Arcana and More

matt_ruff - The "Arcana" Controversy My posting of the Tiptree long list has set off a minor stir in blogland. I assumed that some of the picks would be controversial (wouldn't be much fun, otherwise), but I was surprised to see that the title drawing most of the attention was Emily Brunson's "Arcana." Given that "Arcana" is a work of fanfic in which Harry Potter's Severus Snape impregnates CSI's Nick Stokes, some of you may be wondering, "How could you not expect that to draw attention?" All I can say is, after you've read the child rape, female circumcision, and dragon cunnilingus scenes in Janine Cross's Touched by Venom, mpreg just seems quaint. // Some of the blog discussions of "Arcana" have generated hundreds of comments, so rather than answer specific objections there, where my remarks might get lost in the noise, I've decided to do it here:

matociquala - If I budged off this fence I'm sitting on, I wouldn't get the view. Nominating a fanfiction story for a literary award is, to my mind, the equivalent of somebody who doesn't live in the house where the party is going on sending invitations to everybody in town. The flowers are going to get tromped on, and the people who were wincing over Drunken Uncle Bob's bad behavior may still not want to see the entire town shouting "DANCE MONKEY DANCE" at the poor man.

cathexys - response to matociquala: more on evaluating fanfic outside of fandom and public LJ posts As such, I feel that the terms of the debate as it occurred in your journal are problematic, in that they keep on talking about quality as if it were an utterly objective category divorced of all context. While the author in my icon might believe in such an esoteric abstract objective hierarchy of literary quality, I frankly can't, especially not in the context of fan fiction which so clearly is the production of creative works both as art but also, in many if not most cases, as contributions to shared fannish enjoyment, a fannish debate, or some other form of community engagement.

rivkat - I should be grading Third: I'm always harping on the legitimacy and noninfringing status of fan fiction. Would I put my story where my mouth is and have Iolokus listed for something like the Tiptree? My answer is the same as the punchline to the old lawyer joke: Where's the catch? I understand people who fear exposure, but I dream of a day when our hobby is no more shameful than playing fantasy baseball. (And that's a gendered thing too, which may make the Tiptree a good place to start or maybe a far less useful place to start.) Yes, it could easily come up short in comparison with the best professionally edited and published works f/sf has to offer. At a minimum, most of those would have better punctuation than Iolokus! But fan fiction is not so different that it should be excluded, and works like Iolokus that are intended to respond to problematic aspects of the original text, like Scully's maternity, are fair uses, not copyright infringements, and I will fight for them.

kaiz - Fanfic: Why Context Matters I'm not going to ramble on here about how problematic I find the whole issue of "objective literary quality" to be; you've all heard my rant on the topic before. But what I do want to speak to is the issue of taking fanfiction out of context, and why doing so is a Bad Idea™. // Specifically, I want to share with you folks a short essay that I wrote for a panel at The Witching Hour last October. I'd thought about posting it back during the conference and never got around to it. But I think that some of the ideas I talk about are relevant to the issue of audience and perceived quality, not to mention issues of informed consent (on the part of the author). In addition, a couple of people were asking to read it.

marythefan - Well, everybody else is talking about it ... I'm sorry. But I can't get any farther than any statement that includes "Nick Stokes" and "macho man" in the same paragraph without running into a big freakin' brick wall that leaves me staggering around and clutching my head. I mean, I actually WATCH CSI. And Nicky? A macho man? In what world? EVER? [CSI]

scribewraith - genderised on a lighter note, in a slightly related topic, aelora has declared next monday as MPREG day. I'm going to try and write something, but if not I'll at least rec some of my favourite MPREG stories. (For those who have missed the acronym - MPREG refers to Male pregnancy) It's not one of my kinks but I kind of enjoy some of them and its such a silly idea - we write about boy!porn and then make them into women *rolls eyes* wtf?

watergal - This calls for a poll Yeah, I've done it. I've sent fb including the phrase "like the pro books" intending it to be a genuine and unrestricted compliment. This is despite the fact that I haven't enjoyed a single Star Trek novel published since 1986 enough to reread it. Maybe I was thinking of the early ones that I first read to tatters then slept with and tucked under my pillow praying that the tooth-fairy might make a deal with her cousin the story fairy and maybe one day leave me the talent to write something a tenth as good. Maybe it's just a knee jerk reflex to the conventional wisdom standard of amateur vs. pro. I dunno

jadelennox - POLL: literature, quality, and fanfic

Other Fandom Meta

sistermagpie - Proper conversation in fandom it got me thinking about just the general self-conscious nature of fandom, and the way that people can, in ways I don't think people always do in other groups, refer to some sort of way we're supposed to be interacting but aren't. That sounds confusing, but what I mean is, for instance, in "real life" if you're having a conversation about something, there's only limited situations where you can try to redirect the conversation on the grounds that it would be better to talk about something else. It always surprises me a bit when I see it in fandom--and I see it in every fandom--because the nature of fandom seems to be that it's a group of people who just need to talk about something for no other reason than they need to talk about it. The only goal of fandom discussion is the discussion itself, so you can't really go off-track.

telophase - Copyright FAQ OK, I've had it up to here with the disinformation and misinformation being thrown around DeviantArt about copyright, and am doing something I've threatened to do for a long time, which is to write up a FAQ about US copyright law. I'm posting it here for beta-ing: if you see something that I've gotten wrong or if you have another question which you think should go on here, let me know.

minisinoo - Story Trumps Meta I've noticed that when I'm writing, really writing and all caught up in a story, I'm not interested in the Meta. ...But when I've got a hot project ... no. I'd rather write. I'm the same way when writing original stuff. Don't WANNA read other books or talk about writing. Just want to write, dammit. (G) // Anyone else that way? Or do you like to do a bit of both?

sartorias - Fanon I perceive fanon as group creation. And whoa, what amazing energy is invested there--like, scary! Is it time for fanfiction to be accepted as literature, and evaluated the same, and maybe even awarded? I don't have even the remotest inkling of an answer, but one thing I do know: the fanfic world seems less inclined to keep its "proper" place outside of the "real" world of literature, where the rules are changing every day. I can't tell if it's a bad or a good thing, all I can do is ride the wave, watching.

alixtii - More Meta on the Morality of Mimetic Monsters The voice of a fic is not the author's, but that does not mean the fic does not speak with a moral voice. This voice is instead rooted in the dialogue between the reader and the text, a dialogue over which the author has little control but which nonetheless exists. Furthermore, there are parameters within the sociolinguistic context which provide (predictable) boundaries for that dialogue; this is what separates "good" readings from "bad" ones.

linaerys - Fandom and Slash Meta Onto the slash . . . // So, I'm curious, for those of you who enjoy/consume slash, what makes you decide to go THERE with certain characters? // I think my interest in non-cliched relationships is both what pulls me into a fandom, and what makes me gravitate toward slash. Because putting on the slash goggles is almost always a way of subverting the show's relationships. It takes a cliched buddy relationship and allows the fan to get beyond the surface dimensions of that relationship.

modillian - Incest: The Other White Meat. Er. Maybe. In my head, homosexuality in fictional stories was a more controversial topic than sex between family members in stories. Am I simply used to the argument of anti-slash and unused to anti-incest sentiments? I have seen many an anti-slash manifesto proclaiming its evilness, but I've never seen anything similar in an anti-incest movement. In fact, I've never even seen any anti-incest movement in a fandom (youngling that I am.)