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[This Year's December Days Theme is Community, and all the forms that it takes. If you have some suggestions about what communities I'm part of (or that you think I'm part of) that would be worth a look, let me know in the comments.]
As the joke went, at the time that it was awarded, I had claim to approximately 1 fifty-thousandth of a Hugo Award. (113/5,000,000 works on AO3 (or eventually on AO3, but backdated appropriately, or 1.13/50,000 of a Hugo.) That's one of those things that both showcases the size and scale of the community of fanworks at one moment in time and how much transformative works have been drawn out of the shadows and have become much more part of the normal discourse around fandom, canon, and the like. (And in the intervening years, the amount of fanworks is apparently just over twelve million now, including creation and import of other archives, so the Hugo amounts are smaller than they were before, but probably spread out more among all the participants now.)
( Transformative fandom history )
( A more personal story )
The ratio now is closer to 1/600,000th of a Hugo Award, and in the intervening time, some of the most protective authors have died, the AO3 exists, in and of itself, and instead of being the thing that requires shibboleths and secrecy, fandom is beginning to become something that's leverageable to success. Fanartists, of course, have been able to leverage that to showcase their portfolios and their ability to mimic or wildly diverge from other styles, and sometimes that means getting hired for projects or getting to work on things that they've been drawing fanart for. At least a few traditionally published authors have published their fanworks with the serial numbers filed off. Some of them have found agents because that agent was looking for more of their fanwork. Some openly acknowledge their fannish roots and credit their involvement in transformative fandom for the practice of the craft of writing (and, sometimes, the discipline that the being a professional author requires) and the ability to take criticism from editors and others. Transformative fandom is being studied by srs bzns scholars who are writing papers, theses, and getting their doctorates from those studies. The OTW has an open-access journal for the acafans to publish in, among other places where such material could be found.
In response to the purges and content deletions, and the constant, if not usually exercised, threat of legal action from the corporations and authors who are the original creators of the material transformative fandom uses, the Organization for Transformative Works has staked out a bold claim. According to them, "fanworks are creative and transformative, core fair uses, and [the OTW] will therefore be proactive in protecting and defending fanworks from commercial exploitation and legal challenge". So far, the OTW has not been challenged on that position, although they do put limitations on what kinds of works they will accept at the Archive of Our Own that allows them to defend that position as strongly as possible. (To some degree, still, because nobody wants to be the case where a court makes a decision about the legality of fanworks.) The OTW's position and promise to defend fanworks carves out space that wasn't explicitly present before. Fans have responded in kind, both in providing lots of material for the archive, and in financial support of the archive. It shows just how many people there are who are interested in more stories, more perspectives, making things closer to the reality of the writer or reader, or putting their favorites into situations extremely far-flung from their original contexts. (Or putting two different franchises together to see how well they'll work with each other.)
The difference, I suppose, is that they're more visible now, and more people are willing to say they're part of the community.
As the joke went, at the time that it was awarded, I had claim to approximately 1 fifty-thousandth of a Hugo Award. (113/5,000,000 works on AO3 (or eventually on AO3, but backdated appropriately, or 1.13/50,000 of a Hugo.) That's one of those things that both showcases the size and scale of the community of fanworks at one moment in time and how much transformative works have been drawn out of the shadows and have become much more part of the normal discourse around fandom, canon, and the like. (And in the intervening years, the amount of fanworks is apparently just over twelve million now, including creation and import of other archives, so the Hugo amounts are smaller than they were before, but probably spread out more among all the participants now.)
( Transformative fandom history )
( A more personal story )
The ratio now is closer to 1/600,000th of a Hugo Award, and in the intervening time, some of the most protective authors have died, the AO3 exists, in and of itself, and instead of being the thing that requires shibboleths and secrecy, fandom is beginning to become something that's leverageable to success. Fanartists, of course, have been able to leverage that to showcase their portfolios and their ability to mimic or wildly diverge from other styles, and sometimes that means getting hired for projects or getting to work on things that they've been drawing fanart for. At least a few traditionally published authors have published their fanworks with the serial numbers filed off. Some of them have found agents because that agent was looking for more of their fanwork. Some openly acknowledge their fannish roots and credit their involvement in transformative fandom for the practice of the craft of writing (and, sometimes, the discipline that the being a professional author requires) and the ability to take criticism from editors and others. Transformative fandom is being studied by srs bzns scholars who are writing papers, theses, and getting their doctorates from those studies. The OTW has an open-access journal for the acafans to publish in, among other places where such material could be found.
In response to the purges and content deletions, and the constant, if not usually exercised, threat of legal action from the corporations and authors who are the original creators of the material transformative fandom uses, the Organization for Transformative Works has staked out a bold claim. According to them, "fanworks are creative and transformative, core fair uses, and [the OTW] will therefore be proactive in protecting and defending fanworks from commercial exploitation and legal challenge". So far, the OTW has not been challenged on that position, although they do put limitations on what kinds of works they will accept at the Archive of Our Own that allows them to defend that position as strongly as possible. (To some degree, still, because nobody wants to be the case where a court makes a decision about the legality of fanworks.) The OTW's position and promise to defend fanworks carves out space that wasn't explicitly present before. Fans have responded in kind, both in providing lots of material for the archive, and in financial support of the archive. It shows just how many people there are who are interested in more stories, more perspectives, making things closer to the reality of the writer or reader, or putting their favorites into situations extremely far-flung from their original contexts. (Or putting two different franchises together to see how well they'll work with each other.)
The difference, I suppose, is that they're more visible now, and more people are willing to say they're part of the community.
