What a difference a day makes!

[gwyn]

I wish I'd never gotten involved with the ship manifesto thing. I wish I could take the whole thing down. The bitchery of people who don't know the difference between "I find everything painfully bad" & "I'm insanely nitpicky", and "everything is bad!" & "I'm smarter than you!" just astounds me, and the way people twist your words to suit their argument just so they can win a last word contest (go ahead! if it's that important to you, have the last freaking word, my god) just... gah. Really regretting having done this. I do find the fic painfully bad. I tried to explain why -- I make my living fixing bad writing. I don't find it fun to come home and read more bad writing for "fun" or easy to forgive bad mechanics when I have to spend my whole day looking for those things and fixing them. But apparently if you try to explain that you're an editor, so bad writing is a tougher sell for you, you're undignified and arrogant. Go, me.

I went to so much trouble to find some links to help people get started, but I wanted to warn them that they shouldn't necessarily start out with high hopes. Now I'm a screaming bitch who's managed to slam and diss all of Nikita fandom. I guess that's a pretty good indicator that by staying away from the fandom all this time, I was doing the right thing. And I thought X-Files fans were lunatics. This has just been so discouraging. I hate that you can't be honest in this world. I hate that people who have a personal agenda look for ways to attack you or to take offense, especially if you're not worshipping the correct people they think you should. I just hate the whole fannish political world. I'm no good at it, and I despise the hidden agendas.

Thank god for the Fast and the Furious, where I have a nice little cadre of cool people to depend on, and Buffy, where even though there are lunatics, I keep my pillow fort up, and everything's just fine with me and the people inside the pillow fort. Now I'm going to go watch Angelus laugh sinisterly and Wes cut off Lilah's head. Always cheering.

ETA: I also want to say that this is in no way mod_journal's fault and that I don't blame the site at all. I'm just having a snit. If I did learn anything today, it's that my old ultra-opinionated and grating self still has the capacity to overtake the kinder, gentler opinionated self, and that has nothing to do with the site. Spren is lovely, and this snit is totally focused on my little corner.

Comments

[dettiot.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear that people are giving you grief over your manifesto. It's a shame that fans can't enjoy the good things about their show, instead of always playing "I'm right, you're wrong!" Hang in there.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

People who have to have the last word make me nuts. I totally cop to the fact that I can't handle it. They set up a situation where they say really pointed, nasty things that you want to explain or correct, but if you do, you're buying into their construct, and then they get to come back and nail you again, because they will never let it go until they've had the last word. If you said "bye" they'd say "bye, bye". I just don't get how you can communicate when they're so intent on having a last word, they're not listening.

Hey, is that DB Sweeney in your icon? Is that Cutting Edge? Oh my god, one of my fave movies evah!!!

[ciardhapagan.livejournal.com]

Yeah when I heard about it I thought "Oooh there's a giant flamewar that I don't want to get involved in." But it did spark me to remember all my favorite "ships" over the years and I posted a chronological list. Now that was fun.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ciardhapagan/92855.html

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Oh, cripes. Do you mean people are actually talking about it? Or did you hear it here? If people are talking about it, that's bad, because then the rest of the nutters will come out of the woodwork. Thanks for your link. Even though I don't know all the folks there, I liked seeing your list, it was kind of calming.

[ciardhapagan.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen any talk about the hostility. I've just been enough fandoms over the years to know conflicting ships all too easily jumps into a flamewar. I just heard about the community and though while it sounded like a great idea I knew flamewars would eventually erupt and I stayed away from it because of that. I'm sick to death of shipper wars, I just want to ship who I like in peace. My current list actually isn't a complete list, I just started posting about other things and forgot to continue to add. And I'm still racking my brain for the 73-76 period it's nagging at me but I can't recall something I shipped then and I just know I did something. The problem I think was it was still pretty mild shipping at that point so whatever it was has drifted off into the ether... (I was thinking maybe Peter Parker and Mary-Jane, with the cartoon that aired, but it would have had to been repeats on our independent station as the cartoon's original run ended in 1970. And the 70's version didn't start until 1978. I can recall vaguely shipping Peter Parker and Mary-Jane in the 70's but not reading the comic book.

[umbo.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I'm sorry, sweetie. Unfortunately, anytime anyone says anything that someone could *possibly* construe as against their fandom or their opinion, no matter how it's actually meant or expressed, these kind of things tend to happen. I'm sorry it happened to you.

*more hugs*

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah. There just really is no place for saying what you think, even if you qualify it with "I think" all over the place. I know you've had that happen to you before, too. I just think sometimes people look for ways to be offended, you know? I think there was an interesting clue in one thing someone said, and that's that I'm a nobody they've never heard of writing about something they wanted to write, so... you can imagine how popular it is to hear that this nothing person doesn't worship the right people.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

there's a reason fan is related to fanatic, right?

you wrote such a wonderful post and i felt your caveat was respectful...heck, tyou *could* have slammed the fic but you didn't.

so sorry!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

The funny thing? In the olden days, I used to be much worse! I would have just said, this is a crap fandom for fic and vids, and moved on. This time I tried to explain where I was coming from. Same result, different effort. Guess you can't win.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

i really wonder whether people do not read other fandoms...i mean, we obviously all have limited insight, but there *are* better and worse fandoms. period. yes, sturgeon's law always applies, but the remaining 10% still can be decent, good, or great :-)

then again, folks read for 2 different reasons that often but not always overlap...the love for the source text and the love for the fic...you cannot argue with those of the former ilk :-)

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

You are a wise and gracious woman. And totally correct, and I should really remember that in future when I'm ready to rant again. I wish I'd sent my essay by you for a vet! I tip my cartoon iced tea to you (yeah, it's a pop bottle, but if I could have, I'd have chosen a glass of iced tea).

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

toasts back with my glass of water :-)

i've had several arguments lately with monofannish folks who could not conceive that i would rather read a really excellent fic from a writer i knew than a mediocre one in my current fandom...

FWIW, i still think it was a beautiful essay cherishing the love and affection and tension of this show!

[mlyn.livejournal.com]

there *are* better and worse fandoms. period.

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks so. *G* I was looking at the posting schedule for ship_manifesto and amazed at all the retarded pairings. Dude, I adore Law & Order: SVU, but shipping Olivia/Casey is STUPID.

It reminds me of people on my friends list who seem to make a game out of writing drabbles for as many pairing combinations as they can think of. I excuse it 'cause they're drabbles, but I don't read them. I think that fad has died, thank god.

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

I just hate the whole fannish political world.

Amen.

I'm sorry this turned out so negatively for you, especially after you volunteered your time. I admit I didn't read the post but I'm sure you were respectful.

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

Ok so I just read the post and - you totally sold me and now I want to see the show. Darn you. That's TWO fandoms you've inadvertantly pimped me into.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Well, not necessarily respectful, but it was one tiny comment that I did qualify with "I think this" and that most people aren't as insanely nitpicky as I am, so they could take a look themselves. I *am* nuts about the fic nitpicking, I've never met anyone as bad as me. But I'm the one who loses out; it has nothing to do with them. So one tiny comment overshadows the whole thing because people are looking for something to complain about.

[luminosity]

Geez. I'm so out of the loop! Did you not put enough little smiley faces, "*g*'s" and "IMO's" in there?

Sometimes people are just looking for something to bitch about.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

You know, that has plagued me since the dawn of my fannish time online. I have never used enough smileys and IMOs and all of that. I can't count how many people have told me that I wouldn't get into so much trouble if I would just sprinkle them in my posts. I am destined to be a failure, I think, because of that. ;-) See!

Hey, they took my sound away at work, so I still haven't had a chance to see your credits, but I'm really looking forward to it!! As soon as I can get down to my dad's I'm definitely DLing.

[luminosity]

Well, I don't use them enough either. I mistakenly assumed that because I was writing something in LJ or on a list, it was just common sense that I was writing my opinion. I mean, I didn't have a bibliography or footnotes or anything. It wasn't blessed by the Pope. We're doomed to a life of nitpicking and running up semantic rabbit trails, I guess. ("You *said* this. You didn't *say* that it was your opinion, man." Jesus H. Christ.) Sorry. This is a pet peeve of mine, and I tend to just...go off.

You didn't see my credits yet!?! I hope you hurry down to your dad's and let me know what you think.

[ascian3.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, I went over to see what all the fuss was about, and came away plotting to join Netflix to get the DVDs. It makes me sad that I can only get two seasons that way.

In regard to the fic - um, yeah. I followed those links, too, but only for a few sentences. There's probably better stuff out there, but who has the time?

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Heee. Well, cool! I wish to hell S2 was out but we can keep our fingers crossed.

Some fandoms are fic fandoms for me, and others, just aren't. Sometimes I can be won over, but nothing really jazzed me here. I felt so lucky in Buffy -- I'd never seen so much good stuff, it was like falling into a little bit of writing heaven. Eveythng, sadly, kind of pales in comparison.

[voleuse.livejournal.com]

That sucks. I have to admit, I wasn't able to read the essay today (last-minute meeting at work), but I am looking forward to it. Your essays on LFN were the reason I rented the first season over the summer, and now I'm completely addicted. I even cajoled someone from my f-list into sending me what episodes she had from the last three seasons, and they arrived today!

So, I guess this is just another "thank you" from me for getting me involved in a great show, even if the fandom is a little touch and go.

[klia.livejournal.com]

I hate that you can't be honest in this world. I hate that people who have a personal agenda look for ways to attack you or to take offense, especially if you're not worshipping the correct people they think you should. I just hate the whole fannish political world. I'm no good at it, and I despise the hidden agendas.

Just... word. I've been involved in online fandom for 10 years, now, and you'd think I'd be used to it after all this time, but the pettiness just never stops getting to me. And it's upsetting when your comments are deliberately misconstrued, because your enthusiasm ends up getting bulldozed like Joan Girardi's garden.

*hunkers down in private pillow fort*

[mlyn.livejournal.com]

Thank god for the Fast and the Furious, where I have a nice little cadre of cool people to depend on

I was replying to an email about my current RPG snafu today, and said just that. I have a fear that the fandom will burn fast and bright, then flicker out, but at least it's been great.

[rainkatt.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry that happened... I think I didn't tell you how much I loved that essay, because I was at work, and things happened. I loved that essay. I like it when you talk about Michael and Nikita, because I don't know anyone else who does, and I miss them a lot. I didn't get into the fandom at all, and I'm barely in the Jossverse, but now this makes me happy I stayed away...

[blackmeow.livejournal.com]

I wanted to take the opportunity to let you know how much I enjoyed and agreed with a couple of your essays and journal entries. In particular, I loved the "guests in my corn' essay, and one journal entry (I believe it was a journal entry, I was unable to find it to reread it the other day) about warnings and such on fan fiction.

I thought your points about being not only the author of your fics but also the creator/owner of the website, and as such worthy of a little respect when it came to things like deciding where your work should be posted and what sort of warnings/ratings should be included, well written and argued, and very much in line with my own feelings. In fact, I'm also wondering when and why writers started policing other writers, or expecting to be able to include the works of others on their sites without permission.

You seem to have been in fanfiction quite a while; was there a time when this habit of stating the rating/pairing/content of stories was not the norm? If so, what do you think caused the change to occur? Was is just the growth of the internet as a means of disseminating fanfiction?

I'm not really into the fan fiction world very deeply, so if the answers to the above are common knowledge, sorry! Your writing on the subject just intrigued me, and I've been meaning to give you 'feedback' on your essays. I really enjoyed reading something from the perspective of an experienced writer in the genre, and I hope you'll continue to write on these topics. It's very interesting.
(Reply to this)

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you! And hey, it's nice to meet you, m'lyn has been telling me about your fic and I enjoyed that alternate take on khal's Rewind segment a lot.

You seem to have been in fanfiction quite a while; was there a time when this habit of stating the rating/pairing/content of stories was not the norm? If so, what do you think caused the change to occur? Was is just the growth of the internet as a means of disseminating fanfiction?

I came into media fandom (I'd been in SF fandom for a while, but it's a different world there) at a really interesting time. The Internet was actually just really starting to be a place of community instead of a network for tech people, and e-mail lists were just starting to become established, and usenet was in its heyday. Zines were still, however, the most prevalent way to get fanfic, and vids were all tape trading. X-Files really changed things -- for most of us, getting a story accepted in a zine was usually the way we got published, in some cases there were situations such as the Professionals circuit library, where you could send in stories that would be photocopied and distributed a la a library book.

Zines were, of course, subject to the whims of the publisher, and some would use ratings, and some even offered spoilers (so that folks could know, for instance, if something was non-con, or death, or what have you). But largely, it was assumed that if you were buying zines, especially slash zines, you knew what you were getting into. I could understand the rush to label in the beginning on the net, because people wouldn't always know what they were getting into. Now that you can search on a name from a show, you can find all this stuff and if you weren't a fan, you'd never know what you might find in front of your child's eyes. But I also think people go overboard, and I think that the labeling for age restrictions is a joke. Call it adult, or call it general audience, but don't start telling me that a story is NC-17 because it has a few "fucks" in it and cut to billowing curtains sex, especially if it's slash. Because any gay romance, you know, is NC-17! Gah.

The pairing and keyword labeling I think got started because people wanted a way to easily find like-minded stuff, especially in large archives like the gossamer XF archive. That was really one of the first huge clearinghouses for fanfic on the web. But I think like all things in fandom, it got carried too far -- I watched as all these other networks sprang up, like FFnet, and they seemed to have gotten to a place where the labeling, disclaiming, keywording, and spoiler warnings are so absurd they take up more space than the stories themselves.

With zines, you rarely got things like spoiler warnings. It was harder to often get tapes of shows, and few shows were currently airing, so the childish spoiler culture wasn't a big problem -- but the net seems to have amplified that with its immediacy. In the early days, I remember it being a very, "if you don't want to know, don't get on the boards" mindset; now people scream and wail and gnash their teeth if you even say you loved something without a huge spoiler warning. I think in a way the immediacy has kind of baby-fied the fan culture.

(more below)

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Having watched the way fandom changed so quickly in the short time I was being introduced to it, one of the things that always stuck in my mind was that the single biggest difference between today's fans and older fans is the mentoring process. Before, you had to kind of find out about social networks, cons (and people went to cons because that was the primary source of fannish product), social mores, rules, etc. from getting to know other people. I was kind of a feral fan when my local gang met me -- I'd been poking around outside networks for 16 years, looking for other Pros fans! And that mentoring process of the people who intro'd me to the world was invaluable, and people today don't really get that chance. Sometimes, they can in places like thriving e-mail lists or LJ, but often it's a crapshoot.

So if they see things like archives that have tons of warnings and silly labels on stories, they think that's the norm, and have no other experience with it. Or they think it's okay to take things or to plagiarize or steal vid edits, because no one has ever really said otherwise to them -- because no one has ever had the chance to say otherwise. There's little personal connection anymore, whereas personal connection was a huge part of it before the net became so important. (Someone recently on lJ wrote the funniest, cutest thing ever about her newbie faux pas that just had me in hysterics; but it was so true about what it's like for random fans now.)

I feel really lucky in some ways to have come in at the cusp of change. I'm not so old that I didn't benefit from or thrive on the changes (many old-time fans, I've seen, just will not treat the web with anything except suspicion and disdain), but I also see that there are models of sharing fannish product that maybe are not for the best. If I could change anything about fandom, it would be this ridiculous culture of warnings and over-archiving and labeling. I would make everyone be like Laura, who runs allaboutspike.com, the single best archive I've ever seen. ;-) I'd reduce labels to adult or general audience.

Well, I'd do a lot of things, but... I know the genie's out of the bottle now, and it's not going to get better. I really don't see people talk about these issues at all. I've never heard anyone get into discussions about the labeling/keywording except on a private list I'm on. I'd really love to see this discussed in larger forums, but I doubt it'll happen. People want safety, lack of effort, speed and simplicity, all handed to them on a platter. So, the newer culture gives that to them. It's cheaper and speedier, sure, but also kind of mind-numbing.

[nestra.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry you had such a negative experience. I feel like I'm sort of in a unique position, since I started out in LFN and have at least kept a toe in the water. (I'm also sorry I'm a couple days late - I was out of town and am catching up.)

I know most, if not all of the people who responded to your post, and I can assure you that they weren't trying to attack you. I suspect most of them were thrilled with your essay, which was so wonderfully articulate about Michael and Nikita, and hoping to get a little bit of fresh blood into the fandom. And the first few posts were people providing links and information about the fandom, which is still existing, if not thriving. It seemed to go downhill when you implied -- whether you meant to or not -- that only people with lower standards could find fic to enjoy in the fandom. As I said, I know those posters, and trust me, their standards are often impossibly high. ;-)

Anyway, I'm not trying to drag this up again or hurt anyone's feelings. Just thought I'd provide another perspective on it, from someone who's still in the fandom. I bet most of those people were excited to have a place to discuss LFN that wasn't one of the message boards, and their only object was to try and encourage newbies who might otherwise have been discouraged.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I guess that's the big difference here -- the word implying, because I was implying nothing. They were inferring, which is a really big difference. If I'd wanted to say "if your standards are lower and you have no taste you might like these", believe me, I would have said that, and I never said the phrase all of them were ascribing to me: "there's no good fanfic." I never said that; I said "I find it painfully bad" and if you're not as insanely nitpicky as I am, you might find stuff to enjoy.

I *am* insanely picky. I'm the most absurdly picky fic bitch I know of; I've never met anyone as ridiculous about it as I am. Nitpicky has a pejorative connotation -- and it's not pejorative to the readers, it's pejorative to *me*. I was dissing myself, because I know I'm missing out. So for all these people who don't know me and know nothing about me to infer (not me to imply) that I said something else -- that there is unequivocally no good fanfic and that they have low standards -- is really unfair and has not left me with a good impression of other fans. I also really don't appreciate the baiting for the last word contests, where they make pseudo-psychoanalytical statements about your character and then challenge you to say something, so they can engage in that last-word one-upmanship. That's for 12 year olds. I'm glad that I mostly confined my participation in the fandom to the Heyn's Hussies/Haven MBs.

I can understand wanting to support your friends when you think they've been dissed, but it's been really frustrating for me to have my words twisted and for people to take their inferences from a personal agenda and use them as an excuse to insult me, when all I was doing was stating my opinion about what *I* found about the fic, and how ridiculously rigid I am. When I tried to explain my background and why my work has ruined much of something that 99.999% of fandom loves, one person decided to mock me for telling "everyone" why (I mentioned it to two people).

Just for a reality check, I went to some of those places mentioned, and I still found the fics I checked out to be painfully bad. I didn't see anything that I wanted to read past the first couple lines. Maybe there is stuff hiding out there, but I don't have the inclination to find it, and I don't look at fic for kinks or story themes, or what have you. And if the good stuff is hidden in fic about Ops and Maddie, for instance, I'm never going to know because I despise those characters. So all I could do was state my opinion and my experience -- and it got turned into this dumb thing. I don't get why fic is so all important to people -- certainly I write it, but geez, for that one stupid comment to overshadow everything else and turn into a last word contest just struck me as stupid beyond words. It was interesting to me, as well, that the rudest of the posters were dismissive in a huge way of vids -- and I've found vids to be a much, much more powerful recruiting tool than stories have ever been. That tells me a lot right there (and also kind of says that it's okay for them to slam vids, which I love, but not for me to slam fic).

I don't know. I get what you're trying to say, but inferring and implying are two really different things. I'm opinionated and tough enough that if I wanted to say "your standards are lower," believe me, I would have. Enough people wrote to me privately to tell me they thought my words were being twisted and people were getting melodramatic and hysterical about it that I don't think I'm as crazy as everyone wants me to believe. I don't know those people who wrote to me privately, but they seemed to get what I was saying.

I'm tired, my chest hurts like hellfire, I'm demoralized, and I wish I'd never gotten involved in this. One person made a crack about how she was interested to see what this person she'd never heard of (read: you're a nobody who has no right to say anything about my fandom) had to say about the couple she wanted to write about (which sounds like she's pissed I beat her to it), but that I signed up for first, so a lot of this seems very personal and kind of petty to me. It just made me even more depressed and disgusted, and I guess now I'm kind of done. Sad and done.

[nestra.livejournal.com]

Well, I disagree. I feel like you're reading as much into their actions as you claim they're reading into yours, but it's really not that important an issue to either of us, I'm sure. Again, I'm sorry this was an unpleasant experience for you.