Entries tagged with fandom

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fandom

Canonical Imperfection Breeds Much Fic

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about the relationship between corporate near-monopoly ownership of our shared stories/modern mythologies, how the for-profit model drives creative decisions in that realm, and how the shortcomings or missing elements in the resulting canon media drives fic writing and fandom participation.

Two things I read got me thinking:

First, @sbooksbowm on Tumblr is doing her dissertation on the place of fanfic in book history and the social mechanics of fandom, I'm doing a terrible job explaining. Here browse the dissertation masterpost! You can also read her in her own words about it It's fascinating! But this observation from the introduction jumped out at me:

Fic ‘rewrites and transforms other stories currently owned by others’. Coppa elaborates: ‘it is only in such a system—where storytelling has been industrialized to the point that our shared culture is owned by others—that a category like “fanfiction” makes sense’ [1]. That is to say, in a system where stories can be bought or sold, the transformative, for-pleasure work of fanfiction is defined in contradistinction to for-profit story production and distribution; in a system without purchase and ownership of stories, the work of fanfiction would be called ‘folklore’.[2]

[1] Francesca Coppa, The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), p.7.
[2] @sbooksbowm, Dissertation, Draft - Introduction Part 1 (2020)

Secondly, @Nymphomachy on Twitter put out a great tweet discussion about the Harry Potter series, its canonical shortcomings, and how that breeds a huge amount of fic. They also criticize the way in which not-for-profit fandom, bred by inadequacies of original text, end up creating a feedback loop that makes the creators of the original canon even richer. ( Part 1, Part 2 and a great reply thread by @arthur_affect ) Warning it’s got some vitriolic criticism of the HP canon and JKR.

To me this echoes the firestorm of criticism that’s been leveled at other huge television and film franchises. Most notably on my radar, the widespread panning of Avengers: Endgame and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. But other properties see this stuff too, such as the Supernatural series' later seasons.

The right environment to breed a lot of fic seems to be a canon with engaging qualities that draw you in, numerous characters with inconsistent or incomplete character development, handwavey worldbuilding, and niggling details of the plot (not to say holes) that fans want to see addressed. These kind of issues with big properties, along with the nature of IP laws today and how we as a culture have permitted certain entities to own our shared mythologies, is why I think fanfic has exploded over the last 20 years. Fanfic has an entire subclass called “fix-it” and this is clearly one of the fundamental drivers behind writing a lot of fic. Fic spackles in the cracks, makes the pearl around the grain of sand.

Fanfic exists as an underclass of storytelling, in counterpoint to canon, corporate, officially recognized storytelling. Fanfic has no gatekeeper and no editorial green light. Fanfic is telling all the leftover and left-out stories that aren’t globally marketable or palatable to a mass audience. Fanfic is full of heartbreak, trauma, sweet domesticity, profound emotional connections, and demons exorcised. Its value isn’t measured in dollars, and frankly I don’t think it can be. As with other forms of emotional labor, its value will never be calculated or fully appreciated if you are thinking in terms of money. The tales told in the democratized world of fic are by their nature niche and personal. If they weren’t, then they’d be the tales that we see on the big screen to begin with!

I think fanfic will continue to boom as long as our mass media continues to deliver huge, shiny, beautiful, incomplete and emotionally shallow adventure tales. On one level I'm so happy to see fanfiction boom the way it is now - hell, canon + fanon is our modern-day shared mythology! On another level I'd like to see storytelling democratized more fundamentally. But in our capitalist society, the only way we can have that self-deterministic, open-to-all-comers creation without editorial vetos etc, is in a liminal noncommercial or not-for-profit space. (Donate to OTW/AO3!)

A side note though. I do think mainstream publishing has started to take note to some degree. Notably, TOR has been picking up some books in what I consider to be the “original fic” side of the broader “fic” genre. (e.g. K.M. Szpara's Docile and Everina Maxwell's Winter's Orbit aka The Course of Honour by Avoliot) These books tell the type of tales and tropes we often seek in fanfic but aren’t composed on the framework of an existing canon. I’m excited by this development, and looking forward to see what’s next.

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A Thousand Cakes, and Yours Among Them

I’m flattered by recent attention on Tumblr for my bookbinding posts, and I’m glad the practice of binding fic has resonated with folks!

I periodically get questions about being able to buy these books. I thought I’d address that publicly.

The Gift Economy of Fandom

The vast majority of my bookbinding projects (over 90 and counting so far) have been strictly volunteer - that is, I’ve read the fic, or been recommended it by a trusted friend, and chosen to bind it, based on my own arbitrary evaluations.

Binding means two copies. One goes to the author, as a gift. The other I keep in a slowly growing archive. They are not for sale at any price. Nobody is paid for their labor, and I am not running a business. I am spending out of my own pocket for every piece of paper, every tool, all shipping costs. I accept small tips from authors if they wish, but they are under no pressure to send me money, and a tip doesn’t come remotely close to the value of my labor hours. But why should they pay me? They wrote the entire goddamn book for free.

I approach fandom in the old-school way, as a community-focused practice and a “gift economy” - something a lot of newer participants of fan culture are drifting away from as the incentive to monetize fan works grows. The reasons for it are understandable. But I think this shift in fundamental approach is going to cost us a lot, as a subculture and as a community, in the long run.

Do we really just wanna be customers/consumers and “content producers” in fandom? Fuck that, I want an actual community. I’m not a content producer. I’m a person making connections to other people and slowly growing a modern day online queer found family.

Because I seek community in fandom, and see fanwork as contributions to the “potluck”, I see this as just bringing my dish to the party here. I brought a cake - and it seems popular. If anyone else brought another cake, we’d have MORE of it and nobody would complain. Two cakes, and so forth.

What I’m getting at is, these are not PRODUCTS for you to BUY. These are artifacts of a community and a demonstration of community activism. In order to GET one, you must get involved. You must either write a brilliant longform fic that I’m into,OR you can become a Guerrilla publisher in your own right!

Commissions

I’m uncomfortable with taking commissions and have only done it I think three times. Every time, I had to be convinced to do it. And I spent every penny of it on supplies and shipping and whatnot.

There are two main reasons I’m not open for commissions:

1 It immediately shifts the calculus of whose work gets printed. People with spending money get to see their chosen work in print. People without, not so much.

2. I’m less able to self-direct which work gets printed. I like the power to choose what to bind. I say what gets printed at my house. No outside money is steering that decision. The decision is not driven by money whatsoever.

Without the money, I don’t have to give a fuck about the optics of which book I chose. I don’t have to worry about follower count. I print a lot of work that got “canceled”, authors beset by purity police for being “problematic”, etc. If I were trying to run a profitable business, these works are the last ones I’d choose to print. And that’s exactly why I’m printing them here.

OK but I want a Book, Sell Me One

Well, don’t wave money in my face. I’m sorry, that’s not why I’m here. See above.

If you’d like to actually take up bookbinding similar to what I am doing, I can provide you with information to get started. There are no secrets about my process, just trial and error and a shit ton of work. Just drop me a line.

I realize that not everybody has the resource of time, money, or patience to figure out how to make books like mine from scratch. But that doesn’t mean you’re completely out of options.

Preservation of fic doesn’t have to look like a completely bespoke handmade book with sewn signatures and hand marbled papers.

It also doesn’t have to be a professional-grade 200 page glossy hardcover kickstarted mega-project with 100 contributors.

I’d really like to see the practice of print zines come back. Print your fic in a booklet and sew it up with a piece of thread. Mail it to your fandom friends. Go guerrilla publisher yourself. And if you didn’t write it, don’t forget to give a copy to the author: it’s the only ethical way to make use of their work.

I don’t want to be the only bookbinder to ever touch a fanfic. I want lots of people binding. Two cakes - nay, a thousand cakes, and the feast of cake was legendary and not soon forgotten, and slices of the cake were passed down to our children and grandchildren, and the cake survives even after we are gone. Let’s get baking.

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Why I am a Guerrilla publisher.

I bind fanfic and other underground writing into real books. I am a Guerrilla publisher.

Why are you doing this?

To make a demonstrative statement on the validity of “fic” in general (and fanfic within that specifically) as a newborn genre of literature that has really only come into its own in the last 15-20 years.
To disrupt preconceptions about what is valuable and worthy of being memorialized in print, much less published in a fine edition.
An act of anti-capitalist resistance. Participation in the traditional gift economy of fandom. Most of my projects are volunteer and gifts.
Preservation of fandom history and works for future generations. These books won't blip out of existence by politically-motivated, puritanical updates to a corporate terms of service. These books are acid-free, archive ready, made to survive for another century.
Demonstration against censorship of fiction. Most of the books contain subject matter some people may find objectionable on various grounds. I have begun to deliberately seek out works that authors and artists were persecuted online for creating.
In summary, it’s a big Fuck You to power structures that silence people. On a positive note, it encourages people to keep creating and I hope reassures them that their work has enduring value. It makes my friends so happy that they cry, so that’s nice too.

Stylistic Choices

My book design is deliberately conservative because I am challenging ideas of what should be inside the book. The more a book looks like something a “real” publishing house would put out, the stronger and more subversive the statement it makes.

I've settled onto a bit of an equilibrium point with regards to my setup, production speed, the amount of labor I put into each book. My goal is not to make the most exquisitely fine objet ever bound. My long-term goal is to capture and preserve in print a broad array of fic and outlaw writing. Therefore, I haven't leveled up my equipment to "fine binding" levels, I economize as much as possible the decorative paper, and don't lavish hours on technical perfection. To me it is a race against time to bind as many works as I can. I am racing against repressive bans of adult content, the chilling force of contemporary purity policing, and my own mortality.

Future Plans

Starting out two years ago I'd set a goal of 100 works, and I'm now on project 90. I am on track to meet that goal by the end of the summer, but have no plans to stop.

In the future I would like to somehow propagate this practice to others, and create a movement of decentralized, anarchistic, hardcopy fic distribution. I believe in the community-building power of fandom as a gift economy, a bit of an oasis from capitalism, and want to perpetuate this practice as much as possible. It may not be possible for many people to get into full-blown bookbinding, but I would like to see old-school zines and other paper goods circulate more.

I have deep concerns about the future of these fragile online communities we continually build, only to lose. Every couple of years, a major purge event causes many people in fandom spaces to precipitously fall out of touch. One way I see to combat this is to "get real", and distribute physical things to your circle of friends.

If we are serious about being connected, if we would like to have each other as a modern-day "found family" in the queer tradition, rather than a bunch of randoms unified only by commercially unsavory thirst-consumerism, then we have to do the work to stay connected in an environment where nobody but us gives a fuck about our community, and none of the monetized structures we exist within online are going to go out of their way to support or enable that.

We have to do it; it's up to us.

And that's why I'm a Guerrilla publisher.

(Pseudo x-post on Tumblr)

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