thedeadparrot

Fandom is something we do outside, out in the open, where anyone can see us. It hasn't always been this way, of course, but that's pretty irrelevant because we are now.

I found fandom through a friend of a friend, but not through 'zines. I was a lurker in those days, hunting through Geocities archives with shitty design and bad organization and always being too afraid to e-mail any authors my feedback. I remember the mailing lists, which also gave an illusion of privacy, an extra hoop to jump through, a way to prevent people from getting in when they didn't want to. I remember when you had to send an e-mail to certain archives to prove you were of legal age in order to read the porny fic. I remember the first move to LJ.

I think in some ways, fandom has always been feeling this tension between becoming more public or trying to be less public. The lines between creator and fan have been coming down especially fast now that we have things like tumblr and twitter giving us access to celebrities. And it doesn't help that tags get aggregated outside our own semi-walled journals and communities, making it even easier to stumble across each other in new and interesting ways.

People are able to find us. I don't think we'll ever be able to go backwards, to go less public, less open. Being mocked in public is a blip. (Yes, there has been a blowup in the TSN community over this, unsurprisingly.¹) Having jokes about it on SPN is a blip. Jokes at our expense are a blip. Even Strikethrough, that wonderfully epic shitshow, came and went fairly quickly.

I guess this counts as fannish history now, as it happened five years ago now (omg!), but the reason why AO3 even exists is because fandom wanted to learn how to control its own image in public, wanted to stop hiding to some degree. This isn't to say that you can't or shouldn't if you're more comfortable that way. If the OTW were that dogmatic about their views, they wouldn't give people the option to lock their fic. But the AO3 is there to be seen, to be public. The OTW does have a public relations arm. They helped Lev Grossman with his article about fanfic. They do legal advocacy for vidders. Fandom is public. It's out in the open. It lets the lurkers see us. It lets the gawkers (pun intended) see us too. There are prices we pay for that openness, but I think it's worth paying.

At this point, I don't think there's any point in trying to force the genie back into the bottle when it comes to slash fic. And to be honest, I think if we start shutting things down, if we start forcing the lurkers to stop lurker fandom will become a much smaller, much more insular place. I don't want that for us. I don't want a return of the password-protected archives. I don't want all our fic disappeared until someone can prove that their intentions are good.

Fandom means too much to me. Even though my lurker days are long since past, I remember what it was like on the outside, looking in. I don't want to take that away from anyone else.


¹ For the people who need the background: Gawker wrote an article about Mark/Eduardo and I won't link it because they don't deserve the page hits. TSN fandom is in total meltdown mode right now, not just because of the article, but because of some other stuff that is just so stupid, I won't even dignify it with a full explanation.

(1) Wheeeeeeee muskratjamboree! Man, I am so nervous about going and like, meeting people and being around so many excitable fangirls. I don't know how I'm going to handle being around so many people I know by reputation or like, people I've just seen around fandom. It'll be surreal, at the very least.

(2) In similar news, the OTW is having a donation/membership drive! We needs more serversssssssss, precious. I'm so proud to have been a part of the AO3 project from the beginning. I don't have the time to devote my coding skills to it anymore, but I use it on a regular basis to find fic in new fandoms or even old fandoms. Basically, I love it, and I want to make sure it keeps going and keeps improving (hopefully in time to survive Yuletide, too, omg).

Also, I have one AO3 invite to give away that I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT LOL. It's not hard to get one these days, but if you want to skip the hassle of being put on the waitlist, hit me up.

(3) I was going to use this space to whine about how PLOTTING IS HARD. Because it is. This was going to be inspired by the Study In Emerald/Sherlock fusion-y thing I am currently working on and that was kicking my ass, but then I talked to zulu about it. And now I'm not quite so flaily about everything? Yay? Note to self: You should go back to writing everything out long hand. Notice how you're a better writer when you do that? Yeah.

(4) So there's this video that went around a while ago:
( cut for embed )

For some people, it's about recovering from a break up, but to me, it's a celebration of introversion, of finding the quiet places inside your own head where no one else gets to see. It's not about loneliness so much as aloneness, about being comfortable by yourself, within yourself. Every time I see it, it brings back that feeling I get when I'm happy in my own skin, quiet and content.

(5) There's this moment you get sometimes, where even though the story you're writing is being uncooperative, you can lose yourself in the feel of writing, of making words appear in front of you in a particular order. It's the most amazing thing ever, and even if everyone hates it later (including yourself), you can still hold onto that feeling and it makes it all worth it.

(6) I am kind of a pathetic squeeing fangirl over the fact that Martin Freeman has been cast as Bilbo. Fuck yeah.

I'm KIND OF SORRY I'M GOING TO DO THIS, but I'm about to rec an awesome book that is currently out of print (in the US, at least). But not for long! Amazon tells me there will be a reprint coming out in October, and, um, I'm tempted to buy copies for anyone who wants one, because it is THAT AWESOME.

So, the book is Stories Of Your Life And Others by Ted Chiang, and it's a sci-fi anthology of short stories. I basically scoured everywhere for a decently priced copy, and I ended up getting it shipped from England. Yeah, you heard me.

Anyway, Chiang writes science fiction about Science and Math, capital letters included, but he never loses sight of the human beings at the center of it all, and even when he's rambling about mathematical proofs, he still makes you care about people first and foremost. They're not the most distinct characters ever, but they still live and breathe and ache, and they still feel like people you'd know, people you'd meet. He even writes smart female scientists without a trace of smugness or condescension, which is what frequently aggravates me when cis male writers try to write competent female characters.

I'm a little disappointed in the ways he doesn't really touch on identity issues, especially racial identity issues. Nearly all his characters read as white with the exception of those that take place in a particular non-white historical context.

But on the other hand, I dig the way he investigates religion and philosophical systems and his worldbuilding is epically awesome. Some of my favorites out of this collection are "Seventy-two Letters," "Tower of Babylon," and "Story of Your Life."

Seriously, go find a copy somewhere and read it.

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I should start busting my ass off on remix. I have a story and an idea, now I just need to sit down and write it. Unfortunately, final projects and such are kicking my ass. Alas.

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Speaking of remixing things, there's yet another pro-author telling us we're disgusting thieves. It's all boring and routine and blah, blah, blah. I don't really feel the need to refute her points, because plenty of people have done that before and better. No need to ride that train again.

However, I would like to humbly request that people stop defending fanfic by saying that it's a good training ground for becoming an original writer. This argument just reinforces that really annoying hierarchy, where fanfic isn't writing. Only original fic is, and the only reason to write fanfic is a pitstop on your way to doing things that are actually legitimate. Or whatever. This argument basically makes their argument so much easier, because this argument allows them to make the basic assumption that fanfic is inherently inferior to original fic. Yeah, I'm not okay with that. On any level, really.

Look, I love writing fanfic because it's fanfic, not in spite of it. I love fanfic because it's a way for me to talk back to, to explore, to argue against the media I love and maybe sometimes hate and occasionally have "It's complicated" relationships with. I love fanfic because it's always in conversation with other fanfic, because it's a reclamation of stories that are written for other people, other audiences other than us. I have no desire to channel whatever writing skills fanfic has given me into a pro career, and if you do, that's great! Good for you!

But please don't shit all over what we do in your attempts to defend it.

We should be arguing that fanfic is worthwhile in and of itself, not just what it enables us to do later. We should be arguing that fanfic is creative work, maybe not creative work defined by what is commercially important and commercially viable, but creative all the same. We should be arguing that fanfic is legally transformative, that fanfic is parody is criticism is reader response, and it is important. Because it is.

And not just because it sometimes gets us somewhere that's considered more respectable.


P.S. I would like to propose the following (somewhat flawed) analogy for future fanfic debates: Publishing your stories anywhere public ever is sort of like owning a farm and selling someone a cucumber. Yeah, you can hand it over to them with the intention that they eat it with some delicious salad, but it's kind of stupid for you to tell them after the fact that they can't place said cucumber in whatever bodily orifices they damn well please.

So this article, In Defense of Fan-fiction (courtesy of the metafandom del.icio.us feed), which is kind of hilarious coming in on the heels of the whole OTW thing and the discussions about fan works and how fandom is becoming more public.

So I think I need to check my biases here, because my first reaction is to say, "who the fuck are you to represent fandom? You post on ff.net" Which of course is silly to say, because ff.net is part of fandom, and it has its own fannish communities, and to say that her fannish experience is invalid is totally a douchey thing to do. So I won't do that.

What I will say is this:

1. There are a lot of reasons to write fanfic.


2. No reason for writing fanfic is more valid than the others.


3. This paragraph:
   

   
   Some people think that fan-fiction is purely voyeristic (spelling?!) – in that people like to imagine their favourite fictional couples together, and that’s the end of that one… and on some levels, yes; I agree. A lot of if is voyeristic. But, to counter that, a lot of it isn’t. True, “romance” is probably the most popular genre on fanfiction.net, for example, but I have to say that probably has a lot to do with the people writing and reading it. Sadly, I fall firmly into this category – teenage girls who can’t really help themselves but let their daydreams carry them away.
   

   
   
   makes me flinch, because I believe that we should not be ashamed of writing fanfic. Yeah, I write romance. Yeah, I even write porn. Yeah, I did this as a teenage girl. And yeah, I sometimes daydream about characters. None of this should mean that my writing -- our writing -- is automatically worth less than that of some fanboy who daydreams about being Paul Atreides and about things blowing up and writes a script about his daydreams and then gets it turned into a movie. I am looking at you, James Cameron.
   


4. Fuck the need for outside validation. If other people want to pretend that we are all stupid and giggly and can't write for shit, then it is not my job to educate them or convince them they are wrong. (And, of course, they are.)


5. I haaaaaate the "Why don't you write original stuff?" question, because my answer is, "I don't want to." I love taking things that already exist and turning them inside out and playing with them to see what they do. I love mashups. I love remixes. I love fan films. And I love fan fiction as a means of reclaiming stories and turning them into stories that are written for us. I have better things to do with my time than to write stories I don't really care about, kthnx.


6. Kirk/Spock is hot, and I think Kirk totally loves to bottom.


7. I think I could give a list of fics that I think define fandom to me, what it is, what it can do, how it operates, how it can be transcendent. But I don't trust my motives in doing so, so I won't.


8. I love fandom, you guys. I love what we do. <3
   
   No shame.

So there's been plenty of info coming in from linkspam, but I thought I'd point out a few posts of note:

sabrina_il takes them down from a psychology perspective.

deadlychameleon updates us on the response of the IRB.

neededalj debunks their neuroscience. I know neededalj offline, and I can verify that she knows her shit when it comes to neuroscience. Plus, it's good to see this sort of takedown now that they've tried to confuse the womenfolk with their technobabble. Hint: It's still complete bullshit.

Signal boost where you can, you guys. I'm pretty sure these dudes are just trolls at this point, but maybe we can make an example out of them.

Dear crazy Kirk/Spock shippers,

Please, for the love of god, stop making us all look bad. No, seriously. You all fail.

no love,
me

1. I got roped into my first D&D game ever. I suck at roleplaying, I have discovered. Also, character creation.

2. ( BSG season 4 finale spoilers )

3. Saw The Incredible Hulk, enjoyed it, but I felt like there wasn't enough characterization to hook me. I will also admit that I did like the Ang Lee version as well, so.

4. I've been reading a lot, lately. Yay, libraries. I like libraries a lot.

5. Have also gotten sucked into what may be known in some circles as "Doctor Who fic," but what I know as, "stories about Martha Jones being awesome." Recs are welcome.

6. Speaking of which, anyone up for a quick beta of a 600~ word ficlet about um, the Doctor and Martha? It's slice-of-life-ish.

7. I am playing Twilight Princess again. Also addicted to it again. At least I'm close to the end, so I'll maybe get my life back soon. (Sky Temple, w00t w00t!)

Man, I have this weird inability to avoid reading posts about the OTW as they fly through metafandom and such, and I am so sick of "blah blah blah the womens are oppressing me" wank and "blah blah blah we're being outed to TPTB" wank.

Why can't we have some good Slashdot-style wank over what license we're going to be using for the archive? I mean, we should get some GPLv3 haters, of course, and some rabid BSDers involved. Plus, we could invite FSF groupies to the party. They're always a riot.

Oooooh, how about a long MySQL vs. ProtegreSQL flamewar? I love those.

Seriously, people. I need a change of pace here. You all should get on this right away.


Aaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, I am finding Flickr's The Commons project ridiculously cool. Lookit all the gorgeous pictures! I know that it seems like a sort of half-assed attempt at crowd-sourcing by the Library of Congress, but seriously, I think it's awesome.


I also have this desire to talk about myself my fic. So, poll! It's approval voting, so choose as many or as few as you like.

[Poll #1124469]

So, I'm still reading fandomsecrets and now I'm tempted to make one of my own, except anything I'd be willing to say there, I'd be willing to say here.

Like, say, the fact that I apparently still ship Sailor Moon/Tuxedo Mask or, you know, that I think Desperadoes sucks ass or that House/McKay is OTP liek whoa.

Or that I look myself up on LJSeek from time to time.

Or a lot, actually.