schmevil

I hate the fic labels het, slash, femslash and gen.

Het and slash function as warnings: here there be m/f, f/f, or m/m relationship stuff; enter at your own risk. Or alternately, as beacons: slight femslash, come one, come all. Who cares what the story is actually about? They also have the effect of seeming to change the content of a story. "I don't read femslash." And so you miss out on a 300,000 word swashbuckling adventure, because Anna Maria and Elizabeth Swann happen to share a few kisses. "I don't read gen." And so you miss out on a satisfying story about lifelong friendship that has all the hallmarks of the het, slash and femslash stories you enjoy. The romantic labels het, slash and femslash, trump all other content tags save warnings. The story is het before it is horror; femslash before it is a character study.

Gen, in contrast, is a categorical ghetto for misfit stories - stories that are none of the above. It's a category that's simultaneous too wide, and too narrow, to mean much of anything. There's an unending argument over how we can define gen, and that is because gen has no actual content: it's defined negatively. Gen ISN'T het, slash or femslash. Gen is everything else.

Let me throw in some anecdotal evidence now: most fic is not out and out romance. Shipping is a major component of fic fandom, but it's not everything. A romantic subplot in an adventure story =/= a romance story. The appearance of a romantic relationship in a horror story, does not make it a romance, and it does not make it any less of a horror story. There are an awful lot of first time stories, and fluffy romances, but there are tons and tons of stories that deal with ships, without being romances. So why is it important to label a story het, slash, femslash or gen, in addition to pairing and character tags?

There was a time where slash was a genre unto itself, I think. If you read the really old stuff, slash seemed to indicate not just the presence of a m/m relationship, but that what you are about to read, draws on a certain subset of story types and tropes. Slash and femslash are so much bigger now - they are whatever they want to be. A story about gingerbread dudes falling in love can be slash. A story about girls fighting back the apocalypse, and occasionally having sex, can be femslash. So is there still genre called slash, or a genre called femslash? (Seriously people, is there? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this).

As a reader, I find it much more useful to know what kind of story I'm about to read, than to have two different notifications of the genitals contained therein. Femslash, Buffy/Faith, Summary. But What the hell is the story about? Is the Buffy/Faith relationship central to the story - is it about the relationship? If not, then throw me a bone, in the form of a genre indicator. A hint about what tropes you're drawing on. And for god's sake, I get it, Buffy/Faith does indeed imply hot lesbian action. I don't need the reminder.

I know that some people love these labels to death, for whatever reason, but I think that the changing landscape of fic fandom makes them increasingly meaningless. But that, of course, is just my opinion.

Yes, I know you're all tired of it, but swanswan has an good post on the subject. I've already said that I do warn, and that it isn't a hardship for me, but there are other perspectives. Probably the best presentation I've seen of the 'artistic integrity' argument.

We're a community of adults. The idea of community has been invoked in a particular way in this debate; primarily, by the pro-warning side, as a way to evoke empathy: we are a community of (mostly) women, some of whom are survivors of horrific events, and we should take care of each other. I think that's laudable, but I think it's only part of what community should really mean. My fear is that "community" becomes shorthand for a group of like-minded, enlightened individuals determined to stamp out injustice. I believe that the "we" of fandom is a whole lot more complicated, fractured, and complex than that.

...

The blanket-warning argument is predicated on the suppression of the high artistic impulse in fandom, because art is not moral. I know that sounds WILDLY pretentious, but I believe it. There are valid artistic creations within fandom, and there are people who care a lot about the presentation and delivery of their work in ways which may not always fit in with a warnings culture. I do not think that they should be asked to give up the right to make what they want to make and present their work how they want to present it.

All of my fic is archived at martianhouse. In my policies sticky post, I note that: "I mark stories as Adult if they contain violence or sexual situations that eljay wouldn't want minors stumbling across. I also warn for canon compliance (Pre OotP, S2/3). If you think a story needs a warning, let me know."

I'm extremely lazy when it comes to labeling fic. When posting to a comm, I follow their header rules. At my own fic journal I try to keep things to a minimum. I consider my stories to be 'adult' or not 'adult', with no ratings in between, and I try to make it obvious why I consider a given fic to be 'adult'. I inform my readers about canon compliance, and depending on the context, character death. I've warned for torture. I would warn for rape and dub-con, if I wrote it.

That's my standard practice, but I want to emphasize this part of the note: "If you think a story needs a warning, let me know." Because if you tell me that my not warning for x story element hurt you, then I will put up a warning, no questions asked.

I don't spend a lot of time thinking about headers. I don't especially care about headers. Give me an idea of what's going on in your story, and about how long it is, and I'll be happy. However, as someone without triggers, I have the luxury of not caring. Reading about a fictional rape won't lead to my self-harming, or being unable to function for several hours. So again, in all seriousness, if you think a story needs a warning, let me know. I'm not interested in hurting my fellow fans.

I am also completely uninterested in coddling my fellow fans. Don't expect lengthy explanatory notes, warnings for naughty language, or for me to reveal just how AU my AUs are. It's not going to happen. I think my readers are smart enough to know their own tastes and limits. I also know that sometimes even the best summary can be misleading. Sometimes readers do get triggered. The solution is imho, fairly simple: warn for the most common triggers, and add warnings when my readers tell me they're necessary. If warnings would be spoilery, I might hide them behind whiteout text. That's how I balance the ~artistic integrity~ of my fic, with the needs of my readers.

What's your balance?

Legal battle over Watchmen movie

Film studio Twentieth Century Fox has applied to a Los Angeles court to block the release of Watchmen, based on the comic books written by Alan Moore. [...] Fox spokesman Gregg Brilliant said it planned to stop the release of the movie and "any related Watchmen media that violate our copyright interests in that property".

BBC News
August 19, 2008

Gorram. Everbody wants to get paid.

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Randomly - Did you know that Rosanne has a blog? It doesn't suck - I don't agree with everything she says, but she totally owns her opinions. **ETA** She is so on drugs and it's fascinating.

And randomly the second - I'm heading to my LCS today or tomorrow to pick up Jonathan Hickman's Network News, and Tori Amos' Comic Book Tattoo. Anyone have some more recs for me?

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Now for the meat of this entry:

Cory Doctorow talks about the OTW, comparing it to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. OTW is really getting a lot of press for a fan org.

The other thing is that the CBLDF is, itself, a kind of model for the kind of organizations that other people who are involved in other dangerous cultural acts are turning to. For example, Naomi Novik, she won the Campbell Award last year for best new science fiction writer. She comes out of the fanfic culture of people who make stories out of other people’s universes—this is something that’s pretty common in comics, and obviously, the shared universe is a real common piece of comic storytelling, in the way that comics have always taken place. And even where you have unauthorized, thinly-veiled shared universes—you have things like The Watchmen and so on. So Naomi and her friends, they want to defend the rights of people who are involved in fanfiction, because this is as old as culture, the retelling of stories to suit your own needs.

She said she wanted to make a CBLDF for fanfiction, and that just conveyed so much in just a little phrase. So what the CBLDF has actually done is provided us with a useful vocabulary for describing a certain kind of advocacy organization that’s small, incredibly nimble and intelligent in the way it conducts itself, committed to an important cause, and really fueled by creators and the work they do. So I think for that reason as well, I’m really game for doing stuff for the group.

Cory makes a case for fanfiction being a similar kind of artistic endeavor to writing in shared universes like comics (or if you extend it further television, particularly franchises) - the primary differences, as he sees it are:

1. Experience. Not talent - experience. He doesn't distinguish between pro/fan writers in terms of capability, but he does say that on average, pro writers tend to be more skilled.

Pro writers also operate within an immense infrastructure of editors, publishers and promoters, where they learn to write what sells, or they don't get to be pro writers anymore. I mean, of course there are some incredibly skilled fan writers, but there are also bajillions of us for whom fandom is our first experience with creative writing. And there are lots of us who are more interested in telling our stories, than in developing our skills. Pro writers don't have that option.

What I really like about this point is that Doctorow is committing the fallacy of talent=success, or that success=talent. And that therefore, lack of success=lack of talent.

2. Community. Internet fic, as he points out, is a very public activity. Much more public and interactive than say, writing Action Comics, where the fans only see selected previews and the final product.

Even old school zine fic encouraged much more back and forth between writers and readers, writers and writers, and readers and readers, all on a (more of less) level playing field, than pro writers are likely to experience. My anecdotal evidence suggests that fic is increasingly being treated as a communal experience, especially on eljay where there's very little demarcation between blog-space and story-space (ie fic happens in comments, sometimes even to blog-style entries). So you get tiny ficlets in response to other peoples ficlets, all part of a story-conversation that happens much faster than would be possible in pro writing circles. It's also a conversation in which the more and less skilled can equally participate.. Contributions won't be valued equally, but we technically have equal opportunity to chime in with our say.

3. Subject matter. Doctorow points out that a lot of fic is fundamentally concerned with three things: sex, politics and sexual politics. This is part of why copyright and trademark owners get nervous about fic - it strays into territory which might, if they were to go there themselves, negatively impact marketability.

This is an interesting one. The sex part is easy (fanfic is for porn!), politics less so. Is a fifteen year old Harry/Ginny shipper really engaging in political activity/making a political statement? Well, yes. It's kind of hard to get away from politics. *g*

There's the politics of the medium, the politics of the activity and the politics of the messge. We don't all write fic with the intention of doing politics or making the same kind of statement, but even the most innocuous fic is political.

fluterbev wrote an interesting post about feedback as currency. She's got an excellent look at how different the writing-feedback equation looks from the other side. Some writers view feedback as payment for a job well done. Bev says:

And few readers ever seem to express their giving of feedback in terms of it being payment. Fanfic is freely available on the net, and anyone can read it. Why, unless they have a particular investment in doing so, should readers pay for it terms of feedback? And if stories are read via fanzines instead of on the net, the reader has already paid a monetary sum to read it, so why should they pay again by sending feedback?

musesfool posted her views on feedback. Vic says:

But the fact of the matter is, no one is under any obligation to read, to finish, to like, or to comment on any piece of fan work they come across. It's really awesome that people do, and it can encourage writers/artists to produce more stories/art/whatever. But an obligation, as in, I created this and you must pay for it now since you read and enjoyed it? No. (The exception being gift exchanges where the fic/art/vid etc. was created for a specific person, often to their specific requests. Then there is an obligation, as there is with any gift, to say thank you, at the very least.)

And there's lots of talk about how we do this for free and don't get any compensation yada yada, and I... don't know that that's necessarily true. I get the compensation of knowing I wrote a story, I made a thing that didn't exist before, and 99% of the time, it's a thing that makes me happy. I post that thing because I hope it will make other people happy. Sometimes, it really does. Sometimes... not so much.

destina has a list of 23 Reasons Readers Don't Give Feedback. I like these ones:

22. Because they don't see your story as a gift to them, and they bristle at the notion they are somehow obligated to thank you in return. In fact? They probably think their feedback to you is the gift. And who's to say they are wrong? Not me.

23. They see writing feedback as a chore. Certainly writing a story can be a chore sometimes, for some writers; why would writing feedback be any different? If fandom is supposed to be about having fun, it makes no sense to do what doesn't make you happy.

There is so much confusion about the writing-feedback equation. Personally, I read so much more fic than I write and only feedback a tiny percentage of what I read. The reasons for that are aptly covered by those posts, but writers, make no mistake - you will never find a Unified Theory of Feedback, and you will never, ever find a reliable way to compel readers to post more feedback. And you should seriously stop trying. There's nothing more loathsome imo than attempts to make what is by nature a gift (produced freely, for free) into an obligation. You can't add on after the fact, a moral imperative to feedback, when it wasn't in the initial contract - you posted your fic openly, online, and perhaps requested feedback, but didn't require it. Therefore, you cannot position feedback as payment, obligation or imperative. It must be as much an unlooked for gift as the fic itself. I say must, because those demands for feedback-or-no-more chapters will always get some response, but are imo ultimately corrosive to the writer-reader relationship. Not only must the reader perform on command, but now the writer must too - having received feedback s/he must produce that next chapter, or renege on the fannish contract. And that's just fail.

Bev says that the reader isn't obligated to write feedback, unless s/he's personally invested in doing so, for whatever reason.

I am personally invested in writing feedback. I may not have been writing much of it lately, (for reasons that are unimportant at this juncture, or however the quote goes), but I enjoy giving feedback. I really like talking about fic. There aren't many places in fandom, particularly eljay fandom, where it's cool to talk about people's fic. There's some sort of invisible line between general meta, and discussing individual stories, outside of the writer's own forum. Comment threads are probably the best place on eljay to have in-depth fic-talk. I also really like talking fic with writers - finding out what went on behind the scenes, what their process was, that kind of thing. So feedback? Is win win for me.

As I said, I haven't been writing much feedback lately, but I've come into some free time and I'm setting a challenge for myself. Back when I was posting on Fiction Alley Park, we had this club where you set yourself feedbacking challenges, and then posted on the challenge thread, when, where and to whom you fbed. If it was more generally interesting fb, you might repost it for other people to read. The point was to a) generate fic-talk; b) share your appreciation with the writers; and c) engage in a little community development by getting some multi-directional conversations going. Oh yeah, and have fun. I don't know if this club still exists - it's been years since I posted at FAP - but while I participated, it was great.

I'm declaring the month of May to be my personal Feedback Challenge.

My goal is to write 30 pieces of feedback of 100 or more words, exclusive of story quotes.

I will post about my progress in this journal and tag the entries 'may feedback challenge'.

I might reproduce the fb here, if I think it would make for an interesting discussion, after asking for permission (as a courtesy) from the author.

This challenge isn't about paying fic writers back. It's about sharing my appreciation for their hard work, and indulging my interest in talking about fic.

I would be delighted if other people set themselves a Feedback Challenge, because I want to hear what other people have to say about fic. *I have a tiny flist, so if you think this is an interesting idea, or you think your flist would be interested, please R+R pimp.*

ETA for clarification: you set the terms of your own challenge.

I have been fannish for as long as I can recall. My first fandom was Star Trek. When I was in grade school my friends and I would play Star Trek during recess. We did other stuff to, playing house, skipping, hopscotch and what have you, but Star Trek was one of the games that all of us, boy and girl could all get behind.

We all had one or two roles that we stuck with. My best friend (we’re bff even today) always played Dr. Crusher, and another close friend (who I still hang out with regularly) played Wesley. Let me tell you, they were the most ridiculous appearing and most dysfunctional play-family I have ever had the pleasure to encounter. Our other friends Big Michael and Little Michael played, respectively, Worf and Data. I always played Tasha Yar.

I still remember how upset I was when she was killed by that oil slick punkass.

I don’t remember how old I was when I wrote my first fanfic, but it was Spock/OFC and I wrote it in my head while watching ToS in my older brother J’s brand new apartment. It was the first time he was living alone and without a roommate, and he’d invited us over, I suppose to inspect his new space. Make sure it was up to our standards. The things I remember most vividly are his wicked leather beanbag chair and his (at the time) state of the art tv.

While my parents and J discussed rent, utilities and the economics of KD, my brother G and I watched Star Trek. It was the episode where Spock goes under cover as a Romulan and has a flirtation with that badass Romulan commander. As much as I understood that as a Vulcan, logic was essential to him, and he was uninterested in overt displays of emotion, that episode gave me ideas.

I decided that Spock needed a girl.

The Romulan commander was great, they were almost perfect for each other, but it could never work out, what with his being in Star Fleet and her being a Romulan officer. They might end up having to kill each other!

No, what Spock needed was a girl who had all the brilliance and passion of a Romulan, but none of the political issues. What he needed, I decided, was someone interesting. Someone compelling, beautiful and unique!

I can’t remember her name but she had purple eyes, was a deadly hand-to-hand combatant and was a Vulcan from the time before logic, who was trapped in Spock’s time after an unfortunate accident involving solar flairs and the Enterprise’s warp drives. At first, she and Spock wouldn’t get along – they were from two different world’s… er … time’s, after all, but they couldn’t deny their connection for long. Not with Spock’s Pon Farr fast approaching!

Then it faded to black because sex grossed me right the fuck out, back then. And thus was born my first Mary Sue.

Dirty Thoughts Not About Snapeboy

Spent the afternoon with a friend who will soon be leaving the country (it's like a plague, I swear). She wanted to see Mean Girls and I indulged her, despite wanting to see Denzel lose his shit in Man On Fire (dammit!). She went on and on about how incredibly hot Lindsy Lohan is and after seeing the movie, I agreed. Then she revealed that LL is in fact sixteen.

omgdirtythoughtsiamunclean!

This is the second most traumatising ogling of my life. Runner up to the time I hit on a coworker who turned out to be fifteen and was still interested. So interested she gave me her number, told me to call her and gave me fuck-me eyes. x_X

Mean Girls, btw, is, moment for moment, the slashiest movie I've seen in ages.

Snapeboy is moving to France next month and we decided that it would therefore be a good idea to not see each other. Not seeing each other seems to consist of seeing each other several times a week, and scrupulously avoiding personal bubble contact, except when we don't. This is so like the last year of my sex life that I wouldn't notice the difference if it weren't for the increasingly irritating sexual frustration. He kills my zen in a (not) good way.

Feedback In Fandom

artimusdin posted a Snarry pic in hpart. Snape looks vaguely Asian and Harry has brown hair. saeva makes a few comments on characterization and canon accuracy. The thread quickly devolves into a discussion of what does and does not constitute constructive criticism, and the limits of artistic freedom.

I die. The laughter kills me.

Fic

Here's my remix of lifeinwords's Holes, and while I'm happy with what I did in terms of remixing it, I'm not sure that I did the material justice. It cannot stand alone - you've got to read the original, before or after, or the remix is painfully obscure. And while I never intended it to be read (exactly) as a standalone, that pains me. A remix should be a completely separate fic, but I thought it would be more interesting to write a kind of supplement to the original, looking at the idea of holes. I would do that by not talking about stuff like why Draco and Harry are locked in the dungeon. I'd leave clues and the reader would have to think about the nature of the holes in the characters. I'm kind of thinking that I ended up with some blandly, pretentious verbiage. So now I'm thinking extended remix, featuring Bellatrix, Snape and Dumbledore in memories. Any helpful thoughts to share?

I'm having the worst time finishing fics right now. I have several half-finished one-shots, a multitude of vignettes in need of polish and a couple of chapters with gigantic holes in them. I know exactly where I want to go, but not where I need to go. This is worse than total block. I've tried making plans, charts and lists but no dice. What do you do when you're having trouble finishing up a fic? What are your tricks?