Outdoing Myself. And the Ficswap DNW Debate.
It's never good when I outdo myself in terms of working hard. Between Monday and Tuesday, I worked 28 hours: two 14-hour days. I'm not as tired as I probably should be, but I still did not allow myself to bring work home tonight. I felt like a turtle without my shell coming home without my backpack, but here I am.
We had our first ski day at Jay Peak on Monday. It went pretty well, aside from a lack of information and some general disorganization from the staff. I led the group that does Nordic for half the day, then ice skating for half. Except we were told the wrong order, so we snowshoed in the morning and then couldn't go ice skating in the afternoon, so I read to the students in the lodge while they colored and passed around my phone playing Woody Puzzle. They were not happy snowshoeing; we'll go cross-country skiing next time, which will be its own brand of struggle. We went 4.5 miles/7 km, which was too much for them. Which is sad: I'm three times their age and handled it just fine. (Admittedly, I did intentionally take them up what I knew was a huge hill. >:^))) And Vermont is the fittest state in the U.S.!
So I'm going to wade into the DNW discussion because I'm partly to blame for starting it.
independence1776 has a post here that articulates a different perspective from mine on the matter of ficswaps and DNWs in particular. Some of you probably figured out that I was the person Indy was carefully not referring to by name, so here is my perspective on the subject, under the cut for people uninterested in Tolkien fandom or hearing more about this.
I want to start out by saying that, as far as I know, the concept of Dear Author letters and "Do Not Wants" (DNWs) in particular started in multifandom challenges like Yuletide. I honestly have no dog in that fight. I am monofandom and so don't participate in anything that requires me to list multiple fandoms I'm willing to write for. My beef is with this practice spilling over into Tolkien fandom, where I very much care how things happen.
From what I know of Yuletide, Dear Author letters make sense, although I still question whether hundreds or thousands of words of DNWs are necessary. Indy describes the difference well:
In the [multifandom] type of exchanges, while you can generally assume that people want to write something that makes you happy (and thus act “in good faith”), you can also assume that the person assigned to you doesn’t know you. In the latter [smaller, monofandom] type, it’s quite possible to know or be acquainted with everyone in the exchange. So with the former, you have to explain things you don’t like and things you do. In the latter, that may not be necessary.
Then I wonder why this is becoming a custom in Tolkien fandom exchanges? After all, the initial discussion about DNWs on Discord--which I saw after the fact and so did not participate in and only looked up because a friend mentioned it--was about a Tolkien exchange, and when I still modded on MPTT, Dear Author letters were requested as part of the annual Yule Exchange.
My concerns around this trend in Tolkienfic fandom is manifold.
First, it creates the impression that bad actors are the norm and are something that participants must protect themselves against. By "bad actors," I mean people who either deliberately ignore a prompt or deliberately create something that they know or suspect will be uncomfortable or offensive for the recipient. An example was given in the discussion of someone who requested a femslash pairing and received a story with a heavy domestic violence component. My experience modding fic exchanges is limited to watching from the sidelines during the Yule exchange when I was an MPTT mod. Yes, there was the occasional person who didn't make a good faith effort on behalf of their recipient, but these were very, very rare. I'm willing to be corrected by someone with more exchange modding experience than I have that, in other exchanges, this is more common.
The best analogy I can make is when an otherwise peaceful community puts up Neighborhood Watch sign. Now I'm wondering why they felt that was necessary? If I wasn't worried or paranoid before, now I am. What is happening that this is suddenly necessary? Now I find myself taking precautions that I wouldn't have before.
I could actually see the trend of lengthy requests, and DNWs in particular, making it more likely that authors will inadvertently violate boundaries. After all, if the norm as I know it is that you will "DNW" anything you don't want to read, and you don't include a particular kink or squick, then I assume it is okay to write it. With a less granular prompt, I'm less likely to jump to that conclusion. I think that people who heavily use DNWs are experiencing this; many people mentioned that their DNW list grows constantly as they are exposed to new things that they never thought to include. I think any time you find something proliferating as rapidly as that, you need to question whether the system itself is sound and how it needs to be changed to make it more effective.
Next is the negativity. I hate negativity in fandom. I prefer to focus on the positive in fandom--yes, I realize the irony of writing that on a post complaining about a fandom trend--and Fandom has always had a problem with negativity. Character bashing, ship bashing, nOTPs, flames, sporking, wank, entire communities devoted to hating stories and interpretations and characters and pairings ... and now DNWs. There is so much to hate in the community around us, apparently.
My radical thought--and this is not new to this discussion--is how about we expend that same amount of energy writing about what we love? Supporting the authors and stories and pairings and characters we love? The same can be said of DNWs, which can largely be written as a positive. This reminds me of one of my biggest fandom pet peeves, which is the apparently need of many anti-slash people to declare something like, "I don't write or read slash" in their profiles. Here's a thought: "I love reading and writing genfic and het." Or: "I do not want first person." How about: "I enjoy third-person stories." Unless it is a legit squick or trigger, I don't see why it has to be put in negative terms.
I think some of this comes down to differing views on the balance between the wishes of the author and recipient. I did not read all of the comments on Indy's post, but I saw multiple times people say, "Why wouldn't you want to please your author?" like there is something fundamentally wrong and selfish of me for not wanting to receive a request that is 2,000 words long, spelling out what narrative choices I am permitted to use and exhaustively listing what I am not allowed to write.
These comments misunderstand my point. I am interested in pleasing the person I'm writing for. No, I am not putting my "creative freedom" above your "right" to receive a story you like. The fact that these are being depicted as in conflict with each other is part of the problem, I think. I view a gift story as a give-and-take. You tell me what you would love to read. I turn that story over in my head, using my strengths as a writer and my view of the canon, and I produce a story that matches your request.
But the recipient also does not get full creative control over my work. You are requesting a piece of work from an artist, not typing requests into a fast-food kiosk so that an assembly line system can produce a burger matching your specifications. You are asking an artist to apply their creative judgment and powers to a request you've made. You may know best what you want, but I know best what I am capable of doing to tell the best story that I possibly can to satisfy your request. The discussion on Discord mentioned first person stories, for example--apparently a common DNW. Much of what I write is in first person. And present tense. Two decisions that, in general, set people's teeth on edge, but my work is not unpopular, so I don't think it can be said that I am using them thoughtlessly or ineffectively. I actually do think, deeply, about the narrative choices I make. It is my pledge to recipients when I write a story for them that I will choose the best way I know how to tell that story.
Someone remarked that this new trend of long requests and DNWs seems entitled. I could not agree enough. Increasingly, it seems that it is perceived as okay to push the limits of someone's generosity or hospitality because of what one believes one deserves from a relationship or exchange. I read a lot of advice columns to unwind. In the letters of couples who insist their guests dress to match their wedding colors (or spend thousands flying to distant locations to watch them get married), who respond to dinner party invites with lists of what they will and will not eat, who email their hosts to request a different mattress or use of the master bedroom the next time they visit, I hear the foot-stamping, "I deserve to get exactly what I want," from the person who is extending their generosity in the first place.
I remember one time Bobby and I planned a weekend trip for a group of friends. We handled all of the planning and food purchases. One person, upon arrival, had to say that she didn't like her bedroom and the yogurt we bought wasn't her brand.
Now I know (because people were not shy of telling me) that many think I overreact to this. I don't think I do. This kind of nitpicking negativity has a very real chilling effect.
I know because, when I really stopped and thought about why I was reacting so strongly to this idea, I realized it was because of my own discomfort and (at the risk of sounding hyperbolic) distress. So, yes, I was/am taking it personally, in addition to thinking this is a bad direction generally for our community to go. Over the years, I have written dozens of gifts for people. I am not a big participant in ficswaps--I think I've done two or three in my fourteen years in fandom--but I often sign up as a pinch hitter because I love to give stories to people without the expectation of reciprocity. I also wrote frequently for friends just on the basis of knowing they liked a particular character or genre.
Now, of course, it's coming out exactly how much the people in my community dislike. And much of it can be found in my writing. I feel like the addlepated old aunt whose been gleefully knitting handmade sweaters for her family for years and has only now found out that half of them hate wool and the other half hate the colors she chose, and what she thought were smiles were grimaces as they rolled their eyes behind her back. I thought that doing my best on a story about something I knew a person liked counted for something, even if I made narrative or interpretive choices they wouldn't have thought to make themselves, even if it was written in first person.
Since we've had such an influx of new people to the SWG post-Tumblr mess, I thought about starting a casual "holiday card" challenge on the SWG Discord: make a one-sentence request and write for as few or as many of others' requests as you want. I hoped it would welcome people and let people have some fun and get to know each other in a low-key kind of way. I now think this was a stupid idea. I'm glad I didn't put it out there; I'm sure people would have gotten things written for them that they didn't like and would have been uncomfortable. (I would have had a great time, but I need to focus on my own writing more anyway, so it's probably for the best it didn't happen.)
Frankly, this whole thing has made me feel terribly about my work. I don't have a lot to offer people; my stories are often the best of me. But generosity suddenly seems not so much perilous but oddly selfish.
(P.S. This is a rare midweek entry. I will do my best to get to comments by this weekend.)
This post was originally posted on Dreamwidth and, using my Felagundish Elf magic, crossposted to LiveJournal. You can comment here or there!
https://dawn-felagund.dreamwidth.org/435992.html
We had our first ski day at Jay Peak on Monday. It went pretty well, aside from a lack of information and some general disorganization from the staff. I led the group that does Nordic for half the day, then ice skating for half. Except we were told the wrong order, so we snowshoed in the morning and then couldn't go ice skating in the afternoon, so I read to the students in the lodge while they colored and passed around my phone playing Woody Puzzle. They were not happy snowshoeing; we'll go cross-country skiing next time, which will be its own brand of struggle. We went 4.5 miles/7 km, which was too much for them. Which is sad: I'm three times their age and handled it just fine. (Admittedly, I did intentionally take them up what I knew was a huge hill. >:^))) And Vermont is the fittest state in the U.S.!
So I'm going to wade into the DNW discussion because I'm partly to blame for starting it.
independence1776 has a post here that articulates a different perspective from mine on the matter of ficswaps and DNWs in particular. Some of you probably figured out that I was the person Indy was carefully not referring to by name, so here is my perspective on the subject, under the cut for people uninterested in Tolkien fandom or hearing more about this.
I want to start out by saying that, as far as I know, the concept of Dear Author letters and "Do Not Wants" (DNWs) in particular started in multifandom challenges like Yuletide. I honestly have no dog in that fight. I am monofandom and so don't participate in anything that requires me to list multiple fandoms I'm willing to write for. My beef is with this practice spilling over into Tolkien fandom, where I very much care how things happen.
From what I know of Yuletide, Dear Author letters make sense, although I still question whether hundreds or thousands of words of DNWs are necessary. Indy describes the difference well:
In the [multifandom] type of exchanges, while you can generally assume that people want to write something that makes you happy (and thus act “in good faith”), you can also assume that the person assigned to you doesn’t know you. In the latter [smaller, monofandom] type, it’s quite possible to know or be acquainted with everyone in the exchange. So with the former, you have to explain things you don’t like and things you do. In the latter, that may not be necessary.
Then I wonder why this is becoming a custom in Tolkien fandom exchanges? After all, the initial discussion about DNWs on Discord--which I saw after the fact and so did not participate in and only looked up because a friend mentioned it--was about a Tolkien exchange, and when I still modded on MPTT, Dear Author letters were requested as part of the annual Yule Exchange.
My concerns around this trend in Tolkienfic fandom is manifold.
First, it creates the impression that bad actors are the norm and are something that participants must protect themselves against. By "bad actors," I mean people who either deliberately ignore a prompt or deliberately create something that they know or suspect will be uncomfortable or offensive for the recipient. An example was given in the discussion of someone who requested a femslash pairing and received a story with a heavy domestic violence component. My experience modding fic exchanges is limited to watching from the sidelines during the Yule exchange when I was an MPTT mod. Yes, there was the occasional person who didn't make a good faith effort on behalf of their recipient, but these were very, very rare. I'm willing to be corrected by someone with more exchange modding experience than I have that, in other exchanges, this is more common.
The best analogy I can make is when an otherwise peaceful community puts up Neighborhood Watch sign. Now I'm wondering why they felt that was necessary? If I wasn't worried or paranoid before, now I am. What is happening that this is suddenly necessary? Now I find myself taking precautions that I wouldn't have before.
I could actually see the trend of lengthy requests, and DNWs in particular, making it more likely that authors will inadvertently violate boundaries. After all, if the norm as I know it is that you will "DNW" anything you don't want to read, and you don't include a particular kink or squick, then I assume it is okay to write it. With a less granular prompt, I'm less likely to jump to that conclusion. I think that people who heavily use DNWs are experiencing this; many people mentioned that their DNW list grows constantly as they are exposed to new things that they never thought to include. I think any time you find something proliferating as rapidly as that, you need to question whether the system itself is sound and how it needs to be changed to make it more effective.
Next is the negativity. I hate negativity in fandom. I prefer to focus on the positive in fandom--yes, I realize the irony of writing that on a post complaining about a fandom trend--and Fandom has always had a problem with negativity. Character bashing, ship bashing, nOTPs, flames, sporking, wank, entire communities devoted to hating stories and interpretations and characters and pairings ... and now DNWs. There is so much to hate in the community around us, apparently.
My radical thought--and this is not new to this discussion--is how about we expend that same amount of energy writing about what we love? Supporting the authors and stories and pairings and characters we love? The same can be said of DNWs, which can largely be written as a positive. This reminds me of one of my biggest fandom pet peeves, which is the apparently need of many anti-slash people to declare something like, "I don't write or read slash" in their profiles. Here's a thought: "I love reading and writing genfic and het." Or: "I do not want first person." How about: "I enjoy third-person stories." Unless it is a legit squick or trigger, I don't see why it has to be put in negative terms.
I think some of this comes down to differing views on the balance between the wishes of the author and recipient. I did not read all of the comments on Indy's post, but I saw multiple times people say, "Why wouldn't you want to please your author?" like there is something fundamentally wrong and selfish of me for not wanting to receive a request that is 2,000 words long, spelling out what narrative choices I am permitted to use and exhaustively listing what I am not allowed to write.
These comments misunderstand my point. I am interested in pleasing the person I'm writing for. No, I am not putting my "creative freedom" above your "right" to receive a story you like. The fact that these are being depicted as in conflict with each other is part of the problem, I think. I view a gift story as a give-and-take. You tell me what you would love to read. I turn that story over in my head, using my strengths as a writer and my view of the canon, and I produce a story that matches your request.
But the recipient also does not get full creative control over my work. You are requesting a piece of work from an artist, not typing requests into a fast-food kiosk so that an assembly line system can produce a burger matching your specifications. You are asking an artist to apply their creative judgment and powers to a request you've made. You may know best what you want, but I know best what I am capable of doing to tell the best story that I possibly can to satisfy your request. The discussion on Discord mentioned first person stories, for example--apparently a common DNW. Much of what I write is in first person. And present tense. Two decisions that, in general, set people's teeth on edge, but my work is not unpopular, so I don't think it can be said that I am using them thoughtlessly or ineffectively. I actually do think, deeply, about the narrative choices I make. It is my pledge to recipients when I write a story for them that I will choose the best way I know how to tell that story.
Someone remarked that this new trend of long requests and DNWs seems entitled. I could not agree enough. Increasingly, it seems that it is perceived as okay to push the limits of someone's generosity or hospitality because of what one believes one deserves from a relationship or exchange. I read a lot of advice columns to unwind. In the letters of couples who insist their guests dress to match their wedding colors (or spend thousands flying to distant locations to watch them get married), who respond to dinner party invites with lists of what they will and will not eat, who email their hosts to request a different mattress or use of the master bedroom the next time they visit, I hear the foot-stamping, "I deserve to get exactly what I want," from the person who is extending their generosity in the first place.
I remember one time Bobby and I planned a weekend trip for a group of friends. We handled all of the planning and food purchases. One person, upon arrival, had to say that she didn't like her bedroom and the yogurt we bought wasn't her brand.
Now I know (because people were not shy of telling me) that many think I overreact to this. I don't think I do. This kind of nitpicking negativity has a very real chilling effect.
I know because, when I really stopped and thought about why I was reacting so strongly to this idea, I realized it was because of my own discomfort and (at the risk of sounding hyperbolic) distress. So, yes, I was/am taking it personally, in addition to thinking this is a bad direction generally for our community to go. Over the years, I have written dozens of gifts for people. I am not a big participant in ficswaps--I think I've done two or three in my fourteen years in fandom--but I often sign up as a pinch hitter because I love to give stories to people without the expectation of reciprocity. I also wrote frequently for friends just on the basis of knowing they liked a particular character or genre.
Now, of course, it's coming out exactly how much the people in my community dislike. And much of it can be found in my writing. I feel like the addlepated old aunt whose been gleefully knitting handmade sweaters for her family for years and has only now found out that half of them hate wool and the other half hate the colors she chose, and what she thought were smiles were grimaces as they rolled their eyes behind her back. I thought that doing my best on a story about something I knew a person liked counted for something, even if I made narrative or interpretive choices they wouldn't have thought to make themselves, even if it was written in first person.
Since we've had such an influx of new people to the SWG post-Tumblr mess, I thought about starting a casual "holiday card" challenge on the SWG Discord: make a one-sentence request and write for as few or as many of others' requests as you want. I hoped it would welcome people and let people have some fun and get to know each other in a low-key kind of way. I now think this was a stupid idea. I'm glad I didn't put it out there; I'm sure people would have gotten things written for them that they didn't like and would have been uncomfortable. (I would have had a great time, but I need to focus on my own writing more anyway, so it's probably for the best it didn't happen.)
Frankly, this whole thing has made me feel terribly about my work. I don't have a lot to offer people; my stories are often the best of me. But generosity suddenly seems not so much perilous but oddly selfish.
(P.S. This is a rare midweek entry. I will do my best to get to comments by this weekend.)
This post was originally posted on Dreamwidth and, using my Felagundish Elf magic, crossposted to LiveJournal. You can comment here or there!
https://dawn-felagund.dreamwidth.org/435992.html