Does anyone know of any histories of the Buffy fandom?

[eilowyn]

Remember that history of fandom I was going to post a few weeks ago? Still working on it. It's actually the literature review of my application to study human subjects under the jurisdiction of my school's Institutional Board of Review (don't ask), and it's taking forever to do because I continue to read while I write, and I keep on coming across

Comments

[rahirah]

Honestly, you shouldn't limit it to B/S vs. B/A. There are reams of history in the slash sections of fandom, and the Willow/Tara shippers, and the huge S4 flamewar over Willow being gay, and the previous huge flamewar about Xander lying to Buffy about what Willow said about Angel, and the rise and fall of various non-canon ships, and the controversy over Dawn, and the Kita/Glossing feud, and JennyO blowing a gasket when Lilah Morgan was written out, and the Better Buffy Fics vs Better Buffy Slash controversy, and the implosion of BAPS, and the unrelated implosion of Sparklies, and the Great Spoiler Scandal of S6, and the struggle between Spike/Xander and Spike/Angel shippers, and the Kitten Jihad, and David Fury at the Bronze, and the Sexymermaid incident, and and and... There's SO much more than just Bangel vs. Spuffy!

[lynnenne]

There was a Kitten Jihad??

[londonkds]

It's not as funny as it sounds.

"Kittens" was the self-picked nickname of hardcore Willow/Tara shippers who, with considerable justification, argued at the end of S6 that killing Tara and having Willow go crazily evil over it was homophobic.

[frelling_tralk]

There was also a whole banner war ad with the Kitten's at TWoP when they paid for an ad mourning Tara and saying Willow/Tara are the magic, then the regular posters paid for another ad saying something like "Tara's dead, get over it. Mmmkay"

[eilowyn]

See, when people are spending actual money for ads like that, things get interesting . . .

[frelling_tralk]

It was unusual because TWoP were otherwise very strict about boards-on-boards, but they let anything pass when it came to the banner ad's to help fund the site, and people naturally took advantage of that. I think there was possibly a monkey with glasses involved in the second ad actually, I am struggling to remember *g

[londonkds]

Oh yeah, where they went off the deep end was arguing that Joss was a secret homophobe who had deliberately created a gay couple just so he could kill them off and gloat over the suffering he was causing to gay people.

[rahirah]

What they said. The Kitten Board also imploded after Tara's death, though I believe it was eventually resurrected, with rules saying no one was allowed to mention BtVS canon post-Entropy on it, EVER.

[ladycallie]

The Kitten Board is still alive, abet much quieter now. They actually have a pretty detailed history that theyve kept. Links to the board are on my account if you want them. And the rules have changed a bit, you can go post Entropy, but with restrictions. I like it for what it was, is , and will continue to be, but its not for everyone.

[rahirah]

I checked it out when I first got into online fandom, way back in mid-S5, because I was all "Yay! LGBT Buffy fans!" But I was a Spike fan, and the Kittens hated Spike because... well, honestly, I never really figured out why they hated Spike, other than that apparently one of the mods didn't like him? So I just lurked a little and then left and went and hung out with the Spuffy peeps.

[quinara]

I can't help but feel like the culture of spoilers in those days deserves its own individual history. I mean - was Britney going to appear in S7? Could Britney appear in S7? You just don't get questions like that any more. Or those leaked versions of early Angel S5 episodes where they hadn't finished putting the special effects in. Not to mention the S6 scandal.

/As I always end up repeating in these situations, I miss SpoilerSlayer. :'(

ETA: And the arguments about the ethics of that syndication site (which had all the download links) - what was it called? buffy.nu?

[rahirah]

Buffy.nu, yeah. And who could forget the ineffable, effulgent William the Poet? *g*

I was actually neck deep in the S6 spoiler scandal, albeit semi behind the scenes (I was one of the group of friends that the person who ran the Spoiler Zone was sharing 'secret' info with) and that was one colossal clusterfuck. The whole thing blew up because the person who spilled the beans (also part of the secret info group) was pissed off at the rest of us for not being positive enough about the way S6 was going, so she decided to RUIN OUR FANNISH REPUTATIONS FOREVER.

[eilowyn]

Ooh, there's a whole article with that one, isn't there? I could definitely have a summer of research just looking up links for this stuff in the wayback machine and getting people's autoethnographies of fandom back in the bad old days! (I should be using this icon for every reply, shouldn't I?)

[rahirah]

Yep. It was pretty crazy. But I don't know how much web material you'd find on that one; a lot of it took place in private email, or on defunct lists/boards I'm not sure are Wayback accessible. And some of the people involved probably never want to speak of it again. I can look back and laugh, but I was probably the least affected person involved.

[quinara]

RUIN OUR FANNISH REPUTATIONS FOREVER

And that's why you've never worked in this town again. *shakes head sadly*

[rahirah]

Well, it did pretty much ruin the fannish career of the person who ran Spoiler Zone. Which was... dumb, seeing as all it really accomplished was to lose fandom an excellent spoiler source. The rest of us were small potatoes in comparison. (There were a couple of people who cut me dead after Jacq posted all the private email archives, though I was never sure if it was because of something I said or on general principles. Either way, I figured I was a big girl and could take my lumps.)