What annoys me about fanfic meta about itself

[alias_sqbr]

(separated out as a tangent from Old school fandom: Can we fix it?)

There's a difference between "here are some flaws in X group"/"Here are some awesome things about my group" (both of which are valid) and "Let's think about the differences between X and my group. Well.. X has all these flaws. And my group is awesome. Because we are awesome people, and they are flawed people (apart from the ones who eventually realise how awesome we are and change sides)."

There is a jump from "there is an undertone of misogyny to some slash"/"There is an undertone of homophobia to some non-slashers behaviour" to "slashers are misogynistic"/"non-slashers are homophobic" to "If you really cared you'd write (fem)slash"(*).

One of things which made me feel excluded from fanfic fandom for years was this attitude that "A lot of fanfic works this way"->"This is What Fanfic Is"->"Everything that is not This sucks and is probably written and enjoyed by misogynistic and/or dull men". Yes, a lot of fanfic takes canon characters and puts them into a romance, but that doesn't mean that I'm Missing The Point of fanfic if I take the setting and write gen about some original characters. And the fact that male dominated fandom tends to be sexist and dismissive of fanfic doesn't mean there's a direct correlation between having tastes in line with conventional fandom and being sexist/narrowminded. Acting this way means female fans with "male" tastes get treated badly in both fandoms.

I'm not sure I've ever seen any "Let's compare stuff from fanfic fandom to equivalent stuff made by people outside" meta that didn't spend every second paragraph talking about how much more awesome and creative and feminist and postmodern "our" stuff is.

One of the things about online fandom (especially on lj) is it's much bigger and more finely delineated which makes it easier to avoid really obnoxious people and create your own space but also makes it easy forget that your like-minded friendslist is not all there is to fandom. When I see a comment like Ursula LeGuin fans could demonstrate a little of the progressive social values of Stargate:Atlantis fans I have to wonder if they count all the fans in mainstream male dominated fandom who think Teyla is hot and enjoy the explosions or whatever. And if they don't count, why don't I get to redefine "Ursula LeGuin" fans the same way? (And here I start shading into my next post :))

nb: I realise one of things fanfic meta does is tend to focus exclusively on fanfic (and specifically, boyslash) to the exclusion of other sorts of fannish creativity and I've kind of done that here. I guess I can't break out of the very mindset I'm criticising!

(*)These arguments annoyed me a lot less once I wrote some femslash, since now I'm one irrational-smug-moral-superiority level above the smug m/m slash writers :)

Comments

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

The whole idea of defining a whole human being by reference to their participation in one narrow fandom is rather horrifying don't you think?

Either it's true, and that person actually is - the horrifying thought - entirely pigeonholed by their obsession with (say) Le Guin, or (say) Trek, or it's a fallacious and intellectually bankrupt piece of nonsense that has no place in a serious debate.

Part of the point of discussing prejudice is to escape the uncritical leap from one attribute to another pivoting on a (taken as read, unspoken) stereotype.

Hypothesis that occurs to me: fanfic is partly about assigning archetypes to fictional characters. Could it be that this leads naturally towards an intellectual framework in which archetypes are assigned to "fictional" (i.e. misconstructed) real people?

[alias_sqbr]

I don't think fanfic fandom is any worse at this sort of pigeonholing than anyone else: witness the way regular people stereotype all fans, or the way mainstream fans pigeonhole fanfic writers (a bunch of 12 year old girls and bored housewives etc) The thing that started this conversation was mainstream Old School sf fans being amazingly reductive and narrow minded about who counts as a fan, dismissing people because they read fanfic or used livejournal or were offended by racism (a sure sign you're just unable to appreciate the tropes of fantasy, you see).

It's just that the most recent annoying stuff I read was by fanfic fans, so that's what I feel like ranting about :)

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

"were offended by racism (a sure sign you're just unable to appreciate the tropes of fantasy, you see)"

Well, there's something to be said for the view that being able to see past prejudice ... in a book ... doesn't automatically make you prejudiced yourself.

You're right though, the lazy generalisations are all over. My hypothesis is wrong, although I do think that in fanfic there's interchange between the hobby itself and the meta-discussion.

[alias_sqbr]

I do think that in fanfic there's interchange between the hobby itself and the meta-discussion

Maaaaybe. But from what I've experienced, and what I know of fanfic fandom history, the internal divisions and differences have been and are as big as those between fanfic fandom "as a whole" and any other sort of fandom (and most of this discussion only concentrates on one particular, very vocal, subset of fanfic fandom). Jane Austen fanfic, for example, is this whole other world.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

Well, there's something to be said for the view that being able to see past prejudice ... in a book ... doesn't automatically make you prejudiced yourself.

Just because I'm in a pissy mood and have recently committed WhiteFail myself, would you like to actually say that something, so I can see if I find it remotely convincing?

(alternatively, does this belong on DW, Sophia?)

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

Hypothesis that occurs to me: fanfic is partly about assigning archetypes to fictional characters. Could it be that this leads naturally towards an intellectual framework in which archetypes are assigned to "fictional" (i.e. misconstructed) real people?

That's an interesting suggestion.

Writing is always an attempt to pack as much information as possible into as few words as is practical. As such, writers use a lot of shorthand symbols and messages to avoid having to spell out every last detail. And these shorthands include both archetypes and stereotypes so it is inevitable that in clumsy hands (and which if us is a perfect writer?) those stereotypes will on occasion tip over into the offensive. Really, considering the generally low quality of so much fanfic the miracle is not that offensive stereotypes don't occur but that they aren't even more common than they are.

Does this, however, then spill over into the mindset of the writer his or herself and make their own thinking about real humans more stereotypical? Hmm. Not sure. I certainly can't think of an example from my own experience because while I do use stereotypes all the time, part of my preparing to write a new stereotype will involve a fair amount of research into that character type, so I will probably then end up knowing more about the subject not less. I may well stereotype them in a clichéd and possibly offensive fashion, because that is often the neatest and most information-dense shorthand, but I'm not sure that will then infiltrate my own understanding of the people concerned. It might affect my readers' view of course, but that is a different matter.

But on the whole I would say my experience runs counter to your hypothesis: Writing about a character type leads one to a better understanding of that character type, not a more stereotypical misconstruction.

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

Ursula LeGuin fans could demonstrate a little of the progressive social values of Stargate:Atlantis fans

You are very good to write thoughtfully about this rather than just dismissing it as I have - idiotic definitions of categories at the beginning => argument without merit.

[alias_sqbr]

I guess I've seen these categories used enough to be able to sigh to myself and continue, but it took several years of "Who exactly do you mean by 'media' fandom? These categories are dumb!"

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

I have from time to time met people who try to define what fanfic Is and get very upset with other people if they then don't write within those narrow boundaries. Indeed some of the most spectacular rows I have been involved with online have revolved around just that question. So if your formative experience of ficcers was of that sort of person - and especially if it was falling foul of that sort of person, then you have my sympathy. I don't know why it is so important to them to define fanfic so narrowly, but it clearly is for some reason, and some of them can get extraordinarily aggressive and unpleasant about it.

Meanwhile, people continue to write whatever the hell they want in whatever the hell way they want, as they always will. Thank God.

how much more awesome and creative and feminist and postmodern "our" stuff is
:snort:
Well one thing I can say with pride is nobody has ever accused my work of being feminist or postmodern. And the only person to ever call it misogynistic was me (I should know). I sometimes wish I could take the average metafandomer by the hand and lead them out to show them just how much of fandom - their fandom, all those female ficcers and viders and so forth - not only didn't care about all the stuff they talk about but don't even have a clue it is going on, or if they do have an inkling make a very conscious decision not to notice as far as possible. Fandom isn't a progressive social movement, its a bunch of people enjoying their hobbies.

[hlbr.livejournal.com]

Fandom isn't a progressive social movement, its a bunch of people enjoying their hobbies.

But can't it be both? I mean, I find the fact that not only the production of artworks (fiction, videos, music...) is now more accessible, but that their distribution also is, a very progressive social movement! It's decentralizing the collective imagination, sort of. I like it.

I don't know how feminist it is, I don't know how postmodern, but I very much appreciate the fact that many people who wouldn't have thought about writing and sharing that writing with others are doing so. And that's only what I live, because I'm a writer/beta/translator, and have practically no contact with the vidding community, for example, but I'm sure this happens across the board.

I also am incredibly appreciative of the fact that fandom (and the 'net in general--but I live it through fandom) is an international community that feels like a community.

I don't know, I think both of those are pretty revolutionary things.

[alias_sqbr]

I think fanfic fandom is one of those things where the majority of people aren't doing it out of any revolutionary agenda, they're just pursuing their own personal joy, but as a group we end up creating revolutionary things. Some people are actively pursuing political/social justice etc agendas, and I think the structure and culture of fanfic fandom can be really helpful to that, but you can't assume that your average fanfic fan cares about this sort of thing or is particularly progressive or whatever.

(Which is not to disagree with anything you said, just to riff on it)

[hlbr.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't actually think the general of fans are doing it with any agenda but having fun (and some, improving at their crafts, or getting feedback, or whatever). I--who by other measures do think myself as political--don't consider my involvement on fandom to be political in itself. I enjoy doing it, that's why I do it. It's not untouched by my political ideas, of course, but it's not entirely ruled by them.

Which is to say, yes, I agree. Heh.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

Oh I thoroughly agree that fandom is taking part in revolutionary things. The internet is changing vast amounts of human experience in exciting ways, and fandom is undoubtedly part of that and using it. What I'm having a poke at are the type of metafandom commenters who seem to imply that every time a woman sits down and writes a bit of fic she is making some specific social statement rather than just having fun. To me, the word 'feminist' would have to imply a deliberate choice to try to advance the causes and aims of feminism (as opposed to just something that women happen to be doing). Post-modern is a far more difficult term because it can mean almost anything, but it does at the very least seem to imply a reaction against... something, and again I doubt if any serious proportion of fandom are reacting against anything at all. So while I agree that fandom is producing revolutionary things, that is a coincidental by-product of being involved in a revolutionary medium, not an inherent part of fandoms aims, and I do think that distinction is important.

Besides, the 'people telling stories about other people's stories' part of fandom is as old as stories themselves, and since women have always been doing it as well as men, that part at least isn't exactly revolutionary.

I also am incredibly appreciative of the fact that fandom (and the 'net in general--but I live it through fandom) is an international community that feels like a community.
Fandom has some similarities to RL communities, but it also lacks the organisational structures, especially many of the control structures, that we are used to in RL communities. That is one of several reasons, I think, why when stuff on the net goes bad it can go spectacularly bad. It is also one of the reasons it feels so liberating and exciting being on-line - there aren't many equivalent spaces where adults can play safely without much in the way of boundaries or consequences.

When I first came on-line (2001, for the record) I was blown away by the internationalism. Then I gradually became aware that being in ready daily contact with other nationalities can throw up some pretty glaring fault lines and that there are even bigger absences in who we are actually talking to. It has made me aware of what being British means in a way that I had never thought about before, and also about being part of the Anglosphere, the Western hegemony, and so forth. And these days I think of my on-line friends far less as part of an international community than just a group of friends who have some specific cultural things in common. Nothing wrong with that, and its great fun, but it isn't what I would define as truly international beyond the most trivial definition.

Which may mean I'm contradicting myself by holding one standard to one half of this conversation and another to the second half. :rolls eyes at self:

[hlbr.livejournal.com]

I do know that telling stories to each other is old as humanity, but, you know, I don't think the common (wo)man (by a very lax definition of common--I will touch upon this below) had access to distributing those stories to so many people and from so many places and ages before. That's... powerful in itself, to me. It does mean that the power of shaping the stories, the fiction, is more on the hands of the people.

Now, taking on this 'common men' nonsense, of course it isn't yet. The field has widened, but there's still a long way to go.

Oh, the communities I'm in feel very much like RL communities! Stringent laws and changes in powers, and some with more horizontal power schemes than others, but I'm aware that perhaps that's different in lj? That everyone has their own turf here must change things. But I'm only based on lj for a convenience issue. My only friends here are those I know for other means (in dw I'm getting more into the the journaling communities, but not that much).

It doesn't feel very consequences-less or any of that. It felt like that when I lurked, but then I wasn't acting, to have any consequences. When I began to participate, everything came into a sharper relief. Not to get personal nor any of that--but feeling at odds with my online communities felt as bad as it feels being at odds with my family. (I've never been at odds with other RL communities.) Perhaps I'm an oddity and I'm taking everything too seriously--it wouldn't be weird--but that's how I live it.

International wise... I don't know what is the lack you're feeling? I have betaed for Chinese, Indian, American, Chilean, English and Australian people, and been betaed by Polish, American, Belgian, and Spanish people. I read people of all those places (most in English, some in Spanish), and talk with people from all these places. My two best buddies are my own age (exactly to the year!) but one in Portland and the other in Barcelona (I'm in Buenos Aires)--every time we chat together it means two of us are desperately late for their bedtime.

And yes, that the language be English does impose some limits--but what else would you do, with an international community? You need a common language to talk. At some point French was used. I have no problems with that--I have had French in high school and I'm sure I could get it back. Or Chinese, which is the language of the world's majority; I sure would want to learn the language of our** new overlords. I wouldn't mind. But English it is, by history and current politics. It's not even my language, and yes it's deeply problematic that I'm losing proficiency (somewhat) in my own language because I spend so much of my time writing and reading in English, but... I prefer the international community to perfect proficiency in my mother language. Truly.

**Argentina's. A joke.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I just want to note I find this comment interesting and thought-provoking, but I'm holding myself back partly because I'm currently trying to avoid getting into metafandom discussions which have spun off RaceFail that aren't about race. I think there's a big overlap in stuff I agree with you and disagree with you about. But not really about race - except as you note that the oh-so "international" fandom net is heavily anglophone and anglophone-nations dominated.

[alias_sqbr]

I agree with hele that I think there are aspects to fanfic fandom which tie in with social justice: the fact there's so many women makes it a lot easier to discuss feminist ideas than you can in mainstream fandom, it creates more space for international communication (between the three of us we circle the globe :)), allows for groups like FOC to organise, etc.

But the fact that it creates space for those things, and is perhaps (though perhaps not) more feminist etc in general doesn't mean that that's all there is to fanfic fandom, that people who aren't interested in those things are Doing It Wrong(*), that people who aren't in fanfic fandom can be assumed to be unfeminist etc, or that fanfic fans can be smug about how awesome they are if they haven't done anything particularly worthy as an individual.

Which is to say: I don't think that Fandom, overall, is a progressive social movement. I think that by it's existence it can have some progressive social effects, and create a network that helps those who are trying to create a social progressive movement, but most people do just see it as a hobby and there's nothing wrong with that.

(*)I mean if someone writes sexist fic or whatever then I think that's bad, but it's not inherently less fanficcish.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

I think my answer to hele has pretty much covered this (in other words: I agree).

I mean if someone writes sexist fic or whatever then I think that's bad, but it's not inherently less fanficcish.

That is actually an interesting question, because I undoubtedly write sexist fic - and when I started I was doing it accidentally without any real notion of what I was doing or why. But lately I have come to realise that the sexism is a very important part of what I am enjoying about fanfic, and hence I am pushing those boundaries, exploring gender by being deliberately sexists and seeing what happens. I know a few feminists who would have a fit if they saw my current stuff - and a few who would smile quietly and say 'now P's getting it'. And beyond just me (fascinating as I am ;) I think I can see signs of that in other people's work. I am beginning to suspect that one of the many revolutionary things going on in the fic community (I really have no experience of art or vids) is a reaction against PC and hence people are exploring beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable in every way - not just the commonly defined social norms but the newer social norms of PC, social justice, call it what you will.

But it is happening as a by-product of having fun, of just people writing what they want to write, normally without too much thought about why they are doing it, which in many ways makes it far stronger. Because let's face it, nobody has ever really managed to make writers write anything other than the things they naturally and instinctively wanted to write anyway, least of all the writers themselves.

Which brings us back to to your comment. If somebody actually wanted to use fanfic as a medium for social change, they would fail. Because fanfic is too free, too uncontrollable, too independent of anything, and that most certainly includes any social justice activists who might fancy using it for their own agendas. But social change is still a by-product of fanfic, and since the general drift of society is in that direction, fanfic will be swept along in the tide and become part of furthering the causes of social justice. But it might do so in some very unexpected ways.

[alias_sqbr]

I am beginning to suspect that one of the many revolutionary things going on in the fic community (I really have no experience of art or vids) is a reaction against PC and hence people are exploring beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable in every way - not just the commonly defined social norms but the newer social norms of PC, social justice, call it what you will.

Heh. I have this whole rant about the twin meanings of PC as "Basic human decency with regards to caring about the effect of your words on other people" and "Counterproductive dogma". This is particularly relevant to "sexist" fanfic by women since it messes so much with the id, for example some feminists define anything pornographic as sexist and evil, while others define anything pornographic by and for women as feminist, and both decry the other as "sexist" and/or "too PC". But yes, fanfic does give us all a chance to explore things which would be condemned elsewhere (for whatever reason, and for good or ill)

But social change is still a by-product of fanfic, and since the general drift of society is in that direction, fanfic will be swept along in the tide and become part of furthering the causes of social justice. But it might do so in some very unexpected ways.

Agreed.

That said, I think people can use their own fanfic for social justice, same way as they can use music or art or whatever. They just can't use ALL of fanfic fandom.

no race, but I think I'm allowed here

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I've also noticed this "if it's not Our Kind Of Fic, it's not real fic" thing, particularly around slash, particularly when others start asking exactly how feminist slash is.

Anyway, because I have noticed this thing about slash being the true fanfic, or least near the core of fanfic, I had to think about it in relation to myself. Now I don't read much fic, and I don't write any. Of the stuff I've read, slash does not do anything more for me than het or gen (I've not read femslash enough to have an opinion on it). While I've never actually written fanfic, I'm very sympathetic to it (particularly the feminist issues) because I realised at some point that when I was a child, nearly every book I read that I engaged with that didn't have a strong female character, I'd invent one and rework the story in my head to include her. In other words, I think I was creating Mary Sue fanfic that never got written down.

And I think I'm sort of reluctant to actually write fanfic as an adult, because that childhood experience gives me a reasonably good view of what kind of Id Vortex I'm going to be spiralling around, and Mary Sue has an incredibly bad rep in fandom. Whereas slash, which is the (to my mind) other obvious option for getting some strong emotional/romantic/sexual charge into stories that only have strong male characters, is near the core of fandom and takes itself perhaps a bit too seriously.

What if the feminist aspect of fanfic is the female id trying to deal with the fact that too much "approved mainstream" storytelling doesn't have strong female characters to identify with? What if some women respond by identifying with the strong male characters and writing slash, and others of us respond by inventing strong female characters and getting laughed at for writing Mary Sues? What if the approval of slash and disapproval of Mary Sues is a kind of internal sexist self-policing of fandom, as in 'we can't let this notion get too far out of hand and start thinking women actually deserve strong female characters to identify with'? (or, 'unless "approved mainstream" storytelling actually gives us those strong female characters').

This has been brought on also by I think truepenny recently writing about how all her really interesting characters are male because somehow she's learnt that female characters aren't interesting, and I thought both: "that's so sad" and "that actually makes a lot of sense (but only if you weren't the kind of girl who automatically invented strong female characters for all the stories that didn't have them)".

And doesn't this just serve to maintain the hegemony that men are interesting and women can safely be ignored as characters, when even some published women authors find themselves reluctant to write female characters? And to the extent that authors learn by writing fanfic, and women in general consume fanfic, isn't it problematic that we now have a fanfic culture that tends to enforce the writing of male characters by preference? (Let alone how all this affects all those boys who are never exposed to strong female characters because it'd stunt their manly growth or something - note I don't believe this but I get the impression the movie and publishing industries do.)

Actually, I can map this back to race, in the sense that while I on the one hand don't feel I have a specially strong female gender identity (defined as "I'd be very surprised if I woke up physically male tomorrow but I think I'd cope and wouldn't be desperate for surgery to change me back") it's clear that for me, female characters have always been tremendously important, so I figure they are for a lot of other women as well, and I imagine a lot of PoC would like more PoC characters in exactly the same way. (Actually, I don't just imagine, I know based on how PoC have written about watching Uhura on TV in the 1960s and reading about Ged in the 1970s (Wizard of Earthsea).) And if there are PoC writing disproportionately white characters because they've absorbed the idea that white characters are more interesting (or get to survive!), it becomes all the more important for white authors to write PoC characters, if we're going to have any chance of changing any of this anytime remotely soonish.

Re: no race, but I think I'm allowed here

[hlbr.livejournal.com]

Eh, I've come back to this, probably too late, but I wanted to engage, because honestly, reducing the reactions to only strong male characters in mainstream media of 'women'/'fanficcers'/'fans' to slash/Mary Sue, is really freaking reductionist. Pardon the redundancy.

There are fandoms which are predominantly slash, there are also those who are not, and have gen and het, either along with slash or predominantly. Yes, Virginia, there are. They're not in lj, which is probably why most lj meta doesn't take them into account (though lj meta tends to ignore the parts they should know about, like the fact that HP fandom has the same amount of het than of slash--or near enough of the same amount that we would've to do a study to discover which one predominates.)

Mary Sues are kind of... I don't want to be insulting to the writers, but story telling wise, kinda immature. Which is why you find so many young people writing them. And they are only immature because they piss people off, for different in and out story reasons. But they're not, I think, most of any fandom I know. (Perhaps there's a fandom out there with a majority of Mary Sue fic, what do I know? But I haven't met any.)

So the dichotomy is false, I think.

Slash is not what fanfic is about, necessarily.

I think that fanfic is about retaking the narrative, not for any particularly revolutionary reasons, but because narrating is fun and educative, and entertaining, and a awesome way to create and strengthen communities.

Re: no race, but I think I'm allowed here

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I want to say I feel terribly misunderstood, but instead I'll apologise for writing so poorly as to be so misunderstood about a subject that's clearly so problematic. I need to take much more care when expressing my ideas around fanfic.

Re: no race, but I think I'm allowed here

[alias_sqbr]

I'm in that weird position where I agree with what both of you have said yet you appear to be disagreeing :)

So: what I took aquaeri to be saying is that she would be perceived as writing a Mary Sue if she wrote the sort of fic she'd be drawn to, and that female centered fic is often accused of being a Mary Sue.

Of course it's possible you wouldn't agree with this either, and I don't feel I have a broad enough feel for the way the various fanfic fandoms behave to argue in favour of it very strongly (and I don't know what fandom(s) she would hypothetically be writing in)

Sidenote: based on your and other people's comments in this latest round of meta I've started to realise that I do tend to think of sff based fanfic fandom as the "main" fanfic fandom, which is clearly untrue and unfair. I need to poke at my assumptions some more, I think. EDIT: And thus me passing uncritically past "slash is at the core of fandom". I think that statement is true if you take "fandom" to mean "the particular part of fanfic fandom which writes the sort of meta the post is complaining about", but one of the main issues is that that does NOT go without saying.

Re: no race, but I think I'm allowed here

[alias_sqbr]

Overall: yes.

Everything up to the first paragraph: But at the same time, I write female characters, and femslash, because it's what I feel like writing, and if part of the power of fanfic is writing what you feel like then I can understand those who feel like writing male characters doing so. And I can't get too smug: though I try to fight against it, all my fantasy/period stuff tends to focus on the upper classes because those are the stories that appeal to me.

Also: come write femslash! Or gen! I find they're much less prone to and criticised for Mary Sues than het and slash. *waves little gen and femslash flags*

Final paragraph: A bit of a sidenote, but I felt the same way about my gender identity until I went to a trans-issues workshop which amongst other things got us to imagine all the physical changes that would take place in transitioning and I had this amazing sense of body horror at, of all things, the idea of my shoulders getting broad and muscular. YMMV but I found it really interesting.

Anyway: yes. Though I think it's also important to promote POC depictions of POC characters since we white authors are never going to get it quite right, especially if we base our depictions on those done by other white people.

Re: no race, but I think I'm allowed here

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I'm just feeling this is so difficult for me to explain what I'm thinking, am I really thinking something that's so far from what others are thinking?

I agree completely that people write fanfic about whatever moves them to write fanfic, and I'm not (honest!) criticising anyone's choices so much as trying to look at the patterns formed by all those individual choices. And elephant in room: mostly women write fanfic. Whatever fanfic is "about" must at least partly be about some male-female difference, and I personally refuse to believe it's "biological" so it must be cultural.

And so I looked at myself, and thought about how while I've never been moved to write fanfic, I was moved to do something as a child that looks kinda like the raw material fanfic comes from if the urge doesn't go away. And I'm a woman (check) and I had that urge because so much canon is male character dominated (cultural - check).

So it seemed a pretty obvious leap to me that a significant driver of fanfic, the urge to write more and different stories about canon, is because the canon has some stuff that appeals strongly, but also some flaws from the "consumer's" point of view and fanfic is partly trying to "fix" those flaws, and there are a lot of women in fanfic because the canon our culture gives us is more a mixture of really good stuff and flaws, to us, than to men.

I'm very flattered by your invitation to write fanfic, but I'm going to turn you down. To the extent that I get captivated by canon which is both fabulous and flawed and I want to fix flaws (which is the kind of strong motivation I think people need, at least to get started) my response is more in the science/explanation direction. I.e. I don't feel as strong an urge to create more fiction, and I happen (because I've been a scientist too long and I am now brainwashed) to think science/explanation/meta is just as much a creative response, even if it doesn't look like what people think of as a creative response. (Note that I also regard lecturing at university as a branch of the performing arts so I am aware that my definition of art and creativity is not "normal". And you've subscribed to intertwined already.)

And I can do more worthwhile stuff (for my definition of worthwhile) in the science/explanation corner because I already have heaps of background knowledge and skills. And one of the values for me of fanfic and the social structure around it is developing writerly skills, and while it's clear from the last week or so that my writerly skills could use some improvement, the thing I really want to improve is my ability to communicate complex ideas and explain stuff, not my ability to do good characterisation or describe fictional scenes.

If I ever were to write fiction, I think the kind of fiction that is closest to what I want to express is something like Borges - again not exactly profound characterisation, but it's (to me) exploding with ideas and metaphors and stuff. And I don't think it'd be fanfic in the normal sense because I don't feel much need to re-use the existing characters in written description. (Now vidding attracts me somewhat more and if we ever get a computer with the right kinds of speeds and get the right kind of time I can set aside, - but I'm not sure that's the best use of my time in terms of, again, what I want to do that's "worthwhile" in fandom.

(and it'll be very long if I have to explain that further).

trans issues

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I've never been to a trans-issues workshop, but I've already thought about changes like that. And maybe wide muscular shoulders is a bad example, because I already have wide muscular shoulders for a woman, and larger doesn't bother me at all. And going "the other way", getting a smaller less muscular upper body with larger breasts (I have quite small breasts) is at least as weird an idea to me.

And also it occurs to me that I find the photos of Thomas Beattie while pregnant to be beautiful and natural, and it actually requires me to pay attention to notice just how much revulsion and look-at-the-freak-show there is in most of what's been written about him, because I just see him there and it all makes sense to me.

And the men I've cared about most have all been bisexual or capable of setting off my gaydar (my husband when he's really dressed up to express his personality sets off my gaydar strongly - I keep thinking I should write to Rudd and explain to him that whatever he's trying to prevent by not allowing same-sex marriage, it isn't working already) and I had a gay friend for a while who thought it was a real shame I'm female because he could really have gone for me otherwise and I'm flattered and honoured and I get what he meant exactly.

And the first time I went to a place the toilets were maked "men" and "ladies" I felt genuine confusion, genuine "they didn't think of me", and now I feel like I just have to shrug and go into the "ladies" but dammit That's Not Me.

I had a jokey self-description for a while which is possibly offensive to trans people, that I'm a gay man in a woman's body who has chosen not to transition because I think I can do more damage to social stereotypes as a woman than as a gay man.

And anyway, I'm very confused about the transgender thing. I don't think I'm the thing described by "real" transgender people, but I'm not convinced I'm what they describe as cisgender either. Not that I don't deny I get cisgender privilege, but that's been hard for me to accept because like I said, I think the humanity of transgender is so obvious I can miss the social lack of acceptance.