Cimorene

I just read an UNIRONIC Tumblr wall of text unironically reblogged by someone I follow that argues that the rise of antis is due to the advent of 24-hr news "inventing" punditry (because, they argue, they had to, because not enough real things happen in the world to fill a whole day with news otherwise), and hence that punditry didn't exist until the late 90s, and that the spread of punditry and commentary on the news directly caused the erosion of the societal concepts of truth and facts, leading to the organic evolution of antis when young children were naturally led by overexposure to opinion writings and under exposure to fact-based news imparting to mistakenly assume their opinions about reality were more important than reality itself. Another poster then adds that the disappearance of real journalism in the 1990s means that all children brought up after that era aren't taught how to detect bullshit, which used to be learned naturally by exposure to good quality tv news apparently. And then a clown car appears and the last poster emerges and in complete earnestness explains that all of this is actually the result of postmodernism, which they personify as a malignant force actively desirous of eradicating the concept of 'truth' entirely.

And then there's a bunch of tags and stuff earnestly telling everybody to read the whole wall of text because it's really good.



Now my eyes are metaphorically bleeding and I've still got vertigo from the fifteen seconds I read the last response thinking it was sarcasm before the awful truth dawned on me.

Quick question: is a take's heat solely determined by its stupidity or is it partly freshness? Because this last take - 'antis are because postmodernism' - is in one sense SCORCHING, but OTOH 'postmodernism is actively trying to destroy society because it hates truth' is a take so stale that I learned ABOUT it at university as HISTORY. History that happened in part before I was born.

The last time I checked my inbox someone had commented that they knew the author was probably never going to see their comment, but... .

They perhaps think this because the last comments above weren't answered, but I do get notifications for every comment! There's emails and there's an inbox there on the site! My bookmarks are active and all my other online presences are linked in my profile, so it's not like you could think I'd gafiated.

Even weirder, on a fic that's one of two I wrote for the same romantic relationship that it's probably ruined them for this pairing forever. This would be a great compliment if it weren't implying they can't even read my other one (which is a lot better IMO, and isn't LITERAL teeniefic. The teeniefic is purple prose, which I have to assume is why so many more people like it? But it could also just be because the other one isn't rated E).

I've been reading one of those fascinating writers who seem to have a great deal of talent and no self-discipline.

By that I mean they're writing only for pleasure, yes, but that doesn't indicate lack of self-discipline in itself because in principle writing just to please yourself is a very good thing; but sometimes I just think the author HAS to be having a great time since everything is PAINFULLY obviously driven by wish fulfillment rather than taste, logic or characterization. In spite of obvious talent and skill at writing itself, I mean, where the surface level of writing is good or even great, things like narration and dialogue: this is a writer who could produce stuff I'd rate 110% if they were given a detailed plot outline by someone better at plots than they are and then edited by a sufficiently harsh beta.

As a reader, I... don't really enjoy reading about how all my favorite characters from disparate corners of canon, no matter how remote and unlikely, meet and become the best friends ever and subsequently triumph over every single character I've ever disliked through various embarrassments and humiliations while the world in general agrees explicitly how great my faves are and how pathetic their enemies. I did briefly write a few things like that when I was ten or twelve, and I read the slightly more refined wish fulfillment/Chosen One genre avidly a bit longer than that (Mercedes Lackey mostly), but... for my present enjoyment things would have fewer unpleasant people popping out to be vanquished and the skill and renown of the protagonist wouldn't be continuously increasing so regularly and explicitly. Partly it's just that it's so blatant that it's embarrassing to read and strains suspension of disbelief because I keep noticing the characterization being bent out of shape (hence my reference to the 'slightly more refined' version, ie wish fulfillment that is all about the Chosen One being showered with praise and recognition but without straining credulity as obviously and usually, when published as books like Harry Potter or the Vorkosigan books, broken up with more challenges and problems). But it also just leaves me a bit cold in this form because it's not my particular narrative kink, as it were.

I suppose this kind of wish fulfillment reading must feel for some people like the most engaging and soothing and comforting thing to read ever, so... then the question becomes, what DO I want for my favorite characters?

It isn't something I'd given a lot of thought to over time, but fortuitously, just a couple of weeks ago yvannairie recommended me this gen Transformers series, Xenoethnography by Therrae. And this is pretty much that ideal made real. In fact, I don't have a strong preference for gen, but this is such great gen for such a long time that it's an exemplary opportunity to examine the best stuff that can happen to a beloved protagonist personally as opposed to interpersonally: Therrae's OC social scientist is useful, in fact, crucial for her expertise, and she is introduced to the community of extraterrestrials living in secret and helps them and others in important ways while constantly learning more about their alien culture and psychology and gradually getting to know a wide variety of different characters. (It's Transformers fic, which is hilarious because Transformers, so the aliens are sentient robots, but the genre and register is very classic [second wave or later] science fiction.)

Put like this, the description also explains why I love CJ Cherry's Foreigner series, which was my favorite in high school (I haven't read the last few books mostly because it's so long now that trying to reread it all to remind myself what happened can take months and months each time and I keep getting distracted. I probably need all of them as ebooks in order to manage). But this learning and confidently using extant expertise also pinpoints some of the stuff we in fandom often loved about, say, SGA fic (applying to Rodney but also to John), and also to part of what really entices me about my current favorite book series, Catriona McPherson's 1920s Dandy Gilver mysteries. The found family and alien culture window character applies to popular portrayals of Stiles in Teen Wolf (although this dynamic quickly got overrun with the "pack mom" fanon, which felt weird and kinky for me and kept grossing me out to the point of becoming a pet peeve) and to the Nero Wolfe mysteries that I devoured last year at princessofgeeks's recommendation.

I've reread a bunch of SGA fic in the last two days, and every time I'm reminded about Don't Ask Don't Tell and marriage inequality, I get a little jarring moment of 'WEIRD!' Even though I lived through that reality, and that fandom, and the concerns were contemporary at the time!

I was rereading Highlander a bit a couple of weeks ago, and it's set during the period where the AIDS crisis was a thing! (Not that it's relevant to the magically healing characters really, but I guess the movement to make a big deal about condoms & lube was gaining quite a bit of steam around the late 90s to make up for all the years where no lube or condoms in fic was the norm.) Now I'm thinking... does the crisis make an appearance in Sentinel fic, where at least the characters are both human, or is it late enough (and AIDS enough of a downer) that it only appears indirectly, in the form of condom hygiene? I haven't reread a bunch of Sentinel fic in years.

Every now and then I see the "N times X and one time Y" story format and momentarily rue the day basingstoke started the Five Things That Didn't Happen trend.

But the thing is, when you think about it, who could ever have predicted that 'five short aus' would mutate into 'a few chronological scenes with some common thread followed by one that's related but different'? And honestly, I'd like to shake the dice again and reroll trope history from there with her still doing it, in case we could somehow get the au idea to take off instead.

Is it just me or is "was sat" erroneously occurring in non-British fanfic narration on the rise over time?

*that is to say, very annoying, but not as annoying as "whilst"

I've noticed a distinct pattern in some fannish people I know IRL, which is that the ones who don't Go Here in fandom never know when people and movies are canceled or on notice and usually haven't even heard a hint of why they're problematic, leading to hundreds of instances of this conversation:

THEM: I saw [media thing associated with a controversy].
ME: Yikes...
THEM: It was so good!

Explaining the controversy isn't that difficult if it's just something like "Actually it turns out that the director/writer went on a bigoted rant/has been accused of sexual harrassment" or "The role of X was whitewashed". But in the case of the well-meaning but clueless social-justice-supporting white people - initially mostly my parents, but a few members of my generation who just happen to also be Luddites - they never seem to notice cultural appropriation, white savior narratives, fridging, or unfortunate political ramifications, and the repetitiveness of this same consciousness-raising conversation with its small list of curated reference links starts to feel uncomfortably didactic, especially because the more awkward I feel, the harder I have to work to explain coherently.

The temptation is strong to just say nothing about it to escape this, but it seems a bit shady to not even indicate I was put off by something about it, if they were engaging me in fannish conversation in good faith.

The term "AO3ple" is pretty terrific, at least, and I hope it becomes as popular as it deserves. If it does, this wank will have a positive legacy after all!

synecdochic posted: they really should have known the one thing we know is how to bring receipts

File 770 site owner refusing to let through synecdochic's cited comments debunking that copyright lawyer guy's willful misrepresentation of copyright law and sharing an email conversation with her on the subject with his friend who was busy attacking in defence of the Hugo's honor all over said comment section.

Oh, okay.

elf posted: One-Millionth of a Hugo

But, says JJ at File 770: If the members of AO3 get to call themselves official Hugo Award Winners, then so do all of the commenters at File 770, and so do all of the people who’ve had works published in Uncanny Magazine — and at that point, the official term “Hugo Award Winner” has lost all meaning.

Does File 770 tell its commenters, "you are wanted; you are an essential part of this blog site; it was created so you would have a place to make these comments?" Does it say, "we have created tools that let you post and edit and seek out comments like yours; please send us feedback on how to improve the comment threading?"

Do the authors who are published in Uncanny, choose what they get to publish there? Are they welcome to join a committee and shape the rules for what Uncanny will publish? Does Uncanny say, "Please send your creative works to us; we want them all; this magazine exists to showcase as much of your work as you are willing to share?"

Neither File 770 nor Uncanny was created to support all of the people involved in it equally. Neither of them allows random people to become contributors to searchable, front-page content. Neither of them says: "Your works are welcome here, even the ones that are antisocial, even the ones we personally don't like, because this is your home if you want it to be."

AO3 is not a curated collection; it's a community.

I am done with listening to gatekeeping men who want to put lines around our creativity, who want to declare that while yes, two authors can both win for "best novella" and a team of 6 can win a "best fanzine" or "best podcast" award, a team of a million can't possibly win the "best related work" award.

Fuck that.

The WSFS doesn't get to tell us how AO3 works. That's the whole point of AO3. This is our archive and we make the rules here.