In my last two posts, I revisited some aspects of De Kosnik’s dissertation, Illegitimate Media: Race, Gender, and Censorship in Digital Remix Culture; this week, I’d like to give an excerpt of her book Rogue Archives (MIT 2016). One of the things that I like about the book is the way in which it not only documents the voices of fandom but captures the feels of fandom; consider this section of the book subtitled “The Moment of Discovery””
One of the strongest themes that emerged in my research team’s interviews with fans was their strong and positive affective response when they first found online fan fiction archives. I will call this initial encounter, described by so many interviewees, the moment of discovery. Alexis Lothian, remembering her moment of discovery, which took place in 2003 when she stumbled upon Harry Potter fan fiction, says, “I loved it. I was incredibly—it was exciting. … Definitely it was a very visceral excitement” (Lothian 2012b). nightflier states that her moment of discovery, which was the first time she came across the Gossamer archive in the late 1990s, “was like a revelation. I’ll never forget that day” (nightflier 2012). eruthros, using similar terminology as Lothian, recalls that she “sort of stumbled into some sort of online fandom, I think it might have been Due South first, and the Due South mailing list … and archive,” and says that “thirty seconds after I found the archive I found slash fandom and decided that was pretty awesome, and I wanted to be there” (eruthros and thingswithwings 2012). oxoniensis also employs the metaphor of “stumbling” to characterize her moment of discovery, with Lord of the Rings fan fiction, in 2002: “My first contact with fan fiction was an accident. I’d never heard of fan fiction, either by word of mouth or online, so it was all rather a surprise when I first stumbled across it. … Some stories were moving, some funny, some incredibly hot, some utterly gripping. And to be able to find this all just by searching the Internet was wonderful” (oxoniensis 2012). oxoniensis says she feels “very nostalgic” about “those heady first days of discovery.” Like Lothian, eruthros, and oxoniensis, Robin Nelson remembers her moment of discovery as happening by chance. “It was pure accident,” says Nelson (2012) of finding a Usenet group dedicated to Anne Rice fan fiction in 1996 or 1997. “I didn’t know that fanfic even existed at that point. … I was actually thrilled. I was elated.”
De Kosnik connects this feeling to the idea of the archive – not just the Archive of Our Own, but any archive, any large grouping of stories. As she explains, the very number of stories online is thrilling and validating:
The size of online fan fiction archives (which I explore in the conclusion)—the number of stories housed on these sites, and the number of authors who contributed them—gave Lothian, Nelson, Victoria P., and others a “sense of belonging,” a feeling of recognition (“I GET IT”), and the security of knowing that they were not alone. In other words, if these sites had not been archives, had not immediately given the impression of being well-stocked repositories, trafficked by many writers and readers, then they may not have not have communicated to fans the same aura of safety—safety in numbers, safety in being among “like-minded individuals, safety in standing with others.” (151)
I GET IT!