stuff about stuff
I haven't posted anything here not a fic announcement in... a terribly long time. I'm not sure this has bothered anyone. I'm active on tumblr, which lends itself to magpie tendencies and a more directed audience, but before I lose the art of internet conversing entirely...
* I've been rereading some of my old SGA fic this past week. Not the big stuff, just the random short things, the drabbles (for my value of drabbles) and aborted story starts and random OC-heavy tidbits I never posted to my website, let alone imported to AO3. [all of which is still available and filterable here] I'm pleasantly surprised by the quality -- rereading old fic can sometimes be a horror show -- but also a little surprised how much I miss the fellows. Not enough to write something new, I don't think, but it was nice catching up with old friends I lived with for almost five years.
Next month, it will be ten years since my first SGA story got posted and I might do something to mark that. In the meanwhile, I will admit that I am freshening up The Jenny Code a little. Mostly plain old editing, but also some minor adjustments to reflect that while the readers and I were meeting some characters (Yoni, etc.) for the first time when it was written, the characters were not meeting each other and a much fuller world was subsequently built. I'm not changing the plot or the structure or the details, just filling out the environment a little and softening a few character beats.
* Someone not me could probably get quite a bit of mileage out of a meta essay on When Your Fave Is Problematic... And A Real Person with the Hockey RPS community as the focus. I don't read RPS (or RPF) as a rule; hockey RPS I steer well clear of because I am a huge hockey fan and it's like seeing your cousin's sex tape. But I know several of you enjoy it and write it -- it's on my flist/dash -- and I'm aware of it by second-hand context.
Patrick Kane is a splendid hockey player for the Chicago Blackhawks, a playoff MVP and an Olympic medal winner and the owner of three Stanley Cup rings. He's also one half of the Hockey RPS fandom's two biggest pairings. He's also currently under investigation for rape. This is not his first brush with the law, having gotten in trouble for drunkenly assaulting a cabbie -- an act of stupid assholery that was largely treated as 'boys being boys' within the hockey world because Kane was essentially a frat boy, going on bar crawls in college towns and getting publicly shitfaced and other behavior his team and the league had hoped were behind him.
The rape investigation, which is still in the preliminary stages awaiting rape kit and other evidence testing results, is not being treated as 'boys being boys.' Kane has not faced any kind of suspension or disciplinary action yet because it's the off-season and there are no paychecks to withhold, but he has already lost an endorsement of some stature by being taken off of the cover of the EA NHL'16 game (non-sports people: the EA covers are A Thing). There is serious discussion about what will happen next month, when players are due to report -- and get paid -- if there is no further action by the authorities. Do you suspend a player before he is charged with a crime? The precedents are mixed.
Within hockey RPS, to the best of my understanding, Kane is treated as a force of chaotic good, an imp or a jester who might have a dark side but is good at heart. He's Loki before the first Thor movie. Which then begs the question: what happens after the first Thor movie and Loki is revealed to be a monster? There's a whole lot of fanfic that redeems Loki either by ignoring movie canon or by presenting a revisionist history that either justifies or excuses his behavior -- and there is a lot of backlash to that because it's not the first time fanficcers excuse a villain his crimes because he's hot.
But what happens in RPS if the canon -- real life -- has a character turn evil? Can you just go AU? Is it like that tv series you love but you pretend the last season never happened? I don't ask this rhetorically -- I don't know how the fandom works well enough to even hazard a guess. RPS is frequently explained as being the depiction of fictionalized versions of the real people ("inspired by a true story..."), everyone conveniently packaged and accessorized for maximum entertainment value -- their relationship status is altered, their family situation and social network reconstructed, their personalities largely created from a snippet of an interview or a social media posting that, extrapolated out, turns them into someone fun to write. What happens when the real person that fictionalized character is based on is revealed to be someone appalling? Does it matter any more than if that character's RL basis gets married or divorced? Is the separation between the two so complete that the original doesn't even count anymore?
I looked at the Patrick Kane tag on AO3 the day the rape investigation was made public: there were 1943 fics. Less than two weeks later, there are 1836. But there are also several new ones posted after the news broke -- not just the day after, but also the week after. Clearly some people are bothered enough to pull their stories, but some are still writing him. This doesn't mean everyone who still has their fic up is condoning it, far from it, but it's an interesting statistical note.
I'm not in the fandom, I'm just an observer, which is why if there's anything to be said about this, it can't be me saying it. But for anyone who is in the fandom... I dunno. It might be worth expositing on.
Also posted at DW.
* I've been rereading some of my old SGA fic this past week. Not the big stuff, just the random short things, the drabbles (for my value of drabbles) and aborted story starts and random OC-heavy tidbits I never posted to my website, let alone imported to AO3. [all of which is still available and filterable here] I'm pleasantly surprised by the quality -- rereading old fic can sometimes be a horror show -- but also a little surprised how much I miss the fellows. Not enough to write something new, I don't think, but it was nice catching up with old friends I lived with for almost five years.
Next month, it will be ten years since my first SGA story got posted and I might do something to mark that. In the meanwhile, I will admit that I am freshening up The Jenny Code a little. Mostly plain old editing, but also some minor adjustments to reflect that while the readers and I were meeting some characters (Yoni, etc.) for the first time when it was written, the characters were not meeting each other and a much fuller world was subsequently built. I'm not changing the plot or the structure or the details, just filling out the environment a little and softening a few character beats.
* Someone not me could probably get quite a bit of mileage out of a meta essay on When Your Fave Is Problematic... And A Real Person with the Hockey RPS community as the focus. I don't read RPS (or RPF) as a rule; hockey RPS I steer well clear of because I am a huge hockey fan and it's like seeing your cousin's sex tape. But I know several of you enjoy it and write it -- it's on my flist/dash -- and I'm aware of it by second-hand context.
Patrick Kane is a splendid hockey player for the Chicago Blackhawks, a playoff MVP and an Olympic medal winner and the owner of three Stanley Cup rings. He's also one half of the Hockey RPS fandom's two biggest pairings. He's also currently under investigation for rape. This is not his first brush with the law, having gotten in trouble for drunkenly assaulting a cabbie -- an act of stupid assholery that was largely treated as 'boys being boys' within the hockey world because Kane was essentially a frat boy, going on bar crawls in college towns and getting publicly shitfaced and other behavior his team and the league had hoped were behind him.
The rape investigation, which is still in the preliminary stages awaiting rape kit and other evidence testing results, is not being treated as 'boys being boys.' Kane has not faced any kind of suspension or disciplinary action yet because it's the off-season and there are no paychecks to withhold, but he has already lost an endorsement of some stature by being taken off of the cover of the EA NHL'16 game (non-sports people: the EA covers are A Thing). There is serious discussion about what will happen next month, when players are due to report -- and get paid -- if there is no further action by the authorities. Do you suspend a player before he is charged with a crime? The precedents are mixed.
Within hockey RPS, to the best of my understanding, Kane is treated as a force of chaotic good, an imp or a jester who might have a dark side but is good at heart. He's Loki before the first Thor movie. Which then begs the question: what happens after the first Thor movie and Loki is revealed to be a monster? There's a whole lot of fanfic that redeems Loki either by ignoring movie canon or by presenting a revisionist history that either justifies or excuses his behavior -- and there is a lot of backlash to that because it's not the first time fanficcers excuse a villain his crimes because he's hot.
But what happens in RPS if the canon -- real life -- has a character turn evil? Can you just go AU? Is it like that tv series you love but you pretend the last season never happened? I don't ask this rhetorically -- I don't know how the fandom works well enough to even hazard a guess. RPS is frequently explained as being the depiction of fictionalized versions of the real people ("inspired by a true story..."), everyone conveniently packaged and accessorized for maximum entertainment value -- their relationship status is altered, their family situation and social network reconstructed, their personalities largely created from a snippet of an interview or a social media posting that, extrapolated out, turns them into someone fun to write. What happens when the real person that fictionalized character is based on is revealed to be someone appalling? Does it matter any more than if that character's RL basis gets married or divorced? Is the separation between the two so complete that the original doesn't even count anymore?
I looked at the Patrick Kane tag on AO3 the day the rape investigation was made public: there were 1943 fics. Less than two weeks later, there are 1836. But there are also several new ones posted after the news broke -- not just the day after, but also the week after. Clearly some people are bothered enough to pull their stories, but some are still writing him. This doesn't mean everyone who still has their fic up is condoning it, far from it, but it's an interesting statistical note.
I'm not in the fandom, I'm just an observer, which is why if there's anything to be said about this, it can't be me saying it. But for anyone who is in the fandom... I dunno. It might be worth expositing on.
Also posted at DW.