A post full of thoughts
Apr. 13th, 2010 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elvenpirateladySo this is a post about fandom and meta and me looking back on the things I did in my younger fandom days. It began when I got linked to a few posts talking about the term 'Mary-Sue' and how its meaning has changed over the years since fandom started on the internet.
The first link I read was this essay by Boosette on Dreamwidth (be warned, it's quite provocative even if I agree with most of it, and there's a lot of emotional language), and I was going through it and agreeing with quite a lot of what the author was saying. Then she said a word that I would never have associated with myself: bully. Direct quote:
"Translated, roughly: PPC goes around bullying tweens, teens, young women and yes: older women, too -- for daring to write fanfiction not up to their (dubious) standards. For writing original female characters, minor canon characters and major canon characters in a manner that is empowering to them."
I was shocked to read that. Holy shit, I said to myself, is she talking about me? Am I a bully? Because I used to spork fics a few years ago (going on four or five now, and by god that seems like a long time). I used to post MSTs here, and I used to be on the PPC message board. I wrote a couple of missions, although I only posted one and a half.
Being called a bully was a great shock. I didn't want to believe that of myself, but I have to admit, from an external point of view it sure looks that way. But taken without its context an idea or a word is going to sound off, and I think I should relate how I got to sporking fics in the first place.
The thing is, I got into fandom just when the LOTR films were getting started. I think the first fics I read were printouts of the Very Secret Diaries and Bagenders. I saw The Fellowship of the Ring and read the books in the year between that and The Two Towers, and I fell in love with the world and its canon.
When I got to fanfiction.net, though, what I saw was thousands of romances between a canon male (Legolas, usually, I think it was almost a fandom requirement to fangirl him at one point or another) and an original female character. I clicked on a couple and wasn't impressed (for the record - romance is not my thing, and to this day I'm more interested in plot than pairing). I was amazed at the sheer mass of them, and how they all seemed to follow the same pattern of OFC meets canon male, falls in love, saves world, lives happily ever after. A lot of summaries had some variant of "not a mary-sue!" and eventually, through the Official Fanfiction University of Middle-earth I think, I found the original PPC missions with Jay and Acacia. And I read them, and I loved them, because I wasn't the only one who thought that there were rather a lot of Legomances in the LOTR section of ff.net. When I was reading it the PPC felt fresh and new and because there were so many OFC-centric fics, it didn't feel like it was doing anyone any harm. The targets (the Department of Mary-Sues goes into fics and assassinates the Mary-Sue to bring the world back to canon) had negligible personality. It was like getting upset about watching someone destroy a cardboard cut-out, and so I thought it wasn't doing anyone any harm. What my younger self didn't know or willfully supressed was that every fic that was targeted had been written by someone who had made an effort and put it online hoping to get feedback, hoping to join fandom, hoping to connect. To my knowledge, the PPC missions were not intended to be seen by the original author but they wouldn't have been that hard to find. And so it's possible, no probable, that a lot of the authors of the fics found their stories getting torn apart.
If I'd mentioned this to my younger self, by the way, she probably would have shrugged and said 'they clearly didn't put any effort into it and they didn't make any attempt to stay within canon, so they don't have any right to complain'. This is the point where I want a time machine so I can shake my younger self and say 'can you hear what you're saying?'
Because I used to have ideas about writing my own OFC in Middle-earth too. Her name was Aleia, she could work magic, she was a human adopted by Elves in Hollin and she ended up saving the world and being mortally wounded, going over the sea to be healed/made immortal in the process, and of course she and Legolas fell in love. She's still in my head in an evolved form, wandering around in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender right now, and she's having a good time. Good for her.
I used to pride myself on not writing and posting my OFC fic, even if I had one in my head. I thought I was better than the other writers posting their Mary-Sue fics, and this is the point where I have to go and smack my younger self around the head a couple of times. I might not have posted a Mary-Sue fic, but nobody starts off writing masterpieces that will make the world weep. My earliest fics were the Fellowship-in-modern-times, the poorly-written parodies, the strange ideas liberally laced with crack. They're still at the end of my ff.net account, if you really want to look at them. I never deleted them because they're still the ones with the most reviews, and because I reminded myself that we all had to start writing somewhere.
My younger self was conscious enough of the fact that everyone starts off writing god-awful fic, but she didn't pick up on the hypocrisy of slandering Mary-Sue writers. I thought Suefics had plotholes that you could drive a tank through. My earliest fics were a series of scenes that I thought were funny and the plot was made up as I went along. I accused Suethors of writing canon characters completely OOC. My earliest fics were exactly the same. I winced at Mary-Sues tromping all over the canon. The very first fic I posted, in the WoW fandom no less, contains in the AN: "I haven't played Warcraft 3 and I'm using the game manual for information, so please excuse any mistakes." I had, essentially, no leg to stand on criticising fellow ficcers.
But I was having fun, and I never thought that the Suethors were having fun writing their Mary-Sues. It never occurred to me that they could enjoy writing those types of fics as much as I enjoyed writing fics so cracky that they were coming apart at the seams, but there you go, hypocrisy again. Eventually I grew as a writer and discovered things like plot and subtlety and proper characterisation, and I've gone on from there. I never had my fics torn apart by reviewers, and I think I might have given up writing fics if that happened. Young writers are not exactly thick-skinned. But I think now about how easy it was to jump on a new ficcer for writing a romance badly, or getting canon details wrong, and I feel awful when I think that I probably contributed to people giving up fandom. I love fandom so much because it's inclusive and creative and I think it has made me a better person, and I feel like the worst person in the world for depriving other people of it. If you're out there somewhere, I am so sorry, so very sorry.
At the same time I made a lot of friends at the PPC and I learned a lot about writing in general. Some of my greatest friends here on LJ are people I met on the PPC boards or connected to it in some way, and I value you guys very much. I am not trying to insinuate that any of you are bullies, but I'm not comfortable with the culture any more. For most of you we've moved on from PPC matters and we've got other things that make us friends, and I treasure that. I treasure being included and being able to love fandoms with you guys. If I could take back the hurt I caused to other people and leave the good times with you standing, I would, but life doesn't work that way.
---------
So looking at the whole issue from that perspective, yes I accept that I probably hurt a lot of people and I should have known better. But I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, and here's why:
From an internal POV of the PPC, it was never about bullying or degrading other people's works. It was about protecting the canon.
I loved the LOTR canon - nowadays I still love the books but I have a lot of issues with the movies. But in my younger days I loved the books and the movies both. I was confused to see so many fics about characters that didn't exist in canon, doing things that never happened in the original source. Tolkien made us this wonderful world, I thought. Why aren't they playing with the things he gave us? Why have they brought in other toys?
So eventually I settled into the mindset of canon = good and non-canon = bad, when it's more like you can like some parts of canon and dislike others and still call yourself a fan, and non-canon is not necessarily bad unless you don't explain it. Those are long, though, and it was easier to stick with the shorter slogans in my mind. I started scanning fics for canon errors and judging the fics by how well they stuck to canon, not how well they were written.
This is where Suethors come up against a major barrier, because LOTR canon has very few women, and to a modern audience they have very limited roles. Women in LOTR do a lot of behind-the-scenes work that isn't mentioned or is mentioned only in passing, and it takes a lot of reading between the lines to see them. To a new fan coming straight from the movies or having just read the books, the world of Middle-earth desperately needs more female characters, and if there aren't enough canon females then the only option is to make some up. And if you're going to make up OFCs then why not make them fight with the men and do things that might actually rate a mention in the books?
Because that's not canon, I can hear my younger self whining in the back of my head. They're mangling the canon, they're ruining Tolkien's work, they're not doing it right.
Shut up, younger self. The canon is fine. The canon doesn't know about fandom, and if it did it wouldn't give a damn. Someone writing a fic about a dragon-riding half-elf princess who saves the world and marries Legolas isn't going to change every copy of LOTR in the universe to their version of what happened. My younger self worrying about Suethors mangling canon is about as logical as me worrying that driving instead of taking the bus is going to make the sun stop shining.
I still maintain that you can write awesome original female characters that don't go against the canon, but you need time and patience to do so. Writing a Mary-Sue is one step on the road to writing an awesome female character, but a ficcer isn't going to go any further down that road if they get reviews saying essentially 'your story is a travesty, you can't write for shit, you're ruining the fandom'. Of course they're not going to keep writing if they get that day in day out.
------
In her essay Boosette also talks about how "Mary-Sue", which was once a fairly neutral term for an original female character, is now equivalent to "scum of the Earth". I find myself agreeing with her. When I hear or read "Mary-Sue" I think, approximately, "astonishingly beautiful girl who can do everything and do it better than everyone else, who saves the world and has everyone love her because she is so wonderful, and who screws canon over sideways with a shovel". But what I have there are some of the symptoms of a badly-written original character, not the problem, namely that the character is badly written.
Me calling an OFC a Mary-Sue, with that definition, is implying that well-written OFCs are not beautiful or talented or competent or anything else, and I have a problem with that. I shouldn't be tearing down other ficcers (and knowing fandom demographics, they're probably other women too) for writing about beautiful/talented/competent women. I shouldn't be tearing down women for being beautiful/talented/competent, we get enough of that in society.
What I should be doing is looking past the descriptions and going to the characterisation and the writing, and saying things like "your OFC sounds like a fun character to write but I'd like to hear how she got that scar and how it affected her". And the like.
This is going to be hard. My method of reading fics used to be:
a) click on fic
b) read through fic searching for Mary-Sue symptoms and canon errors
c) find them, go 'oh god, not another one' and click away. I didn't leave much feedback because I was lazy and I didn't know where to start on the list of perceived problems with the fics.
Now it should be:
a) click on fic
b) read through fic, trying to ignore what I've trained myself to see as classic Mary-Sue symptoms. Look for canon errors and try to think of ways to justify the difference or change the fic so that it's within canon. (Easier for some canon errors than others)
c) if I need to, vent my anger on this LJ under lock and key. Not at the author.
d) then go back to the fic and review it properly.
I fully expect that this is going to take a lot of effort on my part, not least because I'm in the bad habit of bookmarking fics without reviewing them, and because looking for signs of a badly-written character takes more concentration than looking for typical characteristics. But I'm determined to try.
-----
And because of this I am not going to use the term "Mary-Sue" anymore because it does not mean what I intend it to mean any more (and hasn't for a good few years) and because it is demeaning, and not gender-neutral. Instead I'm going to try badly-written original character, which is BWOC and I guess I'll get used to it.
Because badly-written original female characters are not doing the canon any harm, and they are the start of writing well-written original female characters. I've been increasingly appreciative of female characters in fanfic (see:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
femgenficathon , my post about ladies in the Silmarillion) and it is not fair that badly-written male characters don't get nearly as much flack as OFCs. And I cannot think of any situation when I could look at a fandom and say "okay, that looks like it has enough awesome ladies, no more please".
I love me some female characters. I really really love me some well-written female characters, but the badly-written female characters are the first step to them. New authors need encouragement and gentle criticism and eventually they will be writing original female characters well. BWOCs are a pain, but they're a passing pain (and a lot of ficcers will keep writing, look back on their first fics and roll their eyes. But they'll still be in fandom and they'll still be writing, and that's a good thing.)
It's going to be a hard habit to break, but I promise to try. Encouraging new ficcers = more people in fandom = more fics being written = ficcers learning to improve their writing = more fics about well-written OCs and canon characters = everyone wins. And that, younger self, is worth a little heartache at seeing canon get mangled.
--------
More links:
Boosette's essay, again: Storming the Battlements or Why The Culture Of Mary Sue Shaming Is Bully Culture
Niqaeli weighs in here and here
Goldjadeocean here
And lastly here are Sarah Rees Brennan's thoughts on female characters in fiction. I'm linking them here because they made me think critically about what I think about female characters and SRB makes a lot of good points about the Mary-Sue thing even if she's not talking about it directly.
Ladies, Please!
Ladies, Please (Carry On Being Awesome)
Ladies, You Are Awesome (Just Admit It, Quit Fronting)
--------
Holy shit that's a long post. Well done if you lasted to the end, if you didn't here's the tl;dr version: tearing down ficcers for writing badly when they start writing is bad, encouragement and gentle criticism is good, and I'm not using Mary-Sue anymore. Back to crackfic posting now.
----------
EDIT: Apparently this is getting more coverage than I expected. For the record, this is just my personal experience with fandom and you shouldn't hold this up as a yardstick to everyone who used to spork fics or still does so, everyone is different. If you're going to comment here please keep it polite, not everyone is going to have the same opinion and I don't want to hit Metafandom and Fandom Wank in the same week.
The first link I read was this essay by Boosette on Dreamwidth (be warned, it's quite provocative even if I agree with most of it, and there's a lot of emotional language), and I was going through it and agreeing with quite a lot of what the author was saying. Then she said a word that I would never have associated with myself: bully. Direct quote:
"Translated, roughly: PPC goes around bullying tweens, teens, young women and yes: older women, too -- for daring to write fanfiction not up to their (dubious) standards. For writing original female characters, minor canon characters and major canon characters in a manner that is empowering to them."
I was shocked to read that. Holy shit, I said to myself, is she talking about me? Am I a bully? Because I used to spork fics a few years ago (going on four or five now, and by god that seems like a long time). I used to post MSTs here, and I used to be on the PPC message board. I wrote a couple of missions, although I only posted one and a half.
Being called a bully was a great shock. I didn't want to believe that of myself, but I have to admit, from an external point of view it sure looks that way. But taken without its context an idea or a word is going to sound off, and I think I should relate how I got to sporking fics in the first place.
The thing is, I got into fandom just when the LOTR films were getting started. I think the first fics I read were printouts of the Very Secret Diaries and Bagenders. I saw The Fellowship of the Ring and read the books in the year between that and The Two Towers, and I fell in love with the world and its canon.
When I got to fanfiction.net, though, what I saw was thousands of romances between a canon male (Legolas, usually, I think it was almost a fandom requirement to fangirl him at one point or another) and an original female character. I clicked on a couple and wasn't impressed (for the record - romance is not my thing, and to this day I'm more interested in plot than pairing). I was amazed at the sheer mass of them, and how they all seemed to follow the same pattern of OFC meets canon male, falls in love, saves world, lives happily ever after. A lot of summaries had some variant of "not a mary-sue!" and eventually, through the Official Fanfiction University of Middle-earth I think, I found the original PPC missions with Jay and Acacia. And I read them, and I loved them, because I wasn't the only one who thought that there were rather a lot of Legomances in the LOTR section of ff.net. When I was reading it the PPC felt fresh and new and because there were so many OFC-centric fics, it didn't feel like it was doing anyone any harm. The targets (the Department of Mary-Sues goes into fics and assassinates the Mary-Sue to bring the world back to canon) had negligible personality. It was like getting upset about watching someone destroy a cardboard cut-out, and so I thought it wasn't doing anyone any harm. What my younger self didn't know or willfully supressed was that every fic that was targeted had been written by someone who had made an effort and put it online hoping to get feedback, hoping to join fandom, hoping to connect. To my knowledge, the PPC missions were not intended to be seen by the original author but they wouldn't have been that hard to find. And so it's possible, no probable, that a lot of the authors of the fics found their stories getting torn apart.
If I'd mentioned this to my younger self, by the way, she probably would have shrugged and said 'they clearly didn't put any effort into it and they didn't make any attempt to stay within canon, so they don't have any right to complain'. This is the point where I want a time machine so I can shake my younger self and say 'can you hear what you're saying?'
Because I used to have ideas about writing my own OFC in Middle-earth too. Her name was Aleia, she could work magic, she was a human adopted by Elves in Hollin and she ended up saving the world and being mortally wounded, going over the sea to be healed/made immortal in the process, and of course she and Legolas fell in love. She's still in my head in an evolved form, wandering around in the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender right now, and she's having a good time. Good for her.
I used to pride myself on not writing and posting my OFC fic, even if I had one in my head. I thought I was better than the other writers posting their Mary-Sue fics, and this is the point where I have to go and smack my younger self around the head a couple of times. I might not have posted a Mary-Sue fic, but nobody starts off writing masterpieces that will make the world weep. My earliest fics were the Fellowship-in-modern-times, the poorly-written parodies, the strange ideas liberally laced with crack. They're still at the end of my ff.net account, if you really want to look at them. I never deleted them because they're still the ones with the most reviews, and because I reminded myself that we all had to start writing somewhere.
My younger self was conscious enough of the fact that everyone starts off writing god-awful fic, but she didn't pick up on the hypocrisy of slandering Mary-Sue writers. I thought Suefics had plotholes that you could drive a tank through. My earliest fics were a series of scenes that I thought were funny and the plot was made up as I went along. I accused Suethors of writing canon characters completely OOC. My earliest fics were exactly the same. I winced at Mary-Sues tromping all over the canon. The very first fic I posted, in the WoW fandom no less, contains in the AN: "I haven't played Warcraft 3 and I'm using the game manual for information, so please excuse any mistakes." I had, essentially, no leg to stand on criticising fellow ficcers.
But I was having fun, and I never thought that the Suethors were having fun writing their Mary-Sues. It never occurred to me that they could enjoy writing those types of fics as much as I enjoyed writing fics so cracky that they were coming apart at the seams, but there you go, hypocrisy again. Eventually I grew as a writer and discovered things like plot and subtlety and proper characterisation, and I've gone on from there. I never had my fics torn apart by reviewers, and I think I might have given up writing fics if that happened. Young writers are not exactly thick-skinned. But I think now about how easy it was to jump on a new ficcer for writing a romance badly, or getting canon details wrong, and I feel awful when I think that I probably contributed to people giving up fandom. I love fandom so much because it's inclusive and creative and I think it has made me a better person, and I feel like the worst person in the world for depriving other people of it. If you're out there somewhere, I am so sorry, so very sorry.
At the same time I made a lot of friends at the PPC and I learned a lot about writing in general. Some of my greatest friends here on LJ are people I met on the PPC boards or connected to it in some way, and I value you guys very much. I am not trying to insinuate that any of you are bullies, but I'm not comfortable with the culture any more. For most of you we've moved on from PPC matters and we've got other things that make us friends, and I treasure that. I treasure being included and being able to love fandoms with you guys. If I could take back the hurt I caused to other people and leave the good times with you standing, I would, but life doesn't work that way.
---------
So looking at the whole issue from that perspective, yes I accept that I probably hurt a lot of people and I should have known better. But I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, and here's why:
From an internal POV of the PPC, it was never about bullying or degrading other people's works. It was about protecting the canon.
I loved the LOTR canon - nowadays I still love the books but I have a lot of issues with the movies. But in my younger days I loved the books and the movies both. I was confused to see so many fics about characters that didn't exist in canon, doing things that never happened in the original source. Tolkien made us this wonderful world, I thought. Why aren't they playing with the things he gave us? Why have they brought in other toys?
So eventually I settled into the mindset of canon = good and non-canon = bad, when it's more like you can like some parts of canon and dislike others and still call yourself a fan, and non-canon is not necessarily bad unless you don't explain it. Those are long, though, and it was easier to stick with the shorter slogans in my mind. I started scanning fics for canon errors and judging the fics by how well they stuck to canon, not how well they were written.
This is where Suethors come up against a major barrier, because LOTR canon has very few women, and to a modern audience they have very limited roles. Women in LOTR do a lot of behind-the-scenes work that isn't mentioned or is mentioned only in passing, and it takes a lot of reading between the lines to see them. To a new fan coming straight from the movies or having just read the books, the world of Middle-earth desperately needs more female characters, and if there aren't enough canon females then the only option is to make some up. And if you're going to make up OFCs then why not make them fight with the men and do things that might actually rate a mention in the books?
Because that's not canon, I can hear my younger self whining in the back of my head. They're mangling the canon, they're ruining Tolkien's work, they're not doing it right.
Shut up, younger self. The canon is fine. The canon doesn't know about fandom, and if it did it wouldn't give a damn. Someone writing a fic about a dragon-riding half-elf princess who saves the world and marries Legolas isn't going to change every copy of LOTR in the universe to their version of what happened. My younger self worrying about Suethors mangling canon is about as logical as me worrying that driving instead of taking the bus is going to make the sun stop shining.
I still maintain that you can write awesome original female characters that don't go against the canon, but you need time and patience to do so. Writing a Mary-Sue is one step on the road to writing an awesome female character, but a ficcer isn't going to go any further down that road if they get reviews saying essentially 'your story is a travesty, you can't write for shit, you're ruining the fandom'. Of course they're not going to keep writing if they get that day in day out.
------
In her essay Boosette also talks about how "Mary-Sue", which was once a fairly neutral term for an original female character, is now equivalent to "scum of the Earth". I find myself agreeing with her. When I hear or read "Mary-Sue" I think, approximately, "astonishingly beautiful girl who can do everything and do it better than everyone else, who saves the world and has everyone love her because she is so wonderful, and who screws canon over sideways with a shovel". But what I have there are some of the symptoms of a badly-written original character, not the problem, namely that the character is badly written.
Me calling an OFC a Mary-Sue, with that definition, is implying that well-written OFCs are not beautiful or talented or competent or anything else, and I have a problem with that. I shouldn't be tearing down other ficcers (and knowing fandom demographics, they're probably other women too) for writing about beautiful/talented/competent women. I shouldn't be tearing down women for being beautiful/talented/competent, we get enough of that in society.
What I should be doing is looking past the descriptions and going to the characterisation and the writing, and saying things like "your OFC sounds like a fun character to write but I'd like to hear how she got that scar and how it affected her". And the like.
This is going to be hard. My method of reading fics used to be:
a) click on fic
b) read through fic searching for Mary-Sue symptoms and canon errors
c) find them, go 'oh god, not another one' and click away. I didn't leave much feedback because I was lazy and I didn't know where to start on the list of perceived problems with the fics.
Now it should be:
a) click on fic
b) read through fic, trying to ignore what I've trained myself to see as classic Mary-Sue symptoms. Look for canon errors and try to think of ways to justify the difference or change the fic so that it's within canon. (Easier for some canon errors than others)
c) if I need to, vent my anger on this LJ under lock and key. Not at the author.
d) then go back to the fic and review it properly.
I fully expect that this is going to take a lot of effort on my part, not least because I'm in the bad habit of bookmarking fics without reviewing them, and because looking for signs of a badly-written character takes more concentration than looking for typical characteristics. But I'm determined to try.
-----
And because of this I am not going to use the term "Mary-Sue" anymore because it does not mean what I intend it to mean any more (and hasn't for a good few years) and because it is demeaning, and not gender-neutral. Instead I'm going to try badly-written original character, which is BWOC and I guess I'll get used to it.
Because badly-written original female characters are not doing the canon any harm, and they are the start of writing well-written original female characters. I've been increasingly appreciative of female characters in fanfic (see:
femgenficathon , my post about ladies in the Silmarillion) and it is not fair that badly-written male characters don't get nearly as much flack as OFCs. And I cannot think of any situation when I could look at a fandom and say "okay, that looks like it has enough awesome ladies, no more please".I love me some female characters. I really really love me some well-written female characters, but the badly-written female characters are the first step to them. New authors need encouragement and gentle criticism and eventually they will be writing original female characters well. BWOCs are a pain, but they're a passing pain (and a lot of ficcers will keep writing, look back on their first fics and roll their eyes. But they'll still be in fandom and they'll still be writing, and that's a good thing.)
It's going to be a hard habit to break, but I promise to try. Encouraging new ficcers = more people in fandom = more fics being written = ficcers learning to improve their writing = more fics about well-written OCs and canon characters = everyone wins. And that, younger self, is worth a little heartache at seeing canon get mangled.
--------
More links:
Boosette's essay, again: Storming the Battlements or Why The Culture Of Mary Sue Shaming Is Bully Culture
Niqaeli weighs in here and here
Goldjadeocean here
And lastly here are Sarah Rees Brennan's thoughts on female characters in fiction. I'm linking them here because they made me think critically about what I think about female characters and SRB makes a lot of good points about the Mary-Sue thing even if she's not talking about it directly.
Ladies, Please!
Ladies, Please (Carry On Being Awesome)
Ladies, You Are Awesome (Just Admit It, Quit Fronting)
--------
Holy shit that's a long post. Well done if you lasted to the end, if you didn't here's the tl;dr version: tearing down ficcers for writing badly when they start writing is bad, encouragement and gentle criticism is good, and I'm not using Mary-Sue anymore. Back to crackfic posting now.
----------
EDIT: Apparently this is getting more coverage than I expected. For the record, this is just my personal experience with fandom and you shouldn't hold this up as a yardstick to everyone who used to spork fics or still does so, everyone is different. If you're going to comment here please keep it polite, not everyone is going to have the same opinion and I don't want to hit Metafandom and Fandom Wank in the same week.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-04-13 08:50 pm (UTC)On the other hand one of our sporkings apparently got ranted about on ffr because we had no taste and the fic was actually awesome and we wouldn't know good writing if it fell on us out of the sky (this was the Remus Lupin/Severus Snape fic with the violent magical sex-change).
Admittedly I don't deal with Sues. Ever. I just avoid writing with OCs in it, and always have. I deal with slash, which is also what I write.
To be honest, I know that a lot of what I write would be considered 'crimes against canon' by some of our younger and rather scarily rabid members (we're getting a lot of people in from TVTropes now who think that ficcing itself is bad, which is worrying to me in the extreme), and I ... don't really care. 'Crimes against canon' to me, is the in-universe reason for PPCing. To me? It's fun. It's stupid. It's relaxing. It's practice writing.
And sometimes I feel like a hypocrite. And sometimes I don't. I never really know how I feel about it. It's just something I've done for a long time.
But you're right. We're stomping on someone's playground, and we're kinda revelling in it.
On the other hand though, we don't write these things for them to find. We write them for our own amusement. We're probably hurting these ficcers no more than ficcers themselves are hurting the original authors of a work simply by taking it in a direction they don't like.
I'm not really clued up enough to consider the morals of it, I suppose. But I can say I'm getting more and more scared by the attitudes of some of the newbies that are coming through. Who knows. Maybe one day I'll give it up.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-14 06:38 am (UTC)I'm not touching the issue of taste because YKINMKATO and et cetera, plus I read a couple of Snapefen wank reports yesterday and some Snape fans are really scary. But I really wonder why someone would complain about sporking to ffrants, because that's half the posts basically. (In a shorter form, but still.)
Imo, I think the Department of Bad Slash did less harm than Mary-Sues, because a) there was seldom if any killing involved, so there isn't an immediate reaction to a pair of agents riddling an original female character with arrows, and b) it makes the distinction of being Bad slash, while Mary-Sues is much more ambivalent.
They... seriously? They think that ficcing itself is bad? Oh god, this is the last thing I want newbies to any sort of fandom to think.
And I've realised that writing against canon is not a bad thing if the author can write it well enough and if they explore how it would affect the rest of the story. Something like "I made it so Boromir didn't die because I think he's hot" vs "I made it so Boromir didn't die because I wanted to see how he'd affect the course of the War, Denethor and Faramir's actions and Aragorn becoming king". Basically I love AUs. And um there is a difference between writing AUs and "what if?" stories and writing stories that you claim are canon-compliant but have character X acting completely OOC for no reason.
For the record, I eventually gave up sporking because it was taking up time that I could use for writing my own stuff. Also I ended up not reading anything at ff.net anymore, now my main source of fics are LJ and recs pages and the like, so I'm not wading through seas of badly-written fic to find gems any more. And sometimes I still read things that make me rage and I have to rein myself in and say "cool it, click away if you don't want to keep reading". But it is a slow process and I expect that I might lapse from time to time.
I gotta call some shenanigans
Date: 2010-04-20 05:16 am (UTC)Why then, are all the anti-Sue comms open to the public to read, and not kept locked down?
We're probably hurting these ficcers no more than ficcers themselves are hurting the original authors of a work simply by taking it in a direction they don't like.
Are you talking about hurting a ficcer's feelings and possibly scaring her away from ever trying to write another original character in her fiction?
And are you comparing that with 'hurting' Tolkien, by writing an alternate story in his universe?
Tolkien is dead.
And the girl is alive.
Tolkien has written his masterpiece, the culmination of his life's work.
The girl hasn't gotten that far yet.
Re: I gotta call some shenanigans
Date: 2010-04-20 06:33 am (UTC)People are allowed to write whatever they please and put it wherever they please on the internet, and one consequence of that right is that they have to take what comes their way in the way of feedback. And I do not put my sporking anywhere near where they post their fic. I do not wave it in their face. If they went hunting for it, good luck to them.
The consequence of my right to have a bit of fun poking holes in bad writing is that I have to then put up with people who disagree with me, and I accept that. Hello. We have our differences, and I am afraid this is an issue we are not going to agree on, so we should probably just leave it here, because I have heard all the arguments about why sporking is reprehensible, and I suspect you have heard all the arguments about why it is not, and there is just a fundamental difference of opinion here.
Good day to you.
Re: I gotta call some shenanigans
Date: 2010-04-20 06:46 am (UTC)Without in any way arguing about whether sporking is good or bad, your comments poked holes in themselves. If you write for a select audience, you lock down the comm. If you don't lock down the comm it's because you *want* other people to read your wit and wisdom.
Don't be any more disingenuous than the kids you poke holes in.