I was thinking about the ghosts of fandoms past
You may be looking for the 2007 essay Ghosts of fandoms past.
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| Title: | "i was thinking about the ghosts of fandoms past" (the actual essay is untitled, and the title used here on Fanlore is the first line of essay) |
| Creator: | vintar |
| Date(s): | July 1, 2015 |
| Medium: | Tumblr post |
| Fandom: | South Park |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | I was thinking about the ghosts of fandoms past, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
I was thinking about the ghosts of fandoms past is a 2015 post by rex/vintar about South Park fandom.
It has almost 12 thousand notes as of March 2017.
Some Topics Discussed
- BNFs and their sometimes unholy power
- South Park fandom during 1998-2001
- Original Characters, Mary Sues and Self-insertion
- Wank about Shared Universe storylines
Excerpts
i was thinking about the ghosts of fandoms past and i realised that my first proper fandom experience is by now completely wiped from the net thanks to age. i feel i have some responsibility here to document an extremely belated fandom wank so buckle up and let me sing you the song of south park fandom circa 1998-2001
At that time, FanFiction.net did not allow scriptform fic, although this was erratically enforced. Many fans congregated at fandom-themed archives, rather than fic-based archives. Many fansites had either a forum or "fan submissions" section," or both. Much fanfic and art is still only archived at these places.
Also, original characters have a long and contentious history; the accusation of Mary Sues is common, so it was (and still is) rare to find a place where OCs of all types are welcome and cherished.
so back in the day there was a big south park site and, while it had a fan creation section, all the art was crude ms paint drawings of the characters and all the fic was canon-type scripts written and posted in the hopes that the author would get picked up as a script writer for the show. one day someone posted a little romance story between kenny and a palette-swapped girl version of himself called jenny. all the girls on the forum went ‘wait, that’s a thing? we can do that??” and suddenly there was a deluge of ocs the likes of which i’ve never seen since everyone had at least a couple. it was what you did! everyone wrote endless ‘a new girl comes to town and dates a character’ fic, then rped their characters with everyone else. everyone was friends, and all their ocs were friends! there was buckets of fanart, and people drew diagrams of the town to show where everyone lived, with new households being added all the time like a bizarro multiplayer game of the sims
This resulted in an impromptu, unplanned shared universe. It managed to bypass the common drama about "who has permission to write in this universe" since it was created by the group, but eventually ran into "which version is the real fanon?"
but the longer this went on, the more a weird tension started to develop. if all the fan characters knew each other, then they all existed in the same universe. if they all existed in the same universe, how could they all be exclusively dating the same character? if you were writing a fic about kyle, but five of your friends had ocs that were his true love, what did you do? who did you pick to put in your fic?one day bnf 1 decided to answer the question once and for all, and wrote a future fic where all the canon characters got married to her and her closest friends’ characters, and they all had lots of oc babies, and so even if other authors wrote about other ocs maybe sort of kind of at some time dating the canon characters, her ocs still won in the end, neener neener
at which point bnf 2 went ‘well that’s just one possible future’, and wrote the beta future, featuring her and her friends’ ocs
This led to fanon and OC ship wars, and a need for documentation to keep track of all the timeline AUs.
and everything went fucking nuts. everyone made a future. there were dozens of the fucking things, with everyone jockeying to get their characters married to the best possible available match. your character was cartman’s girlfriend in your own fic canon? well, she was married to pip in the alpha future, tweak in the gamma, and cartman in the omega future, because your bestie started that one and reserved him for you. not only that, but each couple had different kids in each future, so suddenly each oc had a dozen children across multiple timelines, all of which needed art and fic and character development and rping and and and. a vote was created to give an award to the best new character each month, and a directory was started to keep track of all these fucking futures and all these fucking babies
However, as is often the case, large-scale conflicts within a fandom caused people to leave the host venue, if not the fandom itself.
the fun started to dry up now that mommy and daddy were fighting. people left, put off by the drama, and, with the remaining fans split down the middle, it started to die off
bnf 1 kept making huffy comments about That Other OC ruining everything and being ridiculous
bnf 2 announced her new oc: a half-human half-rat furry, escaped from a lab, who was– because, you know, lab rats and all, it made sense– albino
bnf 1 deleted her forum
a lot of people still tried to keep chatting and rping through icq, but it just wasn’t the same. that little part of fandom died, killed by an overabundance of albinos. it now lives on only in my heart and in my fond memories of the stupidest fandom slapfight i’ve ever been party to, the end
There is a great deal more at the original post
Reactions/Reviews
"fandom history is a wild ride and i love it"[1]
What’s funny is that this story actually sounds EXACTLY like something that would happen in South Park. Like… I can actually HEAR “you don’t own albinos, Kyle!” in Cartman’s voice. It’s uncanny.[2]
#click the readmore #you think you don’t care but YOU DO[3]
I was in the South Park fandom from 2005-2007 and that was a wild ride but absolutely NOTHING compared to what OP has revealed. [4]