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A friend of mine was in a group for collectors of a thing and he made a new one of that thing and posted it and the group admin banned him because the group is "for collectors" and making new things "isn& #39;t collecting" and I think about that when we& #39;re talking about SFF classics.
I wasn& #39;t even the one in the group but every time I think about it I feel contempt for this chucklefuck who thought that creating new things "cheapens the collector experience" because damn if that isn& #39;t a microcosm of Certain Bullshits Of Fandom
There are folks for whom the point of a fandom is to Collect Things. And there& #39;s nothing inherently *wrong* with that, but the failure mode of Collection Fandom is where one& #39;s value and standing within the community is based entirely on Collecting The Best Things.
When one& #39;s worth is entirely in Collecting The Best Things, that can lead to a sense of hostility towards folks who...don& #39;t see that as a source of worth. How dare they tell you that your Precious Collection is irrelevant? How dare they even call themselves fans?
And it& #39;s not the collecting itself that& #39;s the problem. There are plenty of welcoming and joyful collecting communities out there. The pen community comes to mind, and the Breyer Horse folks I& #39;ve met are all "let me share this source of joy with you" about it.
But if you make a pen and bring it to a pen meetup, no one& #39;s going to scoff and tell you that Real Pen Fandom Is For Collectors. They will ask you about your new pen! What are the internals? How did you make it? How does it write? Can they try it?
Because...they like pens.
Because...they like pens.
But when we& #39;re talking about "classics" in SFF, there always seem to be two conversations happening at once, and one of those conversations is "But I Collected The Most Things and now you& #39;re trying to tell me that doesn& #39;t matter!"
And of course it& #39;s not JUST that. It& #39;s never one thing. But some folks grew up in a fandom community where being a Serious Fan meant reading X, Y, and Z and they did that and now new folks are saying X, Y, and Z don& #39;t matter and they read that as saying that THEY don& #39;t matter.
And on one level I have empathy for feeling like a community is moving on without you. If being a fan is part of your identity and you& #39;re told your fandom is outdated, it feel like being told that you& #39;re outdated.
But if you react to that bad feeling with gatekeeping and exclusion, well. Suddenly you& #39;re the chucklefuck claiming that creating and enjoying new things isn& #39;t "real" fandom because it detracts from collecting old stuff, which is what & #39;real& #39; fans do.
This maker side of fandom--the fandom that doesn& #39;t care about collecting or memorizing but about engaging with material through creative expression--has always been here. What& #39;s changed isn& #39;t how fans relate to work, but what types of fandom get centered and heard.
Maker fandom is rooted in routing around exclusion as damage. It was built by people shut out of the approved pathways for making new stuff, and it engages with fandom--and with itself--critically and irreverently.
As the gates to "real fandom" widened to include those previously outside its walls, we began to see aspects of Maker Fandom getting centered, platformed, acclaimed and awarded. But these are not new fans or new fandoms. They& #39;ve always been part of the picture.
So the idea that there "used to be" one literary canon everyone in genre agreed upon (collect the set and we& #39;ll send you a membership card!) has always been ahistorical. That canon has always been curated, and its definition of quality has always been constructed politically.
And, meanwhile, there have always been other canons, always been critical analysis, always been fiction that is explicitly critically engaging with existing work not as friendly banter but as a challenge.
There has always been new stuff that "Real Fans" didn& #39;t care to collect.
There has always been new stuff that "Real Fans" didn& #39;t care to collect.
