Fiction and Fragmented Non-Fiction
A previous post, On fanwork's immortality touched on how the ephemera of fandom could be considered for archiving. This is elaborated by scholars in fandom studies as a direct result of how transformative works and cultures are already structured.
"Those who enter a fandom learn the culture of the fans through their fiction: the fanon explanations, the subtextual relationships that are made text, the rereading and rewriting of source texts into something nurtured and expanded upon. Those new participants who enter the fandom are inspired by what they read, learn from what they read, and build upon it, creating complex and ever-deepening interpretations that are shared with those who came before and after them."
Versaphile. 2011. “Silence in the Library: Archives and the Preservation of Fannish History.” In “Fan Works and Fan Communities in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” edited by Nancy Reagin and Anne Rubenstein, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 6. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0277.
"But if we want to take seriously the possibility that ephemeral conflict and online sex might function to undermine dominant sexual, gendered, racialized, and economic ways of being, both on- and off-line, we cannot restrict fannish politics to the easily archivable."
Lothian, Alexis. 2011. “An Archive of One’s Own: Subcultural Creativity and the Politics of Conservation.” In “Fan Works and Fan Communities in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” edited by Nancy Reagin and Anne Rubenstein, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 6. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0267.
Let us take a step back now and look at how the fragmented non-fiction ephemera and the fiction appear together in the various structures of fandom spaces. (Some of the quotes focus on structures that appear or fade away with time due to various reasons. If you are interested in these reasons and a diachronic look in more detail, let me know.)
One structural attribute is how differentiated the fictional works themselves are. This is related to the preference for a central archive as opposed to smaller, specific ones or vica versa, the existence and type of tagging systems and search functions. What the most of us are familiar with is probably Archive of Our Own with its centralisation, tag wrangling and sophisticated search and filter. On the other hand, we can have a big, central archive, without effective ways to search inside them. When fandom studies discusses a fannish identity or fannish culture independent of the source material, these archives and communities are frequently discussed.
"Readers could easily find a wealth of stories, and there was little fragmentation within the fandom for a single source material. One downside of these large comprehensive fandom archives was the difficulty for the reader to find desired content without robust categorization and search. "
Versaphile. 2011. “Silence in the Library: Archives and the Preservation of Fannish History.” In “Fan Works and Fan Communities in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” edited by Nancy Reagin and Anne Rubenstein, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 6. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0277.
"These fandoms all fit comfortably within the genres of shows typically attractive to media fans, but the late 1990s were distinguished by the crossover between traditional media fandoms and other kinds of fandoms, namely comics, celebrities, music, and anime. These intersections would quickly have a profound effect on traditional media fandom."
Coppa, Francesca. 2006. “A Brief History of Media Fandom.” In Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays, edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse, 41–60. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006.
Smaller, separate archives would seemingly create separate cultures.
"However, the ease of creation also produced a great deal of audience fragmentation: while the new platform allowed for a more tailored fannish experience where a fan could focus on a list dedicated to a minor pairing or a particular story trope, the segmentation prevented a more common fannish consensus. Many mailing lists were perceived—not only to outsiders, but even to many inside observers—to cover the same interests. For fans, it often became necessary both to join multiple groups to keep up with new stories and to cross post to multiple groups to gain exposure. Many groups used privacy controls to block access to nonmembers, and membership could depend upon moderator approval."
Versaphile. 2011. “Silence in the Library: Archives and the Preservation of Fannish History.” In “Fan Works and Fan Communities in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” edited by Nancy Reagin and Anne Rubenstein, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 6. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0277.
However, we see the practice of creating fannish spaces that are not limited to one fandom but incorporate fanworks from these smaller, more specialized archives. Rec lists interpreted as tools of archiving or canonisation are certainly fascinating.
"With a consistent repository for stories, recommendation sites and bookmarking services such as Delicious can be used to create targeted subsets of fan fic, just as themed miniarchives do, compensating for the findability problems that even the most well-indexed archives suffer."
Versaphile. 2011. “Silence in the Library: Archives and the Preservation of Fannish History.” In “Fan Works and Fan Communities in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” edited by Nancy Reagin and Anne Rubenstein, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 6. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0277.
"However, it became common practice for authors to link back to their own journals rather than mirroring their stories in the community space, making those communities little more than collections of announcements, rather than any sort of central archive."
Versaphile. 2011. “Silence in the Library: Archives and the Preservation of Fannish History.” In “Fan Works and Fan Communities in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” edited by Nancy Reagin and Anne Rubenstein, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 6. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0277.
Then, the non-fandom specific, non-fiction elements of fandom are mixed together with transformative works.
"In the early ’00s, fandom expanded into the blogsphere, and its widespread and enthusiastic adoption has had interesting consequences for the fan-created space. Whereas Usenet, ListServs, newsgroups, and bulletin boards all focus on a particular fan topic – a television program, for example – people who blog are just that: people (who are fans) who blog. As a result, individual journals become a mix of fannish and other topics about that fandom, thus including not only fiction, fan art, and commentary on the source text, but also real-life (RL) rants, political discussion, and nonfannish musings."
Busse, Kristina, and Karen Hellekson. 2006. “Introduction: Work in Progress.” In Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet: New Essays, edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse, 5–32. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
"Yet (the Fandom Wank community) too facilitates long-term preservation of fan cultural practices, aggregating histories through an endless succession of in-jokes and links. These ephemeral traces are likely to include fannish creations that are tangential or irrelevant, and sometimes oppositional, to the texts, both initial and archontic, around which they cluster. Yet the flows—the institution, destruction, and resurfacing of digital archives on the fly—produce the experiential politics of online fan culture."
Lothian, Alexis. 2011. “An Archive of One’s Own: Subcultural Creativity and the Politics of Conservation.” In “Fan Works and Fan Communities in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” edited by Nancy Reagin and Anne Rubenstein, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 6. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2011.0267.
Further observing fannish spaces, this is not only by necessity or circumstance but by a marked preference. The difference is if they can mix together in the same space, on the same platform or if they create a network. Mapping this is what awaits fans, researchers and archivists alike.
Author: Szabo Dorottya
