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sineala · 3 years

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How would you say fandom culture has changed over the years? What are some differences you notice between older and younger fandom folks?

I’ve been thinking for a while about how to answer this, and I’m not sure I have a really good answer, but I’m going to try.

I’ve been in fandom since approximately 1995. Maybe 1994. At that point, the world wide web was a relatively new part of the internet, and the fandoms I was in had most of their activity on privately-hosted mailing lists (predating eGroups/OneList/Yahoo Groups) and on Usenet newsgroups, with fiction beginning to be available on websites as part of either fandom-specific or pairing-specific archives as well as authors’ individual pages. Fanfiction.net did not yet exist. LiveJournal did not exist. AO3 definitely did not exist. If you wanted real-time chat, there was IRC. I was coming in basically at the tail end of zine fandom; zines were no longer the only way of distributing fanfiction, as fandom started to move online. So I have a selection of zines from 90s-era Western media fandoms but even by then zines weren’t where I was doing most of my reading.

I think in terms of generally “what it was like to be in fandom,” the big-picture stuff hasn’t changed. Fandom still produces creative fanwork and likes to, y’know, get together and talk about fandom. Also, almost every fight or complaint that fandom has about something is a thing that has been going on for actual years. People complain that, say, the kudos button is ruining comment culture because back in the LJ days the only way you could comment on a story was, well, by leaving an actual comment, or sending an email on a mailing list, and this might mean that people who would have otherwise commented have left a kudos instead. But back in the LJ and mailing list days, people were complaining that commenting was going downhill since the days of zines, when in order to comment on a story you had to write a real paper letter and mail it and because you had to do that, the quality of feedback was so much better than you got nowadays because people could just dash off a quick email or comment. You get the idea. Top/bottom wars are not new either. Pairing wars are not new. If you’ve been in fandom a while, you will pretty much have seen all the fights already. I think one thing that is new, though, is the fandom awareness of things like privilege and intersectionality and various -isms, as well as things like “providing warnings might be nice” (do you know how much unwarned deathfic I have read? a lot!) and I sure won’t say we’re perfect at any of this now, but I think fandom is trying way way more about all that stuff than it used to.

There are some fights we actually don’t have anymore, as far as I can tell. I feel like it’s been years since I’ve seen the “real person fiction is wrong” battle, but also I don’t hang out in a whole lot of RPF fandoms, so it’s possible that’s still going and I just don’t see it.

There also used to be a recurring debate about whether gay relationships that were canonical were slash or not. When slash started, obviously this wasn’t a question because there weren’t canonical gay relationships in fandoms, period. But as gay characters began to appear in media, people started to wonder “does slash mean all same-sex relationships, or does slash mean only non-canonical same-sex relationships?” Now, you may be reading this and think that sounds like an incredibly weird thing to get hung up on, but that’s because what appears to have happened is that the term “ship” (originally from X-Files Mulder/Scully fandom) has, as far as I can tell, come up and eaten most of the rest of the terminology. Now people will just say, “oh, I ship that.” For any pairing, gay or not, canonical or not. Fandom seems to have decided that for the most part it no longer actually needs a term specific to same-sex relationships as a genre.

Similarly, there are a few genres of fic that we used to have also pretty much don’t exist anymore. There are also plenty of genres that are well-entrenched now that are also extremely recent -- A/B/O comes to mind. But there are some kinds of fic we don’t write a lot of now. Like, I haven’t seen smarm in years! I also haven’t seen We’re Not Gay We Just Love Each Other in a while. There was also a particular style of slash writing where you’d basically have to explain, in detail, what made you think that these particular characters could be anything other than straight. You’d have to motivate this decision. You’d have to look at their canonical heterosexual relationships and come up with a way to explain why all those had happened in order to reconcile how this one guy could have romantic feelings for another guy. When had he figured out he wasn’t straight? Who might he have been with before? How does he interact with people in ways that make you think he’s not straight? That kind of thing. You had to, essentially, show your work. And these days a lot of fanfic is just like, “Okay, Captain America is bisexual, let’s go!” It’s... different.

Fandom also used to skew older, is my sense. A lot older. I don’t know, actually, if it really was older, but I get the sense now that there are some younger people who are surprised that adults are still in fandom. I have seen people saying these days that they think they’re too old for fanfiction because they are not in middle school anymore. And I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the barriers to access fandom are a lot lower than they used to be. You used to basically have to be an adult with disposable income (or know an adult with disposable income who was willing to help you out; but even then if you were reading explicit fiction you also had to swear you were 18+, usually by sending in an age statement to whoever you were buying the zine from or to the mods of the list you wanted to join, so a lot of fandom was very much age-gated). Internet access was not widely available. Even if you had internet access, you maybe didn’t have your own email address, so you couldn’t sign up for mailing lists; free email providers didn’t exist. If you wanted to buy zines, you had to have money to buy them. If you wanted to go to cons, you had to be able to afford the cost of the con, travel to the con, et cetera. If you wanted to have a website you had to know HTML. Social media did not exist. You want to draw art? Guess what, you’re probably drawing it on paper! You might be able to upload a picture to your website if you have a digital camera or a scanner, but both of those things are expensive, and also a lot of people don’t have the capability or the money to download pictures from the internet (some people have data caps with overage charges, and some people have text-only connections!), so they won’t get to see it. Maybe you can sell your piece at a con! You want to make a fanvid? We called them songvids, but, anyway, you know how you’re doing that? You’re going to hook two VCRs together and smash the play and record buttons very fast! If you want anyone else to watch them, you are either making them a tape personally and mailing it to them or bringing your vids to a convention. Maybe you can digitize them and upload them, but it’s going to take people hours to download them!

(Every three hours my ISP would kick me off the internet and I’d have to dial in again. If it was a busy time of day, it might take me 20 or 30 minutes to get a connection again. And that was assuming no one else in the house needed to use the phone line. Imagine if your modem went out every three hours now.)

And now, for the cost of my internet connection, I can read pretty much whatever fanfiction I want, whenever I want it. I can see all the fanart I want! I can watch vids! Podfic exists now! Fanmixes exist! Gifsets and moodboards exist! If I want to write fic I can write it with programs that are completely free, and as soon as I post it everyone in the entire world can read it. If I want to draw or make vids that may require some additional investment, but I may also be able to do it with things I already have. Do you have any idea how good we all have it?

There are a couple of kinds of fan activity that don’t seem to exist anymore, though, and I miss them. I know that roleplaying still goes on, but I feel like these days most people who do real-time text roleplay have switched to things like Discord. I know that in the LJ days, RP communities were popular. But I really miss MU*s (MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs, MUXes..), which were servers for real-time text-based RP with a bunch of... hmm... features to aid RP. There were virtual rooms with text descriptions, and objects in virtual rooms with descriptions, and your character had a description, and they could interact with the objects as well as with other characters, and you could program things to change descriptions or emit various kinds of text or take you to different rooms, and so on. Just to, y’know, enhance the atmosphere. It was fun and it was where I learned to RP and I’m sad they’re pretty much gone now.

I also don’t think I see a lot of fanfiction awards in fandoms. Wonder where they went.

Going back to the previous point, the barriers to actually consuming the canon you are fannish about are way, way, way lower now. You can pretty much take it for granted that if right now someone tells you about a shiny new fandom, there will be a way to read that book or watch that show or movie right now. Possibly for free! Of course you can watch it! Why wouldn’t you be able to?

This was absolutely, absolutely not the case before. I’m currently in Marvel Comics fandom. If there is a comic I want to read, I can read it right now on the internet. I have subscribed to Marvel Unlimited and I can read pretty much every comic that is older than three months old; the newer ones cost extra money. But I can do it all from the comfort of my own home right now. I was also, actually, in Marvel Comics fandom in the nineties. If I wanted to read a comic, I had to go to a comic book store and hope they had it in stock; if they didn’t, I had to try another store. Not a lot of comics were available in trade paperback and they definitely weren’t readable on the internet. I used to read a lot of Gambit h/c fic set after Uncanny X-Men #350. I never found a copy of UXM #350. I still haven’t! But I did eventually read it on Unlimited.

Being in TV show fandoms also had similar challenges. Was the show you were watching still on the air? No? Then you’d better hope you could find it in reruns, or know someone who had tapes of it that they could copy for you, otherwise you weren’t watching that show. It was, I think, pretty common for people to be in fandoms for shows they hadn’t seen, because they had no way to see the show, but they loved all the fanfic. The Sentinel had a whole lot of fans like that, both because I think it took a while for it to end up in reruns and because overseas distribution was probably poor. So you’d get people who read the fic and wrote fic based on the other fic they’d read, which meant that you got massive, massive amounts of fanon appearing that people just assumed was in the show because it was a weirdly specific detail that appeared in someone’s fic once. Like “Jim and Blair’s apartment has a small water heater” (not actually canonical) or “Blair is a vegetarian” (there’s an episode where his mother visits and IIRC cooks him one of his favorite meals, which is beef tongue).

Like, I was in The Professionals fandom for years. I read all the fic. I hadn’t seen the show. As far as I know, it never aired in the US, and it certainly never had any kind of US VHS or DVD release. I’d seen a couple songvids. I eventually saw a couple episodes in maybe 2003, and that was because my dad special-ordered a commercial VHS tape from the UK and paid someone to convert it from PAL to NTSC. I didn’t get to see the whole show until several years later when I got a region-free DVD player someone in fandom sent me burned copies of the UK DVD releases and then I special-ordered the commercial release of the DVDs from the UK myself. But if I were a new fan and wanted to watch Pros right now? It is on YouTube! For free!

I think also one of the things about fandom that’s not immediately evident to new fans is the way in which it is permanent and/or impermanent. There are probably people whose first fannish experience is on Tumblr or who only read fanfic on FFN and who have no idea what they would do if either site, say, just shut down. But if you’ve been in fandom a while, you’ve been through, say, Discord, Tumblr, Twitter, Pillowfort, Imzy, DW, JournalFen, LJ, GeoCities, IRC, mailing lists. And sure, if Tumblr closed, it would be inconvenient. But fandom would pack up and move somewhere else. You would find it again. It would, eventually, be okay. Similarly, if you’ve been in a lot of fandoms, if you’ve made a lot of friends, drifting through fandoms is like that. You’ll make a friend in 1998 because you were in the same fandom, and then you might go your own ways, and ten years later you might be in another fandom with them again! It happens.

But the flip side of that is that I think a lot of older fans have learned not to trust in the permanence of any particular site. If you like a story, you save it as soon as you read it. If you like a piece of art, you save it. If you like a vid, you save it. Because you don’t know when the site it’s on will be gone for good. I have, like, twenty years of lovingly-curated fanfic. And I feel like people who have only been in fandom since AO3 existed might not understand how much AO3 is a game-changer compared to what we had before. It’s a site where you can put your fic up and you don’t have to worry that the webhost is going out of business, or that the site might delete your work because they don’t allow gay fiction or explicit fiction or fiction written in second person or fiction for fandoms where the creator doesn’t like fanfiction, or whatever. Because all of those things have absolutely happened. But, I mean, I still save pretty much everything I like, even on AO3, just in case.

So, basically, yeah, fandom is a whole lot more accessible than it used to be. I think fandom is pretty much still fandom, but it’s a lot easier to get into, and that has made it way more open to people who wouldn’t have been able to be in fandom before. There is so, so much more now than there ever was before, and I think that’s great.

#Anonymous #replies

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fox-bright · 3 years

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A note for all the people who started writing in 2020, and are submitting stories now:

I’m a submissions editor (that is, I read slush) for a fairly well-known SF magazine, and in this read period I am noticing a considerably higher-than-usual percentage of manuscripts that are rejected for severe grammatical errors. When I mentioned this on a writing forum, I received a number of comments and PMs from writers who were surprised that I don’t “just fix the errors.” I’ve realized that it’s likely a lot of people don’t really know what a submissions editor does, or what happens to their short story after it’s submitted.

I’m not the magazine editor. I don’t get to send you the fun email that says “We’d like to buy your story!” and at no point do I have any place tinkering with your story at all. It’s not my place to correct errors.

I’m a filter. It is my job to take twenty stories and find one good one out of them to send on to the magazine editors. The other nineteen get rejected. I take stories, one after the other, from the submissions pile and I read through them until I hit a place where I say “No, this one doesn’t work” and I send a rejection letter. If the writer is skilled, I get to the end of the story without hitting that point, and I go “Huh!” and I set it aside for a day. I sleep on it. I go back and read it again, and if I get to the end and go “This is pretty great!” I send it on to the magazine editors, who do the next round of the process. If I am myself very lucky, I start reading a story and immediately forget that I’m looking for reasons to reject it. I am consumed by the drive to finish it, and I immediately send it on.

The second-to-last category is, as I said, composed of about one in twenty stories. The last category? That’s rare. One in a hundred, maybe. Maybe one in twice that many.

It is a lot more likely that I pull a story, open it up, get two or three double-spaced pages in, sigh, tab back to the submissions page and hit the “send rejection” button.

There are a lot of reasons that a story might not make it past me. There’s the basic stuff (does it meet submission guidelines? Is the format correct? Is there a cover letter with the necessary information about the writer? Is it in English? Is it a short story, not a novella, a novel, song lyrics, poetry, or a picture book?) and then we move on through grammar, readability, originality of concept (is it a fiftieth story about sex robots?), genre fit (we don’t publish non-fantastic westerns, or noir, or gonzo horror slasher stories, for instance, even if they’re very well-written), and increasingly arcane, specific things that any particular magazine is looking for. Those specific things differ, from publication to publication; there are good markets that want that gonzo horror robot porn western, for instance.

But the thing is, I can’t even get to looking at all of that top-level stuff if trying to get through your grammar and spelling is like stubbing my toe on concrete every other step.

There’s a tag on Archive Of Our Own that sees pretty common use, variations of “No Beta, We Die Like Men!” meaning that the chapter went up without ever getting a second set of eyes on it. Nobody checked it over for grammar, spelling, cultural accuracy, et cetera. And for fanfic, that’s often fine. You are (by law) not trying to sell your fic, and you’re giving it to readers who generally already know the setting, the characters, the premise of the original work that the fic is based on. Other writers have done all of that trailblazing for the fic author. So if a fic has bad grammar, or weak characterization, or any of the other flaws common to new, casual writers, it’s not such a big deal; we already have a strong construct in our heads that we’re projecting the fic onto. We want to read good fic, but even mediocre fic can have something satisfying about it.

With original fiction, all the work is being done by the writer right then. There aren’t thirty TV episodes, a hundred hours of video games, forty volumes of manga sitting in the reader’s head already waiting for your story to join them. This means that every little thing, every word, is important. Every piece of grammar. Every clue about characterization. You’re building it all in front of us and if it’s nothing but dialogue then we can’t understand your setting, and if it’s nothing but ponderous worldbuilding, we’ll never come to be interested in your characters. And if there are fifteen grammatical errors on a page, it’s too distracting to immerse ourselves in any of it.

I don’t think that most submissions editors like rejecting stories. I think that all of us, who love reading and the craft of storytelling, would much prefer that when we pull your story from the submission pile, it grabs us by the throat. But we have to reject the ones that still need work.

You don’t want to submit a story that needs more work. You want to submit the absolute best thing that you can write.

So if you’re new to submitting stories, particularly to professional markets, I highly recommend that you get a second set of eyes on it before sending it on to me or any other slush reader who will have to bounce it for the sixth dangling participle in two pages. Have a hyperfluent, passionate reader friend go over it for you in exchange for a pizza. Get in with a writing group (there are a lot online!).

And if you don’t have access to anyone else who can help, I suggest that you take the story and you put it in a box for a month or three. Come back to it with fresh eyes after leaving it entirely alone for a few weeks, and read it out loud. Record what you read, and then listen to it! A lot of the mistakes should pop out into sharp visibility.

#writing #fiction #publishing #my actual life

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rhysintherain · 3 years

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I don't think most people, even the ones who regularly read books, appreciate how much the internet has changed book culture.

In the early days, when manuscripts had to be handwritten, or each letter had to be set by hand, books were as much a status symbol as they were entertainment. But that's not how it was in the last decades before the internet.

When I was a kid, I lived in a house with walls lined with books. I'm not exaggerating when I say my mother had thousands of them. They weren't expensive; most of them cost around 25 cents at thrift stores and garage sales, with a few notable exceptions, like medical encyclopedias and obscure off-gridder manuals on how to make your own solar panels and build a house out of discarded bottles or whatever.

So, even though we were pretty poor, we had books. Even then, between my mother's lousy taste in fiction and my absurd pace of 3-5 books a month, I was constantly cycling material from the public library. Books were on every available flat surface, to the point you often had to move some to sit down. The books I was reading were piled beside my bed. The ones my mom was reading were on the coffee table. You could tell my books because they had streaks of nail polish, like ghostly pencil marks, where I'd dragged my finger across the page and my dry nail polish had left a line. If I was going on a trip I had to guess how much I was going to read, and weigh being without a new book against the space it would take up in my bag. Stories were readily available, but they were only accessible through physical volumes, one per story.

Don't get me wrong, the internet was there; it had fanfiction, which I occasionally read, but it didn't have books the way it does now.

But now we live in a world where books are available anywhere. Even if I don't have internet everywhere, I can download hundreds of books on my phone, or thousands on my Kindle.

Most of the ebooks I buy cost less than 10 dollars. My sister didn't pay for books through all of highschool, she just read pirated pdfs on her laptop.

And books don't hold the power over stories that they used to. You can find stories in twitter threads, and tumblr posts, and independent blogs, and fanfic sites.

Just as the mass manufacture of books brought the consumption of fiction to the masses, the internet brought them authorship. Anyone can write an original story, or a reimagining of a classic one, or the next chapter in their favorite saga. They don't need to meet copyright requirements, and they don't need to sell it to a publisher. All they need to do is write it and post it, and people will find it.

So now we're back in a world where physical copies of commercially distributed stories are a status symbol. Self-proclaimed Book People post pictures of their shelves, aesthetically arranged by color, and talk about how eReaders "just aren't the same", and treat books as sacred vessels of narrative, too precious to be marked or folded, even though they could get the same story for free online.

Because anyone can have stories, anyone can make stories, through the internet. A 14-year-old reads crime fiction for free on her laptop; a single mom gets through her days reading 3-dollar romance novels on her battered Kobo; a bank teller writes fanfiction about his favorite monster-hunting tv show that have far better character development and pacing than the original.

And the Book People tell us this cheapens stories. They're right, of course, but only in an economic sense.

You see, simply reading isn't enough to prove you have the money to buy books and the space to store them anymore. Anyone can read nowadays. So we've moved the status of the activity onto the aesthetic: shared stories to the feel of paper under our fingers, literary critique to carefully curated "currently reading" photos.

In a hyperliterate society, how do we define ourselves as readers? Not by our stories, but by our books.

#books #reading #fiction #stories #i finally managed to get my complicated feelings about #book bloggers written out #this is not a callout for book blogs just some observations on reading culture and how it changed with the internet #sometimes it makes me a little sad #what would Anne have thought? or Matilda? or Lazlo?#would they be sad at what books have become?#or elated at the possibilities for stories?

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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Here's a quandary I've suddenly found myself in: where do you stand on writers deleting their own works, fanfiction or otherwise? I've had this happen to me on more than one occasion - I go to look for an old favorite and find it's since been deleted from whatever site I read it on.

On the one hand, I'm inclined to think that, "Sure. The author wrote it, it's their call. I don't own the work - I certainly didn't pay for it. It's their decision, even if it's disappointing."

But at the same time I can't help but consider the alternative - if I believe in death of the author (and I do), that an author's work fundamentally isn't solely theirs once it's been published, posted, etc., then it also seems wrong to have a work deleted. Stories aren't the sole property of their creator, after all.

But then I circle back. D'you think there are different obligations between authors and readers and the works being made in fandom space? I know if I had bought a book and the author decided they wanted it back, I would feel pretty comfortable telling them no, given I'd paid for it and whatnot. But that's a different world from fanfic and fandom space generally.

So. You're insightful Clyde, I'm curious as to what you'll have to say here (and to all y'all thinking about it, don't flame me. I haven't decided where I stand here yet - haven't heard a good nail-in-the-coffin argument for or against yet).

Val are you a mind reader now? I’ve been thinking about this exact conundrum the last few days!

(And yeah, as a general disclaimer: no flaming. Not allowed. Any asks of the sort will be deleted on sight and with great satisfaction.)

Honestly, I’m not sure there is a “nail-in-the-coffin argument” for this, just because—as you lay out—there are really good points for keeping works around and really good points for allowing authors to have control over their work, especially when fanworks have no payment/legal obligations attached. In mainstream entertainment, your stories reflect a collaborative effort (publisher, editor, cover artists, etc.) so even if it were possible to delete the physical books out of everyone’s home and library (and we're ignoring the censorship angle for the moment), that’s no longer solely the author’s call, even if they have done the lion’s share of the creative work. Though fanworks can also, obviously, be collaborative, they’re usually not collaborative in the same way (more “This fic idea came about from discord conversations, a couple tumblr posts, and that one headcanon on reddit”) and they certainly don’t have the same monetary, legal, and professional strings attached. I wrote this fic as a hobby in my free time. Don’t I have the right to delete it like I also have the right to tear apart the blankets I knit?

Well yes… but also no? I personally view fanworks as akin to gifts—the academic term for our communities is literally “gift economy”—so if we view it like that, suddenly that discomfort with getting rid of works is more pronounced. If I not only knit a blanket, but then gift it to a friend, it would indeed feel outside of my rights to randomly knock on their door one day and go, “I actually decided I hate that? Please give it back so I can tear it to shreds, thanks :)” That’s so rude! And any real friend would try to talk me out of it, explaining both why they love the blanket and, even if it’s not technically the best in terms of craftsmanship, it holds significant emotional value to them. Save it for that reason alone, at least. Fanworks carry that same meaning—“I don’t care if it’s full of typos, super cliché, and using some outdated, uncomfortable tropes. This story meant so much to me as a teenager and I’ll always love it”—but the difference in medium and relationships means it’s easier to ignore all that. I’m not going up to someone’s house and asking face-to-face to destroy something I gave them (which is awkward as hell. That alone deters us), I’m just pressing a button on my computer. I’m not asking this of a personal friend that is involved in my IRL experiences, I’m (mostly) doing this to online peers I know little, if anything, about. It’s easy to distance ourselves from both the impact of our creative work and the act of getting rid of it while online. On the flip-side though, it’s also easier to demean that work and forget that the author is a real person who put a lot of effort into this creation. If someone didn’t like my knitted blanket I gave them as a gift, they’re unlikely to tell me that. They recognize that it’s impolite and that the act of creating something for them is more important than the construction’s craftsmanship. For fanworks though, with everyone spread around the world and using made up identities, people have fewer filters, happily tearing authors to shreds in the comments, sending anon hate, and the like. The fact that we’re both prefacing this conversation with, “Please don’t flame” emphasizes that. So if I wrote a fic with some iffy tropes, “cringy” dialogue, numerous typos, whatever and enough people decided to drag me for it… I don’t know whether I’d resist the urge to just delete the fic, hopefully ending those interactions. There’s a reason why we’re constantly reminding others to express when they enjoy someone else’s work: the ratio of praise to criticism in fandom (or simply praise to seeming indifference because there was no public reaction at all), is horribly skewed.

So I personally can’t blame anyone for deleting. I’d like to hope that more people realize the importance of keeping fanworks around, that everything you put out there is loved by someone… but I’m well aware that the reality is far more complicated. It’s hard to keep that in mind. It’s hard to keep something around that you personally no longer like. Harder still to keep up a work you might be harassed over, that someone IRL discovered, that you’re disgusted with because you didn’t know better back then… there are lots of reasons why people delete and I ultimately can’t fault them for that. I think the reasons why people delete stem more from problems in fandom culture at large—trolling, legal issues, lack of positive feedback, cancel culture, etc.—than anything the author has or has not personally done, and since such work is meant to be a part of an enjoyable hobby… I can’t rightly tell anyone to shoulder those problems, problems they can’t solve themselves, just for the sake of mine or others’ enjoyment. The reason I’ve been thinking about this lately is because I was discussing Attack on Titan and how much I dislike the source material now, resulting in a very uncomfortable relationship with the fics I wrote a few years back. I’ve personally decided to keep them up and that’s largely because some have received fantastic feedback and I’m aware of how it will hurt those still in the fandom if I take them down. So if a positive experience is the cornerstone of me keeping fics up, I can only assume that negative experiences would likewise been the cornerstone of taking them down. And if getting rid of that fic helps your mental health, or solves a bullying problem, or just makes you happier… that, to me, is always more important than the fic itself.

But, of course, it’s still devastating for everyone who loses the work, which is why my compromise-y answer is to embrace options like AO3’s phenomenal orphaning policy. That’s a fantastic middle ground between saving fanworks and allowing authors to distances themselves from them. I’ve also gotten a lot more proactive about saving the works I want to have around in the future. Regardless of whether we agree with deleting works or not, the reality is we do live in a world where it happens, so best to take action on our own to save what we want to keep around. Though I respect an author’s right to delete, I also respect the reader’s right to maintain access to the work, once published, in whatever way they can. That's probably my real answer here: authors have their rights, but readers have their rights too, so if you decide to publish in the first place, be aware that these rights might, at some point, clash. I download all my favorite fics to Calibre and, when I’m earning more money (lol) I hope to print and bind many for my personal library. I’m also willing to re-share fic if others are looking for them, in order to celebrate the author’s work even if they no longer want anything to do with it. Not fanfiction in this case, but one of my fondest memories was being really into Phantom of the Opera as a kid and wanting, oh so desperately, to read Susan Kay’s Phantom. Problem was, it was out of print at the time, not available at my library, and this was before the age of popping online and finding a used copy. For all intents and purposes, based on my personal situation, this was a case of a book just disappearing from the world. So when an old fandom mom on the message boards I frequented offered to type her copy up chapter by chapter and share it with me, you can only imagine how overjoyed I was. Idk what her own situation was that something like scanning wouldn’t work, but the point is she spent months helping a fandom kid she barely knew simply because a story had resonated with her and she wanted to share it. That shit is powerful!

So if someone wants to delete—if that’s something they need right now—I believe that is, ultimately, their decision… but please try your hardest to remember that the art you put out into the world is having an impact and people will absolutely miss it when it’s gone. Often to the point of doing everything they can to put it back out into the world even if you decide to take it out. Hold onto that feeling. The love you have for your favorite fic, fanart, meta, whatever it is? Someone else has that for your work too. I guarantee it.

So take things down as needed, but for the love of everything keep copies for yourself. You may very well want to give it back to the world someday.

#fandom #fic things #mymetas #never any easy questions on this blog huh? lol

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mareliini · 4 years

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(I post most of my art in insta nowadays. No link, but it's mareliiini, with three "i"s.)

Time to say final goodbyes to this hell year, as well for a full decade of art..

Year summary: like previous year, finding stuff to fill up some months was hard. I've had some big art bursts in early jan-feb, summer, and during autumn, when i produced several pieces in one sitting before fading into obscurity of life and knitting for months. My artistic balance has relied on to comic making schedule, honestly since 2011, so without that constant flow of crunching up pages weekly I was left wandering amiss and motivationless. I've always made a rule for myself with these yearly summaries, that I wont use comic pages unless there's nothing else that month to fill it up, and this year I couldn't even rely on that.

Decade summary: Started filling up the latter monstrosity of a dA meme back in 2014 and filling it up has been a yearly tradition ever since. It is so wild looking back. 2011 I had been in Uni for a year and haven't really drawn "seriously" ever, outside of private diary doodles and plastering my room with fish art (do not ask me about my finding nemo phase please) and surrealist charcoal renderings. Reliable access to internet and fandoms, and the whole culture of creating in those spaces is really what made me draw more reliably in the first place.

Home was always filled with art supplies (comes with dad being professional oil painter with a severe case of procrastination syndrome), so in a sense I've been priviledged for early and easy access to those... many gouaches and dip pen nibs I use still, are stolen from home drawers, not that I'd had had money to buy completely new art tech supplies on the fly. Only in recent years I've been comfortable enough with my income, that I could purchase better quality watercolor papers and ink sets, and not feel bad for using them regularily. For comic pages I still use cheaper paper, though that has been upgraded several times since the cheapest sketchbook paper I started with. You don't need Big Quality to make Good Art, but it makes the experience of making it a bit more fun.

Looking back, 2014 and 2015 seems to be most important turnaround time. I was breaking away from the mold I'd created my art identity around of, and growing tired of having story ideas but no original characters. I've had some in the early teen years, but I'd been comfortable for years with using pre-set characters from whatever fandom I was into at the time. And there's nothing wrong with that, I say as an avid fanfic reader, but at some point with making Hey it's summer! the frustration between story I wanted to tell and feel proud of, and the set of characters I had decided to work with, to the point of them being almost oc's in the au world, it just put everything in halt. I'm never going to finish HiS! because I cannot finish it with those characters, and cannot remove the story entirely from it's fandom roots even by made-up ocs. 2014 was largely spent on focusing oc's... I created a bunch of grandma characters for a story I'll never be clever enough to write, and then accidentally stumbled upon Jooel in a dream I wrote up and continued later (yeah they're there in 2014 row). I think most of Bus cast was created in that year, but I didn't have clear enough plan for it (and never had even during writing) untill some years and one cloud comic later.

2015 was Big Year for original writing, as well for everything else. Which is why I have to bring it up. As short detour as the tau fandom was, it granted me the first real friend group online, one which is still together now, give or take a few changes and dramas. It wasn't the main reason, but one of the big ones for me to get proper smart phone to keep connected to them outside evenings (biggest reason was neko atsume..... i wanted to feed my cats....). Cloud story was a wild experience I can never replicate, but also a memory I will always remember fondly. 2015 also was the year I started my three years government supported therapy, which I believe affected Bus a lot. I was really tired and couldn't bother to spent time to look for the perfect fit, so I ended up with a therapist who uh, I guess helped? some? Would not recommend my tactic but it was best I could do at the time. Before that bus had never been more than wild ride of found family tropes frollocing around finnish highways, it was a roadtrip story at heart with supposed collection of small moments of each character, of local problems and stories and people they meet with 4 equally written main characters. Therapy thethered it to one character and one town with whisps of its origin, but it provided a big supplement for the somewhat-working therapy sessions.

#art summary #mareliini draws #u can find prev years from art summary tag in my blog #too lazy to link them #art summary 2020

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charmedseoull · 3 years

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The Aftermath of Fanfiction Authors with Reba Interview

Before You Read the Interview

I contacted Reba after she posted a Reddit thread titled “When a fic becomes too popular and the author deletes their account and/or work. Explained.” on a throwaway account. We discussed details of the interview during December over email, then started the interview in January. This interview is not associated with a project and is its own independent work. Reba has chosen to remain anonymous.

She provides insight on potential reasons to why fanfiction authors abandon their work from the perspective of a fanfiction reader. She also answered general fandom questions and questions about herself so readers could understand her background.

Charmedseoul is a BTS-focused anonymous historian who documents fandom history using Fanlore. If you would like to be interviewed to help document perspectives in fandom, please contact her on Twitter @charmedseoul or on Tumblr @charmedseoull.

Parts of this interview have been edited with links to Fanlore and Wikipedia pages for understanding. Any information in [brackets] serves for further clarity for readers and elaboration of information.

Now presenting the interview with Reba, long-time fanfiction reader and participant in fandom:

When did you first join fandom culture?

I joined fandom culture in 2014. I feel like fandoms really peaked during this time. [Presence of SuperWhoLock and other Tumblr specific fandoms.]

What fandoms are you in? How have your experiences in them been?

I will be honest and say fandom culture isn’t for me- so I can’t say I’m active in any fandoms (I’m just a silent consumer) but growing up I was a fan of music artists mostly; Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande… I loved the IT 2017 movie adaptation for a long time (I still do), and early 2020 is when I got into BLACKPINK, then BTS. My experience with all of these has been good, and maybe that’s because I don’t see any of the drama and arguments online- but I don’t regret any of my past interests because they all made me happy at one point in time.

What do you like about fandoms?

What I like about fandoms is how happy it can make an individual; getting excited for a new music video, smiling at behind the scenes photos… it can bring someone a little joy if they are having a bad day.

What do you dislike about fandoms?

I don’t like stan culture at all; fandom drama, arguing on twitter with strangers to defend an artist who doesn’t even know you… it all seems toxic. While I'm sure healthy stanning does exist, I don't think it's easy to achieve at all.

How long have you been an ARMY? What are your opinions about the fandom? How has your experience in the fandom been?

I became an ARMY in early 2020 when Map of the Soul: 7 was released, so only a year. I really do like the fandom; ARMY is the only fandom I’ve seen where there are so many fans worldwide of all different ages, and that just shows how BTS and their music really is for everyone. There is so much BTS content that there’s never a dull day, so my experience in the fandom has been enjoyable!

Did you ever leave ARMY and take a break then come back?

I’ve never left ARMY, that being said, I’m a newbie and haven’t been here for long.

When did you first start reading fanfiction?

I have been exposed to fanfiction since 2014, but I wasn’t in any fandom back then and started reading fanfiction in 2017.

What do you think the purpose behind fanfiction is?

We mostly read for entertainment but there is definitely a purpose to fanfiction, as for all art. Fanfiction is a great thing for both reader and writers, it can be an outlet for many people, a way to experience things that you don't have a chance to experience in your own life. It also can be a good base ground for people who want to start writing, or for someone who finds reading huge paperback novels difficult. Fanfiction is so easily accessible, you can pull up a story to read or share your work at the press of a button.

As you’ve read fanfiction over the years, do you feel like anything about fanfiction has changed?

Yes! Fanfiction is taken a lot more seriously now, people who write fanfiction treat it like an actual novel with plotting and editing- the quality of fanfiction in general is a lot better. Fandom ships have also changed; when I was a teenager Harry Styles fanfictions were crazy popular, now the fanfics that seem to be more popular are BTS! So that just shows when music evolves, pretty much everything else does too.

As a reader, how do you view authors?

I'm always amazed by fanfic authors because they practically write whole novels for free. Writing can be such a personal thing, and it does take talent; there is a story the author wants to convey, and when a story is told in a beautiful way, it leaves a lasting impact on the reader. I’m sure that must be a euphoric feeling for the author- it means they told their story, and they did it well.

Do you think many other readers share the same view as you?

No, not at all. There are readers out there who don’t really think about the time and effort authors put into their stories. I’ve seen readers expect so much, and criticise something so little. It’s sad- people should be able to write whatever they want, writing is supposed to encourage creativity. Authors shouldn’t have to fear backlash for doing just that. Being creative.

Why do you think so many authors delete/orphan their work after it gains popularity?

When a story gains popularity- it attracts good and bad attention alike. Unfortunately the negative affects us a lot more, it’s just human nature. While authors do put their work out there, I don’t think they are ever prepared for their stories to become so popular. I am sure it is overwhelming and that’s why authors feel the need to distance themselves from it all and delete/orphan their work.

What stories prompted you to start thinking about why authors delete/orphan their works?

I read a story called mixtape (IT movie) and I was around long enough to see chapters be uploaded each week. I also saw the struggles the author went through when their fanfic began to rise in popularity, which eventually led to the story being completely deleted from the internet. So I thought this could have been a one-off since I hadn’t read many fanfictions. I then moved onto BTS fanfiction and decided to read the most talked about ones first, only to see a lot of them were by orphaned accounts (so not just a one-off occurrence!). House of Cards by sugamins was the one that got me thinking, I thought “why would somebody not want to be associated with this amazing writing?!” That’s when I began to do some research and stumbled across your interview with the author!

How do you think backlash for a work harms an authors mental health?

An immense amount of feedback, positive or negative, can take a toll on one person. A lot of authors can be reserved people and they write because they are passionate, as an outlet or just a hobby. So when their work does receive backlash it can be very upsetting- it could make them doubt their reasons and capabilities and affect an author so much they might stop writing all together.

How do you think some authors manage their mental health and not delete a work?

This is a hard question because everyone deals with backlash differently. I know some authors who are not bothered by backlash and they choose to ignore it and move on with their day, and then there are other authors who are more anxious and have to put a lot of measures in place to protect their mental health; from your interview with sugamins they explain how they didn’t want to destroy their work, just distance themselves from it, so that’s always an option.

Taking time away from social media and getting enough rest, it is important to not neglect your well-being. Finding a way to cope when you feel low; animals tend to ground me and improve my mental health- they are loving and don’t judge you for who you are. Maybe you cope by talking with friends, or listening to your favourite song. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it helps.

At what point with mental health do you think authors start to consider deletion/orphaning?

I think an author starts to consider deleting/orphaning their work when it completely consumes them. It is not healthy to be fixated on something that is no longer bringing you happiness, you need to let it go. If you are an author reading this, just know you are not your feedback, it doesn’t define your existence, okay? Fanfiction should add to your life, not take away from it.

Why do you think some readers invade an authors privacy?

Sometimes, people care more about the author than the work they have created. So when a fanfic has deeply touched a reader and helped them through so much, they want to reach out in any way and tell them so- this can be invasive if the reader is not careful about their approach.

How do you think authors manage this privacy invasion?

Stopping it before it happens; not using your real name, having a separate account for writing, don’t link social media accounts in your works etc. If privacy has already been compromised and a reader is making the author uncomfortable, then disabling comments on their works, making a new social media or changing their accounts to private would be smart. Just knowing how to keep safe online.

At what point with privacy invasion do you think authors start to consider deletion/orphaning?

When you are at risk of being doxed. I think when readers are going as far as finding authors’ personal accounts and messaging their friends- anything along those lines is scary and the reader is going from a supporter to an intrusive stranger real fast.

Why do you think anonymity is important for fanfiction writing?

When your full name is attached to everything you do, people have a very easy way to get back to you. This is why authors keep an anonymous profile, and it is important readers respect that. Most authors don’t want their family, friends, employer etc to see that sort of stuff. It is completely okay to remain professional and keep fanfiction writing separate from personal life.

Do you think fanfiction writing should stay free? Do you think authors should be paid for their work?

I do think fanfiction writing should stay free on the sites they originate from (AO3 for example). However, if the author wants to take their work elsewhere to earn money then I don’t see an issue in that. I am glad you mention copyright law with fanfiction in particular because the author of mixtape (the fanfiction I mentioned earlier) tried to self publish their work while keeping canon names, the author tried to justify it as a parody work and everyone was so concerned that they reported the book until it got removed. I have seen stories on Wattpad become published books to purchase, however, the names had been changed to original characters- I think this seems like a much more logical move to avoid any legal repercussions.

As a reader, how has an author’s work connected with you personally?

I have had works connect with me on a personal level, one in particular is Somebody To Love by LOVERVMINS (orphaned). My standards are impossibly high after reading that fanfic and I don’t think I will ever come across something so beautiful again. Somebody To Love is a taekook fic that was uploaded to AO3 in 2019, the author ended up deleting all their works but thankfully left this particular story up. I was immediately captured by the incredible writing and unique plot; the story of two lovers who were never meant for each other, but destiny found its way anyway… I apologise in advance for how long this summary (with spoilers) is, but I think my thoughts are proof of how this story has connected with me so much!

(Spoilers for Somebody to Love by LOVERVMINS. Please feel free to scroll to the next bolded question to avoid spoilers.)

In this story, Taehyung is a successful lawyer while Jungkook is just a student, despite the difference in status and wealth, they are intrigued by one another from the very start. After meeting Taehyung, Jungkook is left feeling confused about himself, the internalised homophobia is strong to begin with but as the chapters progress Jungkook goes from someone who is afraid of society and what people may think, to strong and outspoken. Taehyung plays a fundamental part in this, because if Jungkook were to never meet Taehyung, he wouldn’t have realised who he really was, he wouldn’t have been brave enough to discover his sexuality and fall in love in a time where it was so unaccepting. Taehyung is bold and confident on the surface, giving little regard for anybody other than himself, but his concern for others soon changes after he meets Jungkook, he becomes a better man. He could have had his heart desires- but Taehyung was no longer selfish from those few months he spent with Jungkook, so he stayed with his wife to be a good father.

Taehyung makes Jungkook promise him he will find somebody to love (hence the title), and he does, Jungkook finds somebody to love and he is happy- Taehyung finds this out when they unexpectedly meet a few years later, this is the final time Jungkook and Taehyung see each other… but knowing Jungkook is happy, leaves Taehyung happy.

There are different kinds of love, some last forever, and some just for a chapter of your life. It is clear Jungkook was Taehyung’s forever. And I don’t think Jungkook’s love for Taehyung ever went away, he just found another kind of love like he had promised. Jungkook had to live his life; he couldn’t wait for Taehyung, to leave his marriage in the unforeseeable future, or watch him raise his kids from afar, this shows that even if society were accepting, their circumstances were too far gone- if only they met sooner, or in another life. It makes you imagine a world where they could have been together, it makes you think beyond the story even when it’s ended.

It has been a month or two since I read LOVERVMINS work, and I still feel a pang in my chest every time I think of Taehyung’s letter for Jungkook in the epilogue.

Why do you think others think they have the right to know an authors personal information?

I think in this day and age, everything about a person is on show, so people just expect that sort of information from you. Authors appreciate feedback- but they don't know the reader, their family or what they do for fun. Vice versa. You only see a small glimpse into the authors life, and the stuff you see is what they feel comfortable enough to show. That should be enough.

Do you consider writing an art form?

I do consider writing an art form. Writing is like painting an image in the readers mind. I think it is better than visual art because when you are reading a story, not everyone is going to envision the exact same thing, it is up to the imagination. I think that is what makes it so beautiful- we all collectively love a story, yet, we somehow interpret it differently.

Why do you think Archive of Our Own is the ideal platform for fanfiction writing?

I think Archive of Our Own is ideal for fanfiction writing because they give you many options with your work so you are comfortable- it is easy to remove comments, delete an account, or orphan works while keeping your account etc. It is important authors get control of what happens to their work if they want to leave and go in a different direction.

Do you think other fanfiction writing platforms like Fanfiction.net and Wattpad are ideal or lacking?

I think Wattpad is ideal for younger audiences; it’s more visual with book covers and the layout in general is more appealing, I also feel like the stories on there are targeted for pre-teens. When I first got into fanfiction, I did start on Wattpad because it was easier to navigate. I look back now though and do think it is lacking in terms of quality, a lot of the stories are written for shock value and don’t really make much sense because of that. It is hard to find a story on Wattpad that ticks all the boxes (but not impossible). Wattpad also had a breach with data last summer and everyone’s emails got pwned so that made a lot of people move to AO3. I have never used Fanfiction.net so unfortunately I can’t speak for that one. Overall, AO3 has much more content, you can find a story with ease once you know how to use the site.

How has fanfiction writing affected the people in your personal life?

How did you find out that your sister is writing fanfiction?

My sister wrote a Harry Styles fanfic in 2014 which gathered around half a million reads on Wattpad, she got comments from people telling her how much her fanfic has impacted their lives pretty much every day. My sister and I are close and we share the same friends, I noticed when we would have sleepovers she was always on her phone and never paid attention to the movies we were watching. I think all the numbers did affect her for a moment and it wasn’t until my sister started her exams that she realised she had to put her concentration into those to pass, that’s how she came to the decision to delete the story. I asked her recently if she regrets deleting it and she told me she doesn’t at all, she now looks back and doesn’t think her writing was good back then. So I think that shows authors do know what they’re doing and what is best for them in the long run.

My sister had a one direction fan account on Instagram that had 100k+ followers (insane!), she was always open with her interests and I found out she started writing fanfiction through that account.

What personal reasons do you think authors have for deleting/orphaning works?

The list is endless; maybe the author wrote the story in a bad time in their life and they want to delete it because it reminds them of that time, they could have left the fandom, or they simply do not like their story anymore- they grew up and know they can do so much better. It is okay for an author to grow apart from their work, it shows they are growing as a person too.

Why do you think authors get backlash from writing dark themes?

I think authors receive backlash from writing dark themes because it can be triggering for some and can bring up unpleasant memories.

What do you think are the responsibilities of an author when writing dark themes?

A safe bet would be to tag anything relating to abuse (physical, emotional, etc), mental illness (eating disorders, self harm, suicide, etc), graphic violence and rape/sexual assault. That’s what comes to mind. And if a trigger occurs only in a certain chapter, then having an additional warning in the chapter notes would be helpful.

What do you think are the responsibilities of a reader when reading dark themes?

If dark subjects are included in the tags, don’t read the story if it could trigger you. It is as simple as that. People decide to read the fanfic then get mad at the author for triggering them. I am not trying to insult anybody who has triggers, maybe they read a story and their specific trigger was never mentioned in the additional tags… this is what the ‘chose not to archive warnings’ box is for, with this option, it is handled in AO3’s FAQ that major tags are not necessary. In shirt, this means there may be triggering content in the fic that is not disclosed by the author. Plus, there is usually a pop up banner before you click on a story which reads ‘this work could have adult content. if you proceed you have agreed that you are willing to see such content’. There are so many warnings, you can’t miss them. It is a case of reading at your own risk, you can’t blame the author if you do not like the result.

Do you think authors are facing too much pressure from readers about what themes they write?

I do think authors face unnecessary pressure with the themes they write; they are put on such a pedestal that when they write something that isn’t what the audience want, they receive a lot of negative criticism. Authors, no matter what themes you are writing, there is no need to worry if you are writing for yourself and putting out the content you set out to create.

Why do you think authors write dark themes?

Dark themes are simply an exploration of difficult emotions along with unpleasant events or consequences. Authors write dark themes because it serves a narrative purpose. And authors don’t have to be ‘dark’ people or experience all of these unsettling things to write such content.

Why do you think readers read dark themes?

Dark themes are not for everyone, I personally don’t think there are enough dark works out there. I read dark themes because it interests me more, I want to know how the characters are going to cope with the consequences, or heal from the trauma. Other readers might prefer dark themes for the graphic content, this is fine too. Fictional violence is not real- we all know this, so there is no reason to be terrified.

Why do you think so many authors want to have their work get popular?

People may disagree, but I think it has a lot to do with validation. Subconsciously, authors want people to like their work- a rise in popularity means readers are seeing the authors work, and hopefully taking enjoyment from it. This isn’t a bad thing as long as you realise validation does not equal self-worth. There are people out there who write and do not gain much attention, but that doesn’t stop them from posting their work anyway.

Do you think a work’s popularity is important?

I personally don’t. I read a range of fanfictions- some are super popular, others are not. It is the content I am more interested in, not how many hits/views it has.

Should we judge authors for deleting/orphaning their work?

Not at all! I am sure authors have thought long and hard before coming to their decision.

How should we view situations where authors delete/orphan their work?

For a reader, it can be upsetting when authors delete/orphan their work, especially if there is no possibility of reading that story again. However, we need to show compassion and view the situation from the authors perspective; gaining popularity on a fanfic isn't as pleasant as it might seem, it is much more complicated than that. A lot of feedback, both good and bad, can be overwhelming. Mental health is important, and if that means distancing yourself from something so popular, then it must be done. Privacy can be compromised, people in your real life might find out you write these stories and not be accepting, or readers become invasive which is a scary situation to be in. And a mixture of personal reasons, people are allowed to grow and change and want to distance themselves from things they are no longer proud of.

What do you think authors should be aware of in case their work does get popular?

This is a good question… I think authors need to be aware that with good feedback, also comes bad feedback. You cannot please every single person on this earth, but that is not your job- so do not take it personally.

Do you have any last messages to readers of this interview?

I want to thank you in particular, Charm. This interview is probably the coolest thing I’ll ever get to do for the BTS fandom and I’m so grateful that our paths crossed so we could create this interview together. You are such a kind soul and it has been a pleasure from start to finish.

For the authors reading this interview; I am just a reader, but I do understand how it can be hard for you to continue on when you are going through so many struggles readers don’t get to see. Just know you are appreciated, and you are supported no matter what you decide to do with your works in the future. Having popular works shouldn’t feel like a burden, there are blessings hidden in there- you have made readers feel a rollercoaster of emotions with your talent, you are able to engage with readers around the world, and you have created a beautiful story from nothing… you did that!

For the silent readers like myself: let the authors of your favourite work know how much you loved it (in a respectful way) before it is too late! I so wish I had the chance to tell the author of Somebody To Love how their story broke my heart then healed it again. Treasure the fanfictions you love because they very well could be gone tomorrow!

Thank you for reading this interview. Further below are reminders and information about this interview and Charmedseoul’s Fanlore projects.

Reba has chosen to remain anonymous. No social media or information about her will be released publicly.

This interview was conducted through email from January 31, 2021 to February 1, 2021 with Reba’s consent and protections under Fanlore’s Identity Protection policies and the posting website’s privacy policies. Unauthorized reposting of this interview is forbidden.

Due to the casual nature of this interview, repost of this interview is strictly prohibited. Linking and sharing is appreciated. Translation and unauthorized repost of this interview is forbidden.

Thank you for reading. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer them.

#bts #bangtan sonyeondan #fandom #fandom meta #fandom interview #fandom interviews #fanlore #charmedseoul #charmedseoul interviews #fanfiction #fanfiction author #fanfic #fanfiction meta #fanfic meta

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heyyouknowbts · 3 years

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Shipping BTS members is cultural misunderstanding & projection

Long post, text post, the kind of post I don’t normally post post.

Just some thoughts I needed to get out. I don’t consider fanfics with ships as being relevant to this, because there is that inherent assumption on account of the word fiction, lol. And in before I use ships as part of my BTS as Florida man series; they’re never meant to be taken seriously. A lot of times I changed the gender from a headline or made it gender neutral for the memes.

I am really amazed in general about the stories people make up about BTS members and the narratives that get pushed in the fandom that have 0 basis in truth but someone took 2 crumbs from a grainy photo or some fake captions and tweeted it out and here we are.

The way BTS members have grown over the years to freely express physical affection for one another has been repeatedly misinterpreted by some fans as them being gay lovers, and it’s to the point where many elevate them as “gay icons”. That is problematic for lots of reasons, mainly that none of them are openly gay, the members themselves have expressed they do not appreciate being shipped, and it requires speculation on the sexuality/relationship status of public figures we don’t know at all.

Korean culture is extremely conservative, and while BTS members have been shown to be progressive in their perspectives on lgbt+ rights and issues by comparison, that is not the same as actually coming out as gay, nor should it be interpreted as a subtle nod/wink to hint at their sexuality. There is also a lot of, “Well, [Member] had this one gender-ambiguous comment about relationships so they MUST be gay or bisexual,” or, “[Member] wearing a rainbow omgggggg.” It’s pure projection/speculation that is being pushed and packaged into a narrative, and some fans are accepting that as truth.

This falls into that broader category of magical thinking that is incredibly common due to our inability to psychologically cope with the rapid developments in technology that have changed every aspect of our lives. We have easy access to so much information, more than we ever have in human history, and despite that people are constantly seeking out delusions, lies, and conspiracies. Those delusions and conspiracies are pushed out as truth, and people deeply internalize these beliefs and reject anything that contradicts them. There is a suspension of disbelief involved when people read and see things online that I won’t go into detail about because I don’t want to write all day, but it’s key for understanding why people can latch on and believe this stuff to be true. Ever wonder why suddenly there are so many people who believe the Earth is flat? Or why Trump was able to do what he did, despite most people hating him and him being completely incompetent and narcissistic? Anti-vaxxers? Covid deniers? Welcome to the age of magical thinking, we live in it. (Creepy side note, the Unabomber predicted people would start behaving this way and wrote about it in his 1995 manifesto.)

Anyway, back to the shipping and cultural misunderstandings. I feel it needs to be said that I am not Korean, and my experiences with Korean culture consist of several friendships from childhood through high school where I spent time in the homes of my Korean friends, several visits to Korea while my parents lived there (plus their experiences living there as told to me), and then of course my experiences with Korean popular culture (mainly dramas and K-pop). My perspective is still very much that of a western outsider, but as an outsider I think I see where the misunderstanding is for a lot of people.

Koreans (generally) are more affectionate in same-sex friendships. It is socially acceptable to touch your friends, to show physical affection towards your friends in public, and even to be naked around your friends (see public bath culture in Korea). Verbal expressions of affection between male friends, saying things like, “I love you,” and “I miss you” to a friend is not only socially acceptable, but common.

This is a stark contrast to western culture, where men physically touching other men in any way that isn’t assault/aggression is treated as a threat to masculinity and/or an assumption of homosexuality. Most men feel they cannot express affection towards their male friends, as they have been socially conditioned into believing it will emasculate them in some way. This is changing and many men are rejecting that social norm, but it’s glacial change. When people view BTS members’ affections for one another through the western, homophobic lens, it can be easy to misinterpret that these men are lovers, forbidden, hidden, or not. And whether any of them actually are or not is irrelevant. We don’t know, and we can’t know, and anything beyond that is projection.

There is also idol culture at play, where there is a false sense of intimacy created between fans & the artist. We feel like we know them better than we do; that’s purely by design. I appreciate the affection BTS members have for us as fans and what they are willing to share about themselves with us, but I don’t treat that as if I actually know them. However, that line can get really blurry, really fast for fans.

Idk I just get creeped out by some of the shipping content I see. I’m thinking of the really weird photoshopping that people do to pictures of the members, zooming in on “details” of them touching each other in photos and videos and building these creepy narratives around them, that kind of stuff bugs me.

All of this was inspired by this Reddit post about Taekook shipping conspiracies, and how there is this pocket of shippers who actively hate Jimin and try to push this weird, false narrative of him antagonizing and interfering in their relationship. I’ve seen stuff about Jimin getting unnecessary hate before, but this just really irritates me. If you made it this far into my babbling, thank you friend :]

#galaxy brain

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nothorses · 5 years

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Because I’m fired up about this and I feel like I have a pretty good handle on my thoughts rn, I just want to talk about the issue of “adult content” and the way kids interact with it online.

1. There is no ethical way to guarantee children won’t see certain content.

This has always, always been a problem, long before the inception of the internet. Kids have always been able to pick up a book, magazine, or newspaper they shouldn’t, they’ve stumbled into rooms they shouldn’t, dug into drawers and through closets, and then gone back and shared it on the playground for everyone else. There wasn’t a way to 100% guarantee it wouldn’t happen then, and there isn’t now.

Our options are basically to either monitor kids every waking moment of their lives (super damaging), or to require “proof” of a child’s age in order to grant them access to certain materials, which is... also a massive invasion of privacy.

2. Adults should not have to live every moment of their lives as if a child is present.

We cannot live our lives in a child-friendly way because life is not child-friendly, and it’s important to talk about that.

Not to mention certain things are differently appropriate for different kids, depending on a variety of factors. Some kids go through traumatic things at a really young age, and need to be able to talk about that and connect over that earlier than other kids will ever know those sorts of things happen again.

This also raises the question “what is child-friendly”, and I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but that’s not something everyone agrees on. And I’m not really inclined to hand the control of What All Children Consume over to a christian mom group that thinks harry potter is satanic content meant exclusively for adult consumption.

Kid’s books in particular regularly address abuse, violence, etc. They just do it in a generally more age-appropriate way.

3. It’s the guardians’ responsibility

This is, in my opinion, the beginning of the issue itself. It falls to parents, family, and other adults in a child’s life to ensure the kids they’re responsible for are interacting with the world safely.

This requires trusting, communicative relationships between kids and the adults around them. This is something that we, as a culture, struggle with. Parents do not know how to nurture positive relationships with their kids, how to encourage trust and communication, and so they often have no idea what’s going on in their kid’s lives at all. Their kids don’t tell them, and so there’s no way for adults to step in and help, heal, direct, and encourage safety and responsibility.

We need to discourage people from having kids they don’t want, promote education around how to work with kids, and shift our cultural understanding of “proper” child-raising and treatment of kids in general. Trust matters, and it cannot be demanded.

4. Internet literacy

The internet is brand-ass new. The majority of parents don’t really understand it very well, and if they do, they aren’t necessarily literate in the same platforms their kids are using.

YouTube is the most-used search engine for most kids, but most adults better understand Google. If kids are wandering into fandom and fanfic, adults who are perfectly literate in internet safety might not even know those things exist.

Internet safety is an issue for kids in particular because of this; they spend a huge chunk of their time online, but the adults around them don’t know how to handle that the same way they know how to handle school, or sports, or the library. It’s new. How is one supposed to teach their kids age-appropriate online safety when many adults don’t even know not to give their social security number to a facebook page?

Possible Solutions??

We need to address the wider cultural issues; lack of internet literacy, lack of education in online safety, and the extremely broad problem of people having kids and then not knowing how to raise them- or raising them in ways that encourage destructive online behaviors.

I believe the first few steps are:

Getting internet safety education into standard school curriculum (this would work great in health classes, etc.), and

Providing childcare education/training to parents and adults with an increased chance of interacting regularly with kids.

For now, the best we can do is:

Provide “for kids” versions of online platforms (YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, FB, etc.) which operate to preserve privacy and prune content (preferably with different versions for different age groups)

Normalize tagging systems esp those that have options to block tags and prune content

Use “warnings” that denote the age group a page is appropriate for, allowing kids to see these warnings and encouraging them to leave if necessary (preferably with some explanation as to why it’s important they listen).

Talk to individuals, use your platforms to educate folks on the subject, and normalize a culture of age-conscious internet safety. (Without harassing people!)

Kids will defy these, parents will ignore them, people will lie, etc. The point is just to minimize damage as much as we can, to bring awareness to the issue, and to put the onus where it belongs: on the adults in a kids’ life, and more gently, on the kids themselves.

#internet safety #childcare #discourse #education #not horses #this is kinda just for my peace of mind to like #have it all together in one place #ive been thinking about this in a lot of ways for a long time #and it helps to have the bulk of it together and solution-oriented

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randomingoftherandomness · 5 years

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endgame post

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS BENEATH THIS CUT

[Update] I made a Youtube review (still spoilery though). If you wanna support what I do, please consider buying me Ko-Fi

Firstly, there’s no after credits so don’t bother waiting around for that. Three hours is a long time to be holding your pee. Second, bring tissues. I was crying from the moment the title sequence rolled.

The main thing you need to know is that there was time travel courtesy of Scott Lang and the Pym particles in this film and a tonne of pop culture references in terms of time-travelling and it was all

The gist of the Time Heist was that they were gonna go back into time and get the Infinity Stones before Thanos could get to it and they figured out that if they hit the right year, there were already three stones on Earth (Mind, Space & Time). So our heroes split up into three teams to Pokemon Gotta Catch’em all.

Now, we’ll start with my favourite, the love of my life, Tony Stark. My man. We got them right that Carol Danvers definitely brought Nebula and Tony’s space ship back to Earth. There is a five year time jump in this film that saw Tony and Pepper get married (which regardless of how you may swing on Pepperony, YAY!) and have a child together, Morgan H. Stark who, let me tell you, I would die for because she is the perfect copy of Tony and I would not be surprised if one day they did a Young Avengers roster and she is there. Tony Stark having a child of his own and it is glooooriuuusss.

Steve Rogers got rid of the beard, and honestly I missed it ngl.

Let me just say that I adore, adore, adore them for not letting the Stony reunion be just a push by. They let it breathe and matter and it was every angsty Post-Civil War fanfic brought to life. They allowed Tony to lay it into Cap that this was what happened when you didn’t listen to me when I told you I saw this coming. There was a reference to the suit of armour statement from Age of Ultron and Tony laid it into Steve that look at what we lost because you tore us apart and it hurt so good my friends, so good. But over the course of the movie you could see them slowly relearn to trust and depend and be a team again and it was great. When they said that Endgame was a Stony event, they meant it. I live for this. I love it.

Thor got a beer belly and it’s as if the writers underestimate the powers of our thirst for this man. I would still ride him like no one’s business. He’s let himself go, feeling the survivors guilt weigh on him because he aimed for the head and not the arm. The Valkyrie survived Thanos’ raid on the Asgardian refugee ship and New Asgard is formed, probably, where Odin told Thor to remember the view. Thor, Korg and Miek are running a roommate situation where the Wifi is free, and Thor fights back Online trolls.

I think we all knew going in that Clint Barton was gonna be the Ronin and they certainly didn’t disappoint. They gave us a bit of Hiroyuki Sanada’s character fighting with Clint and that was great. But it honestly made me want to say SO dark you sure you’re not the DC Universe?

Natasha has always been a character I was always a bit miffed with the writing about. There have been many complaints about the inconsistencies of her characterisation and those weren’t unwarranted. That being said, I am at peace with where they took her in this movie.

Hulk and Bruce Banner managed to find some zen where Banner’s consciousness could exist at the same time as Hulk’s body.

I’m so happy about the way they treated Nebula as a character and you could tell that Karen Gillan was given a lot of room to stretch out and breathe here. As one of the effects of travelling into a timeline which had her past self, Future!Nebula shared the same network with Past!Nebula which allowed Thanos to access her memories and to be aware of what the Avengers were planning to do. Which, Oh No.

So what happened: The heroes split up through time and space to get the stones. Steve, Tony, Scott and Bruce all go back to 2012 during the Battle of New York, where Bruce goes to convince Tilda Swinton’s Sorcerer Supreme to give him the Time Stone, Steve goes and intercepts the Mind gem (still in Loki’s glow stick of destiny) by convincing Sitwell and Rumlow that he was all Hail Hydra, which gave me all kinds of Hydra!Cap feels, Tony and Scott get to go for the Tesseract. Shit happens, Bruce succeeds by telling the Sorcerer Supreme that Strange gave it willingly to Thanos which clues her in that there might be more to it, and Steve battles himself for the glow stick of destiny

Also, there is much mention and appreciation of Steve’s ass. America’s Ass. Yes, indeed. That is a nice derriere. Premium grade American Ass right there 🍑💦

(I’ve been waiting hours to use this gif :>>>)

Tony and Scott screwed the pooch and they lose the Tesseract while Loki, who sees an opportunity, snatches and bails. So I guess that’s how they get to slip into the planned Loki series for Disney+. Tony and Steve then jump back to the 1970s where they can get more Pym particles, for more jumps and where the Tesseract will be both at the same place, the secret bunker facility we saw in Cap2. Steve chances upon Peggy’s office there and spends some time looking at her from the shadows, while Tony bumps into his dad who is freaking out about Tony’s impending birth. He manages to give his dad some advice on becoming a dad, and they gave us a nice closure for Tony who hugs and thanks his dad for everything he has done.

Rhodey and Nebula go to Morag to intercept Peter Quill right before he gets the orb with the Power Stone. They both succeed but right before they can jump back, Nebula is paralysed by Ebony Maw hacking into her memories and she figures out that Thanos knows the plan. Rhodey jumps back, but she doesn’t and is captured by Thanos, Past!Nebula and Gamora.

Clint and Natasha travel to Vormir and is soon acting like self-sacrificial idiots who battle it out to throw themselves for the Soul stone. Clint manages to clear the ledge, but Natasha is the one who pulls a switcheroo and tells Clint to “Let me go” which :<<<<<< So she dies and Clint gets the stone.

Thor and Rocket go to Asgard circa Thor The Dark World to get the Reality gem. Soon, Thor bumps into Frigga who immediately tells him that she knows he isn’t her son and that the future must’ve not been kind to him. She gives him some words of comfort and wisdom and tells him, despite his insistence that she knows what is going to happen to her, she doesn’t want to know, and honestly this movie gave Frigga the character fleshing out in five minutes what two movies couldn’t and I fucking love it. They are also successful and right before they leave, Thor calls for Mjölnir, and is pleased to know that he is still worthy when she answers.

Our heroes all come back, plus Nebula but they all soon realise that Nat isn’t coming back. They waste no time with assembling the stones with Tony’s nanotech gauntlet (I was kinda bummed we didn’t get to see more giant Peter Dinklage but I guess season 8 of Game of Thrones was a big thing huh) and Hulk-Banner takes it upon himself to do the snapping because he is the strongest avenger and it damn near kills him (remember this).

It works, but before our heroes can enjoy the sweet taste of success, we figure out that Nebula ain’t our Nebula and is Past!Nebula who has impersonated our Nebula to open up a portal for Thanos to arrive in. Thanos decimates the Avengers facility and we enter the final battle.

Thor, Steve and Tony are the only ones not currently trapped under rubble and they all try to hold Thanos off from Clint who has the gauntlet and the stones.

Thor becomes pinned down under Thanos who is trying to stab him with Stormbreaker when Steve picks up Mjölnir and knocks him a new one and we get Thor saying “I knew it!” and let me just say that by this point I was screaming. Really. This was a comic book payoff and I love it. #SteveIsWorthy

This battle bit made me so anxious, like, holy shit I was worried for the safety of all involved. Then we see that Steve is the only left standing against the legion of Thanos, but wait! We see the Strange’s magic circle portals and it shows the arrival of all the other heroes who were snapped. So we have Black Panther coming in with the Wakandans and Bucky and Sam who goes “On your left” to Steve, the heroes on Thanos’ home planet (PETERRRR) and also, Pepper in her own armour!

We get, fucking finally after all this time, to hear Cap say “Avengers Assemble!”

The ensuing melee sees them all try to get the gauntlet to Scott and Hope who are standing by the Pym van to try and get the stones back in time where Thanos can’t get them, and we get to see Peter finally get his hug from Tony and ngl I was crying.

All through it all our Nebula convinces Gamora that she’s changed, and that they have to stop Thanos, and our Nebula kills Past!Nebula when she tries to kill Gamora.

It becomes a whole monkey in the middle situation with everyone passing the gauntlet off to another teammate and we see Peter activate Instant Kill, which is awesome, and then just when shit was about to get worse, get Carol coming in to get the gauntlet coz she’s the star quarterback here (i honestly feel like she was only here for the beginning and end so if you’re only watching this for her, i’m sorry?) and Peter asks her how's she going to get through all of that, all the women Avengers come up and Okoye says, “Don’t worry, she’ll have help” which just, ❤️

When Stephen Strange came back into the fray, Tony had asked him whether this is the one time they succeed and he says that he can’t say it because then it becomes real. So, when it seems like Thanos was going to get another shot at the snap, he makes eye contact with Tony and lifts up a ☝🏼which.

Tony makes a roll for the gauntlet, but Thanos pushes him back, tries to snap but. Nothing happens. We turn, and see that Tony has the stones melding with his gauntlet, and as he prepares to snap his fingers, looks Thanos in the eyes and says “I am Iron Man”

Tony lays dying on the battlefield as Thanos and his legion are dust in the wind. Rhodey, Pep and Peter all say goodbye and are with him to the end and fuck y’all I thought I did my crying in the cinema but as I’m remembering this scene I’m tearing up again holy shit.

We get a funeral where Pepper and Morgan lay a wreath on a lake which had the Proof That Tony Stark Has A Heart reactor from IM1 laid on it. The funeral is a who’s who of the MCU and we get Harley Keener back, which is, yay, but also :< Happy asks Morgan what she wants to eat and she says cheeseburger. Which. Fuck. Tears Happy up as he promises to get her all the cheeseburgers she wants. And ensures that I won’t be touching a cheeseburger within the next year. So many callbacks to IM1 which was the movie that started it all and I can’t even.

Clint goes back to his family, looking like he’s hanging up the bow for good this time, and Thor hands over Kingship of New Asgard to Valkyrie and boards the Guardian’s ship for a future instalment of GOTG.

Steve is charged with being the one to get the stones back into their own timelines. Right before he goes, we get a callback to Cap1 with “Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone” “How can I? You’re bringing all the stupid with you”, they prepare to pull him back but he misses the jump point. Sam, Bucky and Hulk-Banner panic for a moment before Bucky spots a man in the distance. They approach, and Bucky tells Sam to go talk to him, and we now see that it’s an aged Steve Rogers who had decided to stay back in time and is very much at peace and happy with it, Sam tells Steve that he doesn’t know how to live in a world without Captain America, when Steve hands over the shield to Sam and tells him that he’s it now. Now I cannot wait for the Falcon and Winter Soldier series.

The final scene in this movie was of Steve and Peggy dancing in their living room in what looks like the 1940s. Honestly, if I hadn’t already gone through a pack of tissues, I would’ve started then.

Cameos (at least the ones I picked out): Ken Jeong as a security guard in the San Fran warehouse where the Antman van was parked, Yvette Nicole Brown at Camp Lehigh, James D’Arcy as Jarvis (Which I was super stoked by because JARVISSSS), Joe Russo in a therapy circle with Steve (also made me real happy coz they kept a gender drop uncensored in my screening), and finally who could forget Stan Lee’s cameo all bedecked out in ‘70s flower power.

This movie was a lovely bowtie on 22 movies and 10 years of the MCU. Was it everything I wanted? No. It was more. Am I happy with what I got? No, I do wish some things ended differently but I knew they were coming. Nothing good lasts, and everything had to come to an end some time. I’m still unpacking my emotions tbh. The credits had all the OG6 signing their names, and the fact of the matter is, I have been so very changed by the MCU. The past 10 years have been amazing and I’ve been proud, and always will be proud to call myself a Marvel fan.

I honestly don’t know where they’ll be taking the MCU as a whole from this point onwards because it seems like there will be ripple effects from the actions of this film will be felt for at least the next ten years. Far From Home is the next MCU movie and I’m sure they’ll be dealing with the direct effects of this film so I’ll be looking forward to that. I’m elated, I am heartbroken, I am a glass case of emotions.

#gab watches stuff #avengers endgame #endgame #marvel #mcu #tony stark #steve rogers #natasha romanoff #clint barton #bruce banner #thor odinson #iron man #captain america #black widow #hawkeye #hulk #thor #endgame spoilers #avengers endgame spoilers

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archiveacademics · 4 years

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Authors and Fanfic

Sometimes published authors are into fanfic. Sometimes they’re not. These are their stories.

We’ll start with those who don’t like fanfic. Namely, Diana Gabaldon.

In 2010 (as far as I can tell) she went on an epic rant on her blog about how much she hates fanfic and why. There’s three whole chapters to it (not shocking from someone who writes books that could potentially be used like a concrete shoe: chain someone to it and drop them in the river, never to be seen again.) While it was eventually deleted from her blog, it was luckily saved by a few enterprising fans and is recreated on this LiveJournal page for your enjoyment.

Since I read the whole thing, I’ll give you some highlights.

“OK, my position on fan-fic is pretty clear: I think it’s immoral, I know it’s illegal, and it makes me want to barf whenever I’ve inadvertently encountered some of it involving my characters.”

“[Reasons people use in argument for fanfic] 2) I want to write, but I don’t know how to make up characters, and it seems less scary to use some that already exist, and just make up stories for them. You know…it’s practice!

I have a lot of sympathy for people who want to write. I used to want to write, and I had no idea how to develop characters. Oddly enough, the notion of using someone else’s characters never occurred to me. I just tried to do it on my own. Surprise! It worked. Suck it up, guys. If you want to write, write—and write your own stuff. It does take courage, but that’s the only way to learn how, believe me.”

“Beyond the specific arguments against the concept remains the unfortunate fact that a terrible lot of fan-fic is outright cringe-worthy and ought to be suppressed on purely aesthetic grounds.”

“The thing is, though, that the central—the only truly vital part—of a story, and what makes it unique, is the character or characters. Everything else springs from that. In essence, a story is its characters. Therefore, while all kinds of things in a piece of writing can flow throughout the collective consciousness and inspire new work—theme, style, form, setting, mythical archetype, ideas of any kind….a character is not merely an idea. He or she is a real thing, and no less real for having no bodily presence. They do exist, even though they are embodied only in words.

Characters—good characters, “real” characters—derive their reality from the person who created them. They are the person who created them, refracted through the lens of that writer’s experience, imagination, love, fear, and craft. Another writer seeking to duplicate that character might equal—or conceivably surpass--the craft; they can’t touch the essence. When you mess with my stuff, you’re not messing with my characters—you’re messing with me.”

OK, so that’s a lot of quotes, but it saves you from having to go on the whole journey with Gabaldon. It’s a long one and though she seems to soften a bit towards fanfic (acknowledging that she never imagined maybe it was just written out of love while still taking the shot that the reason she never imagined it is because all of it is terrible) she still ends the rant by stating, unequivocally, that she does not want fanfic written about her work.

George R. R. Martin is of the same mind, though he’s a bit nicer about it.

“I don’t think it’s a good way to train to be a professional writer when you’re borrowing everybody else’s world and characters. That’s like riding a bike with training wheels. And then when I took the training wheels off, I fell over a lot, but at some point you have to take the training wheels off here. You have to invent your own characters, you have to do your own world-building.”

Anne Rice also hates fanfic. Famously so, in the face of fandom. There’s even a fanlore page that describes the personal harassment campaign that was launched against several fanfic writers in 2000. Pretty intense stuff there.

Meanwhile, there are other authors who not only support fanfic, they still actively write it.

That’s right, Rainbow Rowell is one. She features on the Fansplaining podcast episode “Rainbow Rowell” and talks all about her fannish history and how she came to write the book Fangirl as well as Carry On (which is actually not fanfiction.)

Fangirl tells the story of Cath, a college freshman with social anxiety who is a big name in fanfic and is trying to complete a novel length fic about her favorite series, The World of Mages by Gemma T Leslie, before the final book of the series comes out while also completing her first year of college. It’s a fun coming of age story and I’d highly suggest it if you’re into that sort of thing.

It’s basically a love letter to fanfic, with Cath having to defend her writing to everyone from her professor to her best friend to her boyfriend. Apparently, Rowell came to the internet late and so she was discovering and exploring the world on online fanfic at the same time she was writing Fangirl, which adds authenticity to the book. Cath’s experience of reading and writing is very much tied to Rowell’s own.

She even admits to writing fanfic today, though she does not publish it.

“I was trying to write Landline and it was the first time I had written about an existing relationship. So Landline is a book for adults about adults, it’s about a marriage that’s kind of having a hard time. They’ve been married like 15 years and they’re having problems.

I was kind of nervous about writing an existing relationship, because I had written only falling-in-love stories, and so I decided to write a really short Harry/Draco where they’ve been in a relationship for 20 years and they have, like, grown stepchildren and this sort of middle-aged thing...

So it was kind of my experiment with, like, can I write—like, let me do this as fanfiction where I don’t feel as much pressure to pull it off. So I’ll just do this short story and I won’t show anyone and I’ll see if I can write a compelling story about two people who’ve been in love for a long time.”

Needless to say, she pulled it off. The book got written and published, though apparently the fic will never see the light of day.

Other authors aren’t so shy about their fanfic and they write a lot of it.

“[Naomi] Novik scorns the idea that published authors should turn their back on fanfiction. She recalls being on a panel where one member said he couldn’t understand why someone would waste their time writing it over an original work: “I said, ‘Have you ever played an instrument?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I play piano’. I said, ‘So, do you compose all your own music?’”

For Novik and many other writers, fanfiction is a fundamental a way of expressing oneself, of teasing out new ideas and finding a joyous way to engage with writing again after the hard slog of editing a novel. The journey to become a published writer isn’t a straight line; it’s a spiral, as we grow older and continue to explore the characters and tropes we love.” (The Guardian)

Novik, who helped found The Organization for Transformative Works, is not shy about the fact that she writes fanfic. In fact, she considers it an important cultural artifact, according to her soundbite here. Though she asks that her fanfic pseudonym not be attached to her in the google-able sense (I couldn’t find out what it is. I think you have to know a guy who knows a guy and I apparently know no guys) she’s not shy at all about the fact that she writes it to this day.

Neither is Seanan McGuire (who is, in case you were wondering, my favorite author of all time.) She discusses fanfic at length in this GeekDad interview that is well worth a read. I couldn’t decide what snippets to quote so I’m quoting none of them. (It was that or quote all of them.) She also wrote a great...”manifesto” might be too strong a word but “essay” doesn’t convey the power of her words, for Tor.com.

“Fanfic is a natural human interaction with story. Children do it before they know its name. People who swear they would never do such a thing actually do it all the time, retelling fairy tales and Shakespearean dramas and family anecdotes in new lights and new settings. FANFIC WILL NEVER DIE. We need to acknowledge that fact: we need to accept that fanfic is never going away, and that it would suck a sack of wasps through a funnel if it did, because we need it.

So if you know someone who wrinkles their nose at fanfic, or who would tell a former fanfic author that their original fiction is somehow worth less because of their roots, or who is just generally an impacted asshole with legs, remember:

They are wrong. Fanfic is beautiful. Writing fanfic teaches you important storytelling skills. I have a funnel and access to wasps. Thank you for coming to today’s episode of Seanan Gets Mad About Things, and join us next time for No It’s Not All Porn And There Wouldn’t Be A Problem If It Was.”

McGuire especially gets into the questions of race and gender than plague fanfic (do women write more? Why? Is it considered bad because more women write it? PS, the answer to that last question is YES and McGuire’s argument is pretty solid on that front.) She doesn’t pull her punches and if you want to dive more into why fanfic is Important, I’d highly suggest checking out what she says. (And then, once you’re awed by her words check out some of her fiction!)

#fanfic #fansplaining #authors #publish #anne rice #rainbow rowell #diana gabaldon #george r r martin #naomi novik #seanan mcguire

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copperbadge · 7 years

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Hi Sam! I'm curious about your magical time management skills: you have a full-time job, are super active in fandom, answer countless asks, write fanfiction and books, and still have time for jogging and many other stuffs. How do you organize yourself? I feel super overwhelmed due to lack of time and end up not doing what I want do. Do you allot time to do stuff? How does your typical day looks like? And any useful tips for us slackers.

I dunno how helpful it’ll be – I mean, some of it is time management, and some of it is that I have spent a long time working on arranging my life so that I have as much free time to pursue my own interests as possible. This hasn’t consciously meant giving up things like close brickspace friends and romantic relationships but in some ways it has kind of worked out that way. (Not that I couldn’t have those things if I chose to work towards them, in other words, but they don’t come naturally to me and I don’t mind the lack.)

So, I will give you a rundown of my average day, but before we begin, I will also give you some context! And this will be long so I’ll put it under a readmore.

I have at present no romantic partner, no children, no pets. This sounds sad, but I’m not complaining; I could work towards those things and choose not to, for a variety of reasons, some good, some not. I would like to have a partner, but honestly at this point in my life it’s as much because it’s cheaper to cohabitate; I am very independent and not, I suspect, built for the kind of daily intimacy that romantic cohabitation requires.

If I were to get a pet it would probably not be a dog, since when I was dogsitting for R I had real trouble with the concept of properly caring for a creature whose life was so scheduled, who required specific attentions at specific times – I have owned dogs before and love them deeply, but never in an apartment or as a solitary person. I would probably get a cat or an axolotl (axolotls: like being alone, require very specific but easy-to-procure stimulus, look like tiny water dragons, sound like fantasy aliens).

I have very few close brickspace friends, not by design but just because I’m kind of a private homebody, and my extensive network of online friendships is satisfying in that regard. But online friendships, while not LESS of a time commitment, are a different kind of commitment – you can multitask while hanging out with online friends, you don’t have travel times, if they’re running late you’re not stuck waiting and vice versa.

I also am not in school, which is much more life-consuming than many jobs. School is a way of life; work can be, but doesn’t have to be. And I am very fortunate (in the literal sense of “it is luck that brought me here”) to have a job where I spend the vast majority of my time a) on a computer and b) in self-directed, non-public-facing work. For most of my day, every day, I guide my own workflow, I choose what to work on and when. Of course I have deadlines, but within the strictures of those deadlines I am free to triage my time as appropriate, and because I’m on a computer with unrestricted internet access, I can take ten minutes to log onto tumblr, read some things, respond to some things, and then go back to my work.

So I am starting from an advantageous position: few personal commitments, unstructured time throughout the day, and a job where when I leave for the day, work stays at work.

So here’s what a normal day is like for me. Bear in mind this is for comparison purposes rather than because I think it’s particularly ideal.

I wake up around 4am; if I haven’t slept well or feel like I need it, I may go back to sleep for about an hour. Normally when I get up I either work out from 4-5 (weights, running) or I sit on the couch with my laptop and check out what’s been going on while I was asleep. We’ll circle back to this, but I go to bed quite early, so at this point I have generally had at least seven hours of sleep. Also, I am a morning person, so I go straight from zero to lucid, which is nice.

I answer email, check tumblr, check my RSS feeds (podcasts, news, fanfic, a couple of NSFW blogs that I can’t have on my tumblr feed because I read it at work). I look at my calendar so that I know what’s on offer for the day – my calendar doesn’t cover work stuff, but primarily anything I want to or need to do after work. My family has a mutual Google Calendar that we all use to schedule stuff the others should see, like whenever I take a vacation, and my parents also use it as their central calendar, so I can see what they’ll be up to on any given day. I’ve been thinking of switching over to a private Google Calendar, but out of habit for years I’ve used a custom-built spreadsheet, now in Google Sheets, that looks like a calendar:

That’s July. This kind of layout works well for me because it’s easy to go in and change things, and I get a good “high level” view of the month. As you can see I’m traveling quite a bit; I’m tracking new TV shows, peoples’ birthdays, events I may attend (I will probably not be at everything happening in evenings on the week of the 10th), baseball games I have tickets for, and possible plans for camping. Google Calendar would work as well and would have some significant advantages, I just haven’t got off my ass to switch over.

Around five, I usually get up and fix breakfast; often I’ll put on something to listen to while I cook and/or eat. If I’ve been working out, all the stuff I did – checking email, tumblr, etc – is pushed forward, and I do a bit less of it. But essentially from 4-6 I’m working out, eating breakfast, and getting a start on the personal-life aspect of my day. In terms of social media, this is the time I’m most likely to like something or save it to drafts to deal with later; I don’t spend brainpower on responding this early in the morning, usually.

I have some fairly…prescriptive routines for the rest of the day, and that works for me, I like structure. Other people may find this sort of thing doesn’t work for them, and that’s okay. This is, again, for comparison purposes, not to dictate how your life should be.

At six o’clock my alarm goes off, warning me that I have nine minutes before I need to stop what I’m doing and start getting ready for work. This is by design, so that I have a buffer zone in which to shift my mental attitudes from morning routine to something more focused. I hit snooze on the alarm and then at 6:09 I turn the alarm off and get in the shower. I shower, brush my teeth, and get dressed in clothes I laid out over a rail the night before (I have an electric heated towel rail, one of the best random-ass things my mother ever gave me, and in winter I turn the heat on so I come out of the shower and into warm undies; in summer it’s just a convenient place to hang clothes). I dress, grab my bag, take my keys off the doorknob and put them in a pocket of the bag, and I’m out the door around 6:25. I catch the 6:40 express bus to work. I usually read on my tablet on the bus (currently reading The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier after remembering how much I loved her prose in Girl With A Pearl Earring) and I get to work around 7.

At work I have routines too: I set down my bag, hang up my jacket, and before I do anything else I get my 32oz mug and go to the kitchen to get ice water to sip on throughout the morning. I come back to my desk, turn on my monitors, and log into my computer.

I check my work email first, to make sure nothing is on fire from yesterday, since I leave work quite a bit earlier than most of my colleagues. If nothing is urgent I delete anything irrelevant to me, respond to anything that needs immediate response, and move on to a quick glance at email and tumblr, then I open my “daily bookmarks” folder. My daily bookmarks folder is mostly stuff that either I can’t or don’t want to put in my RSS reader: a couple of messageboards, a few real estate sites I’m watching for my dream home to show up, a couple of tumblr tags (I don’t follow tags on tumblr because I don’t like seeing shit recur constantly on my dash), and some activism facebook pages because I despise facebook but it’s the only site some of these organizations use. If it’s Monday, I also open my Monday bookmark folder, which is a combination of sites that rarely update and “event” sites (the cinema I’m a member of so I can see what new movies are coming, the calendar of a local band I like, the events page of various cultural centers). I review these quickly, closing most tabs and setting aside anything I need to look at more indepth like an event I’d like to attend. Usually basically I fuck around on the internet until about 8, unless work has something urgent for me.

The one scheduled task I have daily at work is news clipping, where I read several news sites and save off articles of interest to our staff, which need to be turned in by mid-morning. Realistically this could take 15 minutes of focused work, but I like to read the news, too, so from eight to eight forty-five or nine, I’m usually reading a very specifically aimed sort of news, saving off articles, and archiving them appropriately.

After that, the day is, in many ways, mine to do with as I please.

I organize my life by using Google Tasks, which is a little pop-up to-do list in gmail. I have a to-do list for every day, and anything that doesn’t get done one day gets moved to another day, depending on how urgent it is. So at nine or so, I open Google Tasks and start moving each task around based on how urgent it is or how quickly I can do it. Urgent work and fast tasks go at the top; less urgent work, stuff I’m less enthused about, and stuff I can’t do at my desk (buying a card for Father’s Day, picking up groceries after work, etc) goes at the bottom. Some tasks are recurring – every Monday, for example, Radio Free Monday is at the top of the list because it’s time-sensitive.

You can see RFM there at the top; I have to email some information about a 5K to a friend, but I need to get his email from another friend first; I have some registration and hotel issues to attend to for an upcoming conference; I have to write up some evaluations, and do some reading for a presentation I’m giving. I should stop by my PO Box after work. Other stuff will no doubt be added when I check my work email (documents to be prepared, research requests) but this is where I start the day. You can also see I have stuff with pushed out deadlines – Credit Cards is a monthly reconciliation for my corporate card, which I will do ON the 26th rather than BEFORE it, and quarterly I check my 401K, so I won’t need to do that until August 7th.

“PRESENTATION: Reading” will probably get pushed to another day, because by the time I get down that far on the list, I won’t have a ton of brainpower left to do a lot of reading and analysis. It’s ok, my presentation’s not due until the 30th.

And then I just work through my to-do list. Some days I’m really good at getting it done. Some (rare) days I spend most of my time reading tumblr and fucking around because I’m not having a good focus day. But again: this is a job in which I have the luxury to do that, and I’m very lucky.

Rather than take a traditional lunch, I usually eat two small meals, at 11am and 2pm. Usually I bring most of my lunch for the week on Monday and just reheat tupperwares as I go, augmenting them with cheese and crackers; sometimes I’ll throw in a protein bar from a stash I keep in a little box on my desk. Most of my lunches are cooked on the weekends, when my time is a lot less structured. You’ve probably seen my COOKING DAY posts; sometimes I just set aside a day to cook and rest.

I’m gonna tackle fandom and social media here because truthfully my job has enough spare time built into it that this is when I do the majority of my fannish activity, at work, in small chunks. And yes I am very active in fandom but occasionally in very limited ways.

I don’t read a ton of fannish blogs. I have a limit on my tumblr of following 99 people, and I choose those people very carefully. Some are friends, but those who aren’t personally known to me are people who post both low-volume and things that are of interest to me. I do not follow people who flood dashes not because I disapprove but because I don’t have time to wade through ten million gifsets of things that I’m not concerned with. I also follow a few artist or writers, but again, only if they’re of relevance to me. I follow Skottie Young because I really like his art and think he’s a cool dude, and most of what he posts is his art. I don’t follow Matt Fraction because while I think he is also a cool dude and I enjoy his writing, his tumblr wasn’t generally speaking about his writing or him, it was aesthetic stuff I didn’t care for and it was A LOT OF IT.

I don’t read a ton of fanfic. I have a couple of tags fed to my RSS reader and I subscribe to a couple of fics and fic writers, but even then I skim for interesting summaries and tag combinations I don’t find offputting. I don’t read fanfic at work, full stop; when I find one I want to read, I set it aside for a time when I’m at home and feel like reading fanfic.

Throughout the day I will check in on tumblr, in a very systematic manner: I read my dash, only the posts, and like or queue anything I want to reblog or examine later. I read my inbox and try to respond, but some asks don’t get answers for a really long time, because they require more focus or time or whatnot. I read my Activity page and open any reblogs with commentary; I set comments aside to be responded to en mass. I check my likes and try to clean out anything I’ve liked that could go in drafts or queue; I check my drafts and try to move just one draft into my queue (I constantly have a draft backlog). This all takes about ten minutes, then I go back to work.

I get AO3 comment notifications throughout the week, but generally I set aside a block of time either on Friday (if work is slow) or on Sunday to “clear out” my comments; every week I go through my comments, re-read each one, and either delete it or respond to it and then delete it. I don’t reply to a vast majority of them simply because I don’t have the time to respond to each one (I have tried, it was very stressful) and also because most of them don’t really a require a response. For everyone’s patience in this, I thank you.

So work is a long series of multitasking, breaks, deadline work, procrastination. It’s about average, I’d say, with anyone else in my situation. If I’m doing something after work, I check to make sure I know how to get there and what’s going on; if I don’t have all the info I need, I prepare a “brief” that has maps and directions and anything else I need, print that out, and toss it in my messenger bag. And then around 3:45 I pack up my bag, make sure I have my phone, and I head out to either (usually) catch the 4pm express bus home, or catch transit of my choice to whatever I’m doing after work.

If I don’t have something I’m doing after work, I come home, take my keys out of the bag pocket, hang them up on the doorknob once I’m inside, and set my bag down. I’m very specific about my keys here, as I was up above, as a way of demonstrating that I live a very habitual life. Stuff like keys, phone, wallet always has a specific place it goes, and it stays there if I’m not using it. I used to lose shit a lot, and rigidly adhering to “if this is not in your hand, it should be in X pocket” is what saves me.

I change into more comfortable clothes, usually yoga pants and a t-shirt. I make something for dinner and eat it, I unpack anything that needs to come out of my bag and pack anything that needs to go into it, and then usually these days I fuck around on the ukulele for a while. I don’t set a time limit on it, so sometimes I do it for half an hour, sometimes for ninety minutes. It’s a way of unwinding and finding stress relief, so it’s entirely voluntary and anything I do during this time is being done because I want to do it. I think it’s the only thing in my life where there are no external pressures anywhere and I have set no goals for myself.

I don’t think external pressures and goals are inherently bad. The goals I set for myself in my other hobbies, like writing and running, being in fandom, going to movies and such, are good goals and they help me do well. External pressure is something that exists in every human interaction; that’s just the nature of being a person in society, and likewise isn’t a terrible thing. And not everyone needs a release from those things, or finds that release in the same way. I like a lot of my life; I wouldn’t do things if I didn’t like them. But I have found that it helps to have one thing which only belongs to you and which has no goals or benchmarks. For me that’s currently the ukulele.

In the later evening – and let’s be clear, I get home at like 4:30 so “later” to me is 6ish – I’ll hop back on tumblr, maybe do a little writing, or attend or host a stream. I’ll chatter with people, respond to emails and posts, read things I had set aside for reading earlier in the day; it’s probably my most socially active time.

When I was in my twenties I did perfectly fine on five hours of sleep a night, but as I got older that stopped being comfortable, and also I started realizing that after a certain point in the day, I not only wasn’t doing anything useful or interesting, I wasn’t having a good time. I was being awake for the sake of not going to bed. So I adjusted my life to going to bed at nine, and when I started getting up earlier to run, I adjusted again. In order to do that, I created an evening routine, because going to bed is easier if you start out by doing other shit BEFORE going to bed.

Now, generally, I log off between 7 and 7:30. Sometimes I go to bed that early, but that’s when I close down social interaction. Not necessarily turning off the computer, but just gently shutting down on being “around” other people. I log off chats, I stop responding to emails and tumblr posts. I set them aside for the morning. I might continue to read my dash or listen to podcasts or whatnot until eight or so.

I change into pyjamas, wash my face, brush my teeth, lay out my clothes for tomorrow, and get into bed, usually with my tablet to do a little reading. It’s a very rare evening I go to bed any time past 8:30. And that’s my day.

I have actually some reasoning about why I go to bed so early, but I think it’s the most important part of a post that is REALLY LONG and otherwise devoted to the boring details of my day, so I’m going to make it a separate post.

I hope this has helped, Anon! As you can see, what helps me organize and sort out all my time commitments is schedules, lists, and an adherence to several fairly rigid habits – this may not work for you, and I don’t recommend it for everyone. But for me, it’s really the only way I can stay on top of everything, especially in cases where I’m dealing with some particularly intense depression. I’m happy to answer questions, though if people have commentary about the post they should remember to reblog or comment, since I don’t repost asks sent to me about other asks.

#Anonymous

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gabolange · 7 years

Text

A few thoughts on writing.

There's a sign that's been making the rounds at recent marches in support of women's rights and climate science: I can't believe we're still protesting this shit. It means: God, I thought we'd gotten past this.

That sense of dumbfounded disappointment has been my primary response to the kerfuffle about smut these last few days--a conversation I have stayed out of primarily because it's about my writing or at least writing like mine. It seems a little bit strange to join an argument that sits so close to home. It isn't really my nature to comment, either; these last few weeks, I have insisted over and over that my preferred way of engaging with fandom is to write my stories and let the chips fall where they may.

But...God, I thought we'd gotten past this.

Some background: I've been writing in online fandom since about 1998. In all that time, I have only once before written anything rated M or higher and, to be honest, it wasn't very good. My purview has always been complex canon-compliant character studies. Mercy of the Fallen (four conversations set in 6.04, rated PG) is much more my usual style. Indeed, given the makeup of most fandoms, my character studies filled a rare niche--the stuff I wanted to read that no one else was writing.

But then I found myself falling madly in love with the Turners and, in lifelong fandom fashion, reading all the fic. The thing that no one else was writing was the stuff there had always been a glut of: smut. So, when @pellucidthings gave me a challenge to write something different, I figured hey, why not?

And here we are.

A caveat before I go on. The tenet of fandom I most abide and most appreciate is "Don't Like, Don't Read," which means two things: first, no one is ever obliged to read or write things they don't like. And second, no one is entitled to tell other people what they should like, read, or write.

I will never ever tell you what to like, read, or write.

But some of the critiques floating around right now transcend what we like or don’t. Some of them make arguments that feel really contrary to the things I love most about the broader fandom experience and this show in particular: creativity, feminism, and women’s agency. So I want to talk about that.

There have been a couple themes in the responses to all of this, so I will attempt to tackle them as such.

The first and least interesting is the idea that within fic we should protect the characters or maintain the image their creator intended. On one hand, one of the fun challenges of writing fanfic is to see if we can maintain the characters' voices, build on their settings, or extrapolate from what we see on screen to write bigger or different stories.

On the other hand, fanfiction comes from a place of transformative play and the desire to answer the question what happens if? If you want to answer the question What happens if Shelagh leaves the convent for Trixie instead of Patrick? it is no more concerning than if you ask What happens if you extend the scene for another five minutes? or What happens if Poplar is invaded by aliens? The answers to these questions can be equally transformative and provide equal insight into the characters, which is to say a great deal or none at all; the details are in the execution.

The second theme is that of the ability to separate the characters from the actors. When I was a young thing, I learned that Carrie Fisher had struggled with hard drugs while filming The Empire Strikes Back and I was utterly heartbroken. Princess Leia was my hero and in my eyes, the actions of the actress diminished the character.

But as I grew up, I came to love Carrie Fisher as an important spokesperson for mental illness awareness and for the need for young women to not give a fuck about what other people think of them. Princess Leia is still my childhood hero; Carrie Fisher is one of my adult ones. They are different entities that occupy different--and equally beloved--places in my life.

If the actors and characters run too close in your head for you to be comfortable with fanfic that puts the characters in mature situations, that's yours to deal with. I choose to leave the fourth wall in place because my experience has shown me just how different the actors and their characters can be and why keeping them separate matters so much.

The last theme is what I have struggled most with and the thing that has left me astonished and voiceless.

And that is the idea that these characters are too pure to write smut about and that if we do we are tainting or disrespecting them (and, perhaps, ourselves). It is deeply problematic in the context of modern feminism and it is deeply problematic in the context of Call the Midwife.

Call the Midwife is a show that we all love because it gives agency to a diverse set of women in a time and place where women often lacked agency. The show's strongest episodes highlight the value of female agency even in the face of cultural criticism and the dire consequences when women's agency is suppressed. Shelagh's story--especially the parts where she stops being Sister Bernadette to marry a man and then later decides that the family life she wanted is inadequate for her to be fulfilled and so goes back to work--is one of my favorite demonstrations of the theme of agency. But there are so many others: we see the need for women to control their own health care, the need for women to have access to safe divorce, the need for women to respect other women's choices even when they don't understand them (in the S6 FGM episode, among countless examples).

We see the importance of women's sexual agency more and more. Women who have babies out of wedlock are shunned; they lose their jobs, they lose their homes, they lose their standing in the community. The men don't. Women who want not to have children are finally, by the end of 1962, allowed to seek birth control without their partners' consent. The men have been buying it at the barber for years.

This is a show about all the ways women gain the opportunity to control their destinies, including their sexual destinies. Implying that Shelagh is somehow lessened as a character because she might have sexual desires or that we might want to explore them in our writing is fundamentally contrary to the ethos and point of the show.

And more than that, the idea that any woman can be judged on the basis of her sexuality flies in the face of the feminism that this show is built on. Shelagh is not better or more as a character or a woman because she waited until she was married to have sex. Did she wait? Oh, probably. But the notion of purity or chastity as a defining characteristic in what makes a woman desirable is, candidly, really gross. We have been fighting for years to ensure we and our daughters are defined by and loved for our values, our character, our accomplishments, our humor, our loves. How, when, and whether a woman has sex can tell you about her choices and motivations, but it doesn't tell you a damn thing about her desirability or her value.

This line of criticism implies--or says outright--that we shouldn't write stories about Patrick and Shelagh having sex (in wedlock or not) because it's disrespectful and disrupts the purity of the characters. They are too good, too moral to be besmirched by explicit sex. But that argument only holds if you think sex is immoral or if discussion of sex or sexuality is somehow condemning.

If that’s the point anyone is trying to make, if we are here to debate whether women should express their sexuality or if we should be writing about these topics, the only thing I have to say is: God, I thought we'd gotten past this.

Your mileage may vary, as we used to say. I still think you should write, read, and love the things that make you happy--because that’s the whole point of this beautiful, diverse fandom endeavor. I know I will.

#feminism #fandom #call the midwife #agency #why smut matters #turnadette

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