Merlin S5 | Cast on slash fic + Cast tweets [no spoilers] + No 'Merlin' at Kapow? + 'Fast Girls'

[gealach_ros]

DigitalSpy Forum: User lil_miss_blonde (who's believed to somehow be involved in making the show because they've confirmed spoilers/speculation during S4 and were right, they continued to confirm S5 speculation/spoilers since filming started again), now became involved in a DS Forums discussion about the views of TPTB/Cast/Crew on fanfiction (

Comments

[gnimaerd]

I have to say I'm always bemused when people (involved with making the show or not) complain that certain kinds of creative reaction to Merlin (or anything else) are 'over the line'.

You can't control how others are going to react to a particular artwork - if we take 'artwork' to mean any media output that isn't factual - it's called freedom of expression. Of course not everyone wants to see rape/abuse fics (I don't either) but you can't trample someone else's desire to write them just by calling them offensive - that's not how human creativity works! Once the show is out there, it's out there: the people who contribute can control what they put into it, but they cannot control how individuals in the audience are going to receive it. If they don't want to SEE creative reactions that they find offensive then they shouldn't go looking - rather than blanket calling an online subcultre that they don't understand 'offensive' and trying to attach moral value in a context that they have no experience of. They just end up sticking their feet in their mouths (which is what I remember happening when the twitter debacle went down) because they have NO idea what they're talking about or who they're talking to and make a lot of really eronious assumptions about fandom and fannish types in general based on a TINY sampling of our output.

I also think people tend to use this 'over the line' argument (as MikeAP001 seems to be doing) to try to stifle slash fans because they aren't comfortable with seeing male/male romantic relationships celebrated. Which stinks of homophobia in a MAJOR way - terminally uncool. You don't have to actively enjoy slash (it does nothing for me but that's because I'm a shallow lesbian fangirl and I WANT BOOBS) but there's no logical reason to insist that m/m slash is offensive in and of itself unless you are arguing that gay men are inherently offensive just for being gay. Which again: homophobia, you haz it.