Metafandom #1: Scar Tissue · 8:02pm Aug 17th, 2018
Actually, I researched most of this well over a year ago and dismissed the topic as not particularly interesting to anyone. It’d be a nice sociology paper, printed, read by all of four people, and subsequently forgotten forever, but I’m not doing that sort of thing academically anymore.
Recently, however, I had the occasion to publicly refer to this conclusion again, so why not. Mind you, I’m not about to make this an actual sociology paper up to my usual standards. I neither have the time to do it in detail nor the desire, and we aren’t in the academia in the first place. If it becomes food for thought, I’ll say I didn’t waste the time typing it in.
The Statement
The statement I am offering here is this: A significant proportion of the corpus of fan fiction and other fan-created media is produced as a reaction to events and statements that the community at large sees as hurtful, and proceeds through stages into a self-perpetuating loop, eventually becoming a meme that loses its origins and forms a sub-sub-culture within the fandom, occasionally becoming severely alienated from the rest.
I’m talking, in particular, about the bandwagons like the Displaced, the Un-Fall-Of-Equestria, the Anon-a-Miss fixfics, the Conversion Bureau backlash stories, and a few others.
1. Not all. For example, the idea of a more traditional HiE seems to occur to people completely independently very often.
This is of course not the only way fandom self-perpetuates, however, this is how most bandwagons appear to form.1 In all cases covered under this model, the stages the process goes through are like this:
- Something Happens that causes a widespread reaction of outrage. This is itself a piece of media, sometimes canonical, other times, initiated by fandom itself, but in all cases it achieves some notoriety and/or popularity.
- Someone publishes a rebuttal story. Occasionally, one originator of the rebuttal can be identified, but more often than not, to start, the cycle requires several authors working independently, and achieving a certain notoriety of their own.
- A group of readers and fans coalesces around the first few stories, motivated in their preference for the rebuttal stories primarily by their shared outrage, rather than by literary qualities of these stories or lack thereof.
Fandom is a living organism, and constantly regenerates – people come and people go. New inductees into the fandom get inspired by the original rebuttal stories, but, not being aware in detail of what exactly caused the outrage, simply imitate what they see without fully understanding the original motivation for their creation.
If they did not have a ready group of readers, who are looking for the proverbial “more of the same,” they would be discouraged, or turned to imitating something else and perhaps, progressing to more meaningful forms of fan-literature. However, they find such a group, because stage 3 formed it for them. The outrage becomes a minor trope, a tradition, with, occasionally, formal rules, organized reviews, etc, and most importantly, a loyal audience.
The process of transitioning into a meme is complete, and a few loops in, there’s hardly anybody in the fandom who remembers what was all the fuss about, while, if there’s a core of long-standing old guard, who are tired of seeing more of the same, the bandwagon splits off into its own ghetto under their scorn, where it stays.
I could go on describing how, but instead, let me offer an example that gave me the idea that this is how it works.
Case Study: The Displaced
I spent quite a while digging into the archives trying to find out just what was the first story to belong to the subgenre that we now call “The Displaced.” If you, by some miracle, have avoided bumping into those, let me give you a formal definition:
A human protagonist appears in Equestria, transformed into a character from a completely unrelated media.
That’s the gist of it, but the picture is very incomplete without a long list of “typically…” – and for a story to count as Displaced, more than one of those needs to be present.
- Typically, the protagonist departs from a convention, which they attended while cosplaying as the character in question.
- Typically, the protagonist is not altered mentally to any significant degree, but any of the character’s abilities and powers suddenly become theirs to use.
- Typically, even traditionally, the trip is triggered by the arrival of the Merchant from Resident Evil 4, who sells the protagonist a cosplay prop that turns out not to be a prop at all.
Typically, the story devolves into a power trip from the get go. Very often, we’re dealing with a villain protagonist, who speaks out against the pony establishment early on, immediately gets in conflict with it, and spends the rest of the story as a roaming natural disaster. Often, the trip starts in Discord’s era, wherein the protagonist is imprisoned for evildoing by turning into stone, and only gets released in modern day, though later stories typically abandon this motif.
Originally, they weren’t even called “Displaced.” The actual term used was “LoHAV” – “League of Humans Acting Villainous” – and persisted up until the abortive attempt to introduce a set of shared universe rules much later. The attempt failed, but the term stuck.
After a considerable amount of searching, I’ve been able to identify three stories that were the earliest examples. This was significantly facilitated by the fact that they would often cite each other as inspiration right in the story description, so by following the chain of breadcrumbs, I arrived at three, which, either directly or in various side statements like comments, cite each other as inspiration, despite being roughly contemporary. This is not as impossible as it sounds, because all of them weren’t written in advance and ran for months, giving the authors enough time to cross-pollinate:
[Adult story embed hidden]
This appears to be the earliest story that fits the pattern: A teenager in costume ends up in Equestria, and proceeds to behave like an asshole, enjoying unlikely success. This story is cited as inspiration by a huge chunk of early Displaced stories. The first chapter is timestamped with 29th Nov 2013, which will become important in a bit.
Another story is the “F*** it I’m Having Fun” by one Jimmy the Grape. I’m not embedding it because I can’t: It has since been deleted and even overwritten, so the Internet Archive is the only source, since the ponyfic archival efforts have picked up the overwritten story instead of the original. It is cited as inspiration by at least as many stories as “Malideus,” if not more, and started publication on 19th Jan 2014. The concept is refined to more strongly resemble the formula we know today: While the protagonist of “Malideus” started off at a costume party, here, the protagonists are explicitly cosplaying at a convention, and their transportation is triggered by a purchase of an artifact they believe is merely a prop.
This might have been it, but there’s a third story which is arguably superior, was a lot more popular in its day, and is probably one of the bigger contributors to the original phenomenon: “The Rise of Darth Vulcan” by RHJunior, better known on Fimfiction as RealityCheck. This story is also no longer on FimFiction, though it is at least available, and even occasionally continued. The original timestamp on the first chapter was 2nd Dec 2013.
2. He does occasionally comment.
RealityCheck is no longer active here2 but at the time he was, he gained much popularity as well as controversy by taking ideas introduced in a different fan work which, in his view, were executed poorly, and trying to do them justice.
Together, these three stories are the trope originators, and the reader commentary is probably the most interesting about them. For an example, here’s an exchange between a reader of “Malideus” and the author:
Alright.
Just one more question.
Why would you go to brony websites and act like a dick?
Its for the fun of it right?
If its some sort of way to get revenge on the show (there actually is one guy who makes a lot of anti-mlp stories and a lot of other things and claims that it is to have revenge on the show for being too happy and not realistic) then well, that would be pretty retarded.You want to know why?
I hate the show, and I hate bronies.
But in reality, do I need a reason? I think it’s fun to torment/amuse/harass the brony populace, and that seems like reason enough for me.
Assume irony where appropriate. If appropriate. And yet, these were, in their day, very popular stories.
Why?
This is where the publication dates come in. Notice that this story starts in November 2013.
- Magical Mystery Cure aired on 16 Feb 2013, and was extremely controversial among the fandom. Still is, even.
- Equestria Girls was released in summer of 2013, and fanned the flames.
- And just a few days prior to the first chapter of “Malideus,” Princess Twilight Sparkle airs.
After a year which split the fandom and caused widespread dissatisfaction, what do people get for a season opener? A story that openly declares a tonal change for the rest of the season, not to mention the second instance of Celestia getting kidnapped off screen by an overgrown poison ivy.
You usually don’t write fanfics for a show you just hate, right? You do, however, write fanfics for a show that you hate because you feel it betrayed your expectations, and many expectations were betrayed or had to be reevaluated with the start of Season 4. A few popular stories expressed this dissatisfaction in the form of dark, mocking comedy, and became a meme.
Now, few people still in the fandom reject Twilight’s wings or openly hate Celestia, but the bandwagon remains with us.
Conclusion
I won’t be doing a similar search of what-inspired-what for any of the above cited bandwagons, but I’m pretty sure that if one were to do that, the same pattern will emerge.
I also suspect that the phenomenon reproduces its structure in smaller scales as well. As MitchH noticed when I first told him about it, “Rantfics and fixfics cluster heavily around episodes which were experienced as ‘wounds’.”
Really does look like scar tissue which eventually transitions to cancer if left unchecked, doesn’t it? That said, sometimes, cancer is difficult to distinguish from growing heretofore unseen organs.
You seem to describe a traumatic subcategory of a more general bandwagon process. Aside from the cause, this looks like the same cycle as any internal fad. That said, those don't have quite the same mechanism for new blood as new writers encounter the source of the outrage.
In any case, I can't deny the phenomenon as you described it. Certainly not when i wrote my own anti-Anon-a-Miss fic.
Hmmmm.
I'm going to PM you at some point. Hopefully this month.
You should do a pseudo sociology paper on the BCU.
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That would involve reading it. I suspect enjoying that would be very unlikely.
4921447 No, that's the BCI⁽*⁾. Nopony expects the BCI.
(*) Beanis Cinematic Inquisition. Strike hard, strike fast, and take no prisoners. Unless they want to.
I saw this with ATB fanfiction. Some of the new authors don't know anything about original TB, and never ever read Shatoyance TB version. Or often don't even know who she is.
They imitating earlier works without even understand why the hell it's work that way.
I never able to understand what the problem people have with MMC. Of course, in the same time I never cared about "one true writer" Lauren Faust, never come to a conclusion that Celestia or Luna are some sorts of gods, so my reaction boiled down to "oh, she got wings. Neat.".
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Published as a part of the Proceedings of Beanis Cinematic University, no doubt.
I remember this all like it was yesterday, Malideous was definitely the founder. I read a few chapters and gave up because it was wangsty, but even then I could tell there was something appealing about it on a base level.
Darth Vulcan was meant to mock displaced stories, the author just got going really fast. He's still adding new chapters to it on his other platform. There's probably a whole different article to be had on fiction created as satire/mockery of other fiction, which over time drops its mocking angle and becomes a straight example of what it was once mocking.
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It might sound strange considering his reputation, but as far as I can tell, RealityCheck does not mock other authors. He just wants to show he can do what they did better, not really caring that this might be perceived as mockery.
Which is precisely why “F****, I’m having fun” cited “The Rise of Darth Vulcan” as inspiration back when said story was less than a month old.
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I don’t have any particular objections to porn, but I do have a cringe humor allergy.
I've never been a fan of most bandwagon-y hatefics/genres like that. More specifically, though, the "fixfics" that generally start the trend are the worst, just as bad as the horribly written imitations (in my opinion). It's fine to be angry in the moment or to dislike a piece of media. It's not fine or fun to read if someone is just pouring their rage into their writing. Angry, vindictive writing isn't fun to read.
That said, lots of these "genres" have interesting ideas and tropes that, IMO, rarely get used well. Even fixfics have an interesting idea that isn't really explored. A lot of fics go with "I restarted the show but I fixed everything I hate", rather than using it to address anything genuinely interesting. I think the reason my own fic with the "start the show over" concept, The Day the Show Reset, took off like it did is because instead of "I'm fixing the show", I'm using the reset to do interesting things (i.e. having some characters remember the original timeline, thus affecting the new timeline irreversibly)......... Here's to actually finishing Chapter 3 at some point this autumn. I already have other chapters finished, but Chapter 3 has to be published first... My main issue is that I have to reference certain events, so I'm forcing myself to work out a logical timeline for the Equestria Girls content ahead of time so I know what I can and can't write in the chapter. Ironically, EG's timeline is more difficult to work out than FiM's (unless you count the "9 months" thing from earlier this season... then it's just as difficult, ugh).
Shit, I rambled. Sorry.
Huh that's a very interesting discussion... mind if I cite this? XD
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Of course not, feel free.