smirnoffmule: In which if I want to stupidly trigger myself, I can. - People have a lot of different motivations to seek or write H/C fic. Myself, I have a number of buttons H/C generally hits, but since it's a diverse genre, different stories are going to hit different buttons for different reasons. In short, I think it's a very difficult trope to generalise about. And if you're saying writing to these bingo squares is appropriative and it's writing the Other, then you're making some big assumptions and generalisations about the people who are going to be doing the writing. -
hollow_echos: Why hurt/comfort you ask? - I’m going to try to explain what hurt/comfort means to me. I’m sure it’s different for other people, but understanding the stuff you are debating right now is important. You can’t just barge into our genre and start discussing it without understanding the basics. If you want the writers in this genre to do their research on the conditions they are writing about, I think it’s fair to ask the meta writers to do a little research too and maybe look at this from our perspective and see where we are coming from. -
attackfish: If I Woke up Tomorrow Without Disabilities... - All told, I don’t know entirely what my life would be like if I suddenly had disabilities, but it wouldn’t be a pure improvement. It would be fraught with conflict, and though I’d gladly be cured, I know that it would only be the beginning of a story, not it’s conclusion. And it would be a fascinating story. The sort of cure for a character with disabilities in fanfiction that I would like to see wouldn’t be the happily ever after, but the beginning, the once upon a time. -
b_dsaint: Meta, Meta, but not that Meta - Right so, like, its right in the definition(-ish) that fanfic is not commissioned or authorized by the original works... so why do we, as fanfic authors, feel like we can control who writes fanfic about our fics? It's my understanding that the "unwritten rules of fandom" frown down upon unauthorized remixes which... seems a bit hypocritical. -
drvsilla: You've been on a road that just don't seem to end - my initial reaction started from a tangential place, one that allows that choosing the Haiti earthquake as the location for a fic isn't necessarily an egregious breach of common laws of decency. There is undeniable pathos in settings as emotionally visceral and cogent as the scene of human-embroiled disaster. There is a lot of importance and investment that could have been said about what's happening there, still, and should be said. It was interesting to me that someone had decided to tackle that, even while I had established misgivings. -
thoracopagus: [meta] internet identity and the burden of history, with a dash of racefail - It isn't Orwellian to delete entries from your LJ or get rid of art and writing you don't feel is up to your current standard. There might be something distasteful about editing old posts and deleting comments you've made in an attempt to convince people that you didn't actually say or do something utterly ridiculous on the internet, but so long as you have the ability to do that? You have that right. -
deird1: The Vegemite Effect - meta - There is a reason why sequels flop, McDonalds succeeds, blurbs are important, and Dawn Summers was hated by many fans when she first appeared.That reason is known as The Vegemite Effect, and I am here to explain it to you. -
lokifan: I Love You For Your Flaws (Not That You Have Any) - It’s pretty much universal: we hear that people who like our favourite character are whitewashing, being silly fangirls, missing their glaring faults. (I imagine villain-lovers hear this more but I’ve certainly seen it related to the heroes.) We get all William Congreve: nay, I like her for her faults! But we’ll then go on to argue blind that those faults aren’t really faults at all. It’s a matter of circumstance, and what about authorial intent, and anyway that other character deserved it. -
edenfalling: why wouldn't you worry about how Hamlet's friends cope with his death? - Because while I know perfectly well that fictional characters are fictional, I do wonder what happens to them before, during, and after their stories. I do wonder about the implications of their actions. I don't think that is in any way more difficult or unusual than wondering about nonfictional people -- in fact, I think it's easier -
usullusa: On Porn - It is incredibly upsetting that somebody decided to make the deaths of thousands of people, particularly PoC, the backdrop for a completely unrelated story about two white guys. But the fact that it was porn is not in and of itself bad. I am frustrated by the tone that I've seen people take implying that the porn makes it even worse. -
tikiaceae: I feel... safer... - When I first started this online participation thing (pre-LJ), I hid who I am. I didn't have to lie, I didn't have to fabricate anything but I knew by not saying anything otherwise people would assume I was white. And sometimes people thought I was a white dude even.//Maybe I was being a coward but I did that because I felt safer that way. -
lookninjas: Just - I have an obligation to my story, to tell it to the best of my ability, to make my intentions clear. I have an obligation to my audience, to listen to what they have to say and ask myself if the response I'm getting is the response I wanted, and if it's not, to ask myself what I need to do to change that. I have an obligation to myself, to make sure that I'm comfortable engaging in the conversation and that, if I'm risking an ugly situation, that I'm taking that risk for a good reason. -
onelittlesleep: Racefail: same shit, different day - One thing that bothers me about the way people handle racefail in fandom is that the SAME SHIT comes up every time. It's just ignorance, but come on, people. Do you know why people stop talking to you in a race argument? It's not because your under-thought, uneducated knee-jerk responses are winning, it's because you're arguing the same disproven point that has come up a hundred times before. People stop talking to you in race arguments because you're too ignorant to bother with. -
hesychasm:: the continuing conversation - I get so tired of seeing the same defenses and pleas for understanding on behalf of people who fuck up and show their ignorant, racist asses. She didn't know. She didn't intend any harm. What we need here is forebearance and compassion so everyone can learn something. Why do you have to be so rude about someone who made an honest mistake. She was just thoughtless, not mean-spirited. I was just thoughtless, not malicious. I am not a racist. How dare you call me a racist. I didn't understand that it was wrong. Teach us not to do it again.No. How about I ask why the hell you still need to be taught? -
tanndell: Let's talk Privilege - So to all of you out there, particularly those of you who are struggling with white privilege in the face of this particular fic, the problem is not with the setting, the problem is not even that it assumes a white privilege. The problem is that it is a display of blatant ignorance and lack of sensitivity. Write about other cultures, write about other people. Just try and avoid the obvious pitfalls (and even the less obvious ones). Just don't stop writing about me because you're white. I have been erased enough in fan-narrative, to not want to see it happen again. -
ninhursag: Culture and confessionals - One thing that's always bewildered me (I'm not saying it's always wrong or bad, just that I don't really understand the beneficial role it plays and it strikes me as fairly negative as a whole) every time there's a fandom-wide fail is the need bystanders feel to confess their (more or less unrelated) sins and apologize. -
2_perseph: Classic racism - Bearing in mind that this is not an academic paper on the subject, your story nevertheless serves as a perfect tool for demonstrating what people claim to not understand when someone gets accused of "being racist." Whether you intended the story as racist or not is, I'm afraid, your bad; I'm still going to use it. So if you or any one you know is baffled and wondering what's the big deal, point them in this direction. -
poisontaster: But Trust Me On the Sunscreen - You do not exist in a vacuum. Your story does not exist in a vacuum. You are not ever going to be judged just as yourself on yourself. And for as special snowflake as you think your story is, you exist as part of a human continuum of stories. You are part of the story telling consciousness of humanity and, quite frankly, A LOT of that story-telling consciousness has been full of various kinds of fail. -
littlemousling: Warnings and fail, fail and warnings - Warnings, for oppression issues, don't really exist. The only people who warn are the people who probably got it right**, anyway, because they're the only ones thinking about it. Which is why "well, you don't have to read it!" is such a fucking unhelpful response. How, exactly, oh commenter (there's always one like that, isn't there?), is someone supposed to know? -
muccamukk: This Is Not JUST about Writing Characters of Colour - The thing is, when people fail spectacularly like this author, the entire Internet sees it. There's metamobbing. Tears are shed. Curses are screamed. Friendships are broken forever. And yeah, the author probably will be known for hir fail for a long time. The whole thing is very dramatic and everyone remembers it.//But what happens when the author doesn't fail? Basically nothing. If zie writes characters of colour well, as many authors do all the time, nothing happens. The fic will get reviews. If it has a character of colour in the lead role, it might get fewer reviews than if it had starred fandom's favourite pretty white boys, but that's it. -
amonitrate: like clockwork. - The way we write, what we choose to write about, the words we choose, have impact. What we choose to read has impact too. It's insidious. It can plant and reinforce these unquestioned stereotypes in our minds about the way the world is. There's an entire orchestra's worth of fiction (and non-fiction, for that matter) forwarding these racist ideas, ideas that if you're white and privileged, like I am, it's easier to accept than question. And boy howdy, how I just accepted this shit for years and years. And probably still do in ways I don't catch. -
the_grynne: We write about the world we want to live in (and we're doing a pretty shit job of it today). - Fan culture, after all, is largely self-policing. A lot is tolerated - nay, celebrated! - in fandom that is frowned upon in "wider society", no matter which country we come from; I think that's how we, as a subculture, challenge dominant discourses. But this isn't to say that we don't have norms that are constantly being renegotiated/revised, or that anything goes, that we are beyond offense. -
mardia: throw my head back and shout, come on now. - I deal with racism all the time, and I very rarely--if ever--have a choice about when I have to deal with it. So the oh-so-common trope of "White Person Opens Their Eyes To Racism In Their Society" doesn't really appeal to me. In fact, it does nothing except piss me off. -
withdiamonds: I wanted to make a separate post for thi - I am about as privileged as one person can be, except in the areas of age and gender. I have to THINK about things, and you know? I make an effort to do just that, even if I don't always succeed. I see no evidence of THOUGHT here, so what does intent matter? -
roga: Boosting the signal about the J2 Big Ban - Because these kinds of fics get written all the time, and this discussion might be what makes people think twice next time before they choose to tackle sensitive subjects in order to get their OTPs together, think deep and hard about whether what they want to write is appropriate, be more aware. -
marina: Cathing the sunlight under the red moon - Right now fandom is in a general uproar, as tends to happen when an issue that's been bothering people for a while finally erupts. I'm sure everyone realizes this isn't just about the Haiti story, it's not unique, not to the fandom it came from and not to fandom in general. It's about all the stories before it that have made people raise their eyebrows, rage and seethe in private, talk about in public and feel like they were getting nowhere. -
tiferet: So, about that J2 fic. - This is HER story. It's not the story of the Haitian people, or of the foreign aid and rescue workers who are in Haiti. It's her story, about how she thinks Jensen Ackles is the coolest person ever, constructed wholly out of her imagination using a bunch of tired old racist tropes as source material. -
sohotrightnow: Big Bangs are ripe for problematic content this year, apparently! - The thing is, I feel like it's been established, throughout the various *Fails of the past year and a half, that intention means very little, if anything. I don't think [livejournal.com profile] promisethstars sat down and said "I think, for my Bandom Big Bang, I want to write something that contributes to a problematic historical tradition of erasing Jewish identity!" and then cackled and did some villainous mustache-twirling. -