neil-gaiman:

I’m with Scalzi on this.

My gut reaction to this new Amazon thing is abject horror. I’m posting Scalzi’s thing here b/c he raises some good points.

I’m not ready to take a real stance on this. I’m under-informed and there’s no way to know in what kind of direction this experiment is going to go. But from what little I’ve read so far it seems to me that the “benefit” to the author is negligible, and what’s more I find the idea of royalties for fanfiction…well I find it grates at my idealistic view of what constitutes the very foundation of fanfiction.

What I’ve always found so cool about fanfiction is that it’s a form of creative expression (and one that people work very hard on) that thrives on no real currency other than love. And that’s it. We love a story. And we want to participate in that story. We want to make it better. We want to fit it around ourselves and our world views and so we revise and we discuss and we argue and we don’t get paid, but we get ideas around.

I don’t want publishers sticking their noses into this wonderful (though very imperfect) world of mine. I don’t want them telling me what is too vulgar, what is too strange, what is too too. Fanfiction’s position outside of the mainstream media is what makes it the playground for “inappropriate” ideas and “queer” ideas, “new” ideas, “bad” ideas, “counter-cultural”, and “unacceptable” ideas.

Fanfiction, if I may take a wild liberty for a minute, is like a modern art movement without the pressures and obstacles of being a starving Bohemian playwright. It’s just unmitigated creation and expression. And some of it’s terrible. And some of it’s porn. But it’s not harming anyone. It’s not oppressing anyone. It’s not stripping anybody of dignity or rights. What’s more, don’t tell me to be ashamed of my sexuality. Or my desire for sex. Or my desire to read or write about sex.

Don’t tell me that sex is shameful, I don’t buy it. And don’t tell me what’s acceptable and what isn’t.

As a group, fanfiction authors have already established a code. We’ve found our parameters and we adjust them as we find we need to.

Maybe in the end this will turn out to be a good thing. Maybe it will bring to light some of the problems in our current mainstream media. Maybe it will start conversations about queer-baiting and misogyny in television.

But I also worry about what we’re going to lose if fanfiction becomes a market. I’m worried about the bottlenecking of good ideas for the sake of profit. And I’m worried about the philosophical loss; the thrill and the beauty of this participatory culture that is in many ways the very embodiment of “art for art’s sake”. I worry it will fall by the wayside, as so many have.

We write in these worlds because we love these worlds. And sometimes I have heard us asking for voice. Asking for a sympathetic ear. Or a megaphone. A column in a “respectable” news source that doesn’t paint us as a fringe group of weirdos. I’ve heard us asking for changes. And I’ve heard us asking for help.

I’ve never heard us asking for money. The great advantage of this day and this technological age, is that we don’t have to be aristocrats to be critics or creators anymore. We don’t need a dowry and a room of our own. Not in the same way that we used to. I barely make my rent. I can barely fix my car. I can still write and have my writing seen and discussed. I don’t even need to be agreed with. I don’t need to be liked. And I don’t need to worry that the CW doesn’t think a serious non-heterosexual love story will sell.

We get to do this thing that we do out of love alone. And I guess I’d just always hoped that was always going to be enough.

(via ununpentium)

ravingliberal:

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ravingliberal:

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because it’s Saturday morning and I can do what I want, that’s why.

And I was thinking about how, as far as fanfiction and it’s “rules” can be considered the structure for a community, fanfiction writers engage in an incredibly contentious community. If you look at the rules on any livejournal…

I wonder about this myself. Patch and I talk about it, and she said that you would at least be able to see if a book contained rape, etc. because it would be mentioned in reviews of the book… but I don’t know.

I’m a careful warner in fanfic, because we do write on some really sensitive topics and I don’t want someone thinking they’re about to read fluff and getting, IDK, self-harm or something. On the other hand, it does minimize the emotional impact of those scenes, knowing ahead of time to look for them.

I always warn because it’s the polite and considerate thing to do in fandom, and I greatly appreciate people taking the time to read. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to warn, though. 

Sometimes you can see if there’s rape in a book. But again it depends on how prevalent it is within the context of the story’s greater theme. If you’re reading The Lovely Bones or Lolita, yes, you will have been warned ahead of time about rape, underaged themes, etc, because it’s a huge part of the book. 

If you’re reading, say, Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier, or something more popular even, House of Silk, the new Sherlock Holmes novel by Anthony Horowitz that made a huge smash b/c it was endorsed by the ACD estate, you don’t get any warning at all that there might be upsetting themes within. (And I won’t tell you what themes are touched on by those books either, because that’s spoilers, and oh hey look, there’s you point.)

Fanfiction sort of necessarily covers itself with spoilers, thus removing some of the fun of the twists and turns of a story, in order to avoid harming or offending its readers. And I have definitely before, as you mentioned, found myself in a position where I was wondering how I could keep a twist intact without also breaking the rules of fic-warning? And it’s those times when I find myself discontented with all this tip-toeing. All this careful prodding across common ground. Because it takes away some of my freedom to just shove a reader off a plot-cliff; (which as a writer I cannot deny my desire to do.) 

But then, how much of that are we really losing? Look at projects like Redemption Road (a fan run, fan written season of SPN). Warnings everywhere. And yet they still manage to surprise their readers, to bring them to tears. Clearly, on an emotional level, fanfiction still manages to engross and surprise. And, as burningfairytales said, the spoilers are, on the one hand, an opportunity to be completely honest, and thus to write about subjects we might otherwise avoid. 

So what’s being lost and what’s being gained? 

I think the main that that is being gained is maintaining a social contract. Fandom is exclusively self-policing, fandom has developed its own culture, and new fic writers especially (which I still consider myself to be) need to respect the culture they’re writing in.

I came into fanfiction writing in a sort of ass-backwards way. I didn’t start off with any involvement in fandom prior to beginning writing fanfiction; Patch grabbed me by the wrist about a year and a half ago and pulled me off a cliff with her. I still don’t feel like I have a good handle on fandom and fandom culture sometimes. 

My background is in RPG writing, specifically horror RPGs. RPG writing is a lot like fanfiction writing, almost deceptively so, sometimes. Both involve writing within someone else’s pre-established worlds while observing their canon and universe-governing rules. The big differences are the places where RPG writing is more flexible (you really are making a mini-world with any given supplement and you shape the canon as you go) and less flexible (but no, seriously, you HAVE to observe the canon and follow those universe-governing rules, or your editor is kicking it back at you). RPG materials don’t tend to have very detailed warnings, either; surely you know what you’re getting into when you pick up (or these days, download) a dark fantasy/horror supplement. 

Now, White Wolf, the company I wrote for, does have a line specifically for the much darker/adult content materials. Black Dog is the imprint they use for anything that is extremely graphic (sexually or violently) or disturbing (including Charnal Houses of Europe: The Shoah which I still consider to be the bravest supplement ever published by an RPG company; addressing the Holocaust in a dark fantasy/horror setting is beyond risky). Still, other than a “this work contains potentially disturbing situations,” the warnings are pretty minimal. The genre and imprint are enough to let you know to proceed with caution.

The first time I started looking at the fanfiction communities, I was surprised by the type and extent of warnings on fic. Warnings for sex (especially gay sex)? Shouldn’t that be inferred from the pairing and rating? Warnings for violence/blood? Wasn’t that implied by the “genre: horror” label? The trigger warnings made more sense, but again, coming from a background where the genre stands alone as the warning, I was surprised at the depth/extent of warnings on fic. However, it wasn’t my culture; I was the outsider coming into it, not a long-term member influencing it. 

We warn extensively. We joke sometimes that we made an art form out of warnings on our zombie apocalypse Glee fic, Dead in Ohio. We used the warnings almost as a summary, and I don’t think we lost anything by doing so. I think there are stories were the very act of including a warning gives away the resolution of a plot twist, however.

On the one hand, I agree with you about fandom being a safe space and that giving someone enough warning/control to be able pick and choose exactly what they read is a wonderful escape from some of the less pleasant day-to-day realities. And yeah, because I can’t control who looks at my fic, warnings are a good CYA if a minor chooses to read them.

I think the other side of that coin (and my god, the metaphor mixing!) though is that it goes too far sometimes and the result is Special Delicate Snowflake Syndrome and people who are indignant you didn’t warn for every possible trigger, wherein “trigger” in this instance really means “something I don’t like.” How far do we have to go to create a safe space and what’s an acceptable level of warning? Fandom culture seems to be trending towards more and more warnings, towards greater DETAIL in the warnings, and I think we’re approaching a point where some groups’ expectation level for warning does result in a loss to any sort of built up, plot twists, etc. in a story. Maybe this is a trend that waxes/wanes; I haven’t been in a fandom long enough to attempt to make any sort of authoritative statement. 

What’s the line and how far do we go? Is there an acceptable line between respecting/protecting the readers and deciding for them what they should/shouldn’t be offended by? 

I sometimes also just wonder,  beyond even “Special Snowflake Syndrome” if there’s not some social responsibility to ourselves that we are undercutting. Because as you say there are ratings and there are genre labels on fic sites (or in communities on LJ). And further, on sites like AO3, there are archive warnings: “Graphic Violence”, “Major Character Death”. So why do we feel the need to warn further? 

What worries me about the most specifically, is that we end up labeling the difference between even what should be benign things. We give the pairing, we specify whether it is “het” or “slash”, and while I’m really pleased that both labels do and would appear (as opposed to “slash” alone, thus distinguishing it as outside the norm) by labeling them we’re still treating them as fundamentally different. 

I don’t even know if that’s a legitimate concern, or if perhaps there’s some condition within the fandom which better accounts for it. Or if the simple existence of slash (which none can doubt is pervasive) sort of makes up for this difference labeling. 

But it was something I wanted to bring up because your questions and concerns made me think of it. 

By labeling everything, aren’t we necessarily outlining differences and giving them importance and power?

burningfairytales:

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because it’s Saturday morning and I can do what I want, that’s why.

And I was thinking about how, as far as fanfiction and it’s “rules” can be considered the structure for a community, fanfiction writers engage in an incredibly contentious community. If you look at the rules on any livejournal…

Well, for one thing; I think we have the opportunity to warn people exactly of what they’re going to get when they read our fanfiction, because we do it for free.

And yes, I’m calling it an opportunity, because I think it’s pretty cool that we can be so absolutely honest about it. See, the thing is, if an author would write things like that on the back of their book, there would be a chance that less people buy it, right?

But as a writer of fanfiction, we don’t exactly get paid. No one forces us to put any warnings on what we write, and the fact that we still do it anyway… I dunno, I think that just proves how good a “community” we are. I’d like to think of it as not being apologeticor fearing misunderstandings, but rather as being considerate :)

Freeeee. I agree. Because we don’t have to worry about revenue, we’re existing in a different context than paid, published authors. Which gives us a different set of responsibilities as well as opportunities. 

And perhaps, by putting the big contents label on the things we write, we are freeing ourselves up to write about more and different things. Because we can just go through a list and skip over the tags that we don’t like, we can also write the grotesque, and the shocking with less fear of being lynched by online mobs of morally offended readers. And, by virtue of being able to explore these taboo subjects, we get to start conversations that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. 

So, on the one hand we seem to be constraining our ability to surprise a reader. On the other hand, we get to say other things we might have considered too “beyond the pale” otherwise. 

As far as consideration vs fear is concerned; I think we are considerate as a whole. We don’t want to offend anyone. We want to make sure that the fic community is a place where people can go without worrying about being smacked in the face with the unpleasant or the unwanted. I do still hold to fear as a motivator, however. Perhaps it is not the ONLY motivator. But there is the shame to consider. There is the fact that this community began as a haven for marginal groups and desires. That in the beginning it was undergound zines. It was people who wanted to talk and write the things that weren’t being talked or written about in pop-culture without also being condemned. 

because it’s Saturday morning and I can do what I want, that’s why. 

And I was thinking about how, as far as fanfiction and it’s “rules” can be considered the structure for a community, fanfiction writers engage in an incredibly contentious community. If you look at the rules on any livejournal community, or you read the tags scrolling through AO3, in general we are not just careful, we are obsessive about warning our potential readers what they are in for. 

If there’s rape, incest, violence, any kind of trigger that might not be any particular persons particular cup of fantasy, if there’s a pairing we think someone might not like, if there’s character death, we are SO CAREFUL about being absolutely up front. We have more guidelines in place than the ALA and they’re all designed to avoid miscommunication. 

If you buy a book you’re not going to get that kind of advanced warning. Unless the entire story is about rape, or incest, or torture, you won’t know until you get to that page in the book. You’re never going to get the author giving a list of things that might upset you on the back. 

What baffles me is that somehow, still, both inside and outside the community, fanfiction writers get beef for being insensitive maniacs. We have written about characters in ways other than they were portrayed on television. The betrayal! We have exaggerated the importance of “secondary” characters to our own porny purposes. The indignity!

But it’s not as though we are hiding gay porn in anybody’s apple pie. We are really the only creative community that practically apologizes up front and then labels our works exhaustively, as if the contents could be seriously harmful if ingested unmindfully.  

Dean and Castiel: A sex story. Warning: may contain gay sex and peanuts. 

So where is all the contention coming from? 

Follow up questions: Is it right that we should be inherently so careful and apologetic? Because we are counter-cultural, are we therefore required to turn ourselves inside out and upside down for inspection? The rhetoric is less apologetic, especially internally (I think about the animosity between the Winchester purists and the Destiel fandom) but the structure of the fanfiction community shows how much we fear misunderstandings. 

Why? 

snakeslide replied to your post:WHICH ONE OF YA’LL BROKE MY COVER?

LAST NIGHT MY DAD TURNED TO ME AND SAID ‘the author of this book actually started out writing fanfiction, you know, like you do’ AND I WAS LIKE HOLY FFFFF WHEN DID YOU EVENNNNNN. So basically, I feel your pain.

WHAT IF THEY ALL KNOW?

WHAT IF THEY ALL HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN

So my dad just called, a little tipsy and happy as a goat, to ask my how life was going. 

And thirty minutes into the conversation he says: 

“So how is your fanfiction going these days? Still making people on the internet cry?” 

…I kept my cool. I laughed and was appropriately witty and self deprecating. 

But inside I was like WHO TOLD YOU HOW DID YOU FIND OUT OH MY GOD HAVE YOU KNOWN ALL THIS TIME AND ALL THOSE YEARS I WAS ON THE COUCH WITH  MY COMPUTER AND YOU ASKED WHAT I WAS DOING AND I SAID “WRITING” YOU TOTALLY KNEW THAT WHAT I MEANT WAS ‘MAKING BOYS KISS EACH OTHER IN WAYS SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO SMASH APART THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE WHO ARE SMASHING APART MINE?’ 

ALL THIS TIME, DAD. 

ALL. THIS. TIME. 

scarletjedi:

thereichenbachfinn:

kingies:

oh no

shut down everything

whoops

WHO TALKED TO THE PRESS? 

(via scarletjedi)

I’ve been watching a load of the Vlogbrothers lately. And I think it might be cool to do a vlog about fanfiction. 

Like, questions people have about it, how to write it, what is it’s cultural function? 

And of course it’s basically just another excuse for me to nerd out. (And something to keep me occupied while the girl is away.) 

I shall be employing the use of a mask, b/c masks are cool and, while it’s not like I’m famous or anything, I enjoy a certain degree of anonymity and for the moment I’d like to keep it intact. So I shall not be putting a face on fanfiction. 

But, for fun, and for the sake of dialogue, I shall give it a voice I think. 

I gotta go sew a mask now.