to this forced diaspora? Not really. If you want to have the same flexibility as MSN Groups has, you’ve got to create your own website, and very likely, you’ll have to pay for it. And if you want to continue having a free site, you’ll have to pay in other ways, with intrusive ads or with a loss of those features you’ve become accustomed to.  (Yes, MSN Groups has ads, but because of their placement, they are ignorable.)

As a side issue, I’ve been poking around the Windows Live team blogs for the past few days, and I noticed that they’re not asking for feedback on WLG. Everything else, yes. Windows Live Groups, no. I think they know what kind of response they’d get there: a very angry one from a large group of disgruntled MSN Group owners.

So, we’re losing a piece of fandom property. What’s to go next?

ETA: I’m also aware that AOL is/was dumping their Groups. So there are more fandom communities disappearing. Let’s hope that Yahoo doesn’t join the pack.