Interesting Links for 23-02-2015

[andrewducker]

• Ingress agents jailed while gathering for Anomaly event in Egypt
  (tags: Google egypt games maps )
• Apparently some idiot is teaching a course on fanfic - and telling the students to leave critical comments on the fic
  (tags: fanfic academia criticism ettiquette )
• How to let go of emotional suffering
  (tags: emotion mindfulness )
• Half of Ukip voters

Comments

[bart_calendar]

Here's the thing - right now is the perfect time for a literature professor to getting students to read and engage in fanfic - given that at the moment the most popular movie in the world is based on what was originally fanfic. If 50 Shades has done nothing it's proved that fanfic is an important part of modern fiction.

On the other hand before telling students to engage in the fanfic he or she should probably have contacted the authors and gotten their permission. I'm sure some would have been happy to get objective comments from people outside the community (and some would have declined and he/she should have respected that.)

Another way around it would have been to have the students search and find fanfics to interact with - that way a given fanfic would have probably only gotten one comment per student, hardly enough to cause this kind of weirdness.

[lil_shepherd]

See my comment below. It wasn't a Professor, it was a *student taught* class.

As several people have said, if you were asked to critique a published author you would not be asked to send the critique to them. In particular, you would not be asked to be critical (and, incidentally, rude) to the author.

Fan fiction has a particular etiquette about comments, which is that unless someone has indicated they would welcome critical comments or grammar picking etc (and, to be fair, a lot of us do) you do not comment at all unless you have something nice to say. There are a number of reasons for this, but, basically, it's meant to be fun for the writer as well as the reader.

[bart_calendar]

Fair points. One way around it could have been for the students to write their critical comments but give them to the student teachers instead of posting them.

[lil_shepherd]

Which would have been absolutely fine, though it should have been preceded by a request to the author, as a matter of courtesy, whether or not they wanted their work to be used in this way.

Quite a lot of fanfic is explicit, and plays to personal kinks. These are almost always tagged so that people who don't share those kinks can avoid reading. (I can think of half a dozen I wouldn't touch with a barge pole.) This might be shocking to some (though by no means all) members of the class and a lot of authors wouldn't want that.

[gonzo21]

One would assume/hope that the fanfic used in the course was not at the kink end of the spectrum, and was just... non sexual stories?

[woodpijn]

The list given in the link includes fics tagged "Explicit, Rape/Non-Con, Graphic Depictions of Violence", and descriptions including "Based on the kink meme prompt", "After a long process of tears and expletives trial and error, Mike becomes Harvey’s sub", and "When Stiles meets his Dom for the first time, it’s nothing like the cutesy, lovey-dovey Subflicks he used to drag Scott to when they were thirteen."

[gonzo21]

Oh wow, okay. Yeah, that's a pretty appalling mis-step then isn't it. THere's plenty fanfic out there which would be way more appropriate, without the course going into the porno world.

[sashajwolf]

You would be disappointed in that hope. If you check the list at the link, it includes several stories tagged as Explicit and one tagged as Rape/Noncon.

[gonzo21]

Well I suppose there is some academic merit in discussing the social/sexual/etc energies that result in Rape/Noncon fic being written in the first place. But yeah, it seems an odd selection for a course on fanfic.

I mean, I think there is stuff of academic interest to be found in discussions of fanfic, and transformative fan works. It has merit.

I guess the biggest mistake was that the course setters did not approach the writers first and say hey, we're doing this, you okay with it.

[lil_shepherd]

Sorry. Nope. I've seen the list and several are rated 'explicit' and I am told that one is 'underage.'