August 2018

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Talking About Vidding - Youtube Playlist by Lim

Direct link
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLliE8mqiSLjwoQ7sXRXkd-JEmFhtIfaur

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Vidding: Collaboration and Community

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Vidding: Collaboration and Community

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anduniela:

inkandcayenne:

tywinning asked you:
2012-08-09 03:37

As a professor, may I ask you what you think about fanfiction?

I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn.

Most of the history of Western literature (and probably much of non-Western literature, but I can’t speak to that) is adapted or appropriated from something else.  Homer wrote historyfic and Virgil wrote Homerfic and Dante wrote Virgilfic (where he makes himself a character and writes himself hanging out with Homer and Virgil and they’re like “OMG Dante you’re so cool.“  He was the original Gary Stu).  Milton wrote Bible fanfic, and everyone and their mom spent the Middle Ages writing King Arthur fanfic.  In the sixteenth century you and another dude could translate the same Petrarchan sonnet and somehow have it count as two separate poems, and no one gave a fuck.  Shakespeare doesn’t have a single original plot–although much of it would be more rightly termed RPF–and then John Fletcher and Mary Cowden Clarke and Gloria Naylor and Jane Smiley and Stephen Sondheim wrote Shakespeare fanfic.  Guys like Pope and Dryden took old narratives and rewrote them to make fun of people they didn’t like, because the eighteenth century was basically high school.  And Spenser!  Don’t even get me started on Spenser.

Here’s what fanfic authors/fans need to remember when anyone gives them shit: the idea that originality is somehow a good thing, an innately preferable thing, is a completely modern notion.  Until about three hundred years ago, a good writer, by and large, was someone who could take a tried-and-true story and make it even more awesome.  (If you want to sound fancy, the technical term is imitatio.)  People were like, why would I wanna read something about some dude I’ve never heard of?  There’s a new Sir Gawain story out, man!  (As to when and how that changed, I tend to blame Daniel Defoe, or the Modernists, or reality television, depending on my mood.)

I also find fanfic fascinating because it takes all the barriers that keep people from professional authorship–barriers that have weakened over the centuries but are nevertheless still very real–and blows right past them. Producing literature, much less circulating it, was something that was well nigh impossible for the vast majority of people for most of human history.  First you had to live in a culture where people thought it was acceptable for you to even want to be literate in the first place.  And then you had to find someone who could teach you how to read and write (the two didn’t necessarily go together).  And you needed sufficient leisure time to learn.  And be able to afford books, or at least be friends with someone rich enough to own books who would lend them to you.  Good writers are usually well-read and professional writing is a full-time job, so you needed a lot of books, and a lot of leisure time both for reading and writing.  And then you had to be in a high enough social position that someone would take you seriously and want to read your work–to have access to circulation/publication in addition to education and leisure time.  A very tiny percentage of the population fit those parameters (in England, which is the only place I can speak of with some authority, that meant from 500-1000 A.D.: monks; 1000-1500: aristocratic men and the very occasional aristocratic woman; 1500-1800: aristocratic men, some middle-class men, a few aristocratic women; 1800-on, some middle-class women as well). 

What’s amazing is how many people who didn’t fit those parameters kept writing in spite of the constant message they got from society that no one cared about what they had to say, writing letters and diaries and stories and poems that often weren’t discovered until hundreds of years later.  Humans have an urge to express themselves, to tell stories, and fanfic lets them.  If you’ve got access to a computer and an hour or two to while away of an evening, you can create something that people will see and respond to instantly, with a built-in community of people who care about what you have to say.

I do write the occasional fic; I wish I had the time and mental energy to write more.  I’ll admit I don’t read a lot of fic these days because most of it is not–and I know how snobbish this sounds–particularly well-written.  That doesn’t mean it’s “not good”–there are a lot of reasons people read fic and not all of them have to do with wanting to read finely crafted prose.  That’s why fic is awesome–it creates a place for all kinds of storytelling.  But for me personally, now that my job entails reading about 1500 pages of undergraduate writing per year, when I have time to read for enjoyment I want it to be by someone who really knows what they’re doing.  There’s tons of high-quality fic, of course, but I no longer have the time and patience to go searching for it that I had ten years ago. 

But whether I’m reading it or not, I love that fanfiction exists.  Because without people doing what fanfiction writers do, literature wouldn’t exist.  (And then I’d be out of a job and, frankly, I don’t know how to do anything else.)

That’s perfect <3

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hi ! is the anti phenomena (by that i specifically mean "telling people/thinking that shipping abusive/underage ship makes you a bad person") only a fairly recent thing, appearing bc of the voltron fandom, or did it happened in the past, like ten years ago or more ?

freedom-of-fanfic:

Kinda depends.

In regards to the moralist stance of fandom anti-shippers – the stance that anything smut-related, kink-related, or addressing sex in any way, with particular objection and/or attention paid to LGBT+/queer sex, will ‘harm the children’ and must be eradicated and/or hidden from sight – it’s at least as old as Christianity as an organized religion.

Such moralists have gone after transformative fandom in the past, particularly targeting sexually explicit content and especially LGBT+/queer content.  MLM-friendly (slash-friendly) transformative fandom’s run-in with such a group, calling themselves the Warriors for Innocence (you can’t make this stuff up), led to Strikethrough and Boldthrough on LJ, which helped galvanize the creation of the Archive of Our Own.

In regards to intracommunity violence with words, threats, and more over what people choose to ship: that’s definitely as old as fandom itself. Shipping wank (as we called it back then; now we would say ‘discourse’) forms the backdrop of the wild and entertaining story of con artist Miss Scribe, who expertly played each faction of the Harry/Ginny, Harry/Draco, and Harry/Hermione ship war off each other to push herself to fandom fame. HP fandom was wild: fandom is wild, and has been for a long, long time. being truly cruel and nasty to one another in personally devastating ways over fandom is not an anti-exclusive phenomenon in any way.

In regards to using social justice language to bully other fandom members: the first instance of widespread damage being inflicted on a creative online community specifically by calling everything they hated ‘problematic’ (that I am aware of) is the case of RequiresHate/Winterfox/Benjanun Sriduangkaew. The devastating and chilling effect WF singlehandedly inflicted on the SFF community – particularly on other authors of color – was detailed by The Mixon Report (with a follow-up response to criticism she received here).

WF was – is – the Fandom Anti precursor case, complete with terrifying threats of violence and exposure towards people who dared to disagree with her cutting, cruel ‘reviews’ of SFF works. She couched her cruelty in terms of social justice to make it much harder for people to call her out and found it very effective at protecting her for a long, long time. And in the years since her reign of terror was partially checked by Mixon’s callout, social media has only become more ripe for abusive bullying via progressive language.

Using social justice language and moralist purity culture together – our own members torching fandom creativity and freedom from the inside in order to win ship wars and drive out social enemies - is the latest remix on all of the above.

The landscape of the internet changed a lot between 2007, when Strikethrough happened, and the mid-2010’s, when the Mixon Report was issued and fandom-as-activism started to really get wings. Also, a lot of LGBT+/queer strides were made in the US & across the western world in terms of improving visibility, awareness, and legislative protection. (Not as much as one might hope, but still.) shipping The Gay Ships in fandom is still relatively weird (believe it or not, mlm shipping is still a minority of shipping activity), but not seen in such a destructive, deviant light as it had been before. There’s a lot more open acknowledgement of being not-straight or not-cis than there used to be, and fandom spaces are no exception.

Nonetheless, fandom antis picked up the torch that groups like Warriors of Innocence dropped. While many antis ship mlm ships themselves, they take rival mlm ships and scrutinize them under the scorching rays of purity culture, find them wanting, and call everything touched by that ship tainted. They even echo the WoI cry that everything they hate is secretly pedophilia and only loved by pedophiles, perhaps unaware of how devastatingly dangerous this narrative is to push in LGBT+/queer spaces.

Like Winterfox, their only goal is self-advancement (or advancement of what they like over what they hate), and they have no scruple about causing harm to others in the name of getting what they want for themselves. In their worldview, they are the protagonists in a story with protagonist-centric morality. fandom antis are warriors for innocence! They are, of course, Always Right. Everyone who is against them must be evil and dangerous and harmful; everyone who slows their progress or questions their actions is against justice, fair play, and protecting the marginalized. No attack on the character of a dissenter can be too strong, because it’s impossible to be against antis and a good person at the same time.

But in reality: it’s just a shipwar, and purity/sj language is just the newest ammunition.

Moral panic isn’t new; people being cruel to each other with whatever tools they have at their disposal isn’t new. transformative fandom being considered weird and socially unacceptable isn’t new. Fandom policing fandom on a large scale is somewhat new. But the only thing that I think is truly, completely ‘new’ about fandom anti-shipping is that where we used to argue ship wars based on what was more canon, now we argue ship wars based on what is ‘more pure’ or ‘more progressive’.

Incredibly, this is even more subjective than interpreting canon!  In fandom, no ship is more pure or moral than another: the ‘rules’ of shipping are all artificial in an environment built for infinite imagination. It’s literally arbitrary. Imaginary. Absurd.

Antis impose these rules, loosely based on morality and progressiveness, because without them, they have no power. And many of us ‘buy’ into anti-shipper ‘rules’ because if we don’t, anti-shippers will do whatever is necessary to traumatize or intimidate us into submission or silence.

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faequeentitania:

Lol, so I’m going through my livejournal and fanfiction.net accounts, debating the merits of keeping them or not, and I realized that my lj has my Star Trek essay from my sociology class back in freaking 2010. And I still think it’s pretty good! So I imported it to my AO3, if that’s anyone’s thing: A Trek Across Time: The History of Star Trek and Its Influence on Culture

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The Brontë sisters were writing RPF. They really did. About Wellington. They might not have been writing, as far as we are aware, anything particularly erotic, but they were imagining him and other personages—famous personages of their era, outside of the context of what they knew, outside of the news reports, they were writing about their home lives, writing about battles, writing about other things. And making things up! Which, yeah, it’s not new. It never has been a new thing to do.

Evan Hayles Gledhill on how RPF is hardly a new trend in Fansplaining Episode 10
(via fansplaining)

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imperiuswrecked:

“Don’t call mlm or wlw aka ‘gay ships’ in fanfiction ‘slash’ you weirdo”

Me:

image

Listen up people. Slash fan fiction does not mean gay. It means the pairing is romantic.

That’s all.

If you don’t want the pairing to be romantic then you dont use slash. Using slash helps people who want to find this ship or avoid it. Slash it not just used for mlm or wlw ships it’s also used for mlw. Slashfiction goes all the back to the beginning of fandom and fanfiction with Star Trek. Where writers would use slash for slashfiction to tell others this fic right here is romantically shipped.

?

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Meta Monday

fangirlunderground:

I got involved in fandom in the mid-90s when I was around 14 years old. My cousin @lyndanaclerio sent me VHS recordings of the Sailor Moon dub, and I fell in love… I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before.

Since then, I’ve been in a lot of different fandoms: from manga to YA, Tolkien to Xena, Harry Potter to Teen Wolf, Star Wars to Marvel, and countless mini-fandoms along the way. And I’ve met a lot of cool people online over the years — older and younger alike, including my best friend of 15 years — on all sorts of platforms. I’ve built myself fandom homes on shitty GeoCities fansites and moderately less shitty sites I made from scratch; on Yahoo! Groups and LiveJournal; on AO3 and Tumblr… and that’s nothing compared to others!

But, last week, I turned 36, and according to some, I’ve already overstayed my welcome in fandom by at least a decade. I guess I’m supposed to put all my comics and collectibles on eBay, swap out my fanfiction with whatever the fuck a beach read is, and spend the rest of my life cloistered in my house where I won’t offend society. (I mean, I’m kind of a hermit, but that’s not why.) 

And let me be clear here: by some, I mean some. While there is indeed a frightening trend here on Tumblr, in which some young people have embraced bizarrely conservative views about women and sexuality, with the Trumpian rhetoric to match, I think the problem is bigger than that. I recently talked about the pressure I felt to abandon fandom when I was 25 when Tumblr was still brand new, and nothing like it is today. It’s clear there were (and are) more societal forces at work than just a toxic sub-culture on a struggling platform.

So, this post isn’t about the vast majority of young people in fandom, nor am I here to yell “get off my fandom, you pesky kids!” when no one ever said that to 14-year-old me. In fact, this post is as much for fangirls as it is for fanwomen because you deserve to know that getting older doesn’t mean giving up the things you love. But you don’t deserve to tell others to conform just because you’re uncomfortable that they exist. There are already enough toxic fanboys trying to keep women out of geek culture, so don’t help them hold the gates closed from the outside.

And if you are older, and already let that shit drive you out of taking a more active part in fandom, I’ve been there, and I get it. But you can still come back; not just on your private Tumblr, or your secret AO3 account, but for real and any time. One of the most freeing choices I’ve made is to stop pretending I think all of this is stupid. The world needs more quirky, eccentric women, anyways.

Sorry this one is so long, but apparently I have FEELINGS this month — especially after the Bog of Eternal Stench I had to trot through while researching this one — and there are a lot of people who’ve articulated them better than I did here (see the following meta recs). I promise we’ll move on next week! As always, let the authors know you appreciated their work by engaging however you can. And if you ever feel alienated on this site, please feel welcome to talk to me! 💛  

Fandom - Ageism

Adults in Fandom by @littlesystems, […] There are a lot of different factors at play with the current fandom purity thing. It’s primarily being driven by minors, which is why I’ve used that as a stand-in, but there are older people who are obsessed with this and younger people who aren’t. Nuance! Exciting stuff. I think the two biggest drivers here are a genuine but misguided desire to make fandom a better place, paired with plain ol’ run-of-the-mill sexism. I’m not the first person to say this and I know others have said it better, but here are my two cents.

Age and Experience in Fandom by @tppfandomstats, This month’s @threepatchpodcast episode, When I’m 64, looks at fandom and aging. To go along with these discussions, here are some demographic stats from a few fandom surveys on the age distribution in our online fandom communities. 

Age Appropriate Activities by @telesilla, So this post, another in a long series of “find a bridge club you embarrassing old ladies” posts, came around. And I adulted hard all day and it just really pissed me off and caught me at a bad time. 

Ageism in Fandom by @badtech-reblogs, Seeing yet another post about ageism in fandom and I’m trying to do some root cause analysis. That ageism in fandom is tied up with misogyny is a given. There is almost no age too young to start ridiculing a woman for her hobbies and interests, and even young girls are expected to have a maturity and patience beyond their years. The misogyny is coming in from the larger world outside of fandom like how misogyny, ableism, anti-blackness etc. seeps into all subcultures.

Ageism in Fandom: Too Old to Fangirl? by @ravenmorganleigh, @vulgarweed, et al. Most Fandoms are comprised mostly of women, young and old. It’s interesting to me when Young Women– who are the most likely to champion women’s rights can turn around and show their youth-bias when it comes to Older Women in Fandom.  

Fandom culture wouldn’t be where it is now if it wasn’t for Old Fandom by @thepalmtoptiger, I almost forgot that ageism in fandom is a thing. Apparently once you hit 25/30 years old you’re supposed to stop having interests in things. People need to freshen up on their fandom history and realize that fandom now wouldn’t be what it is if it wasn’t for older fans.   

Getting older doesn’t actually feel like anything by @catchmewhispering, The hilarious thing about growing up, that all the ageist people here are gonna very harshly realise, is getting older doesn’t actually feel like anything. You don’t “turn into” an adult, it’s just another year that passes and, sure, it might become easier to make decisions or figure out how to fix a sticky situation but overall, you don’t suddenly Enter Adult World and never have a goofy thought or a messy moment ever again.   

The idea that you will someday be ‘too old’ for the stuff you find fun by @freedom-of-fanfic,  […] The idea that you will someday be ‘too old’ for the stuff you find fun now is a long-standing cultural message that I’m sure many anti-shippers - many adolescents of all stripes - have absorbed. that message caused adolescent me to think I would outgrow fandom, and I don’t think that message has particularly changed.  

If other people in fandom are older than you, by definition, they have been your age by @codenamecesare, […] If other people in fandom are older than you, by definition, they have been your age. When fans write about younger characters, we’re not peering through a keyhole at young people now and creeping on them. We are drawing on our own experiences, thoughts, feelings and memories of what it was like when we were that age.

I’m old as balls by @warlordenfilade, […] Just realize that with 30+ year old franchises there will be 30+ year old people who grew up with the franchise and still love it.  Tumblr may be a relatively recent platform but fandom as an institution is waaaay older than I am and the Transformers fandom in particular has fans in their 40s and 50s whom I am personally acquainted with, fans who have adapted from photocopy fanzines and snail mail mailing lists to bulletin boards, newsgroups, forums, and, yeah, tumblr, in their many years of fandom.  

I wish we’d stop telling each other - and ourselves - that there’s a point at which we’re too old for fandom by @vantasticmess​, I spent every year from 14 to 25 telling myself that eventually I’d grow out of fandom: I would get too old to cosplay and I would write my own original stories instead of ‘just’ fanfiction. After all, adults don’t write fanfic and adults don’t make costumes for themselves. Adults get married and have kids and make costumes for their kids and write real stories and get published.  

“like, i’m not saying that adults don’t have a place in fandom.” by @porcupine-girl​, @melifair​, et al. […] Fandom is vast and encompasses a multitude of interests and age groups. We all fandom responsibly, and those who abuse that at the expense of someone vulnerable or impressionable are not tolerated. This does not mean that anyone specific group of fandom should be limited. Nor does it mean that the only entertainment media created ever should be accessible to all viewing audiences. Young fandom will grow to understand this, not only in fandom but in life.

“Lmao 30-year-old women don’t belong in fandoms. Go knit or have kids or something.” by @rainbowloliofjustice, @the-salt, et al. […] It’s the fact I don’t get what these people think happens when you turn 18 it’s not like the second you turn 18 you just immediately lose interest in everything you were interested in at 17 and from then on only like strictly ‘adult™’ things. A lot of people who were in fandoms as teenagers stay in fandoms as adulthood. Fandoms aren’t minor-only spaces and never have been and there’s literally nothing wrong with adults in fandom environments.

Older fans are crucial to the survival of fandoms by @muchymozzarella, […] Not ONLY because they’re literally the ones keeping fandom afloat (AO3 wasn’t created or maintained by kids, let’s just say), but because older fans generally don’t attack or bully or fuck up a fandom by being aggressive or volatile or overzealous, destroying any enjoyment of a medium. 

PSA by @bugsieplusone​, I’ve been sitting on this post for a while because it probably reveals more about me on a platform that I’d rather not reveal but here goes. I’d like to talk about fandom and ageism. If you are older, you are: Allowed to like things, Allowed to create fan works, Allowed to discuss things with other like minded fans, Allowed to participate.

Reblog if Older Fans Are Welcome In Fandom by @cameoamalthea​, For many fandom is a life long passion that starts young, but being a geek isn’t something you have to grow out of and put away. I didn’t start cosplaying until my 20s (I couldn’t have, and probably won’t be financially secure enough to do all the things I want until my 30s).

tumblr’s disgust for older people in fandom by @bai-xue​, @awkward-smiley​; […] I’m young now, but I was scared that I wouldn’t be over fandoms when I got older. I’m sick of it, how about we all just like what we like and not judge people?

you are never too old for fandom by @hils79​, […] You are never too old for fandom and if you think that’s true I pity you when you reach whatever arbitrary age you think is the cutoff point.  

You are reinforcing a stereotype by @asocialjusticeleague​, @olderthannetfic​, et al; […] Whenever you question a woman’s right to this space because of her age or parental status, you are reinforcing a stereotype that has effects that reach beyond that one situation. The expectation, for example, that 40 year old men be catered to when writing comics, but that characters of interest to 40 year old women are obsolete or unprofitable.

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itisi-asimplegay:

saintmilady:

roxolotl:

Look i dont wanna sound like a Fandom Mom or whatever but what do you think women over 25 or so are supposed to do? Do u really think theyre supposed to drop all their interests and just talk about taxes and marriage or whatever? It seems like 25+ year old fanboys do not receive this kind of “ooh cringe” reaction either. There are guys in their 40s with comic book collections and shit and people might think theyre a nerd at worst, not a freak who shouldnt be trusted

The issue most people have with “fandom moms” its how they keept interacting with kids the same way they do with adults, like no one is telling people to drop their interest, they are telling them to share that interest with people their age

Ummmm… But most of them don’t??? They tag their nsfw and do their best to prevent ppl (and kids) who don’t want to see it be forced to??? The “’‘problem”“’ with “fandom moms” is deeply rooted in misogyny and the belief that women are nothing more than baby making and house cleaning machines

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roxolotl:

Look i dont wanna sound like a Fandom Mom or whatever but what do you think women over 25 or so are supposed to do? Do u really think theyre supposed to drop all their interests and just talk about taxes and marriage or whatever? It seems like 25+ year old fanboys do not receive this kind of “ooh cringe” reaction either. There are guys in their 40s with comic book collections and shit and people might think theyre a nerd at worst, not a freak who shouldnt be trusted

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heroofthreefaces:

science fiction fans 1930s-1970s: We love science fiction! We love the ideas! We love the sense of wonder! We love the visions of the future! We love reading about how technology will advance, and how technology will change society!

the same people 1980s-present: No, you’re doing it wrong! You don’t get science fiction from watching tv series and playing online games! You get it from reading paper books!

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faequeentitania:

Lol, so I’m going through my livejournal and fanfiction.net accounts, debating the merits of keeping them or not, and I realized that my lj has my Star Trek essay from my sociology class back in freaking 2010. And I still think it’s pretty good! So I imported it to my AO3, if that’s anyone’s thing: A Trek Across Time: The History of Star Trek and Its Influence on Culture

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I'm done explaining why fanfic is okay.

bookshop:

bamf-detective-charlie:

bookshop:

thesaltofcarthage:

bookshop:

Note: this post was originally made in 2010 in response to Diana Gabaldon’s epic rant about fanfiction. The original version is still being updated. I’m reposting it to Tumblr by request, but if you have any additions, please feel free to drop a comment at LJ so they can be added to the masterpost!

Dear Author of the Week,

You think fanfic is a personal affront to the many hours you’ve spent carefully crafting your characters. You think fanfic is “immoral and illegal.” You think fanfiction is just plagiarism. You think fanfiction is cheating. You think fanfic is for people who are too stupid/lazy/unimaginative to write stories of their own. You think there are exceptions for people who write published derivative works as part of a brand or franchise, because they’re clearly only doing it because they have to. You’re personally traumatized by the idea that someone else could look at your characters and decide that you did it wrong and they need to fix it/add original characters to your universe/send your characters to the moon/Japan/their hometown. You think all fanfic is basically porn. You’re revolted by the very idea that fic writers think what they do is legitimate.

We get it. 

Congratulations! You’ve just summarily dismissed as criminal, immoral, and unimaginative each of the following Pulitzer Prize-winning writers and works:

Keep reading

OH. MY. SAINTED. AUNT.

get a cuppa, get comfortable, and read the WHOLE fucking thing. Aja brought so many receipts the table just collapsed.

This is back on my dash today! And I’m just reblogging because I love the phrase “Oh, my sainted aunt!” 

The R E C E I P T S this is beautiful, a work of art

You know, honestly, when this post was made way back in 2010, and @seasquared and I were chatting and started brainstorming this list, we were both just so exasperated that we even needed to make it? 

Like this was 2 years before 50 Shades blew open the floodgates on legitimizing fanfiction, but in 2010, we were just so baffled that this backwards, regressive conversation about fanfic still was being had, when there were uncountable examples of culturally sanctioned fanfiction everywhere.

And I was very much like, “this is a no-brainer, everything i’m writing here is so obvious, it’s SO OBVIOUS, it’s redundant and rhetorical, this list is pointless,” lol. I was so certain that most people, at least most people within fandom writing fanfic, already knew that these cultural works existed. And I was sure most fic writers already operated under the assumption that they had absolutely zero reason to be ashamed or defensive or cowed by the cultural contempt for fanfiction, because they knew that these equivalencies were out there, and they were too obvious to ignore.

but then i posted that list, and people were just blown away by it, and it went kinda viral, and seemed to change so many minds!! and what really got me was that within fandom, so many people were thanking me for it, because they honestly hadn’t realized that there was such a huge vast repository of culturally sanctioned fanfiction, and it made them feel validated in a way that I don’t think they had before. 

And basically that was the day i learned that sometimes there’s a huge, tremendous value in stating what you think is blatantly obvious, because it’s not always obvious, at all, to everyone else.

And the whole thing kind of profoundly opened my eyes to how much fucking internalized shame there is in fandom, about fanfiction, for absolutely no goddamn reason.