May 13th, 2007
by
Yonmei
Fanfiction isn’t exclusively women writing: slash fanfiction, however, is very much a women’s genre. Writers, editors, con organisers, readers, and fans of slash are mostly women. It is this genre which in general takes the brunt of attacks on fanfiction: which is held up as an example of how worthless, or perverted, or trivial, or pointless fanfiction is.
A recent comment on a post I wrote a few days ago (Slash fandom and male privilege/hetero privilege) led me to google on the commenters’ name, which I thought I remembered from a while back – from a post about a Star Wars fan novel which briefly appeared on Amazon, before the Lucas Machine got a hold of it and shook down the author.
It turned out that A.R.Yngve has quite a lot to say about fanfiction, though none of it exactly well informed, and all of it fairly hostile. On 5th May he posted at his blog a link to another blogpost by another male writer. His blogpost was entitled: “The Last Word On Fan Fiction. (Promise.)” – a promise which he broke only a week later to comment here. The post he linked to was by Denis McGrath, entitled “Wherein Kirk and Spock Make the Man Love With The Cast of Heroes and Jane Eyre pokes Rocky Balboa” (posted 27th April) and was primarily a rant about “Why Fanfic is Bad”. (No, I don’t think I’ll provide them with linkage: if you want to go read, google them up yourself. So far this piece of rantage has 35 comments.)
Joanna Russ points out:
More and more the claim women can’t write is being answered not by re-definitions or by evasions, or by appeals to models, or to truth, or even by direct confrontation and anger (except as a deliberate, public tactic). This newest response is even more disturbing:
It’s a What? from a group of turned away, pre-occupied female backs.
On 26th April, Cupidsbow over at the SixApart Place wrote an essay called How Fanfiction Makes Us Poor. There are 361 comments to that one essay, and in the follow-up (The Response So Far), Cupidsbow lists 48 blog and journalposts written in response to it. And given what the onlineverse is like, each of those 48 responses has likely sparked another set of responses. The difference between the two posts – Cupidsbow’s and McGrath’s: is measureable, and astonishing only, I suppose, if you’re a Whelk-Finned Glotolog.
I was recently urged to do more to add theory about slash to the slash entry on feministsf wiki: and while I added the four waves theory of slash, plus a recent response to it from Torch, the problem I have – which is a good problem to have! – is not where to find theory and criticism of slash by slash fans, it’s where to start. Or where to stop. Lezlie’s Four Waves theory is well known in slash fandom and much referred to, even by people who don’t agree with it: but there’s a host of other analytic, critical work out there by slash fans about slash fandom and fanfiction.
A.R. Yngve, who self-publishes online, came here trying to start a fight about fanfiction. Googling on his name and fanfiction or fanfic I come up with a number of other places where he’s ranted similiarly. The problem is, he simply doesn’t know enough about fanfiction to be able to argue cogently. Directing him to sources where he could find out more was tried over a year ago: he appears to have paid no attention to such directions, and to be still in the same state of ignorance. It’s unfair, yes, to pick on him as an individual: many people have reacted in similiar ways to the textual poaching that goes on, especially since it got online.
(I became a slash fan in 1983: the main difference between pre-Internet fandom and online fandom is that in online fandom everything is enormously speeded up, from publishing to flamewars.)
In general, then: there are people who don’t like fanfiction. Not just “I don’t like it so I don’t read it” which is a perfectly sensible approach, or writers like Robin Hobb who are disturbed to find out via fanfiction that readers of her books are interpreting her books differently from the way she wanted them read (which I feel is an understandable, if futile, reaction), but people who don’t like it to the extent of writing rants about how it’s all terrible and no one should read it or write it. And the response they’re getting – aside from occasional posts like this one – is that disturbing reaction Russ describes: a What? from a group of turned away, pre-occupied female backs.
I still haven’t worked my way through all the responses to How Fanfiction Makes Us Poor. By the time I do, there will be more responses. It’s a seed planted in a fertile lawn that is throwing out more shoots and more, linked by complex underground rootage that would be difficult – impossible! – to dig out and kill. Slash fandom is a vast and fertile garden, in which we grow all sorts of strange and wonderful things: while these people lean over the gate, yelling at us that we’re wasting our time, that we ought to be somewhere else. That we can’t be enjoying ourselves. That they hate our garden, and the things we grow there, and so we ought to hate it too.
“What are you women doing out there all by yourselves?”
[Update: I'm certain that at least one response from the fanfiction-haters will be that they don't hate fanfiction, they just (list of reasons why they hate it). To pre-empt this reaction: I find that kind of argument as convincing as the homophobes who argue they don't hate gay people, they just (list of reasons why they hate gay people). Further, you cannot claim that you see fanfiction as worthless of anyone's time or effort, when you spend significant time writing about how worthless you think fanfiction is.]
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- More blogging by
Yonmei at
http://yonmei.insanejournal.com
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Filed under Cons & Community, feminism, geek sexism, slash | Comments (15)
OK, I’ll take a different tack on fanfic. I can respect people who write fanfiction that attempts to be in continuity with the established fictional universe. If I were to write Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic (I don’t write fanfic), I would want to write something that fits within the established framework of the series and could conceivably have been turned into a script for the show (but I am not a scriptwriter). I have less regard for other fanfiction which attempts to shoehorn incongruent elements that conflict with canonical details or which have characters acting out of character. (But I generally exempt parody, satire, and other humorous efforts.) That writing strikes me as excessively egotistical and self-involved. Sometimes there’s an attempt to turn a specific character into the author’s alter ego, inserting him- or herself into the story by proxy. There’s also a fanboyish or fangirlish trend to write about things based on the premise “wouldn’t it be cool if….” and then heap on a bunch of details trying to make it as “cool” as possible. When I have bothered to look at fanfic (generally at the request of a friend who wrote it), I tend to see the latter. Just like any other writing out there, most fanfiction is crap. but some of it is well-written. It’s wrong to completely trash a subgenre as a whole, just as it would be wrong to slam country or rap or mainstream pop music as a whole, but I get the sense that some fanfiction authors want to elevate the genre to more than it actually is because doing so would also elevate their personal measure of selfworth.
I’ll compare fanfiction to two other forms of writing. There is alternative history, or as I call it “historical fanfiction.” (How much is there in the way of slash alternative history?) Some of it can be good. Some of it can be dreadful, going no further than the “wouldn’t it be cool if” level of thinking. There is also professional wrestling fantasy booking, where pro wrestling fans pretend to be the people in charge of a wrestling promotion and write out extended storylines of what they would do. This often serves as a protest against the product a wrestling company is putting out, but also create some sort of community, with forums and websites dedicated to the activity. I might consider calling fantasy booking a professional wrestling subset of fanfiction rather than a separate category.
I have less regard for other fanfiction which attempts to shoehorn incongruent elements that conflict with canonical details or which have characters acting out of character.
Chapter 5. She wrote it, but look what she wrote about!
But I generally exempt parody, satire, and other humorous efforts.
How very arbitrary of you. Too bad you’re not the arbiter.
it actually is because doing so would also elevate their personal measure of selfworth.
And now it’s personal!
Anthony, as a response to a post entitled, “This is our garden. We like it,” what you’ve written is pure trolling. It’s pulling people into the very argument that this essay is highlighting AS the problem, and as such is a highly ignorant response born of pure privilege. You’re treating her argument as totally irrelevant. You’re textually just marking territory here. There is nothing more “egotistically excessive” than your response here.
I place more value on attempts at fanfiction that show a sense of collaboration, however one-sided, with the original creators. I dislike people who write fanfiction with a seemingly blatant disregard or understanding of the original continuity about as much as I dislike authors who write science fiction with a seemingly blatant disregard or understanding of actual science (or basic human psychology, when it comes to character construction). It’s why I have distaste for a hypothetical Attorney General giving testimony before Congress that has a seemingly blant disregard for established facts. Perhaps I should qualify my statement by saying that a writer can overcome my initial distaste by showing clear awareness that s/he is contradicting established continuity and why.
I exempt parody and satire because those are not strictly collaborative in nature, but have the (perhaps friendly) antagonistic quality of mocking the original creators and their work.
I’ve taken the stance that the writing and reading of fanfiction is not an inherently uplifting activity, but that it is also not an inherently worthless subgenre as some people want to claim. Are you denying that there is such a thing as good fanfiction and bad fanfiction? Is there any level where we can judge the quality of individual works of fanfiction or are we prevented from doing that because to criticize one is to criticize all and to criticize women by proxy since so much of it is written by women?
And it is a natural human behavior to overstress the importance of their own activities as a way of elevating their personal measure of self-worth. That is not something specific to writers of fanfiction. You see it all the time. People often lionize their favorite genres of music and denigrate the ones they dislike to pump up their self-evaluation as a discerner of good music. Politicians often like to claim that their actions are more important than they actually are.
While there are some authors who write good stuff, I just think it’s wrong to elevate fanfiction to the level of some great artform held down a male-dominated culture (and in fact, some of the people I have talked to who hate fanfiction think that it is written mostly by male computer nerds and not women). Anything artistic that can be found in fanfiction is because the writer has artistic ability, not because fanfiction is art. It’s just another human activity and spending hours writing it can be as valuable or as worthless as spending hours reading military history, working in the garden, participating in a dozen fantasy baseball leagues, or playing Worlds of Warcraft.
You know, Anthony, there is a very simple solution to your problem: don’t like it, don’t read it. And, please, STFU about it if you don’t have anything original or useful to bring to the conversation. Really, everything you’ve said? Has been said before, and much more eloquently (and concisely!).
And I say this as someone who doesn’t read fanfic and who isn’t an active participant in any kind of fandom, so don’t try to turn this into a “look how the evil fangirls are prosectuting me” kind of thing.
I don’t think any fan of fanfic would say there’s no such thing as bad fanfic. Almost every fan I know has a piece they found so hideous they had to share it with their friends so everyone could enjoy mocking it. I’ll also prefer fanfiction (slash or not) in which the majority of the character’s personality, motives, and relationships mirror the original source.
I want my Spock intelligent and unemotional, my Bones practical and crusty, and my Kirk passionate and charismatic. Stories in which Spock has broken down in tears (or broken into a grin) by the second paragraph make me wonder why the author is even calling this character Spock.
Most people who don’t like slash seem to dislike it because 1) sex is bad, or 2) gay sex is bad, or 3) any interpretation of a character’s sexuality other then their own is bad. All of that is fine by me, but occasionally a reader will then demand that the author or those within the slash reading community change their ‘bad’ ways. Moreover, a number of these people are straight men.
When you see a pattern of straight men coming into female dominated space to tell them to stop with all the faggy writing, it’s hard not to put it into a larger social context.
As for fanfiction not being art or not, that’s not even a question for me. It’s writing from the masses – 80% of it is crap, 20% of it is good, and all of it is art.
I have to agree with Hippokrene. The pictures we made with noodles as kids may not be great, but they are still art. From there it’s all value judgment, and subjective.
Fanfiction, in that respect is like any other folk art. For the person who creates it and the person who appreciates it, it is a fun, possibly fullfilling hobby. One that I may not understand or appreciate, but I understand why people do it and enjoy it.
Waste of time? Maybe. Most hobbies can be seen that way. *shrug* People devote time and effort to all sorts of things, and that’s fine.
What I *don’t* understand is the urge to devote so much time and effort to railing against other people’s hobbies. You have to know that it won’t change anything, so perhaps it’s the pure unfettered joy of trying to provoke splapfights?
If a person doesn’t have time to devote to fanfic, why would that person choose to waste time *arguing* about fanfic? *head asplode*
Anthony, as a response to a post entitled, “This is our garden. We like it,” what you’ve written is pure trolling.
Indeed, it’s a perfect example of what I was attempting to pre-empt in my update…
Hippokrene wrote: When you see a pattern of straight men coming into female dominated space to tell them to stop with all the faggy writing, it’s hard not to put it into a larger social context.
There’s also a pattern of men coming into feminist spaces to reiterate what women have been saying for years as if the women didn’t know it.
Yonmei wrote: Indeed, it’s a perfect example of what I was attempting to pre-empt in my update…
And of what I wanted us to at the very least consider a policy for last year.
The thing that struck me most about Anthony’s comment is that it foregrounds what I’d consider the two typical fanboyish responses, i.e., convergence and parody: one of the issues that Cupidsbow’s essay addresses and that we have to confront is the fact that guys tend to be more interested in playing in the producers’ garden, which gives them both access to the modes of production (as in potentially becoming script writers, film makers, etc.) and, in lieu of that, not running afoul of copyright violations quite as easily (the parody defense).
He says I place more value on attempts at fanfiction that show a sense of collaboration, however one-sided, with the original creators, which clearly indicates a convergence attempt yet valorizes the AUTHORity of the “original creators.” What he completely misses, of course, is Yonmei’s argument both about playing with/subverting/aggressively reading the source text, and the fact that it is “our garden,” whatever that anti-capitalist desire may cost us.
For me, the best example of the male/female fan creative split is satirical SW fanfilms and their success and Machinima (both heavily male) versus vidding. The economic success of some of these male fans as well as the tacit permission and even encouragement speaks to all the issues brought up above: our garden, our poverty, our refusal to converge, our desire to counternarrate,…
[The first page of Jenkins's essay on the genderedness of fanfilms vs vids is still here and some vehement response here.]
Sorry, found the full article: Star Wars and the Fracas over Fan Films
I think I see what you mean here.
I enjoy reading the “sporkings” on sites like deleterius (http://community.livejournal.com/deleterius/), but I think they go a bit too far when they act as if going against cannon is a crime that needs to be stopped.
Ide Cyan: There’s also a pattern of men coming into feminist spaces to reiterate what women have been saying for years as if the women didn’t know it.
Their belief that their uninformed opinion is worth something and that they ought to share it with us. It is especially curious (and why I included this as an example of geek sexism) that a science-fiction fan who would doubtless treat with deserved contempt someone who made remarks as ignorant as this about science-fiction, has no alarm bells ringing to stop him from making such ignorant comments about fanfiction.
And of what I wanted us to at the very least consider a policy for last year.
If I’d read Anthony’s comment before so many people responded to it, I think I would likely have disemvowelled it.
Djiril Says: I enjoy reading the “sporkings” on sites like deleterius (http://community.livejournal.com/deleterius/), but I think they go a bit too far when they act as if going against cannon is a crime that needs to be stopped.
The difference between the Deleterius community and Anthony’s bloviating, though, is that the Deleterius community falls squarely inside the fanfic crit tradition, whereas Anthony clearly just doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
[...] and male privilege/hetero privilege (a great PiA post written by someone who isn’t me!), This is our garden. We like it., and So, why do fanboys hate fanfic, especially slash?. The common thread that I want to talk about [...]