Tuesday, June 22, 2010 - Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Editors note: I started to split tonight's rather long update into categories, and realized that the current large conversations in fandom are so entertwined, it's impossible to split them easily into tidy groups. The best I can give you is two broad groupings:
aesc: "it's just a story": an argument for getting rid of the 'just' - So, my question is, why "it's just a story" exists, given overwhelming evidence of the fact that stories aren't "just" anything. A related question is why people think "it's just a story" is actually a defensible argument. -
elf: My head can't tolerate this bobbing and pretending - dogpiling is *all we've got*; there isn't any "ban this person from the LJ fannish community" or "pass a law that all future bingo-card fests will be culturally sensitive" option. There isn't any Official Fandom Police to tell people they've stepped over the line from "a bit controversial" to "stupid hurtful." All of that has to be done by individuals. Having it done by a *lot* of individuals is how we establish group standards. -
belmanoir: Racefail stuff - Because you know who else is being hated on the internet right now? You know who else is probably getting hate mail and having nasty things said about them in locked posts? You know who else maybe (or maybe not, given how often stuff like this happens) felt safe in fandom and now doesn't anymore? You know who else might feel vulnerable and attacked? THE PEOPLE WHO HAD TO READ A STORY INSULTING THEM AND THEN HAD THE COURAGE TO SAY SOMETHING ABOUT IT EVEN THOUGH THEY PROBABLY KNEW IT WOULDN'T BE FUN FOR THEM. -
schmevil: put it in the rules - As far as fanworks challenges go, can we put it in the freaking rules?//DO NOT SPREAD HATE through the perpetuation of oppressive, discriminatory tropes and attitudes.//DO NOT EXPLOIT other people's tragedies or cultures, in order to tell stories of/for the privileged.//DO YOUR RESEARCH before writing about other places and peoples. -
muccamukk: Some Thoughts on Comm and Challenge Rules - I've thought about how challenges and comms might handle anti-oppression policies on an individual level. It seems to me that there's two ways to go about it. -
lierdumoa: My Thoughts on the Latest Race Wank - People don't find themselves at the center of epic race wanks by accident. Racist people find themselves at the center of epic race wanks because they did something preposterously racist. -
mercilynn: So You Want To Write A [Natural Disaster/Delicate Time Period/Touchy Subject] Fanfic? - Research. This cannot be stressed enough. Know enough about the issue at hand to treat the matter with respect and knowledge. Use your research responsibly. Don't romanticize people/places/things that should NOT be romanticized. Romanticizing is just another form of minimizing. Don't use the information you've gathered just because it "sounds cool". -
thoracopagus: [meta] on silence, entitlement, fanfic, and criticism - every time fandom starts to question these kinds of appropriation, every time authors who overstep boundaries that seem obvious to the rest of us are made aware of those boundaries, there's a point where the debate shifts back to, But Is Fanfic Worth It? -
dysprositos: Dogpile! - So, here is a PSA for anyone who believes themselves to be the One Brave Soul who will stand up and defend freedom of expression from the dogpiling hordes: You're not! There are a ton of you! And you're all saying the same things, and you're trying to shut people up by criticizing them! Which you have defined as dogpiling and censorship! You have met the enemy, and we are you! -
rhivolution: why fandom is not an ethnic group, by Rhi. - to claim that fandom is an ethnic group denigrates the identity politics that come into the concept of ethnicity, and the problems surrounding ethnic conflict worldwide. -
littlebutfierce: you know... - When you write a post bemoaning what you see as the witchhunts and censorship of people speaking up against offensive portrayals in fanfic? You are not some brave renegade speaking out for those who don't dare; you're not fighting the good fight. You're upholding a deeply entrenched status quo--which has been responsible for uncountable damage--and signaling your interest in maintaining it. -
amaresu: Community Standards, OH NO! - And I'll be the first to admit that public shaming/shunning (because that's what we do in fandom even if we tend to use more words) comes with a multitude of problems. Are there people who perhaps don't speak up out of fear of that shaming and shunning? Without a doubt. But it is unfortunately the best method we have of both enforcing those customs and standards of decent bahavior and showing the community what they are. -
icarus_chained: Debate? Or merely war? - I have watched some of those debates, and they didn't look like debates. They looked like mobs. They looked like gang-wars. They looked like the virtual echoes of the goddamn sectarian violence my dad's job drops him into the remnants of. They looked like wars.They felt like them too. -
secondsilk: Not exactly about Schmoop Bingo - There have been some concerns raised about the North American Christian centric nature of the prompts from Schmoop Bingo. In the original list there were eight prompts for Christmas, and one for a generic holiday. Three people commented to the community about it and the mods have revised the pompts list. This is good.//But I don't like (and this is just my reaction) the way the mods have responded to the concerns that have been raised. -
bewize: Authorial Responsibility - As an author, while I may have the right to write whatever I want, that doesn't guarantee me the right not to be called out for Doing It Wrong. There is no single other aspect of my life where I am given this right. If I do my work badly, I get called out. If I am a bad friend, I get called out. If I'm not meeting family obligations, believe me, people tell me. -
mari4212: Oh no you don't. This person posted a r - you don't need to mindlessly fall into those tropes which diminish characters of color and women. The fact that you automatically assumed you would have to use those hurtful tropes unquestioningly, says a lot. This is why people feel the need to speak up when they find stories like this. Because the sooner we convince people that the hurtful tropes are not the easy answer, the sooner people who lack one privilege or another stop feeling that fandom is punching them in the face for existing on the internet. -
riko: excuse me as i'm serious for a moment - here are some brief, non-exhaustive, things that I think fandom generally tends to be unaware of when discussing narratives about persons with disabilities: 1) Disability is societally-created. -
eumelia: The Fallacy of Symmetry - One of the ways of doing better when discussing race is realising the asymmetrical position I have (as a white Jewish woman) in the power structure of the discussion and of life in general. That means that despite the fact that I'm offended by the notion that someone called me on my racism, the hurt I caused by saying or doing something racist is that much more damaging. -
zvi: How to run a generalist panel at a mediafan con - But say that you're going to do the panel on "Is manpain ever appropriate on my tv screen?" or "[Your OTP] in [Your Fandom]: how so awesome?". This is what you do: -
melannen: Fandom, Copyright and Copyleft - There are some specific parts of copyright law that fans tend to be far more concerned with than anybody else is. Because there is rarely much money or reputation riding on these fannish uses, very few of them are frequently tested in court, and if you ask a non-fannish copyright lawyer about them, the answer you will likely get is something along the lines of "nobody knows, because frankly nobody cares. The chances you will get sued are tiny. Stop worrying." That said, those answers rarely satisfy fans, and there's enough of a risk that it's worth learning about the things that are most likely to apply to you. -
lately: with(in) the band: an essay - There is a space where a woman’s fannish interest in a band will not immediately result in her being labeled as a groupie – with all its attendant misogyny. There is a subcultural space where a different paradigm is not just permitted, but is the norm. In this network on the internet, women not only have no difficulty expressing their love for the music produced by the bands of which they are fans, but further, they have no difficulty expressing a sexual attraction to them. Instead of that desire being exclusively directed at the band members, however, the desire is written between the band members. Fanfiction – slash fanfiction – that writes in a queer desire. -