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This started as a comment to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
runedgirl about the not-for-profit nature of fandom and its influence on the issue of writerly responsibility and ballooned into something else entirely. Well, here it is.
That's a really tricky question, one to which I don't have definitive answers. I do have opinions out the wazoo, however, and as a giddy participant in Internet culture, I have to say that the Internet is a double-edged blade in terms of creative exchange.
Anything can go up anywhere at any time, and that free and ready access has made people both less appreciative of fannish output and more inclined to criticize what is offered. After all, if they don't like what you've written, there are thirty thousand other folks waiting to ply their wares. Because there are no pages to hold, people forget that work went into creating the story they're reading, and they're more apt to dismiss it out of hand.
And let's face it, posting things on the Internet gives both writer and reader bigger balls. I've written and posted fic for Internet consumption that I would never read aloud to a writing circle. The Internet grants us safe harbor in anonymity, and it's easy to be brave when you can pretend no one's watching.
The anonymity comes with a price, though. It dehumanizes the writer to an aggregate of pixels, and folks therefore say things that they wouldn't were they face to face and forced to confront their adversary's humanity, their reality. I'm not talking about story-related concrit that bursts the ego bubble and leaves the backside sore, but the personal jibes meant just for plain meanness.
It's paradoxical that the medium that strips creators of their essential reality imbues their creations with such immediacy that many cannot separate fiction from advocation. Maybe it's because fen are so involved and engaged with the characters they love that they forget they aren't real, or maybe the recent content hysteria is symptomatic of a broader disconnect. Maybe it's because so many people have bought into the idea that the world is a dirty, rotten place, not because people have done bad deeds, but because they have bad thoughts. Even if that were true, banning them from public discourse wouldn't get rid of them. It would just make the things that go on in the dark that much darker and make it that much harder for frightened people to find the light and expose the monster when he does shamble from the closet.
The fact that fannish output is free should absolve us of responsibility more than it should increase our moral onus. Someone-a crackpot, no doubt-could lay the charge that proficcers profit from their work, and thus, the propagation of their ideas, latent and overt. Someone has paid them for their brain soup and distributed it to the masses, and what is more, people have paid to consume it.
The fanficcer, on the other hand, gets nothing in return for the dissemination of ideas. Occasionally, a "Good job" comes down the pipeline, but by and large, he has no clue how large an audience he is reaching, or even if he is reaching one at all. Since he is gaining little tangible profit from his contributions, he should not be bound by the same standards that govern content acceptability and saleability in profic. Fandom has exceptions to this, of course, such as giftfic and prompt and thonfic, but in those cases, the writer is aware of those strictures before he begins.
Writers, in fandom or out, should have no fetters placed upon their creativity. They should, however, avail themselves of the climate of the fandom or genre in which they want to write. Wincest, for example, has no place in a gen or het comm, and a writer of gay erotica would do well to stay out of the fundamentalist Christian arena.
For me, the problem lies with the fact that fandom readers demand newer, fresher ideas and plots, while at the same time refusing to be drawn from their comfort zones or to accept that they might not like what they read. They want to know everything about a story before they begin, and then they wonder why the story holds no surprises and packs no punch. Fandom wants to have its cake, eat it, and then complain about it, too. And then it wants the cooks whose efforts they have just derided to get back in the kitchen and make them more. It's and endless, vicious cycle.
I recognized that some time ago, and now I write whatever I please. Fewer folks read my output, but I'm happier and prouder for it.
runedgirl about the not-for-profit nature of fandom and its influence on the issue of writerly responsibility and ballooned into something else entirely. Well, here it is.That's a really tricky question, one to which I don't have definitive answers. I do have opinions out the wazoo, however, and as a giddy participant in Internet culture, I have to say that the Internet is a double-edged blade in terms of creative exchange.
Anything can go up anywhere at any time, and that free and ready access has made people both less appreciative of fannish output and more inclined to criticize what is offered. After all, if they don't like what you've written, there are thirty thousand other folks waiting to ply their wares. Because there are no pages to hold, people forget that work went into creating the story they're reading, and they're more apt to dismiss it out of hand.
And let's face it, posting things on the Internet gives both writer and reader bigger balls. I've written and posted fic for Internet consumption that I would never read aloud to a writing circle. The Internet grants us safe harbor in anonymity, and it's easy to be brave when you can pretend no one's watching.
The anonymity comes with a price, though. It dehumanizes the writer to an aggregate of pixels, and folks therefore say things that they wouldn't were they face to face and forced to confront their adversary's humanity, their reality. I'm not talking about story-related concrit that bursts the ego bubble and leaves the backside sore, but the personal jibes meant just for plain meanness.
It's paradoxical that the medium that strips creators of their essential reality imbues their creations with such immediacy that many cannot separate fiction from advocation. Maybe it's because fen are so involved and engaged with the characters they love that they forget they aren't real, or maybe the recent content hysteria is symptomatic of a broader disconnect. Maybe it's because so many people have bought into the idea that the world is a dirty, rotten place, not because people have done bad deeds, but because they have bad thoughts. Even if that were true, banning them from public discourse wouldn't get rid of them. It would just make the things that go on in the dark that much darker and make it that much harder for frightened people to find the light and expose the monster when he does shamble from the closet.
The fact that fannish output is free should absolve us of responsibility more than it should increase our moral onus. Someone-a crackpot, no doubt-could lay the charge that proficcers profit from their work, and thus, the propagation of their ideas, latent and overt. Someone has paid them for their brain soup and distributed it to the masses, and what is more, people have paid to consume it.
The fanficcer, on the other hand, gets nothing in return for the dissemination of ideas. Occasionally, a "Good job" comes down the pipeline, but by and large, he has no clue how large an audience he is reaching, or even if he is reaching one at all. Since he is gaining little tangible profit from his contributions, he should not be bound by the same standards that govern content acceptability and saleability in profic. Fandom has exceptions to this, of course, such as giftfic and prompt and thonfic, but in those cases, the writer is aware of those strictures before he begins.
Writers, in fandom or out, should have no fetters placed upon their creativity. They should, however, avail themselves of the climate of the fandom or genre in which they want to write. Wincest, for example, has no place in a gen or het comm, and a writer of gay erotica would do well to stay out of the fundamentalist Christian arena.
For me, the problem lies with the fact that fandom readers demand newer, fresher ideas and plots, while at the same time refusing to be drawn from their comfort zones or to accept that they might not like what they read. They want to know everything about a story before they begin, and then they wonder why the story holds no surprises and packs no punch. Fandom wants to have its cake, eat it, and then complain about it, too. And then it wants the cooks whose efforts they have just derided to get back in the kitchen and make them more. It's and endless, vicious cycle.
I recognized that some time ago, and now I write whatever I please. Fewer folks read my output, but I'm happier and prouder for it.