Fandom Explained
June 10, 2016 5:51 AM Subscribe
Why We're Terrified of Fanfiction. A response to the assertion that fandom is broken.
All week, Vox has been exploring the world of fandom.
A glossary of fandom.
Fanfiction isn't about muting the original stories. It's about heightening them.
Don't miss this earlier article about how Hamilton is fanfiction.
Fanfiction and The Organization for Transformative Works mentioned in some of the articles have shown up previously on Metafilter.
A glossary of fandom.
Fanfiction isn't about muting the original stories. It's about heightening them.
Don't miss this earlier article about how Hamilton is fanfiction.
Fanfiction and The Organization for Transformative Works mentioned in some of the articles have shown up previously on Metafilter.
Paradise Lost is fan fiction. The Sistine Chapel ceiling is fan art. Mozart's Requiem is filk.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:27 AM on June 10, 2016 [26 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:27 AM on June 10, 2016 [26 favorites]
Come on, exactly zero human beings on earth are "terrified" of fan fiction. What the fuck does that even mean?
Most human beings don't care about fanfiction and probably don't want to hear about it, and the solution, as with most human problems in the twenty first century, is to quit Twitter. I just did and I already feel a lot better!
posted by selfnoise at 6:29 AM on June 10, 2016 [18 favorites]
Most human beings don't care about fanfiction and probably don't want to hear about it, and the solution, as with most human problems in the twenty first century, is to quit Twitter. I just did and I already feel a lot better!
posted by selfnoise at 6:29 AM on June 10, 2016 [18 favorites]
exactly zero human beings on earth are "terrified" of fan fiction.
Clearly you've never read Diana Gabaldon's unhinged rantings.
Or met a dude who has noped out with extreme prejudice when the topic of slash comes up.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:34 AM on June 10, 2016 [27 favorites]
Clearly you've never read Diana Gabaldon's unhinged rantings.
Or met a dude who has noped out with extreme prejudice when the topic of slash comes up.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:34 AM on June 10, 2016 [27 favorites]
I wonder if the ability to just post fan-fiction online has led to a drop in the number of spec scripts being sent to TV shows.
posted by wabbittwax at 6:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by wabbittwax at 6:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
When presented with slash fic, Dan Bergstein writes, you can do only five things:
One: Giggles.
Two: Gently whisper "No" to an empty room.
Three: Solemnly shake your head at humanity.
Four: Stare out the window as you try to make sense of it all.
Five: Send links to all of your friends.
See, I mean, ok. I get that, I get that a lot of fanfic, especially slash fanfic, is "weird" (NB: I am into a lot of "weird" slash fanfic). But my husband, who is not, STILL utterly enjoys coming across a "weird" fanfic because it opens his mind to the vast diversity of people there are in the world, and how they all like different things. He says he gets a sense of reflected joy from reading a slash fanfic because even if the story in question was written ironically, SOMEONE had fun writing it, and he loves to find just how many THINGS there are in this world that give people a sense of fun.
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [43 favorites]
One: Giggles.
Two: Gently whisper "No" to an empty room.
Three: Solemnly shake your head at humanity.
Four: Stare out the window as you try to make sense of it all.
Five: Send links to all of your friends.
See, I mean, ok. I get that, I get that a lot of fanfic, especially slash fanfic, is "weird" (NB: I am into a lot of "weird" slash fanfic). But my husband, who is not, STILL utterly enjoys coming across a "weird" fanfic because it opens his mind to the vast diversity of people there are in the world, and how they all like different things. He says he gets a sense of reflected joy from reading a slash fanfic because even if the story in question was written ironically, SOMEONE had fun writing it, and he loves to find just how many THINGS there are in this world that give people a sense of fun.
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [43 favorites]
I'm terrified of fan fiction because I've seen what a million people did with Microsoft Movie Maker, video clips of their favourite anime, and A song by Linkin Park/Eminescence/etc.
posted by Yowser at 6:39 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by Yowser at 6:39 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
Eminescence
I assume this is an Eminem/Evanescence mashup and I must hear it immediately.
posted by murphy slaw at 6:46 AM on June 10, 2016 [52 favorites]
I assume this is an Eminem/Evanescence mashup and I must hear it immediately.
posted by murphy slaw at 6:46 AM on June 10, 2016 [52 favorites]
> "Come on, exactly zero human beings on earth are 'terrified' of fan fiction."
Fan fiction killed my family.
posted by kyrademon at 6:46 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
Fan fiction killed my family.
posted by kyrademon at 6:46 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
Or met a dude who has noped out with extreme prejudice when the topic of slash comes up.
I dunno, noping out when the topic of conversation switches from Star Wars to gay porn seems like a valid life decision?
posted by murphy slaw at 6:48 AM on June 10, 2016 [11 favorites]
I dunno, noping out when the topic of conversation switches from Star Wars to gay porn seems like a valid life decision?
posted by murphy slaw at 6:48 AM on June 10, 2016 [11 favorites]
If your work gets its own fan fiction, it's a good sign you just might be able to pay your mortgage through this writing thing. It means people are so excited about the world you've created that they can't wait for you (but will likely be there when you show up again).
posted by jscalzi at 6:49 AM on June 10, 2016 [81 favorites]
posted by jscalzi at 6:49 AM on June 10, 2016 [81 favorites]
To borrow a line, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg, and if it makes some folks happy, cool.
posted by Mooski at 6:50 AM on June 10, 2016 [16 favorites]
posted by Mooski at 6:50 AM on June 10, 2016 [16 favorites]
Found on Twitter:
In researching the quote, I found someone claiming it was wrong, but in an interesting way. They later found out it was actually right, but I'm linking to it anyway.
posted by JHarris at 6:51 AM on June 10, 2016 [52 favorites]
Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of by the folk."-- Henry Jenkins (Director of media studies, MIT)
In researching the quote, I found someone claiming it was wrong, but in an interesting way. They later found out it was actually right, but I'm linking to it anyway.
posted by JHarris at 6:51 AM on June 10, 2016 [52 favorites]
Fandom and the fanfiction community have legitimate issues, but so much of the criticism comes across as thinly-veiled panicking that a teenage girl somewhere might get away with enjoying something without hearing a lecture on why it's silly and shouldn't be taken seriously by greater society.
posted by almostmanda at 6:53 AM on June 10, 2016 [89 favorites]
posted by almostmanda at 6:53 AM on June 10, 2016 [89 favorites]
Is it just me, or did Vox's "response" entirely miss the point of the "fandom is broken" article? As someone who was at one time heavily involved in a TV show fandom (not so much anymore), I saw a lot of the frighteningly-entitled fans that the article discusses, hurling abuse and invective at creators who had, for whatever reason, decided to become accessible on Twitter and other platforms. Their complaints almost always centered around how the show wasn't being written or produced to cater to their specific interests, as though they were the only viewers that actually mattered, and many of them seemed to feel that encouraging the creators to quit the show (especially when new staff joined, because they became scapegoats - the cancer that's killing the show) was entirely appropriate.
That kind of thing disgusts me. It has nothing to do with a fear of fanfiction - I like fanfiction. But the accessibility of creators has turned "I love this show, and I wonder what would happen if characters X and Y got together!" to "I hate you and the show you make because you refuse to write characters X and Y getting together just like in my fanfiction," and that really bothers me.
It's something that I'm not sure we talk about often enough in the fandom community - it reflects poorly on the fandom as a whole, so most decent people just roll their eyes and say "well, but they aren't representative of the rest of us." Meanwhile, people whose professional creative output I respect take Twitter breaks to get away from the abuse spouted by people who allegedly love their creations.
Anyway, this has been my embarrassing rant about fandoms. Back to your regular comment thread.
posted by Kortney at 6:56 AM on June 10, 2016 [29 favorites]
That kind of thing disgusts me. It has nothing to do with a fear of fanfiction - I like fanfiction. But the accessibility of creators has turned "I love this show, and I wonder what would happen if characters X and Y got together!" to "I hate you and the show you make because you refuse to write characters X and Y getting together just like in my fanfiction," and that really bothers me.
It's something that I'm not sure we talk about often enough in the fandom community - it reflects poorly on the fandom as a whole, so most decent people just roll their eyes and say "well, but they aren't representative of the rest of us." Meanwhile, people whose professional creative output I respect take Twitter breaks to get away from the abuse spouted by people who allegedly love their creations.
Anyway, this has been my embarrassing rant about fandoms. Back to your regular comment thread.
posted by Kortney at 6:56 AM on June 10, 2016 [29 favorites]
That's it, I'm writing my slashfic story about writers of thinkpieces about fanfic boning in the Starbucks bathroom.
posted by goatdog at 6:58 AM on June 10, 2016 [22 favorites]
posted by goatdog at 6:58 AM on June 10, 2016 [22 favorites]
I dunno, noping out when the topic of conversation switches from Star Wars to gay porn seems like a valid life decision?
Not all slash is pornographic, and when the topic is homosexual relationships in the Star Wars universe, the conversation is still about Star Wars, no switch has actually occurred.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:59 AM on June 10, 2016 [24 favorites]
Not all slash is pornographic, and when the topic is homosexual relationships in the Star Wars universe, the conversation is still about Star Wars, no switch has actually occurred.
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:59 AM on June 10, 2016 [24 favorites]
"Fan" is short for "Fanatic", not a complimentary team, one that essentially declares emotional instability. Yes, some took "Fan" to mean a "lesser Fanatic" or "nicer Fanatic", but that was never universally agreed upon. There's also "Idolitry", based on "Idol" (and looking too similar to "Idiocy"). Growing up, there were certain media celebrities whom I was a "fan" of, a couple of whom I had the opportunity to meet and even work with/for. While not seriously disillusioning, the experience dampened all future fandom for me and made me the dull cynic that I am today.
In my first high school Creative Writing class, my first assignment was to write something featuring "the characters of something you loved". I got an A-minus (The teacher was more familiar with the characters than I was). Then, at one point in my creative writing career I wrote what could be considered "Fanfiction" of a couple popular TV shows... but because I had minimal Hollywood connections, I submitted them to the shows' Producers, turning "Fanfiction" into "Spec Scripts". I was never interested in anyone else's Specs, unless they were accepted and used.
In the '70s, Hanna-Barbera made umpteen "reimaginings" of their '60s cartoon characters, and if "Yogi's Ark" didn't "ruin" Yogi Bear for me, nothing could be ruined. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" did not ruin "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and Edward James Olmos' Adama did not ruin Lorne Greene's. I can go into great lengths about why many originals are better than reimaginings... and, in not-too-rare occasions, some reimaginings are better than the originals, but none are "ruined". Sequels, prequels and remakes carry extra baggage because you can't just forget what you saw before, and usually the creators don't want you to, but if you can't get over that, IMO you have not emotionally progressed past the fifth grade. Of course, in America today, a scarily high percentage of so-called adults haven't.
I just spent three long paragraphs explaining what I could state in the following two words: "Famdom: Meh".
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:01 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
In my first high school Creative Writing class, my first assignment was to write something featuring "the characters of something you loved". I got an A-minus (The teacher was more familiar with the characters than I was). Then, at one point in my creative writing career I wrote what could be considered "Fanfiction" of a couple popular TV shows... but because I had minimal Hollywood connections, I submitted them to the shows' Producers, turning "Fanfiction" into "Spec Scripts". I was never interested in anyone else's Specs, unless they were accepted and used.
In the '70s, Hanna-Barbera made umpteen "reimaginings" of their '60s cartoon characters, and if "Yogi's Ark" didn't "ruin" Yogi Bear for me, nothing could be ruined. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" did not ruin "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and Edward James Olmos' Adama did not ruin Lorne Greene's. I can go into great lengths about why many originals are better than reimaginings... and, in not-too-rare occasions, some reimaginings are better than the originals, but none are "ruined". Sequels, prequels and remakes carry extra baggage because you can't just forget what you saw before, and usually the creators don't want you to, but if you can't get over that, IMO you have not emotionally progressed past the fifth grade. Of course, in America today, a scarily high percentage of so-called adults haven't.
I just spent three long paragraphs explaining what I could state in the following two words: "Famdom: Meh".
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:01 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
I dunno, noping out when the topic of conversation switches from Star Wars to gay porn seems like a valid life decision?
Oh my god, is shutting down interminable Star Wars discussions by the mere mention of slashfic an option??? My life since December could have gone so differently...
posted by book 'em dano at 7:02 AM on June 10, 2016 [17 favorites]
Oh my god, is shutting down interminable Star Wars discussions by the mere mention of slashfic an option??? My life since December could have gone so differently...
posted by book 'em dano at 7:02 AM on June 10, 2016 [17 favorites]
Do the ideas and memes of fandom map cleanly from media fandom to sports or religion or politics?
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:02 AM on June 10, 2016
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:02 AM on June 10, 2016
Fandom is one reason why I can no longer casually enjoy Doctor Who. I once made the mistake of pointing out what I saw as "flaws" with that universe (the ways in which it handles feminism and diversity) and was shouted down both in real life conversations as well as online bulletin boards.
I hate the fandom more than I enjoy the show. I've not gone back to that universe since.
posted by Fizz at 7:04 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
I hate the fandom more than I enjoy the show. I've not gone back to that universe since.
posted by Fizz at 7:04 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
I've been involved with piles of on-line tv fandoms, but personally less interested in fanfiction and much more interested in recaps, metas of all sorts, humorous works about the shows, and fan art (videos in the past and now I follow a few really talented visual artists on Tumblr.)
I get that everyone is (good/bad) fully obsessed with fanfiction but series thst purport to talk about fandom and *only* talk about fanfiction kinda leave me cold.
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:04 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
I get that everyone is (good/bad) fully obsessed with fanfiction but series thst purport to talk about fandom and *only* talk about fanfiction kinda leave me cold.
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:04 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
Oh my god, is shutting down interminable Star Wars discussions by the mere mention of slashfic an option??? My life since December could have gone so differently...
I wish I had thought of this as well. "Hey, I agree that it's possible that Rey could have been Luke's daughter, but have you also considered how all these various characters' crevices and protrusions could fit together? Hey, where are you going?"
posted by selfnoise at 7:05 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
I wish I had thought of this as well. "Hey, I agree that it's possible that Rey could have been Luke's daughter, but have you also considered how all these various characters' crevices and protrusions could fit together? Hey, where are you going?"
posted by selfnoise at 7:05 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
That being said, there are some lovely fandoms out there. The Legend of Korra's .tumblr fandom is one place that I always felt very comfortable and enjoyed spending time with.
posted by Fizz at 7:05 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 7:05 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Oh my god, is shutting down interminable Star Wars discussions by the mere mention of slashfic an option??? My life since December could have gone so differently...
It's a great way to shut down office gossip, too.
posted by michaelh at 7:06 AM on June 10, 2016
It's a great way to shut down office gossip, too.
posted by michaelh at 7:06 AM on June 10, 2016
I think a big problem here is that "fandom" as a term is way waaaay too general. Fizz says they were shouted down in the Doctor Who fandom for critiquing how it handles feminism and diversity. I was in Doctor Who fandom myself for a decade and actually feeling like the way the show handles those things is a-okay would get you shouted down in the spaces where I was hanging out. Same "fandom" but entirely, entirely different worlds.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:07 AM on June 10, 2016 [17 favorites]
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:07 AM on June 10, 2016 [17 favorites]
It's a great way to shut down office gossip, too.
Accounts Payable/Human Resources OTP.
posted by murphy slaw at 7:08 AM on June 10, 2016 [21 favorites]
Accounts Payable/Human Resources OTP.
posted by murphy slaw at 7:08 AM on June 10, 2016 [21 favorites]
"the absurd conclusion that a creator's feelings about their own work are more important than the audience's."
That is not an absurd conclusion. Writing what your audience tells you to write is called "pandering." See: Snakes On A Plane. A creator needs to work from their vision and drown out the noise. They are not beholden to the whims of fans and they do not owe those fans anything aside from the best art they can create. If that art is not what the fans expected or wanted, too bad. Art is not about the audience.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:08 AM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]
That is not an absurd conclusion. Writing what your audience tells you to write is called "pandering." See: Snakes On A Plane. A creator needs to work from their vision and drown out the noise. They are not beholden to the whims of fans and they do not owe those fans anything aside from the best art they can create. If that art is not what the fans expected or wanted, too bad. Art is not about the audience.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:08 AM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]
Do the ideas and memes of fandom map cleanly from media fandom to sports or religion or politics?
If we're going to complain about entitlement in fandom, it definitely maps on to sports and politics. People demanding that their favorite franchise cater to their whims are, if anything, less entitled and vocal than your local NFL team's backup quarterback's fan club on sports talk radio.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:08 AM on June 10, 2016 [15 favorites]
If we're going to complain about entitlement in fandom, it definitely maps on to sports and politics. People demanding that their favorite franchise cater to their whims are, if anything, less entitled and vocal than your local NFL team's backup quarterback's fan club on sports talk radio.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:08 AM on June 10, 2016 [15 favorites]
I like fanfiction because the intersection of "ridiculous pedantry" and "things people enjoy" is A: not large and B: dear to me. I will read the article now.
posted by solarion at 7:09 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by solarion at 7:09 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
See: Snakes On A Plane.
once was enough, thanks
posted by murphy slaw at 7:10 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
once was enough, thanks
posted by murphy slaw at 7:10 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
There was no word for this when I was a teen, writing and illustrating sequels to books I loved that had none.
I never did anything past that, but if I'd had LiveJournal/Tumblr/DeviantArt, who knows how far I would have gone with it?
I still love those books, the writer lost zero money through my efforts and I actually gained a new appreciation for their craft, in that you don't realize how the book/its world is really structured until you try messing with it/adding new characters that fit into it.
posted by emjaybee at 7:10 AM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
I never did anything past that, but if I'd had LiveJournal/Tumblr/DeviantArt, who knows how far I would have gone with it?
I still love those books, the writer lost zero money through my efforts and I actually gained a new appreciation for their craft, in that you don't realize how the book/its world is really structured until you try messing with it/adding new characters that fit into it.
posted by emjaybee at 7:10 AM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
I think a large part of it is that social media these days is structured in such a way that it becomes a megaphone for cranks. So the people who end up seeing movies twice in a month or plan their weekly calendar around the household TV show don't get nearly as much attention.
But, the whole idea behind mass media is to satisfy audience entitlement. But we don't call it entitlement when Disney/Marvel delivers the Millennium Falcon, Cap giving Tony a super-powered beatdown, or a Princess movie with a heterosexual relationship. Somehow, the market demands that studios deliver more iterations of standard formulas rarely gets called an entitlement.
Why is it that people who shrug at porn parodies, SNL sketches, and Weird Al get strangely bent out of shape when fans queer popular franchises?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:11 AM on June 10, 2016 [21 favorites]
But, the whole idea behind mass media is to satisfy audience entitlement. But we don't call it entitlement when Disney/Marvel delivers the Millennium Falcon, Cap giving Tony a super-powered beatdown, or a Princess movie with a heterosexual relationship. Somehow, the market demands that studios deliver more iterations of standard formulas rarely gets called an entitlement.
Why is it that people who shrug at porn parodies, SNL sketches, and Weird Al get strangely bent out of shape when fans queer popular franchises?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:11 AM on June 10, 2016 [21 favorites]
Do the ideas and memes of fandom map cleanly from media fandom to sports or religion or politics?
If we're going to complain about entitlement in fandom, it definitely maps on to sports and politics. People demanding that their favorite franchise cater to their whims are, if anything, less entitled than your local NFL team's backup quarterback's fan club on sports talk radio.
Also, the disdain that many people hold for fandom (as it relates to specific media: film, books, comics, etc.) often does not apply when placed in the context of sports. This is not to say that sports fans are some how worse than a comic book fan, just that I've noticed society often gives the sports fanatic a pass.
posted by Fizz at 7:12 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
If we're going to complain about entitlement in fandom, it definitely maps on to sports and politics. People demanding that their favorite franchise cater to their whims are, if anything, less entitled than your local NFL team's backup quarterback's fan club on sports talk radio.
Also, the disdain that many people hold for fandom (as it relates to specific media: film, books, comics, etc.) often does not apply when placed in the context of sports. This is not to say that sports fans are some how worse than a comic book fan, just that I've noticed society often gives the sports fanatic a pass.
posted by Fizz at 7:12 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
Right as I was walking into our office today, our student intern was ranting about how dudes freaking out about their sportsball teams (Stanley Cup is happening here) is no different from girls freaking out about Justin Bieber but for some reason the former is totally okay and the latter is contemptible. I said, "Oh honey, that's just because this society is wildly misogynistic. You'll get used to it."
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:14 AM on June 10, 2016 [52 favorites]
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:14 AM on June 10, 2016 [52 favorites]
Yowser: I'm terrified of fan fiction because I've seen what a million people did with Microsoft Movie Maker, video clips of their favourite anime, and A song by Linkin Park/Eminescence/etc.
Sokka shot first: Yes god forbid teenagers teach themselves incredibly valuable technical skills while engaging with the silly media properties that they're obviously going to grow out of anyway.
And also lets them speak through the media. Everyone has their bad teenage poetry phase, but some people go on to become good poets. And those who don't can use the poetry to get something out or get through something.
Eminescence
I assume this is an Eminem/Evanescence mashup and I must hear it immediately.
OK, here you go: Not Afraid of Going Under (Eminem Evanescence Mash Up). It's pretty good in terms of the blend, except for one out-of-place Eminem sample.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:14 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
Sokka shot first: Yes god forbid teenagers teach themselves incredibly valuable technical skills while engaging with the silly media properties that they're obviously going to grow out of anyway.
And also lets them speak through the media. Everyone has their bad teenage poetry phase, but some people go on to become good poets. And those who don't can use the poetry to get something out or get through something.
Eminescence
I assume this is an Eminem/Evanescence mashup and I must hear it immediately.
OK, here you go: Not Afraid of Going Under (Eminem Evanescence Mash Up). It's pretty good in terms of the blend, except for one out-of-place Eminem sample.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:14 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
Beatlemania is the province of "the dull, the idle, the failures," until the Beatles become a band that everyone loves.
If the Beatles had peaked in 1965, would they have become a band that everybody loves? Discuss.
(That said, I take his point.)
posted by IndigoJones at 7:17 AM on June 10, 2016
If the Beatles had peaked in 1965, would they have become a band that everybody loves? Discuss.
(That said, I take his point.)
posted by IndigoJones at 7:17 AM on June 10, 2016
Come on, exactly zero human beings on earth are "terrified" of fan fiction. What the fuck does that even mean?
From the article:
From the article:
So what’s so dangerous about fandom? Because it is considered dangerous. It’s considered so dangerous, in fact, that in the '90s, Scotland Yard developed a secret file on fans of shows like The X-Files and Star Trek to make sure they weren’t planning on pulling a Heaven’s Gate. Scotland Yard took the threat seriously: "What is of concern," they wrote, "is the devotion certain groups and individuals ascribe to the contents of these programmes. … The problem is that growing numbers are not treating this as entertainment, and finding it impossible to divorce fantasy from reality."posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:19 AM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]
The fear isn’t completely baseless — fandom is not a cult, but cults have come out of fandoms, and the members of Heaven’s Gate were fans of a lot of different sci-fi. But surely fewer sci-fi fandoms have begat dangerous cults than, say, sports games have led to dangerous riots? Yet if any police force has a stash of secret files on sports fans, they’re keeping it a very closely guarded secret. No one is writing tittering, vaguely disgusted anthropological examinations of sports fandom.
people have for a long time made things from the artifacts of the life around them. and they make artifacts out of the pieces of other artifacts. there's also a general tendency for things to get organized into larger forms.
i think Stephen King's "Misery" is a nifty Broken Fandom tale ...
posted by Mr.Pointy at 7:20 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
i think Stephen King's "Misery" is a nifty Broken Fandom tale ...
posted by Mr.Pointy at 7:20 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
As a writer I'd say in general people are more worried about large scale harrasment than fan fiction.
posted by Artw at 7:26 AM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by Artw at 7:26 AM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]
Certainly not zero, but I've been reading SF since, well I don't specify time ranges any more, but it took me a long time of noticing snide side comments to notice it's existence. Charted on any reasonable population diagram it would barely register though, so for some value nines the awareness of the existence of such a movement let alone a "fear" would not display.
It may be therapeutic for some, so write on.
posted by sammyo at 7:35 AM on June 10, 2016
It may be therapeutic for some, so write on.
posted by sammyo at 7:35 AM on June 10, 2016
Also, the issue of structural fucking oppression needs to be considered in any kind of analysis of LGBTQ fanfic/art. The current state of mass media is that we're getting more same-sex relationships than ever before, but half the show runners won't use the word "bisexual" to describe characters on-screen and off-screen. We're still in a state of on-screen subtext partnered with off-screen "Oh yeah, I totally was playing that character as (LGBTQ) in that scene." This is a slight improvement over the previous 100 years of cinema where on-screen subtext was usually clarified as a punchline.
But while GLAAD is still documenting significant disparities in LGBTQ representation in mass media, it's really tone deaf to compare masculinist backlash with LGBTQ media activism.
(That said, I think the harassment by groups such as Destihellers, Johnlocke, and Baby Gaters really need to stop.)
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:36 AM on June 10, 2016 [13 favorites]
But while GLAAD is still documenting significant disparities in LGBTQ representation in mass media, it's really tone deaf to compare masculinist backlash with LGBTQ media activism.
(That said, I think the harassment by groups such as Destihellers, Johnlocke, and Baby Gaters really need to stop.)
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:36 AM on June 10, 2016 [13 favorites]
"Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of by the folk."From my seat in the house, fanfiction, "fandom," and the arguments for and against often look like they occupy a niche in the culture very similar to conspiracy-mongering and nutty political theorizing, i.e., a way to assert an autonomous voice in the face of fears that one has no autonomous voice. It's a kind of literary grafitti. (Which is not to say that it cannot be interesting as grafitti: SAMO© … 4 THE SO-CALLED AVANT-GARDE.) People have always felt those fears, I guess, but the internet created a new performative space to act out those fears and rivalries and associate with others who feel similarly.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Ok, I know Johnlocke off the top of my head, and got search results for Destihellers*, but Baby Gaters?
*Became tired of Supernatual and fed up with Dean/Cas shippers around the same time, which made for a nice clean break with both show and fandom.
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:48 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
*Became tired of Supernatual and fed up with Dean/Cas shippers around the same time, which made for a nice clean break with both show and fandom.
posted by Squeak Attack at 7:48 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
Ok, I know Johnlocke off the top of my head, and got search results for Destihellers*, but Baby Gaters
One Direction band tinhatters.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:56 AM on June 10, 2016
One Direction band tinhatters.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 7:56 AM on June 10, 2016
But my husband, who is not, STILL utterly enjoys coming across a "weird" fanfic because it opens his mind to the vast diversity of people there are in the world, and how they all like different things.
You see, I've gotten to the point in my life where I am already well aware of this, and generally just throw up my hands and declare, "well, people are just weird!" and move on. People enjoy weird shit. The fact that Saw and Friday the 13th have way too many sequels is proof. I stopped trying to understand the appeal of slash fiction a long time ago.
Scotland Yard developed a secret file on fans of shows like The X-Files and Star Trek to make sure they weren’t planning on pulling a Heaven’s Gate.
I first read this and thought, "Scotland Yard is really that worried that fandoms might create another interminable, overbudget, career-destroying Western?"
posted by deanc at 7:59 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
You see, I've gotten to the point in my life where I am already well aware of this, and generally just throw up my hands and declare, "well, people are just weird!" and move on. People enjoy weird shit. The fact that Saw and Friday the 13th have way too many sequels is proof. I stopped trying to understand the appeal of slash fiction a long time ago.
Scotland Yard developed a secret file on fans of shows like The X-Files and Star Trek to make sure they weren’t planning on pulling a Heaven’s Gate.
I first read this and thought, "Scotland Yard is really that worried that fandoms might create another interminable, overbudget, career-destroying Western?"
posted by deanc at 7:59 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
Megan Purdy wrote a better response than Vox's to the 'fandom is broken' article here.
Key point:
With this new entitled fandom the creator is toppled off his perch, says Faraci. But yet, the perch was only in your head! The distance between creator and created, viewer and viewed is somewhat less than you might think. Art is a dialogue between creator, created and audience. Topple one leg of that triangle and you’re in the realm of one hand clapping while a tree falls in the woods to no one’s attention — it’s not art until someone calls it art; it’s not art until someone experiences it as art. Get it? Art is a feedback loop. And in corporate art that feedback loop is managed — by committee — to satisfy, to entice and to produce the conditions for more.
posted by ocular shenanigans at 8:03 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
Key point:
With this new entitled fandom the creator is toppled off his perch, says Faraci. But yet, the perch was only in your head! The distance between creator and created, viewer and viewed is somewhat less than you might think. Art is a dialogue between creator, created and audience. Topple one leg of that triangle and you’re in the realm of one hand clapping while a tree falls in the woods to no one’s attention — it’s not art until someone calls it art; it’s not art until someone experiences it as art. Get it? Art is a feedback loop. And in corporate art that feedback loop is managed — by committee — to satisfy, to entice and to produce the conditions for more.
posted by ocular shenanigans at 8:03 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
I first read this and thought, "Scotland Yard is really that worried that fandoms might create another interminable, overbudget, career-destroying Western?"
Well, you see how they are about fucking Firefly.
posted by Artw at 8:04 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
Well, you see how they are about fucking Firefly.
posted by Artw at 8:04 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
No good can come from paying attention to Devin Faraci.
posted by Artw at 8:04 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by Artw at 8:04 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
Some of my earliest memories involve making up new Star Wars stories with my brother (or by myself) back in the late 70's, so when I discovered fanfiction, it seemed like a natural, awesome thing to me. More stories about characters I love! What's not to like?
That "fandom is broken" article is seriously missing the point of a lot of criticism of white male heteronormative works. It's not "entitled" to ask for more diverse characters, more diverse relationships, and to please stop killing lesbians and bisexual women.
Also this:
There are new wrinkles for younger fans, a group that seems uninterested in conflict or personal difficulty in their narratives (look at the popularity of fan fics set in coffee shops or bakeries, which posit the characters of a comic or TV show or movie they love as co-workers having sub-sitcom level interactions.
Dude needs to read a wider variety of fanfiction before he writes an article criticizing it. There are tons of conflict-filled, angsty, fics out there. I run across much more of those that the coffee shop happy-ending types.
Finally, men who freak out about pornographic fanfics had better have non-existent porn consumption habits themselves. For some reason, I doubt that's the case.
posted by Mavri at 8:08 AM on June 10, 2016 [27 favorites]
That "fandom is broken" article is seriously missing the point of a lot of criticism of white male heteronormative works. It's not "entitled" to ask for more diverse characters, more diverse relationships, and to please stop killing lesbians and bisexual women.
Also this:
There are new wrinkles for younger fans, a group that seems uninterested in conflict or personal difficulty in their narratives (look at the popularity of fan fics set in coffee shops or bakeries, which posit the characters of a comic or TV show or movie they love as co-workers having sub-sitcom level interactions.
Dude needs to read a wider variety of fanfiction before he writes an article criticizing it. There are tons of conflict-filled, angsty, fics out there. I run across much more of those that the coffee shop happy-ending types.
Finally, men who freak out about pornographic fanfics had better have non-existent porn consumption habits themselves. For some reason, I doubt that's the case.
posted by Mavri at 8:08 AM on June 10, 2016 [27 favorites]
I first read this and thought, "Scotland Yard is really that worried that fandoms might create another interminable, overbudget, career-destroying Western?"
I'll bet the file on Ishtar is YUUUUGE.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:13 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
I'll bet the file on Ishtar is YUUUUGE.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:13 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
I was in Doctor Who fandom myself for a decade and actually feeling like the way the show handles those things is a-okay would get you shouted down in the spaces where I was hanging out. Same "fandom" but entirely, entirely different worlds.
I was going to say, my experience in fandom has been more like yours. Some of the most intelligent, socially progressive amateur media criticism I've read has been from people fandom. Through being in fandom, I've learned a lot about how to analyze a story from multiple angles. I've also learned how to extend that to the world outside of fiction.
People who are rabid in their defense of their favorite shows or pairings do exist, but they've always been widely dismissed within my circles. They're hardly even on the radar, unless they drive-by comment on something you wrote--in which case, the response is often "LOL".
But of course, to outsiders, it's those people who are representative of fandom. And instead of focusing on the creativity of people within fandom, they focus on what they think is "weird"--look for any reason to dismiss its value. A good example is how complaints about fanfiction often apply just as well to any kind of amateur writing, but you don't see people attacking other kinds of amateur writing nearly so often or with such scorn.
I think it's very sad. And I do think sexism plays a role, yes.
Also: If you feel about explaining to us people in fandom what "fan" really means, you should read up on the etymological fallacy first.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:18 AM on June 10, 2016 [12 favorites]
I was going to say, my experience in fandom has been more like yours. Some of the most intelligent, socially progressive amateur media criticism I've read has been from people fandom. Through being in fandom, I've learned a lot about how to analyze a story from multiple angles. I've also learned how to extend that to the world outside of fiction.
People who are rabid in their defense of their favorite shows or pairings do exist, but they've always been widely dismissed within my circles. They're hardly even on the radar, unless they drive-by comment on something you wrote--in which case, the response is often "LOL".
But of course, to outsiders, it's those people who are representative of fandom. And instead of focusing on the creativity of people within fandom, they focus on what they think is "weird"--look for any reason to dismiss its value. A good example is how complaints about fanfiction often apply just as well to any kind of amateur writing, but you don't see people attacking other kinds of amateur writing nearly so often or with such scorn.
I think it's very sad. And I do think sexism plays a role, yes.
Also: If you feel about explaining to us people in fandom what "fan" really means, you should read up on the etymological fallacy first.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:18 AM on June 10, 2016 [12 favorites]
Do the ideas and memes of fandom map cleanly from media fandom to sports or religion or politics?
Considering the calls from certain segments of Arsenal's supporters for the resignation of a manager who has been the most successful in club history, has made consistent improvements over the last five years, and who brought us to second place in the league this year, I would say that's a big ol' yes.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:22 AM on June 10, 2016
Considering the calls from certain segments of Arsenal's supporters for the resignation of a manager who has been the most successful in club history, has made consistent improvements over the last five years, and who brought us to second place in the league this year, I would say that's a big ol' yes.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:22 AM on June 10, 2016
There are new wrinkles for younger fans, a group that seems uninterested in conflict or personal difficulty in their narratives
Sometimes people with a lot of stress and uncertainty in their actual lives do not want to create or consume fiction with stress and uncertainty! So weird, right? {/}
posted by rtha at 8:24 AM on June 10, 2016 [14 favorites]
Sometimes people with a lot of stress and uncertainty in their actual lives do not want to create or consume fiction with stress and uncertainty! So weird, right? {/}
posted by rtha at 8:24 AM on June 10, 2016 [14 favorites]
My oldest kid, who joined our family at the age of 20 after a long history of abuse and abandonment, was raised in an isolated and abusive fundamentalist christian homeschooling family. Their access to books, television, movies, and everything else in the world was very tightly restricted and controlled. And yet! Somehow their parents decided it was OK for them to watch Stargate: Universe. Why is a mystery. But their parents also decided it was OK for them to spend sometime online at some SG:U website thing. Also a mystery, given that the only books they were allowed were young-earth Adam-rode-dinosaurs textbooks, and Amish romances. But we are grateful for such odd moments of inconsistency.
Somewhere in its depths, this SG:U site included fanfiction. Which is where our exceptionally intelligent, queer, gender-non-conforming kid discovered gay people, lesbian people, genderfluid people. SG:U fanfiction was our kid's only window on the world beyond what their parents allowed, and because fanfiction is a no-rules, no-holds-barred, wild frontier without gatekeepers, this single window let them catch a glimpse of other people like them in a way that no other window could have.
posted by not that girl at 8:25 AM on June 10, 2016 [72 favorites]
Somewhere in its depths, this SG:U site included fanfiction. Which is where our exceptionally intelligent, queer, gender-non-conforming kid discovered gay people, lesbian people, genderfluid people. SG:U fanfiction was our kid's only window on the world beyond what their parents allowed, and because fanfiction is a no-rules, no-holds-barred, wild frontier without gatekeepers, this single window let them catch a glimpse of other people like them in a way that no other window could have.
posted by not that girl at 8:25 AM on June 10, 2016 [72 favorites]
Considering the calls from certain segments of Arsenal's supporters for the resignation of a manager who has been the most successful in club history, has made consistent improvements over the last five years, and who brought us to second place in the league this year, I would say that's a big ol' yes.
I'd give just about anything if the ownership of the Minnesota Twins would address the concerns of their fans.
posted by Ber at 8:28 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'd give just about anything if the ownership of the Minnesota Twins would address the concerns of their fans.
posted by Ber at 8:28 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
At worst, fan fiction will stop people from engaging with parts of the fan community. It's easy to follow if that's your thing, and even easier to ignore if it isn't.
Since I'm not deeply involved with any fandoms (other than posting on FF or when I posted GIFs at Tumblr), "easy to ignore" is exactly the word, and other than those very vocal that think any deviation from their own head canon is a crime by the writers/creators and whine at every chance for being such a fools for not seeing what "everyone" wants, or on the other way, every suggestion of change to the canon deserves tar and feathering to the borders of the fandom, this hate of fandoms come from assholes with way too much time in their hands to be outraged at other people (and yes, at times I've fallen into this pattern, until I realize that and drop out).
But as Kortney said, that's a problem with fandom in general, not exactly anything to do with a section of fandom where people write stories about characters they love.
Also: Yet if any police force has a stash of secret files on sports fans, they’re keeping it a very closely guarded secret. No one is writing tittering, vaguely disgusted anthropological examinations of sports fandom.
I'm pretty sure I had photos of mine stored at the Anti-Crime Brigade archives when I was part of the Ultra movement, as well as being indirectly called a drug peddling criminal fascist murderer regularly on national TV. I also saw quite a few times people filming or watching us (including away fans arriving) that were in plain clothes, but still wearing tactical boots and cargo pants used by the police. England at a time routinely forced hooligans to present themselves to the Police on away games so they wouldn't go fucking around.
I first read this and thought, "Scotland Yard is really that worried that fandoms might create another interminable, overbudget, career-destroying Western?"
Look, enough bombs could destroy the whole supply of villains for Hollywood productions. Scotland Yard must keep an eye out.
posted by lmfsilva at 8:33 AM on June 10, 2016
Since I'm not deeply involved with any fandoms (other than posting on FF or when I posted GIFs at Tumblr), "easy to ignore" is exactly the word, and other than those very vocal that think any deviation from their own head canon is a crime by the writers/creators and whine at every chance for being such a fools for not seeing what "everyone" wants, or on the other way, every suggestion of change to the canon deserves tar and feathering to the borders of the fandom, this hate of fandoms come from assholes with way too much time in their hands to be outraged at other people (and yes, at times I've fallen into this pattern, until I realize that and drop out).
But as Kortney said, that's a problem with fandom in general, not exactly anything to do with a section of fandom where people write stories about characters they love.
Also: Yet if any police force has a stash of secret files on sports fans, they’re keeping it a very closely guarded secret. No one is writing tittering, vaguely disgusted anthropological examinations of sports fandom.
I'm pretty sure I had photos of mine stored at the Anti-Crime Brigade archives when I was part of the Ultra movement, as well as being indirectly called a drug peddling criminal fascist murderer regularly on national TV. I also saw quite a few times people filming or watching us (including away fans arriving) that were in plain clothes, but still wearing tactical boots and cargo pants used by the police. England at a time routinely forced hooligans to present themselves to the Police on away games so they wouldn't go fucking around.
I first read this and thought, "Scotland Yard is really that worried that fandoms might create another interminable, overbudget, career-destroying Western?"
Look, enough bombs could destroy the whole supply of villains for Hollywood productions. Scotland Yard must keep an eye out.
posted by lmfsilva at 8:33 AM on June 10, 2016
Must read: I'm done explaining why fanfic is okay
What annoys me about these discussions is how they treat fanfiction as an exotic, new phenomenon, when it's actually a totally normal human response that has been around since forever. Jane Austen's niece wrote her letters with fanfic of her characters.
When I was in second grade, I loved the Redwall series. But I also loved chipmunks, and there weren't any in the Redwall books. So I wrote a story about redwall-esque chipmunk characters, and also they were stranded on an island because why not.
It goes without saying I had zero idea what "fanfic" was at age 7. But stories are ideas, and the way ideas work is that they spread, and morph, and change, and grow.
And this entirely modern conception of story-ideas as property, that Disney can take oral traditions centuries old and then copyright their fanfiction version of those stories into perpetuity, is so utterly ridiculous.
But whatever, snobby authors who never stooped so low as to gasp imagine continuations or alternate versions of your favorite stories, whose stories sprang fully formed, immaculately conceived from your skulls, in glittering original perfection, like exactly zero stories ever.
posted by Cozybee at 8:34 AM on June 10, 2016 [33 favorites]
What annoys me about these discussions is how they treat fanfiction as an exotic, new phenomenon, when it's actually a totally normal human response that has been around since forever. Jane Austen's niece wrote her letters with fanfic of her characters.
When I was in second grade, I loved the Redwall series. But I also loved chipmunks, and there weren't any in the Redwall books. So I wrote a story about redwall-esque chipmunk characters, and also they were stranded on an island because why not.
It goes without saying I had zero idea what "fanfic" was at age 7. But stories are ideas, and the way ideas work is that they spread, and morph, and change, and grow.
And this entirely modern conception of story-ideas as property, that Disney can take oral traditions centuries old and then copyright their fanfiction version of those stories into perpetuity, is so utterly ridiculous.
But whatever, snobby authors who never stooped so low as to gasp imagine continuations or alternate versions of your favorite stories, whose stories sprang fully formed, immaculately conceived from your skulls, in glittering original perfection, like exactly zero stories ever.
posted by Cozybee at 8:34 AM on June 10, 2016 [33 favorites]
From my seat in the house, fanfiction, "fandom," and the arguments for and against often look like they occupy a niche in the culture very similar to conspiracy-mongering and nutty political theorizing, i.e., a way to assert an autonomous voice in the face of fears that one has no autonomous voice. It's a kind of literary grafitti.
Or...people just like the characters and their world and like telling stories about them to their friends?
(I know, I know, crazy thought! Everyone knows that Real Creators are joyless careerists who write only for money and maybe enough fame to be skeezy to impressionable young women.)
posted by praemunire at 8:54 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
Or...people just like the characters and their world and like telling stories about them to their friends?
(I know, I know, crazy thought! Everyone knows that Real Creators are joyless careerists who write only for money and maybe enough fame to be skeezy to impressionable young women.)
posted by praemunire at 8:54 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
I stay away from poorly written fan fiction or fiction that makes wild changes to the original media because what has been seen cannot be unseen. You know, like when the lawyers on Law & Order say stuff in front of the jury that they know the judge will strike from the record and tell the jury to ignore. Maybe I'm just too stupid to compartmentalize, but one will always remind me of the other.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:55 AM on June 10, 2016
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:55 AM on June 10, 2016
Bronte didn't read Austen until after she wrote Jane Eyre. Maybe that comment is an AU fanfic.
posted by betweenthebars at 8:56 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by betweenthebars at 8:56 AM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
A revelation for me was realizing that my Star Trek TOS novels were, in fact, totally fanfiction.
posted by XtinaS at 8:56 AM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by XtinaS at 8:56 AM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]
I will always like fanfic because it allows critical rewritings of things I would like to enjoy. Ie, I would like to enjoy swashbuckling tales of adventures in another galaxy with scary villains and improbable technology, but it turns out that your particular swashbuckling universe is really misogynist and racist and basically leans on the "we never came here before therefore we discovered it when we arrived, therefore we can do what we like" trope. So I will happily read reworkings of a swashbuckling adventure story which centers people of color, isn't misogynist and critiques imperialism.
And the thing is, sometimes I just want something light, people - I have collected and studied fantasy and SF for literally my entire adult life, I know where I can find left-leaning critical work like, say, Celia Holland's Floating Worlds or the Neveryona series, but sometimes I just want some mass-media-quality swashbuckling like everybody else gets to enjoy. And for that, I turn to fanfiction. And hey, sometimes I want a cheesy romantic plot that isn't based on gross misogynist tropes....and while there's lots of gross and misogynist fanfiction, there's a much higher percentage of cheesy romantic plots in fanfic that are not based on gross misogyny than the percentage of such plots in actual TV and movies.
Also, on a personal level, when I read fanfic rather than watching TV, I can envision the characters as average-looking regular people rather than highly manicured actors, and this heightens my enjoyment.
I mean, yes, there is terrible fanfic. Before the internet, when I was thirteen or fourteen, I wrote terrible original fantasy. My scribblings are not an argument against fantasy itself, just an argument that no one should be forced to read my old notebooks.
posted by Frowner at 8:59 AM on June 10, 2016 [15 favorites]
And the thing is, sometimes I just want something light, people - I have collected and studied fantasy and SF for literally my entire adult life, I know where I can find left-leaning critical work like, say, Celia Holland's Floating Worlds or the Neveryona series, but sometimes I just want some mass-media-quality swashbuckling like everybody else gets to enjoy. And for that, I turn to fanfiction. And hey, sometimes I want a cheesy romantic plot that isn't based on gross misogynist tropes....and while there's lots of gross and misogynist fanfiction, there's a much higher percentage of cheesy romantic plots in fanfic that are not based on gross misogyny than the percentage of such plots in actual TV and movies.
Also, on a personal level, when I read fanfic rather than watching TV, I can envision the characters as average-looking regular people rather than highly manicured actors, and this heightens my enjoyment.
I mean, yes, there is terrible fanfic. Before the internet, when I was thirteen or fourteen, I wrote terrible original fantasy. My scribblings are not an argument against fantasy itself, just an argument that no one should be forced to read my old notebooks.
posted by Frowner at 8:59 AM on June 10, 2016 [15 favorites]
My Arsène Wenger/Claudio Ranieri odd-couple fics are actually just a bunch of old Frog & Toad stories.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:02 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:02 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Not all slash is pornographic, and when the topic is homosexual relationships in the Star Wars universe, the conversation is still about Star Wars, no switch has actually occurred.
soren_lorensen
But it has, and you're conflating different things here.
Talking about the nature and treatment of homosexual relationships in the Star Wars universe isn't the same as talking about fanfics about specific homosexual relationships, or sex in the case of pornographic ones. If you like talking about Star Wars, talking about the former could be interesting, but talking about the later isn't unless you like fanfic, shipping, or sex fantasies.
I like Game of Thrones. A discussion of the place of homosexuality in that world would be interesting, but I have no desire to hear about someone's romance or sex fantasies with GoT characters. I don't "fear" fanfic, I just find it boring and stupid, and I especially have no interest in "shipping" or sex fantasies. I just have zero interest in someone's Arya/Danny story, or Jon/Danny, or anything like that.
It's odd to me to insist people have to discuss things they have no interest in or it's a sign of fear.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:02 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
soren_lorensen
But it has, and you're conflating different things here.
Talking about the nature and treatment of homosexual relationships in the Star Wars universe isn't the same as talking about fanfics about specific homosexual relationships, or sex in the case of pornographic ones. If you like talking about Star Wars, talking about the former could be interesting, but talking about the later isn't unless you like fanfic, shipping, or sex fantasies.
I like Game of Thrones. A discussion of the place of homosexuality in that world would be interesting, but I have no desire to hear about someone's romance or sex fantasies with GoT characters. I don't "fear" fanfic, I just find it boring and stupid, and I especially have no interest in "shipping" or sex fantasies. I just have zero interest in someone's Arya/Danny story, or Jon/Danny, or anything like that.
It's odd to me to insist people have to discuss things they have no interest in or it's a sign of fear.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:02 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
Also, also: I notice that it is widely considered impolite to comment on the pervasiveness of dudes watching, like, porn of women getting choked. (I accidentally discovered that someone I am close to is very into porn that involves choking, and we quickly stopped that conversation.) Basically, everyone who is, like, cool is suuuuuuper polite about dudes' porn consumption. But somehow if a bunch of women want to read slash fiction (and/or femme-slash, and/or straight pairings, I mean fanfiction contains multitudes) then it is just the end of the world plus lols.
posted by Frowner at 9:02 AM on June 10, 2016 [39 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 9:02 AM on June 10, 2016 [39 favorites]
There are new wrinkles for younger fans, a group that seems uninterested in conflict or personal difficulty in their narratives (look at the popularity of fan fics set in coffee shops or bakeries, which posit the characters of a comic or TV show or movie they love as co-workers having sub-sitcom level interactions.
The grass is always greener. People who like "angst" complain about the abundance of light fic, and people who like light fic complain about too much "angst" fic.
Full disclosure, I write "angsty" fanfic for game franchises. Usually they start with breadcrumbs that the writers drop into the narrative pointing to off-screen conflicts and relationships that are never fully explored from the game's first-person narrative structure. I don't claim it's particularly good, but it's a way to explore those conflicts beyond the dozen words they're given on the screen.
Then again, I read a lot of contemporary fantasy that does the same to "classic" literature and folklore. What does the Little Mermaid say if the Mermaid really isn't human? What if Paris and Troy were set up by the gods?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:03 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
The grass is always greener. People who like "angst" complain about the abundance of light fic, and people who like light fic complain about too much "angst" fic.
Full disclosure, I write "angsty" fanfic for game franchises. Usually they start with breadcrumbs that the writers drop into the narrative pointing to off-screen conflicts and relationships that are never fully explored from the game's first-person narrative structure. I don't claim it's particularly good, but it's a way to explore those conflicts beyond the dozen words they're given on the screen.
Then again, I read a lot of contemporary fantasy that does the same to "classic" literature and folklore. What does the Little Mermaid say if the Mermaid really isn't human? What if Paris and Troy were set up by the gods?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:03 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Anyway, I just started reading a Melville/Hawthorne fanfic, except it is not called fanfic because it is printed on paper and written by a man. That's historical fiction!
"Hawthorne must know the truth--that he and he alone held the key to Herman's heart."
posted by betweenthebars at 9:03 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
"Hawthorne must know the truth--that he and he alone held the key to Herman's heart."
posted by betweenthebars at 9:03 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
I don't read or write (modern) fanfiction, but I don't think that there is a coherent argument to be made against fanfiction.
It's always existed, and will exist even if it's just ideas running through people's minds. I do think that there are discussions that can be had about aspects of it. For example: protecting the copyrights of the original works and making sure that fanfic authors aren't deriving undeserved profits (I am aware that the vast, vast, vast majority of fan fic is a non-revenue generating exercise). Or, trying to figure out what is broken on the Internet that means that I need to make sure my Safe Search is on before googling My Little Pony.
Similarly, I don't consider myself to be a member of any of them, but I don't think that there is a coherent argument to be made against fandom.
People will be passionate about things, and that's generally awesome. But when the "fanatic" part takes over it can get scary. This is not unique to geek fandom -- sports fan riot all the damn time, sports fans attack atheletes/coaches/managers on twitter (and hell, on talk radio) all day long. And yeah, some fandom communities can get pretty insular/toxic, but for the most part if you don't like that you can find some other community. The real "issues" that fandom has: harassment, entitlement, etc. are not unique to fandom, and can be solved in whatever ways we come up with to solve, say, the general problem of internet harassment/cyberbullying.
posted by sparklemotion at 9:12 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
It's always existed, and will exist even if it's just ideas running through people's minds. I do think that there are discussions that can be had about aspects of it. For example: protecting the copyrights of the original works and making sure that fanfic authors aren't deriving undeserved profits (I am aware that the vast, vast, vast majority of fan fic is a non-revenue generating exercise). Or, trying to figure out what is broken on the Internet that means that I need to make sure my Safe Search is on before googling My Little Pony.
Similarly, I don't consider myself to be a member of any of them, but I don't think that there is a coherent argument to be made against fandom.
People will be passionate about things, and that's generally awesome. But when the "fanatic" part takes over it can get scary. This is not unique to geek fandom -- sports fan riot all the damn time, sports fans attack atheletes/coaches/managers on twitter (and hell, on talk radio) all day long. And yeah, some fandom communities can get pretty insular/toxic, but for the most part if you don't like that you can find some other community. The real "issues" that fandom has: harassment, entitlement, etc. are not unique to fandom, and can be solved in whatever ways we come up with to solve, say, the general problem of internet harassment/cyberbullying.
posted by sparklemotion at 9:12 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Or...people just like the characters and their world and like telling stories about them to their friends?
Madness!
There's as many reasons to write fic as there are fic writers. I know sometimes it's nuts for dudes to think that women are, like, actual individual people so they want to try to drill down on the one REAL reason why the ladies do a thing (this will never be the reported reason/s because women never really know their own motivations and need a man to tell us what we really think) but the Venn diagram of "it's social fun" and "it helps create media where I see myself better represented" and "I like porn" and "I'm practicing to write original fiction" and about 100 other reasons looks different for every fic writer.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:13 AM on June 10, 2016 [21 favorites]
Madness!
There's as many reasons to write fic as there are fic writers. I know sometimes it's nuts for dudes to think that women are, like, actual individual people so they want to try to drill down on the one REAL reason why the ladies do a thing (this will never be the reported reason/s because women never really know their own motivations and need a man to tell us what we really think) but the Venn diagram of "it's social fun" and "it helps create media where I see myself better represented" and "I like porn" and "I'm practicing to write original fiction" and about 100 other reasons looks different for every fic writer.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:13 AM on June 10, 2016 [21 favorites]
On the one hand, I've been in fic-writing fandom for more than twenty years, and I'm glad to see strong and clear pushback in this thread to slash = gay porn!!!!!!!!, and to see people who actually in fandom talking about fandom.
On the other hand, I've been in fic-writing fandom for more than twenty years, and let's not twist our arms out of our shoulders patting ourselves on our backs. Fandom is made up of people who live in the real world. Thus, fandom reflects the real world it takes place in. Like, I remember fandom back in the 90's, when the bulk of fandom was homophobic as all-the-fuck-get-out. Remember back when you were supposed to put "warnings" on your fic if two people of the same gender so much as kissed?
Fandom is less overtly homophobic these days in some ways, but fandom has a long way to go still. We've all seen Franzeska's recent so-called and popular meta defending racism in fandom, right? (I'm not linking it here because it's only available to people who have an AO3 account.)
And:
People who are rabid in their defense of their favorite shows or pairings do exist, but they've always been widely dismissed within my circles. They're hardly even on the radar, unless they drive-by comment on something you wrote--in which case, the response is often "LOL".
It really depends on the circle. A lot of my fandom friends are vocal and prominent calling out racism, misogyny, lesbophobia/biphobia, and/or transphobia when they see it in fandom. The amount of harassment and pushback that they get on a regular basis from fellow fandomers is in-fucking-credible. It starts at "torrents of anonymous hate in the inbox" and escalates up through "having your home address posted to the internet/having somebody call up your employer and say you're writing pedophilic pornography."
posted by joyceanmachine at 9:14 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
On the other hand, I've been in fic-writing fandom for more than twenty years, and let's not twist our arms out of our shoulders patting ourselves on our backs. Fandom is made up of people who live in the real world. Thus, fandom reflects the real world it takes place in. Like, I remember fandom back in the 90's, when the bulk of fandom was homophobic as all-the-fuck-get-out. Remember back when you were supposed to put "warnings" on your fic if two people of the same gender so much as kissed?
Fandom is less overtly homophobic these days in some ways, but fandom has a long way to go still. We've all seen Franzeska's recent so-called and popular meta defending racism in fandom, right? (I'm not linking it here because it's only available to people who have an AO3 account.)
And:
People who are rabid in their defense of their favorite shows or pairings do exist, but they've always been widely dismissed within my circles. They're hardly even on the radar, unless they drive-by comment on something you wrote--in which case, the response is often "LOL".
It really depends on the circle. A lot of my fandom friends are vocal and prominent calling out racism, misogyny, lesbophobia/biphobia, and/or transphobia when they see it in fandom. The amount of harassment and pushback that they get on a regular basis from fellow fandomers is in-fucking-credible. It starts at "torrents of anonymous hate in the inbox" and escalates up through "having your home address posted to the internet/having somebody call up your employer and say you're writing pedophilic pornography."
posted by joyceanmachine at 9:14 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
If your recontextualization of a piece of literature or popular fictional universe is published (by someone other than you) and in bookstores/Amazon/whatever, it is not fan fiction. Fan fiction is pretty much by definition amateur. 50 Shades Of Gray started out as fanfic but is now its own thing. Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead re-imagines Hamlet from the standpoint of two minor characters. It is not fan fiction. When someone submits a spec script for Law And Order and it gets accepted and produced, it is not fan fiction.
There's nothing wrong with fanfic. It is also totally understandable that the audience for fanfic is not universal and that many people will not find it palatable or interesting, but there is no reason to actively harass or discourage fanfic authors.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:17 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
There's nothing wrong with fanfic. It is also totally understandable that the audience for fanfic is not universal and that many people will not find it palatable or interesting, but there is no reason to actively harass or discourage fanfic authors.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:17 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
A revelation for me was realizing that my Star Trek TOS novels were, in fact, totally fanfiction.
Early novels especially had this tendency.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:17 AM on June 10, 2016
Early novels especially had this tendency.
posted by ZeusHumms at 9:17 AM on June 10, 2016
Sangermaine, your comment has "common sense" -- but it seems to be from the perspective of someone who has little idea of how such conversations in fandom generally go.
You also seem to be unaware of just how dismissive people can be before the topic of fanfiction even comes up; they're repelled by the very idea that you think such-and-such character could plausibly be gay.1
Like, fandom discussions about character relationships (of whatever kind) usually don't focus on fanfiction. They focus on the source material. How can the source material be interpreted? Where are the holes that can be explored?
Discussions of fanfiction and sex fantasies do happen sometimes, and you're right that they're different than a discussion about the source material--but they're not actually the main mode of conversation, and not what people are generally reacting to when they get the heebie-jeebies about obi-wan or whatever being gay.
I don't "fear" fanfic, I just find it boring and stupid
You know, if you just said you find it boring, no one would object because that's a personal preference, but you also had to call it stupid--which is a very dismissive judgment. No wonder people think that there is a weird hostility toward fandom, if this is your idea of a neutral way of saying you're not interested.
1 Though a really important point is that just because you write about something, doesn't mean you think it's the "real" interpretation. People outside fandom seem to get very confused on this point sometimes.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:18 AM on June 10, 2016 [22 favorites]
You also seem to be unaware of just how dismissive people can be before the topic of fanfiction even comes up; they're repelled by the very idea that you think such-and-such character could plausibly be gay.1
Like, fandom discussions about character relationships (of whatever kind) usually don't focus on fanfiction. They focus on the source material. How can the source material be interpreted? Where are the holes that can be explored?
Discussions of fanfiction and sex fantasies do happen sometimes, and you're right that they're different than a discussion about the source material--but they're not actually the main mode of conversation, and not what people are generally reacting to when they get the heebie-jeebies about obi-wan or whatever being gay.
I don't "fear" fanfic, I just find it boring and stupid
You know, if you just said you find it boring, no one would object because that's a personal preference, but you also had to call it stupid--which is a very dismissive judgment. No wonder people think that there is a weird hostility toward fandom, if this is your idea of a neutral way of saying you're not interested.
1 Though a really important point is that just because you write about something, doesn't mean you think it's the "real" interpretation. People outside fandom seem to get very confused on this point sometimes.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:18 AM on June 10, 2016 [22 favorites]
Megan Purdy's point (linked above) about the mutually constitutive nature of artistic production and reception is called the "communications circuit." Robert Darnton came up with the concept back in '82.
posted by Sonny Jim at 9:29 AM on June 10, 2016
posted by Sonny Jim at 9:29 AM on June 10, 2016
A lot of my fandom friends are vocal and prominent calling out racism, misogyny, lesbophobia/biphobia, and/or transphobia when they see it in fandom.
I wonder if this is partially due to different definitions of "fandom." I just realized that the people I have the most to fear are probably in fandom--it's just that I don't think of them that way because their fandom is very different than mine.
I'm talking specifically about male fans of certain media properties.
My experience is that attacks generally come from people outside of my circles--people who might consider themselves to be in fandom, but are in fandom a different way; i.e. they aren't really fanfiction writers/fanartists/media beanplaters, but they might be gamers, or modders, etc.
I'm aware that this depends a lot (and probably somewhat on luck), but my experience within my circles has been mostly positive. I've run into a few bad actors, but they stand out.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:31 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
I wonder if this is partially due to different definitions of "fandom." I just realized that the people I have the most to fear are probably in fandom--it's just that I don't think of them that way because their fandom is very different than mine.
I'm talking specifically about male fans of certain media properties.
My experience is that attacks generally come from people outside of my circles--people who might consider themselves to be in fandom, but are in fandom a different way; i.e. they aren't really fanfiction writers/fanartists/media beanplaters, but they might be gamers, or modders, etc.
I'm aware that this depends a lot (and probably somewhat on luck), but my experience within my circles has been mostly positive. I've run into a few bad actors, but they stand out.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:31 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
> It's odd to me to insist people have to discuss things they have no interest in or it's a sign of fear.
Sorry, did someone insist you comment in this thread?
posted by rtha at 9:34 AM on June 10, 2016 [19 favorites]
Sorry, did someone insist you comment in this thread?
posted by rtha at 9:34 AM on June 10, 2016 [19 favorites]
I've been reading fanfic like it's my job since February, when I completely accidentally fell into the Captain American fandom and haven't been able to crawl up out of it. Some fanfic is outstanding, like, better than many published novels I've read. There's a Captain America fic set in high school written like Middlemarch and it is the most entertaining piece of art I've read in a long time. I read so much fanfic that I finally got inspired to write some of my own, and it's been a fun hobby, something to do at night that isn't watching tv. It's enjoyable to read people's interpretations of characters that you already know, and for fandoms like movie franchises, it takes a pretty limited body of original work and allows for tons of expansion that you can't get from waiting every two years for new movies.
Fandom itself usually gives me contact embarrassment, and I linger on the periphery, consuming the art/metas/fics/random meltdowns and drama, but I don't contribute anything to it. There's a fine line between fans talking about what they'd like to see in future works, and fans going bananas and harassing people, and it does seem like the greater availability of the creators online makes it easier for fans to cross the line. I'd love for fandom in general to have more chill. But it's nice to see people have a space to be themselves and create things that make them happy.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 9:34 AM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
Fandom itself usually gives me contact embarrassment, and I linger on the periphery, consuming the art/metas/fics/random meltdowns and drama, but I don't contribute anything to it. There's a fine line between fans talking about what they'd like to see in future works, and fans going bananas and harassing people, and it does seem like the greater availability of the creators online makes it easier for fans to cross the line. I'd love for fandom in general to have more chill. But it's nice to see people have a space to be themselves and create things that make them happy.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 9:34 AM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
Talking about the nature and treatment of homosexual relationships in the Star Wars universe isn't the same as talking about fanfics about specific homosexual relationships, or sex in the case of pornographic ones. If you like talking about Star Wars, talking about the former could be interesting, but talking about the later isn't unless you like fanfic, shipping, or sex fantasies.
No, they are, at least in part, different ways of doing the same thing. You can use a narrative to make a critical argument, or even more anodyne ones. To take your example, there are zero canonical gay relationships in the SW universe (maybe there were back in the EU days, I don't know, but now that they've jettisoned all that, there aren't). So even the most self-indulgent, careless, ill-thought-out SW slash fiction is making the point that there are gay people in the SW universe. And, with it, usually some idea of how that experience might play out within the universe itself--just in the form of the individual experiences of characters, rather than in critical and absolutizing terms.
You don't want to read it, cool, but you can't argue that critical analysis and narrative construction are entirely different things operating on different subjects.
As a general matter, I tend to find that most anti-fanfic arguments based on its lack of literary merit or sophistication or intellectual usefulness (as opposed to one's simply not enjoying it or being interested in it, which is entirely a matter of taste) reflect a depressingly limited, super-middle-brow approach to literature. Like, if it has to be explained to you (at least a Western you) that the Oresteia effectively functions as a sequel to the Iliad, written by another person, and thus in its relationship to an earlier text is indistinguishable from fanfic, you're not yet qualified to discuss the literary merit of any particular genre. The defense of the Integrity of Canon! and Rules! is very...buergerlich.
posted by praemunire at 9:34 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
No, they are, at least in part, different ways of doing the same thing. You can use a narrative to make a critical argument, or even more anodyne ones. To take your example, there are zero canonical gay relationships in the SW universe (maybe there were back in the EU days, I don't know, but now that they've jettisoned all that, there aren't). So even the most self-indulgent, careless, ill-thought-out SW slash fiction is making the point that there are gay people in the SW universe. And, with it, usually some idea of how that experience might play out within the universe itself--just in the form of the individual experiences of characters, rather than in critical and absolutizing terms.
You don't want to read it, cool, but you can't argue that critical analysis and narrative construction are entirely different things operating on different subjects.
As a general matter, I tend to find that most anti-fanfic arguments based on its lack of literary merit or sophistication or intellectual usefulness (as opposed to one's simply not enjoying it or being interested in it, which is entirely a matter of taste) reflect a depressingly limited, super-middle-brow approach to literature. Like, if it has to be explained to you (at least a Western you) that the Oresteia effectively functions as a sequel to the Iliad, written by another person, and thus in its relationship to an earlier text is indistinguishable from fanfic, you're not yet qualified to discuss the literary merit of any particular genre. The defense of the Integrity of Canon! and Rules! is very...buergerlich.
posted by praemunire at 9:34 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
What bugs me is I will see the exact same people who go on long rants about how Fanfic Found Everything, also talk about how Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is THE BEST THING EVER.
Because evidently, if you're a big name male writer and you put enough rape and racism in, it no longer counts as fanfic.
posted by happyroach at 9:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
Because evidently, if you're a big name male writer and you put enough rape and racism in, it no longer counts as fanfic.
posted by happyroach at 9:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
Sangermaine must have misinterpreted my phrase "nope out with extreme prejudice" to mean "yawn and cordially meander away from the water cooler" instead of my intended meaning as "immediately and defensively freak the hell out about how not that there's anything wrong with that but HAN SOLO ISN'T GAY!!!ELEVENTY!"
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
Sangermaine must have misinterpreted my phrase "nope out with extreme prejudice" to mean "yawn and cordially meander away from the water cooler" instead of my intended meaning as "immediately and defensively freak the hell out about how not that there's anything wrong with that but HAN SOLO ISN'T GAY!!!ELEVENTY!"
Yeah, I wrote the comment Sangermaine was building off of and that was my misunderstanding. Sorry.
posted by murphy slaw at 10:01 AM on June 10, 2016
Yeah, I wrote the comment Sangermaine was building off of and that was my misunderstanding. Sorry.
posted by murphy slaw at 10:01 AM on June 10, 2016
Paradise Lost is fan fiction.
I didn't realize this was the "compete for most ahistorical statement" thread!
"Fan fiction" is something that occurs in a cultural context; a self-aware one, at that, with customs, connections to other things in the broader culture, a self-conception on the part of the participants as "fans", itself a concept located in a highly local conceptual space, etc.
Milton was not a "fan" of the Bible. He could not have been; "fandom" did not exist then.
posted by kenko at 10:35 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
I didn't realize this was the "compete for most ahistorical statement" thread!
"Fan fiction" is something that occurs in a cultural context; a self-aware one, at that, with customs, connections to other things in the broader culture, a self-conception on the part of the participants as "fans", itself a concept located in a highly local conceptual space, etc.
Milton was not a "fan" of the Bible. He could not have been; "fandom" did not exist then.
posted by kenko at 10:35 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
Whenever you get the urge, in a discussion of any literary/artistic/broadly cultural/even more broadly conceptual topic, to apply contemporary terms wholesale to a past phenomenon, well, I'm not going to say "don't do that", but before you do that, imagine Heinrich Wölfflin looking at you and saying: "Not all things are possible at all times."
posted by kenko at 10:39 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by kenko at 10:39 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
> "I didn't realize this was the 'compete for most ahistorical statement' thread!"
It is?! Hot damn! Virgil was fanfic of Homer! Homer was fanfic of the epic cycle oral tradition! The epic cycle oral tradition was fanfic of THE GODS THEMSELVES!
I AM READY FOR THIS CHALLENGE!
posted by kyrademon at 10:43 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
It is?! Hot damn! Virgil was fanfic of Homer! Homer was fanfic of the epic cycle oral tradition! The epic cycle oral tradition was fanfic of THE GODS THEMSELVES!
I AM READY FOR THIS CHALLENGE!
posted by kyrademon at 10:43 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
When in my early teens and before I realized I was queer, I was a fan of Elfquest, gladiators, and Michael Jackson. I inked up a short comic combining all 3 and I will never show it to anyone ever, including my wife. But dang if it wasn't important to me back then.
posted by ikahime at 10:46 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by ikahime at 10:46 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
kenko: Ok, let's say, "derivative work written by and for people who appreciate an earlier work." Which probably wouldn't apply to Paradise Lost, but would apply to a number of pre-modern and early modern documents relating to Arthurian folklore and Canterbury Tales.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:46 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 10:46 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
I just write My Little Pony fanfiction, 'cause I like th' ponies. Not ready for all this sturm und drang, y'all. Whelp, Ah've got apples to buck. Yeehaw!
posted by SPrintF at 10:55 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by SPrintF at 10:55 AM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
"so Charlotte Bronte read Emma by Jane Austen and was really interested in this minor character named Jane Fairfax who was poor and would have been a governess had she not married well and then Bronte wrote her own novel exploring the plight of the poor governess who married this guy named Edward Fairfax Rochester in a novel called Jane Eyre and my point is don’t let anyone tell you shit about fanfiction"
Somewhat inconveniently for this mic drop, we know when Bronte first read Emma: 1850, after her publisher's reader sent it to her as a gift. Jane Eyre appeared in 1847. I mean, she could have been lying (says someone who has accused CB of playing fast and loose before), but all available evidence suggests not this time.
Carry on.
posted by thomas j wise at 10:56 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
Somewhat inconveniently for this mic drop, we know when Bronte first read Emma: 1850, after her publisher's reader sent it to her as a gift. Jane Eyre appeared in 1847. I mean, she could have been lying (says someone who has accused CB of playing fast and loose before), but all available evidence suggests not this time.
Carry on.
posted by thomas j wise at 10:56 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
Paradise Lost is fan fiction.
But is it canon?
posted by Artw at 10:57 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
But is it canon?
posted by Artw at 10:57 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
I don't "fear" fanfic, I just find it boring and stupid,
This is the other thing that frosts me about critics of fanfics; it's not just that they dislike fanfics, but they ALSO have to take pains to make sure anyone into fanfics knows that they feel the activity is unworthy of their attention. I mean what, are we supposed to be impressed by their contempt for the hobby?
It's like your parent coming into your room while you're watching Star Trek, and saying loudly how they don't know HOW you could be watching that purile crap, especially when it's a nice day outside. And then they settle down to watch the Big Game in the living room.
posted by happyroach at 11:01 AM on June 10, 2016 [25 favorites]
This is the other thing that frosts me about critics of fanfics; it's not just that they dislike fanfics, but they ALSO have to take pains to make sure anyone into fanfics knows that they feel the activity is unworthy of their attention. I mean what, are we supposed to be impressed by their contempt for the hobby?
It's like your parent coming into your room while you're watching Star Trek, and saying loudly how they don't know HOW you could be watching that purile crap, especially when it's a nice day outside. And then they settle down to watch the Big Game in the living room.
posted by happyroach at 11:01 AM on June 10, 2016 [25 favorites]
Hmm. I thought I was going to come in here and write a comment defending fanfiction and socially-aware media critique, but having read the "Fandom Is Broken" piece, that doesn't seem necessary. The article seems mainly focused on the prevalence of abuse and death threats in fandom (stereotypically male-oriented ones to boot), which is an extremely legitimate thing to criticise, with a side of "stop trying to pressure creators into doing canon your way", which is fair enough. Faraci's problem is that fans have "gotten more and more involved in trying to shape [canon] [...] not through writing or creating but by yelling and brigading and, more and more, threatening death." I don't think he's talking about dismissing fanfiction and other healthy types of fan engagement at all.
That said, I've actually been listening to Faraci's (very good) movie podcast with Amy Nicholson, The Canon, and one of their sponsors is a monthly subscription box for merch for the biggest fandoms - Star Wars, etc. Each time I hear them do the ad, it makes me wonder what the read on the different faces of fandom would be if it were guys who were stereotypically the tireless authors of new stories and eloquent, politically-informed critiques based on deep engagement with original texts, and women who were stereotypically the insatiable consumerist maw devouring branded merchandise by the truckload.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 11:03 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
That said, I've actually been listening to Faraci's (very good) movie podcast with Amy Nicholson, The Canon, and one of their sponsors is a monthly subscription box for merch for the biggest fandoms - Star Wars, etc. Each time I hear them do the ad, it makes me wonder what the read on the different faces of fandom would be if it were guys who were stereotypically the tireless authors of new stories and eloquent, politically-informed critiques based on deep engagement with original texts, and women who were stereotypically the insatiable consumerist maw devouring branded merchandise by the truckload.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 11:03 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
Whenever you get the urge, in a discussion of any literary/artistic/broadly cultural/even more broadly conceptual topic, to apply contemporary terms wholesale to a past phenomenon, well, I'm not going to say "don't do that", but before you do that, imagine Heinrich Wölfflin looking at you and saying: "Not all things are possible at all times."
So it's argument from authority time, is it? Very well.
Ecclesiastes 1:9: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:16 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
So it's argument from authority time, is it? Very well.
Ecclesiastes 1:9: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:16 AM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
Come on, exactly zero human beings on earth are "terrified" of fan fiction. What the fuck does that even mean?
I have looked into the abyss - I have read fic by David Gonterman.
posted by jb at 11:17 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
I have looked into the abyss - I have read fic by David Gonterman.
posted by jb at 11:17 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
The fanfic scenario I worry about is an author becoming aware of it and abandoning natural developments in their own universe to avoid seeming to appropriate the fanfic.
posted by jamjam at 11:19 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 11:19 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
-A revelation for me was realizing that my Star Trek TOS novels were, in fact, totally fanfiction.
--Early novels especially had this tendency.
This is doubly so for the official Dark Shadows novels by William "Marilyn" Ross. It was obvious he had been given publicity materials by the production company, but never actually seen the series. The nice thing is, though, parallel universes were built into the show so it was a simple matter to fanwank the novels as such.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:23 AM on June 10, 2016
--Early novels especially had this tendency.
This is doubly so for the official Dark Shadows novels by William "Marilyn" Ross. It was obvious he had been given publicity materials by the production company, but never actually seen the series. The nice thing is, though, parallel universes were built into the show so it was a simple matter to fanwank the novels as such.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:23 AM on June 10, 2016
Milton was not a "fan" of the Bible. He could not have been; "fandom" did not exist then.
Everyone knows that "Midrash" is just a fancy world for ancient rabbinical bible fanfiction.
posted by jb at 11:27 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Everyone knows that "Midrash" is just a fancy world for ancient rabbinical bible fanfiction.
posted by jb at 11:27 AM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
> What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again;
So say we all!
posted by rtha at 11:30 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
So say we all!
posted by rtha at 11:30 AM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
BRB, airlocking rtha.
posted by Artw at 11:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by Artw at 11:37 AM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
So it's argument from authority time, is it? Very well.
No? I gave reasons in the immediately preceding comment. The reference to Wölfflin is there because he gave pithy and well known expression to the idea.
The statement in Ecclesiastes is clearly wrong if you interpret it to be about specific cultural formations.
posted by kenko at 12:03 PM on June 10, 2016
No? I gave reasons in the immediately preceding comment. The reference to Wölfflin is there because he gave pithy and well known expression to the idea.
The statement in Ecclesiastes is clearly wrong if you interpret it to be about specific cultural formations.
posted by kenko at 12:03 PM on June 10, 2016
We've all seen Franzeska's recent so-called and popular meta defending racism in fandom, right?
some of us haven't and are behind on the wank...
posted by TwoStride at 12:07 PM on June 10, 2016
some of us haven't and are behind on the wank...
posted by TwoStride at 12:07 PM on June 10, 2016
The fanfic scenario I worry about is an author becoming aware of it and abandoning natural developments in their own universe to avoid seeming to appropriate the fanfic.
Happened in the 90s with J. Michael Straczynski and Babylon 5 - someone posted something on rastb5, it matched up with something he was planning on doing, and there was some delicate work that had to be done before he could have a episode that focused on what he wanted to do.
(I don't have a citation to hand, alas - I just remember that was one of the many reasons why Babylon 5 fandom was very very protective and holy god, if you wanted to read something that was even remotely adult you had to know someone who knew someone who could vouch for you to get onto a mailing list that no one else was allowed to know about...)
posted by Katemonkey at 12:11 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
Happened in the 90s with J. Michael Straczynski and Babylon 5 - someone posted something on rastb5, it matched up with something he was planning on doing, and there was some delicate work that had to be done before he could have a episode that focused on what he wanted to do.
(I don't have a citation to hand, alas - I just remember that was one of the many reasons why Babylon 5 fandom was very very protective and holy god, if you wanted to read something that was even remotely adult you had to know someone who knew someone who could vouch for you to get onto a mailing list that no one else was allowed to know about...)
posted by Katemonkey at 12:11 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
I was a fan of Elfquest, gladiators, and Michael Jackson. I inked up a short comic combining all 3 and I will never show it to anyone ever
Now that I know this exists, I am forlorn for knowing I shall never see it.
posted by sobell at 12:13 PM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
Now that I know this exists, I am forlorn for knowing I shall never see it.
posted by sobell at 12:13 PM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
If you're not terrified then you're not reading the right fanfiction.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:19 PM on June 10, 2016
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 12:19 PM on June 10, 2016
Lois McMaster Bujold is supportive of fanfiction - got her start there - but can't read any, for fear that she might be accused of stealing an idea.
Which is a shame, because Vorkosigan fanfiction is some of the most sophisticated and intelligent that I've ever read.
posted by jb at 12:35 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
Which is a shame, because Vorkosigan fanfiction is some of the most sophisticated and intelligent that I've ever read.
posted by jb at 12:35 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
I'm reading a star wars/mad max crossover right now while waiting for my giant neck needle full of steroids and the fact that ppl might be missing out on this glorious masterpiece because they think it might have gay cooties is tragic but at the end of the day idgaf about them
posted by poffin boffin at 12:46 PM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by poffin boffin at 12:46 PM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
"Fan fiction" is something that occurs in a cultural context; a self-aware one, at that, with customs, connections to other things in the broader culture, a self-conception on the part of the participants as "fans", itself a concept located in a highly local conceptual space, etc.
Yeah, this is why I tend to be a little leery of claiming the likes of Paradise Lost or The Aeneid are fanfiction. Fandom/fanfiction comes out of a specific context for a specific audience, and has its own norms and conventions that aren't necessarily easy to parse from the outside. Like, you can't just read any random fic in any given popular fandom and expect to get the same thing a fan would out of it, or even to fully understand it at all. It's why I tend to recommend Yuletide stories to people not familiar with fanfiction norms: since Yuletide is a small-fandom fic exchange, there's less fandom-specific context built into each story, no build up of months or years worth of fandom conversation and fandom-specific fic trends. Yuletide fics are more likely to stand on their own as complete works. Indeed, a lot of them wouldn't be at all out of place in official short story anthologies or literary magazines.
However, I think the point stands: from Paradise Lost to a teenager's first Harry Potter fic, these are all derivative works based on preexisting stories. They're all from different cultural contexts, sure, but the fundamental impulse to respond to, continue, expand on, critique, comment on, etc a prior work is still the same. If you sneer on fandom-style fanfiction but not on stuff that's entered the literary canon, or even stuff that's officially a tie-in novel like the Star Wars EU, it's instructive to think about why.
Fanfiction is amateur, sure, but you don't see people enthusiastically shitting on or mocking other amateur pursuits the way they do with fic. Like, no one is telling the guy noodling away at some cover songs on his guitar that it's stupid for him to do it. No one's telling the people on ad hoc neighborhood soccer teams that they're pathetic. Heck, even the response to amateur writers who are perpetually working on a memoir or something is kinder than it generally tends to be towards fanfiction. No one's telling any of these people that they're the reason the music industry/sports/publishing is broken and/or dying. So if you don't dismiss any of those forms of engagement, why dismiss fanfiction?
posted by yasaman at 1:00 PM on June 10, 2016 [15 favorites]
Yeah, this is why I tend to be a little leery of claiming the likes of Paradise Lost or The Aeneid are fanfiction. Fandom/fanfiction comes out of a specific context for a specific audience, and has its own norms and conventions that aren't necessarily easy to parse from the outside. Like, you can't just read any random fic in any given popular fandom and expect to get the same thing a fan would out of it, or even to fully understand it at all. It's why I tend to recommend Yuletide stories to people not familiar with fanfiction norms: since Yuletide is a small-fandom fic exchange, there's less fandom-specific context built into each story, no build up of months or years worth of fandom conversation and fandom-specific fic trends. Yuletide fics are more likely to stand on their own as complete works. Indeed, a lot of them wouldn't be at all out of place in official short story anthologies or literary magazines.
However, I think the point stands: from Paradise Lost to a teenager's first Harry Potter fic, these are all derivative works based on preexisting stories. They're all from different cultural contexts, sure, but the fundamental impulse to respond to, continue, expand on, critique, comment on, etc a prior work is still the same. If you sneer on fandom-style fanfiction but not on stuff that's entered the literary canon, or even stuff that's officially a tie-in novel like the Star Wars EU, it's instructive to think about why.
Fanfiction is amateur, sure, but you don't see people enthusiastically shitting on or mocking other amateur pursuits the way they do with fic. Like, no one is telling the guy noodling away at some cover songs on his guitar that it's stupid for him to do it. No one's telling the people on ad hoc neighborhood soccer teams that they're pathetic. Heck, even the response to amateur writers who are perpetually working on a memoir or something is kinder than it generally tends to be towards fanfiction. No one's telling any of these people that they're the reason the music industry/sports/publishing is broken and/or dying. So if you don't dismiss any of those forms of engagement, why dismiss fanfiction?
posted by yasaman at 1:00 PM on June 10, 2016 [15 favorites]
You know, if you just said you find it boring, no one would object because that's a personal preference, but you also had to call it stupid--which is a very dismissive judgment.
And yet, "sports are stupid" is something you can hear in just about any sitcom and certainly any forum discussion. People have opinions.
This is not a fanfic forum, or a discussion of fanfic. This is a discussion of why people do or don't like it. Having "Why don't people like fanfic" as a topic and then deciding there is only one proper side of the question to be on sounds like a flawed premise.
posted by bongo_x at 1:10 PM on June 10, 2016
And yet, "sports are stupid" is something you can hear in just about any sitcom and certainly any forum discussion. People have opinions.
This is not a fanfic forum, or a discussion of fanfic. This is a discussion of why people do or don't like it. Having "Why don't people like fanfic" as a topic and then deciding there is only one proper side of the question to be on sounds like a flawed premise.
posted by bongo_x at 1:10 PM on June 10, 2016
Whatever other issues there might be with fanfic, there is something magical about reading a well written story where The Avengers all live together and the world is saved by Tony Stark's heavily modifed self-replicating hive-minded Roombas.
posted by monopas at 1:13 PM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by monopas at 1:13 PM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
There are new wrinkles for younger fans, a group that seems uninterested in conflict or personal difficulty in their narratives (look at the popularity of fan fics set in coffee shops or bakeries, which posit the characters of a comic or TV show or movie they love as co-workers having sub-sitcom level interactions.
Dude needs to read a wider variety of fanfiction before he writes an article criticizing it. There are tons of conflict-filled, angsty, fics out there. I run across much more of those that the coffee shop happy-ending types.
Ha, he definitely needs to read a wider variety of fic to understand the context behind the popularity of that kind of mundane-setting fic. Like, I'm not the biggest fan of it either, but I understand why it exists, and I understand why fans like it. There's probably a whole paper in it, but in brief: these settings are ones fans are more familiar with and can feel more comfortable writing in; they're a reaction against the perpetual high stakes of most canons; it's just plain more pleasant to read about a gentler/happier scenario than your canon of unrelenting agony, etc. Even I occasionally read one as a sort of palate cleanser.
But, like, take a look at MCU Captain America fandom, especially post-Winter Soldier. This is a fandom where a lot of the fic is incredibly focused on some tough, heavy issues: memory, identity, recovery, trauma. Most of the fic falls under Sturgeon's Rule to be sure (take it from someone who checks the Steve/Bucky tag on AO3 once a day, oh my god, what a wasteland most days), but when it's good, it is good. Sometimes it's brutal and good, and sometimes it's good because it's the kind of nice happy ending canon will never give us thanks to the eternally retconning/rebooting nature of comics and movie franchises. Either way, I wouldn't say younger fans are uninterested in conflict or personal difficulty in their narratives in canon or fanfiction.
posted by yasaman at 1:18 PM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
Dude needs to read a wider variety of fanfiction before he writes an article criticizing it. There are tons of conflict-filled, angsty, fics out there. I run across much more of those that the coffee shop happy-ending types.
Ha, he definitely needs to read a wider variety of fic to understand the context behind the popularity of that kind of mundane-setting fic. Like, I'm not the biggest fan of it either, but I understand why it exists, and I understand why fans like it. There's probably a whole paper in it, but in brief: these settings are ones fans are more familiar with and can feel more comfortable writing in; they're a reaction against the perpetual high stakes of most canons; it's just plain more pleasant to read about a gentler/happier scenario than your canon of unrelenting agony, etc. Even I occasionally read one as a sort of palate cleanser.
But, like, take a look at MCU Captain America fandom, especially post-Winter Soldier. This is a fandom where a lot of the fic is incredibly focused on some tough, heavy issues: memory, identity, recovery, trauma. Most of the fic falls under Sturgeon's Rule to be sure (take it from someone who checks the Steve/Bucky tag on AO3 once a day, oh my god, what a wasteland most days), but when it's good, it is good. Sometimes it's brutal and good, and sometimes it's good because it's the kind of nice happy ending canon will never give us thanks to the eternally retconning/rebooting nature of comics and movie franchises. Either way, I wouldn't say younger fans are uninterested in conflict or personal difficulty in their narratives in canon or fanfiction.
posted by yasaman at 1:18 PM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
Mod note: n.b. we tend to discourage folks just plopping "sports are stupid" into threads these days too. In general there's not much to lose in aiming more for critical examination of something and less for just declaring it bad in various ways, etc.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:18 PM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:18 PM on June 10, 2016 [7 favorites]
But my husband, who is not, STILL utterly enjoys coming across a "weird" fanfic because it opens his mind to the vast diversity of people there are in the world, and how they all like different things.
Like SomethingAwful's Awful Link of the Day, where the point is supposed to be an opportunity to point and stare at the weirdos but I mainly kept reading it in rapt fascination at the kind of stuff I never would have known that people were into otherwise. (And I even discovered one of my favourite artists (Jin Wicked) that way.)
Is it just me, or did Vox's "response" entirely miss the point of the "fandom is broken" article?
Well, part of the problem there is that "Fandom is Broken" was conflating multiple different kinds of fandom and wound up not actually having much of an identifiable point as a result (other than getting behind a totally unproductive form of author-worship).
posted by tobascodagama at 1:21 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
Like SomethingAwful's Awful Link of the Day, where the point is supposed to be an opportunity to point and stare at the weirdos but I mainly kept reading it in rapt fascination at the kind of stuff I never would have known that people were into otherwise. (And I even discovered one of my favourite artists (Jin Wicked) that way.)
Is it just me, or did Vox's "response" entirely miss the point of the "fandom is broken" article?
Well, part of the problem there is that "Fandom is Broken" was conflating multiple different kinds of fandom and wound up not actually having much of an identifiable point as a result (other than getting behind a totally unproductive form of author-worship).
posted by tobascodagama at 1:21 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
And yet, "sports are stupid" is something you can hear in just about any sitcom and certainly any forum discussion. People have opinions.
Context is important. Sports fandom is validated by the majority culture in just about every way. Sports fandom supports entire multi-billion dollar industries in which probably literally billions of people participate, in one way or another. People writing fanfiction or making vids or drawing fanart? Uh, not so much. We're a small subset of the people consuming mass media.
People in fandom are used to keeping their shit on the down low or having it mocked. Your hypothetical coworker's fantasy football team, on the other hand, is the subject of enthusiastic water cooler conversation. It's kind of a punching up versus punching down distinction. Your opinion is valid either way, obviously, but it helps to keep that in mind when you get push back.
posted by yasaman at 1:24 PM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
Context is important. Sports fandom is validated by the majority culture in just about every way. Sports fandom supports entire multi-billion dollar industries in which probably literally billions of people participate, in one way or another. People writing fanfiction or making vids or drawing fanart? Uh, not so much. We're a small subset of the people consuming mass media.
People in fandom are used to keeping their shit on the down low or having it mocked. Your hypothetical coworker's fantasy football team, on the other hand, is the subject of enthusiastic water cooler conversation. It's kind of a punching up versus punching down distinction. Your opinion is valid either way, obviously, but it helps to keep that in mind when you get push back.
posted by yasaman at 1:24 PM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
Like, no one is telling the guy noodling away at some cover songs on his guitar that it's stupid for him to do it.
Ok, let's say, "derivative work written by and for people who appreciate an earlier work." Which probably wouldn't apply to Paradise Lost, but would apply to a number of pre-modern and early modern documents relating to Arthurian folklore and Canterbury Tales.
You can call any derivative work "fanfic" if you like, but not only are you eliding everything that makes "pre-fan" works interesting, but you're defining "fanfic" so broadly that the term practically meaningless. Yes, the desire for new stories about old figures is common to many (all?) cultures and ages and "fanfic" responds to that desire, but it isn't identical with it. You can call the ancient Greek myths "fanfic" if it satisfies you, but naming them so won't tell much about either fanfic in an age of mass media or the Greek myths.
I tend to find that most anti-fanfic arguments based on its lack of literary merit or sophistication or intellectual usefulness (as opposed to one's simply not enjoying it or being interested in it, which is entirely a matter of taste) reflect a depressingly limited, super-middle-brow approach to literature. Like, if it has to be explained to you (at least a Western you) that the Oresteia effectively functions as a sequel to the Iliad, written by another person, and thus in its relationship to an earlier text is indistinguishable from fanfic, you're not yet qualified to discuss the literary merit of any particular genre.
Besides implying a remarkably formalist view of culture—some notion that works exist solely as a combination of ahistorical generic topoi—this is an argument in search of a pedigree, like the science fiction fans who want to trace their beloved genre back to the Greek romances. If I were depressed by super-middle-brow approaches to literature I might hesitate to endorse one which basically wants to be the Great Books in weekend cas.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:51 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Ok, let's say, "derivative work written by and for people who appreciate an earlier work." Which probably wouldn't apply to Paradise Lost, but would apply to a number of pre-modern and early modern documents relating to Arthurian folklore and Canterbury Tales.
You can call any derivative work "fanfic" if you like, but not only are you eliding everything that makes "pre-fan" works interesting, but you're defining "fanfic" so broadly that the term practically meaningless. Yes, the desire for new stories about old figures is common to many (all?) cultures and ages and "fanfic" responds to that desire, but it isn't identical with it. You can call the ancient Greek myths "fanfic" if it satisfies you, but naming them so won't tell much about either fanfic in an age of mass media or the Greek myths.
I tend to find that most anti-fanfic arguments based on its lack of literary merit or sophistication or intellectual usefulness (as opposed to one's simply not enjoying it or being interested in it, which is entirely a matter of taste) reflect a depressingly limited, super-middle-brow approach to literature. Like, if it has to be explained to you (at least a Western you) that the Oresteia effectively functions as a sequel to the Iliad, written by another person, and thus in its relationship to an earlier text is indistinguishable from fanfic, you're not yet qualified to discuss the literary merit of any particular genre.
Besides implying a remarkably formalist view of culture—some notion that works exist solely as a combination of ahistorical generic topoi—this is an argument in search of a pedigree, like the science fiction fans who want to trace their beloved genre back to the Greek romances. If I were depressed by super-middle-brow approaches to literature I might hesitate to endorse one which basically wants to be the Great Books in weekend cas.
posted by octobersurprise at 1:51 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
I don't want to drag this thread off-topic, but I would very much like to read this Middlemarch-esque Captain America fic, and the other really good fics people keep vaguely referencing. Could you guys maybe post some links?
posted by Anyamatopoeia at 1:53 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Anyamatopoeia at 1:53 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
Yes! Here is the Middlemarch Cap fic. It is amazing!
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 2:03 PM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 2:03 PM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
"sports are stupid," whispered cortex to his giant donut as they embraced passionately
posted by poffin boffin at 2:42 PM on June 10, 2016 [11 favorites]
posted by poffin boffin at 2:42 PM on June 10, 2016 [11 favorites]
pls dont ban me
posted by poffin boffin at 2:42 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by poffin boffin at 2:42 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
Sports are stupid and people are stupid and love means nothing in some strange quarters.
That would be better if I could post as Boy George.
NotBBC represent.
posted by Grangousier at 2:56 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
That would be better if I could post as Boy George.
NotBBC represent.
posted by Grangousier at 2:56 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
Sports are really big on cosplay and filks.
posted by Artw at 2:57 PM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by Artw at 2:57 PM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
I am now several "months" into Middletown. Thank you!
Another mega Cap fic people love: Known Associates (this link is to Chapter 1 of several). There are also lots of recommendations in the "fanfiction" tag here.
posted by brainwane at 3:06 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
Another mega Cap fic people love: Known Associates (this link is to Chapter 1 of several). There are also lots of recommendations in the "fanfiction" tag here.
posted by brainwane at 3:06 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
Your hypothetical coworker's fantasy football team, on the other hand, is the subject of enthusiastic water cooler conversation.
I don't know. Over the years I've watched football (beginning around 2005-ish), I've watched a decline in the quality of commentary on pre-game shows. Part of that is certainly I've grown to understood the game better and what seemed smart then sounds a bunch of cliches later, but there was a steep decline when first discussion was dumbed down to headline/clickbait crap like IS JOE FLACCO ELITE?, and then when analysis was replaced by more fluff pieces of JJ Watt with the troops or, yes, "fantasy football hot picks" - I stopped watching once them once a starting RB not playing being treated as a "FF breaking report" and not an "injury report".
Not that there's any problem with FF; but this increase in coverage also meant some people were starting to use FF as replacement for analysis; I've seen once one guy trying to back a bunch of asinine FA choices with "well, he gets a couple more points each game, so he's clearly better". Or when in a tough game someone decides to say "well, at least I have OPPONENT GUY WHO'S TRASHING TEAM in my team". I doubt that's less "enthusiastic" and more "SHUT THE HELL UP GARY NOBODY GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOUR TEAM".
So, like in everything, either you have the right audience for a particular hobby or you don't. But I routinely avoid FF as much as I can, to the point I totally ignored The League until someone told me it was very light on actual FF.
COLLUSION!
posted by lmfsilva at 3:19 PM on June 10, 2016
I don't know. Over the years I've watched football (beginning around 2005-ish), I've watched a decline in the quality of commentary on pre-game shows. Part of that is certainly I've grown to understood the game better and what seemed smart then sounds a bunch of cliches later, but there was a steep decline when first discussion was dumbed down to headline/clickbait crap like IS JOE FLACCO ELITE?, and then when analysis was replaced by more fluff pieces of JJ Watt with the troops or, yes, "fantasy football hot picks" - I stopped watching once them once a starting RB not playing being treated as a "FF breaking report" and not an "injury report".
Not that there's any problem with FF; but this increase in coverage also meant some people were starting to use FF as replacement for analysis; I've seen once one guy trying to back a bunch of asinine FA choices with "well, he gets a couple more points each game, so he's clearly better". Or when in a tough game someone decides to say "well, at least I have OPPONENT GUY WHO'S TRASHING TEAM in my team". I doubt that's less "enthusiastic" and more "SHUT THE HELL UP GARY NOBODY GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOUR TEAM".
So, like in everything, either you have the right audience for a particular hobby or you don't. But I routinely avoid FF as much as I can, to the point I totally ignored The League until someone told me it was very light on actual FF.
COLLUSION!
posted by lmfsilva at 3:19 PM on June 10, 2016
It can be tough to come up with a good primer for a fandom's fic when you've been in it for a while because it's hard to remember what's easily accessible/understandable without long exposure to the Fandom Discourse, but I'll take a shot. I'll try confine it to fics that take on some weightier issues/themes, though if you want recs for more fun/fluffy fic, I can do that too. I just think the more fun stuff is more fandom context-dependent. I'm also going to steer away from alternate universes, because I think those are more for Advanced-level Fanfiction Consumption (i.e., you're already obsessed with these assholes to the point you're perfectly willing to read about them running a cat shelter or whatever as opposed to them being superheroes). (Also, I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of AUs like that Middlemarch fic. Different strokes and all.) Most of these recs will be Steve/Bucky.
Cap Fandom Really Loves Historical Research: Hansbekhart writes fic that reads like historical fiction it has such close attention to the historical details of 1940s Brooklyn. When I Put Away Childish Things is my favorite of hers. Speranza's All the Angels and the Saints is a great look at the kind of person Steve Rogers might have been pre-war, given his background, and what it would mean for him to be in a relationship with Bucky and later become Captain America. The series Scraps by Scappodaqui and Tinzelda is more heavy on the romance and sex than the previous two, but also portrays a rich and detailed portrait of being a queer soldier during World War II. The summary of Speranza's Half of the History (We Shall Never Know) is "This is a war story," and that's about it. This one is something of an unstinting, brutal look at what it means for Steve and Bucky to have been soldiers in World War II, and how that impacts who they are in the 21st century as Captain America and the Winter Soldier.
Cap Fandom Is Super Obsessed with Memory and Identity: When one of your main characters is Bucky Barnes, who's been electroshock brainwashed and has amnesia, your fandom tends to be PRETTY PREOCCUPIED with questions surrounding the importance of memory to identity, and vice versa. Explorations of this run the gamut from "Bucky remembers everything and things are mostly okay" to "Bucky never remembers much of anything and everything is terrible," with stops everywhere in between those two points. How this intersects with a Steve/Bucky love story is varying degrees of heartbreaking and agonizing. One of my favorite takes on it is lacuna by alcibiades, a wonderfully layered and painful story of Bucky relearning Steve, and Steve learning who Bucky is now, and how they both use physical intimacy to bridge the gap. Etharei's to memory now I can't recall uses a creative conceit to explore Bucky's identity: post-Winter Soldier still partly amnesiac Bucky Barnes swaps places with his wartime self. This is a Steve/Bucky fic, but that's not really the love story at the core of it. Memory by emilyenrose is one of the more wrenching Cap fics I've ever read, but one that has a very compelling and brutally honest take on what it means to be the person who's survived terrible traumas, and what that says about who you are now versus who you used to be (it's not as depressing as I'm making it sound, but it was a hell of a gut punch when I first read it).
Cap Fandom Is Super Obsessed with Trauma and Recovery: Again, when one of your main characters is Bucky Barnes (as portrayed by Sebastian Stan especially), who is basically the world's longest held prisoner of war, trauma and recovery tends to be a pretty big deal in fic. Also when your other main character is a time-displaced war veteran who goes on sadness errands. How the Light Gets In by theheartischill gives beautiful space to Steve's grief, and that same author's When the Season Comes Around is a genuinely moving, and quiet, take on Bucky's recovery that's full of compassion. Magdaliny's series to win back what you lost is similarly full of compassion and bravery and kindness. (Also, as an aside, Cap fandom has an interesting little subset of second person fics like this one, that use second person POV to fascinating effect. Writers use it as a way to work around/with having a POV character whose sense of identity is not all there yet [is he Bucky Barnes yet, or the Winter Soldier, or someone in between?]) Hetrez's But We Can Try has a Bucky who's doing alright, but a Steve who's really struggling, and is a lovely little love story to boot. The same author's All Along the Watchtower puts Inception-style dream manipulation to creative use in having Bucky reintegrate his sense of self with it, and Steve come to some long-withheld realizations. your homecoming will be my homecoming is a beautifully achy look at a Bucky who's trying to piece himself together while Steve's busy falling apart via the medium of vengeance. Owlet's Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail is rightfully a very popular series in fandom, and while in many ways it's silly and fun and light, it's also a sometimes wrenching look at a Bucky who's in disparate pieces post-Winter Soldier, but they're pieces he's working hard to put together into something like a whole, with varying degrees of success and weird coping mechanisms.
posted by yasaman at 3:29 PM on June 10, 2016 [24 favorites]
Cap Fandom Really Loves Historical Research: Hansbekhart writes fic that reads like historical fiction it has such close attention to the historical details of 1940s Brooklyn. When I Put Away Childish Things is my favorite of hers. Speranza's All the Angels and the Saints is a great look at the kind of person Steve Rogers might have been pre-war, given his background, and what it would mean for him to be in a relationship with Bucky and later become Captain America. The series Scraps by Scappodaqui and Tinzelda is more heavy on the romance and sex than the previous two, but also portrays a rich and detailed portrait of being a queer soldier during World War II. The summary of Speranza's Half of the History (We Shall Never Know) is "This is a war story," and that's about it. This one is something of an unstinting, brutal look at what it means for Steve and Bucky to have been soldiers in World War II, and how that impacts who they are in the 21st century as Captain America and the Winter Soldier.
Cap Fandom Is Super Obsessed with Memory and Identity: When one of your main characters is Bucky Barnes, who's been electroshock brainwashed and has amnesia, your fandom tends to be PRETTY PREOCCUPIED with questions surrounding the importance of memory to identity, and vice versa. Explorations of this run the gamut from "Bucky remembers everything and things are mostly okay" to "Bucky never remembers much of anything and everything is terrible," with stops everywhere in between those two points. How this intersects with a Steve/Bucky love story is varying degrees of heartbreaking and agonizing. One of my favorite takes on it is lacuna by alcibiades, a wonderfully layered and painful story of Bucky relearning Steve, and Steve learning who Bucky is now, and how they both use physical intimacy to bridge the gap. Etharei's to memory now I can't recall uses a creative conceit to explore Bucky's identity: post-Winter Soldier still partly amnesiac Bucky Barnes swaps places with his wartime self. This is a Steve/Bucky fic, but that's not really the love story at the core of it. Memory by emilyenrose is one of the more wrenching Cap fics I've ever read, but one that has a very compelling and brutally honest take on what it means to be the person who's survived terrible traumas, and what that says about who you are now versus who you used to be (it's not as depressing as I'm making it sound, but it was a hell of a gut punch when I first read it).
Cap Fandom Is Super Obsessed with Trauma and Recovery: Again, when one of your main characters is Bucky Barnes (as portrayed by Sebastian Stan especially), who is basically the world's longest held prisoner of war, trauma and recovery tends to be a pretty big deal in fic. Also when your other main character is a time-displaced war veteran who goes on sadness errands. How the Light Gets In by theheartischill gives beautiful space to Steve's grief, and that same author's When the Season Comes Around is a genuinely moving, and quiet, take on Bucky's recovery that's full of compassion. Magdaliny's series to win back what you lost is similarly full of compassion and bravery and kindness. (Also, as an aside, Cap fandom has an interesting little subset of second person fics like this one, that use second person POV to fascinating effect. Writers use it as a way to work around/with having a POV character whose sense of identity is not all there yet [is he Bucky Barnes yet, or the Winter Soldier, or someone in between?]) Hetrez's But We Can Try has a Bucky who's doing alright, but a Steve who's really struggling, and is a lovely little love story to boot. The same author's All Along the Watchtower puts Inception-style dream manipulation to creative use in having Bucky reintegrate his sense of self with it, and Steve come to some long-withheld realizations. your homecoming will be my homecoming is a beautifully achy look at a Bucky who's trying to piece himself together while Steve's busy falling apart via the medium of vengeance. Owlet's Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail is rightfully a very popular series in fandom, and while in many ways it's silly and fun and light, it's also a sometimes wrenching look at a Bucky who's in disparate pieces post-Winter Soldier, but they're pieces he's working hard to put together into something like a whole, with varying degrees of success and weird coping mechanisms.
posted by yasaman at 3:29 PM on June 10, 2016 [24 favorites]
octobersurprise: Don't bother quoting if you're going to respond to something unrelated. No, not all derivative works are fanfic. But we have a number of historical documents, not a part of the literary canon btw, that were written as insider fiction by and for people who read works that we consider canonical. Whether we call those documents fanfic or not is a matter of semantics. But they share a fair number of similarities including assuming familiarity with the source material and referencing the culture of the audience.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 3:31 PM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 3:31 PM on June 10, 2016 [4 favorites]
Also, the right routinely threatens boycotts when studios consider LGBTQ characters, and have done so for Frozen. Where are the articles on their entitlement?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 3:36 PM on June 10, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 3:36 PM on June 10, 2016 [9 favorites]
If your work gets its own fan fiction, it's a good sign you just might be able to pay your mortgage through this writing thing.
Hickory/Dickory?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:55 PM on June 10, 2016
Hickory/Dickory?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:55 PM on June 10, 2016
Sokka shot first: Yes god forbid teenagers teach themselves incredibly valuable technical skills while engaging with the silly media properties that they're obviously going to grow out of anyway.
You can take my Linkin Park and Evanescence from my cold, dead fingers. ;) Also, best fanvid is best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9197GTl1ASg
Fresh out of Tokens had a very interesting discussion on the Fandom is Broken (and subsequent 'I didn't mean people adding diversity' post) on their most recent episode, which is when I heard about it. The discussion focused more on the abuse angle of fandom mobilization, as the podcast itself regularly comments on the lack of diversity and desire for more and more interesting characters and stories.
When discussing this, I think hard distinctions need to be made between people issuing abuse, people offering critique and wishes, and people being creative. Also, within the context of people being creative there is a Time and a Place (e.g. do not give real person slash fic to your favorite actors, and if it's aimed at kids keep the porn locked down) which is often not appreciated by the more ...enthusiastic members. The troubling issue is the sheer amount of abuse, with another major concern being how that abuse is directed primarily at women and people of color and serves as a barrier to public participation.
There are also subtler issues, like the misogyny endemic to some corners of (woman/girl dominated) fanfiction and the like, but my experience has been those issues are invisible to people who aren't deeply invested in both fanfic and social justice.
One of the more interesting fandom/creator relationships is around the TV Show Hannibal, where Bryan Fuller was entirely open about receiving feedback from fans, the actors were seemingly delighted to be given flower crowns to wear (for a violent and disturbing show, the fandom is surprisingly into puppies, sparkles, and flowers), and Fuller has implied (from what I heard) that seeing his creation through the eyes of the fans did give him different perspectives and alter some of how he did things, though he never let the fans rule him. At least one thing which set the Hannibal creators apart was the degree of respect they had for fandom, and I think that respect was reciprocated in kind to build something very different from the typical fandom/creator dynamic.
posted by Deoridhe at 4:34 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
You can take my Linkin Park and Evanescence from my cold, dead fingers. ;) Also, best fanvid is best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9197GTl1ASg
Fresh out of Tokens had a very interesting discussion on the Fandom is Broken (and subsequent 'I didn't mean people adding diversity' post) on their most recent episode, which is when I heard about it. The discussion focused more on the abuse angle of fandom mobilization, as the podcast itself regularly comments on the lack of diversity and desire for more and more interesting characters and stories.
When discussing this, I think hard distinctions need to be made between people issuing abuse, people offering critique and wishes, and people being creative. Also, within the context of people being creative there is a Time and a Place (e.g. do not give real person slash fic to your favorite actors, and if it's aimed at kids keep the porn locked down) which is often not appreciated by the more ...enthusiastic members. The troubling issue is the sheer amount of abuse, with another major concern being how that abuse is directed primarily at women and people of color and serves as a barrier to public participation.
There are also subtler issues, like the misogyny endemic to some corners of (woman/girl dominated) fanfiction and the like, but my experience has been those issues are invisible to people who aren't deeply invested in both fanfic and social justice.
One of the more interesting fandom/creator relationships is around the TV Show Hannibal, where Bryan Fuller was entirely open about receiving feedback from fans, the actors were seemingly delighted to be given flower crowns to wear (for a violent and disturbing show, the fandom is surprisingly into puppies, sparkles, and flowers), and Fuller has implied (from what I heard) that seeing his creation through the eyes of the fans did give him different perspectives and alter some of how he did things, though he never let the fans rule him. At least one thing which set the Hannibal creators apart was the degree of respect they had for fandom, and I think that respect was reciprocated in kind to build something very different from the typical fandom/creator dynamic.
posted by Deoridhe at 4:34 PM on June 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
The odd thing about Hannibal is that after the first couple of seasons I decided I'd just go wherever it went. Which was fine - I loved the Italian art movie start to the third season, and generally revelled in what I felt was a general sociopathy. But for me the last few episodes were more complicated. I enjoyed the last episode well enough when I watched it. However on reflection I felt it sold out all the other characters apart from Hannibal and Will. Now, the character of Reba is traditionally dumped once she's fulfilled her narrative purpose (but was that necessary here?). But was it necessary to strip Dolarhyde of his character? We never really get his backstory and in the last episode he's just a heavy. There was also something about the threat to Alana (and Margot) and the final scene with Bedelia that just seemed deeply misogynistic - that they somehow deserved to be punished. For disrespecting the murder husbands. Or something.
I do have a respect for what I refer to as the Sadeian - the conviction that the bad will be victorious and the innocent will be punished - as a satirical position as much as anything else. But there was a sense that Hannibal had become somehow domesticated and cuddly. Hannibal is a character who first gives himself away to us by killing a randomly chosen teenage girl by ripping her lungs out in order to get someone's attention. It's odd to be sentimental about a character like that.
But, like I said, I'd committed myself to following wherever it went, and it went there. So.
posted by Grangousier at 5:10 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
I do have a respect for what I refer to as the Sadeian - the conviction that the bad will be victorious and the innocent will be punished - as a satirical position as much as anything else. But there was a sense that Hannibal had become somehow domesticated and cuddly. Hannibal is a character who first gives himself away to us by killing a randomly chosen teenage girl by ripping her lungs out in order to get someone's attention. It's odd to be sentimental about a character like that.
But, like I said, I'd committed myself to following wherever it went, and it went there. So.
posted by Grangousier at 5:10 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Could you guys maybe post some links?
i sort of hate posting links to fic on mefi because almost always, always every single time, ALWAYS, whenever someone else posts a link to something and says THIS IS MY FAVOURITE and im like ok im gonna go read it, pretty much every single time i am like wow, this. this is bad. this is. the badness, wow. my eyes have seen a bad thing, did not want.
so i assume i have v different fic needs than everyone else here? idk?
but anyway here is a fic in which namor is suddenly, hilarribly, unexpectedly, courting steve and a also small octopus falls in love with tony
it's pretty gr8
posted by poffin boffin at 5:22 PM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]
i sort of hate posting links to fic on mefi because almost always, always every single time, ALWAYS, whenever someone else posts a link to something and says THIS IS MY FAVOURITE and im like ok im gonna go read it, pretty much every single time i am like wow, this. this is bad. this is. the badness, wow. my eyes have seen a bad thing, did not want.
so i assume i have v different fic needs than everyone else here? idk?
but anyway here is a fic in which namor is suddenly, hilarribly, unexpectedly, courting steve and a also small octopus falls in love with tony
it's pretty gr8
posted by poffin boffin at 5:22 PM on June 10, 2016 [8 favorites]
Literate cultures almost always have a folklore surrounding their canons. Often this is literally marginal, written in the margins of pages that are preserved by accident. But there is just too much of it to say that bored scholars and scribes were not having (sometimes dirty) fun speculating off the pages of their canonical works.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 5:30 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 5:30 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Whether we call those documents fanfic or not is a matter of semantics
If you're more interested in naming a work than understanding it in its context, then, yes, it is all a matter of semantics.
posted by octobersurprise at 5:54 PM on June 10, 2016
If you're more interested in naming a work than understanding it in its context, then, yes, it is all a matter of semantics.
posted by octobersurprise at 5:54 PM on June 10, 2016
The fanfic scenario I worry about is an author becoming aware of it and abandoning natural developments in their own universe to avoid seeming to appropriate the fanfic.
Most creators avoid this these days by just, y'know, having a general policy of not reading fanfic of their own works, and making a public statement to that effect.
posted by pie ninja at 5:54 PM on June 10, 2016
Most creators avoid this these days by just, y'know, having a general policy of not reading fanfic of their own works, and making a public statement to that effect.
posted by pie ninja at 5:54 PM on June 10, 2016
octobersurprise: The context of those works was explicitly addressed in the posts you've quoted.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:23 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:23 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
i sort of hate posting links to fic on mefi because almost always, always every single time, ALWAYS, whenever someone else posts a link to something and says THIS IS MY FAVOURITE and im like ok im gonna go read it, pretty much every single time i am like wow, this. this is bad. this is. the badness, wow. my eyes have seen a bad thing, did not want.
That's hilarious, I feel the same way about music here for the most part, so I learned to quit clicking on things and pretend they're all good and everyone has great taste. Generalities are better. Let's just say we like things in general and leave it at that.
posted by bongo_x at 6:38 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
That's hilarious, I feel the same way about music here for the most part, so I learned to quit clicking on things and pretend they're all good and everyone has great taste. Generalities are better. Let's just say we like things in general and leave it at that.
posted by bongo_x at 6:38 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm reading a star wars/mad max crossover right now while waiting for my giant neck needle full of steroids and the fact that ppl might be missing out on this glorious masterpiece because they think it might have gay cooties is tragic but at the end of the day idgaf about them
o.0
I must read this thing. Where can such a thing be found?
posted by Jalliah at 6:45 PM on June 10, 2016
o.0
I must read this thing. Where can such a thing be found?
posted by Jalliah at 6:45 PM on June 10, 2016
Seeing Namor's name up above reminds me of how much his name sounds like a Tolkien Elf. If I were a more writerly sort, I'd definitely be writing a fic with Atlantis as a sort of Doriath-beneath-the-waves, with Namor being descended from Beren and Luthien.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:59 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by tobascodagama at 6:59 PM on June 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Wow, yasaman, thank you so much for all the recs! I bookmarked a bunch of them. I'm especially excited to read the historically-focused ones! And I am definitely open to AUs, even though Cap isn't my #1 fandom. I... may or may not have written a novel-length X-Men AU that takes place in the early 1960s. Historical AUs are totally my jam.
posted by Anyamatopoeia at 8:40 PM on June 10, 2016
posted by Anyamatopoeia at 8:40 PM on June 10, 2016
Long Live Fandom: Fandom isn’t broken; it’s what’s fixing things.
posted by homunculus at 9:05 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by homunculus at 9:05 PM on June 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
I must read this thing. Where can such a thing be found?
here u go
posted by poffin boffin at 9:11 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
here u go
posted by poffin boffin at 9:11 PM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]
pls note the warnings though, and imo the dubcon should really read noncon instead.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:14 PM on June 10, 2016
posted by poffin boffin at 9:14 PM on June 10, 2016
Not that anyone cares, but I love fanfiction even though I never read it. I mean, I don't want to, and really what puts me off of it (beyond just having no time) is getting such an intimate view of the person who wrote it. A fanfiction story can embarrass me for all the reasons I embarrass myself, and that has nothing to do with the actual creator. I feel uncomfortable when I see something that makes me think of the part of myself that needs approval and positive attention, and fanfiction writers put their work out there where other people can actually see it, even if it's not up to everyone's standards. And I'm embarrassed, unfairly, because in this way I'm way more shy than they are.
I've had this notion lately that stuff like fanfiction is a resistance against having all our stories dictated to us by other people (as in movies, etc.) (and I'm an anthropology student, and I guess I should say that I've made this up having never actually studied folklore, based on how I feel about things). But it feels to me like it's taking the place of passing stories down in a social way, and I love that, I love that people are telling each other stories and forming social groups and encouraging each other because they love some characters from something. They're too creative and interested to just let things rest where the last book/movie/episode left off. And I mean - what we're seeing in fanfiction is the capacity for people everywhere to get enjoyment out of their own creativity, and I absolutely love that, and I love that they do it in spite of the insecure jerks like me who feel uncomfortable knowing that someone, somewhere, has some idea that doesn't click with me. But it works for them, and it works for other people, and they encourage each other and write stories for each other, and get to live creatively. That's awesome.
posted by teponaztli at 10:56 PM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
I've had this notion lately that stuff like fanfiction is a resistance against having all our stories dictated to us by other people (as in movies, etc.) (and I'm an anthropology student, and I guess I should say that I've made this up having never actually studied folklore, based on how I feel about things). But it feels to me like it's taking the place of passing stories down in a social way, and I love that, I love that people are telling each other stories and forming social groups and encouraging each other because they love some characters from something. They're too creative and interested to just let things rest where the last book/movie/episode left off. And I mean - what we're seeing in fanfiction is the capacity for people everywhere to get enjoyment out of their own creativity, and I absolutely love that, and I love that they do it in spite of the insecure jerks like me who feel uncomfortable knowing that someone, somewhere, has some idea that doesn't click with me. But it works for them, and it works for other people, and they encourage each other and write stories for each other, and get to live creatively. That's awesome.
posted by teponaztli at 10:56 PM on June 10, 2016 [10 favorites]
really what puts me off of it (beyond just having no time) is getting such an intimate view of the person who wrote it.
Ah, you're referring to what we in fandom call the Id Vortex, as it was coined by Ellen Fremedon..
Some kinds of fanfiction are explicitly used by fans as a way to delve deep into their own ids and play with all sorts of narrative tropes (including sexual ones) in a completely shameless way.
(... and jesus, that was 12 years ago. I am OLD.)
But not everyone writes for those purposes. Sokka Shot First upthread mentioned that for a hundred different ficwriters, you have a hundred different reasons for writing fic, and that's right on the money. And not all of those reasons are about exposing our sexual desires to the world. Me, I tend to veer away from super id-vortexy work. I don't want to know a writer's sexual fetishes: I want to know about the characters and the world.
But everyone has their own reasons for writing, and the end result is a shockingly wide variety of stories and styles. Which makes fanfiction pretty damned awesome, and nothing to be afraid of.
posted by suelac at 11:33 PM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
Ah, you're referring to what we in fandom call the Id Vortex, as it was coined by Ellen Fremedon..
Some kinds of fanfiction are explicitly used by fans as a way to delve deep into their own ids and play with all sorts of narrative tropes (including sexual ones) in a completely shameless way.
(... and jesus, that was 12 years ago. I am OLD.)
But not everyone writes for those purposes. Sokka Shot First upthread mentioned that for a hundred different ficwriters, you have a hundred different reasons for writing fic, and that's right on the money. And not all of those reasons are about exposing our sexual desires to the world. Me, I tend to veer away from super id-vortexy work. I don't want to know a writer's sexual fetishes: I want to know about the characters and the world.
But everyone has their own reasons for writing, and the end result is a shockingly wide variety of stories and styles. Which makes fanfiction pretty damned awesome, and nothing to be afraid of.
posted by suelac at 11:33 PM on June 10, 2016 [6 favorites]
So I haven't read that much fanfic but now there is no question I'm a 100% a fan of it existing. I did not realize how much I wanted (needed?) a story about what happens after Furiosa et al rise up to the citadel. Poffin Boffin's link led me to find one and even though I'm only on chapter 12 it's glorious. It's like the movie hasn't ended and I get more of it to play in my mind.
posted by Jalliah at 6:51 AM on June 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Jalliah at 6:51 AM on June 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
i've been following that for like 6 months now and it is SO GOOD
posted by poffin boffin at 9:59 AM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by poffin boffin at 9:59 AM on June 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
I don't mind most fanfic although some of it definitely squicks me the fuck out.
I also get a little weirded out by real people fan fic because it feels like a bit of an invasion. You might be visualizing Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint when you write a Harry/Ron fanfic but in my mind that's different than writing a Daniel/Rupert slashfic or a One Direction slashfic.
I am not saying you shouldn't do it but it crosses a line I feel shouldn't be crossed.
posted by vuron at 12:07 PM on June 11, 2016
I also get a little weirded out by real people fan fic because it feels like a bit of an invasion. You might be visualizing Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint when you write a Harry/Ron fanfic but in my mind that's different than writing a Daniel/Rupert slashfic or a One Direction slashfic.
I am not saying you shouldn't do it but it crosses a line I feel shouldn't be crossed.
posted by vuron at 12:07 PM on June 11, 2016
I also get a little weirded out by real people fan fic because it feels like a bit of an invasion. You might be visualizing Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint when you write a Harry/Ron fanfic but in my mind that's different than writing a Daniel/Rupert slashfic or a One Direction slashfic.
This stuff makes me pretty uncomfortable, too, and I go out of my way to avoid it. But I'm only really opposed to it when fans put it in front of the actors in question. To me, that's when it goes from 'I personally dislike this' to 'you need to stop what you're doing.'
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:13 PM on June 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
This stuff makes me pretty uncomfortable, too, and I go out of my way to avoid it. But I'm only really opposed to it when fans put it in front of the actors in question. To me, that's when it goes from 'I personally dislike this' to 'you need to stop what you're doing.'
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:13 PM on June 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
But they share a fair number of similarities including assuming familiarity with the source material and referencing the culture of the audience.
There are remarkably few works that don't do those things. Is The Prelude fanfic w/r/t Paradise Lost? Is The Aeneid w/r/t Homer? "The Waste Land" w/r/t a hodgepodge of myth and cultural fragments Eliot dug? I'm not sure what "insider fiction" in particular means but "derivative work written by and for people who appreciate an earlier work" casts about as wide a net as is conceivable.
And I think there really is something to be said for making the particularity of "fan culture" part of the application of "fanfic". Fandom is self-aware; one of the things about fans is that they think of themselves as fans—oder? I don't think Grendel is "Beowulf" fanfic not least because I don't think John Gardner is a Beowulf fan (and I'd be surprised if there's a Beowulf fandom, but stranger things have happened, I guess).
posted by kenko at 12:16 PM on June 11, 2016
There are remarkably few works that don't do those things. Is The Prelude fanfic w/r/t Paradise Lost? Is The Aeneid w/r/t Homer? "The Waste Land" w/r/t a hodgepodge of myth and cultural fragments Eliot dug? I'm not sure what "insider fiction" in particular means but "derivative work written by and for people who appreciate an earlier work" casts about as wide a net as is conceivable.
And I think there really is something to be said for making the particularity of "fan culture" part of the application of "fanfic". Fandom is self-aware; one of the things about fans is that they think of themselves as fans—oder? I don't think Grendel is "Beowulf" fanfic not least because I don't think John Gardner is a Beowulf fan (and I'd be surprised if there's a Beowulf fandom, but stranger things have happened, I guess).
posted by kenko at 12:16 PM on June 11, 2016
I don't think you can address the question "what is fanfic?" without addressing the question "what is a fan, and what is [a] fandom?", and I think those are questions that are to be understood with reference to the cultural formations in which the terms emerged. And the answer to the question "what is a fan?" in that light sure doesn't seem to be "someone who appreciates something", especially not if "appreciation" is given the quite broad sense it would have to have to accommodate all the claims that X is fanfic that have been made in this thread.
posted by kenko at 12:20 PM on June 11, 2016
posted by kenko at 12:20 PM on June 11, 2016
I recently started writing fanfiction (and then reading it) despite major misconceptions. I'd had it in my head for years that fanfic as a whole was lame, weird, and a waste of time - despite having read some really awesome Buffy fanfic back in the day, and despite personally doing lots of other things that might be considered lame weird wastes of time.
But the experience of writing it completely changed my mind.
I write nonfiction for a living, and I had been half-assedly trying to write fiction for years and getting nowhere. I'd taken a handful of fiction writing classes in high school and college and churned out some utter crap with basically no redeeming qualities - not quite poorly written, but totally uninspired and uninspiring. And what I realized when I started writing my first fanfic was, but shouldn't have been, a massive revelation: those stories were terrible because I didn't care about them.
Somehow, no writing teacher had ever managed to get this message across to me. I didn't know how much of a difference it would make to actually care about the story I was writing. Using characters I already cared about meant that I came in already invested in what would happen to the characters, in how they were portrayed, in maintaining a consistent atmosphere, and in actually finishing the damn thing.
And more than that, other people cared, too. They were also invested already - and so they actually read my story, while it was in progress, and gave me feedback and support and a sounding board for ideas I wasn't sure about.
I'm in the middle of my third fic now. I went back and read the first two, and honestly: I've improved, in the less-than-a-year I've been doing this. I'm still very obviously an amateur fiction writer, but now I'm an amateur fiction writer with 50,000+ words of story under my belt and a supportive audience for which to continue writing. And these days, it doesn't feel so insane to think that I might branch out and start writing original fiction, too.
I wish I'd found this stuff out ten years ago. But I couldn't have, because I just 'knew' that fanfic was lame, weird, and a waste of time.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:26 PM on June 11, 2016 [12 favorites]
But the experience of writing it completely changed my mind.
I write nonfiction for a living, and I had been half-assedly trying to write fiction for years and getting nowhere. I'd taken a handful of fiction writing classes in high school and college and churned out some utter crap with basically no redeeming qualities - not quite poorly written, but totally uninspired and uninspiring. And what I realized when I started writing my first fanfic was, but shouldn't have been, a massive revelation: those stories were terrible because I didn't care about them.
Somehow, no writing teacher had ever managed to get this message across to me. I didn't know how much of a difference it would make to actually care about the story I was writing. Using characters I already cared about meant that I came in already invested in what would happen to the characters, in how they were portrayed, in maintaining a consistent atmosphere, and in actually finishing the damn thing.
And more than that, other people cared, too. They were also invested already - and so they actually read my story, while it was in progress, and gave me feedback and support and a sounding board for ideas I wasn't sure about.
I'm in the middle of my third fic now. I went back and read the first two, and honestly: I've improved, in the less-than-a-year I've been doing this. I'm still very obviously an amateur fiction writer, but now I'm an amateur fiction writer with 50,000+ words of story under my belt and a supportive audience for which to continue writing. And these days, it doesn't feel so insane to think that I might branch out and start writing original fiction, too.
I wish I'd found this stuff out ten years ago. But I couldn't have, because I just 'knew' that fanfic was lame, weird, and a waste of time.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:26 PM on June 11, 2016 [12 favorites]
kenko: Context and type of texts in question were explicitly described in the post you quoted. Pulling "appreciation" out of context to argue about the Aeneid when I'm referencing evidence of ephemeral folklore surrounding literary canons just muddied the water.
I'm explicitly not comparing fanfic to anything in a literary canon. I'm comparing fan work to the crude jokes about farting saints that come to us from monks via margin notes in bibles.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:40 PM on June 11, 2016
I'm explicitly not comparing fanfic to anything in a literary canon. I'm comparing fan work to the crude jokes about farting saints that come to us from monks via margin notes in bibles.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 12:40 PM on June 11, 2016
I don't think Grendel is "Beowulf" fanfic not least because I don't think John Gardner is a Beowulf fan
Erm, probably not? But Grendel is a transformative work based on Beowulf. Much the same way that Goodnight, Room is a transformative work based on Goodnight Moon. I don't think Skogkatt would call herself a "fan" of Goodnight, Moon, though, because there's so little there to be a fan of.
Because one of the many things fanfiction can be is critical commentary, fanfiction does not require the writer to be a fan of the source text, any more than an essayist commenting on Wuthering Heights is required to approve of Heathcliff and Cathy's romance. Which is how you get stories like The Kids Aren't All Right, which I defy anyone to tell me is written by someone who is a fan of the MCU.
All that aside, I wouldn't call Grendel fanfiction, because John Gardner got paid for it. My personal definition has always been purely functional: if you can get paid for it, it's not fanfiction.
posted by suelac at 2:44 PM on June 11, 2016
Erm, probably not? But Grendel is a transformative work based on Beowulf. Much the same way that Goodnight, Room is a transformative work based on Goodnight Moon. I don't think Skogkatt would call herself a "fan" of Goodnight, Moon, though, because there's so little there to be a fan of.
Because one of the many things fanfiction can be is critical commentary, fanfiction does not require the writer to be a fan of the source text, any more than an essayist commenting on Wuthering Heights is required to approve of Heathcliff and Cathy's romance. Which is how you get stories like The Kids Aren't All Right, which I defy anyone to tell me is written by someone who is a fan of the MCU.
All that aside, I wouldn't call Grendel fanfiction, because John Gardner got paid for it. My personal definition has always been purely functional: if you can get paid for it, it's not fanfiction.
posted by suelac at 2:44 PM on June 11, 2016
To spell it out in bullet-points, we have "works" (broadly defined) that were:
1. clearly derivative
2. informal
3. likely written for a small audience of peers.
Usually we don't see much of this stuff unless the person is a biographical superstar (Benjamin Franklin) or you're digging deep into historical archives.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 3:42 PM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
1. clearly derivative
2. informal
3. likely written for a small audience of peers.
Usually we don't see much of this stuff unless the person is a biographical superstar (Benjamin Franklin) or you're digging deep into historical archives.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 3:42 PM on June 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Yeah, this is why I tend to be a little leery of claiming the likes of Paradise Lost or The Aeneid are fanfiction. Fandom/fanfiction comes out of a specific context for a specific audience, and has its own norms and conventions that aren't necessarily easy to parse from the outside
There's some merit to reserving the term fanfiction for modern day derivative works, mostly for context, but reading Paradise Lost or the Aeneid or Divine Comedy certainly depends on familiarity with norms and conventions as well as context, mythology, religion, history and all these nice things that offer texture and depth to these works.
posted by ersatz at 4:49 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
There's some merit to reserving the term fanfiction for modern day derivative works, mostly for context, but reading Paradise Lost or the Aeneid or Divine Comedy certainly depends on familiarity with norms and conventions as well as context, mythology, religion, history and all these nice things that offer texture and depth to these works.
posted by ersatz at 4:49 PM on June 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
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