The Lj-sphere has got stupid again
Apr. 12th, 2010 01:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
farlaIt'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?
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?
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 07:15 pm (UTC)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.