#fanlore log

[charmedseoull]

Day 16: I was only going to put this in my private notes for the day, but I felt the need to share my thoughts in the public notes. I truly hope each writer I contact or read or discuss for the T50BTSFF Ao3 project truly knows how their work has affected people. These writers inspire and motivate others to write and create. Honestly I’ve put off researching on other authors until I read their fanfics so I don’t cloud my judgement or find something upsetting. As a member of the fanfiction community, I’ve seen many things. I experienced the Dirty Laundry Klance incident in 2016 firsthand and felt the after effects of the Hamilton cannibal mermaid incident. I’ve seen authors rise in popularity and get slashed down and harassed by those who though they were morally right. I have many fears when coming into this project, but I’ll only share one here. The rest are in my private notes, which will be publicly published in 5 years. I fear the truth. Some people, after they’ve written fanfiction, do not want to be found again or ever talk about their work again. I respect such, but I fear it. In this moment in time, it is one of the only moments I can be doing this. Many of the authors and readers from 2016-2017, which is where a majority of the T50 are from, could have moved on or are extremely hard to track down. Even in some of my notes, I am omitting information to protect the identities and my own private life. I am just an anonymous collector of information and I wish history to respect that. My analysis and documentation should be shared publicly if possible, but there’s a lot to respect and move on from. Personally, I find that I’m at the right place at the right time. We need to start documenting these fanfics now because if we wait any later, it’ll be too late. I’m already planning on releasing some essays and writing pieces about the BTS fanfiction culture, general fanfiction culture, and some of the commonalities in the T50BTSFF. Already, I’ve found that a majority of the fanfics are explicit. In the T50BTSFF Ao3 project, I’ll be including both complete and incomplete works. So in the end, I might not actually do only 50 fanfics.

From there, I might move on to do T100, but let’s wait on that decision. Also, there’s an entire drabble collection in the T50 that I’ll probably do individual notes on for each drabble. Here’s some observations about the T50:

-A majority of the works were started in 2017 or 2020 -> Indication of rising and falling popularity in fanfiction reading culture. 2017 = BTS’s first spike in popularity into the west with DNA. 2020 = COVID-19 Pandemic, people have more time to read and write.

-Majority of the works contain sexual content -> Displays BTS’s older userbase, sexualization of gay relationships, gay fetishization, there’s been people who’ve written about this MLM phenomena in fanfiction already and I’ll probably write my own piece on it at the end of 2021.

-Taekook is a majority of the fics for the T50 -> Most popular ship in the fandom, obsession, fan behavior analysis will have to do later

-Most popular ship combination is Taekook, Yoomin, Namjin

I’m going to have to read some things I’m uncomfortable with for this project. I’m okay with that. Some of these word counts are pushing 600k though, so I’m going to have to start keeping a more consistent reading schedule. Also some of these fanfictions have sequels, which I’ll also be reading and including in the project. Overall, the T50BTSFF Ao3 project should have both the T50 when searching for All Works and for Complete Works Only. I’m going to see how I feel at the end of 2021 before deciding if I should do the T50BTSFF on Wattpad or not. I’m determined to follow through with this project. Even if I disappear for a bit because of real life, I will return. On 11:59 of December 31st, 2021, I will take one last inhale and submit the last fully complete Fanlore page for the 50th most hit BTS fanfic on Ao3. Then at midnight, I will exhale and find my project done. It will happen, I will manifest it into being. I promise this to myself and whoever may read this in the future that I will finish this project. Nothing in the world can stop me. After the project is done, I will carry on maintenance for the pages for as long as I can. In this moment in time that God or whichever higher power has given me because of quarantine, I will use it to its fullest and make a mark in history for fandom. I say this to an empty crowd, but be prepared. I will help fandom history make our mark.

(Day 23 repost onto Tumblr)

[charmedseoull]

Day 15 (Part 2): I’m reading tStS. I’m working on finishing it up soon. Currently on Chapter 19, it’s been fun. tStS is much more adventure fantasy while HoC was psychological gangster thriller. It’s interesting seeing the differences between the top 2 fanfics. The tattoo idea is quite interesting. I’m mostly wondering where Yoongi’s keeping his tattooing materials in the middle of sea. The whole tiger thing cements this fic as fantasy for me. What an interesting story element. Kind of random, but we’ve seen a lot of weird with this fic already. Oh to have such juvenile writing like tStS has~ It attempts to be a real book, but the amount of fanfic rhetoric slipping through is so pleasing. Authors never forget their roots whether it be in the common phrases or dialogue. tStS having cultural diversity and exploration of Indian culture, uncommon in a majority of fanfiction, is incredibly refreshing

(Day 23 repost onto Tumblr)

[charmedseoull]

Day 3: I just realized that while I’m documenting fandom history, I should probably document how I’m documenting that history. So hello world to my daily logs as I work on documenting the Top 50 Most Hit BTS Fanfiction on Archive of Our Own. The original House of Cards (BTS story) Fanlore was created by a user named Caessius. They haven’t been active since June 2020 and created HoC’s Fanlore page on January 2019. On their profile page, they said that they usually create stub pages and encourages people to contribute to pages. So, I decided why not? And why not make a project about it? I’ve always been passionate about documenting fandom history and I think this is the perfect way to do something productive during quarantine. Seeing the Fanlore page of HoC motivated me to start Fanlore, so here I am now. Today I added some Archive of Our Own comments to the page. It was pretty emotional while doing so. A lot of comments were from the last update of HoC on May 22nd, 2016. Getting to read these people’s reactions from 4 years ago is very meaningful. Fandom culture was a bit different in 2016, pre-Tumblr purge. I’ve read a lot of comments with people who’ve broken down the story and have shared how the author has inspired them. I’ll be honest: I cried a lot while reading through these people’s comments. I hope they’re doing well now. I finished reading HoC a while ago because I’ve only recently gotten into BTS, but I truly feel like I came at the right time to do this. I hope to keep documenting fandom history as best as I can. I’m still working on the HoC page though I hope to do the Top 50 Most Hit works for the BTS fandom by the end of 2021. That’s about one fanfic a week. It’ll probably be easier the lower I get because of a lack of information. I also hope to keep track of these pages and update them when I can

One question I do have about HoC is its orphaning. I’ve scoured the internet. I’ve looked through Twitter and Tumblr an unhealthy amount with the keywords House of Cards, sugamins, valentinosuga, and BTS 2016 fanfiction and I can’t find any remains of discourse or drama. There’s no call out posts or angry comments or anything like that. It feels so strange. In 2016, there was another fanfiction controversy with Dirty Laundry from the Voltron fandom. I don’t know if that’s drowning out my search results at all, but it’s been an interesting experience so far. Tumblr’s search engine sucks sooooo much though, it’s the ACTUAL worst. I’ve found much more useful information by only using Google. I also have to consider how House of Cards was pre-Tik Tok era and during Vine era We lost so many fan edits due to that and Vine’s own search engine sucks, even back in 2016. I know, I used it myself to search for fan edits. On Instagram, it’s even more of a hassle to search. I haven’t reall tried there yet but I will tomorrow Now onto all the edits I’ve made today for House of Cards: I’ve added some Spotify playlists, Archive of Our Own comments, and after I finish writing this I’ll be working on my formatting for the page. I want to be able to expand my cultural impact section more. Hopefully I can go on Asiafanfiction and find someone who’s Korean and ask them if they’ve ever heard of House of Cards. I’m also going to ask around on r/fanfiction and find where I can contact someone who lives in Korea and speaks English that I can talk about fanfiction with and its history. Also I need to find a way to look at ao3 statistics over time because House of Cards seemed to have a peak in viewership in 2017. I think that goes along with BTS’s peak in 2017 as well into the American market. Ao3 is used more by Americans and Chinese people before the ban in February 2020 due to the Xiao Zhan incident. I need to probably look into other fandom circles to see HoC’s impact there as well. 2016 is difficult though. Even though it’s pretty recent, it’s past enough to where a lot of authors who would’ve been affected by ao3 would have moved on or grown up. I’m looking through old 2017 Tumblr posts and the nostalgia is kinda getting to me. I’m learning a ton about culture and fandom itself right now. It’s very fulfilling. That’s all the notes for today’s log. I hope to continue writing these and finish my project for as long as I can. Ah I just looked back at my notes and I need to call all Chinese ao3 accounts I find void because of the ban. They won’t be able to contact me at all. I’m gonna need to find a Chinese contact. Well, I have some goals now so yeah. That’s truly it for today. See you tomorrow.

[charmedseoull]

Day 23 (Part 2): I’m posting all of my daily tweets from here onto Tumblr so I have two places of documentation. Tonight, I’ll be editing the House of Cards page pretty heavily to add the appropriate credits and make it more thorough. Interviews have been going well. I’m trying to go for depth on Fanlore pages. Honestly, I’m a bit amused about what future historians will think of what I’m doing. Perhaps my anonymity will drive them mad. We’ll see~

[charmedseoull]

Day 23: I haven’t been putting many updates here because I’ve been working on analysis of some fanfics. Currently, I’m working on for for Imprints (for the boys in the back) by Anna(arctic_grey) and for House of Cards by sugamins. The Songbird and the Sea has been hard to find the time and motivation to finish. I need to finish it soon. Maybe by tonight if I’m feeling up for it. Right now I’m sort of in an analyzing sort of mood, so I’ll be writing what I can. I really want to do formal reviews and breakdowns of these stories, but I think after the T50BTSFF Ao3 project I’ll only choose a few that have the most for me to delve into then go from there.

[charmedseoull]

Day 15 (Part 1): Someone edited the Imprints and Magnitude Fanlore stub page I made and I am overwhelmed with emotion that they did that. I’m going to work on that page as a side project because Imprints and Magnitude by artic_gray means so much to me as a reader. It’ll be a side project from the T50BTSFF project. Maybe I’ll just document Namjin fanfiction there. There’s some that I really want to make sure get pages on Fanlore, especially Imprints and Magnitude plus landscapes like our hearts. They’re not read by many, but they hold immense meaning to me. And kind of selfishly, I want them to be documented and talked about more. They’re very meaningful works to me that encapsulate fanfiction so rawly and the Namjin dynamic so well.

(Day 23 repost onto Tumblr)

[charmedseoull]

Day 14: I sent the first interview email for the T50BTSFF project today. I’m still clearing my head for tStS. I need to start collecting data to make graphs appropriately

(Day 23 repost onto Tumblr)

[charmedseoull]

Day 13 (Part 1): I need to kind of reset and clear my mind before delving back into tStS. I’ve stopped researching and won’t continue until after I’ve read all of it as to not cloud my judgement. I’m not sure if the author is transphobic, has changed from such, or where the claims come from at all. I will know in due time, but until then I will try to read tStS as clearly as possible without judgement. I’m still enjoying it and taking notes about the writing of the story itself. I have these public diary format entires that you’re reading now on Twitter and Tumblr, but I’m going to start keeping private notes as well to document my struggles. I will release all of those notes once I am done with the T50BTSFF project in a mass note page. I’m beginning to contact more people for interviews now. I’ve gotten in contact with HoC’s author and I’m contacting fanfic authors and readers from 2016-2017 through Tumblr. I need to pick up on my reading more.

(Day 23 repost onto Tumblr)