fandom, dysregulated

Disclaimer: no hate on Robin Hobb, I am perfectly aware that I'm beating a dead horse/reheating old debates, so this post is merely personal intellectual curiosity on my part.

As I am writing my master thesis on fanfiction, I find myself thinking about this quote from fantasy author Robin Hobb, published in May 2005 (20 years ago!) on her personal blog. [If you don't know this piece of lore, the essay was called "the fanfiction rant", and the title tells you everything you need to know about the author's position on ff at the time].

Here is the quote:

"Coloring Barbie’s hair green in a coloring book is not a great act of creativity. Neither is putting lipstick on Ken. Fan fiction does exactly those kinds of things."

Of course, reading the whole article is useful to understand where this comes from. Because I'll never encourage anyone to take a quote from anywhere and comment it out of context, I'll provide a brief explanation of what's *around* this quote.

Here, Robin Hobb was demonstrating, in her views, why fanfiction is not only pointless but also plainly rude, and can never be a good way for people to learn how to be writers. I find this quote in particular to be quite delightful, because it encapsulates a specific flavor of irony that tastes extra-sweet to me.

In my humble opinion, Robin Hobb couldn't provide us with a more telling example on how she (along with other people) have a skimpy vision of what creativity is.

Conventionnality vs creativity

When you're given a coloring book, you can go at least two different ways about it. Either you conform to what's more or less expected of you, aka coloring Barbie's hair with your yellow felt pen. (It can be neat and beautiful. It's probably going to be boring, though). Either you can let your imagination run free and, indeed, make Barbie's hair green (*collective gasp*). God forbid you let your brain do a thing called creativeness.

2. Remix, repetition, transformation

Joke aside, isn't that being an artist 101? Isn't creativity and deviance from the conventional what makes us human? (side-eye to AI, yes we hate AI in this house).

We didn't create from nothing, since we have a coloring book, a canvas of some sort - the source material, in a fic's case. We can wager that if that person bought a Barbie coloring book, that means they like Barbie to begin with. There is nothing wrong with liking Barbie. There is also nothing wrong with exploring different ways that Barbie could present.

I mean, isn't that basically what artist have been doing since the dawn of time? We take a subject and represent it in a million different ways.

The birth of Venus (in order: Boticelli, Cabanel, Poussin, Robert Heitz, Harmonia Rosales):

None of us would doubt that all of them are Venuses, even if some purists might act like classist assholes and consider that some of them are more accurate representations of Venus than others.

So... green-haired Barbie is just another, slightly different version of Barbie, isn't she?

The thing some people don't understand about fanfiction is that its very nature is based on this idea of "remix". It's not plagiarism. It's a form of creativity. It's, in a way, the most obvious practical output of a common symptom we all have: being inspired by what we know. (*another shocked gasp*)

I'm taking this opportunity to leave here a quote from one of my favorite articles on the subject: Limit Play: Fan Authorship between Source Text, Intertext, and Context, by Louisa Stein and Kristina Busse

"[...] fan authors and artists can be understood as part of a larger aesthetic tradition that celebrates reproduction [...], and, consequently, as part of a threat to both the concepts of original artistic creation and the idea of aesthetic ownership"

[See how I skim around the concept of plagiarism and ownership but never dip my toes fully? Fully intended. Maybe a future exploration.]

3. "Putting lipstick on Ken"

Okay, this one is more of a bonus. I'm not gonna linger on the potential half-hidden homophobic implications. That is, because I'm too distanced with the source quote to fully take this at heart. It happened so long ago, and while this could be taken seriously, I think there are other, more recent texts to tackle on this subject.

I'll just have fun with it.

Oh no... fanfic writer put lipstick on Ken... The epitome of masculinity...

I guess it just makes me laugh how certain people have been traumatized by the idea of sweet homosexual love (and sex) between Kirk and Spock, and every other ships that sprung from the OG slash.

Has anyone written KenxAllan fics? (Just checked AO3. Of course there is.)

Anyway, this post is getting both long and out of hands. I'll let smarter people close it for me:

“[...] fannish traditions of creativity celebrate the possibility of creativity held between transformation, multiplicity, and repetition. In the end, the collective creative energies of media fans showcase artistic prototypes that emphasize intertextuality, community, and a creativity that is not invested primarily in notions of originality."

And that's not a bad thing :)

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Sources:

Hobb, Robin. 2005. "The Fan Fiction Rant." Available on: https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Fan_Fiction_Rant

Senator Booker was NOT allowed to sit down, eat, or use the bathroom during his speech. Sitting or leaving the room to use the bathroom would be considered yielding the floor. Eating would have interfered with his speaking and the person who has the senate floor must continue to speak, except when listening to questions that they will then answer.

He only took occasional sips of water.

The person who previously held the record for longest speech on the Senate floor did have bathroom breaks and also did things like read from the encyclopedia.

Senator Booker did not do that. His speech was to point out the damage that this administration is doing and he stayed on that subject.

Senator Booker's speech did reach many people. It wasn't a silly stunt that was done so that he could take the record for longest speech. He wanted to show the country that democrats will do something to bring attention to the problems we are facing. That democrats are listening to them.

He trained himself to give this speech by practicing and then implementing limits on food and water intake leading up to this. He cut out food for days, then cut out water the day before.