The Lj-sphere has got stupid again

[farla]

It's mindboggling.

There is actually debate, still going on, about if Aooo should allow original works. In a reprisal of the "omfg how can my hits counter be higher than my comments!!!!!" stupidity, one point brought up in all seriousness is WHAT IF THE ORIGINAL STUFF DROWNS OUT THE FANFIC OMG OMG OMG. Hey guys, remember back before Fictionpress, how there was totally way more original stuff being written, and how it was impossible to find fanfic? Because original fiction will totally dominate that oppressed minority, fandom. Kind of like how all that gen on Aooo is just making it impossible to find anything shippy.

If you check out the debate, you may be momentarily fooled into thinking there is a decent argument to be raised that they want to focus on fanfic. This will last until you realize what they're defining as fanfic. So fanfic = a thing you do in groups on Lj.

I think my favorite part is how jaw-droppingly stupid the entire concept is. If you're trying to get people to take fanfic seriously as writing, of course you should make sure to keep it in its own ghetto! Of course you should make sure that any author who doesn't approve should never be let near your precious archive, because that'll sure help change their minds! Of course making sure authors can't post both fanfic and original works will convince everyone that fanfic is a legitimate form of writing and not something people do because they're unoriginal hacks! Of course making a huge deal of the distinction between the two is the best idea ever if you're trying to make people think fanfic deserves to be treated as actual writing.

Meanwhile, in another, related corner, the fuckwittery with sues is back again, now with even more misogyny accusations. Remember, everyone: if it was a guy doing it, you wouldn't mind. Really. The term mary sue exists only to SHAME AND OPPRESS WOMEN. Because women are such horrible writers we have to applaud any attempts they make lest their delicate souls be crushed under the terrible burden of standards. Just because they're bad characters doesn't mean you should say that! God, don't you know anything?

Comments

[negrek.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile, in another, related corner, the fuckwittery with sues is back again, now with even more misogyny accusations. Remember, everyone: if it was a guy doing it, you wouldn't mind. Really. The term mary sue exists only to SHAME AND OPPRESS WOMEN. Because women are such horrible writers we have to applaud any attempts they make lest their delicate souls be crushed under the terrible burden of standards. Just because they're bad characters doesn't mean you should say that! God, don't you know anything?

I wonder what sort of impression they'd get if they were coming from a fandom background where there were more male writers and perhaps more of a focus on gen. I mean, in a fandom where the main character of the series is often derided for being a terrible Stu and you often see main male characters with terrible story-distortion problems, it seems clear that people can recognize and dislike these traits just as much in males as they do in females.

Incidentally, Metafandom and the AO3 seem like very interesting little groups to peer in at. A lot of what they're wrestling with is what they see as the major issues in fandom, but theirs is really just a tiny, tiny little corner of the beast as a whole. Much of what they talk about just doesn't seem relevant outside the particular medium and demographic they encompass, so looking in at what they consider important is a voyage to a different culture and a reminder of how really fucking huge the concept of "fandom" in all its manifestations is, and how easy it is to let your interpretations of it be constrained by whatever little corner of it you call home.

On an unrelated note, why are you playing style roulette?

[negrek.livejournal.com]

So wow. After actually reading the posts in question, I keep flashing back to your earlier rant about people not agreeing on the definition of things like Mary-Sue, because wow. "I don't want to read about totally average characters who have nothing exciting happen to them" is about as missing the point as one can get, aside from the whole, "If someone wrote my autobiography I'd be called a Mary-Sue because I have so many talents and my life is so unusual!" The number of people who showed up to post about how cool and unusual and Mary-Sue they were was quite headdesky.

And cringe-worthy statements like, "It's not being special that's the problem -- it's not building a complex background that lets us understand why she is special, why she knows the things she knows, why she has the skill and talents that she has." bring to mind that one OC analysis you posted about a little while ago with the ludicrous-huge backstory that had to be crafted to justify all the character's crazy powers.

I spent a while wondering what the difference between an "OFC" and an "OC" was. For people going on about how misogynist it is to label a character a Mary-Sue it sure seems odd that you feel the need to single female characters out somehow! I'm almost surprised nobody started referring to female fanfic writers as "authoresses." =/

Anyway, just driving home that this is a little slice of fandom vastly different from my own. At least those posts just come off as the adult version of people throwing a tamper tantrum because people think their writing is bad.

The format of LiveJournal seems to kind of funnel people into little like-minded groups (seriously, how rare is it to have someone make a post and people on their friendslist actually post and say--politely, you will sometimes get people --that the person is dead wrong). It seems to me that it's not really the best medium for debate, as opposed to something that focuses less on the "friendslist" mentality and kind of throws things wide open to the rabble, such as a newsgroup or general forum. I was surprised there, at least at this point, seem to be so few people disagreeing (well, perhaps they recognize a losing battle). But LJ is kind of a pat-yourself-on-the-back place, by and large, and when people don't adhere to that sort of cultural expectation drama erupts.

I wonder what a community seriously focused on fanfic for, say, Harry Potter, would look like versus the kinds of discussions that go on in the cluster around Metafandom?

[farla.livejournal.com]

The number of people who showed up to post about how cool and unusual and Mary-Sue they were was quite headdesky.

I think it has something to do with seeing characters as being people in their own right, which, unsurprisingly, tends to strongly correlate with writing sues in the first place.

The way they were describing their past and current characters as being similar seemed to be more like the issue isn't that it was unfair to call their past characters sues as that they're still writing the damn things and just think they've improved because they took out the color-changing eyes.

And cringe-worthy statements like, "It's not being special that's the problem -- it's not building a complex background that lets us understand why she is special, why she knows the things she knows, why she has the skill and talents that she has." bring to mind that one OC analysis you posted about a little while ago with the ludicrous-huge backstory that had to be crafted to justify all the character's crazy powers.

Yeah, that actually surprised me, because I've never seriously seen that outside an RP context where people are trying to justify their character build. When they were talking about "ask why they have this thing" I was nodding along, and then I realized they meant why as in show her sue power, don't just tell about her sue power, not why as in why does she need it?

It's one of those weird points where I feel like we're not even talking the same language. I mean...

Mary Sues are not criticized for the how. Sue Reports do not list "dizzyingly implausible leaps of logic" like "Uhura defers to a twelve-year-old who has not studied xenolinguistics because she can say a sentence in Klingon". They list qualities (She has "shining chestnut hair" and "dazzling blue eyes", people!) and the things the character dares to accomplish (She's got a crystalline singing voice! The nerve!).

And the advice isn't, "Maybe you should put in a scene where she demonstrates her knowledge to Uhura so Uhura's support of her makes sense," or "How about you mention how often she practices singing, so she has a reason to be good." (http://goldjadeocean.dreamwidth.org/36599.html)

Where would you even begin?

The friendslist thing is theoretically addressed better on Dreamwidth, but I suspect a lot of it's part of the general conflation of enjoying something a person produces and caring about the person themself. And the fact so many of the arguments tend to acquire a moral frame doesn't help matters. I suspect the lack of disagreement is equal parts issues of separate spheres (I follow metafandom because it's interesting, not because it has much to any overlap with my own fandom area) and that after the argument opens on the assumption that you're just doing this to bully little girls and keep women in their place, no one wants to start arguing and risk getting dogpiled.

And yeah, LJ-fandom is full of the unwritten rules and niceness cult. There's a reason I don't touch anything fandom here and am pretty leery of reviewing over on Aooo.

I wonder what a community seriously focused on fanfic for, say, Harry Potter, would look like versus the kinds of discussions that go on in the cluster around Metafandom?

Harry Potter's big enough that it used to have a chunk that existed in the LJ/Metafandom sphere. I don't know how much, if any, real overlap it had with the rest of the fandom, though. As I recall it was basically the exact same stuff but about HP instead of Supernatural or Lost.

[farla.livejournal.com]

This is definitely an echo chamber issue. The fact that they're predominantly in fandoms that admittedly are very misogynistic and prone to bashing female characters undoubtedly colors a lot of discussion, but I'd guess the core issue this time has something to do with that old sociology thing where when boys disagree on a game's rules, they hash it out and keep going but when girls disagree on a game's rules, they stop the game.

On an unrelated note, why are you playing style roulette?

Because April. And because I'm getting plenty of newcomers coming in from FFN and I want to disconcert them. I'm also running my subtitle through successive translation party (http://translationparty.com/) results.

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

"If someone wrote my autobiography I'd be called a Mary-Sue because I have so many talents and my life is so unusual!"

Wow. I just tried it and could manage an 11 by being as egotistical as possible. I believe people say things like that, but it's not even "unusual" so much as "insanely overdone in fiction compared to its prominence in real life."

On a more fun note, someone I know has just started Platinum: "I also stalk across the land of Pokemon, trapping and enslaving the inhabitants thereof to be my helpless minions, and breaking their will in a cruel and vicious manner. Go forth to fight and faint on my command! Hell with Team Rocket or Team Galactic, at this rate I'll be the one with the unmatchable pseudo-military force. The world shall be mine. And I shall brush my hair back with one hand and remove my glasses and call it good."

[farla.livejournal.com]

I'm getting steadily more suspicious every time that claim comes up. A good chunk of the questions on those tests can't be applied in real life at all, and I wonder how many are getting that score by answering yes on stuff like "do you share opinions with your character". And it's just such a stupid argument. If you have a good singing ability in real life, then no one fucking cares! Characters aren't people, they don't just randomly have abilities and likes/dislikes! THE REASON WE DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THE FUCKING PEPPERJACK CHEESE IS BECAUSE IT'S IRRELEVANT SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.

...and that quote is awesome. See that is a good character.

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

Some of my friends run an interesting panel at cons called "Anime Fight Club." It's that traditional "who would win a fight, Superman or Batman?" It was listening to people do this for hours, trying to come up with the cleverist/funniest answer, that I realized something important. There is no right answer. Some characters (Superman) are much easier to write winning against another (Aquaman), but in something that doesn't have quantified D&D rules, the person who win a fight is who the author wants to. No one ever sits around writing two characters having a fight and wonders "who wins?" Even with the minimum of outlining, they know who wins to advance the plot in what way, so they might sit around and wonder about how. Characters are not people--they are tools of an author is storytelling.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the stat-up-characters-and-see-who-wins tends to infinitely less entertaining than trying to use...reason (http://www.nuklearpower.com/2005/08/27/episode-591-hypothetically-speaking-again/) to work it out. And conversely, making one character win just because they're the favorite, rather than because it makes sense or there's a clever solution, tends to get tiresome even to fans.

There was an interesting thing I read a little while back about constructing fight scenes, using DBZ as the example (http://mike-smith.livejournal.com/202315.html#cutid1).