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I have lately been diving back into Tolkien Fanfic Survey data, as well as reading Abigail De Kosnik's Rogue Archives, and the combined endeavor has made me eager to visualize some of the data on how fanfiction archive use has changed over the years in the Tolkien fandom. Hence, the above. As the title to this post suggests, it is not complete. The archives listed are those that Maria and I included in the 2020 Tolkien Fanfic Survey, and Fanlore has expanded its offerings in this area since then, and I hope to add those in to the graph as well. But this is a start.
Some takeaways:
- The saddest for me: Tolkien-specific archives are all but gone, at least as far as use goes. Several still exist but no one is using them. The only two that exist and are being used are the Silmarillion Writers' Guild and Stories of Arda (with the former the more active of the two ... and believe me, that scares the hell out of me that this thing I built and continue to run is the best bulwark at the moment against the extinction of an entire mode of sharing Tolkien-based fanfiction).
- De Kosnik writes of the different eras of archive development. In the late '90s to early 2000s, the first multifandom archives (what she classifies as "universal archives") and social networks (often leveraged as fanfiction archives, though not intended to be used as such) appeared. By the mid-2000s, you have see a burgeoning in Tolkien-specific archives built by fans (versus coopted from space on other, larger websites). De Kosnik calls these community archives because they are almost always associated with a group on a social network, such as a Yahoo! mailing list. The first social media sites begin to arise here too, but they aren't utilized by fans until the last decade or so, when they—plus AO3—shift into the primary mode by which people share fanfiction. What's cool to me is that you can see these "eras" represented in the timeline.
- You can also see waves of archive closures. And this is totally new to me. I'd never detected patterns in this before, but what I notice first and foremost is that waves of closures follow the ends of film releases. When the third film in a trilogy leaves theaters, in the years that follow, fanfiction archives will close. You see it following the ends of both trilogies, in 2004 and 2015.
- But that's not the full story. Recent years have been devastating, and I don't think that's an overdramatic choice of words, nor is putting it in italics overkill either. So many archives have closed ... and why?
I think this is a combination of things. First, is technological rot. eFiction stopped being updated in 2015. We first started noticing problems on the SWG several years ago (I do need to find the exact year for this—note to self) as the code became deprecated. This predicated, for us, our investigation into options and our move to Drupal ... but this was a HUGE endeavor. If I had another type of HTML tag to signal that, I'd plunk it in there. It took years of research, learning, and experimentation, then the better part of a year (much of it during lockdown, when time at home was in abundance! else it would have taken much longer!) to actually build the thing and migrate the existing stories onto it. We have an active archive, so it was worth the effort. For sites that have seen interest in them dwindling? It wouldn't be.
I think the shift to AO3—plus the availability of Open Doors—is part of it too. AO3 has become, for better or worse, the default and the norm, even in Tolkien fandom. And if you're an archive owner watching your archive slowly die from deprecating code and waning interest, the option to avail yourself of the default via Open Doors is a very reasonable solution. It saves the stories and also saves you from the herculean task of migrating to a finicky new software system.
Of course, anyone who knows me and my writing/thinking on archives knows that I don't think that shift is a total good. I included AO3-bound archives separate from other rescue projects (like those dedicated to Yahoo! Groups) in part to illustrate how much of Tolkien fanfiction is shifting onto this single platform. Open Doors is a very good thing. But it is worth thinking about what we lose when most of our fanworks exist on AO3 and whether we are content to let there be just two active Tolkien-specific archives out there‐or whether the next hypothetical wave of archive-building should restore our community archives.
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(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-09 09:44 pm (UTC)As a consumer (or reader, should I say, but it's a free consumption of literary works for me anyhow (I don't view this under a negative light, it's merely the description I prefer to illustrate the process of searching, selecting and reading fanfiction (you can tell I just finished my assignment on the consumer's decision process for my marketing class))), I alternate between SWG, Stories of Arda and AO3. AO3 has plenty of Chinese fics, and I have too much fun using the translator option on my ipad to read. However, AO3 offers a lot in terms of quantity, but in terms of quality, I have to spend more time searching for something that meet my taste. Stories of Arda and SWG offer more quality. I did lurk on Faerie from time to time, and on Library of Moria.
The useage of fanwork archives is shaped by the mainstream consumption of social medias: quick, easy, gratifying. I'm an oddball in the sense I tire from those easily, and don't mind to spend a lot of time searching for a product that caters to my desires.
I alternate between commenting on AO3 and SWG, although I'm guilty of commenting more on AO3 (when I think of commenting at all. I often lack words to contribute to anything, that's why I don't blame people for not commenting my own fics. I'm my #1 fan, and if a poor soul likes my works, so be it).
I think the shift to AO3—plus the availability of Open Doors—is part of it too. AO3 has become, for better or worse, the default and the norm, even in Tolkien fandom.
AO3 offers more views. Then again, it's chasing the dragon (gratification, the more, the best). Young users who were too young to start their internet life on forums are more likely to stick to AO3 (generalisations based on my observations/prejudices of a youngster/old gen Z). I was quite reluctant to read fics on AO3 at first only because it was too big for me, too noisy, too 'all-over-the-place'. But I can see why it's alluring to many.
Likewise, treating AO3 like a quantity dumpster, there are fics I haven't posted on SWG because I judged the quality was too crap (even though I'm sure you wouldn't mind my shitty, absurd Tokien parodies on SWG!). I do have a few fics under my name on SWG, and I posted my French fics as well (hoping it'll encourage other francophone writers to do so rather than just sticking to AO3).
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-09 11:46 pm (UTC)I feel like that used to be the norm. People were okay with checking in at multiple places or going to a site based on their taste at the moment. Of course, there was no true universal archive till AO3; Fanfiction.net was the closest, and with its ban on explicit content, that ruled out a lot of fic. I have heard from so many people over the years that they can go to AO3 and get it all, so why bother with multiple sites?
But I think you get at the fact that there are cultural differences that I question whether AO3 can reflect. And that is something we lose when we consolidate onto one "universal archive" (not exactly how De Kosnik intends the term, but I feel like AO3 is swiftly approaching that point). Beyond the requirement that a work must be Silm-based and should be spellchecked/proofread to the best of the creator's ability, we have no requirements for posting on the SWG. Yet we have developed the culture/reputation over the years for more literary stories. That doesn't make us better than the erstwhile archives that people went to when they wanted to read purely fun or erotically charged stories; it's just what we've become known for. We disappear and that outlet disappears. So many of those outlets—for the kinds of stories that are welcome but not common on the SWG (silly parodies, for instance!)—are now gone.
Tl;dr, you said it: "quick, easy, gratifying."
(even though I'm sure you wouldn't mind my shitty, absurd Tokien parodies on SWG!)
We would not! :D
I posted my French fics as well
Thank you! We offered the ability to tag and search by language because it felt the right thing to do in an international fandom, but I would love to see it used more, to be perfectly honest.
(Are you in Quebec? If so, you truly are my neighbor to the north: I am in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, about 20 minutes from the border.)
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 08:12 pm (UTC)I understand the convenience and the shortcuts AO3 offers. I shouldn't talk against shortcuts because I'm all for shortcuts when they don't harm the process and reaching the final goal, but when it comes to search for sources/things to watch and read, I'd rather check on multiple places. I took the habit from a young age to roam in the library and look for books I'd like to read (and ask the staff for recommendations), and use the library's database. It never bothered me. It's part of the process. Maybe I am intense at times when it comes to fanfiction because with sites being taken down, I go on Wayback Machine. I feel like a spy lol.
Each place has its own atmosphere, just like no house is the same. Not everything is on AO3, and there are great stories written in the 00s hidden somewhere.
And that is something we lose when we consolidate onto one "universal archive" (not exactly how De Kosnik intends the term, but I feel like AO3 is swiftly approaching that point).
I agree. It has gotten so big I'm sometimes scared the site will explode and disappear. That's why I post the fics I'm not ashamed of on SWG :D
That doesn't make us better than the erstwhile archives that people went to when they wanted to read purely fun or erotically charged stories; it's just what we've become known for.
No, and then again, I find it's easier to research on multiple archive sites for one fandom since each site has its ambience and specialties.
We would not! :D
There's one I wouldn't mind posting, but the two others... Erh, my first Tolkien fics in the dire need of a remaster, but arh. Revising +/- 90k words total is long, and I'm lazy.
Thank you! We offered the ability to tag and search by language because it felt the right thing to do in an international fandom, but I would love to see it used more, to be perfectly honest.
Me too. I took the occasion because writing in French is a double-edged sword: I want to write in English because it has a universal aspect to it (sadly, there aren't many francophone Silmarillion fans, unlike German, Russian and Chinese fans that are known to be numerous and to use their own platforms) but on the other hand, I want to contribute and write stories in my language. By offering the possibility to write in another language than English, it was clear to me SWG expanded its horizons, and I took advantage of that, as a Silm specialised archive.
(Yes, I am, bonjour! Vermont is Québec's sibling on the wrong side of the border.)
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-09 09:45 pm (UTC)In around 2016 or so, we began to get these long, convoluted emails from our webhost (who'd been bought by someone else) that we were using tons of bandwidth, our site was too busy, blah, blah, blah. None of these things appeared to be true since our site had very little traffic. Basically they were only interested in large customers, since they insisted I needed to upgrade to spending several hundred dollars a month for their webhosting. Since I footed all the bills except for some donations every year at renewal time, I couldn't do this and simply let the site close.
That is when I decided that we needed to save it - it had many stories from people no longer in fandom and people no longer alive. Besides, I wanted to preserve all our hard work and this week, that has all finally been completed at Ao3. I can't say enough nice things about Open Doors and Ao3.
I think that lack of new material made the archives slow down, but I think changes in the internet and the desire to make more money by webhosts is why many sites simply disappeared. OEAM almost did.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-09 09:56 pm (UTC)By the same token, I avoided the sites that seemed geared toward this exclusivity - which has always been a problem in the Tolkien fandom, as far as I can tell. The nature of the original works themselves seems to leave a bit of a division in the fandom.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 12:21 am (UTC)I agree with both. As I'm getting a broader view of the history of fanfic archives (versus just Tolkien fandom, which I've lived for almost 20 years and studied for the past few), I feel like there was a tension in the Tolkien fandom that comes, at least in part, from a source material that has always been taken with a scholarly level of seriousness by many fans and the gatekeeping that tends to come with it. ("You must know *this* much 'lore' to ride the ride.") So while online fanfic and the archives that arose from its writing were very much pulling away from a traditional academic/publishing world mindset, there was a subset of the fandom that wanted that traditional "legitimacy" conferred by, for example, being accepted for publication somewhere exclusive or winning an award because they either occupied those worlds already or those things had value/meaning to them.
I remember my early days in fandom it was unthinkable that you weren't writing fic to become a better writer. Later when, as a fan studies researcher, I came across the notion in other fandoms (or parts of the Tolkien fandom I wasn't a part of) that this wasn't the way A LOT of people were approaching fic? It was honestly mind-blowing.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-09 11:54 pm (UTC)I remember this time. And I'm sure it was. Rebuilding the SWG in Drupal took years to do right. If I remember correctly, you all had a vast amount of material to move onto the new site?
I think that lack of new material made the archives slow down, but I think changes in the internet and the desire to make more money by webhosts is why many sites simply disappeared.
Yep. We've run into it a couple of times with Bluehost, when Russa or I will connect with the help desk because something that they offer is out-of-date for what Drupal needs, and the answer is always, "You can upgrade to VPS hosting for $X per month."
(Ironically, we were on the brink of doing just that: upgrading to VPS hosting. I was willing to pay the extra per month, but they only offered unmanaged VPS, which meant we not just paid more but had to manage our own server, and we decided we weren't up for that. We were looking at managed VPS options with other hosts when Russa got working what we wanted to upgrade for. So they were *this* close to losing us entirely as customers and someday still may.)
I'm really glad Open Doors worked out so well for you all. Thank you for setting up to have the archive moved.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-09 10:31 pm (UTC)Stories of Arda being the only other active archives scares me as well; it has at least one known tech weakness, though I don't know if it's been fixed (spammers can access the backend enough to edit summaries to include links). I suspect it will be around for a while longer, if only because of it standing firm against the bulk of fic the owner disapproves of. I remain firm in thinking that the fandom should have a space like SOA, if only so people can self-select. Though it would be more useful as a self-select if it was open to new writers.
But it is worth thinking about what we lose when most of our fanworks exist on AO3 and whether we are content to let there be just two active Tolkien-specific archives out there‐or whether the next hypothetical wave of archive-building should restore our community archives.
I think most people don't want to bother. There's even people wishing AO3 gets a recommendation algorithm because actively searching for fics is too much work. It leads into the phrasing/attitude I well and truly despise: the whole "we write content to be consumed" a lot of people use. It feels like fic is free entertainment to be used and tossed aside without much community-building.
I kind-of want a chart just of the Tolkien-specific archives and how many of them are active, inactive, on AO3, or simply gone so we can really see in a glance just how has been lost. But that's something I can play with on my own. Maybe I'll do it based on my archive listings, just for my own edification. I don't know if it's something you're going to cover.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-09 10:47 pm (UTC)Agreed. As I stated in my comment above, social medias shape our consumption attitude, which is much like chasing the dragon and running after the rush given by dopamine when gratification is received.
It feels like fic is free entertainment to be used and tossed aside without much community-building.
Community shifted to Reddit and Discord, both active places with instant communication. I miss the forum era--time, presence and absence weren't much of a burden (at least, the calmer, niche forums I used to be in).
There's even people wishing AO3 gets a recommendation algorithm because actively searching for fics is too much work.
Fuck's sake.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-09 11:48 pm (UTC)On archives, community was built by commenting. That's how, in my early years in the fandom, I met people who are still friends: we commented on each others' stories. It was possible to have that sense of community simply because of that reaching out. That said, the larger part of community came from off-archive places like the Yahoo!group and Livejournal/Dreamwidth. Discord has replaced that. (I don't know too many people who use Reddit for fandom. I know they exist, but it's not a place I would ever think to go to.) It's not a bad thing. But the size of AO3 makes it difficult to get to know each other via comments in the same way smaller archives do.
But I think that's largely not what I meant. It feels like, to me, that unless you are constantly writing and posting fic, you are irrelevant to fandom. You don't matter because you're not prolific or talking up whatever you're working on or just being around 24/7. It feels like there's no space for those of us who are quieter or slower or who can't talk about what we're actively working on or hope to write in the future. We are shut out from the community because we're not what the community wants.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 12:13 am (UTC)I'd heard the same so I included Reddit (and Twitter) in the 2020 Tolkien Fanfic Survey and ... 12 people used Twitter for sharing fic, and no one used Reddit (out of 444). Readers: 37 used Twitter and 16 used Reddit for reading fic (out of 747). So its either a community I haven't been able to access with the survey, or it's not heavily used for fic. (I know it is heavily used for discussion.)
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 01:43 am (UTC)Back in my day (maybe yours, too), we did't write to produce content. We wrote because we were compelled to do so... and we shared with like-minded fandom friends, who lifted us up and made us all feel relevant. THAT was what the fandom was like for a few years and I so wish that any fandom could be that way again.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 06:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 07:45 am (UTC)Yes, exactly this. That’s how I made the friends I still have today, 15 years later.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 08:39 pm (UTC)Anyhow, I can understand why it's jarring for people to whom stories have a reverential aspect that has nothing to do with today's overconsumption habits.
I did use Reddit a lot for the Tolkien fandom when I had a Reddit account. Just like tumblr, there are many bad apples to throw to the compost, but I had interesting conversations with a few Redditors, analysing excerpts and such. Like tumblr, it's not a place I favour for discussion of Tolkien's works and fanworks because of the insufferable moral police of insecure and broken egos. I'm not on big Discord servers for that reason either (and I don't have the energy to figure imaginary social rules (that are likely to clash with my personal values at the end)).
Commenting offers more room for 1-on-1 meetings and bonds, which is something I personally favour.
It feels like, to me, that unless you are constantly writing and posting fic, you are irrelevant to fandom.
+ Make sure your creations meet the public's demand.
AO3 may have no algorithm but I never sort results out by hits, comments or kudos because there are many great stories with less hits/kudos I'd miss out. And the more there are hits and kudos, the more people are compelled to read, like a snowball effect. Not a thing I'm a fan of. Same for tumblr, or public Discord servers: less popular writers and artists will get less feedback whenever they update and pass the word about it.
Boy I never fail to feel irritated whenever I find a work that is a genius masterpiece to me, only to see it has not many kudos. What is wrong with people's tastes? I know it's subjective, buuut- (strong sense of like and dislike here)
We are shut out from the community because we're not what the community wants.
The 'community' is more like a cyber-dystopia of multiple subgroups, to me at least. It makes it harder to find your people. (One of the reasons why I migrated to Dreamwidth) I'm far from fandom famous (thank fuck, I'd hate to become a so-called big name) but I'm glad to blabber with equally enthuasiastic people.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 10:05 pm (UTC)I generally use the exclusion filters, but not much else. If I switch the sort-by mechanism, it's usually for wordcount. I read fast, so longer fics are my preference.
Tolkien fandom has always been a bit splintered, but there used to be more of a sense of community. I am thinking post-LotR trilogy and pre-Tumblr here, because events like Back to Middle-earth Month and the Middle Earth Fanfiction Awards were things that brought disparate groups of Tolkien fandom together. There isn't that kind of all-encompassing event now, even though B2MeM still exists. TRSB in some ways has succeeded in that niche, but it is Silm-heavy in a way B2MeM and the MEFAs weren't. Maybe Tolkien Secret Santa/Gates of Summer is in that niche, too, but I know a lot less about that event than I do TRSB.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-13 12:39 am (UTC)I sometimes use it depending what I feel like it reading, or the tag and character search functions. Still, whether a fic has 3,000 kudos or none, the fic will be there, and not on the last page of the search.
TRSB in some ways has succeeded in that niche, but it is Silm-heavy in a way B2MeM and the MEFAs weren't. Trsb is also big, and impersonal. In the past, was there more contact with the participants? Did people interact more compared to today?
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-13 12:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 12:07 am (UTC)I've compared over the years and think you have most of them!
I remain firm in thinking that the fandom should have a space like SOA, if only so people can self-select.
I agree. I disagree wholly with their approach, but that is why I do not use their site. Their presence as a place for people to share fanworks harms me in no way. I just pretend they don't exist except when I need them for research! :D
I think most people don't want to bother.
I've wondered about this. It is hard for me to disentangle motivation from the availability of viable options for building an independent archive.
I do sometimes feel like people are less interested in learning/inventing now, but I'm not sure if they really are or if this is just me becoming a curmudgeon. It certainly felt, in my early years of fandom, that every utterance of "it'd be cool if there was a ..." was met by someone leaping to the task of making it happen. This is probably an overly romanticized view but ... people were inventive. When I think back to the ways they coopted early social networks to serve various functions in fandom even, and then it felt like so many people were willing to learn site design/building in order to ... design and build sites. I was not the only one who learned HTML and CSS out of books for the purpose of building a fanfic archive.
But of course things were raw and rough around the edges back then, which made a hand-coded site seem ... okay to offer. I remember someone remarking to me about the old SWG site (and they did not mean to be unkind) that they suspected we were losing traffic because it looked so "old-fashioned." Where I'm thinking: Why does it matter? It's the content that matters.
The ironic thing is that people are so much more tech-savvy today than 20 years ago that you'd think more people would be jumping in to learn these skills. But again, I have no data or evidence to back up what is really just the observation/feeling of one biased mind.
I kind-of want a chart just of the Tolkien-specific archives and how many of them are active, inactive, on AO3, or simply gone so we can really see in a glance just how has been lost.
I do plan to get to this! I'd like to build out what I have first: add in the Tolkien-specific archives I'm missing, then start editing the chart to show different groupings. Once I have it in place, I can just move things around to get what we want/need. (I made it in Photoshop for exactly that purpose. It took forever to do it that way, but it will be highly customizable once it's done.)
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 07:45 am (UTC)I'm not sure if that's quite what you mean but this reminds me about an article I came across a few months ago, about the tech skills of Gen Z or lack thereof that I found really interesting. The generation is entering university with many of them understanding less about computers than their parents did, because they learned with the app paradigm which hides so much of how the underlying tech works.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 01:35 pm (UTC)We've seen it happen with cars already: repairing cars used to be something anyone could do with a toolbox and a manual, and now it requires proprietary chip readers and access to computer software that isn't sold to the public. Other tech is heading the same way; I can remember putting a neverending stream of batteries into my boom box as a young teen... and compare that to my first iPod, which told me that so much as opening the battery compartment would void the warranty.
Likewise, on social media control has been steadily taken away from users; privacy settings and control of the audience don't benefit companies, so companies have taken control of them. LJ gave us a panoply of ways to limit your audience and control who saw what you posted; but Twitter doesn't care if your post gets positive or negative engagement (up to and including actual harrassment), as long as it gets engagement, because that's revenue for Twitter.
Internet browsers provide too much control to the user, so more and more companies are pushing mobile apps, because apps give the user zero control over privacy or advertising or algorithms. You've already waived all your rights not to be tracked or marketed to on your mobile device, so companies would much rather you use that than a computer browser where you still have rights and options.
Newer tech users often don't have an instinctive 'this is something I should be able to fix' reaction when they encounter something unpleasant, because they've never had the ability to fix or modify their tech, and are frequently using a device that's been specifically designed not to allow it. My immediate first thought upon being hit with creepy tracking tech is, "I don't have to allow this! So how do I get around it?" But for many people, that's just a standard part of being online; it doesn't strike them as something unjust, or as something they have a right to opt out of, even if they dislike it.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 04:42 pm (UTC)But they required a level of problem-solving to repurpose them from their intended use to turn them into fandom archives, events, and projects. And people got pretty innovative in what they were able to do with a bare minimum of simple tools, and once you saw someone do something on their list or LJ, suddenly you knew it was possible to do on yours, and you dove under the hood to figure out how (or just asked ... so much of my knowledge has come from teaching myself, experimenting, or mentorship from more experienced people, and as archives are disappearing, so are the people who very visibly have those skills, and I worry the mentorship opportunities are fading as well and will make it harder to reestablish community archives, even if that is something people want).
With that, though, users also knew that they'd have to take the time to learn not just the rules but the culture of specific places, and as tech becomes user-friendly to the point that you expect to open a site or app and be able to use it without having to consult any directions or help files, the expectation that a new user learn how to use a particular community (or the culture of that community ... our number-one issue on the SWG's Discord, for instance, is people who rampage in like the proverbial bull in a china shop, treating the community like Tumblr or Twitter when we have very intentionally spent 17 years cultivating the exact opposite culture ... but gods help us if we have to sit back and take a few minutes to notice how things are done before plunging in!)
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 04:30 pm (UTC)Everything is so user-friendly now that it allows us to bypass understanding even at the most basic level of how things work. I'm 41, so I remember when, if you didn't know where you saved a file, you had to hunt around until you found it. Now, 99% of my curriculum is on Google Drive, and I've gotten so used to just beginning to type the name of the file in the browser bar when I need it ... and I get a little irritated when enough time has passed since I last opened it that I have to actually go to my Drive and search for it! (And I do keep my files organized.)
By the same token, I remember well the mindset (employed by me many times and observed in others running fannish things online) of, "Well, I have this site/platform/tool ... it's not intended for fandom or fanworks, but if I arrange the settings just so and repurpose this feature like that, then I actually have a functioning archive/award/event/challenge/whatever." Part of that working, too, was users' willingness to go along: "I will have to learn the headers this group uses or how they structure their tags, but it is worth it for the audience and interaction my fanwork will receive" (or whatever the person hoped to get out of their participation on that particular project ... but it seems most often to be a community element).
Whereas now I get things like "But I have to scroll through a list of characters on the SWG where I can just start typing the name on AO3," and I'm like :^|
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-13 01:16 am (UTC)I can't believe I was tonight old when I discovered you could do that. And I'm soon-to-be 25 🤡 (who avoids Drive whenever possible, except for team projects. I have files like a big boy on my computer, all nice and tidy)
But yes, with Gen Z, I'd say older Gen Z (pre-2000 Gen Z) may be more resourceful when it comes to basics, less so the younger ones because technology had time to improve a whole lot before they were born. When I tell my teenage students Windows XP was peak technology to me because we used to have Windows 2000 at home until the end of 2009, but it was Windows XP at school, they look at me like I'm an artifact at the museum. In result, knowledge is more specialised. Interestingly, an online friend of mine is a med student and she has coding classes, so does my brother who studies civil engineering. He also helds a degree in architecture and knows well the softwares of the field (that my father, a mecaninal engineer, would be a total noob). Some of my students know a bit of coding (not all the languages, of course, even my friend who's a programmer don't know them all), but it comes from personal interest. The others know how to use Google Classroom like champions, but aren't technology-versed in other spheres.
Whereas now I get things like "But I have to scroll through a list of characters on the SWG where I can just start typing the name on AO3," and I'm like :^|
I had fun messing up with the Zoom of the screen until I figured what was the right buttons to press, still, nothing compared to trying to battle with Microsoft Office (even my uni's IT is defeated!). Those people are lazy.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 06:41 pm (UTC)That's a bit of a relief!
Their presence as a place for people to share fanworks harms me in no way.
Exactly. This is somewhat related on a broad level, but I saw a post on Tumblr earlier this year-- and this is going to flabbergast you-- that someone complained that conservative Christians were (and I quote) "invading Tolkien fandom." I think it points back to the break in fandom between fandom-specific and AO3-Tumblr subfandoms. Back in my very early days in the fandom, even though I primarily read on ff.net, I still knew of the main Tolkienfic archives and their general attitudes. Now? People don't even know SOA exists, much less why it is what it is.
I do sometimes feel like people are less interested in learning/inventing now,
I do think in some ways it's harder because things change so fast. But... I also remember having to learn bare-bones HTML simply to get italics in LJ and then I liked pretty links so I learned how to do that instead of posting the raw link and then I liked how bullet-point lists look... and I can go on. I don't have the knowledge (or the time) to learn more than that. But there is several rows of how-to-code/use-tech books at my library, so I know the information is there if I want to use it. (Heck, when I needed a Windows laptop for grad school, I got Windows 10 for Dummies just in case.)
On the other hand, some people don't have the tech to do things. I also think some people are afraid to look under the hood in case they break something. (I'm this way with Windows; I actually did nearly delete my entire laptop because I did something wrong.) It's easier to let people who seemingly know what they're doing keep on doing it.
I was going to point you to the article Vriddy did. Also, I saw a post on Tumblr within the past couple of weeks talking about the same thing, but I will never be able to track it down.
(I still miss the "old-fashioned look" of the old SWG. Who cared if it didn't have the bells and whistles? AO3 isn't modern-modern-modern, either.)
I do plan to get to this!
Then I will be patient. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 12:48 am (UTC)I wasn't in Tolkien fandom at the time, so I can't say for certain that there was Tolkien fanfic there, but it would suprise me if there wasn't some; I definitely encountered Tolkien fanart there, after all. So that might be worth adding to your archive list, at least as a possibility. The site was founded in 1996, making it a very early source for fanfiction hosting.
Being a young person at the time (and said time being one where there was only one computer in the house, used by everyone), I couldn't bookmark anything that I wasn't prepared to explain to my parents, so I had to memorise URLs I wanted to revisit. Elfwood, in case you want to know, was: http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/elfwood.html It's engraved on my brain forever! :D
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 04:46 pm (UTC)It is on Fanlore already, though not categorized as a Tolkien archive: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Elfwood Hence, it is not on my timeline either (which is built off the Tolkien archive listing, though now that I have remembered it existed, I will dig a bit more to see if it should be tagged as such.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 07:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 04:53 pm (UTC)Of course, all those people coming in aren't staying, and the low points in the graph suggest there were times when the fandom was losing people over time. I think we'd see the same pattern if we looked at stories being archived, participation on mailing lists and LJ comms, etc, and this translates into less excitement, which is going to make maintaining an archive (especially if/once it starts to experience technical challenges) less appealing.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 07:39 am (UTC)I would have paid to keep Faerie open, but with e-fiction already being buggy, it might have become unusable in time, save for reading.
I still think it would have been worth keeping up as a archive, though.
Fandom is such a constant thing, and yet ephemeral in the sense that most have a time of ‘attraction’ which then dies off. I think Tolkien will always tick over though, between the times of films/adaptions as it has for decades.
I just remembered that the Valar Guild.org still has a story section
http://valarguild.org/varda/Tolkien/encyc/fiction/chars/chars.htm
This is one of the first places I ever saw fanfic but it once had a lot more, articles etc.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 05:00 pm (UTC)Fandom is such a constant thing, and yet ephemeral in the sense that most have a time of ‘attraction’ which then dies off. I think Tolkien will always tick over though, between the times of films/adaptions as it has for decades.
I agree. There will those of us who weather the gaps between when #Tolkien is trending again, but if my research has shown one thing pretty conclusively, it is that the fandom will experience its surges around media adaptations.
Valar Guild is still around!!! It is not on Fanlore yet. I've opened the page and will try to get it added today, so that it shows up on Fanlore's list of Tolkien archives (which has always been what I use as my baseline for archive research).
ETA: Here it is: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Valar_Guild
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 05:15 pm (UTC)We are so looking forward to building a community again. We didn’t do too badly in the years Faerie was up.
it is that the fandom will experience its surges around media adaptations.
Yes, I suppose I started posting fic several years after the last LOTR film and on Faerie didn’t notice much of a spike when the Hobbit came out, so I’m more used to the ‘between’ times. Tolkien will always grab a few more even after the media bustle dies away.
Valar Guild is still around!!! It is not on Fanlore yet. I've opened the page and will try to get it added today, so that it shows up on Fanlore's list of Tolkien archives (which has always been what I use as my baseline for archive research).
That must have been the first site I ever found, but not for the fic; I was reading articles there about 2005? Then later found the fic lists. I’m glad it’s still going!
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-10 05:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-14 10:48 pm (UTC)Now that the first 8 episodes of Rings of Power have streamed I have to ask. Have you seen them? What do you think? If not, why not? I am interested in your opinion especially.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-15 05:12 am (UTC)I imagine AO3 convenience isn't just for readers, but also for multi-fandom authors. If you're not just a Tolkien ficcer, then easier to be able to post all your stories in one place.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-15 03:01 pm (UTC)I would say convenience is just as much—maybe more—for authors as readers.
I get the ease of a single space (being an author myself!) You don't have to learn different rules and tech and cultures for different archives or groups. There's far less an investment of time and energy and opportunity cost to post in one place that four or five, as was not uncommon in the early-mid 2000s.
Where I'd push back is that "convenient" and "easy" should be the only consideration or even the most important consideration. (Which, to be clear, is not what I think you're saying, but as a small archive owner who has been, for years now, pushing back on the idea that a single "universal archive" is the ideal we should be working toward, I think a lot of people do assume that easy/convenient automatically equals good.)
This is why the Walmart analogy works for me. I live in northeastern Vermont where small, independently owned businesses are still the norm—though we do have a Walmart too! We shop locally whenever we can. It is not the easiest or the most convenient, but we do, and we've strengthened our ties with our community by doing so. We also shop at Walmart but only when we must (or when the only other choice is Amazon!)
Just over a year ago, we lost our house in a fire. Our community came together for us. There were times when those small businesses we'd been shopping at loyally for the six years we've lived here would comp our bill. Where we buy our ag supplies, the owner handed us a card with $100 in it. When we'd go to the diner where we eat breakfast almost every weekend, people paid our bill for us.
When we went to Walmart? Well ... it was the same Walmart it always was.
Likewise, I lost my entire non-insignificant Tolkien book collection in the fire, and SWG members rallied to gather their extras or find secondhand copies to send to me. They replaced my entire Tolkien library, which incidentally allowed me to continue writing and publishing even while I was displaced and was a huge comfort and allowed one aspect of my everyday existence to continue at least.
But AO3? Still just AO3.
I think in many human-to-human transactions/interactions, we trade community for convenience because taking the time to build those connections with others does take time and effort. And for some people, that tradeoff works, they just want to get their work out there and quickly find fanworks to "consume," and that's fine. But in talking with fan creators, I so often hear a longing for community ... but then these same fans are posting entirely on AO3 and Tumblr, neither of which are designed or intended to offer that. But where are the other options? They're increasingly hard to find, much less build.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-17 10:12 am (UTC)