What I Know, Fandom Edition
Aug. 26th, 2016 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2bqMHCv:
spaceoperafeerie:
still pretty upset about yesterday, so I tried to channel it into positive statements. I’ve been in media fandom for almost 15 years. This is everything I’ve learned along the way, all the beliefs that I’ve come to hold and want to defend.
1. A drabble is a fascinating literary form that has precisely 100 words. It’s not synonymous with “short fic” or “sketch”.
2. There should always be more femslash. Never enough femslash.
3. Preferences can, and should, be expressed without shitting on other ways of doing things: “I love [X] so much”, rather than “I love [X], wtf is wrong with [Y], gawd!”
4. Quantity (of words, of fics, of followers, of kudos, whatever) does not correlate with quality. Of course, sometimes they do accompany each other! But there’s no necessary relation.
5. There’s no single story. That’s why we’re here in media fandom, rather than other fannish modes more exclusively focused on consumption. Multiplicity of stories is our reason for being: To tell more stories, to tell the same story again and again, to tell a new story and then another and another, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’ve all rejected the tyranny of a single story (often sold as a consumer good, technically indistinguishable from toothpaste or a Glock) in favour of embracing the joy of many stories (shared for free).
6. If you want something, make it. We’re all creative here. Chances are, someone else wanted it, too, and will be really psyched you did this. Conversely, if you want something, if you’re really excited for something, don’t demand it from others whether directly or generally. That’s just assy.
reblogs and thoughts are more than welcome♥
I feel like what may have been upsetting yesterday was the post where someone asked for a fic and said “but not just a one-off”, as if one-offs are some sort of disappointing thing.
And it made me think, and I’ve probably come across as dismissive of one-offs before, I remember making a glib remark in tag art somewhere. And it has bothered me ever since, because I don’t feel that way, not really, not at all.
So I thought, whether I’m right about what sucked yesterday or not, the sentiment is probably important regardless. So, now is probably the time for me to wax a tiny bit poetic about how much I love @spaceoperafeerie‘s entire body of Star Wars work, and how I’ve been awkward about it up to now because this is a classic case of the kind of jealousy I was talking about in my posts the other day.
I write epics, and they’re always angsty and hurt/comfort. I am not able to change this. I try to do other things, and then 15k words later I realize I didn’t do anything else, I’m writing another goddamn hurt/comfort epic that probably features about 15 original characters I just made up by accident. It just happens, I don’t know why it happens. I guess that’s how I’m wired. I don’t know.
I am so jealous of gloss’s gorgeous collection of one-offs, I just am. (Confession time: some of them might not even be one-offs, I might not know; I go and I read them and I stew in how perfect they are, and I click kudos probably, maybe leave a comment but probably not lbr i’m the worst reader on this planet probably, and I don’t let myself go reread them because I’ll just get jealous that I can’t write like that. I am not an attentive or devoted reader, not a good or faithful fan, and I don’t remember what I read where, ever.)
But there is this gorgeous quality to one-offs, and I’m speaking of several other authors here now too, the ones who form a kind of glittering core of any particular fandom: all those perfect, tempting, usually 3-5k-word one-shots that absolutely, absolutely make up the bulk of quality work in a fandom.
It’s like waves on a shore, and I’ve always wished I could do that– just write five, ten, twenty, versions of the same OTP’s first time, each one lapping up on the same beach but each one immeasurably different, different intensity and different chemical composition and different history and different pattern of ripples on a differently-arranged pile of the same sand– I don’t even know if I’m conveying it properly. This probably sounds patronizing as fuck. It’s not meant to be. Just– related but unconnected works, where there doesn’t have to be a continuity, they’re in the same fictional universe but unconnected to each other, or no more connected than gems on a necklace, each refracting light in completely different ways, each standing alone on its own merits.
As a reader, I fucking hate epics. There’s like, one in every fandom, and you read it and it takes up your whole fucking weekend and it devastates you and burns you out and so on and so forth. And then there’s like, five more in every fandom that you try to read, and either they get abandoned as WIPS (hi) or the thing that attracted you to them can’t sustain it through the whole thing (uh probably hi) or they’re too clunkily-written or too mannered for you to really be able to take it for the entire duration of the story or the plot can’t quiiiiite take the strain (hiiii it’s meee) and kind of maybe goes off the rails a little and just, god, you’ve sunk so much time into reading this thing. Why did this have to be like this. I like getting immersed in epics sometimes, but it’s such a high risk that it won’t be worth it, and I’m prone to reading-hangovers, and I just– no, thanks, please, no, 15k is probably my limit, I just can’t. (I’m a shitty reader, I think we’ve already established that. The people who read my shit are far superior in this department to me, although in my defense if I weren’t so distracted by all that writing maybe then I’d be a better reader. … Well, no, but it’s a good excuse isn’t it?)
In short, I’m a huge fucking hypocrite because I only write epics and they’re perpetually WIPs and the plot is always more than I meant and so on and so forth. [I mean. This doesn’t really make me a hypocrite. One can like things according to one’s own heart, that’s not weird. I can prefer other types of things to the stuff I do, that’s not weird at all. But. For my rhetorical point, it kind of is.]
As a reader, I would not read me, as a writer.
[Relatedly: if you write epics, or like, interconnected shorter works, and I read your stuff and comment, clearly you’re an exception. I’m overstating it slightly. But for real, I wouldn’t read me. I would see that mess and backspace no matter how sincere the rec that led me there.]
As a reader, what I want is that perfect little core of glitter. I want my OTP, I want their first time, or maybe I want a different pairing and I want to see that but I don’t want to see a whole universe set with that as canon, I want incandescent porn, I want a few tropes, I want a shockingly deep revelation that gets right to the point, I want emotional devastation but quick resolution, I want one-offs. And the best fucking thing that ever fucking happens is when you stumble across an author who has written a whole pile of small works in the fandom and most of them are your OTP and it’s, ugh it’s so perfect. You can just roll in them and coat yourself in them. It’s so fucking great. It’s the best thing in the world.
So. Anyway. If you didn’t know, you know now: here are like three dozen fucking flawless Star Wars fics, and there are more here I haven’t even read, so I know what I’m doing later.
If you did know, then there’s a convenient link to reread them. I exhort you to be a better reader than me, and leave a comment.
spaceoperafeerie:
still pretty upset about yesterday, so I tried to channel it into positive statements. I’ve been in media fandom for almost 15 years. This is everything I’ve learned along the way, all the beliefs that I’ve come to hold and want to defend.
1. A drabble is a fascinating literary form that has precisely 100 words. It’s not synonymous with “short fic” or “sketch”.
2. There should always be more femslash. Never enough femslash.
3. Preferences can, and should, be expressed without shitting on other ways of doing things: “I love [X] so much”, rather than “I love [X], wtf is wrong with [Y], gawd!”
4. Quantity (of words, of fics, of followers, of kudos, whatever) does not correlate with quality. Of course, sometimes they do accompany each other! But there’s no necessary relation.
5. There’s no single story. That’s why we’re here in media fandom, rather than other fannish modes more exclusively focused on consumption. Multiplicity of stories is our reason for being: To tell more stories, to tell the same story again and again, to tell a new story and then another and another, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’ve all rejected the tyranny of a single story (often sold as a consumer good, technically indistinguishable from toothpaste or a Glock) in favour of embracing the joy of many stories (shared for free).
6. If you want something, make it. We’re all creative here. Chances are, someone else wanted it, too, and will be really psyched you did this. Conversely, if you want something, if you’re really excited for something, don’t demand it from others whether directly or generally. That’s just assy.
reblogs and thoughts are more than welcome♥
I feel like what may have been upsetting yesterday was the post where someone asked for a fic and said “but not just a one-off”, as if one-offs are some sort of disappointing thing.
And it made me think, and I’ve probably come across as dismissive of one-offs before, I remember making a glib remark in tag art somewhere. And it has bothered me ever since, because I don’t feel that way, not really, not at all.
So I thought, whether I’m right about what sucked yesterday or not, the sentiment is probably important regardless. So, now is probably the time for me to wax a tiny bit poetic about how much I love @spaceoperafeerie‘s entire body of Star Wars work, and how I’ve been awkward about it up to now because this is a classic case of the kind of jealousy I was talking about in my posts the other day.
I write epics, and they’re always angsty and hurt/comfort. I am not able to change this. I try to do other things, and then 15k words later I realize I didn’t do anything else, I’m writing another goddamn hurt/comfort epic that probably features about 15 original characters I just made up by accident. It just happens, I don’t know why it happens. I guess that’s how I’m wired. I don’t know.
I am so jealous of gloss’s gorgeous collection of one-offs, I just am. (Confession time: some of them might not even be one-offs, I might not know; I go and I read them and I stew in how perfect they are, and I click kudos probably, maybe leave a comment but probably not lbr i’m the worst reader on this planet probably, and I don’t let myself go reread them because I’ll just get jealous that I can’t write like that. I am not an attentive or devoted reader, not a good or faithful fan, and I don’t remember what I read where, ever.)
But there is this gorgeous quality to one-offs, and I’m speaking of several other authors here now too, the ones who form a kind of glittering core of any particular fandom: all those perfect, tempting, usually 3-5k-word one-shots that absolutely, absolutely make up the bulk of quality work in a fandom.
It’s like waves on a shore, and I’ve always wished I could do that– just write five, ten, twenty, versions of the same OTP’s first time, each one lapping up on the same beach but each one immeasurably different, different intensity and different chemical composition and different history and different pattern of ripples on a differently-arranged pile of the same sand– I don’t even know if I’m conveying it properly. This probably sounds patronizing as fuck. It’s not meant to be. Just– related but unconnected works, where there doesn’t have to be a continuity, they’re in the same fictional universe but unconnected to each other, or no more connected than gems on a necklace, each refracting light in completely different ways, each standing alone on its own merits.
As a reader, I fucking hate epics. There’s like, one in every fandom, and you read it and it takes up your whole fucking weekend and it devastates you and burns you out and so on and so forth. And then there’s like, five more in every fandom that you try to read, and either they get abandoned as WIPS (hi) or the thing that attracted you to them can’t sustain it through the whole thing (uh probably hi) or they’re too clunkily-written or too mannered for you to really be able to take it for the entire duration of the story or the plot can’t quiiiiite take the strain (hiiii it’s meee) and kind of maybe goes off the rails a little and just, god, you’ve sunk so much time into reading this thing. Why did this have to be like this. I like getting immersed in epics sometimes, but it’s such a high risk that it won’t be worth it, and I’m prone to reading-hangovers, and I just– no, thanks, please, no, 15k is probably my limit, I just can’t. (I’m a shitty reader, I think we’ve already established that. The people who read my shit are far superior in this department to me, although in my defense if I weren’t so distracted by all that writing maybe then I’d be a better reader. … Well, no, but it’s a good excuse isn’t it?)
In short, I’m a huge fucking hypocrite because I only write epics and they’re perpetually WIPs and the plot is always more than I meant and so on and so forth. [I mean. This doesn’t really make me a hypocrite. One can like things according to one’s own heart, that’s not weird. I can prefer other types of things to the stuff I do, that’s not weird at all. But. For my rhetorical point, it kind of is.]
As a reader, I would not read me, as a writer.
[Relatedly: if you write epics, or like, interconnected shorter works, and I read your stuff and comment, clearly you’re an exception. I’m overstating it slightly. But for real, I wouldn’t read me. I would see that mess and backspace no matter how sincere the rec that led me there.]
As a reader, what I want is that perfect little core of glitter. I want my OTP, I want their first time, or maybe I want a different pairing and I want to see that but I don’t want to see a whole universe set with that as canon, I want incandescent porn, I want a few tropes, I want a shockingly deep revelation that gets right to the point, I want emotional devastation but quick resolution, I want one-offs. And the best fucking thing that ever fucking happens is when you stumble across an author who has written a whole pile of small works in the fandom and most of them are your OTP and it’s, ugh it’s so perfect. You can just roll in them and coat yourself in them. It’s so fucking great. It’s the best thing in the world.
So. Anyway. If you didn’t know, you know now: here are like three dozen fucking flawless Star Wars fics, and there are more here I haven’t even read, so I know what I’m doing later.
If you did know, then there’s a convenient link to reread them. I exhort you to be a better reader than me, and leave a comment.
