Rambly panel related thoughts

[alias_sqbr]

Ug. I seem to have become One Of Those Fans who starts off with a reasonable question then goes into a ramble about a pet topic or, worse, a self righteous and only barely relevant rant. I think it's a combination of less ability to concentrate on what I'm saying and my social skills being rusty.

Perhaps I should write questions down when I think of them. And/or find more opportunities to rant about fannish stuff in person outside of a panel context, get it out of my system.

I also think I might have to stop going to panels that are too straightforwardly celebratory of their subject. Even if I agree with 99% of the positive things people are saying, that 1% of disagreement and the vibe that only squeeful responses are expected niggle at me and I start feeling all contrary and cantankerous and being tempted to rant. I had to just leave the Doctor Who panel before I ended up ranting about the ways Russell T Davies is better than Stephen Moffat (Not that I think he's better overall! But he wasn't all bad) And I seem to be unable to make it through a panel about fanworks without muttering about the ways the community isn't quite as inclusive and supportive as all that.

That said, I came to an interesting realisation during cupidsbow's panel (alas it might have been better if I hadn't gotten sidetracked into rambling about it and some other random stuff right then and there) She and chaosmanor were giving examples of political fanworks, and the ways that remix culture and transformative works can say and do interesting things. Many of the examples they gave were satire deigned to unsympathetically critique the original work (EDIT: Or at least, that's what they started with, which is what inspired my ramble), even though this form of transformative work (a)already has general legal and cultural support and (b)is not remotely representative of the kind of stuff fanfic etc fandom usually creates. In fact there's a lot of meta which makes a big deal about how critical fanworks are still "made with love" (which most of them are), and I've had people tell me that anything not made out of love isn't really fanfic and doesn't necessarily belong in places like the AO3.

Yet when people want to talk about vidding fandom, say, they'll frequently give the example of something like Women's Work, which shows pretty much no love for the show and fits much more into traditional expectations of transformative art as satire or angry political statement. Love of subject (and specifically of character, and of romance/sex) is hugely maligned and invisibled outside fandom, and totally centralised within. As someone whose fanworks span the spectrum from angry/mocking satire to affectionate critique to shmoopy non critical romance and a bunch of other genres in between I have this weird set of inconsistent internalised and externalised reactions to my work.

It's worth noting that satire is not unrespected within fanworks fandom, but it is for example hard to know where to post something that is about X without celebrating X at all. Maybe there needs to be an "antifanworks" comm for posting such stuff. Though I imagine it would fill with intellectually lazy anti-Twilight etc works pretty quickly unless it was set up carefully (you'd definitely need to ban anything mocking other fans).

Also I'm not saying that people like cupidsbow etc are wrong to use these works as examples, especially not if they're justifiying/celebrating transformative works in general rather than the more female dominated circles we move in. And they did also mention more uncritical celebratory works as well. But I still find the dynamic where these more "acceptable" (and in some ways, male coded) works become disproportionately used as the public face of fanworks fandom interesting. I think I need to ponder it some more.

In short: my contrary critical nature gets me into trouble as a fan wherever I go :D

Comments

[ex_pippin880]

I have this fantastic mental image of you waggling your cane at all the Newfangled Fans Confound Them They Are Wrong.

[alias_sqbr]

I..uh...may or may not have actually threatened to thwap a young panelist with my cane at one point :D (In my defence he was joking about throwing things at the audience, so he totally started it)

[hl]

I don't think those works are unfannish, or not fannish or whatever -- I mean, it's more or less the same urge for me, either to create something because canon inspires me positively or negatively (though perhaps the later is less strong in me -- I never end up doing critical stuff of canon I dislike, though I've gone as far as to plan it out) -- and fanon itself sometimes inspires me negatively (that is, I'm inspired to write something to 'disprove' a bit of fanon). But it's kinda lazy to use it to justify the transformativness or value of fanworks, because, as you say, they're already accepted (in fact, the only place I can think of where that's even in doubt is in fandom itself, where love for canon is highly valued). Also, it echoes the affirmative/transformative fandom false dichotomy that creeps up every now and then in journal fandom meta circles.

[alias_sqbr]

As lian points out below, though, a lot of audiences simply won't be able to understand what's going on with a lot of "affirmative" fanworks. cupidsbow gave the example in a later panel of the way that the very dark Kirk/Spock vid Closer was read as humour by many people outside fandom. I'm still trying to think of many political fanworks which are unambiguously in love with their source and which would be accessible to a non-fanworks-fannish audience. The examples I remember them giving were race swaps, which works, plus the meta-level political effect of people embracing their sexuality etc, but I'm going to ponder the question some more.

[hl]

I do get that. And perhaps 'lazy' is too harsh. But it's not very representative to me, and it doesn't really explain fandom, so I'm not sure how useful it could be.

It's weird, but thinking about this, I've realized that all the things I show when I want to explain fandom are affirmative creations. Like the one night fandom vid when I wanted to explain yuletide to my mother. (Or fic -- when I introduced the idea of fic to my brother, when I told him I was writing austen ff, I showed him some of my favourite fics (actually, lin's and E's fic!). The same when I showed my sister HP fandom -- I chose one my favourite fic-writers. And all those fanworks are pretty unambiguously affirmative.)

[alias_sqbr]

Fandom in general I think you can introduce with affirmational stuff, it's fandom + deep political commentary that gets trickier.

Here's the list of works prepared for the panel, though they didn't talk about all of them.

[shrydar]

I wonder if there's a certain amount of cultural cringe going on - where rather than presenting to outsiders representative work (regardless of how highly we may regard it) we instead present the subset of fanworks that we have a higher expectation of getting a positive response to.

(ps, I do enjoy your asides :)

[lian]

I don't think it's 'lazy' or wrong per se -- transformative fandom is an incredibly high-context culture. It can be almost impossible to introduce the context needed for properly interpreting postive-affective fanworks; hence, shortcut to negative-affective transformative stuff, because people are either well-versed (or more comfortable, which is where I guess your critique comes in) in interpreting those.

(you know, like how many people saw "Closer" as a parody or something because they didn't have/get the interpretative context, at all. [I had that sort of experience -- of most of the audience not getting postive-affective fanworks and treating them as parody -- at a fan cultures conference, even. Like a default interpretative mode for fanworks, because ironic distancing = safe.] Personally, I don't understand how it can be seen as funny at all, but...)

Then again, idk how clued-in the audience was, you know? Maybe they would have gotten it, and I do agree with you that we should be more bold in showing the more context-dependent side of fandom too, hard as it may be. (And conceptualize the audience's unease and chuckles and whatnot. I'm contrary like that too -- I don't think panel mods should let that pass, but take it as an opportunity for discussion.)

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, very good point. I'm not sure I made it clear that for this and other reasons I don't have a problem with the way they ran the panel (and there were more postive-affective ones as the panel progressed, including an anthroporfic exploring race and gender where John and Rodney are girlscout cookies. The audience seemed pretty cool with it) but they started with satire which got me thinking about the dynamic.

Since the panel I've been thinking about which sorts of more typical political fanworks would be accessible to a broader audience, it's an interesting and difficult question.

[alias_sqbr]

I don't think that that was what was going on here, but I think that does happen sometimes. Lian make a good point about how hard it is to find fanworks that a broader audience will understand the context for though.