A Blast From the Past

[tiggymalvern]

I woke up this morning, and found this wonderful comment, on one of my old Trigun fics.



And wow, it’s just taken me back about 16 years. It’s amazing to me that a tiny, niche manga fandom that seemed to have died out around 2007 has still been gaining new fans in all the years since. I still get the occasional comment from new people who only just read the manga.

And it’s really reminded me of two things. One is how MUCH I miss the old LJ/DW-style fandoms, with communities, where everyone could have discussions in one place, and everybody could see and reply to everyone else’s thoughts and comments, and then (even better!) go back and easily find them again when you wanted to. It all felt so much more friendly and inclusive than tumblr does, where anybody new feels like they’re struggling on the fringes of a fandom, barely seen.

And the other is that I should finish uploading my back-catalogue of fanfics, because I still have a couple of fandoms I haven’t put on AO3. It really does mean something to people to have them there, it’s not just me collecting all my stuff in one place to be a completionist.

Also, anyone who thinks there’s no point commenting on older fics because the authors won’t care about that stuff any more, you are so, so wrong.

Comments

[anirrationalseason]

Wow! That's an amazing comment to get on a fic! And a lovely reminder that old fandoms are still loved and cherished today <3

One is how MUCH I miss the old LJ/DW-style fandoms, with communities, where everyone could have discussions in one place-- I am so, so with you. The Trigun communities were my first LJ experience and I miss them all so much. That cohesive community feel is hard to find on Tumblr.

[tiggymalvern]

What really hits hard for me is that they talk not just about the fic, but the meta too. Someone who came into the fandom ten years late can just go back to an LJ community and read all of that, because it's all still there, in date order.

All that fannish history on tumblr will be lost - nobody will find those meta posts and discussions about canon in another ten years. Technically they might be there, but trying to find them via searching for tags? That's not going to happen. Fandom has gone from an archive format to something that's fleeting and temporary, and that's a real loss.

[anirrationalseason]

Yeah, Tumblr is so... ephemeral. It's frustrating. I remember returning to the Trigun fandom in 2011 (when most people had left) and falling in love all over again with the early-2000s meta and conversations that had been archived on LJ. One thing I appreciate about AO3 is how the comment space has been designed to take after LJ, to encourage the back-and-forth that I saw so often when I was just first starting out in the fandom. (It's a real joy when I see people using the space for that purpose.)

[tiggymalvern]

I've done that too! A couple of times when there's been something specific Trigun-related I've been looking for (like the dates when I published my stories so I could put it in the AO3 notes), I've been completely sucked in going through the old community posts and seeing all the names and conversations and the fun we all had. And that archive just isn't there for newer fandoms to look back on, which is a real shame.

[bymyverytoes]

Gosh, we're all getting old :) And what a lovely surprise, well-earned.

[tiggymalvern]

Yes, we are! I'll have to keep churning out the fics while I still can :-)

[tei]

Ah, this is so lovely!

I'm reading a fic with a really active comment section on AO3 right now, where the author has no additional social media, and it feels like an entire alternate universe, imagining that all of fandom was still like that. Things staying more or less whee you put them, and the ability to go back and read not just old fic but old discussions, and that the discussions were just as valuable as the stories.

[tiggymalvern]

Exactly! The discussions are just as valuable as the stories, and LJ keeps them available in a giant library of fannish thoughts and enthusiasm. When everything's on tumblr and twitter, most of it might as well be gone forever 24 hours after it's posted.

[tei]

Yeah. I really, really wish that ao3 comments sections were the same kind of social space as LJ comments used to be— and am reading one fic right now where they really ARE, which is an amazing experience, that's probably mostly because the author has no social media at all and spends a lot of time checking in on readers, asking about their lives, and writing long and thoughtful replies to every comment. So... it can be done, and I'm trying to do more of that in the comments sections on my fics too, but it's an uphill battle when the social web 2.0 exists and people expect that kind of communication.

[tiggymalvern]

Half the problem is that you're fighting a battle against the idea that it's bad form to have discussions in AO3 comments. I LOVE it when my readers talk to me about their fannish ideas, and I do the same, and we strike up an actual conversation. But there are people who see chit-chat as a way of artificially inflating the comment count, like it's somehow cheating for an author to talk to their readers.

As long as there's the possibility that people might base their decisions on whether or not to read a fic on how many kudos and comments it already has, that bizarre atmosphere is going to linger; that authors are somehow in competition with one another for readers, and you shouldn't make one reader's comment turn into ten by actually answering. It's an argument I've seen go around on tumblr and it's desperately sad.

[tei]

...HUH. I've never been a heavy tumblr user, and... I think maybe I saw that worry float by on ao3commentoftheday or some similar ask-us-about-writing blog, and my entire thought about it was "wow, that person's got Issues." I had no idea that was a widespread opinion or worry! Aaaaand now that I know, I will continue aggressively not caring, lol. I'm not buying into no bullshit competition, and if people think I'm "cheating" and don't like me, they're free to not read my fic.