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Hi world (with extra bonus meta!)
So, not only did I get back from vacation to find that my professional life (both on the writing front and the day-job front) had blown up in various ways, but my husband had moved all the furniture into the garage and refinished the floor. Which, on the one hand, is awesome, because it really needed it, and now it's shiny and gorgeous rather than dull and scratched, plus I didn't have to do any work at all! It just magically polished itself! The only problem is, while I was staying at ye ancestral homestead, my mother made it very clear that all the stuff I've been storing there since I moved out (fifteen years ago) HAS GOT TO GO. So I came back with my little car packed to the brim with boxes of old books, toys, clothes, letters, etc. that I need to go through and probably, in most cases, throw away or give to goodwill. But ... now I have no idea where or how or WHEN I'm going to be able to sort them! The car is still packed with stuff, and on top of that, the house reeks of varnish (it's giving me a headache) and it's obnoxiously chilly in here because we've had all the doors and windows open for two days and it's ALASKA so it's sixty degrees in July. And the dogs think the end of the world is here, and keep hiding in the bedroom, or clinging to my legs and requiring constant reassurance that, no, we didn't move all the furniture outside to punish them for something they can't remember doing.
I'm dealing with it in my usual mature and responsible fashion ... by hiding on LJ. Hello, LJ!
Where fandom has exploded, it seems. Again. In various ways. Rather than round up links, I'll just point you all at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
metafandom for details if you're curious, since that's where I'm getting most of them from anyhow. Basically, there appear to be two things making the rounds right now:
- Thing One: A fairly well-known asshat atfanthropology publicly "outed" a fanfic writer, connecting her personal and professional identities.
I'm not sure if my association with anyone on my current flist goes back this far, but I used to write fanfic under my real name. I stopped and switched to pseuds (first Sholio, later friendshipper) because I realized that being associated with fanfic could hurt my fledgling RL writing career. I've never tried THAT hard to keep them separate, so I honestly haven't as much to lose as some people do, but the thought of being maliciously outed had occurred to me from time to time, usually in a "... but no one would be that nasty, would they?" kind of way. Well, apparently, yes they would, and it freaks me out that there are people so petty, small-minded and stupid in fandom. Some people maintain a separate fannish pseudonym because their career could be hurt; some people are worried about other RL issues (stalkers, family finding their journal, etc); some just like the freedom of being able to create their own identity online; others probably have other reasons, but no matter what, they obviously chose to maintain that privacy for a REASON. Exposing the connection between a person's pseudonym and their real name is probably the most gross violation of online privacy that anyone can commit, short of publishing their address and phone number. Whether you're in fandom or not, it's an obvious, fundamental violation of online etiquette (and just general manners).
Someone might be new online, and not realize that. Someone might slip and refer to a friend by their RL name, which happens to me more than I'd like, especially with people that I have strong offline friendships with -- exchanging emails under real names and then switching to fandom pseudonyms can be tricky, especially since I'm pretty casual about using my real name online (and, generally, don't mind if other people do), so it often doesn't occur to me until after the fact that I've slipped up. I'm such a moron sometimes that I wouldn't be surprised (though I don't remember specifically) if I've accidentally referenced other people, especially the better-known ones, in unlocked discussions without thinking about it. You can do it by mistake and not mean any harm, though it's something I'm trying to be more careful about.
But outing someone on a large fan board, on purpose ... that's obviously malicious and I'm very glad that fandom's come down on her hard. This is an utterly despicable thing to do to anyone online. (Although, having said that, I doubt if it would be more of a minor annoyance for me personally, because I've never worked that hard at keeping mine separate, and anyone with rudimentary googling skills can figure it out. But just because it's not that important to me doesn't mean anyone can go around doing it to be a dickwad. I'm always happy to let a friend stay on my couch, but if I come home to find a total stranger and all their buddies sleeping on my couch, I will be pissed.)
-Thing Two: The ever-popular to-criticize-or-not-to-criticize debate. When I saw that this one was making the rounds again, I actually thought I'd started it, because shortly before I left there was a locked discussion on my LJ about concrit. I was relieved, in a way, to discover that it's a completely unrelated thing, and a little different from what I was talking about -- although, my relief that I hadn't started a mess and then accidentally walked away to let everyone else deal with it was tempered by the fact that people I know and respect are getting attacked for their beliefs, and that's never cool.
The difference between this debate, and the one in my journal, is that I was wondering how far it's okay to go when you're commenting on someone else's story -- that is, bringing your opinions into their space. This, apparently, unless I'm totally missing the reading-comprehension boat, involves the whole idea of critizing other fen's stories in one's own journal. (Here's the original post, and attached discussion, that spawned the round of meta. The original post is fairly unclear what sort of concrit it's talking about; the discussion makes clearer that the topic at hand is not comments on fanfic, but third-party discussion/debate/reccing that isn't glowingly positive.)
Here's how I see it: This journal is MY SPACE. I try to be polite, reasonable and a good fannish citizen, and treat others as I'd like to be treated; I do hope that nothing I post here will be blatantly offensive to anyone, but, being human, I'm sure that I'll stumble sometimes, and I hope that someone calls me on it if I do. I also try to be a hands-off moderator and let other people disagree with me; I don't think I've ever deleted a comment, the only people I've banned are blatant trolls and spammers, and I've only ever gone back and made private an unlocked post once or twice (and I felt very bad about it).
But, when it comes right down to it, the sole arbiter of what I post in my space is me, and me alone. And nobody gets to tell me what I can post here. Well, of course, you're perfectly welcome to TRY -- you can announce to the world that you want everybody else to write a particular kind of thing in their journals, at which point I will simply laugh at you and carry on as I have been.
You have every right to police your space as you see fit. If you don't want concrit and I invade your journal with a critical review, then I'm the one who's being rude, by imposing my own fannish values on your space. (It may not stop me, but I do understand that I run that risk, and if I get a poor reception, *I'm* the one who has erred.) But the suggestion that other fen are being rude by having the type of discussions that they want to have, in their own space ... that's just completely ridiculous, to me. I don't agree, and I have no intention of doing anything other than starting the discussions that *I* want to have, in the manner that I want to have them.
I know that there will always be differing opinions on this, and it will probably go on being a perennial topic of fannish discussion as long as there is such a thing as fandom. However, I'm pretty firmly in the "Don't like? Don't read" camp. Obviously, this means that everyone else is entitled to post whatever they want in their journals, too, which includes screeds on other people's journaling behavior. Just don't expect that you'll change how I do things.
I'm dealing with it in my usual mature and responsible fashion ... by hiding on LJ. Hello, LJ!
Where fandom has exploded, it seems. Again. In various ways. Rather than round up links, I'll just point you all at
metafandom for details if you're curious, since that's where I'm getting most of them from anyhow. Basically, there appear to be two things making the rounds right now:- Thing One: A fairly well-known asshat at
fanthropology publicly "outed" a fanfic writer, connecting her personal and professional identities. I'm not sure if my association with anyone on my current flist goes back this far, but I used to write fanfic under my real name. I stopped and switched to pseuds (first Sholio, later friendshipper) because I realized that being associated with fanfic could hurt my fledgling RL writing career. I've never tried THAT hard to keep them separate, so I honestly haven't as much to lose as some people do, but the thought of being maliciously outed had occurred to me from time to time, usually in a "... but no one would be that nasty, would they?" kind of way. Well, apparently, yes they would, and it freaks me out that there are people so petty, small-minded and stupid in fandom. Some people maintain a separate fannish pseudonym because their career could be hurt; some people are worried about other RL issues (stalkers, family finding their journal, etc); some just like the freedom of being able to create their own identity online; others probably have other reasons, but no matter what, they obviously chose to maintain that privacy for a REASON. Exposing the connection between a person's pseudonym and their real name is probably the most gross violation of online privacy that anyone can commit, short of publishing their address and phone number. Whether you're in fandom or not, it's an obvious, fundamental violation of online etiquette (and just general manners).
Someone might be new online, and not realize that. Someone might slip and refer to a friend by their RL name, which happens to me more than I'd like, especially with people that I have strong offline friendships with -- exchanging emails under real names and then switching to fandom pseudonyms can be tricky, especially since I'm pretty casual about using my real name online (and, generally, don't mind if other people do), so it often doesn't occur to me until after the fact that I've slipped up. I'm such a moron sometimes that I wouldn't be surprised (though I don't remember specifically) if I've accidentally referenced other people, especially the better-known ones, in unlocked discussions without thinking about it. You can do it by mistake and not mean any harm, though it's something I'm trying to be more careful about.
But outing someone on a large fan board, on purpose ... that's obviously malicious and I'm very glad that fandom's come down on her hard. This is an utterly despicable thing to do to anyone online. (Although, having said that, I doubt if it would be more of a minor annoyance for me personally, because I've never worked that hard at keeping mine separate, and anyone with rudimentary googling skills can figure it out. But just because it's not that important to me doesn't mean anyone can go around doing it to be a dickwad. I'm always happy to let a friend stay on my couch, but if I come home to find a total stranger and all their buddies sleeping on my couch, I will be pissed.)
-Thing Two: The ever-popular to-criticize-or-not-to-criticize debate. When I saw that this one was making the rounds again, I actually thought I'd started it, because shortly before I left there was a locked discussion on my LJ about concrit. I was relieved, in a way, to discover that it's a completely unrelated thing, and a little different from what I was talking about -- although, my relief that I hadn't started a mess and then accidentally walked away to let everyone else deal with it was tempered by the fact that people I know and respect are getting attacked for their beliefs, and that's never cool.
The difference between this debate, and the one in my journal, is that I was wondering how far it's okay to go when you're commenting on someone else's story -- that is, bringing your opinions into their space. This, apparently, unless I'm totally missing the reading-comprehension boat, involves the whole idea of critizing other fen's stories in one's own journal. (Here's the original post, and attached discussion, that spawned the round of meta. The original post is fairly unclear what sort of concrit it's talking about; the discussion makes clearer that the topic at hand is not comments on fanfic, but third-party discussion/debate/reccing that isn't glowingly positive.)
Here's how I see it: This journal is MY SPACE. I try to be polite, reasonable and a good fannish citizen, and treat others as I'd like to be treated; I do hope that nothing I post here will be blatantly offensive to anyone, but, being human, I'm sure that I'll stumble sometimes, and I hope that someone calls me on it if I do. I also try to be a hands-off moderator and let other people disagree with me; I don't think I've ever deleted a comment, the only people I've banned are blatant trolls and spammers, and I've only ever gone back and made private an unlocked post once or twice (and I felt very bad about it).
But, when it comes right down to it, the sole arbiter of what I post in my space is me, and me alone. And nobody gets to tell me what I can post here. Well, of course, you're perfectly welcome to TRY -- you can announce to the world that you want everybody else to write a particular kind of thing in their journals, at which point I will simply laugh at you and carry on as I have been.
You have every right to police your space as you see fit. If you don't want concrit and I invade your journal with a critical review, then I'm the one who's being rude, by imposing my own fannish values on your space. (It may not stop me, but I do understand that I run that risk, and if I get a poor reception, *I'm* the one who has erred.) But the suggestion that other fen are being rude by having the type of discussions that they want to have, in their own space ... that's just completely ridiculous, to me. I don't agree, and I have no intention of doing anything other than starting the discussions that *I* want to have, in the manner that I want to have them.
I know that there will always be differing opinions on this, and it will probably go on being a perennial topic of fannish discussion as long as there is such a thing as fandom. However, I'm pretty firmly in the "Don't like? Don't read" camp. Obviously, this means that everyone else is entitled to post whatever they want in their journals, too, which includes screeds on other people's journaling behavior. Just don't expect that you'll change how I do things.
no subject
I am also not trying to proscribe any kind of fandom-wide behavior (except, perhaps, that all sides do more to understand where the other side is coming from before reacting maliciously) so anywhere that sounds like I'm telling or demanding someone to stop doing something - I am wording it wrong, and please call me on it.
(I also confess that, as I said, I misinterpreted Kyuuketsukirui at first, so I might have some lingering issues that are inadvertently coming out in whatever I say; I apologize for those, too. I am not unbiased, however I'm trying not to be, and you're right to call me on the strength of some of my statements that betray my attempted neutrality.)
you'd think, from your description, that she posted a big rant in her journal about stupid shippy fans and how dumb they are. When what she actually did was criticize *stories*, not *people*. That's really the key issue in this discussion and I think it's important to keep it straight..
This is the central issue. Because to some people, I think her reviews, however qualified, read exactly as that big anti-ship rant you describe (just as my own remarks here, though I tried to qualify them, came across as accusatory, to you and to Friendshipper, too).
I think the problem here is that crucial story-author distinction. To some people, especially those used to literary/fiction critiquing, the distinction is inherent and obvious. But to other people - some authors and readers both - there is not as clear a line between story and author. In fandom, where one's fanfic is often an expression of one's personal and often passionate beliefs about a character/ship/whatever, to challenge the fic is to challenge the ideas, and through that the author. Not everyone comes from the sort of artistic/creative/critical education that they can clearly see the distinction between an idea and the person who presents it. And to someone who is blind to that distinction, any negative criticism of a story, however worded, comes across as some measure of attack (and is likely to be interpreted as being personally motivated).
All the contorted qualifications and explanations I'm attempting to make here stem from the fact that at one time, I was largely blind myself to the story-author distinction (I could understand it intellectually, but I didn't feel it.) While I can see it now, I need corrective lenses, as it were; I have to make a deliberate effort to perceive the difference, to not emotionally react to things that can appear to me, at first, to be emotional attacks, but actually are intellectual arguments. To many people, the distinction between the two is obvious and apparent, but it's not to everyone.