Arduinna

(It isn't bunnies.)

I've been reading some of the posts about money and fandom that are making the rounds, and in the comments to fairestcat's post, people touch on the source of much of the weirdness in fandom re fanworks and money: old-school SFF fandom.

It's always been bizarre to me that fanartists could make money off their fanart, when fanfic writers were expected not to. (I should add here: I love the fannish gift economy, and thought it should encompass all fanworks, not just fic.) I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and eventually came up with what I think might be the answer. Or an answer, anyway.

So here's what I think happened: back in the day (mid-20th century), if you were an SFF fan going to conventions, there were three "paths" to participating. (Someone's going to come and argue that. I'm generalizing wildly here for simplicity. I know there were many ways to participate.) If you wrote fiction, you could submit it to magazines or book publishers, and go pro, and create content for people to talk about. If you drew art, you could submit it to magazines or book publishers, and also sell it directly to buyers at art shows at conventions, which were basically fandom's galleries.

If you didn't want to be a "pro" creating more content, but wanted to talk about fandom in general or the content that already existed, you contributed ("tribbed") to zines (APAzines, letterzines). Tribbers got copies, and other people could buy copies (of the letterzines) for the price of copying and mailing, basically. (Again, generalizing wildly, just to provide a sense of a common approach. Don't @ me *g*.)

Star Trek fandom branched off from SF fandom, and took a lot of SF fandom's terminology and culture with it, including zines. They were created along the old familiar lines: people who wanted to tribbed to zines, and got "paid" with a copy of the zine, and people who hadn't tribbed could buy it for cost and shipping. But in ST fandom and its descendants, zines were as likely to be full of fanfic and fan poetry as meta or analysis.

Artists could get their work out by tribbing to zines, or making zine covers, but art reproduction was harder than mimeographing or photocopying text, so artists also tended to show their work at conventions, which also got set up along the old familiar lines: an art show that allowed for sale or auction of the art.

And then that got embedded in the culture. Fanfic was part of the conversation, like meta, and you didn't pay for it beyond the cost of physically receiving a copy. Fanart that was in zines was also part of the conversation, and ditto.

Fanfic writers who wanted to be paid filed off the serial numbers and went pro if they could, just like in SF fandom. Fan artists didn't have as clear a path to a pro life, but could sell their art at cons. Even as fandom moved online, it was hard to show art, so art stayed outside the general conversation.

These days, art is a huge part of the conversation, and for the most part is free the way fanfic and meta are; you can browse around DA or tumblr (or you could, anyway, sigh) and see all sorts of visual takes on things. But because it was outside the conversation for so long, and treated as a sort of pro content, it's still much more acceptable in fannish culture to take art commissions, or sell art.

It's a bizarre difference in approach when you only see the existing conversation among all the creative forms of output. But I really think it goes back to those early days of creating something slightly different out of SF fandom's culture, and the translation just not being perfect.

for kass: reminisce about your first fandom. What did you love about it?

This ties back into the first post I did, about the people I encountered first in fandom: my first online fandom foray was Forever Knight, and I adored it. Part of it was the fandom itself; I really had a blast, met some great people, wrote my first fanfic there*. Part of it was just that it was the first time I realized that hey, I really am a media fan -- and wow, other people liked this weird little show that I loved! Cue fandom honeymoon phase. *g* I should say upfront, though, that this was nearly 20 years ago (wow, seriously -- next spring/summer will be my 20 year online-fandom anniversary), so I've lost a lot of details, and a lot of what's left has turned rosy in memory.

I kept going off on tangents here about my pre-FK background, but suffice to say that I didn't know any media fans, and was always surrounded by people who thought it was weird to want to watch a tv episode more than once, or tape it so you didn't miss an ep, or talk about a show in any depth. So to find people who not only liked to watch tv the way I did, but loved this one particular oddball, late-night show, was amazing. I only had a computer at work for the first year or two, so I would stay late and go in on the weekends to keep up with everything. I looked like the world's most dedicated employee. *kof*

Then I started going off on more tangents, because my remembered love of FK is inextricably linked to my delight in finding the internet and online fandom at large: the lists, the shared culture (and the bits that weren't shared), using tools like IRC and FTP, putting fannish images into a rotating screensaver, realizing that the lists were full of women -- not exclusively, but there were a lot of women, and it was so rare for me to find women who liked the things I liked.

So all of that was also great, and is a huge part of my memory of FK fandom.

I loved the way the fandom structured itself. The main list was Forkni-l. Basically everyone was on that list; that's where the fandom lived. There was also a fic list, fkfic-l, for gen fic, and an ftp archive to store the stories that got posted there; an erotica list, JADFE, for het or slash erotica (this kinda blew my mind, that you could get erotica so easily, and slash, too! that wasn't about Kirk and Spock!) (not that I was specifically looking for non-K/S, just that the only slash I'd seen in almost 15 years was K/S, and it was a revelation that people were writing it for other characters. IDK, I was sheltered or something.). And partway through second season, another list was created, FKSPOILR, for spoilery discussion, to keep the main list safe for people who didn't want spoilers. I actually joined the spoiler list! ... For about a day, then realized nope, I really didn't want to know. I was happier on the now-spoiler-free main list. (No, I didn't imprint at all on the idea that spoilers should be kept completely separate from general conversation, why do you ask?) And the different factions would form off-list "loops", where they could focus more intently on the characters or pairings they liked, without taking over the main list, which then got to stay for general show discussion that everyone could participate it. It was the best of all worlds, IMO; a really centralized place where the entire fandom hung out together, and lots of smaller offshoot areas where people could focus on their own thing.

It was a great gateway fandom for me all around. The list was active and full of people who liked all sorts of different things about the show, and that "we all like different aspects and characters" was built in to the list culture in the form of factions. Which I guess might sound confrontational? But they weren't; factions were just a way of letting people know what character or pairing you liked best, and it absolutely didn't mean you were bashing other characters or fans of other characters. (There was even a faction for people who liked all the characters equally.) It made it really weird for me later in other fandoms, when things started turning into "well, if you like that pairing, you must hate this other one!" because -- no? It's just not my thing, and that's okay. And there was never a limit on factions; as the fandom grew, the number of factions grew, as people liked more and more things. There was room for absolutely everyone. Not that people didn't some time get a little over-invested in their factions, but mostly the point was to have a good time with it.

The faction thing was also the first way I learned about fandom wars -- but not like any other fandom's wars. FK wars were giant round-robins where factions competed and collaborated and had a blast. They wouldn't have been nearly as much fun if everyone approached the show from the same direction.

Forever Knight also started me on the road to technical competence, as I learned how to hook two VCRs together to dub tapes so I could swap with other people (this seems so meaninglessly easy now, but it was hard then; I had an idea of what I wanted to do and knew it was possible, but the guys at Radio Shack were utterly flummoxed. And the cables I used were like nothing I've used since; they were specifically for dubbing VCR to VCR, and when I finally unhooked those two original VCRs last year -- no, really, they'd been hooked up all that time -- I didn't even recognize the cables). I learned what IRC was and how to use it, including things like dcc'ing files around, and then made friends with people in the IRC channel who I'm still in touch with nearly 20 years later, and it's still one of my favorite ways to get to know someone. I learned not to be shy about contacting people, whether to see if I could get tapes with the Canadian eps (which I could, and which I still have some somewhere <3) or just to strike up an offlist conversation.

I went to parties and gatherings, mostly with the local slash contingent, where we had a good time. My favorite memory of that was someone trying to figure out the name of the episode where a particular thing happened, and everyone saying no, that never happened, until someone realized she was talking about a Susan Garrett story. *g* (Seriously, very easy to mistake one of her stories for canon -- she created an OC that was so well-drawn that he had his own faction.)

I got my hands on whatever images I could; I just found a folder with a bunch of FK images from 1996 and 1997, although I don't know whether I got these over email, IRC, AOL chats, or what. They're mostly tiny by today's standards, but I loved them; I think I put them into a rotating screensaver. At least one is a digital manip. I'm grinning all over my face looking at them now; I remember them so well!

I got exposed very fast to the idea that TPTB were around and interacting with the fans; we had both actors and behind the scenes folks on the list, and while Nigel Bennett (Lacroix) never said anything publicly that I remember, Fred Mollin (the music guy) used to post fairly regularly. When Sony decided to try tie-in novels, they read the archive and hired three fanfic writers to write them. Really good training for the steady erosion of the fourth wall, when you get right down to it.

FK was the first time I heard people talking about songs that went well with particular fandoms; basically they were talking about vidsongs, although I'm not sure if I quite understood that at the time. I remember a conversation with someone where I was all "oh, huh, it never occurred to me to listen to music like that, to match it to a show" and them saying that once you start doing it, you can't help it, you do it all the time. I think I thought that was a little silly. hahaha. *looks at 'vid ideas' music directory*

Basically, reading that list was my favorite part of the day. I got into huge offlist conversations with people, often because we had different takes on things and it was fascinating to see how other people interpreted things. I found out about other fandoms there as well; there was a lot of overlap between FK and Highlander, especially, and people would mention what was happening on Highla-L or hlfic-l, not to mention all the crossovers. There was a little less cross-cultural stuff with the Due South list, but there was some, and I'm pretty sure FK is how I found the DS lists.

I loved that it was my entry into online fandom, and that it just kept going long after I'd moved on. I still recognize names as I move around fandom, especially if they're faction-based; there's just no mistaking a faction-based name for anything but what it is, and I smile every time I see one.

♥ FK ♥

* ahaha, no I didn't. I just made myself check. I'm always completely positive that I wrote my first fanfic in FK, and I'm always wrong; it was Due South, after which I wrote a couple of FK stories. But FK was such a well of firsts in other ways that it feels like the first one I wrote in, regardless of the truth. It is, however, the only fandom where I ever wrote fic under my real name. *g* At the time I figured I'd do gen under my real name and slash under a pseud, but that was way too unwieldy so I just switched to all-pseud, all the time. (back to post)

---

Full request list here, still open!

I'm sorting out a bookcase today, the one that has my media tie-ins. I've purged a lot of them over the years; fanfic gives me more of what I want. But I used to buy anything I could find for any show I loved, and I've hung on to a bunch, especially Star Trek books.

I used to buy a lot of Star Trek books. Some of these I'd forgotten I have; the only way to fit everything is to have doubled rows of books, and the titles in the back rows tend to fade. But today I'm looking at everything, and wow. Seriously, I'd forgotten.

Before VCRs, in most cases your only hope of knowing what happened in an episode was to actually watch it live as it aired, whether first run or rerun/syndication. But for some shows, you could buy books.

James Blish wrote adaptations of (almost) every episode; they weren't perfect, as they were written off scripts rather than final episode transcripts, and they were short stories rather than being particularly fleshed out, but. You could have the episodes in your hands!

I bought as many of the original paperbacks as I could find used, when I discovered these, but I couldn't get my hands on all of them. I was buying in the mid-80s, and there just wasn't much available; used bookstores weren't quite in vogue yet, and I could only get to one con a year with their fabulous dealers' rooms full of rows and rows and rows of used and new SFF. Then the Science Fiction Book Club offered four hardcover volume "Star Trek Readers", which collected all of Blish's adaptations, and I bought those, too. So now I have doubles of almost all of it, and still can't bring myself to purge any of them. *g* What if one day there are no more reruns or DVDs or blu-rays or downloads or anything!!

Blish wasn't the only one writing; a few years after him, Alan Dean Foster wrote adaptations of the animated series, which I also got my hands on, to my delight, as I'd never seen the animated show. Again, I don't have them all, but at least I had something.

And I bought behind-the-scenes books, and making-of books, and anything else I could. (Anyone else have "Chekov's Enterprise"?)

And then I discovered a couple copies of a treasure trove I'd had no idea existed: in the late '70s, Ballantine started publishing "fotonovels". I wound up with copies of Metamorphosis and Day of the Dove.

( Metamorphosis front cover )

( back cover )

They used comic book layout, with multiple panels per page in various combinations to carry you through the story, using tricks like outlining specific people in a white panel border to show that they're in a different place (like talking over communicators), or that a conversation was cutting back and forth on screen, so the still picture would have both face-on shots together. Although someone appears to have decided that that looked silly, because by book #10, they were no longer doing that - so it's less cheesy looking, but also a bit less fun. *g* Some photos spread seamlessly across a two-page spread (which, wow, has to have been a BITCH to print -- there are no whitespace margins in these books, they're pure photos).

( interior pages )

I didn't want to break the spine on the book to get a sample of one of the two-page photos, but they're there.

The front of each book has a short cast list, including guest stars, and a two-page interview with one of the guest stars.

The back of the books have a helpful glossary to explain the terms in the book, from basic ST stuff like "communicators" and "phasers" to episode specifics like the disease one of the characters had, the planets involved in the ep, etc. Plus there's a quiz at the end, to see how much you were paying attention! (Answers on the very final page, so you didn't have to wait till the next book came out to see how you did.) And there would be a teaser photo from the next fotonovel, with a descriptive blurb. They packed a lot into these little books.

I'd completely forgotten about these, but man, now I remember how over the moon I was when I found them way back when. It was like being able to watch the episode any time I wanted!!

Even with VCRs available not long after, these were still fabulous for a long time, because a VCR was only useful if you had episodes to record - and the money to buy enough tapes to record more than a few episodes of anything. A single VHS cassette cost as much as ~10 fotonovels.

I kinda wish the trend of making these had started about five years earlier than it did, just to see how widespread it might have become before it got completely overshadowed by VCR tech.

(Seriously, these are so cool.) (How do I not have a TOS icon?)

(If you want to link to these and keep the cut tags intact for people, link to my front page or link to this archive page)

For the Meta Month of March thing (month_of_meta), someone asked for "Tales of fandom past. Anyone who was around in the mailing-list era or before...I want to hear How Things Were Different Back In The Day."

Which made me feel both really old and like a raw newbie again (there were so many days before The Day! so many people have been around so very much longer than me!). But I also thought to myself, well, this is something I can do. I was there, I really enjoyed it very much, and it won't be that hard. It'll be a little bit long maybe, but not too bad.

Then I started writing. I wasn't entirely sure where to start it, or what angle to approach it from, so I had five or six different starts written out. And then I just started writing, and writing, and writing.

Yeah, this got ridiculously long, even for me, so I'm breaking it out into three posts.

Disclaimer
First the disclaimers and caveats: This is what my experience of mailing-list-based fandom 10-18 years ago (oh dear god) was like, to the best of my recollection. Other people had different experiences, sometimes hugely different, depending on when they came into fandom, what fandom was their gateway, whether they were monofannish or not, whether they were into slash or not, whether they lurked or were active, etc. The only thing that would be mostly the same for everyone is that posts were made, distributed, and read via email.

I had written up a giant step-by-step explanation of my fannish background for context, but it boils down to this: I started out in SF fandom in 1980, found a few slash zines in a dealer's room around 1985, and then totally failed to connect further with media and especially slash fandom until around 1994, when I got on the internet through work and discovered Forever Knight mailing lists. I knew about newsgroups but for some reason they intimidated me, and I stuck to lists; looking back, I regret that, as the newsgroups were hugely active and I probably would have had a lot of fun if I could have adapted to the way they worked.

My personal experience is with Western, tv-based fandoms that revolved around discussion of the source, producing fanworks (which wasn't a word yet - we wrote fanfic, drew art, made vids, tribbed to or edited or published or agented zines), consuming fanworks (likewise), and to some degree attending (or putting on) cons. If you came in through SF fandom, you might say all of that, including the participation in lists/newsgroups/cons/APAs/zines, was your fanac, a term that I wish had gained as much traction as fanworks, because it doesn't narrow down the field of "people who actively create fandom" to people with creative urges.

As time went on I slid more and more toward slash-based fandom, but with the same emphasis as before on discussion, fanworks, and interaction.

Okay, so, with all of that out of the way, here's my take on what mailing-list fandom was like, from about 1994 to the early/mid-2000s.

( The medium defined the message )

( Signal-to-noise: bandwidth and storage )

( Size limits: text, images, video, music )

( Things were pricy )

Looking back on it, it all looks sort of wretched, no? Slow, creaky, limited, expensive.

But at the time, it was amazing. $3,000 for a 4 G system sounds like a lot of money 15 years later -- but 10 years earlier, I'd've paid $3k just for a 15 MB hard drive and installation kit, plus another $2k if I wanted a second unit. My computer had a graphical user interface! It had a web browser! (I didn't have one at work; we didn't need them. We had email, and if you knew enough to ask, you could get a newsreader, too. What else could you possibly need?)It had an internal modem!

We were living the good life.

( ascii art )

part 2
part 3

(If you want to link to these and keep the cut tags intact for people, link to my front page or link to this archive page)

(disclaimer in part 1)

Time to talk about actual mailing lists!

Mailing lists changed over time; in a lot of ways, this goes back to "the medium defined the message" again.

(I'm going to caveat here and say: some of this information is 18 years old and got dug out of very dusty corners of my mind. This is all to the best of my recollection, but take that with a grain or six of salt, please.)

( A brief history of lists )

( General list etiquette )

( Gen v Het v Slash )

( Public and private lists )

( What did people talk about, anyway? )

( RPF )

( Spoilers )

( Posting fanfic )

( TPTB on the lists )

( Getting/trading source )

So I will wrap up with:

( Getting to know people on lists )

And that is my incredibly long, yet incredibly brief and incomplete, look at fandom on mailing lists.

\o/

part 1
part 2