Fans Talking about Fandom

Fanfic scratches the same itch as academic essays about the work. Both are comments on the original work, just in different formats. 

Fanfic must be free or else it is breaking copyright — even advertising on a fanfic website is risky.

You shall not feel guilty for spending time on art

You shall comment when you can with joy

You shall share the art you find that makes you happy

You shall not envy the size of your neighbor's fandom or pairing

You shall support your fellow fans in making art that makes them happy even if it is not to your own taste

You shall make art of your own to your own taste

You shall love your art however imperfect because it is yours

You shall share your art in whatever way you can with joy

You shall not covet your neighbor's hits or comments or kudos

-what if this bad thing was good instead

-how about Make-Believe Land can have whatever I want

-would that be fucked up or what

The slash elements were requested to be removed by Paramount, and they were, BUT due to a mistake, the original was sent to print without the edits

When it was caught, they’d printed 250k of this “first edition” which subsequently became collectors items for Kirk/Spock fans, since later editions DID include the edits censoring the slash

NOW, I bring this up because my friend who’s into the original Star Trek found and was reading the first edition at the desk at the library we work at, cause we’re slow on weekends and we’re the only ones here. She laughs at it, so I ask and she tells me about the general backstory of the book, and that she laughed because (among other things) Kirk, who doesn’t get mad in the og series really, was being described as hot headed and apparently just getting into fights left and right

So I’m looking over her shoulder at the scene, commenting on the character changes that resemble modern fic-degradation of characterization for the sake of a shipping dynamic, when I realize something

Now, my only interaction with the Star Trek series directly was the 2009 reboot, and my friends hasn’t seen those and is only interested in the originals. As I’m looking at this scene, and my friend is pointing out the character changes to Kirk, I realize that this is the fucking premise of the reboot, down to the fucking alternative timeline shenanigans, the rank swap, and Kirk being a hotheaded fuck up

The 2009 film was literally based on this slash fiction misprint they tried to bury!

Im reeling.

I can’t be the only one who made this connection.

So I google to see if anyone else has, and oh yes, good, there was someone

The fucking author of Killing Time

here’s an article from brown university on the subject i’ll discuss further. there are 3 parts of practicing metacognition identified in this article: planning, monitoring, and evaluation. how might this look like for a fanfic writer? 

planning: asking oneself ‘what is my goal?’ ‘what strategies should i use to meet that goal?’ ‘how much time/length do i need to meet my goal?’. so maybe my goal is to write a meet cute where two characters kiss. i’ll need to use a perspective, an upbeat tone, and forward characterization to do this. it’ll probably take 5000 words and two days to write. 

monitoring: asking oneself: is my story making sense? am i reaching my goal, or do i need to summarize more succinctly to keep it to 5k? maybe you started with a lot of exposition and now you’re 6k in and the characters haven’t met yet. what went wrong/changed? is it ok that it changed or did you not realize it got away from you? what now? 

evaluation: asking oneself: did i reach my goal? was it effective? what would i change next time? 

this is where comments come in

it is incredibly difficult to evaluate yourself. comments like “i love this!” actually do begin to touch on the evaluation step of metacognition. it means, in general, the writer is on the right track. comments like “i loved the dialogue between x and y” or “the emotions of this section really hit me” begin to answer the questions of was it effective, did i reach my goal and conversely answer what would i change next time (by adding more of whatever was specified as working well). HYPER SPECIFIC comments, like analyzing the story between the lines or pasting in a line that you really liked and explaining why, is like jet fuel for the metacognition process and i’m not exaggerating. specifically pointing out what was effective and why is incredibly useful 

Whereas some half-baked hot garbage has got ALL KINDS of plot holes, incomplete characterization, warped timelines, missing worldbuilding and other Spaces for fans to colonize, like coral growing on a sunken battleship.

And then if a series just sucks too much, it's not fun to interact with at all, and people won't fandomize it because it's toxic. Like how coral won't grow on sunken piles of burnt-out tires.

Don’t send actors fics

Don’t give them explicit art ever

Don’t tag them in rpf questions or theories

Don’t try to bring them into fandom drama of any kind

Don’t hold them responsible for what the producers and writers decide

If you want to bash rpf shippers for *existing*, make your own post.

RPF has been a part of fandom since the beginning, and I’d highly recommend doing some research into the topic; as always, Fanlore is a good place to start.

The problem with RPF is when people breach the fourth wall, which fandom is doing more often as the internet expands and becomes the current culture, and newcomers to fandom either are not taught or do not care about the basic rules (i.e. the purpose of this post).  The problem is not with people having fantasies or telling stories.

Fandom is transgresive by nature as much as it is transformative, because we are thieves and magpies and because here we’re allowed to talk about things that we’re not supposed to in mainstream culture.  I have never seen a space like fandom creates, where people are able to share their desires and fantasies and kinks openly and *talk* about the taboo.

And when people come along and talk about how RPF shouldn’t even exist, it is frequently less rooted in a concept of “this causes this specific harm” and more “this is disgusting and I don’t want it near me, how can this even exist.”  It causes discomfort because it’s rooted in taboos (talking about sexual fantasies in public, openly, even though those same fantasies are well acknowledged in pop culture - think about the concept of the “free pass”).

When people break the fourth wall and get the actors involved, sending fics (or letters back in the old days), explicit images, harassing them online or at conventions and concerts, they have committed actions that cause harm.  And there is real harm, I’ve done my digging and seen the results in bandoms and fandoms (hell, my fandom has done some things over the years.)

Thoughts are not actions.  Fantasies do not make you a villain, telling stories is not a sin (though it has been a crime).  Sharing those things with other people is part of what makes fandom culture what it is.

There are conversations that need to happen about objectification and dehumanization, there are conversations (like this post was meant to be) about maintaining healthy boundaries and treating the actors as people when we interact with them; there are conversations that need to happen about how much more mainstream fandom is now than it was fifty years ago, and what that does to the relationship dynamic we have with our creators and actors, what may need to change as we move forward.  The Hockey RPF fandom’s solution to that problem was to lock a great deal of their content so that the fourth wall could not be breached.

RPF is the single greatest squick I have dealing with fandom; the way people talk in my fandom hits my “someone is altering my sense of reality” button really hard.  I frequently have to blacklist it to control my exposure to the low-level shipping that permeates everything in my community, otherwise I get punchy.  But my discomfort with the topic doesn’t mean I’m ever okay with throwing those people out of the communities they helped build.

you see, any work of fiction is either committed to the bit or it's not. the worst thing a piece of media can be is ashamed of its own premise, of the genre it in habits, of the tropes and aesthetics we expect from it. to be committed to the bit does not inherently make it good, but it makes it more worthy of respect than those which are not.

also, that's not to say that a story cannot parody or criticize the genre it inhabits or mimics. we can discuss the bit, we can deconstruct the bit, we can ask ourselves whether or not it's a good bit, but to commit to it first will strengthen these discussions, not detract from them. commitment to the bit is, after all, the first step to genuine sincerity. and sincerity will exalt and elevate parody such that it can stand on its own feet.

commitment to the bit turns melodrama into camp, elevates parody to biting commentary, and allows cringe to open up into a resonant, if unpolished, expression of true emotion.

LOLcat fic? It's not just there's a cat that talks in audible capslock; the cat is real, has a real problem, and needs help.

Foodieverse asserts that it's not stupid to make all the Avengers into chefs if the entire premise is that they are locked in a serious battle with Loki The Developer to protect restaurant row.

Dennys/Applebees is a convincing romance if they are two people who have serious issues and real-life worries and also want to bang.

And the thing is, they can all still be funny and silly and dumb -- but they're convincing, because I didn't let being dumb get in the way of being sincere.