Well, it's been a while since I posted publicly on something fan-related, and it figures it would be something shit-stirring to draw me out
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I remember there being some vague discussion just post-9/11 about whether it was tacky as hell or what to write 9/11 fic AT ALL, let alone stories where somebody's OTP was all, "omg, I just saw 9/11 on the news. Let's fuck."
I mean, at the time.... You'd really hope that anybody writing a story involving 9/11 *at all*, you know, would be actually trying to express something that they deeply felt, that *personally affected them* somehow, or trying to work something out through writing-as-therapy, and not just-- I don't know. Using the death of real people as a cheap plot device in your travelogue PWP because mass murder is OOH SO ANGSTY AND DRAMATIC.
"Hey, can you name a place in America that's interesting and dramatic? Manhattan, huh? Anything cool ever happen there? Oooh, like, a couple thousand people died a while back?? That Ground Zero place sounds sooooo angsty! I can totally use that to get my OTP to fuck!"
Yeah, exactly! I was telling someone else this: this is exactly the exercise I went through when I was writing an SPN fic a while back. When I started it I thought it would be Sam/Dean, see, and then I found myself referencing slavery and racism in the South, and I said, nope, there's not gonna be any wincest next to that in my story. And I still felt guilty for even mentioning those subjects in a fanfic, you know?
So to have someone plowing right on ahead with a story like this just takes the cake.
(Which I suppose could get us into a whole other debate about the legitimacy/importance/significance of fanfic as a commentary on or response to RL issues, and from there we could get into fiction as such a commentary...but in this case we're talking about a straight-up excuse for porn and I am just not able to even get into it seriously. Not on that story's behalf.)
erm. hullo (here via the Carnival)bellatrysOctober 25 2007, 18:38:12 UTC
I hesitate to bring this up, because it's not exactly the same, but I was wondering if you've a) read the short story by Geoff Ryman "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter," and b) if so, how did it strike you? Because it gave me the same reaction - RPF! + RL atrocity + WAFFiness = Major Squick - while lots of other white readers loved it and found it "deep" and "moving" and expressive of the truth of Cambodian culture - but my connection to Cambodia and Cambodian history is of course not the same as yours (although I do have a tangled, messy, familial-guilt/personal connection of a sort.) So I'm curious if you had any opinions on it
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Re: erm. hullo (here via the Carnival)hesychasmOctober 27 2007, 13:54:55 UTC
Someone else linked the story as well as an article discussing it -- I don't know if you feel inclined to search through these comments for cryptoxin, but the link to the article will be in one of those. I've downloaded it but haven't had time to read it myself. Not sure how high a priority it should be either, considering.... But thank you for the pointer.
And yeah, I visited the WTC myself after everything, and it was curiosity more than anything else, basically just wanting to witness the space and see the memorials people had left. But even then I felt like it would be skeezy to take pictures of any of it, and I certainly wasn't trying to feel any ghosts. Sigh. I do understand the impulse behind Disaster Tourism, definitely -- I just think we should always be aware of what we're doing (which could be quite different from what we THINK we're doing) and the context surrounding us.
I think there are degrees and kinds, toobellatrysOctober 27 2007, 15:54:44 UTC
I mean, big events do have an impact on us all, and especially the larger they are and the closer we are to them societally, and this is true whether they're good things or tragedies. So being drawn to the tangible signs of the event is in some ways a very *sane* and healthy response - to be totally unaffected is a kind of apathy that isn't human. That's why we put up monuments and hold ceremonies and remember history. So it *can* be a mark of engagement, "no man an island" - but it can also be, depending on the person, quite morbid, or trivializing, or just an excuse for someone to indulge in OTT emotionalism - and then when you get questions of appropriation it becomes even more uncomfortable
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I remember there being some vague discussion just post-9/11 about whether it was tacky as hell or what to write 9/11 fic AT ALL, let alone stories where somebody's OTP was all, "omg, I just saw 9/11 on the news. Let's fuck."
I mean, at the time.... You'd really hope that anybody writing a story involving 9/11 *at all*, you know, would be actually trying to express something that they deeply felt, that *personally affected them* somehow, or trying to work something out through writing-as-therapy, and not just-- I don't know. Using the death of real people as a cheap plot device in your travelogue PWP because mass murder is OOH SO ANGSTY AND DRAMATIC.
"Hey, can you name a place in America that's interesting and dramatic? Manhattan, huh? Anything cool ever happen there? Oooh, like, a couple thousand people died a while back?? That Ground Zero place sounds sooooo angsty! I can totally use that to get my OTP to fuck!"
Jesus, people.
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So to have someone plowing right on ahead with a story like this just takes the cake.
(Which I suppose could get us into a whole other debate about the legitimacy/importance/significance of fanfic as a commentary on or response to RL issues, and from there we could get into fiction as such a commentary...but in this case we're talking about a straight-up excuse for porn and I am just not able to even get into it seriously. Not on that story's behalf.)
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And yeah, I visited the WTC myself after everything, and it was curiosity more than anything else, basically just wanting to witness the space and see the memorials people had left. But even then I felt like it would be skeezy to take pictures of any of it, and I certainly wasn't trying to feel any ghosts. Sigh. I do understand the impulse behind Disaster Tourism, definitely -- I just think we should always be aware of what we're doing (which could be quite different from what we THINK we're doing) and the context surrounding us.
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Also, the Carnival? Is that an LJ thing?
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But a lot of the articles linked (and 3 of the hosts so far) are on LJ, and there's a feed for it, let me find it for you:
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/ofcolor/profile
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