Okay. I will probably always stan Nick. I have written hundreds and thousands of words of fanfic featuring him, his radio show gives me an enormous amount of happiness and I think heâs great. At the same time, I donât have to unequivocally love my fave and accept sometimes they will do things that jar with me. Louis certainly has. Harry has. Nobodyâs perfect and sometimes we hold people up to unrealistic standards. This post is NOT an excuse to bash Nick. Garbage about Nick is not something I welcome or support. Iâm not here for any of that. What I do want to do is open up a discussion about celebrities opining on fanfiction.
In my post on RPF and Fandomâs Fourth Wall (or why breaking the fourth wall in the interests of shipping pursuits is nobodyâs friend) I wrote about how frustrated I get when fans themselves deliberately break the fourth wall, tagging and linking celebrities to things which bring them into our private spaces. Rarely, if ever, has this resulted in celebrities developing a positive, well-reasoned view of fandom. Instead it gives them a skewed view of fandom spaces as controlled people who have no concept of personal, private boundaries when it comes to celebrities. Celebrities then (perhaps rightly) feel at liberty to opine on areas they know very little about in ways that can make fandom participants who are respectful about the celebrities they love, keeping under the radar and just enjoying creating transformative works for the fandom community feel small.
Listening to Nick talk about fanfic on the radio this morning - something heâs done before - actually gives me hives and itâs very difficult not to have a personal, visceral reaction to it. When Nick decides fanfic is weird all I hear is âNick thinks Iâm a weirdo.â Nick doesnât know me, itâs illogical and ridiculous, but itâs what I hear all the same. When he seems fascinated (in a negative way) by the length of the stories and the time investment put into creating transformative works, it makes me feel like Iâm personally wasting my time. It has the impact of making me question a private space which gives me so much pleasure. It feels like a punch in the gut, like being called out by someone you admire. Itâs not the first time itâs happened and it wonât be the last. Iâve heard Benedict Cumberbatch give his completely misinformed views on fanfiction and fandom demographics. Iâve had to eye-roll at some of the opinions on shipping coming from the SPN actors at fan conventions. Iâve gritted my teeth through countless moments of talk show related âhilarityâ where everyone from Tom Felton (a rare celebrity who respectfully engages and interacts with his fan communities, shipping and transformative works) to Tom Hiddleston get shown fanart or conduct readings of fanfic which people never intended to be ridiculed on such a wide, public level. Letâs be honest, itâs usually just another case of dudes mocking women, and we get plenty of that already, thanks.
This issue extends far beyond a throwaway conversation between Nick and Niall this morning. It runs much deeper because it happens, all the time. Fan communities are consistently utilised on the one hand for the commercial power they wield and denigrated on the other for their âstrange and unusualâ pursuits. You see it everywhere from the rise in terms like slash-wink, ship tease, fan service and queerbaiting to the misogynistic and ageist stereotyping of fandom participants. I remain desperate for celebrities to actually educate themselves on fandom communities to the extent they plan to talk about them, even just a little. Fandom demographics are consistently misunderstood, together with fannish pursuits. I long for someone in the public spotlight to be able to engage with the broad and rich history of fanfic, to speak back to fandom in its own terms, to understand the creative importance of these largely female populated spaces, the positive impact of accessible, queer narratives, when the mainstream lag behind, on the one hand queerbaiting and on the other providing representation couched in stereoptypes and tokenism (with one or two exceptions). I have a whole paper on the meta-textual fangirl in Supernatural, but thatâs another discussion.
I rationally understand that for the celebrity stumbling across fic, it must be very strange to find stories people have written about you with explicit content. But letâs be abundantly clear. These stories may be written about you but they are certainly not written for you. They are works of fiction which have been inspired by aspects of your public persona but they are fiction. Please also understand most fans do not write from the perspective of hoping youâll find their stories and fall in love with the person youâre paired with. Most writers would really prefer it if you didnât find their stories at all. They would definitely prefer not to be mocked for writing them. While weâre at it, as youâre already online, youâre just a google search away from actually figuring out a bit more about this âcrazy, odd, fanficâ thing. If itâs so fascinating and hilarious you think itâs worthy of a mention, actually do some bloody research about it and understand thereâs an increasingly growing field of scholarship on this stuff, a whole history of suppressing womenâs writing which ties into discourse on fanfic and some pretty good stuff out there.
To celebrities engaging with the alien worlds of your RPF fandoms (all celebrities, not just Nick, Niall or whoever else wants to speak about fanfic in public spaces). Please, please, stop using fanfiction to get a cheap laugh. Please stop making fun of these spaces unless you understand them and are prepared to engage with their complexities and nuances. Please understand the people who are creating these works are your fans. If youâve got time to find stuff to make jokes about, take five minutes to find an article - any article - written by an actual fan and understand the history and importance of transformative works before dismissing them so easily. Think about the people who put hours into creating something and respect their privacy as they (hopefully for the most part) respect yours.
Now Iâm going to stop feeling annoyed, put on my âIâm an adultâ hat and remind myself. I do not need or want a male celebrity I love to validate how I engage with fandom. I go back to articles like Elizabeth Minkelâs excellent Why It Doesnât Matter What Benedict Cumberbatch Thinks of Fanfiction and revisit similarly fan-positive discourse from writers such as the always excellent Aja Romano. I go back to my books, like Rhiannon Buryâs âCyberspaces of Their Ownâ and Anne Jamiesonâs âFic: Why Fanfic is Taking Over the World.âÂ
In RPF fandoms in particular there is an enormous fourth wall issue and itâs becoming ever harder to maintain, but Iâm still keen to try. The fans who are respectful about the celebrities they love do not need anyone to validate what they do creatively within these fandom spaces. I just sometimes need to take a breath and remind myself of that.
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The Hannibal book chapter I wrote has been sent back to the editors with revisions--two weeks before the deadline!. *squee* One less thing on my plate for the start of the semester, and one step closer to being published. Iâm pretty damn chuffed.
We just released Episode 46, in which we talk about our personal answers to the Fansplaining Definitions survey, to our Patrons! Itâll be out for the general public tomorrow, but in the meantime, kick us $2 and listen early!
And, by the way...the survey is still open till the end of this month, so go take it!
Ep. 1 Dr Tanya Cook, Founder of Always Keep Nerd Fighting. Interview with ace-fan who studies fan activities. Also a kick ass cosplayer and rocks the Xena war cry.
Iâm working on a paper for publication relating to the impact of changing platforms on HP fandom, and I would love to hear from people who would be prepared to be quoted (this is not a data gathering exercise). In essence, Iâd love your thoughts on the below questions, and depending on what you respond with I might follow up with one or two more questions.Â
Username, as you would want to be quoted. Real name or tumblr/LJ/DW handle (or even just a preferred nickname) is fine.
A sentence about your ârole(s)â in fandom (moderator, reader, reccer, artist, writer, shipper (if so what ship)).
Which platforms are you currently active on?
Where did your HP fandom experience start?
Do you think a different platform changes the way you experience fandom? If so, how?
If you have experience of both journals and tumblr, what do you think are the positives and negatives of tumblr as opposed to the journals? Which do you prefer?
If you have only ever been on tumblr (i.e. no experience of the journals) whatâs your knowledge/perception of the journal side of fandom?
If you have only ever been on journals (i.e. no experience of tumblr) whatâs your knowledge/perception of the tumblr side of fandom?
Is fandom history important to you? Do you feel you know a lot about it?Â
The tone of the essay is intended to be pretty balanced, and relatively relaxed, rather than being overly scholarly or opinionated. It wonât be a terribly long piece, so depending on responses, I may not be able to quote everyone. The essay will appear in a published book and I can send details of the publication and the other chapters/content if youâre interested in taking part. I would obviously send anyone I quote a draft of the essay before submitting it, so you can check I havenât quoted you out of context and make sure youâre happy with the article.
If you would like to offer some thoughts, you can email your responses to these questions to me (writcraft at gmail dot com)
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Iâm giving a talk for LGBT history month (February 2018 in the UK) giving my queer perspectives on big slash ships, talking about things like queering pop culture, changing fandom platforms, the evolution of fannish discourse (from the seventies), shipping as activism (also toxic activism) and I have a section on pop music, which focuses on One Direction, K-Pop and Bandom. Iâd love to play a pretty short (3 mins or less) Harry fanvid or 1D fanvid (ideally not ship specific) to introduce anyone who attends to the delight that is Harry Styles.
If you have any recs, or even better, if youâre a vidder or artist and would be happy for me to use your stuff (with credit) please send me links. So you know my style of doing aca-fandom, Iâm a fan myself with thousands (actually millions *dies*) of words of fanfic to my name and although I firmly believe in critiquing aspects of fandom, I am very creator-positive about stuff and would simply want to include the vid in a slide to show people, many of whom wonât be fandom savvy. I want to showcase TALENT and creativity, not ridicule people for their endeavours. I wouldnât ever mock fanvids (I love them) and the vid itself wouldnât be analysed in the talk, itâs more a HEY, HEREâS HARRY, HEREâS WHY WE LOVE HIM and then onto how 1D has generated such a massive pool of RPF works.
Feel free to send me asks or private messages if you would like more info. ETA I mentioned LGBT History Month and to be abundantly clear the talk is about fandom queering pop culture, not analysing whether people (fictional or otherwise) are actually LGBT <3
For the fanfic author ask meme: 22, 26, 47, 50? :)
Full list of questions here.
22. Has there ever been anyone whoâs made you freak out because they read your work and followed/favorited/reviewed?
Answered here.
26. What aspect of your writing do you most enjoy to see praised?
Emotional resonance. If something Iâve written gives you FEELS (happy, sad, keyboardsmash, etc), it makes me so very, very happy. Second to that, anytime someone tells me my fic feels like an extension of canon, or that they accidentally remember something I wrote as canon, I am thrilled.
47. If someone you know in real life who isnât involved in fandoms asked to read your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you recommend they read first?
So, funny story. That has actually happened to me.
There is a relatively small group of people in my field who are not members of the fandom but have read pieces of my fanfic. One has even been published in an academic journal (which probably has a smaller readership than the fic did when it was on AO3). But partly this is because Iâve become a lot more open about my aca-fandom now that Iâve branched out into fan studies. (Also because my chances of landing an academic job are basically zero at this point, so I have nothing to lose if people in my field think Iâm a weirdo.)
I tend to direct non-fandom people to my Shakespeare fic or to my historical fic, since public domain fanfic tends to weird people out less? Iâm not sure if this is still the case, but it used to be. My sister has read my Harry Potter fic and my brother has read at least some of my ASOIAF/GoT fic. My husband has read a bunch of my Shakespeare fic. But mostly Iâm content that my parents and extended family donât know about this particular hobby because Iâd never hear the end of it.
50. Has writing fanfic had a significant impact on your life? Would you say itâs entirely positive?
Oh, it has had an enormously significant impact on my life. Iâve been writing fanfiction on and off since I was eleven and consistently since I was 21, and it has made me so much more confident as a writer. Iâm more willing to be adventurous, to try different POVs, character types, settings.
Writing this fic helped me crack the Shakespeare chapter in my PhD thesis, and this fic kept me sane while writing said thesis, while also giving me what is still my favorite conference paper of all time.
No experience is entirely positive (I get wound up about comments and kudos and stupid stuff like that), but I love writing fanfic and wouldnât have it any other way.
Project Title: Fan Creatorsâ Identification With Entertainment Media In Visual Storytelling
Principal Investigator: Kimberly Lynn Workman
IRB Number: 16-1907 (This submission has been reviewed by the Office of Human Research Ethics and was determined to be exempt from further review according to the regulatory category 2.Survey, interview, public observation under 45 CFR 46.101(b).)
Purpose of the Study: The purpose of this research study is to gather information about fanvidders' engagement in fandom as a result of their fanvids, the vidders' interactions with media owners, the extent to which vidders align their identities with the media they are vidding, and what reactionary steps vidders take when identification with media goes astray.
Overview: You will be asked your opinion about the target areas listed above, as well as completion of a section to self-identify and/or consent for follow-up questions.
Duration: This survey will take 10-15 minutes to complete.
Statement of Confidentiality: Your participation in this study is voluntary. You may cease completion at any time and your answers will not be saved until your final submission. You have the option to provide an email address for follow-up questions, but this section is not a requirement for completion of the survey. All data collected from this survey will be reviewed by the principal investigator only, accessible through a password-protected site where all survey data will be stored. The information will be summarized for use in infographics as part of a Masters thesis project, as well as later utilized for academic publication. No identifying information will be used without consent.
Qualifications: In order to participate in this study, you must be a fanvidder above the age of 18. Fanvidders are defined as those who have participated in the act of vidding, creating music videos that combines source content from popular media through video and audio materials and re-purposes it in a new way.
Questions: You are welcome to ask any questions about this research, the study, or the follow-up interview questions at any time. Please contact Kimberly Lynn Workman through her official UNC-Chapel Hill email address ([email protected]) or her fandom email address ([email protected]).
