This focus on portraying a real, desirable example of friendship is one of the things that’s made the Starsky & Hutch fandom so durable. While it lends itself to both gen and slash exploration, it also stands up to scrutiny on its own in a way that shallower depictions might not—and it provided a model for members of the fandom.
“I kind of took that example when I was a teenager watching the show and made that my thing,” said Lisa. “I wanted to be that friend. I wanted to have that kind of friendship.” And she did: she still has friends she met in the ’70s. Flamingo, too, says the show influenced her close relationships: one friend she made through the fandom lived with her for 20 years.
In our June article, Jay Castello talks to the admins of the Starsky & Hutch Fiction Archive about their decades-long efforts to preserve fanworks—and fandom friendships.
This Week in Fandom, from a Small Site Owner's Perspective
This past week has offered an interesting example of synchronicity in fandom history. On 5 May, a comment on the Silmarillion Writers' Guild Discord about "AI fanart" prompted the mods to collectively make a uncomfortable noise like, "ummmm ..." and swiftly open discussion on whether AI-generated "fanworks" were actually fanworks. (We decided no.) The next day, 6 May, the OTW Signal highlighted the interview with legal chair Betsy Rosenblatt, where she expressed excitement for inclusion of fanworks in AI training and pissed off a bunch of fans. By this point, I'd mostly written the SWG's AI policy but was giving my comods the weekend for further research and discussion on the issue before turning the document over to them for comments and edits.
As a small archive owner, it is interesting to undergo this process, first with my comods and now with SWG members, at the same time as the OTW/AO3 is wrestling through theirs. Yesterday, my afternoon was spent researching and implementing, with the help of my co-admin Russandol, strategies to block as much AI scraping of the SWG as we can. In the aftermath of that work, I wrote this post about a small archive owner's perspective on the issue and how it has unfolded on the SWG vs. AO3.
Then, in a second instance of synchronicity, while I was writing this post, AO3 was clarifying their stance on AI. First, as a PSA to anyone reading this, AO3 does block AI scrapers and has since December 2022 (though I'll be petty and note that it doesn't seem that they've gone as far as the SWG in the tools they're using, at least based on this post). But AI-generated "fanworks" are allowed: "If fans are using AI to generate fanworks, then our current position is that this is also a type of work that is within our mandate to preserve." This is what I predicted in my [synchronous] post, and I was right.
Two big points emerge from my consideration so far of this issue and how it has been handled on a small site (mine) and AO3:
People want/need AO3 to be something it's not because there aren't any other options for the vast majority of fans. (Tolkien fans, you do have options. Not a lot, but trust that there are people in other fandoms wishing they had even the few small independent archives that we do.) OTW/AO3 need to take a principled stand that all fanworks deserve to be preserved. And fans often want spaces where all of the fanworks that ideal encompasses (like AI-generated ...) aren't included. Both are legitimate! But when AO3 is the only option for most fans, they turn their energy to trying to change a foundational value of the one option they do have, and that's fruitless and frustrating and contribute to the comments along the lines of "no one will listen or care."
Big organizations are big, and changing or responding to anything is like trying to port-round the Titanic: It's going to be slow and cumbersome and possibly involve catastrophic collisions with icebergs despite best intentions. In eight days, the SWG went from never having discussed AI formally to having a draft policy in front of members for comment and implementation of AI bot blocking. In the same span of time, OTW managed to rouse themselves to an apology that has been widely perceived as half-assed, and AO3 managed to inform people, after a week of worry, that they've been blocking most AI scrapers for months. This isn't a criticism of those organizations (really!) but an acknowledgement of the difference between big organizations and small ones and an argument for diverse options for archiving fanworks because both options have advantages to offer.
As I said above, I wrote much more about this here.
Of course, what should be done? The options are what they are, right? Right now, yes, mostly. That's the sad place where we've ended up, but we can reverse course. There was a time when many fandoms had dozens or even hundreds of options for archiving fanworks. Those small sites, archives, and communities died due to a variety of factors: closure of the platforms on which they were built (e.g., Geocities and Yahoo! Groups), low to no traffic (due to everyone reading and posting exclusively on AO3), and deteriorating software (e.g., eFiction ... and again at least partly due to low demand, again because everyone thought AO3 would be everything they ever needed).
However, there is hope that more options will become available (or already have).
Neocities is a resurrection of Geocities for personal homepages.
Bobaboard "lets you create moderated, privacy-oriented communities for all your fandom interests."
Dreamwidth is still around, fandom-positive, and underused.
eFiction is being rebuilt, ideally with the ability to host a site through their servers, much as you can build a Wordpress site without downloading Wordpress onto your own webspace.
Fandom Coders is a resource for educating fans who want to learn the skills to build and run website.
I'm working on a tutorial for how to build a fanworks archive in Drupal, the software we use on the SWG. I have the whole thing outlined and will be recording it this summer. Watch this space.
So what can you do?
If fanworks are hosted somewhere other than AO3: post there, read there, comment there, interact there, link there. I cannot overstate how vital this is for small sites.
Make sure your fanworks are archived someplace other than AO3 (like Dreamwidth), even if you're not getting clicks, comments, and interaction there ... yet.
Nearly all of the options for independent sites that I linked above accept donations toward their projects. eFiction is one where I know progress has stagnated due to a lack of funding.
So this turned into another tirade/plea for small sites, but it really is unfair to OTW/AO3 to ask them to be something they were never intended to be, and it's also unfair to fans that they don't have a place to put there work that they feel reflects their needs, wishes, and values.
idk if this is a hot take but "cringe culture" (or whatever tf we're calling it) will wreak havoc on fannish archival practices.
current and former fans are deleting, archiving, and/or disavowing fanworks that aren't "problematic" or harmful simply bc they're afraid of being perceived as cringe. even when they are works for fandoms that had or have a long streak of harmful behavior, we need these fanworks - including fanart, fic, rec lists, criticism, etc - to be extant so that our fandom archives can be full and complete with context.
we lose a lot when all we know about harmful fandom behavior comes from secondary sources. in addition, we lose a lot when everyone is scared of being cringe and good, amazing fanworks are taken down simply for the crime of having the potential for cringe.
I can't tell you how much I fucking hate Instagram from an archiving perspective. I've had my accounts basically softblocked and left unable to load Instagram feeds because of downloading lots of fanart (if you didn't know, Instagram doesn't let you directly download photos and if you try to circumvent it using extensions/software you're basically flagged as a bot and punished).
Like I get that the intention is to stop people from downloading selfies, but for fuck's sake I've never seen a site go through such extreme lengths to prevent people from archiving their content. I'm not being a creeper, I'm just trying to archive fanart from my favorite series/artists because you never know when they'll disappear forever. God, archiving is such an annoying hobby to have sometimes lmao
sometimes I dream that one of the cool fandom historian youtubers will make an xf video about alt.tv.x-files and gossamer and shipping bc I'm tired of hearing about how amazing and influencial hp fic archives were
How did I miss that squidge.org was rebuilding the old jinjurly podfic database??? And that of the 5000+ stories, they're down to under 800 still missing? Go check your old drives, my loves, and see if you have a missing fic!
Hey Podficcers, just want to warn you about a site. https://audiofic.jinjurly.com/ is a podfic archive which seems well and good, but someone posted one of my podfic there without my permission, which is against their terms. Anyway, might want to have a quick check to see if any of yours have been posted there without your knowledge. The person who did it actually commented with a link on my AO3 podfic page which is how I found out. I have requested the site owners remove it as I did not want my podfic posted elsewhere. We shall see what happens. Will report back with any responses (or lack thereof) I receive.
About This Site | Audiofic Archive
Also, in case this isn’t clear DO NOT DO THIS. If a fan work, any fan work, is not on a platform or site you want it to be on DO NOT TAKE IT ON YOURSELF TO PUT IT THERE. Contact the creator and ask if they will put it there themselves, or if they mind you cross posting. And if they say no to cross posting THEN YOU FUCKING RESPECT THAT. You do not get to take a fan work out of the creator’s control just because you want to. It is the height of rudeness and I promise you the creator will be extremely upset when they find out. It is theft, and it is absolutely not ok. Don’t do it.
