lirazel | (no subject)

Warning: these thoughts are very preliminary and more coming from a place of instinct than well-formed thought. I am happy for anyone to push back against anything I say provided you do it respectfully.

Hannah and I were talking yesterday (in a very un-nuanced way) about how weird it is that within fandom circles, there are fewer and fewer people willing to engage in commenting/meta-writing/actual fannish conversation (or hell, even reblogging of art on Tumblr), but more and more people who think nothing of paying for online stuff? I am shocked that this ko-fi thing has taken off--I guess I'm old school enough that the thought of monetizing fandom is horrifying to me.

I mean, I guess there's an entire cohort of people who never used the internet before Facebook introduced the like button and so don't know the joy of full-on fannish engagement. And those same people are accepting the commodification of...everything.

It's just really, really weird to see. I know there was a gap in culture between the pre-internet 'zine-and-conventions fans and then the very first fans who were using the internet before the world wide web and then again my generation who started using it in the late 90s and came up on message boards and mailing lists and such. But the gap between those earlier generation of fans (and by generation, I'm very much talking about "when you got involved in fandom," not what age you are) and the current one seems like a chasm. I just don't recognize how they do fandom, and I am actually pretty sad that none of them seem to want to do it the way we do it (only, you know, with greater diversity, etc. I'm not pretending like the internet in 2001 was perfect. It was much whiter and richer, and lots of things about accessibility have changed for the better since then).

I've just always really loved that fandom is a gift economy and that the gifts go both ways. That I write fic because I want to share it with y'all, and y'all respond and engage with it, and we all have a great time together. A "content"-based view of fandom where you just ~consume~ is just so repugnant to me and I don't want anything to do with it, and I know we're not going back to a livejournal kind of fannish experience, but I'm just...really not looking forward to further changes in fandom. I don't see good developments coming down the road, and I can't figure out if this is me being all Old Man Yells at Clouds or if I'm right and things just aren't as fun anymore.

And yes, this is partially about me getting fewer comments when I write fic for a huge fandom than when I write for a Yuletide-sized fandom, but also it's about a general feeling that people just don't view fandom (or even the whole internet) as a place of two-way interaction anymore.

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I get as few comments in big fandoms as in small fandoms. That is, in part, also because I don't necessarily write things people read (too long, too plotty, not enough sex and what sex there is is not in the least kinky or anything else, relationship happens with the plot rather than the plot around the relationship). But I've also stopped writing for an audience a long time ago; basically, these days I write what I want to read and if anyone else likes it that's rad! But...yeah. This is partially born from the fact that, at some point, I ended up figuring out that if I want to read [specific thing], I probably have to do it myself.

All of that being said, I agree with you that I find the monetization of fandom at best problematic and at worst as horrifying as you.

But I also fear we won't get old fandom back and that ship has sailed....and that means those of us still left have to stick together and make our own fun. Since I never made the jump to tumblr and twitter, I think I've been spared from a lot of things happening over there but the fringes are enough to just make me...tired. I'm clinging to the old time friends I have and...well. Hope for the best. Save as many fics as you can that you love and hope astolat will pull the plug on AO3 before allowing monetization or censure.

The good thing about fandom now though is that it's so big that you can absolutely stay out of the wank and the flame wars. That was definitely very different in the late 90s.

I really wish I could get to that "I'm only writing for me" place, but I have not yet reached it.

But I also fear we won't get old fandom back and that ship has sailed....and that means those of us still left have to stick together and make our own fun.

You are no doubt correct about this.

The good thing about fandom now though is that it's so big that you can absolutely stay out of the wank and the flame wars. That was definitely very different in the late 90s.

True! Even on Tumblr, I hear rumblings of far-off fandom wank, but it never gets anywhere near me. A true blessing!

I really wish I could get to that "I'm only writing for me" place, but I have not yet reached it.

Yeah, I wouldn't worry about it too much? It's not that I don't love every comment I get to bits, but realistically, I don't get enough comments because (see reasons above) and I've had to make peace with that. And I personally need writing as an outlet; I know from painful experience that me not writing is a sign of something larger that's wrong with me and unfortunately I can't have it both ways. So I, at least, had to put this into a larger context and somehow get make it both work. So the only way to actually do that was to make myself not care.

I don't think there's anything bad about not being at that point.

I am, however, also very lucky that over the years I've shared most of my fandoms with carmenta, so I had at least one person in my corner. We can probably debate about how healthy it is to have my mental equilibrium hung up on this, but, frankly, I'm not ready to examine that.

I think I was very fortunate in having lived in the pre-Internet era, when it was so much harder to find readers. I occasionally had feedback on works of mine that appeared in school publications or local newspapers, but nothing along the lines of what I've received from the fanworks community. So I grew used, during those decades, to writing story after story, knowing that no one was going to see the story except me. As a result, comments and kudos have always been icing on the cake for me.

That said, my spirits do soar especially high when I know that readers like my fics, and especially when they take the time to tell me why.