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Apparently the cold has us all locked inside and in front of our computers, where we have nothing better to do than to rant. And the rant du jour seems to be incest fic, once again.
In Which I Write An Essay About Not Writing An Essay
I, too, was tempted to write yet another essay about incest fic, which I did, actually, quite a good one too, if I may say so. The more I think about it, the more interesting (at least to me) my conclusions become. But after following the recent discussions, I don't feel like posting it anymore, for one simple reason: 90% of fandom seems to be unable to have a reasonable discussion about any fannish subject, especially a delicate one like incest fic. I don't mean people flaming the writer, no, I mean the simple process of reading an essay, understanding it and reacting to the arguments made within. Look at any discussion in fandom and you will find, as I myself have often experienced, that the replies of the author often begin with "As I said before...".
I'm tired of this. It's one thing that people can't properly voice their own arguments. I'm a lawyer, I expect to be better at that than others. It's another, more annoying thing, if people bring up something that is an argument, but that is completely beside the point. Many fannish discussions read to me like this:
Me: "Cows can be black and white."
Commenter:"If I want my dogs to be yellow then I can damn well MAKE them yellow."
Me: *bangs head against the wall*
The sad thing, and also the reason why it is an agonizing process to try to follow these discussions, is that people often react to that kind of statement. Which means that an essay that was supposed to be about the color of cows, ends up being a controversy about dog food. Of course, if we'd actually talk about cows and dogs, people would be able to make the distinction, but take any more intelligent subject and they are not. Which is not to say that cows and dogs are not intelligent, oh no, I would never say that. (see how I barely avoided having the first comment to this be something like "but cows are very intelligent!"?)
What annoys me most, however, is that people are not even able to understand a text in the first place. Write certain key words, like incest, rape, slash=feminism or Rodney's nipples in any context, and you can be sure to get the same results from the same people, no matter what the rest of your text says. Which proves that
a) some people don't even bother to read your opinion (but react to the keyword and then are rude enough to comment and expect their opinion about Rodney's nipples to be read, even though they didn't care to read yours)
and
b) some people try to read the rest of your arguments, but are unable to understand them (and then, maybe not even realizing that they didn't understand them, comment on the keywords anyway).
Option a) makes me angry, option b) makes me just sad. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell them apart, and so my participation in fannish discussions often ends in frustration and many *bangs head against wall* comments. But don't get frustrated, you are not alone with your insufficient reading comprehension skills. Many highschool kids today can barely follow a comic book.
I admit that as a lawyer, I feel sort of responsible when people don't understand my arguments. After all, I'm getting paid to put legal facts into words that laymen can understand. If I'm not able to write an argument on a fannish subject in a way that other fans can understand, I'm doing something wrong. Or so I thought for a long time, which was even more frustrating. But that's not it at all. It all depends on the audience. As a lawyer, I can't choose my audience, but as a fan, I can. And I will, because unlike in real life, no one here pays me for talking to the stupid people. So I choose not to have discussions with people who are too stupid to understand me anymore, or with people who are so rude that they ignore what I'm saying. Yes, I referred to people as stupid. Get over it.
I will still happily participate in any intelligent discussion, with people who are intelligent enough to understand me (and I, hopefully, am intelligent enough to understand them). But it also means that I will ignore all the "My Dog is YELLOW" people, whose "arguments" don't even deservce to be called arguments. An argument, by definition, is a statement in support of another statement. Meaning: if you read an essay and want to respond to it, your statement should respond to something the author of the essay said (preferably in said essay, which seems to be yet another problem for some people). A statement about dogs, no matter how true, cannot be an argument in a discussion about cows. It's that simple.
Two arguments I'd especially like to never EVER see again (oh, I wish!) are the following:
1) Fiction is not reality.
This can be found in any fannish discussion. I think there is a Secret Club somewhere, whose members detect fannish discussion only to insert a "Fiction is not reality" comment in one of its many incarnations, and then wait to see what happens. And lo and behold, someone always falls for it.
I'm not quite sure what the "Fiction is not reality" is supposed to say, since it is, as shown above, rarely if ever used as a real argument. Most often it appears in a context that makes me think that whoever wrote it wants to say something like that: "Fanfiction is not reality, therefore everything is allowed, especially as it is based on fictional characters."
This is wrong for many reasons. While I can whole-heartedly agree with the statement "Fiction is not reality.", I cannot agree with the implied "fanfiction is not reality."
See, many fans forget that - unlike writers of original fiction, whose only limit is their imagination, - fanfic writers have a reality. TV, books, comics, whatever you base your fanfic on is your reality. Fanfiction is therefore a special kind of fiction, one that is based on imagined events while at the same time making claims about its "source reality." It is a mixture between fiction and non-fiction. With the source reality also being fiction and thus being a lot more flexible than real events, fanfic has much more possibilities than "real" non-fiction, but they are not endless.
In other words: if you state in your fanfic that Dean is driving a white Ferrari, and has always done so, your are wrong. (Yes, fanfic writers can be wrong, and people are allowed to say it!) On the other hand, if you want to write a fanfic in which Dean's car mysteriously turns into a white Ferrari (car-changing demon, perhaps, or crossover with Miami Vice), the fiction part of fanfic allows you to do so. You don't even have to explain yourself to your readers, though in my experience readers appreciate some kind of explanation for blatant changes in canon (=your reality).
2) The other "argument", my favourite one, without which no fannish discussion is complete, is the wonderful
If you don't like it, you don't have to read it!!!
Apart from the fact that this is not an argument (see above) and therefore has no right to be in the discussion (and you can tell that it doesn't feel welcome by the way it stands there, all alone or in groups, accompanied by the heated exchange of progressively irrelevant reactions), apart from that, it is true.
Completely true.
If I don't like a fic, I don't have to read it.
Signed,
Oceana
Well, let me tell you something: If I don't like a fic, I may not HAVE to read it, but I can still do so if I want. And you know what? I can then tell you or anyone else that I don't like it. I can even say why I didn't like it. This is even more true for a whole genre of fiction, but really, it goes for your individual fic, too.
As long as you can throw out your fics into the public where anyone can see or read them, people are allowed to react to them. You don't get to tell people that they were not supposed to read your fic. If you are allowed to write and publish your fics, I am certainly allowed to have an opinion about them and to WRITE about that opinion, on the internet, in public, where everyone can read it. Even you.
If you don't like my opinion?
Oh, you don't have to read it.
Thank you, and good night.
In Which I Write An Essay About Not Writing An Essay
I, too, was tempted to write yet another essay about incest fic, which I did, actually, quite a good one too, if I may say so. The more I think about it, the more interesting (at least to me) my conclusions become. But after following the recent discussions, I don't feel like posting it anymore, for one simple reason: 90% of fandom seems to be unable to have a reasonable discussion about any fannish subject, especially a delicate one like incest fic. I don't mean people flaming the writer, no, I mean the simple process of reading an essay, understanding it and reacting to the arguments made within. Look at any discussion in fandom and you will find, as I myself have often experienced, that the replies of the author often begin with "As I said before...".
I'm tired of this. It's one thing that people can't properly voice their own arguments. I'm a lawyer, I expect to be better at that than others. It's another, more annoying thing, if people bring up something that is an argument, but that is completely beside the point. Many fannish discussions read to me like this:
Me: "Cows can be black and white."
Commenter:"If I want my dogs to be yellow then I can damn well MAKE them yellow."
Me: *bangs head against the wall*
The sad thing, and also the reason why it is an agonizing process to try to follow these discussions, is that people often react to that kind of statement. Which means that an essay that was supposed to be about the color of cows, ends up being a controversy about dog food. Of course, if we'd actually talk about cows and dogs, people would be able to make the distinction, but take any more intelligent subject and they are not. Which is not to say that cows and dogs are not intelligent, oh no, I would never say that. (see how I barely avoided having the first comment to this be something like "but cows are very intelligent!"?)
What annoys me most, however, is that people are not even able to understand a text in the first place. Write certain key words, like incest, rape, slash=feminism or Rodney's nipples in any context, and you can be sure to get the same results from the same people, no matter what the rest of your text says. Which proves that
a) some people don't even bother to read your opinion (but react to the keyword and then are rude enough to comment and expect their opinion about Rodney's nipples to be read, even though they didn't care to read yours)
and
b) some people try to read the rest of your arguments, but are unable to understand them (and then, maybe not even realizing that they didn't understand them, comment on the keywords anyway).
Option a) makes me angry, option b) makes me just sad. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell them apart, and so my participation in fannish discussions often ends in frustration and many *bangs head against wall* comments. But don't get frustrated, you are not alone with your insufficient reading comprehension skills. Many highschool kids today can barely follow a comic book.
I admit that as a lawyer, I feel sort of responsible when people don't understand my arguments. After all, I'm getting paid to put legal facts into words that laymen can understand. If I'm not able to write an argument on a fannish subject in a way that other fans can understand, I'm doing something wrong. Or so I thought for a long time, which was even more frustrating. But that's not it at all. It all depends on the audience. As a lawyer, I can't choose my audience, but as a fan, I can. And I will, because unlike in real life, no one here pays me for talking to the stupid people. So I choose not to have discussions with people who are too stupid to understand me anymore, or with people who are so rude that they ignore what I'm saying. Yes, I referred to people as stupid. Get over it.
I will still happily participate in any intelligent discussion, with people who are intelligent enough to understand me (and I, hopefully, am intelligent enough to understand them). But it also means that I will ignore all the "My Dog is YELLOW" people, whose "arguments" don't even deservce to be called arguments. An argument, by definition, is a statement in support of another statement. Meaning: if you read an essay and want to respond to it, your statement should respond to something the author of the essay said (preferably in said essay, which seems to be yet another problem for some people). A statement about dogs, no matter how true, cannot be an argument in a discussion about cows. It's that simple.
Two arguments I'd especially like to never EVER see again (oh, I wish!) are the following:
1) Fiction is not reality.
This can be found in any fannish discussion. I think there is a Secret Club somewhere, whose members detect fannish discussion only to insert a "Fiction is not reality" comment in one of its many incarnations, and then wait to see what happens. And lo and behold, someone always falls for it.
I'm not quite sure what the "Fiction is not reality" is supposed to say, since it is, as shown above, rarely if ever used as a real argument. Most often it appears in a context that makes me think that whoever wrote it wants to say something like that: "Fanfiction is not reality, therefore everything is allowed, especially as it is based on fictional characters."
This is wrong for many reasons. While I can whole-heartedly agree with the statement "Fiction is not reality.", I cannot agree with the implied "fanfiction is not reality."
See, many fans forget that - unlike writers of original fiction, whose only limit is their imagination, - fanfic writers have a reality. TV, books, comics, whatever you base your fanfic on is your reality. Fanfiction is therefore a special kind of fiction, one that is based on imagined events while at the same time making claims about its "source reality." It is a mixture between fiction and non-fiction. With the source reality also being fiction and thus being a lot more flexible than real events, fanfic has much more possibilities than "real" non-fiction, but they are not endless.
In other words: if you state in your fanfic that Dean is driving a white Ferrari, and has always done so, your are wrong. (Yes, fanfic writers can be wrong, and people are allowed to say it!) On the other hand, if you want to write a fanfic in which Dean's car mysteriously turns into a white Ferrari (car-changing demon, perhaps, or crossover with Miami Vice), the fiction part of fanfic allows you to do so. You don't even have to explain yourself to your readers, though in my experience readers appreciate some kind of explanation for blatant changes in canon (=your reality).
2) The other "argument", my favourite one, without which no fannish discussion is complete, is the wonderful
If you don't like it, you don't have to read it!!!
Apart from the fact that this is not an argument (see above) and therefore has no right to be in the discussion (and you can tell that it doesn't feel welcome by the way it stands there, all alone or in groups, accompanied by the heated exchange of progressively irrelevant reactions), apart from that, it is true.
Completely true.
If I don't like a fic, I don't have to read it.
Signed,
Oceana
Well, let me tell you something: If I don't like a fic, I may not HAVE to read it, but I can still do so if I want. And you know what? I can then tell you or anyone else that I don't like it. I can even say why I didn't like it. This is even more true for a whole genre of fiction, but really, it goes for your individual fic, too.
As long as you can throw out your fics into the public where anyone can see or read them, people are allowed to react to them. You don't get to tell people that they were not supposed to read your fic. If you are allowed to write and publish your fics, I am certainly allowed to have an opinion about them and to WRITE about that opinion, on the internet, in public, where everyone can read it. Even you.
If you don't like my opinion?
Oh, you don't have to read it.
Thank you, and good night.
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