I really wasn’t expecting this old paper of mine to suddenly be relevant, but... did you know I did a whole study of Goncharov fandom?  I doubt anyone even remembers alt.goncharov, but there was this absolutely wild thing where in the late nineties the community was essentially taken over (from Scorcese fanboys) by fanfiction writers and shippers. It was AMAZING. I saw @destinationtoast ‘s post about Goncharov AO3 stats and I really hope that some of the stories there are from folks who posted on alt.goncharov back in the day. Because I read a LOT of fic when I was doing this research, and that late nineties Katya/Sofia REALLY holds up. ::chef’s kiss::  Seriously, alt.goncharov was ahead of its time and the fans involved were the coolest.

Anyway let me know if you have questions about this research! 

Title: Ships and Ice Picks: An Ethnographic Excavation of alt.goncharov

Abstract: Many research studies of early fandom and fanfiction online communities have focused on well-known fandoms such as Star Trek and X-Files. In this paper, I describe findings from trace ethnography and discourse analysis of archived posts from the Usenet group alt.goncharev. During the time period between 1995 and 1999, the community underwent a significant shift from discussions of the film itself to a focus on fanfiction and "shipping." I argue that this forgotten fan space reflected an early microcosm of the kinds of fandom discourse we see decades later, with respect to the largely gendered conflict that ensued as this shift occurred. I conclude that just as fanfiction writers managed to "win" control of alt.goncharov, in our current time we will continued to see increased attention to and respect for transformative fandom and queer fans in particular.