Living Two Lives – A Story of Bilingual Fan-dom

[rodo]

The topic of this post is one that has been on my mind for years, and this certainly isn’t the first attempt to write it all down. This post is about my very subjective experience in fandom, which, I believe, is not quite normal. I suppose all of you who are multifannish know at least to some degree what I am talking about, because essentially, I am talking about being in two fandoms at once. But while most people experience two fandoms as two different things they’re interested in, for me, it is the same thing, in two languages.

So I suppose this is where I should introduce myself: I am a German and German is my first language. I didn’t really start learning English until I was ten (so I am not really bilingual). I started writing fanfiction when I was seven. I discovered fandom when I started reading the AnimaniA when I was fourteen. I doubt more than a few of you ever touched that magazine, but I loved it. Buying the new issue was more fun than Christmas. I discovered online fandom when I was nineteen, googling Harry Potter and finding Animexx. A few months later, somebody posted the translation of this really great Harry Potter fanfic (or so I thought at the time – it was the Draco Trilogy), and I started reading it in English.

That was five years ago, and since then, I spent time in English and in German fandom. Many people would, I think, think it enlightening to be able to participate in discussions in two languages. And to a degree, it is. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to change it, because now that I know what the English fandom is like, I really wouldn’t want to leave. In fact, if I had to choose, I would chose the English and not the German one. But: Being a bilingual fan certainly has its disadvantages. I am living in two places at once, I have to be two different persons at times, and that does not feel nice at all.

The English fandom, for example, has meta. Lots of it. They even have a name for it. But while the topic is certainly not unknown in German fandom (as a look at ff.de’s pages on columns and essays shows, which occasionally includes discussions on slash and writing tips), the name is only used by those who are part of the English fandom as well (see: ff.de’s forum). I love meta. I certainly miss meta when I am in German fandom, especially the sort that people really thought about. And the really intellectual meta. I sometimes feel as if the German fandom is unable to follow me when I start talking in that direction (and I know that is a shitty thing to say, but that’s how I feel).

Another problem with German meta discussions is the different background. I learned to deal with meta-y things via metafandom, which I suppose is true for most of us who haven’t been in fandom long enough to remember a time when there was no metafandom. And following metafandom established a background we use when we talk, a background that is missing in discussion with the German fandom altogether.

I feel the same when it comes to various other fandom related communities, especially fanficrants and fandom_wank, both of which shaped the mind of the English fandom enough to establish phrases like “thoughts on yaoi”. Mocking other fans is considered horrible in most of the German fandom. The only community with that specific purpose was deleted a while ago. It was a sporking community on LJ called loesch_dich and I don’t quite remember why the mods deleted it, but I do remember that I thought it a pity and unnecessary. And I loved the sporking of BlackBolt's “novels”. Big scandals like those around Cassandra Claire and MsScribe couldn’t happen in German fandom. Even the mention of gugi28’s bad behaviour and her accusing unsuspecting new fans of plagiarism when all they did was invent an OC who was slightly similar to hers was deleted (and I forgot to take screencaps), despite being neutral and totally unwanky (at least compared to what ends up on fandom_wank). I know of no place where German fandom can be properly criticized, apart from English fandom, that is. And I think fandom_wank and similar communities are good for a fandom, because on the one hand they serve as an outlet for all the negative feelings, and on the other they establish some sort of rules for community interaction. German fandom needs a place where young fans can learn not to tell others that liking slash/incest stories is OMG SO SICK and that wanky behaviour should be avoided.

German fandom also needs to learn that comments aren’t everything. I know, English fandom has its own fair share of comment whoring and stories that are held hostage. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the fact that in discussions with German authors, I am often told that a good reader writes a comment, because the author has to be paid for a story. The story is seen as a service to the fans that has to be paid for, not as something the author does because s/he likes it or as something the author does as a thank you. There is a hierarchy in fandom, and it places the reader on the bottom. Readers who don’t review are bad readers; I sometimes even get the feeling that they are considered worse than the people who don’t read the story at all. There even is a word for readers like that: “Schwarzleser”. It’s a term that has its origin in the term “Schwarzfahrer” (literally black passenger – meaning someone who takes a train or bus without paying) and “Leser”, the German word for reader. I don’t think the English fandom has developed a term for that yet.

Another thing the German fandom lacks, at least in my opinion, is the presence on journaling platforms. The English fandom on LJ and its clones is enormous. The German part, at least as I remember it, is tiny. I know quite a few people are from Germany, but they don’t participate in anything German. Their journal entries are in English, so that they can communicate with their English speaking friends. After a while, many start writing fanfic in English as well. I am one of those people who really like journaling platforms, because they allow me more freedom than most archives (my main issues with them is generally linked to the fact that I am not free to do as I like), and I generally like reading other peoples’ journals and the flist makes it so much easier to find all the new fic you’re interested in than combing through all the pages of an archive. I like the sense of community as well.

There are, of course, things the German fandom has that the English fandom doesn’t. For one, it allows me to use my dearly beloved first language. Something that I rather like about the German fandom on principle, despite not finding much use for it myself, is the amount of translated fic. Some people aren’t talented when it comes to writing their own stories, some of them lack the ideas, but quite a few of these people can still use their talent to translate stories. I only know of a handful of stories that are translated into English, often by the German authors themselves, but there are a lot of fanfictions in German archives that are translations. Ff.de has threads in which people ask for help translating a certain phrase, threads in which the merits and difficulties of translations are discussed and even those in which potential readers ask other people to translate a fic for them.

And of course there is Animexx, which I don’t like for a lot of reasons (too strict, too focussed on anime and manga), which is an archive maintained by a non-profit organisation that hosts fanfiction, dōjinshi, fanart, cosplay, fic contests and a myriad of other things. It was founded in 2000. Sound familiar? Well, at least that’s what I thought when I first heard of the OTW’s archive. I sincerely hope that the OTW’s archive won’t develop the way Animexx did in terms of focus on visual art and policy, but in terms of functionality, I think Animexx is rather more than English archive users are used to. At least as far as I know. (You can check out the very reduced English version here.) So to me, at least, the idea of the OTW was not a new one. A good one, yes (I’m a volunteer, after all), but not a radically new one.

A difference between the two fandoms, the way I see it, is the fact that a lot of the English fandom culture seems to be based on the traditions of media fandom, while the German fandom seems to be more focussed on anime/manga fandom. That might just be my impression because I started out on Animexx, but I still get that impression when I’m on ff.de now, despite the main fandoms being Harry Potter and Twilight.

Now all this means one thing for me: I am two people. When I am my English fandom person, I can’t talk to anybody about what happened to yaoi.de without having to start with a lengthy explanation on the German laws for the protection of minors. (The end result is this: adult fanfiction on German websites can only be accessed during the night and/or after you sent the maintainers your identification card number so that they verify that you’re an adult. And for God's sake, don't ever call it porn.) I can’t talk about racefail with Germans. I have to separate knowledge and behaviour in my head so that I don’t accidentally think English fandom hates readers. I can’t use the same platforms. I have to watch out for spoilers (both ways – we got the final Pushing Daisies episodes last month). I have to keep track of air dates and publication details. I have to remember that musings on translating fic should be written in German rather than in English. But nobody will read it anyway there since it’s meta and Germans don’t read meta. The latest post on fandom_wank? Nobody’s read it and the fandom isn’t big in German anyway. A “yes, but” would probably not be the best way to react to the enthusiasm for the idea behind the OTW because the people I’m talking to have never even heard of Animexx.

The two fandoms are not entirely separated, though. I do meet quite a few Germans on fanficrants, and many people on my flist are Germans (writing in English, but they will at least heard of some of the things I’m talking about) and there are a number of people in German fandom who are in English fandom as well. But the topics that are discussed are often separate. While the English fandom talked about racefail, ff.de was told to delete the fanfictions for a certain book series by the author’s lawyers. Something that hasn’t happened in German fandom before, at least to my knowledge. While people in the German fandom argued about the new rating system on ff.de, English fandom squeed about Dreamwidth. And I do both, but almost never with the same people or in the same space.

Dreamwidth will make it harder for me to have one place for both of my personas. The Archive of Our Own and the OTW might make it easier, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to have just one fan personality.

Comments

[nikku]

I got here via a link from frogspace, and just wanted to say:

>>I started reading the AnimaniA when I was fourteen. I doubt more than a few of you ever touched that magazine, but I loved it.

I started to read it when I was eighteen, and I loved it, too. It changed my life.^^

[rodo]

Of course the old AnimaniA was superior. *nods* It just wasn't the same after #40.

I think the AnimaniA was at least partly responsible for some manga/anime being published in Germany. Without their article about Weiß Kreuz I would have never become a fan of that series. (other examples: Basara and Angel Sanctuary)

[nikku]

Yeah, after #40 I followed the old staff to the MangaScene.^^;

I also remember the good ol' times when you could buy every new volume of all in Germany published Mangas with a student's pocket money.^^

[rodo]

Yeah, after #40 I followed the old staff to the MangaScene.^^;

Me too.

And my brother liked manga back then as well, so despite not having much pocket money, we could buy every new volume and the old ones.

Nowadays I can't even keep track of the few series I'm still reading.

[lian]

Oy, how could I miss this post??? Thanks to frogspace I did still find it, phew. This is super-fascinating, and the thing is -- I'm fascinated by how similar our Sozialisation (see! another beautiful word without a decent translation ;P) is -- I totally would understand you if you talked about yaoi.de/animexx (I got on both around 2001, and every now and then I realize of deeply I am still influenced by that -- e.g. in arguing definitions or naming conventions with English fen!), even though I branched off into English fandom exclusively around...phew, 2004 2005 or so?

And it strikes me, and fascinates me, how there are these seemingly somewhat discrete traditions in German fandom -- apart from individual developments, I mean. Pre-yaoi-crowd maybe? Closer to old-school slash. frogspace, for example, seems to be from that crowd, even though that is of course grossly simplified -- she does write about having submitted a boy x boy story one time, after all. (I commented to her entry here).

[rodo]

(Don't worry, almost nobody on my flist was interested in this entry.)

umm ... "socialisation"?

Yes, 2004/2005 was also the time when I largely left German fandom as a reader (I do still read in German sometimes, but it's really hard to find decent stories without rec-lists). Didn't Animexx used to have a rec function? I could have sword it did, but I can't find it anymore.

The pre-yaoi(oh how I hate that term, it's shounen-ai, goddammit)-crowd also seems to be rooted in a pre-internet culture. Maybe they are old-school media fen while most of the German internet fandom is at least influenced by anime/manga fandom? I know I had to work quite hard on overcoming the naming conventions where the name before the / was the seme, and I still can't read some characters as ukes. (And I use seme/uke quite frequently.)

I also think most of the old school media fen migrated to LJ (unlike the rest of German fandom), but I can't say that I met many of them in archives or forums.

[lian]

*swirls cape* yeah, but now I am part of your f-list! Ha-haaa! ...;P

(socialisation? really? Somneone once told me it ws not quite the same, but maybe they were lying! hah.)

I actually asked frogspace about that, because I just...don't know anything about the development of German media fandom (as opposed to German yaoi fandom. Sorry. It's shorter ^^;) Oh, yeah, the use of 'shounen ai' in itself is a German peculiarity -- most international fandoms now use BL. (ONE day I need to finish writing that Fanlore article on the usage of 'yaoi'!)

*points to last line* I used to use the Japanese smilies exclusively until a few years back -- I abandoned the habit once I'd been thoroughly absorbed by English media-fandom. Heh.

I suppose because I'm a reader, not a writer, leaving my native language behind was easier. But speaking of which, I talked to xavie a while back, about what we really loved about the ficathon_de challenge -- rediscovering to write fannishly in your own language. She's never been in yaoi fandom, as far as I know. It's just, most people are just... *better at it*. And like you, I dislike the idea of seeing German as inferior -- it's just that there's hasn't been all that much ground covered, so sure it's harder to write, say, sex scenes in German at first. *shrugs*

Open up yet another strand, this time German people assimilated into English media-fandom re-discovering their own language, and trying to find an audience? I'm not sure if there are enough re-patriates for this to succeed...but I'd sure like to try.

I think this idea of giving native (=Germans socialised into) media fans a place to pool their writing, and through this, hey, maybe pool the scattered audiences -- this is what I would LOVE to see to come out of the OTW Archive translation. There is certainly enough infrastructure in place for native yaoi fen. Though, of course, I'd argue that our infrastructure is better ;P

(My committee is trying to badger coders into writing a 'translation of...' feature into the Archive that links back to the original story and vice versa. That would be so.fucking.awesome.)

edited to fix code

[hl]

Hi! (Here from lian)

I clicked, very interested in reading this, because I'm Argentinian and, like you, am not truly bilingual. I only did a very short stunt on Spanish fandom, (turns out that misspellings in Spanish bother me much much more!) but lately I've friends that are more in it, so I was curious about what did it mean for the fan to be in the two different fandoms.

All I can think of, now, is that 99% of the stuff you say I could take out 'German fandom' and put in 'Jane Austen Fandom' and it would hold true. Seriously, though it's in English, the fannish culture is completely different from the rest of fandom, and the issues are very similar to those you described!

[lian]

heh, I never really bought AnimaniA (too expensive and all), but when I did I was incredibly bothered by all the spelling and grammar mistakes. There is no genitive apostrophe in German gah. >:( maybe that was already the 'new guard' edition, I don't know...

[rodo]

I didn't really care about grammar back then, but the articles used to be a) long, b) detailed and full of geeky in-jokes and c) written in to include the opinion of the writer. Sometimes the articles were really funny and full of irony, sarcasm and wit, and I loved that.

[lenija]

I was at my parents' and missed this post - too bad, I would have loved to enter the discussion.

I came into fandom a bit later than you, and started to read manga only a few years ago, so I've never been on animexx or yaoi.de. At some point I left fanfiktion.de, too, because I don't agree with some of their policies (some of which might just be German policies, I notice) but didn't feel there was the right atmosphere to discuss any of my concerns. The only place where I'm still in German speaking fandom is livejournal, where many people have finally started to write their fic in English.
But still many experiences you describe sound familiar to me, especially the feeling of being split into several personas. It helps to be able to tie this to the two different communities -- the way you just can't discuss certain questions with one group or the other, because you would need to add pages and pages of links and footnotes, and even of anyone would read what you linked to, they still wouldn't know what it's like to be part of that discourse (racefail09, for example, or Jugendschutz on the other side), even if you're only marginally involved.

For me, there's also still a large language barrier. I don't trust my English skill enough to participate in complex discussions. The problem is, if I can't (or won't) discuss the English speaking fandom's meta problems with English speaking fen, there's no one left I can discuss them with.

There should be more posts like this one. I think it's important that we talk about our different backgrounds in order to... well, help sharpen everyone's perception. Show that diversity is not theoretical.

(Und nun hab ich schon wieder große Furcht, mich schlecht ausgedrückt zu haben, weil mir auf englisch die Genauigkeit fehlt, die ich für meine Definitionen und Fußnoten brauche.)

[rodo]

Oh, yeah, the use of 'shounen ai' in itself is a German peculiarity -- most international fandoms now use BL.

Still, I don't like it. Even though the Japanese now use BL themselves. And yes, it definitely is peculiar to German fandom (And I thought about editing the fanlore article about ten times already as well.)

But speaking of which, I talked to xavie a while back, about what we really loved about the ficathon_de challenge -- rediscovering to write fannishly in your own language.

Me too, but since they're on LJ and I'm not a big porn writer (no matter the language), I generally miss out on the fun. I did participate in the Wünsche Wochen last Christmas, though.

And I agree, certain things like sex scenes seem harder to write in German. I think it's because on the one hand we lack a certain emotional distance to words like "Schwanz" and on the other most of us are simply so much more used to reading English smut.

Open up yet another strand, this time German people assimilated into English media-fandom re-discovering their own language, and trying to find an audience? I'm not sure if there are enough re-patriates for this to succeed...but I'd sure like to try.

I'm not even sure how many actually left German fandom and how many are sort of ... split. I'm always in favour of German goodfic. And something I would really like is a Yuletide-like fic exchange in German, but I wouldn't know the first thing about how to start and promote something like that.

(My committee is trying to badger coders into writing a 'translation of...' feature into the Archive that links back to the original story and vice versa. That would be so.fucking.awesome.)

OMG that would be super doubleplus awesome! Like on the OTW website with "this content is also available in German/English/Swahili". And what committee are you talking about now *iz confused*?

[rodo]

(turns out that misspellings in Spanish bother me much much more!)

Funnily enough, they bothered me more in English because when I started out I never knew if a word was misspelled or simply a totally different word that I didn't know yet.

All I can think of, now, is that 99% of the stuff you say I could take out 'German fandom' and put in 'Jane Austen Fandom' and it would hold true. Seriously, though it's in English, the fannish culture is completely different from the rest of fandom, and the issues are very similar to those you described!

... Now you've got me wondering about the German Jane Austen Fandom (yes, it exists, there even is an archive, as I found out a few weeks ago).

[hl]

... Now you've got me wondering about the German Jane Austen Fandom (yes, it exists, there even is an archive, as I found out a few weeks ago).

Yes, I know! There are some people in the English JA fandom that come from the German JA fandom. :D

[rodo]

The world is a very small place indeed.

[sabeth]

Here from lian! This was so interesting to me – I'm Austrian, but I think I found fandom early enough (X-Files when it was just transitioning from usenet to mailing lists) that there just wasn't much of a German fandom to get involved with online. (Fic-writing fandom, that is; there were fansites.) So it's always been English-speaking fandom for me, and I'm glad for it.

I've tried looking into German fandom a couple of times, but I always end up feeling seriously uncomfortable, happy to return to the modes of communication I'm used to – as you said, many of the meta institutions (fw, metafandom) are missing, and I think that's the reason German fandom has retained a certain ... naïveté that I find frustrating.

Gah, I don't want to be offensive and I'd happily be corrected on this point. But I think because German fandom appears to be so strongly rooted in anime/yaoi fandom, there's a tendency to simplify the characters, stick more closely to the idea of tops and bottoms, bash/ignore the female characters, etc. And that's why I got so fed up with yaoi fandoms in the first place. Not saying there's not a lot of bad slash out there, just that I'm not sure I've ever read a German fic I really loved.

I think in the end German fandom just doesn't offer me anything that interests me. I generally dislike reading/watching anything in translation because meaning always gets lost, so I really don't see the point of doing it in fandom. I like the vastness and diversity and cleverness of international fandom. Conversely, I like being accessible to as many people as possible. The one thing I do regret is that I don't get to hone my writing skills in my own language nearly as much as I do in English, but that's just ... nowhere near enough to draw me away from international fandom.

(Also, wow, "Schwarzleser," seriously?)

[lian]

Du bist sooo ein Dussel! Das war doch total perfekt! o_O;

anyway. :) maybe ficathon_de should do a podfic challenge, you know? Or maybe just ask people to go over to amplificathon -- a cooperation?

(see general_jinjur commente here about her not knowing how to 'getting the word out'.)

edited -- Jesus, I fail at closing tags today!!!

[logovo]

Excellent post! There are similarities between your experiences and what I have felt in Spanish fandom, although it does sound like you have more a foot in both spaces than I do. I started out in English fandom in the 90s and could not find another media based native Spanish speaker for a long time.

[rodo]

Hey, kannst auch ruhig auf Deutsch antworten. Im InsaneJournal habe ich mit mllesatine und anotherslashfan auch auf Deutsch geredet. Ich wollte ja auch noch eine deutsche Variante des Posts schreiben, aber da fiel es mir dann irgendwie schwer, mich auf Deutsch auszudrücken. *seufz*

For me, there's also still a large language barrier. I don't trust my English skill enough to participate in complex discussions.

I know the feeling. I sometimes stuff my foot in my mouth because I have the same problems in English that I do in German (I like to forget words or parts of sentences) on top of the inability to say certain things as precise in English as I would in German (God, I love the Konjunktiv).

General discussions I can follow most of the time, but sometimes meta is so academic that I just know I'm missing some of the background and that part of that background has to do with language.

There should be more posts like this one. I think it's important that we talk about our different backgrounds in order to... well, help sharpen everyone's perception. Show that diversity is not theoretical.

I think I discussed that with someone a while back. We all tend to assume that the other persons in fandom have similar backgrounds and most of the time that might be true, but sometimes it just isn't, and it shows. In discussions on race, for example, Germans have a totally different background because for us, it's not black people, it's mainly the Turkish immigrants (and it used to be people from Southern Europe and Eastern Europe, all of which are caucasian), and the fact that they bring a foreign culture into our country, which is at the center of the non-fandom discussion.

[lian]

Go and edit that article!!! Chances are that I, uh, wrote/started it, and I suck :> it'd be awesome if you did!

I chatted about that with lenija when I met her, about the porn theme being exhausted for now. But really, what about teaming up with the people doing ficathon_de, suggesting that kind of challenge? I know it's hard to establish something like that on one's own, so why not synergize and use existing ressources? Might be worth looking into, though I know lenija really deosn't have much time atm.


I'm not even sure how many actually left German fandom and how many are sort of ... split.

...There seem to be quite a few who 'left' (or rather, just drifted out of German fandom, into the beautiful plenty of English-speaking fandom.) Just my very subjective impression, though, from randomly talking to people here and there.


OMG that would be super doubleplus awesome! Like on the OTW website with "this content is also available in German/English/Swahili". And what committee are you talking about now *iz confused*?

Translation committee, sorry! hl is our brand-new member, btw :> she brought it up again in our meeting yesterday. And it's so good to hear so much support for the feature request, it makes it a lot easier for us to argue for it to coders if we can show how excited people are!

[general_jinjur]

this is really interesting, and a lot to think about. thank you for posting it.

this is not meant to invalidate your statement at all, since i think the phenomena (from what you say) is on a completely different scale, but i believe english language fandom does hate the reader slightly more than you say - it's just much, much less explicit. but because it's not explicit, it's harder to refute. reading/viewing fanworks is a fanwork itself, separate from leaving feedback, i think. it's largely invisible, which makes it hard to value, and when it is quantified (in pageviews or statistics) that visibility often becomes a negative element, i.e. "hundreds of you jerks read my story and only thirty left comments! you are bad people!" but reading *is* work. it takes time, which has a value. and leaving feedback is a skill that not all of us have (i don't, for one, though i do try, largely out of guilt). i think there's a lot of internalized (and sometimes stated - i know i've stated it) self-loathing in non-commenters that's actually encouraged by english-language media fandom. i think the marginalization of readers who do not create tangible fanworks (even those who do leave feedback) is one of the places that the utopian idea of the fandom stumbles, and does so badly.

anyway. you are making me think! thank you!

[rodo]

many of the meta institutions (fw, metafandom) are missing, and I think that's the reason German fandom has retained a certain ... naïveté that I find frustrating.

Yes, it's rather ... headdesk-inducing. I just can't help it. I love the German language, and I like writing in German, even though I sometimes to try to write in English as well.

I actually had a flatmate once who read only one fic in German because the translation into English wasn't finished yet and the remaining chapters were only available in German. So there do seem to be good fanfics out there, they're just hard to find (no rec-lists).

I think it's interesting that you refer to English fandom as "international". It is international, at least partly, but I wouldn't call it truly international because it is definitely dominated by American media and fen (and British media and fen, to a certain extent). I just don't feel comfortable calling it "international" because of that. Sure, it's on its way of becoming more international (I wholeheartedly support lilithilien's Alles Was Zählt project), but for that we need more translations – of fic and media (and meta and everything else I forgot to mention so far).

(Also, wow, "Schwarzleser," seriously?)

Yes, seriously. It's a big topic on the ff.de forums.

[lian]

*nods* yeah, German fandom just -- isn't my crowd anymore? I love reading rodo's posts about current German fandom, because I have no clue whatsoever, having left it so long ago. The insularity
*does* have the tendency to produce the effects you describe, yes, so I'd snobbishly claim that I've 'grown out of it'. *g*

But speaking about fic: what I would love love love is what we have here in LJ-based fandom *and do it in German*. Take what we already know and do in English, that awareness and sophistication, and try it in German.

Obviously, and ironically, I value accessibility above everything else, or else I wouldn't keep my journal almost entirely in Eglish. (I respect rodo a lot for trying to balance both languages.)

But I still strongly believe there is value in -- repatriating? Re-discovering your own language? There just might be a bigger audience than one might think -- even independent of the 'traditional' German yaoi crowd, I mean. Though the dividing lines may be a lot thinner than one may think (*points at our hostess*)

And yeah, Schwarzleser just makes me...boggle. That's pretty much the most stupid concept ever, sorry.

[lenija]

In discussions on race, for example, Germans have a totally different background

Absolutely. The two discourses interlink, but it only works if you're aware that there are two discourses. Actually I've been wanting to write a post about this, I've already written bits of it in my mind. Let's see if I ever get it done, or if someone else will.

Oh, and re: entering the discussion in German - I didn't want to, because I think I need to jump over that imaginary barrier in my mind, and because I think a discussion like this one shouldn't exclude people who don't speak German. But thanks anyway! :)

[rodo]

I don't think there was much going on in German fanfiction fandom in the 90s either (I could be wrong, that's frogspace's speciality), so a lot of early fen seem to have defaulted to English more easily than the "newbies" of the 2000s.