Fandom and the Underground

The nature of fandom has traditionally been an underground one.
The legal status of fanworks and other fannish activities makes many fans wary of publicity.
Fans are often distrustful of publicity due to media potrayals of fans and of being a figure of derision or ridicule from non-fans.
Many fans, especially those who create and consume same sex and erotic fanworks, do not want the attention of who they consider to be outsiders. 
==Some Varying Definitions of Underground Fandom==
==Early Underground==
In the beginning, there was Drawerfic.
Drawerfic sometimes led to zines.
In 1981, George Lucas also tried to curb fan activities, namely zines, something this fan vehemently opposed. She cited the underground nature of fandom and how: 
==Slash and Underground==
Ironically, it was David Gerrold who "outed" slash and zines. A fan relates to others a phone call she recently had with David Gerrold: "According to David, he didn't want to mention K/S in the revised edition of The World of Star Trek, feeling it best left 'underground,' but did so at the urging of his editor who encouraged him to write his impressions of the genre." from 1985, Not Tonight, Spock! #7 Gerrold's nod to slash zines and materials was often the very thing that alerted eager and curious fans to the very thing he'd hoped to quash.
===Under the Table===
"Under the table" is a phrase used in print zine fandom. It is used to describe zines that were literally sold from under the table at conventions, meaning from boxes that were not in the open or had restrictions upon them. 
These zines were almost always slash zines, regardless of their level of explicitness.
Being required by concoms to keep slash under the table was aggravating, because het zines with relatively explicit covers were generally not hidden, even at all-age cons and actor cons.
Slash fans would wander around the dealer's room looking for zine sellers, and then ask them quietly if they had slash zines as well, or they would gently pull aside the convention-hotel supplied long tablecloths of dealer's tables to see if there were boxes of slash zines hidden beneath. 
Shortly thereafter the 1985 Shore Leave, Pam Rose and Lezlie attended Tulsa Star Trek, a convention in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They brought some of their K/S zines and had to hide them under the table whenever security walked through the Dealer’s Room. See Banned from Tulsa. 
It was then that they decided they needed a convention of their own. ~ Legacy, #2, The Legacy of K/S in Conventions: Convention Memories 
Different cons had different rules regarding slash fanworks: From a fan in 1993: 
In 2008, a zine publisher described how at one gen convention: 
From a fan in 2014: 
==Levels of Underground Fandom==
====Kept Away from TPTB==== 
A fan writes of the underground nature of early Pros fandom: 
The editor assures her readers that a letterzine is underground: 
The underground as being bad for Paramount and TPTB, because above-ground fandom made them more money: 
====Kept Away from Everybody: Except Me and My Friends aka the "Right People"====
====Kept Away from Family and Non-Fan Friends====
* often referred to as being "in the closet"
==Being Underground as a Precaution==
===Due to Legal and Copyright Concerns===
 
===Due to Moral Outrage===
 
==Underground Fandom: It's Way More Fun that Way!==
A fan comments on NASA/Trek and naughtiness: 
A fan comments on the frog brooch and how it 
 
==Underground Fandom as a Private Club==
For some fans, fandom being underground is a way to be exclusionary, and/or a reward for those who are truly deserving.
==The Underground as a Way to Disperse Information Within Fandom==
* underground as a way to disperse previously published works (Maya, RPS, piracy, circuit stories, scantlation)
"There is an underground trade in her stories via email, and the pdf had been available on Megaupload before the site was shut down." regarding Maya's fan fiction 
From History of Scanlation: Some fans are worried, seeing this as the first step towards the closing of database or release-tracking sites such as MangaUpdates that have not yet been contacted by publishers. Others see this as a call for the scanlation community to self police and return to its earlier stance on licensed series. Fans outside of the US who rely on English language scanlations but who do not have access to commercial US releases have been particularly vocal about their disappointment.
It is widely speculated that this crackdown may drive scanlators underground--back to IRC or to locked forums and livejournal communities.
==Now You See Us, Now You Don't==
Underground Fandom: the open secret, and how do fans find each other?
Some fan comments:
===1976===
===1978===
===1979===
===1980===
===1981===
 
===1982===
===1984===
===1985===
===1993===
===2012===
==Underground Yesterday, Above Ground Today==
* fanworks that were underground, then above ground: Code 7, many Pros circuit stories, A Fragment Out of Time, Tales of Feldman whose author described it in a flyer as "the underground classic that's coming up for air"
==The Internet as a Game Changer==
Underground, even on the internet: Scuttlebutts is a Scully/Skinner archive. It's the site of the Scuttlebutts mailing list that was founded in 1999.Yahoo Group, founded 27 July 1999. (Accessed 02 July 2011)
The site understood itself as a place for "underground fiction" and as a private archive for the dark side of X-Files
fanfic - Skinner/Scully romance.Scuttlebutts - Disclaimer, 2001. (Accessed 02 July 2011)
==Getting What Some of Us Wished For...Having is Not the Same as Wanting==
Some fans don't enjoy canon homosexual relationships in media as it brings attention to what they feel should remain underground and subversive: 
==The Perils of Fandom's Increased Visibility==
==The Pluses of Fandom's Increased Visibility==
==Meta/Further Reading==
* First they came for the hackers. (September 2006)
* Keep it secret, keep it safe by musesfool (September 2006)
==References==
Category:Fan Activities